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Category: Politics

Trump sees incoming acting DNI as ‘less shackled.’ Pulte (‘Little Trump’) will fire lots of intel employees

Trump sees incoming acting DNI as ‘less shackled.’ Pulte (‘Little Trump’) will fire lots of intel employees

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his incoming acting director of national intelligence, to begin firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Trump said he has privately told Pulte that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, which oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies and units, was “unnecessary and/or too big.”…

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Starmer accuses U.S. of ‘trying to interfere in our democracy’

Starmer accuses U.S. of ‘trying to interfere in our democracy’

The Guardian reports: Keir Starmer has suggested the US is trying to interfere in British democracy after JD Vance, the US vice-president, blamed the murder of the British teenager Henry Nowak on mass migration. The prime minister’s office responded after the senior Republican politician claimed in a post on X that Nowak would be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of…

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How Fox News viewership increases belief in the anti‑immigrant ‘great replacement theory’

How Fox News viewership increases belief in the anti‑immigrant ‘great replacement theory’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2022, about a resolution condemning the great replacement theory. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta By Adam Eichen, UMass Amherst; Jesse Rhodes, UMass Amherst, and Tatishe Nteta, UMass Amherst During a Washington Nationals baseball game on May 17, 2026, three people unfurled a large banner from the upper deck of Nationals Park displaying a link to a white nationalist website. The website, warning of the replacement of whites by people of…

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Political anger fuels support for violence mainly when voters feel ignored by the system

Political anger fuels support for violence mainly when voters feel ignored by the system

PsyPost reports: A recent study published in Political Psychology suggests that how political anger influences a person’s support for violence depends heavily on whether they believe the political system actually listens to them. Researchers found that intense anger tends to fuel support for undemocratic practices only when people feel their voices do not matter to politicians. When people believe the government is responsive, this sense of political power acts as a buffer against endorsing political violence. Political discussions in the…

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Oil industry warns Trump administration of price spikes within weeks. White House in denial

Oil industry warns Trump administration of price spikes within weeks. White House in denial

Politico reports: The oil industry is warning the Trump administration that a Hormuz-sized hole in the world’s petroleum market is steadily draining inventories to levels that are likely to send global energy prices surging in the next several weeks, according to four executives. Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said. The warnings came as…

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Iran will not give up in negotiations what could not be taken from it in war

Iran will not give up in negotiations what could not be taken from it in war

Thomas Wright writes: A U.S. official told Axios that on Monday that Donald Trump read Benjamin Netanyahu the riot act for wanting to launch strikes on Beirut, which could collapse American negotiations with Iran. The message, the official said, was “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” Later that evening, the official White House account posted “TRUST IN TRUMP. ‘Just sit…

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Ballroom ‘donors’ won $50 billion in contracts after giving to Trump project, watchdog group finds

Ballroom ‘donors’ won $50 billion in contracts after giving to Trump project, watchdog group finds

The Washington Post reports: More than half of the publicly identified donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion during the past six months, according to a report released Thursday by a government watchdog group. Fourteen of the 27 known corporate donors to the $400 million project, which would replace the East Wing that Trump demolished in October, have seen their government business grow in that window,…

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Russia’s elite is souring on the war, but Putin doesn’t seem to care

Russia’s elite is souring on the war, but Putin doesn’t seem to care

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia’s inability to break through the stalemate in Ukraine is becoming so evident that significant voices in the Russian establishment have publicly started to call for an end to the conflict. The big question is whether President Vladimir Putin will acknowledge this reality and abandon his aspiration to extinguish Ukrainian independence. So far, there is no sign that, in the fifth year of Europe’s bloodiest conflict in generations, he is ready to climb down from…

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60 Minutes hatchet man: ‘Nick’s politics are consistent with a lot of the tech people he’s covered’

