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Category: Politics

Elon Musk secretly funded effort to dump Texas prosecutor

Elon Musk secretly funded effort to dump Texas prosecutor

The Daily Beast reports: Elon Musk secretly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to turf a Democratic prosecutor in Texas, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The Texas resident and Tesla and SpaceX CEO was the chief financier of Saving Austin, a group that distributed incendiary material attacking District Attorney José Garza during the Democratic primary, including fliers that baselessly accused him of “filling Austin’s streets with pedophiles & killers,” the Journal reports. Alongside…

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After Trump and Vance’s baseless claims about pet-eating immigrants, Springfield faces bomb threats

After Trump and Vance’s baseless claims about pet-eating immigrants, Springfield faces bomb threats

Parker Molloy writes: The lie was absurd, and yet it spread like wildfire. A baseless rumor, claiming Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating people’s pets, began as a fringe social media post. In a matter of days, it had evolved into a talking point at the highest levels of Republican politics. Trump mentioned it in a presidential debate, and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, repeated it without a shred of evidence. But the fallout didn’t stay…

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Republicans fear Laura Loomer is influencing Donald Trump

Republicans fear Laura Loomer is influencing Donald Trump

The Associated Press reports: Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist who posted last year that 9/11 was an “inside job,” joined Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in New York and Pennsylvania on Wednesday as he commemorated the anniversary of the attacks. The 31-year-old provocateur and influencer posted photos from ground zero and shared a video of Trump talking with firefighters in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday morning, writing, “They were thrilled to see him.” She also accompanied the former president to Shanksville,…

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Mary Trump says Uncle Donald suffered ‘narcissistic injury’ in debate and won’t recover

Mary Trump says Uncle Donald suffered ‘narcissistic injury’ in debate and won’t recover

HuffPost reports: Mary Trump on Wednesday praised Vice President Kamala Harris for inflicting what she described as a “narcissistic injury” on her uncle, Donald Trump, during the opening minutes of Tuesday’s presidential debate. Democratic nominee Harris’ way of getting under her Republican opponent’s skin just made him “unravel,” the former president’s niece told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “He couldn’t recover and, honestly, he’s not going to,” she added. Harris “so brilliantly” gave both “substantive answers to questions to help the American…

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Matt Taibbi conjures a media consensus into a political conspiracy

Matt Taibbi conjures a media consensus into a political conspiracy

Jonathan Chait writes: In the immediate aftermath of the presidential debate, most reporters and analysts conveyed a similar narrative of what had transpired: Kamala Harris baited Donald Trump into an angry, frequently incoherent performance. Why did so many journalists who witnessed the same event describe it so similarly? To Matt Taibbi, a popular commentator who has migrated from liberal-hating leftist to liberal-hating Trump apologist, there could be only one explanation: The entire news media was taking orders from the Democratic Party. Taibbi’s post-debate column,…

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As Harris campaign rakes in $47 million in donations in 24 hours after first debate, Trump rejects second

As Harris campaign rakes in $47 million in donations in 24 hours after first debate, Trump rejects second

The New York Times reports: Vice President Kamala Harris raised $47 million in the first 24 hours following her debate with former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night, a sum that will likely expand a widening funding gap between the two campaigns. That tally, shared by the Harris campaign with The New York Times, included donations from 600,000 people. It is her largest 24-hour fund-raising period since an initial burst of donations when she entered the race in July…

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Trump company CEO’s unexplained meeting with Balkans leader raises specter of new conflict

Trump company CEO’s unexplained meeting with Balkans leader raises specter of new conflict

By Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica Earlier this summer, Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media and a former California congressman, touched down just outside Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. He and a small group of other North American executives were there to talk business. But they weren’t there to meet with representatives from another company. A high-ranking official from the Macedonian government greeted them on the tarmac outside their…

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Israel’s war spreads to the West Bank

Israel’s war spreads to the West Bank

Mariam Barghouti reports: The sounds of explosions, bulldozers, military drones and heavy gunfire are a constant in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which has been under full military lockdown for nearly 10 days as Israel carries out a military offensive. “The siege on the camp first began outside, on the edges of the camp,” Shatha Sabbagh, 21, told New Lines, referring to the refugee camp built in the city in 1953 that is…

