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Category: Politics

Pro-Palestinian activists lambasted Biden and Harris. Trump will be an even bigger dilemma

Pro-Palestinian activists lambasted Biden and Harris. Trump will be an even bigger dilemma

Politico reports: Pro-Palestinian groups in the U.S. are staring down a new challenge: Donald Trump and Republicans. The movement has tended to focus its efforts on who controls the White House and Democrats, whom its leaders view as more persuadable to soften support for Israel. But 15 months into the war in the Middle East, as the GOP trifecta prepares to control the White House and Congress, leaders in the movement find themselves with far less leverage — and much…

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Jimmy Carter’s quiet but monumental work in global health

Jimmy Carter’s quiet but monumental work in global health

The New York Times reports: Jimmy Carter’s five decades of leadership in global health brought a hideous disease to the brink of elimination, helped deliver basic health and sanitation to millions of people and set a new standard for how aid agencies should engage with the countries they assist. It was quiet work and drew relatively little attention because it was focused on afflictions that plague the poorest people in the most marginalized places, but it had enormous impact. “The…

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With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance

With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance

Sophia Goodfriend reports: On Dec. 10, Israeli military officials, weapons manufacturers, and American venture capitalists gathered at Tel Aviv University for the first ever DefenseTech Summit. The two day affair featured panels on “The Future of Global Conflict,” “Challenges of Iron Swords” (the IDF’s name for the war in Gaza) and “Exploring Innovation in Drone Technology.” Representatives from Palantir, Sequoia Capital, and Elbit shared the stage with the Director General of the IDF and the head of LOTEM, the army…

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Israeli citizenship has always been a tool of genocide — so I am renouncing mine

Israeli citizenship has always been a tool of genocide — so I am renouncing mine

Avi Steinberg writes: I recently entered an Israeli consulate and submitted papers to formally renounce my citizenship. It was an unseasonably warm fall day and office workers on break were lounging by the pond in Boston Common. The night before had seen a particularly gruesome series of aerial attacks by Israel on refugee tent camps in Gaza. Even as Palestinians were still counting bodies or, in many cases, collecting what remained of loved ones, the suburban woman in front of…

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In a war between tech bros and core MAGA, the winner is easy to spot

In a war between tech bros and core MAGA, the winner is easy to spot

Adam Lashinsky writes: The spiteful bickering in recent days between Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley enablers and his MAGA acolytes is an unexpected reminder of how quickly the folks around the president-elect can put everything to the side while trying to hurt one another. Apparently preferring to sling insults rather than enjoy Christmas with their families, Trump’s anti-immigrant supporters spent much of the last week battling on X with his new tech-industry pals over the arcane issue of limited-term visas for…

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MAGA influencer Laura Loomer: Trump world is afraid to challenge ‘king of the world’ Musk

MAGA influencer Laura Loomer: Trump world is afraid to challenge ‘king of the world’ Musk

Mediate reports: Right wing MAGA influencer Laura Loomer told host Eric Bolling on Monday that Donald Trump insider and billionaire Elon Musk has made “junkies” of the right with his massive donor money and control of X, and suggested that Trump world is afraid to cross him. Loomer is one of the latest and most vocal among MAGA influencers to join in scorched earth internal warfare over the issue of H-1B guest worker visas. She joins Trump insider Steve Bannon…

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MAGA civil war is spiraling out of control and insiders fear it’s just the beginning

MAGA civil war is spiraling out of control and insiders fear it’s just the beginning

The Daily Beast reports: The MAGA Civil War has already rendered the Republican Party ungovernable, according to former GOP lawmakers who think the “s—show” is going to continue spiraling out of control. The party is already acrimoniously split between the tech billionaires like Elon Musk, who helped bankroll Donald Trump’s re-election, and the original MAGA grassroots who have been loyal to Trump since 2016. To make matters worse, the tiny Republican majority in the House means there is absolutely no…

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Jimmy Carter might have saved the climate, if the country had let him try

