Browsed by
Category: Politics

‘They’re eating pets’ – another example of U.S. politicians smearing Haiti and Haitian immigrants

‘They’re eating pets’ – another example of U.S. politicians smearing Haiti and Haitian immigrants

By Nathan H. Dize, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance continues to defend the false claim that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been abducting and eating area cats and dogs. That outlandish idea has been thoroughly debunked since former President Donald Trump repeatedly raised it as an anti-immigrant talking point in the Sept. 12, 2024, presidential debate. Trump never mentioned where the migrants allegedly “eating the pets” came from, but many…

Read More Read More

The stark reality of mass deportation

The stark reality of mass deportation

Popular Information reports: Former President Donald Trump has promised that he will start mass deportations if he wins in November. The promise has become a central selling point of his 2024 campaign. At a campaign rally in Michigan this summer, Trump vowed, “As soon as I take the oath of office, we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” In April, during an interview with TIME, Trump laid out his plan for mass deportations, stating…

Read More Read More

‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum

‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum

CNN reports: Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery, a CNN KFile investigation found. Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as…

Read More Read More

How Opus Dei conquered Washington D.C.

How Opus Dei conquered Washington D.C.

Nina Burleigh writes: In 1998, a prematurely silver-haired, baby-faced priest named C. John McCloskey was dispatched by Opus Dei, the secretive right-wing Roman Catholic group, to Washington, D.C., to minister to some of the world’s most powerful men. He arrived at the Catholic Information Center, which the organization runs, on K Street, the lobbying district of the nation’s capital, to act as a kind of lobbyist for the nation’s soul. Before being ordained, the priest had spent a few years…

Read More Read More

Iranian hackers tried but failed to interest Biden’s campaign in stolen Trump info, FBI says

Iranian hackers tried but failed to interest Biden’s campaign in stolen Trump info, FBI says

The Associated Press reports: Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday. There’s no indication that any of the recipients responded, officials said, and several media organizations who have said they also were approached with stolen material did not publish it. Kamala Harris’ presidential…

Read More Read More

Donald Trump’s financial failures are stunning. ‘Lucky Loser’ has the receipts

Donald Trump’s financial failures are stunning. ‘Lucky Loser’ has the receipts

Bethany McLean writes: If you tell someone who is not a fan of former president Donald Trump that he is essentially a fraud — that his claim that he’s “really rich” due to his own business acumen is simply not true — they will almost certainly say, “Of course. I already know that.” That this has been documented is in large part because of the work of New York Times reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, and other colleagues, who…

Read More Read More

One man’s stand against Donald Trump’s election conspiracies

One man’s stand against Donald Trump’s election conspiracies

  After Trump claimed the 2020 Presidential election was “rigged,” a short documentary shows the effect of election conspiracies in the crucial jurisdiction of Maricopa County, Arizona, through the experience of one elected official. The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump’s escalating calls to investigate and prosecute election officials he sees as “corrupt” are sounding alarms among democracy experts and the local and state workers preparing to run elections and tally millions of votes across the country. In recent…

Read More Read More

Vance spread lies about Haitians despite his office knowing they were baseless

Vance spread lies about Haitians despite his office knowing they were baseless

Rolling Stone reports: During a campaign event in Wisconsin on Tuesday, J.D. Vance told supporters that it’s not his job to check if a story is true before broadcasting it to his millions of supporters. “The media has a responsibility to fact-check,” Vance said of false claims he’s spread accusing “illegal” Haitian migrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, of killing and eating local pets. Well, members of the media did fact-check Vance. As it turns out, the Ohio senator…

Read More Read More

After false pet claims, Springfield’s GOP mayor says Trump visit would be ‘an extreme strain’ on resources

After false pet claims, Springfield’s GOP mayor says Trump visit would be ‘an extreme strain’ on resources

NBC News reports: The Republican mayor of Springfield, Ohio, the city that has been the target of unfounded claims from former President Donald Trump and his running mate about Haitian immigrants’ eating residents’ pets said Tuesday that a visit from Trump would tax the city’s resources. “It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Mayor Rob Rue said at a news conference at City Hall….

