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Category: Politics

The Roberts Court is defending white supremacy

The Roberts Court is defending white supremacy

Adam Serwer writes: For the conservative editor and columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick, the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation was an atrocity. Brown v. Board of Education, he wrote in the 1950s, was a “revolutionary act by a judicial junta which simply seized power.” He warned in 1963 that the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would destroy “the whole basis of individual liberty.” And in a 1965 National Review cover story, he argued that in order to “give…

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Supreme Court paves the way for largest-ever drop in Black representation in Congress

Supreme Court paves the way for largest-ever drop in Black representation in Congress

NPR reports: A historic drop in representation by Black members of Congress may be on the way after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision Wednesday to further weaken the Voting Rights Act. Now that the high court’s conservative majority has reinterpreted longstanding provisions against racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Republican calls for new rounds of map drawing for the House of Representatives have already begun. How much of that redistricting can be done in time…

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Demand destruction: How the Iran war could rattle or break the U.S. economy

Demand destruction: How the Iran war could rattle or break the U.S. economy

CNN reports: At its linguistic core, the two-word phrase “demand destruction” feels severe, harsh, maybe even violent. In practice, that’s not far off: It means that the magnitude of a price shock can be so large, so persistent and so painful that spending behaviors shift – sometimes to the point where they permanently alter the course, the structure and the stability of a sector or an entire economy. Earlier this month, the International Energy Agency warned that in the wake…

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U.S. national debt tops 100% of GDP

U.S. national debt tops 100% of GDP

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. national debt now exceeds 100% of gross domestic product, crossing a once-unthinkable threshold, on the way toward breaking the record set in the wake of World War II. As of March 31, the country’s publicly held debt was $31.265 trillion, while GDP over the preceding year was $31.216 trillion, according to data released Thursday. That puts the ratio at 100.2%, compared with 99.5% when the last fiscal year ended Sept. 30. That figure…

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Iran’s latest AI Lego video reaches out to American people instead of taunting U.S. military

Iran’s latest AI Lego video reaches out to American people instead of taunting U.S. military

Iran’s latest AI Lego video marks a significant pivot. Instead of taunting the US military, it reflects a new chapter in which Tehran will seek peace by reaching out directly to the American people, bypassing the US government. It's a mirror image of the US strategy of the past… pic.twitter.com/wywq3DWsxZ — Trita Parsi (@tparsi) April 30, 2026

Trump’s call to reduce U.S. troops in Germany shocks Pentagon

Trump’s call to reduce U.S. troops in Germany shocks Pentagon

Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s announcement Wednesday that he was considering pulling some U.S. troops out of Germany stunned defense officials, who scrambled to figure out if the president was serious about following through on his threats this time. Trump’s social media post was the first that many had heard of a potential new push to take hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops out of Germany, according to three defense officials. It strongly contrasts a recently concluded monthslong review…

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Trump tells aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran

Trump tells aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said, targeting the regime’s coffers in a high-risk bid to compel a nuclear capitulation Tehran has long refused. In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried…

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seizes wartime power, weakening Supreme Leader’s role

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seizes wartime power, weakening Supreme Leader’s role

Reuters reports: Two months into a war with the U.S. and Israel, Iran no longer has a single, undisputed clerical arbiter at the pinnacle of power — an abrupt break with the past that may be hardening Tehran’s stance as it weighs renewed talks with ​Washington. Since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic has revolved around a supreme leader with final authority on all key matters of state. But the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day…

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Trump administration will pay more energy firms to abandon wind farms

Trump administration will pay more energy firms to abandon wind farms

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration will pay energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to abandon their plans to build two wind farms off the U.S. coast, the Interior Department said Monday, in a repeat of a tactic the government used to cancel other offshore wind leases last month. The firms will forfeit their leases in federal waters for the two wind farms, one of which would have been built off New York and New Jersey and…

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The Supreme Court’s conservatives just issued the worst ruling in a century

The Supreme Court’s conservatives just issued the worst ruling in a century

Richard L. Hasen writes: Wednesday’s 6–3 party-line decision in Louisiana v. Callais will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century. All six Republican-appointed justices on the court signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters, while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the act. This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local…

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Tom Steyer could be California’s next governor — and he wants to arrest Stephen Miller

Tom Steyer could be California’s next governor — and he wants to arrest Stephen Miller

Zack Beauchamp interviewed California gubernatorial candidate, Tom Steyer: In the plan you have on your website, there’s a very interesting line about not just arresting ICE agents but imposing criminal liability on “their leaders.” So do you think if you were governor and your policy were enacted that it would be right for California state agents to arrest, say, Stephen Miller if he showed up there and was shown to be responsible for some of these things that you believe…

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Fear and opportunity: Immigration scams surged as Trump’s sweeps lured desperate people to eager defrauders

Fear and opportunity: Immigration scams surged as Trump’s sweeps lured desperate people to eager defrauders

By Naisha Roy, Northwestern University, and Francesca D’Annunzio and J. David McSwane, ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica As an asylum-seeker living in the U.S., Jasmir Urbina worried as she watched violence break out amid the military-style immigration sweeps across the country. Then she read about legal residents being arrested at immigration court and wondered when federal agents would set their sights on her city. Urbina had fled Nicaragua in 2022 and legally resided with her husband, a…

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‘There’s a day of reckoning coming’: Energy experts expect another spike at the pump

‘There’s a day of reckoning coming’: Energy experts expect another spike at the pump

Politico reports: Energy experts say another oil price spike is coming — and it may be made worse by the president’s social media posts. President Donald Trump has repeatedly spurred temporary dips in oil prices by claiming on Truth Social that the Iran war is near an end and that U.S. oil production would ensure sky high gas prices would soon retreat. The jawboning has mostly worked. Even as the global price of oil has crept up over $100 per…

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Middle East crisis could cost world $1 trillion while oil firms make ‘obscene’ profit, analysis finds

Middle East crisis could cost world $1 trillion while oil firms make ‘obscene’ profit, analysis finds

The Guardian reports: The Middle East oil and gas crunch will impose as much as a trillion dollars of additional costs on the global economy while petroleum companies rake in spectacular profits from elevated fuel prices, analysis has revealed. The uneven distribution of risk and reward comes amid rising concern that the US-Israeli attack on Iran is worsening inequality, poverty and hunger across a world that has become dangerously dependent on fossil fuels. Even if the strait of Hormuz swiftly…

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How the UAE’s decision to leave OPEC could recast the Middle East

How the UAE’s decision to leave OPEC could recast the Middle East

Patrick Wintour writes: The United Arab Emirates’ decision to walk out of Opec is a political as much as business decision, and will reignite the simmering rows between the UAE and Saudi Arabia – which had been covered up by their shared anger with Iran over its attacks on the Gulf states since the start of the US-Israel war on Tehran. In the short term, leaving the oil producing cartel it joined in 1967 gives the UAE the freedom to…

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How the Trump administration ended independent science at the EPA

How the Trump administration ended independent science at the EPA

The New York Times reports: For more than a half-century, a prestigious scientific arm of the federal government did groundbreaking research aimed at saving American lives. It studied fertility, asthma, wildfires, drinking water, climate change and myriad other health threats. In just one year, it has been almost completely dismantled. One scientist, a doctor and expert in lung health, has recently been reassigned to a finance office. Another, an epidemiologist, has been told she has a new job issuing permits…

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