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Category: Politics

Trump loyalist pushes ‘post-constitutional’ vision for second term

Trump loyalist pushes ‘post-constitutional’ vision for second term

The Washington Post reports: A battle-tested D.C. bureaucrat and self-described Christian nationalist is drawing up detailed plans for a sweeping expansion of presidential power in a second Trump administration. Russ Vought, who served as the former president’s budget chief, calls his political strategy for razing long-standing guardrails “radical constitutionalism.” He has helped craft proposals for Donald Trump to deploy the military to quash civil unrest, seize more control over the Justice Department and assert the power to withhold congressional appropriations…

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An object lesson from Covid on how to destroy public trust

An object lesson from Covid on how to destroy public trust

Zeynep Tufekci writes: Big chunks of the history of the Covid pandemic were rewritten over the last month or so in a way that will have terrible consequences for many years to come. Under questioning by a congressional subcommittee, top officials from the National Institutes of Health, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, acknowledged that some key parts of the public health guidance their agencies promoted during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic were not backed up by solid science….

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Netanyahu will block any attempts at peace

Netanyahu will block any attempts at peace

Alon Pinkas writes: If you think reports of Netanyahu rejecting an Israeli proposal are bizarre, think again. After all, this isn’t so much George Orwell’s 1984 but Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2024. The moment the Israeli leader stipulated that Israel would “reserve the right to return to war”, it was clear that the “Israeli proposal” presented by the US president, Joe Biden, last Friday, to end hostilities with a three-part hostage release and ceasefire deal, was dead in the water. Netanyahu wasn’t…

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‘We have normalised horror’ says UNRWA official, after Israeli strike on school

‘We have normalised horror’ says UNRWA official, after Israeli strike on school

The Guardian reports: Mass casualty incidents caused by the Israeli military offensive in southern Gaza are becoming normalised in the west and leading to a sense of fatalism inside Gaza itself, according to Sam Rose, the director of planning for the Palestinian relief agency Unrwa. He was speaking after an Unrwa school at Nuseirat was bombed by Israeli forces leaving at least 33 dead, including 12 women and children. “When everyone is living in cramped, overcrowded conditions, we always said…

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How Israel’s illiberal democracy became a model for the right

How Israel’s illiberal democracy became a model for the right

Suzanne Schneider writes: Amid the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, it is easy to forget the political drama that gripped Israel only one year ago. After assuming power in December 2022, a new far-right government led by Benjamin Netanyahu had proposed a slate of judicial and administrative reforms that prompted a wave of anti-government protests. Concerned journalists, former U.S. and Israeli government officials, and major American Jewish organizations issued ominous warnings about democratic backsliding. Israel, it seemed,…

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Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledges he should have disclosed free trips from billionaire donor

Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledges he should have disclosed free trips from billionaire donor

By Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged for the first time in a new financial disclosure filing that he should have publicly reported two free vacations he received from billionaire Harlan Crow. The pair of 2019 trips, one to Indonesia and the other to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in northern California, were first revealed by ProPublica. Last year, Thomas argued that he did not…

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Judge overseeing Trump’s documents case seen as isolated and inexperienced

Judge overseeing Trump’s documents case seen as isolated and inexperienced

CNN reports: [Judge Aileen] Cannon’s assignment to the documents case was a game of odds. Though the charges were filed in West Palm Beach, the division that is home to Mar-a-Lago, Cannon was randomly chosen from a broader pool of judges in Florida’s southern district. Her approach as a jurist – detail-obsessed to the point of tedious – appears uniquely prone to being exploited by a defense team eager to delay the case. And the complicated system Cannon has set…

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Why do Republicans stick with Trump? New study explores the role of white nationalism

Why do Republicans stick with Trump? New study explores the role of white nationalism

PsyPost reports: A new study explores why many Americans, particularly Republican voters, continue to support former President Donald Trump despite serious charges against him. Researchers found that white nationalism and political views play crucial roles in shaping public attitudes towards these charges. The study, published in The British Journal of Criminology, sheds light on the interplay between racial attitudes and political allegiances in contemporary America. The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, by Trump supporters resulted in…

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NAACP asks Biden to halt weapons to Israel as he seeks to shore up Black voter support

NAACP asks Biden to halt weapons to Israel as he seeks to shore up Black voter support

Reuters reports: The NAACP urged President Joe Biden on Thursday to “indefinitely” halt all weapons deliveries to Israel and pressure the U.S. ally to end its war in the Gaza Strip, sending a reminder that his support for Israel could hurt him among Black voters in November’s election. The NAACP’s call was a rare instance of the influential civil rights organization taking a position on U.S. foreign policy towards a country without a significant Black population. It appeared likely to…

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Spain applies to join South Africa’s case at top UN court accusing Israel of genocide

Spain applies to join South Africa’s case at top UN court accusing Israel of genocide

The Associated Press reports: Spain became on Thursday the first European country to ask a United Nations court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice late last year. It alleged that Israel was breaching the genocide convention in its military assault that has laid waste to large swaths of Gaza. The court has ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the…

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Jewish supremacy formed the bedrock of Zionist colonialism, the New York Times reported in 1947

Jewish supremacy formed the bedrock of Zionist colonialism, the New York Times reported in 1947

What is so remarkable about journalistic and online debates about the formation of Israel is that the contemporary reporting is publicly available, often from the very same news organs whose op-ed pages are currently spreading disinformation about it. https://t.co/RrNwTLynpB — Ryan Ruby (@_ryanruby_) June 6, 2024 On March 20, 1947, Clifton Daniel reported for the New York Times: Talking to Jews in ordinary walks of life — not Zionist leaders — one gets the definite impression that relations with Arabs…

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Corruption: Clarence Thomas accepted gifts worth millions of dollars over 20 years, analysis finds

Corruption: Clarence Thomas accepted gifts worth millions of dollars over 20 years, analysis finds

CNBC reports: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted millions of dollars’ worth of gifts over the past two decades on the bench, a total nearly 10 times the value of all gifts received by his fellow justices during the same time, according to a new analysis. Thomas received 103 gifts with a total value of more than $2.4 million between 2004 and 2023, the judicial reform group Fix the Court said in a report Thursday. In contrast, Thomas’ fellow justices…

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U.S. clears way for antitrust inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

U.S. clears way for antitrust inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

The New York Times reports: Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter,…

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Secret Israeli propaganda campaign targets U.S. Congress and public using fake accounts with AI content

Secret Israeli propaganda campaign targets U.S. Congress and public using fake accounts with AI content

The New York Times reports: Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging, as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza, according to officials involved in the effort and documents related to the operation. The covert campaign was commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the State of Israel, four Israeli officials…

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‘America kills a person and then attends their funeral’

‘America kills a person and then attends their funeral’

  Sky News has followed the treatment of a Palestinian woman who was evacuated from Gaza to the US after an Israeli tank shell hit her home. Ahed Bseiso’s leg was badly injured and had to be amputated by her uncle, who is a surgeon. Video of the amputation went viral on social media. Ahed’s treatment in the US was arranged by the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which has extracted about 100 injured children from Gaza since the conflict began.

Former Meta engineer sues company saying he was fired over handling of Gaza content

Former Meta engineer sues company saying he was fired over handling of Gaza content

Reuters reports: A former Meta engineer on Tuesday accused the company of bias in its handling of content related to the war in Gaza, claiming in a lawsuit that Meta fired him for trying to help fix bugs causing the suppression of Palestinian Instagram posts. Ferras Hamad, a Palestinian-American engineer who had been on Meta’s machine learning team since 2021, sued the social media giant in a California state court for discrimination, wrongful termination and other wrongdoing over his February…

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