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Category: Politics

Republicans block aid to Ukraine, jeopardizing its fight against Russia

Republicans block aid to Ukraine, jeopardizing its fight against Russia

The New York Times reports: Republicans on Wednesday blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine, demanding strict new border restrictions in exchange and severely jeopardizing President Biden’s push to replenish the war chests of American allies before the end of the year. The failed vote highlighted waning support in the United States for continuing to fund Ukraine’s war effort at a perilous time in the conflict, with Kyiv’s counteroffensive failing to meet its objectives and Russia’s…

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White supremacists are celebrating Vivek Ramaswamy’s ‘great replacement’ rant

White supremacists are celebrating Vivek Ramaswamy’s ‘great replacement’ rant

Wired reports: For months, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has been dog-whistling to supporters of extremist far-right ideologies and wild conspiracy theories like QAnon. On Wednesday night, at the fourth Republican presidential debate, Ramaswamy went full tilt: After blasting the three other debaters for turning on former president Donald Trump, Ramaswamy argued, without evidence, that the January 6 Capitol riot was an inside job, the 2020 presidential election was stolen, the government had lied about 9/11, and the “deep state”…

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Russian spies targeting UK MPs and media with ‘cyber interference’

Russian spies targeting UK MPs and media with ‘cyber interference’

The Guardian reports: Russian spies have been targeting British MPs, peers, civil servants, journalists and others with cyber-hacking since 2015 as part of a concerted attempt to meddle in British politics, a Foreign Office minister has said. Leo Docherty, a minister under David Cameron, told the House of Commons that the Russian federal security service was using “cyber interference” to target politically connected people. He said one Russian group was behind the 2018 hack on the Institute for Statecraft, and…

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Israel’s failed bombing campaign in Gaza

Israel’s failed bombing campaign in Gaza

Robert A. Pape writes: Since October 7, Israel has invaded northern Gaza with some 40,000 combat troops and pummeled the small area with one of the most intense bombing campaigns in history. Nearly two million people have fled their homes as a result. More than 15,000 civilians (including some 6,000 children and 5,000 women) have been killed in the attacks, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, and the U.S. State Department has suggested that the true toll may be…

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‘This is grim,’ one Democratic pollster says

‘This is grim,’ one Democratic pollster says

Thomas B. Edsall writes: The predictive power of horse-race polling a year from the presidential election is weak at best. The Biden campaign can take some comfort in that. But what recent surveys do reveal is that the coalition that put Joe Biden in the White House in the first place is nowhere near as strong as it was four years ago. These danger signs include fraying support among core constituencies, including young voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, and…

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‘Test case’ for America: Colorado’s top court poised to weigh Trump’s eligibility to run again

‘Test case’ for America: Colorado’s top court poised to weigh Trump’s eligibility to run again

Politico reports: The most potent effort to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot lands Wednesday in the lap of Colorado’s highest court — and a ruling there could send the case hurtling toward the U.S. Supreme Court just as the election year arrives. The Colorado case is one of dozens around the country that have challenged Trump’s eligibility to return to the presidency. The cases argue that he is disqualified under section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states…

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Wisconsin Trump electors settle lawsuit, agree Biden won in 2020

Wisconsin Trump electors settle lawsuit, agree Biden won in 2020

The Washington Post reports: In a legal settlement Wednesday, the 10 Republicans who signed official-looking paperwork falsely purporting Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2020 have agreed to withdraw their inaccurate filings, acknowledge Joe Biden won the presidency and not serve as presidential electors in 2024 or in any election where Trump is on the ballot. Wednesday’s civil settlement marks the first time pro-Trump electors have agreed to revoke their false filings and not repeat their actions in the next presidential…

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Steve Bannon blasts Fox News as ‘TV for stupid people’

Steve Bannon blasts Fox News as ‘TV for stupid people’

