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Category: Politics

Asylum in America, by the numbers

Asylum in America, by the numbers

The New York Times reports: Under President Biden, the Border Patrol has arrested more people for illegally crossing the southern border into the country than in any other period since the government started keeping count in 1960. His time in office coincides with a global migration movement driven by tens of millions of people displaced because of war, persecution, climate change, violence and human rights abuses, according to the United Nations. More Americans far from the border are witnessing the…

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Before Hillary Clinton, there was Rosalynn Carter

Before Hillary Clinton, there was Rosalynn Carter

Azadeh Moaveni writes: When Americans look back and take stock of their most impressive first ladies, they rarely think of Rosalynn Carter. In a 2020 poll that asked historians and other experts to rank first ladies on a score of exemplary characteristics, Mrs. Carter came in ninth, trailing Dolley Madison, Betty Ford and Jackie Kennedy. When Apple TV+ produced “First Ladies,” a series of six documentary portraits, in 2020, it ignored Mrs. Carter entirely. So too did Showtime’s 2022 drama…

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Pro-Israel groups are weaponizing civil rights law to suppress dissent on campuses across America

Pro-Israel groups are weaponizing civil rights law to suppress dissent on campuses across America

The Intercept reports: In front of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library, seven infant-sized bundles of white cloth rested on the steps, splattered with red paint. Behind the swaddles, plywood boards read “10,600 lives slaughtered,” “4,412 children,” and “let Gaza live,” alongside images of Palestinian flags and olive trees. This was the scene where Columbia students gathered last Thursday for a “peaceful protest art installation” and demonstration organized by the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice…

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Argentina’s new far-right president ‘the madman’ takes the stage

Argentina’s new far-right president ‘the madman’ takes the stage

The Associated Press reports: His legions of fans call him “the madman” and “the wig” due to his ferocity and unruly mop of hair. He refers to himself as “the lion.” He thinks sex education is a Marxist plot to destroy the family, views his cloned mastiffs as his “children with four paws” and has suggested people should be allowed to sell their own vital organs. He is Javier Milei, Argentina’s next president. A few years ago, Milei was a…

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Federal court deals devastating blow to Voting Rights Act

Federal court deals devastating blow to Voting Rights Act

Politico reports: A federal appeals court issued a ruling Monday that could gut the Voting Rights Act, saying only the federal government — not private citizens or civil rights groups — is allowed to sue under a key section of the landmark civil rights law. The decision out of the 8th Circuit will almost certainly be appealed and is likely headed to the Supreme Court. Should it stand, it would mark a dramatic rollback of the enforcement of the law…

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More than 60% of Trump voters would consider voting for a different candidate

More than 60% of Trump voters would consider voting for a different candidate

The Hill reports: More than 60 percent of Trump primary voters said there is “at least some chance” they would support a candidate other than former President Trump in the Republican presidential primary, according to a survey from Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll shared Monday with The Hill. The findings come roughly two months before the first Republican presidential primary contests in Iowa. While the poll found that Trump voters were somewhat open to another candidate, it also found that the former…

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Judge Aileen Cannon is setting up some serious roadblocks in Florida that may delay other Trump trials

Judge Aileen Cannon is setting up some serious roadblocks in Florida that may delay other Trump trials

The Daily Beast reports: When Donald Trump’s beloved federal judge issued yet another head-turning order this week to throw the upcoming Mar-a-Lago classified documents trial into limbo, she actually did him an even bigger favor—she created chaos that can spill over into his other legal battles ahead of the 2024 election. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has pushed back what might have been a one- or two-day meeting with prosecutors to review classified documents until February. On Thursday, she also…

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Biden’s loyalty to Israel may result in Trump’s return to the White House

Biden’s loyalty to Israel may result in Trump’s return to the White House

NBC News reports: President Joe Biden’s approval rating has declined to the lowest level of his presidency — 40% — as strong majorities of all voters disapprove of his handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. What’s more, the poll finds Biden behind former President Donald Trump for the first time in a hypothetical general-election matchup, although the deficit is well within the poll’s margin of error for a contest that’s…

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In a shift, U.S. Jewish lawmakers ramp up criticism of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza

In a shift, U.S. Jewish lawmakers ramp up criticism of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza

The Times of Israel reports: In the span of two days, one Jewish lawmaker became the first to call on Israel to ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, another called the Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war “unacceptable,” and a third said suffering in Gaza was a “moral failure.” On Wednesday, Sen. Jon Ossoff, who has been a consensus-seeking voice on Israel within the Democratic party and who has carefully avoided overly criticizing the Jewish state since entering Congress in…

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Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide

Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide

Raz Segal writes: I cannot stop thinking about the dozens of Israeli children held in captivity by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in underground tunnels in Gaza, while above them Israel’s attack has killed, so far, nearly 4,500 Palestinian children. Stopping the violence, and returning the hostages, is urgent for any person who values all lives. That it is very difficult to imagine how this happens tells a terrible truth: Those with the most power to effect change refuse to…

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Nakba generation relive trauma of displacement in Gaza

Nakba generation relive trauma of displacement in Gaza

The Guardian reports: Umm Ghadeer’s earliest memories are of the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948 in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel. She was three years old. Last month she was forced to abandon her home all over again, fleeing Shejaiya, a neighbourhood of Gaza City, after the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. “I cried very hard because I relived the experience of displacement when we fled our homes in…

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I’m a climate scientist. I’m not screaming into the void anymore

I’m a climate scientist. I’m not screaming into the void anymore

Kate Marvel writes: Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated. Did we really need another warning of the dire consequences of climate change in this country? The answer, legally, was yes: Congress mandates that the National Climate Assessment be updated every four years or so. But after four previous assessments and six United Nations reports since 1990, I was skeptical that…

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How the hillbillies remade America

How the hillbillies remade America

Max Fraser writes: On April 29, 1954, a cross section of Cincinnati’s municipal bureaucracy—joined by dozens of representatives drawn from local employers, private charities, the religious community, and other corners of the city establishment—gathered at the behest of the mayor’s office to discuss a new problem confronting the city. Or, rather, about 50,000 new problems, give or take. That was roughly the number of Cincinnati residents who had recently migrated to the city from the poorest parts of southern Appalachia….

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Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have died in all other conflict zones globally over the last year

Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have died in all other conflict zones globally over the last year

The New York Times reports: Barefoot and weeping, Khaled Joudeh, 9, hurried toward the dozens of bodies wrapped in white burial shrouds, blankets and rugs outside the overcrowded morgue. “Where’s my mom?” he cried next to a photographer for The New York Times. “I want to see my mom.” “Where is Khalil?” he continued, barely audible between sobs as he asked for his 12-year-old brother. A morgue worker opened a white shroud, so Khaled could kiss his brother one final…

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Israel could lose

Israel could lose

  Jon B. Alterman writes: Israel’s army has a remarkable record of winning. It won conventional wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973; it forced the Palestine Liberation Organization to give up armed struggle in 1996; and it has deterred Hezbollah since a 2006 campaign laid waste to the group. The military is strong not merely because of U.S. support, but also because everything about Israeli military—from its doctrine, organization, and training to its leadership and personnel—makes it by far the…

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These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

Talia Lavin writes: On Tuesday, approximately 300,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to show their support for Israel in an ongoing war that has claimed the lives of thousands of people. The lineup of speakers at the March for Israel included Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Jewish-American celebrities like Debra Messing and Tovah Feldshuh, as well as rabbis and cantors. It also included an evangelical Christian pastor from Texas, infamous for his fire-and-brimstone prophecies about the end of…

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