Browsed by
Category: Politics

Left revolts over Biden’s staunch support of Israel amid Gaza crisis

Left revolts over Biden’s staunch support of Israel amid Gaza crisis

The Observer reports: On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of liberal Jewish American activists staged sit-ins in the Capitol Hill offices of top Democrats, including in the senate office of progressive champion Bernie Sanders, to demand a ceasefire in the escalating war between Israel and Hamas. As they sang in Hebrew and prayed for peace, the House floor resumed legislative activity for the first time in weeks after the election of a new Republican speaker, congressman Mike Johnson. In his first act,…

Read More Read More

Palestinians deserve equal rights — human rights. What makes that controversial?

Palestinians deserve equal rights — human rights. What makes that controversial?

Hala Alyan writes: I’ve moved back to the United States twice since my birth. Once as a child, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Then again for graduate school. I’d had the privilege of a youth — adolescence and young adulthood — in countries where being Palestinian was fairly common. The identity could be heavy, but it wasn’t a contested one. I hadn’t had to learn the respectability politics of being a Palestinian adult. I learned quickly. The task of…

Read More Read More

Russian losses in battle for Avdiivka may be worst of 2023, says UK

Russian losses in battle for Avdiivka may be worst of 2023, says UK

The Guardian reports: Russian forces are believed to have suffered some of the country’s biggest casualty rates so far this year as a result of continued “heavy but inconclusive” fighting around the Donetsk oblast town of Avdiivka. According to the UK Ministry of Defence’s intelligence update on Saturday morning, Russia has probably committed elements of up to eight brigades to the sector where it initiated a “major offensive effort” in mid-October. Ukraine’s armed forces claimed on Saturday that Russia had…

Read More Read More

Over 375 former Bernie Sanders staffers urge senator to introduce ‘ceasefire now’ Senate resolution

Over 375 former Bernie Sanders staffers urge senator to introduce ‘ceasefire now’ Senate resolution

290 Former @BernieSanders Staffers Are Urging The Senator To Sponsor A "Ceasefire Now" Senate Resolution Story to follow. Watch their video message to Sanders: pic.twitter.com/fnV0DONhbp — Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 24, 2023 Dear Senator Sanders, We, the undersigned, worked for you in your 2016 and 2020 campaigns because we share your principles that all human lives are precious, and that all people deserve dignity, peace, and justice. We saw in your candidacy a chance to make life better for oppressed…

Read More Read More

Despite Biden’s doubts, humanitarian agencies consider Gaza toll reliable

Despite Biden’s doubts, humanitarian agencies consider Gaza toll reliable

Reuters reports: U.S. President Joe Biden has cast doubt on casualty figures provided by Palestinian officials in Gaza, but international humanitarian agencies consider them broadly accurate and historically reliable. Although there is no dispute that Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed many people since Hamas ran amok in southern Israel on Oct. 7, Biden said on Wednesday he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using”, without saying why. The health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza responded by…

Read More Read More

Only 29% of Israelis support an immediate invasion of Gaza, poll

Only 29% of Israelis support an immediate invasion of Gaza, poll

Reuters reports: Almost half of Israelis want to hold off on any invasion of Gaza, according to a poll published on Friday, in what may indicate a dip in support for the planned next stage of the counter-offensive against Hamas militants holding some 200 hostages. Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas in response to the Palestinian Islamists’ killing and kidnapping spree in its southern communities on Oct. 7, and has been stepping up tank and infantry raids in concert with heavy…

Read More Read More

Dean Phillips could jolt the Democrats out of complacency — or gift the presidency to Donald Trump

Dean Phillips could jolt the Democrats out of complacency — or gift the presidency to Donald Trump

Tim Alberta writes: To spend time around Dean Phillips, as I have since his first campaign for Congress in 2018, is to encounter someone so earnest as to be utterly suspicious. He speaks constantly of joy and beauty and inspiration, beaming at the prospect of entertaining some new perspective. He allows himself to be interrupted often—by friends, family, staffers—but rarely interrupts them, listening patiently with a politeness that almost feels aggravating. With the practiced manners of one raised with great…

