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Category: Politics

How the far right rose – and found Trump

How the far right rose – and found Trump

Charles Kaiser writes: Rightwing extremism has always been a feature of American life, from the diehard supporters of slavery in the 19th century to the 20,000 fascists who filled Madison Square Garden in 1939 and the violent opponents of integration who beat and killed civil rights workers and leaders throughout the 1960s. Today, this ugly tradition of hatred is perpetuated by dozens of vile groups, from the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to the Family Research Council and a…

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Clean energy subsidies attract European companies to expand hydrogen development in the U.S.

Clean energy subsidies attract European companies to expand hydrogen development in the U.S.

Politico reports: European leaders have devoted tens of billions of dollars toward encouraging production of hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that advocates say will create jobs and help fight climate change. But now, many of those jobs will be going to the United States instead. The clean energy subsidies that undergird President Joe Biden’s climate agenda have just prompted one Norwegian manufacturer to choose Michigan, not Europe, as the site of a nearly $500 million factory that will produce the equipment…

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Seeing the erosion of our freedoms makes it hard to celebrate this Fourth of July

Seeing the erosion of our freedoms makes it hard to celebrate this Fourth of July

Jill Lawrence writes: Despite the promises of America’s founding documents, on Independence Day 2023, justice, the “general welfare,” “equal protection of the laws” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are all at risk. The Supreme Court, conservative governors and gerrymandered state legislatures are racing to shrink fundamental rights and freedoms, enabled and empowered by structural inequities built into the Constitution. The result is that tens of millions of Americans are being deprived of rights that other Americans have. The scale of the disparity is frightening and growing, taking…

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Migrant workers flee Florida as new immigration law takes effect

Migrant workers flee Florida as new immigration law takes effect

The Wall Street Journal reports: Florida’s agricultural and construction industries say they are experiencing a labor shortage because a new immigration law that took effect July 1 is leading migrant workers to leave the state. The law, signed in May by Florida Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, seeks to further criminalize undocumented immigration in the state. It makes it a third-degree felony for unauthorized people to knowingly use a false identification to obtain employment. Businesses that knowingly employ…

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Federal judge halts new Florida law he calls ‘latest assault’ on voting

Federal judge halts new Florida law he calls ‘latest assault’ on voting

Politico reports: A federal judge on Monday blocked a new Florida election law pushed by Republicans that puts restrictions on voter registration groups, calling it “Florida’s latest assault on the right to vote.” U.S. Chief District Judge Mark Walker granted a preliminary injunction against the law just days after it went into effect. Walker is an appointee of former President Barack Obama who has repeatedly ruled against the state in past legal challenges to election measures put in place by…

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Can John Roberts disarm Democratic threats to overhaul the Supreme Court?

Can John Roberts disarm Democratic threats to overhaul the Supreme Court?

Jonathan Chait writes: The Republican Party has been in desperate need of a pragmatic leader who can gauge public opinion, shrewdly husband political capital, and advance the party’s agenda in sustainable ways. That leader has materialized in the form of John Roberts. The chief justice of the United States is attempting to navigate the disjuncture between voters, who on the whole are sharply divided but have slightly favored Democrats, and the power Republicans have accumulated through the Supreme Court, which is quasi-permanent…

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Biden nominates Iran-Contra convict, Elliott Abrams, to Public Diplomacy Commission

Biden nominates Iran-Contra convict, Elliott Abrams, to Public Diplomacy Commission

CNN reports: President Joe Biden announced Monday his intention to nominate a former appointee under former President Donald Trump with a controversial past in Latin America to the bipartisan United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Elliott Abrams, who has served in three Republican administrations, most recently acted as the Trump administration’s special envoy to Iran and Venezuela where he was tasked at the time with directing the campaign to replace Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. The Republican insider’s long history…

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French government refuses to tackle police violence

French government refuses to tackle police violence

Pauline Bock writes: As of this week, a crowdfunding campaign set up by the French far right in support of the police officer who shot and killed Nahel M, a 17-year-old from Nanterre, has now surpassed €1.4m. Around the same time that Nahel’s killer’s fund passed the €1m mark, it was reported that at least 120 young people who had been arrested in the unrest unleashed by his death had already been sent to prison. So far, this “swift, firm…