Jimmy Carter might have saved the climate, if the country had let him try

Dave Levitan writes: It’s an old and well-worn story, of course. On June 20, 1979, President Jimmy Carter stood in front of 32 newly installed solar panels on the White House roof, and announced a set of recommendations he sent to Congress regarding a grand new solar strategy. “Today, in directly harnessing the power of the Sun, we’re taking the energy that God gave us, the most renewable energy that we will ever see, and using it to replace our…

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Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller

Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller

Andrew Prokop writes: A bitter public feud split the MAGA movement over the holidays, as supporters of high-skilled legal immigration like Elon Musk argued vociferously (and sometimes profanely) with the right’s immigration critics over the topic of H-1B visas. Musk, like many tech executives, strongly supports that program, which lets companies bring skilled foreign workers to the US for specific jobs — indeed, Musk said he once had such a visa himself. Critics on the right have long argued that it suppresses wages…

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How much do Democrats need to change?

How much do Democrats need to change?

Peter Slevin writes: The mood among Democrats on a December morning in the Wisconsin state capitol was celebratory. Ten Assembly candidates—among them a school administrator, a tavern owner, an accountant, and a county politician—had flipped Republican seats after the state Supreme Court threw out a heavily gerrymandered map. “I am super excited. Who else is super excited?” Representative Lisa Subeck, the caucus chair, said. Some of the newly elected spoke about what they hope to deliver: affordable housing, broadband, clean…

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Turkey’s jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

Turkey’s jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

Reuters reports: The jailed leader of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as indicating he may be prepared to call for militants to lay down arms, after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group’s decades-old insurgency. Two parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party met Ocalan for talks on his island prison on Saturday, in the first such visit nearly in a decade. DEM requested the visit after a key…

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Jimmy Carter elevated human rights above Realpolitik

Jimmy Carter elevated human rights above Realpolitik

Daniel Fried writes: Official Washington and most of US academia regarded the Soviet Bloc­­—communist-dominated Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea east of West Germany—as permanent and, though this was seldom made explicit, stabilizing. Talk of “liberating” those countries was regarded as illusion, delusion, or cant. Maintaining US-Soviet stability, under this view of Cold War realism, required accepting Europe’s realities, as these were then seen. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Final Act of Helsinki, a sort…

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Jimmy Carter on Israeli apartheid and why U.S. political leaders avoid taking action

Jimmy Carter on Israeli apartheid and why U.S. political leaders avoid taking action

Jimmy Carter: "The word 'apartheid' is exactly accurate…they are absolutely & totally separated…the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people." "There are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective analysis…"pic.twitter.com/58qIJBWcmy — Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) December 29, 2024

Unheralded environmentalist: Jimmy Carter’s green legacy

Unheralded environmentalist: Jimmy Carter’s green legacy

Kai Bird writes: The angry Alaskans gathered in Fairbanks to burn the president’s effigy. It was early December 1978 and President Jimmy Carter was that unpopular in Alaska. A few days earlier Carter had issued an unusual executive order, designating 56 million acres of Alaskan wilderness as a national monument. He did so unilaterally, using a little known 1906 Antiquities Act that ostensibly gave the president the executive power to designate buildings or small plots of historical sites on federal…

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German politicians decry Elon Musk’s AfD support as election ‘interference’

German politicians decry Elon Musk’s AfD support as election ‘interference’

Reuters reports: U.S. billionaire Elon Musk drew criticism from German politicians from the government and opposition on Sunday for an opinion piece he wrote backing the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) which they deemed “intrusive” outside influence. The support of the AfD from Musk, who is set to serve U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s administration as an outside adviser, comes as Germans are set to vote on Feb. 23 after a coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed. The commentary…

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How Trump went from backing a TikTok ban to backing off

How Trump went from backing a TikTok ban to backing off

The New York Times reports: Four years ago, President Donald J. Trump denounced TikTok, the Chinese-owned video sharing app, as a threat to America’s national security. This week, as Mr. Trump prepares to retake the White House, he called it a “unique medium for freedom of expression.” The comment was part of a brief he filed to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking the justices to pause a ban on TikTok set to take effect next month so that he…

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