Browsed by
Category: Politics

100 Jewish leaders call out Elon Musk for promoting antisemitism

100 Jewish leaders call out Elon Musk for promoting antisemitism

CBS News reports: A group of 100 Jewish leaders, including some prominent rabbis and academics, released a public letter criticizing X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and its owner Elon Musk for enabling a “new stage of antisemetic discourse.” According to the letter, the group’s concerns began with Musk’s takeover of the site in October 2022. Musk has been criticized for allowing previously banned users back onto the platform, including Andrew Tate, Kanye West and some notorious…

Read More Read More

The five most eye-opening lines in the antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

The five most eye-opening lines in the antitrust lawsuit against Amazon

Politico reports: A heavily redacted, 172-page lawsuit reveals how Amazon allegedly orchestrated a long-running campaign to muscle out competitors from the online retail space by financially squeezing merchants who rely on its platform. It’s a landmark case that will cement the legacy of FTC Chair Lina Khan, who first gained public attention going after Amazon. It’s also a key pillar in the Biden administration’s push to curb the alleged monopoly power of the nation’s largest tech companies. “There is immediate…

Read More Read More

Trump floats the idea of executing Joint Chiefs chairman Milley

Trump floats the idea of executing Joint Chiefs chairman Milley

Brian Klaas writes: Late Friday night, the former president of the United States—and a leading candidate to be the next president—insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death. That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy. But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley’s phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “an act so egregious that, in…

Read More Read More

How America’s war devastated Afghanistan’s environment

How America’s war devastated Afghanistan’s environment

Lynzy Billing writes: Birds dip between low branches that hang over glittering brooks along the drive from Jalalabad heading south toward the Achin district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. Then, the landscape changes, as lush fields give way to barren land. Up ahead, Achin is located among a rise of rocky mountains that line the border with Pakistan, a region pounded by American bombs since the beginning of the war. Laborers line the roadside, dusted with the white talc they have…

Read More Read More

Giant fracking is threatening America’s fragile aquifers

Giant fracking is threatening America’s fragile aquifers

The New York Times reports: Along a parched stretch of La Salle County, Texas, workers last year dug some 700 feet deep into the ground, seeking freshwater. Millions of gallons of it. The water wouldn’t supply homes or irrigate farms. It was being used by the petroleum giant BP to frack for fossil fuels. The water would be mixed with sand and toxic chemicals and pumped right back underground — forcing oil and gas from the bedrock. It was a…

Read More Read More

China is all about sovereignty. So why not Ukraine’s?

China is all about sovereignty. So why not Ukraine’s?

Michael Schuman writes: By Beijing’s reckoning, the U.S.-led global order is in turmoil, and a Washington in decline has no answers to the world’s mounting problems. Fortunately for the future of humanity, however, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping does. He would like to replace Washington’s “rules-based” world order with a framework of his own—one whose most sacred principle is national sovereignty, or the right of states to govern themselves, free from outside interference. In the world Xi envisions, nations will…

Read More Read More

Bob Menendez, Al Franken, and the presumption of innocence

Bob Menendez, Al Franken, and the presumption of innocence

Judd Legum writes: “Bob Menendez has been a dedicated public servant and is always fighting hard for the people of New Jersey. He has a right to due process and a fair trial.” That was the response of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to the indictment of Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) on Friday. Federal prosecutors accused Menendez and his wife, Nadine, of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for using his official position to benefit…

Read More Read More

Biden is presiding over a labor renaissance

Biden is presiding over a labor renaissance

Noah Berlatsky writes: President Joe Biden announced last week that he will join striking United Auto Workers (UAW) workers on the picket line in Michigan on Tuesday. This will likely be the first time a president has ever walked a picket line. Biden is branding himself as a labor president. And his actions are not just symbolic. We are currently in the middle of an era of labor action and labor power unlike anything we have seen in decades. This…

Read More Read More

After summer’s extreme weather, more Americans see climate change as a culprit, AP-NORC poll shows

After summer’s extreme weather, more Americans see climate change as a culprit, AP-NORC poll shows