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No Labels, backed by Clarence Thomas’s sugar daddy, has made ‘a financial and personal decision to destroy Joe Biden’

No Labels, backed by Clarence Thomas’s sugar daddy, has made ‘a financial and personal decision to destroy Joe Biden’

The Wall Street Journal reports: A centrist group is laying the groundwork to run an alternative candidate if the 2024 presidential race becomes a Donald Trump–Joe Biden rematch. It is called No Labels, but many political strategists have their own label for it: spoiler. History and recent polling suggest a third-party candidate has little chance of winning and could tip the election to Trump, the Republican former president who No Labels itself says is too dangerous to return to the…

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The ‘shrinking Baptist convention’ is doubling down on the culture wars

The ‘shrinking Baptist convention’ is doubling down on the culture wars

David Siders writes: “Things have changed in America,” Tim Wilder, the pastor at a church in Osceola County, Fla., near Disney World, told me as we rode alone in a dark shuttle bus back from a day of meetings at the city’s convention center to a nearby hotel one night. “I believe we’re in an anti-Christian nation.” The next day, at the meeting site, Angela Mathews, a retired high school history and English teacher from Murphy, Texas, told me, “It’s…

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Ron DeSantis leans hard into homophobia

Ron DeSantis leans hard into homophobia

Prem Thakker writes: Over the weekend, Ron DeSantis’s rapid response team shared a video railing against twice-impeached and twice-indicted former President Donald Trump for previous expressions of support for the LGBTQ community, proudly contrasting it with DeSantis’s outward crusade against America’s LGBTQ population. To wrap up “Pride Month,” let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it… pic.twitter.com/FT7LdW4vls — DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 30, 2023 The video begins by focusing on Trump’s…

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As France burns, the far right rises

As France burns, the far right rises

David A. Bell writes: What the street barricade was to France in the 19th century, the burning car has become in the 21st: a preferred means of violent protest, and a key theatrical symbol of political defiance. In 2005, after two boys named Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré died while running from police, rioters burned close to 9,000 cars across France in unrest that ultimately led President Jacques Chirac to declare a state of emergency. This year, after an officer…

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Israel attacks Jenin in biggest West Bank incursion in 20 years

Israel attacks Jenin in biggest West Bank incursion in 20 years

The Guardian reports: Israel has launched a major aerial and ground offensive into the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, its biggest military operation in the Palestinian territory in years, in what it described as an “extensive counter-terrorism effort”. At least eight Palestinians were killed and 50 injured, 10 seriously, in the attack that began at about 1am on Monday, and the death toll is likely to rise, according to the Palestinian health ministry. On Monday afternoon, Israeli sources suggested…

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Lessons for the next Arab Spring

Lessons for the next Arab Spring

Shadi Hamid writes: On July 3, 2013, the Arab Spring ended. A military coup ousted the democratically elected government of Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian president who was a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, a decade later, the role the United States played in the events leading up to the coup, and the coup itself, is still contentious. Brotherhood supporters blame the Obama administration for its unwillingness to stop the coup or even to call it one. Coup supporters, meanwhile,…

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How Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing set the stage for the unraveling of affirmative action today

How Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing set the stage for the unraveling of affirmative action today

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw writes: In October 1991, I was part of the legal team that supported Anita Hill in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which she bravely alleged sexual harassment at the hands of now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. His confirmation by that committee, chaired by then-Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, was one of the most consequential moments in setting the future trajectory of the ideals that matter most to me — civil rights, gender equity and our…

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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s bold debut and independent streak

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s bold debut and independent streak

The Washington Post reports: In a rare public speech this spring, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson talked to law school graduates about the challenges of starting a new job and about her love of musical theater. One of her favorites, she said, is the smash hit “Hamilton.” A particular song resonates: “History Has Its Eyes on You.” “Given my own experience over the past year, I think it’s pretty obvious why,” she told the crowd at Boston University School of…

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