Read More Read More

Speaker Johnson’s mission is to align America with God’s laws

Speaker Johnson’s mission is to align America with God’s laws

Katelyn Fossett interviews historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez: Katelyn Fossett: I want to talk to you a little about Mike Johnson’s worldview and the belief system that has shaped him. Kristin Kobes Du Mez: He is incredibly standard in terms of being a right-wing, white evangelical Christian nationalist. Fossett: Tell me a little more about what makes someone a Christian nationalist. Does he use that phrase to describe himself? Du Mez: I don’t know that he uses that. But I…

Read More Read More

Speaker Johnson’s conspiracy theories about ‘illegals’ mark a new GOP low

Speaker Johnson’s conspiracy theories about ‘illegals’ mark a new GOP low

Greg Sargent writes: Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected House speaker, has repeatedly flirted with what’s known as the “great replacement theory,” the idea that Democrats are scheming to supplant American voters with immigrants. The Louisiana Republican’s views show how fringe conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the Republican Party at the highest levels of power. “This is the plan of our friends on this side — to turn all the illegals into voters,” Johnson said at a congressional hearing…

Read More Read More

Accounts Musk recommended on X are connected to a teen and a U.S. soldier

Accounts Musk recommended on X are connected to a teen and a U.S. soldier

The Washington Post reports: A social media account recommended by Elon Musk for its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war with a long history of antisemitic posts is connected to a southwest London teenager, according to research and a text exchange with the account. The @WarMonitors account on X, formerly Twitter, is one of two that drew hundreds of thousands of new followers the weekend that the Palestinian militant group Hamas rampaged into Israel after Musk recommended them. The second account…

Read More Read More

The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, wants to make America a Christian theocracy

The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, wants to make America a Christian theocracy

David Rothkopf writes: The most dangerous movement in American politics today is not Trumpism. It is Christofascism. With the election of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the organized effort to impose the extreme religious views of a minority of Americans on the entire country, at the expense of many of our most basic freedoms, took a disturbing step forward. Despite Speaker Johnson’s claims of being a constitutional “originalist,” via his elevation by a…

Read More Read More

Colorado judge rejects Trump’s bid to toss lawsuit aimed at keeping him off 2024 ballot

Colorado judge rejects Trump’s bid to toss lawsuit aimed at keeping him off 2024 ballot

NBC News reports: A Colorado judge on Wednesday denied the latest attempt by former President Donald Trump to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to remove him from the state’s 2024 ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. The decision comes just days before a trial on Trump’s eligibility for the ballot is expected to begin. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of six voters in Denver district court last month, says Trump should be disqualified from running…

Read More Read More

Trump is becoming more aggressive on immigration than ever before

Trump is becoming more aggressive on immigration than ever before

Ronald Brownstein writes: As president, Donald Trump imposed an array of deeply divisive immigration restrictions on both Latinos and Muslims. And yet from 2016 to 2020, he increased his share of the vote among both groups. Even some Latino and Muslim voters who opposed Trump’s immigration agenda moved to support him anyway because of his record on other issues, particularly the economy and conservative social priorities. Now Trump and several of his rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are…

Read More Read More

Amnesty calls for an immediate ceasefire to end civilian suffering in Israel and the occupied territories

Amnesty calls for an immediate ceasefire to end civilian suffering in Israel and the occupied territories

Amnesty International is issuing an urgent call for an immediate ceasefire by all parties in the occupied Gaza Strip and Israel to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid for people in Gaza amidst an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. “Over the past two and a half weeks we have witnessed horror unfolding on an unimaginable scale in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. More than 2 million people in the Gaza Strip are struggling to…

Read More Read More

How climate change drives conflict and war crimes around the globe

How climate change drives conflict and war crimes around the globe

Inside Climate News reports: Drought, flooding and extreme weather are driving and amplifying violent conflict around the world. At the same time, warfare has devastated ecosystems, imperiled access to vital resources and left behind toxic legacies that sicken civilian populations. On Thursday, a coalition of human rights organizations and lawyers published an open letter urging the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan, to begin assessing the links between climate change and crimes in the court’s remit. The letter…

Read More Read More