The Associated Press reports: Kathleen Maxwell has lived in Phoenix for more than 20 years, but this summer was the first time she felt fear, as daily high temperatures soared to 110 degrees or hotter and kept it up for a record-shattering 31 consecutive days. “It’s always been really hot here, but nothing like this past summer,” said Maxwell, 50, who last week opened her windows for the first time since March and walked her dog outdoors for the first…

Read More Read More

As Trump prosecutions move forward, threats and concerns increase

As Trump prosecutions move forward, threats and concerns increase

The New York Times reports: At the federal courthouse in Washington, a woman called the chambers of the judge assigned to the election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and said that if Mr. Trump were not re-elected next year, “we are coming to kill you.” At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, agents have reported concerns about harassment and threats being directed at their families amid intensifying anger among Trump supporters about what they consider to be the…

Read More Read More

North Carolina Republicans just passed a massive power grab to seize control of elections

North Carolina Republicans just passed a massive power grab to seize control of elections

Mother Jones reports: North Carolina Republicans on Friday passed a major power grab, stripping the state’s Democratic governor of the authority to appoint a majority of members to state and county election boards and giving the heavily gerrymandered GOP legislature far more influence over how elections are run and certified in the battleground state. In North Carolina, the governor dictates the political makeup of the state and county election boards, which are each composed of five members. Under Democratic Gov….

Read More Read More

A monopoly-busting Amazon lawsuit might be Biden’s boldest move yet to tame tech

A monopoly-busting Amazon lawsuit might be Biden’s boldest move yet to tame tech

Politico reports: A long-awaited antitrust case against Amazon’s massive online retail operations is expected to be filed in federal court as soon as Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The Federal Trade Commission has been preparing a complaint since at least the start of this year targeting an array of Amazon’s business practices. The exact details of the lawsuit are not known, and changes to the final complaint are possible until it’s officially submitted. But personnel…

Read More Read More

Derna’s man-made disaster and the tragedy of Libya’s fate

Derna’s man-made disaster and the tragedy of Libya’s fate

Emadeddin Badi writes: Where the echoes of helpless cries linger amid the ruins of Derna in eastern Libya, its citizens are living a nightmare brought about by the callousness of successive rulers and the unbridled cruelty of military elites. Two dams, remnants of a bygone era under Moammar Gadhafi’s rule, had stood for decades as neglected sentries, guarding a coastal city deliberately left vulnerable to climate-induced changes. As the dams eventually broke under the weight of Mediterranean Storm Daniel’s heavy…

Read More Read More

Saudi Arabia sentences schoolgirl to 18 years over tweets, says rights group

Saudi Arabia sentences schoolgirl to 18 years over tweets, says rights group

Middle East Eye reports: Saudi Arabia has sentenced a secondary schoolgirl to 18 years in jail and a travel ban for posting tweets in support of political prisoners, according to a rights group. On Friday, ALQST rights group, which documents human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, revealed that the Saudi Specialised Criminal Court handed out the sentence in August to 18-year-old Manal al-Gafiri, who was only 17 at the time of her arrest. The Saudi judiciary, under the de facto…

Read More Read More

The wrecking-ball caucus: How the far right brought Washington to its knees

The wrecking-ball caucus: How the far right brought Washington to its knees

The New York Times reports: When it comes to his view of the United States government, Representative Bob Good, a right-wing Republican who represents a Virginia district that was once the domain of Thomas Jefferson, doesn’t mince words. “Most of what Congress does is not good for the American people,” Mr. Good declared in an interview off the House floor as the chamber descended into chaos last week. “Most of what we do as a Congress is totally unjustified.” Though…

Read More Read More

Clarence Thomas’ latest pay-to-play scandal finally connects all the dots

Clarence Thomas’ latest pay-to-play scandal finally connects all the dots

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write: ProPublica released a new report on Friday detailing Justice Clarence Thomas’ close relationship with the Koch brothers with previously undisclosed and extraordinarily damning new details. According to ProPublica, the justice developed a friendship with the Kochs as they were funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into right-wing causes, many of which ended up before the Supreme Court. The brothers then used Thomas to raise money for their sprawling network, inviting him to speak…

Read More Read More