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The ‘bully’ billionaire who led calls for Claudine Gay’s Harvard exit

The ‘bully’ billionaire who led calls for Claudine Gay’s Harvard exit

The Guardian reports: Chief among the campaigners celebrating the resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University was a man who arguably did the most to push Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, out the door: Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge-fund manager and Harvard alumnus. Ackman, who accused Gay of antisemitism and plagiarism, was a major player in what increasingly became a rightwing campaign against the Harvard president – who said many of the attacks against her were “fueled by…

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Trump received millions from foreign governments as president, report finds

Trump received millions from foreign governments as president, report finds

The New York Times reports: Donald J. Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments during his presidency, according to new documents released by House Democrats on Thursday that show how much he received from overseas transactions while he was in the White House, most of it from China. The transactions, detailed in a 156-page report called “White House For Sale” that was produced by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, offer concrete evidence that the former…

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Gaming out scenarios for an up-for-grabs convention (or two!) in 2024

Gaming out scenarios for an up-for-grabs convention (or two!) in 2024

Mark McKinnon writes: “The era of strategic certainty is over,” James Carville declared recently. Carville, the Democratic Yoda, often comes out with these kind of astute, irrefutable observations. I trust the guy. He’s a battle-tested political warrior. And 40 years ago he managed the first campaign I was a part of. He earned his spurs by winning hard-fought, high-stakes races. And he’s famous for other savvy political pronouncements such as the catchphrase of Bill Clinton’s 1992 run for the White…

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Israeli officials’ calls for ‘voluntary’ migration of Palestinians alarm human rights experts

Israeli officials’ calls for ‘voluntary’ migration of Palestinians alarm human rights experts

HuffPost reports: As the reported death toll of the Israeli invasion of Gaza tops 22,000, senior Israeli politicians have grown more explicit in their goal for the Palestinian enclave: the movement of a large number of Gazans out of Gaza entirely. The rhetoric has garnered charges of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement, and a rare rebuke from U.S. officials. But there are no signs of the calls losing steam within Israel. “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip…

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Ethnic cleansing: Israel in talks with Congo and other countries on Gaza ‘voluntary’ migration plan

Ethnic cleansing: Israel in talks with Congo and other countries on Gaza ‘voluntary’ migration plan

The Times of Israel reports: The “voluntary” resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the government, with a senior official saying that Israel has held talks with several countries for their potential absorption. Zman Israel, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, has learned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is conducting secret contacts for accepting thousands of immigrants from Gaza with Congo, in addition to other nations. “Congo will be willing to take…

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Gaza is starving

Gaza is starving

Isaac Chotiner writes: Last month, a United Nations report on hunger described a catastrophic situation in Gaza, where more than ninety per cent of the population has been facing “acute food insecurity,” and where “virtually all households are skipping meals every day.” Much of Gaza is at risk of famine in the next several months. Parents have been going without food to insure that their kids have at least something to eat; where food is available, moreover, prices have skyrocketed,…

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Israeli public figures accuse judiciary of ignoring incitement to genocide in Gaza

Israeli public figures accuse judiciary of ignoring incitement to genocide in Gaza

The Guardian reports: A group of prominent Israelis has accused the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring “extensive and blatant” incitement to genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza by influential public figures. In a letter to the attorney general and state prosecutors, they demand action to stop the normalisation of language that breaks both Israeli and international law. “For the first time that we can remember, the explicit calls to commit atrocious crimes, as stated, against millions of civilians have turned…

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Whoever is behind Kerman bombing risks igniting regional war

Whoever is behind Kerman bombing risks igniting regional war

Julian Borger writes: It is still unclear who is responsible for the double bombing of a crowd in the south-eastern Iranian city of Kerman but whoever is behind the outrage is clearly willing to risk igniting a regional war. In Washington, officials have been pointing towards the possible role of Islamic State or some affiliated Sunni extremist group, and away from the partnership of Israel and the secular Iranian rebel group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), who have reportedly been behind previous…

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Powerful donors managed to push out Harvard’s Claudine Gay. But at what cost?

