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Category: Politics

Political identity appears to shape our choices in love and location — and the implications are troubling

Political identity appears to shape our choices in love and location — and the implications are troubling

PsyPost reports: New research demonstrates that an individual’s political identity is related to their romantic and residential preferences. The findings, published in Politics and the Life Sciences, suggests that political beliefs play an important role in choosing romantic partners and preferred living locations, especially for those with strong partisan views, potentially exacerbating political polarization. The research was based on niche construction theory, a concept from evolutionary biology. This theory posits that organisms, including humans, actively modify their environment and social…

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War without end suits Netanyahu

War without end suits Netanyahu

Simon Tisdall writes: Warnings about a region-wide escalation engulfing the entire Middle East have been circulating since the first fraught days after the 7 October Hamas terrorist atrocities. The most dangerous flashpoint is generally believed to be Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where lethal clashes between the powerful Shia militia Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have greatly intensified in recent days. Sporadic Israeli airstrikes inside Syria, repeated limited attacks by Islamist militants on US bases in Iraq and…

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Biden continues supporting Israel’s ‘Genghis Khan model of warfare’

Biden continues supporting Israel’s ‘Genghis Khan model of warfare’

The Associated Press reports: For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism. The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155…

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Muslim leaders expand campaign to abandon Biden in 2024 over Israel-Hamas war

Muslim leaders expand campaign to abandon Biden in 2024 over Israel-Hamas war

NBC News reports: Muslim leaders announced on Saturday that they are going national with an effort to dissuade voters from reelecting President Joe Biden in 2024 due to his failure to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. The #AbandonBiden campaign officially began earlier in December, led by Muslim leaders in swing states like Michigan, Minnesota and Arizona, who disapproved of Biden’s support for Israel’s counterattacks against Hamas. The counterattacks have come at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent…

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How a Russian barrage evaded Ukraine’s defenses to wreak deadly chaos

How a Russian barrage evaded Ukraine’s defenses to wreak deadly chaos

The New York Times reports: For months, Ukraine’s use of powerful Western-supplied air-defense systems to repel Russian missile attacks has provided its citizens with some reassurance that a protective shield was effectively in place over big cities such as the capital, Kyiv. On Friday, that shield partly cracked. In one of the biggest air assaults of the war, Russia launched so many missiles that the Ukrainian defenses seem to have been overloaded. Faced with a complex barrage of different airborne…

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Here’s what the Supreme Court should do with the Trump ballot cases

Here’s what the Supreme Court should do with the Trump ballot cases

Shan Wu writes: The U.S. Supreme Court needs to understand that the disqualification of former President Donald J. Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from running again for President of the United States is going exactly as it should. The Maine Secretary of State ruled in an administrative proceeding that Trump is disqualified, and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled similarly. Both states followed the law set forth in the U.S. Constitution that anyone who once took an oath…

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Jack Smith: Trump immunity bid a ‘license’ to commit crimes

Jack Smith: Trump immunity bid a ‘license’ to commit crimes

The Daily Beast reports: Special counsel Jack Smith warned in a new filing Saturday that ex-President Donald Trump’s bid for immunity could “license Presidents to commit crimes to remain in office.” The brief lodged in the D.C. Court of Appeals came in response to the ex-president’s claims that he is immune to prosecution for his efforts to undo his 2020 defeat because he survived an impeachment proceeding in the Senate, and because his plotting fell within the powers and duties…

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Kremlin says it has list of Western assets to be seized if Russian assets are confiscated

Kremlin says it has list of Western assets to be seized if Russian assets are confiscated

Reuters reports: The Kremlin on Friday warned the West that it had a list of U.S., European and other assets that would be seized if G7 leaders decided to go ahead and confiscate $300 billion in frozen Russian central bank reserves. Leaders of the Group of Seven major industralised nations will discuss a new legal theory that would enable the seizure of frozen Russian assets when they meet in February, two sources familiar with the plans and a British official…

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How Russia silences dissent about the Ukraine war

How Russia silences dissent about the Ukraine war

The New York Times reports: Russia’s crackdowns on free speech used to garner global headlines. Now they are noticed less and less. One reason is the sheer scale: On each of the 530 days of the war for which we have near-complete data, an average of 13 cases were heard in court involving people opposing the war — and that’s just under the discreditation law. The indignities of the crackdown, and the long arm of the Russia law, is being…

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Public Christian schools? Leonard Leo’s allies advance a new cause

Public Christian schools? Leonard Leo’s allies advance a new cause

Politico reports: Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The…

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America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority

America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority

The Washington Post reports: The commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration had an urgent message last winter for his colleagues, brandishing data that life expectancy in the United States had fallen again — the biggest two-year decline in a century. Robert Califf’s warning, summarized by three people with knowledge of the conversations, boiled down to this: Americans’ life expectancy is going the wrong way. We’re the top health officials in the country. If we don’t fix this, who will?…

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Benjamin Netanyahu’s war crimes

Benjamin Netanyahu’s war crimes

Hafiz Rashid writes: As 2023 comes to a close, grim numbers in Gaza are piling up, where Israel’s bombardment and invasion have thus far killed more than 20,000 people, including 8,200 children and 6,200 women. Those dire statistics lay alongside the grievous outcome of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed—including 36 children—and nearly 250 Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas, again, including about 30 children. But beyond the dismal casualty statistics, we’re ending…

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Tel Aviv high school principal faces suspension for sympathizing with suffering of Gazans

Tel Aviv high school principal faces suspension for sympathizing with suffering of Gazans

Haaretz reports: The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality on Thursday summoned Yael Ayalon, the principal of the city’s Ironi Yud Daled High School, to a hearing before suspension, after she posted a Haaretz article criticizing the lack of Israeli media coverage of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on her Facebook page about a week ago. Following Ayalon’s Facebook post, a group of students opened a protest strike on Wednesday which escalated into a physical altercation, during which the head of the school’s…

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Recordings, emails show how Trump team flew fake elector ballots to DC in final push to overturn 2020 election

Recordings, emails show how Trump team flew fake elector ballots to DC in final push to overturn 2020 election

CNN reports: Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail. So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress,…

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A fake Trump elector in Michigan told prosecutors of regret, anger

A fake Trump elector in Michigan told prosecutors of regret, anger

The New York Times reports: One of the Republicans in Michigan who acted as a fake elector for Donald J. Trump expressed deep regret about his participation, according to a recording of his interview with the state attorney general’s office that was obtained by The New York Times. The elector, James Renner, is thus far the only Trump elector who has reached an agreement with the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, which brought criminal charges in July against…

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