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How resounding was Kamala Harris’s debate win? Let’s look at the polls

How resounding was Kamala Harris’s debate win? Let’s look at the polls

Aaron Blake writes: Vice President Kamala Harris turned in one of the more resounding debate performances in recent decades on Tuesday night — to the point where Donald Trump’s allies have struggled to locate a silver lining. Precisely how much the debate could impact the race is an open question, as my colleague Dan Balz notes; we’re a very polarized country, and we don’t generally see big and sudden shifts in polls anymore. But small margins can matter greatly in…

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Taylor Swift drove nearly 338,000 people to Vote.gov with Kamala Harris endorsement post

Taylor Swift drove nearly 338,000 people to Vote.gov with Kamala Harris endorsement post

The Hollywood Reporter reports: Taylor Swift‘s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris led to a surge of visitors to Vote.gov, the U.S. government website that helps citizens understand how they can register to vote. According to a spokesperson for the U.S. Government Services Administration, Swift’s endorsement post on Instagram led directly to 337,826 people visiting vote.gov. “As of 2:00 P.M. on Wednesday, September 11, there have been 337,826 visitors to vote.gov referred from the custom URL created and shared by…

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How swing voters reacted to the Trump-Harris debate

How swing voters reacted to the Trump-Harris debate

Sarah Longwell writes: Last night, Trump was, in a certain sense, a stand-in for strongmen like Putin and Xi, and the voters I spoke with right after the debate said that Harris held her own. They appreciated her ability to bait Trump, counter his lies, and look calm while doing it. Her decision to point out how easily foreign despots use flattery to influence Trump also did her a lot of good. “I was actually pleasantly surprised at Harris,” said…

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Trump Media shares plunge after GOP nominee’s debate with Harris

Trump Media shares plunge after GOP nominee’s debate with Harris

CNBC reports: The share price of Trump Media plunged more than 13% on Wednesday, a day after majority shareholder Donald Trump gave a widely panned presidential debate performance against Vice President Kamala Harris. The company’s stock price was at its lowest intraday level since the Truth Social app owner began publicly trading as DJT on the Nasdaq in late March. Investing in Trump Media stock is often seen as a way to bet on the political fortunes of Trump, the…

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Election officials warn that widespread problems with the U.S. mail system could disrupt voting

Election officials warn that widespread problems with the U.S. mail system could disrupt voting

The Associated Press reports: State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the U.S. Postal Service that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies. In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the…

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At least two Saudi officials may have deliberately assisted 9/11 hijackers, new evidence suggests

At least two Saudi officials may have deliberately assisted 9/11 hijackers, new evidence suggests

By Tim Golden This story was originally published by ProPublica From the start of U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the question of whether the Saudi government might have been involved has hovered over the case. The FBI, after the most extensive criminal probe in its history, concluded that a low-level Saudi official who helped the first two hijackers in California met them by chance and aided them unwittingly. The CIA said it saw no evidence…

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The war crimes that the U.S. military buried

The war crimes that the U.S. military buried

Parker Yesko writes: War entails unspeakable violence, much of it entirely legal. And yet some violence is so abhorrent that it falls outside the bounds of law. When the perpetrators are U.S. service members, the American military is supposed to hold them to account. It is also supposed to keep records of wrongdoing in a systematic manner. But the military has failed to do so, leaving the public unable to determine whether the military brings its members to justice for…

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A quarter of Republicans think Trump should seize power even if he loses

A quarter of Republicans think Trump should seize power even if he loses

Philip Bump writes: If the 2024 presidential election were held today, it’s not clear who would win. Vice President Kamala Harris has a slight national advantage, according to The Washington Post’s average of polls, but margins in swing states are uniformly narrow. If the polls are overestimating Harris’s support, Donald Trump will return to the White House. If they are underestimating her support, she’ll be the next president. Unless, of course, there’s some successful, anti-democratic effort to subvert her victory….

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