Powerful donors managed to push out Harvard’s Claudine Gay. But at what cost?

Robert Reich writes: [For major donors] to use their influence to force the ouster of these university presidents is an abuse of power. It sets a dangerous precedent of mega-donor intrusion into university life. It endangers the autonomy of America’s universities to determine for themselves how to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and hateful speech. The core problem is that one of the major jobs of today’s university presidents is to solicit money. Even at Harvard, whose…

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Bernie Sanders calls on Congress to block funding for Israel’s ‘immoral’ war

Bernie Sanders calls on Congress to block funding for Israel’s ‘immoral’ war

The Guardian reports: Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator of Vermont, issued a statement Tuesday calling on Congress to block additional funding to Israel amid the war in Gaza, where more than 22,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks after Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel on 7 October. “While we recognize that Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack began this war, we must also recognize that Israel’s military response has been grossly disproportionate, immoral and in violation of international law,” Sanders…

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Israel assassinates Hamas leader who has been ‘indispensable’ in hostage release negotiations

Israel assassinates Hamas leader who has been ‘indispensable’ in hostage release negotiations

Jason Burke writes: The killing of Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut is the first strike in a campaign of assassinations overseas promised by Israeli officials for several months. The target was carefully chosen – one of the most senior Hamas leaders and the organisation’s main link to Iran and the Lebanon-based militia Hezbollah. Arouri was also influential in the occupied West Bank, where he was born and where violence has soared in recent months. Some Israeli officials also believe that the…

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How death threats get Republicans to fall in line behind Trump

How death threats get Republicans to fall in line behind Trump

Zack Beauchamp reports: Stephen Richer should have been safe. In early 2021, Richer was an Arizona Republican official who regularly attended local party events. At the time, he was the newly elected county recorder of Maricopa County. The job was a new level of prominence — he was now the most important election supervisory official in the state’s largest county — but going to Arizona Republican events was routine: the kind of thing that Richer, like any state politician, had…

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How the Biden campaign wants voters to focus on who they’re voting against, not who they’re voting for

How the Biden campaign wants voters to focus on who they’re voting against, not who they’re voting for

CNN reports: The 2024 campaign year for President Joe Biden’s inner circle will largely be about carefully ratcheting up the intensity against Donald Trump, wary of voters becoming dulled to what they expect to be the former president’s ever wilder rhetoric and promises about what he would do if back in power. Or, as some of the younger aides on Biden’s reelection campaign have been grimly joking, it’s about when to go “full Hitler” – when the leading Republican candidate’s…

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Trump plot to turn his Jan. 6 trial into a ‘MAGA freak show’

Trump plot to turn his Jan. 6 trial into a ‘MAGA freak show’

Rolling Stone reports: Attempts to drag Nancy Pelosi into court to berate her on the stand and, hopefully, on live TV. Claims that the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was an FBI frame job, with an assist from Antifa. Conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was indeed “stolen,” supposedly backed up by still-classified documents. Unhinged assertions that President Joe Biden is now secretly, personally orchestrating an unprecedented act of political persecution. Calls to publicly unmask the federal officials and lawyers investigating…

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Dying in the fields as temperatures soar

Dying in the fields as temperatures soar

Liza Gross and Peter Aldhous report: For most of July 2019, stifling heat hung over the agricultural fields of California’s Central Valley, as farmworkers like William Salas Jiminez labored under the sun’s searing rays. Temperatures had dipped from 99 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit the last day of the month, when the 56-year-old Puerto Rico native was installing irrigation tubing in an almond orchard near Arvin, at the valley’s southern edge. Around 1:30 that afternoon Salas sat down to rest. When…

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Brexit has completely failed for UK, say clear majority of Britons polled

Brexit has completely failed for UK, say clear majority of Britons polled

The Observer reports: A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union. The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the…

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