Browsed by
Category: Politics

Trump and MAGA are desperately trying to pin New Orleans attack on the border

Trump and MAGA are desperately trying to pin New Orleans attack on the border

Rolling Stone reports: The truck attack that killed 15 and injured dozens in New Orleans’ French Quarter early Wednesday morning has cast a pall over the dawn of the new year — but it hasn’t deterred President-elect Donald Trump and his sycophants from pushing misinformation to politicize the tragedy. Trump responded to the attack on Wednesday by suggesting that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the suspect in the mass murder who was killed by New Orleans law enforcement, was an undocumented migrant. Jabbar,…

Read More Read More

Net neutrality rules struck down by appeals court

Net neutrality rules struck down by appeals court

The New York Times reports: A federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s landmark net neutrality rules on Thursday, ending a nearly two-decade effort to regulate broadband internet providers as utilities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, said the F.C.C. lacked the authority to reinstate rules that prevented broadband providers from slowing or blocking access to internet content. In its opinion, a three-judge panel pointed to a Supreme Court decision in June, known…

Read More Read More

America, Afghanistan and the price of self-delusion

America, Afghanistan and the price of self-delusion

John F. Sopko writes: The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, revealed what little American lives and money had purchased over 20 years there. It also laid bare a gaping disconnect between reality and what senior U.S. officials had been telling Americans for decades: that success was just around the corner. As the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2012, my staff and I have audited and investigated U.S. programs and spending to rebuild…

Read More Read More

The little-known federal agency that’s primed to crack down on dissent

The little-known federal agency that’s primed to crack down on dissent

Spencer Reynolds writes: President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to implement a slate of controversial policies in his second term, including military strikes on Mexican drug cartels, restrictions on abortion pills, a new “Muslim ban,” immigration raids, and mass deportations. Any one of these moves is likely to bring tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets. Trump has made it clear he will meet opposition with force. A major player in that crackdown will be the Federal Protective Service, a little-known but powerful law-enforcement…

Read More Read More

Timothy Snyder: ‘I think we overestimate Trump and we underestimate Musk’

Timothy Snyder: ‘I think we overestimate Trump and we underestimate Musk’

The Guardian reports: Allies and aides to Donald Trump should be increasingly concerned by Elon Musk’s proximity to and influence on the US president-elect, the Yale historian and bestselling author Timothy Snyder said. “Trump is a little guy, and Musk is a big guy when it actually comes to having money,” Snyder said. “And I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried.” The author of bestsellers including On Tyranny (2017) and On Freedom (2024) was…

Read More Read More

Where is Russia finding new soldiers? Wherever it can

Where is Russia finding new soldiers? Wherever it can

The New York Times reports: Russia has ground through repeated waves of soldiers in Ukraine. It lost some of its most experienced troops at the very start of the invasion, then shipped off tens of thousands of convicts without seeming to care whether they survived. Now, still desperately seeking sufficient manpower to maintain pressure on Ukraine, Russia has expanded recruitment even more. Men (and women) no longer have to be convicted of a crime — under new laws, any suspects…

Read More Read More

John Roberts absurdly suggests the Supreme Court has no ‘political bias’

John Roberts absurdly suggests the Supreme Court has no ‘political bias’

Rolling Stone reports: In his first term as president, Donald Trump built a conservative 6-3 supermajority on the Supreme Court. Ever since, the nation’s highest court has repeatedly issued increasingly extreme, far-right decisions on topics of abortion, race, the environment, corruption, and much more. The Supreme Court has eliminated federal protections for abortion rights; limited the federal government’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, protect Americans’ drinking water, and limit ozone pollution; gutted federal agencies’ ability to implement regulations generally; opened…

Read More Read More

Trump falsely suggested New Orleans suspect was an immigrant

Trump falsely suggested New Orleans suspect was an immigrant

The New York Times reports: On Wednesday morning, hours after a man drove a pickup truck into New Year’s Eve revelers in New Orleans, killing 10 people, President-elect Donald J. Trump falsely suggested on social media that his condemnations of undocumented immigrants had been validated. “When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More