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Category: Politics

Money once used for crucial national-park repairs is now financing Trump’s vanity projects

Money once used for crucial national-park repairs is now financing Trump’s vanity projects

Michael Scherer writes: The pathway that connects the White House residence to the Oval Office has long been paved in Tennessee flagstone. Every president since Harry Truman made the 45-second commute, and made it without complaint, until Donald Trump. The dun rock would not do. Instead, Trump wanted polished African granite, carved in Italy, with a flamed-finish stripe—slightly raised, to prevent slips—running down the middle. As workers tore up the flagstone in March, a reporter asked Trump who was paying…

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Supreme Court decision penalizes immigrants who followed the law but white South Africans are welcomed

Supreme Court decision penalizes immigrants who followed the law but white South Africans are welcomed

Elora Mukherjee writes: On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration sweeping power to remove the legal right to live in America for Haitians and Syrians who are here under a program known as Temporary Protected Status. For more than three decades, T.P.S. enabled highly vetted immigrants from countries ravaged by war or natural disaster to remain in America. In 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano granted Haitians the right to apply for T.P.S. after a devastating earthquake….

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Supreme Court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’

Supreme Court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’

The Guardian reports: Lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups on Thursday sharply denounced two US supreme court rulings that allowed the Trump administration to strip certain immigration protections and fundamentally reshape the asylum system. Dozens of groups, advocates and members of Congress called the court’s decisions “disastrous” and “cruel”, while the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and anti-immigrant groups celebrated the rulings. “Today, Trump’s loyalists in the supreme court have joined forces with him to deny immigrants’ internationally recognized human rights and…

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Iran estimates $40 billion windfall from reopening Strait of Hormuz shared with Gulf states

Iran estimates $40 billion windfall from reopening Strait of Hormuz shared with Gulf states

The Wall Street Journal reports: Iran is pushing to make billions of dollars from the Strait of Hormuz as the regime positions itself to manage the global oil artery it severed at the start of the war. The Islamic Republic estimates that charging for security, safety and environmental services in the strait would bring in $40 billion a year in revenue for states involved, according to officials familiar with the matter. The idea, if implemented, would give Tehran cash flow…

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Beyond denial: How oil industry executives shaped a landmark climate study

Beyond denial: How oil industry executives shaped a landmark climate study

By Katie Worth This story was originally published by ProPublica It is rare that a single scientific paper shapes how people think about a challenge as daunting as climate change. But one, known as “Wedges,” published 22 years ago by researchers at Princeton University, told an irresistible story.  It made solving climate change seem possible, even simple. It claimed that the world didn’t have to wait for innovation because it had the tools to start work immediately. The trick was to…

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We can’t let my former venture capital colleagues in the AI lobby buy off our democracy

We can’t let my former venture capital colleagues in the AI lobby buy off our democracy

John O’Farrell writes: I first came to America from Ireland in 1984, as a young engineer about to attend business school. I chose Stanford University — partly for the weather and natural beauty, but more for the electrifying entrepreneurial spirit coursing through Silicon Valley. I was riveted by Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl ad — an athlete hurls a sledgehammer into Big Brother’s screen, shattering IBM’s grip on computing. More than an advertisement, it was a manifesto that technology could dismantle…

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U.S. support is Israel’s true weakness

U.S. support is Israel’s true weakness

Yonatan Touval writes: There is a condition that can befall small states kept too long under the protection of great powers. When the protection is generous enough, they can become both militarily formidable but also strategically undisciplined. They grow fluent in force and illiterate in consequence. They acquire the manners of sovereignty without its restraint, because the costs of that sovereignty are borne elsewhere — in arms shipments, guarantees, Security Council vetoes and the patron’s diplomacy. Over time, strategy atrophies….