Read More Read More

Russian election interference efforts focus on the Harris-Walz campaign

Russian election interference efforts focus on the Harris-Walz campaign

Microsoft Threat Analysis Center: Russia and Iran have both undertaken cyber influence operations headed into the 2024 presidential election. In our last report, published on August 8, we detailed how Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations sought to undermine the Republican campaign through targeted hack-and-leak operations, covert social media personas, and imposter US news sites. In the past two months, Microsoft has observed a notable shift in Russian influence operations tactics reflecting the changing U.S. political environment. Specifically, we have observed Russia…

Read More Read More

Leaked records detail vast Russian influence campaign targeting Ukraine, EU

Leaked records detail vast Russian influence campaign targeting Ukraine, EU

RFE/RL reports: A trove of leaked records from a Russian disinformation campaign reveals how Moscow sought to discredit Ukraine and Western governments that support it while also trying to boost support for far-right political parties in the European Union. The documents obtained by a consortium of European media outlets and shared with Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, highlight the internal operations of the Social Design Agency, a Moscow-based company that the United States says has led the propaganda campaign at…

Read More Read More

Biden’s arms transfers to Israel under internal investigation

Biden’s arms transfers to Israel under internal investigation

The Washington Post reports: Government watchdogs with jurisdiction over the State Department and Pentagon are preparing to publish the results of multiple investigations scrutinizing the Biden administration’s provision of U.S. weapons to Israel for its military campaign in Gaza, and “several” related inquiries are either underway or planned, their offices told The Washington Post. The forthcoming inspector general reports, which are not yet public, follow complaints from within the U.S. government that the export of billions of dollars in arms…

Read More Read More

The Gazan infants who never saw their first birthday

The Gazan infants who never saw their first birthday

Ibrahim Mohammad writes: On Sept. 16, Gaza’s Health Ministry released a 649-page document containing the personal information of 34,344 Palestinians killed by Israel’s onslaught on the enclave over the past 11 months. The seemingly endless list is incomplete: more than 41,000 Palestinians have been martyred since October 7, according to Health Ministry figures, but many of them have not yet been fully identified. Over 11,300 of the identified victims are children, and 710 of them were killed before they turned…

Read More Read More

Thousands injured in Lebanon in large-scale act of terrorism

Thousands injured in Lebanon in large-scale act of terrorism

The Washington Post reports: Thousands of people were injured across Lebanon on Tuesday when electronic pagers used by the militant group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded around 3:30 p.m., the group and Lebanese officials said, in what experts said may have been an unprecedented attack by Israel that possibly involved sabotaging the devices before they were delivered. “Each one who received a new pager, throw it away,” said a voice message that was circulated to Hezbollah members, according to one of the…

Read More Read More

J.D. Vance: Republican immigration policy of mass deportations ‘fails to pass the laugh test’

J.D. Vance: Republican immigration policy of mass deportations ‘fails to pass the laugh test’

J.D. Vance wrote: I became a conservative in large part because I felt that the Right was far more honest about the real state of the world. Yet a significant part of Republican immigration policy centers on the possibility of deporting 12 million people (or “self deporting” them). Think about it: we conservatives (rightly) mistrust the government to efficiently administer business loans and regulate our food supply, yet we allegedly believe that it can deport millions of unregistered aliens. The…

Read More Read More

As Trump persists in using inflammatory rhetoric, he claims he’s a victim of inflammatory rhetoric

As Trump persists in using inflammatory rhetoric, he claims he’s a victim of inflammatory rhetoric

Philip Bump writes: The day after Secret Service agents confronted an armed man near where Donald Trump was playing golf, the former president told Fox News that the rhetoric of Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris was to blame. “He believed the rhetoric of [President Joe] Biden and [Vice President Kamala] Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said of Ryan Wesley Routh, the man arrested after fleeing the Trump International Golf Club on Sunday. “Their rhetoric is causing me…

Read More Read More