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Category: Politics

Leonard Leo says he will not cooperate with D.C. Attorney General tax probe

Leonard Leo says he will not cooperate with D.C. Attorney General tax probe

Politico reports: Judicial activist Leonard Leo is not cooperating with an investigation by Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb for potentially misusing nonprofit tax laws for personal enrichment, his attorney confirmed. David Rivkin, Leo’s attorney, said in a statement to POLITICO that Schwalb has “no legal authority to conduct any investigatory steps or take any enforcement measures” because Leo’s multi-billion-dollar aligned nonprofits — which poured millions into campaigning for the nominations of conservative Supreme Court justices and advocating before them…

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The disinformation sleuths: a key role for scientists in impending elections

The disinformation sleuths: a key role for scientists in impending elections

An editorial in Nature says: Next year will bring a series of high-profile elections around the globe, including in India, Taiwan, the United States and, in all likelihood, the United Kingdom, as well as for the European Parliament. Social media will play a huge part in bringing information to the hundreds of millions of people casting their votes — and researchers who study elections are worried. Access to social-media data is essential to those who research political campaigns and their…

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How Republican state politics are shaving years off American lives

How Republican state politics are shaving years off American lives

The Washington Post reports: Mike Czup unspooled the hose to wash his hearse. It was time to pick up the body of yet another neighbor who had died in the prime of life. Since he started working at 15 in the funeral business, Czup has seen plenty of tragedies. But the 52-year-old said he’s still coming to grips with a disturbing fact about the bodies he washes, embalms and entombs: About a quarter of the people he buries are younger…

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Trump wanted to fire missiles at Mexico. Now the GOP wants to send troops

Trump wanted to fire missiles at Mexico. Now the GOP wants to send troops

The New York Times reports: The first time Donald Trump talked privately about shooting missiles into Mexico to take out drug labs, as far as his former aides can recall, was in early 2020. And the first time those comments became public was when his second defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Trump had raised it with him and asked if the United States could make it look as if some other country was responsible….

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Trump’s violent rhetoric escalates as his legal peril grows

Trump’s violent rhetoric escalates as his legal peril grows

The New York Times reports: Former President Donald J. Trump had a lot to say on the first day of the fraud trial against him and his company. Speaking to reporters at a Manhattan courthouse on Monday, he dismissed the judge as a “rogue” justice and said he did not “think the people of this country are going to stand for it.” And he focused on the official who filed the lawsuit against him, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James….

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‘God help us’: John Kelly issues scathing statement on Trump

‘God help us’: John Kelly issues scathing statement on Trump

  CNN reports: John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN. Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand. “What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said,…

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The Supreme Court’s uncharacteristic moment of sanity

The Supreme Court’s uncharacteristic moment of sanity

Ian Millhiser writes: Imagine that the Supreme Court of the United States spent an entire morning debating whether penguins are the primary cause of colon cancer or whether John F. Kennedy was assassinated by aliens from the planet Venus. That’s more or less the quality of arguments that former Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco presented to the Court on Tuesday, as part of a quizzical effort to convince the justices to declare an entire federal agency unconstitutional. The good news…

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‘They’re just meat’: Russia deploys punishment battalions in echo of Stalin

‘They’re just meat’: Russia deploys punishment battalions in echo of Stalin

Reuters reports: Drunk recruits. Insubordinate soldiers. Convicts. They’re among hundreds of military and civilian offenders who’ve been pressed into Russian penal units known as “Storm-Z” squads and sent to the frontlines in Ukraine this year, according to 13 people with knowledge of the matter, including five fighters in the units. Few live to tell their tale, the people said. “Storm fighters, they’re just meat,” said one regular soldier from army unit no. 40318 who was deployed near the fiercely contested…

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One reason the Trump fever won’t break

One reason the Trump fever won’t break

David French writes: In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, there was a tremendous surge of interest in Christian nationalism. Christian displays were common in the crowd at the Capitol. Rioters and protesters carried Christian flags, Christian banners and Bibles. They prayed openly, and a Dispatch reporter in the crowd told me that in the late afternoon Christian worship music was blaring from loudspeakers. I started to hear questions I’d never heard before: What is Christian nationalism and…

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David Cay Johnston talks about Trump’s $250 million civil fraud trial

David Cay Johnston talks about Trump’s $250 million civil fraud trial

  Politico reports: Donald Trump came face-to-face in a Manhattan court Monday with the attorney general who is suing him for massive business fraud and the judge who last week revoked his business licenses, as the former president attended the first day of a $250 million civil trial. A scowl on his face as he entered the courtroom, Trump showed up to see opening statements in the trial. New York Attorney General Tish James alleges that Trump, his adult sons,…

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Putin’s next target: U.S. support for Ukraine, officials say

Putin’s next target: U.S. support for Ukraine, officials say

The New York Times reports: Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West. But how does Vladimir Putin plan to do that? American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies. The Russia disinformation aims to increase support for candidates opposing Ukraine aid with…

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GOP senators weigh go-big-or-go-home strategy on Ukraine

GOP senators weigh go-big-or-go-home strategy on Ukraine

Politico reports: From Mitch McConnell on down, the Senate’s pro-Ukraine coalition is trying to reassure the U.S. ally that help will soon be on the way — even after a bruising GOP confrontation over keeping the government open snuffed out billions in immediate new aid. But for that bipartisan group — which has served as a bulwark against growing House Republican opposition to continued aid — the past week has been a rude awakening. Not until now has the depth…

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Leaked U.S. strategy on Ukraine sees corruption as the real threat

Leaked U.S. strategy on Ukraine sees corruption as the real threat

Politico reports: Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by POLITICO suggests. The “sensitive but unclassified” version of the long-term U.S. plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors. It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft…

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Laphonza Butler will be the first Black, openly LGBTQ+ woman in the Senate or House

Laphonza Butler will be the first Black, openly LGBTQ+ woman in the Senate or House

HuffPost reports: Laphonza Butler, who California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) appointed Sunday to finish out the late Dianne Feinstein’s Senate term, will make history when she’s sworn in. She will be the first Black, openly LGBTQ+ woman to serve in either chamber of Congress. “Today she shatters a rainbow ceiling in becoming the first out Black LGBTQ+ U.S. senator and she will serve knowing her presence and impact will be felt in countless ways,” Annise Parker, the president and CEO…

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The rightwing intellectuals who are laying the groundwork for ‘post-Constitutional’ autocratic rule

The rightwing intellectuals who are laying the groundwork for ‘post-Constitutional’ autocratic rule

Jason Wilson writes: In June, rightwing academic Kevin Slack published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end. Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class…

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How a ‘Trump train’ attack on a Biden campaign bus foreshadowed Jan 6 — and echoed bloody history

How a ‘Trump train’ attack on a Biden campaign bus foreshadowed Jan 6 — and echoed bloody history

Diane McWhorter writes: The bane of raw intelligence – and history – is that you can always look back and find the signs, but you can’t necessarily look ahead and see where they’re pointing. Many questions remain about the intelligence failures that enabled an insurrectionist mob to lay siege virtually unimpeded to the US Capitol. But here’s one sign that’s been flashing in my head since 6 January 2021. Four days before the 2020 election, a “Trump Train” of motorists…

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