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Victories by pro-Palestinian Democrats show the party’s shift on Israel

Victories by pro-Palestinian Democrats show the party’s shift on Israel

The New York Times reports: Three Democrats who made criticism of Israel central to their political identities swept to victory in House primary races in New York City on Tuesday, signaling a new era of skepticism in their party toward the Jewish state and its actions. The striking results reflected a fast-moving shift in liberal politics. Democratic voters are now more likely to be critical of Israel and its government than they are to be supportive, according to several recent…

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Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote

Federal judge bars Trump from implementing proof of citizenship requirement to vote

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban….

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Bribery: How a $45 million donation brought Larry Ellison deeper into Trump’s circle

Bribery: How a $45 million donation brought Larry Ellison deeper into Trump’s circle

The Wall Street Journal reports: Larry Ellison didn’t join the gaggle of CEOs that traveled with President Trump on his state visit to China. He wasn’t among the guests at a White House dinner Trump hosted with tech titans. He also skipped the UFC event on Trump’s 80th birthday. The Oracle billionaire didn’t need to be at these public events. Ellison, 81, has developed a more-private friendship with Trump that has helped his tech company’s business as well as his…

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Democratic socialists aren’t taking over America

Democratic socialists aren’t taking over America

Adam Serwer writes: Candidates endorsed by New York City’s democratic-socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, swept the city’s primary elections yesterday, provoking alarm in both conservative and centrist circles over the future of the Democratic Party. The right-wing New York Post dubbed the winners, Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, the “hateful slate.” The Free Press quoted a supporter of one of the defeated candidates warning that it “doesn’t feel safe to be Jewish anymore,” notwithstanding the fact that one…

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Ten years after Brexit, every grim prediction has more than come true

Ten years after Brexit, every grim prediction has more than come true

Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes: “It was Game of Thrones,” says George Osborne. The former Tory chancellor of the exchequer was talking about the fateful referendum 10 years ago, on June 23, 2016, on whether the United Kingdom should remain in or leave the European Union. Or rather, he was talking about one man in particular, and Osborne’s comparison was just right. For Boris Johnson, the referendum—in fact, all of politics, even all of life itself—was a game, although also an opportunity….

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Trump’s Iran debacle could be a an unexpected gift for America

Trump’s Iran debacle could be a an unexpected gift for America

Robert Malley and Stephen Wertheim write: With Iran, Donald Trump has done the impossible once more. In attacking that country in February, he went where his predecessors never dared, joining with Israel in a bid to overthrow or incapacitate the regime in Tehran. Having achieved neither, he appears to have accepted worse terms than he could have obtained through diplomacy. His war was a political albatross as well, garnering, at the start, less support from the public than any other…

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Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren: Our plan to save Social Security

Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren: Our plan to save Social Security

Senators Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren write: One of us is a Republican from Ohio who built a business that generated hundreds of jobs. The other is a Democrat from Massachusetts who built a career protecting consumers from financial tricks and traps. We don’t agree on everything, but here’s one thing we do agree on: Congress must act now to save Social Security for generations of Americans to come. Social Security is a core component of our nation’s promise —…

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New DOJ memo, pushed by Stephen Miller, questions decades of protections for people with disabilities

New DOJ memo, pushed by Stephen Miller, questions decades of protections for people with disabilities

  HuffPost reports: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was a driving force behind the Justice Department’s recent memo giving states authority to institutionalize people with disabilities rather than fund community-based care, according to an exclusive report from Bloomberg Law. Miller was reportedly instrumental to the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel’s Thursday opinion that said states may disregard decades of Supreme Court precedent that shields people with disabilities from being forcibly institutionalized. Instead, courts had been encouraged to…

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I cold-called President Trump. Here’s what he told me about an oil tycoon and major donor

I cold-called President Trump. Here’s what he told me about an oil tycoon and major donor

By Alex Cuadros This story was originally published by ProPublica My family’s morning routine is usually pretty ordinary. We wake up early, drink some coffee and get our 1-year-old ready for daycare. But one Wednesday morning last month, I found myself uttering to my wife a sentence that sounded frankly surreal to both of us: “Just to let you know, I’m about to call Trump.” Then, hoping to avoid any urgent diaper events, I ducked into the next room and…

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