The Daily Beast reports: Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon tore into Fox News for cutting away from a Donald Trump speech over the weekend and fact-checking the former president’s election conspiracies, calling the conservative cable giant “TV for stupid people” and an “absolute disgrace.” Briefly covering the GOP frontrunner’s campaign rally in Iowa on Saturday, Fox News anchor Arthel Neville pulled away from the twice-impeached ex-president’s tirade to remind viewers that Trump’s claims about a “rigged” election remained baseless. “Well,…

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Trump’s second term agenda: revenge

Trump’s second term agenda: revenge

David Frum writes: If Trump is elected, it very likely won’t be with a majority of the popular vote. Imagine the scenario: Trump has won the Electoral College with 46 percent of the vote because third-party candidates funded by Republican donors successfully splintered the anti-Trump coalition. Having failed to win the popular vote in each of the past three elections, Trump has become president for the second time. On that thin basis, his supporters would try to execute his schemes…

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Trump and his allies will restore their draconian zero-tolerance immigration policy

Trump and his allies will restore their draconian zero-tolerance immigration policy

Caitlin Dickerson writes: Almost as soon as Donald Trump took office in 2017, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were dispatched across the country to round up as many undocumented foreigners as possible, and the travel ban put into limbo the livelihoods of thousands of people from majority-Muslim countries who had won the hard-fought right to be here—refugees, tech entrepreneurs, and university professors among them. The administration drew up plans for erecting a border wall, as well as an approach…

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How Trump will try to evade justice and punish his enemies

How Trump will try to evade justice and punish his enemies

Barton Gellman writes: Once Trump has installed loyalists in crucial posts, his first priority—an urgent one for a man facing 91 felony charges in four jurisdictions—would be to save himself from conviction and imprisonment. Of the four indictments against him, two are federal: the Florida case, with charges of unlawful retention of classified documents and obstruction of justice, and the Washington case, which charges Trump with unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those will be the easiest for him…

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Trump will break up NATO

Trump will break up NATO

Anne Applebaum writes: “Idon’t give a shit about NATO.” Thus did former President Donald Trump once express his feelings about America’s oldest and strongest military alliance. Not that this statement, made in the presence of John Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, came as a surprise. Long before he was a political candidate, Trump questioned the value of American alliances. Of Europeans, he once wrote that “their conflicts are not worth American lives. Pulling back from Europe would…

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Trump was determined to stay in power ‘at any cost,’ say prosecutors; Mike Johnson protects the insurrectionists

Trump was determined to stay in power ‘at any cost,’ say prosecutors; Mike Johnson protects the insurrectionists

AFP reports: Federal prosecutors unveiled plans on Tuesday to introduce evidence at Donald Trump’s trial for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election that shows he was determined to “remain in power at any cost.” Special counsel Jack Smith’s office, in a court filing, said the former US president had a history of “sowing mistrust” in election results and had repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. “The Government will offer…

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Israel investigates possible trading knowledge ahead of Oct 7 Hamas attack

Israel investigates possible trading knowledge ahead of Oct 7 Hamas attack

Reuters reports: Israeli authorities are investigating claims by U.S. researchers that some investors may have known in advance of a Hamas plan to attack Israel on Oct. 7 and used that information to profit from Israeli securities. Research by law professors Robert Jackson Jr from New York University and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University found significant short-selling of shares leading up to the attacks, which triggered a war nearly two months old. “Days before the attack, traders appeared to anticipate…

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Eligible voters are being swept up in conservative activists’ efforts to purge voter rolls

Eligible voters are being swept up in conservative activists’ efforts to purge voter rolls

CBS News reports: Voters eligible to cast ballots are already being swept up in a grassroots effort to purge the nation’s registration rolls ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a CBS News investigation has found. Fueled by doubts about the 2020 election, an army of conservative activists is poring over state voter lists, looking for registration errors that can be used to file what are known as voter challenges — questioning the registrations of thousands of Americans. The undertaking, which…

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