60 Minutes hatchet man: ‘Nick’s politics are consistent with a lot of the tech people he’s covered’

Page Six Hollywood reports: Like [Bari] Weiss, it is hard to pin down exactly where [Nick] Bilton falls on the political spectrum. The central tension is that Bilton, who regularly criticized Donald Trump during his first term in the pages of Vanity Fair, now finds himself inside a company that many see as friendly, if not subservient to the Trump Administration. Interviews with friends and former colleagues suggest any political shift within Bilton has been subtle. Sources paint a picture…

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Women take majority of cabinet seats in first for Denmark

Women take majority of cabinet seats in first for Denmark

Bloomberg reports: Denmark’s new cabinet reached a record level of female representation, with women outnumbering men for the first time in the Nordic country. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the first woman to win a third term in her homeland, unveiled a ministerial lineup of 11 women and 10 men, bringing female representation to 52%. “For the first time in Denmark’s history, there are more female ministers than male ministers,” Frederiksen told media on Wednesday as she presented her new cabinet…

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How Thomas Paine spelled out astronomical expectations for a new nation

How Thomas Paine spelled out astronomical expectations for a new nation

Jo Marchant writes: In politics, as in nature, tensions can take years to build, but it takes just one stone to unleash an avalanche, one spark to ignite a wildfire. For many historians of the American Revolution, that spark was a pamphlet of fewer than 100 pages written by a newly arrived English immigrant named Thomas Paine. Throughout 1775, violent clashes between British troops and colonist rebels protesting onerous taxes inspired little talk of outright revolution. Most rebels aimed to…

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Trump ignored warnings about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz

Trump ignored warnings about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz

The New York Times reports: In mid-February, shortly before President Trump launched the war on Iran, the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps conducted live-fire drills in its coastal waters. Iranian state media publicized the exercise, whose official name made its purpose clear: “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz.” The exercise amounted to a flashing red warning light to the Trump administration — one that, for reasons that are still not fully clear, went largely unheeded. Within days of the…

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Judge Michael Luttig: ‘Trump has lost his war on the federal judiciary, the Constitution, and the rule of law’

Judge Michael Luttig: ‘Trump has lost his war on the federal judiciary, the Constitution, and the rule of law’

  Will Judge Williams find that Trump “Defrauded” the Court in his IRS suit and “weaponization fund” case? On a special Legal AF, J. Michael Luttig, retired federal appellate judge and one of the leaders of the 35 judges that got Judge Williams to reopen the case and determine if there has been fraud on the court, and Andres Rivero, local counsel for the judges, joins Michael Popok to brief the audience on what Judge Luttig says is the END…

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Bill Pulte is Trump’s most dangerously sycophantic promotion yet

Bill Pulte is Trump’s most dangerously sycophantic promotion yet

Hayes Brown writes: President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte would become acting director of national intelligence. Pulte is stepping in to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from her post last month. Though Trump claimed his appointee “has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America,” he’ll take the position with literally zero relevant experience for coordinating 17 American intelligence agencies’ work. But Pulte’s appointment makes slightly more sense when you consider his…

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Inside Trump’s takeover of the American regulatory machine

Inside Trump’s takeover of the American regulatory machine

The Wall Street Journal reports: The debate over how to respond to Omnicom Group’s $13 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group to create the world’s largest advertising business came down to two people: Federal Trade Commission chairman Andrew Ferguson—and President Trump. Sitting in the Oval Office with Ferguson last August to discuss the deal, once considered a run-of-the-mill review left to FTC staff, Trump invited an interested party to weigh in. He dialed his friend Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who had…

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Lawmakers demand answers after the White House initiated a $620 million loan to a firm tied to Donald Trump Jr.

Lawmakers demand answers after the White House initiated a $620 million loan to a firm tied to Donald Trump Jr.

By Robert Faturechi This story was originally published by ProPublica A group of lawmakers demanded answers from the White House this week following a ProPublica investigation revealing that a top aide to the president intervened to secure a $620 million Pentagon loan to a startup linked to the president’s eldest son. ProPublica’s reporting “reveals a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling that superseded this process, enriching the President’s son at the expense of U.S. national security and taxpayer dollars,”…

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