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Category: Politics

How Trump still taps into America’s cultural animus

How Trump still taps into America’s cultural animus

Scott Nelson and Bradley Klein write: When Trump first won the presidency in 2016, legacy media outlets, including the New York Times, wrung their hands in anguish for having missed the story of profound public anxiety about the future. They raced to diners and truck stops across the Midwest in an effort to find out what “ordinary Americans” — those who rejected the Roosevelt coalition and bicoastal liberalism — were thinking and feeling. The stories that resulted painted a picture…

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The truth about Elon Musk and anti-Semitism

The truth about Elon Musk and anti-Semitism

Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria write: Elon Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” is threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for billions of dollars because the group has publicly criticized his management of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a public meltdown over X’s declining financial condition, Musk accused the ADL, an organization founded in 1913 “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” of being “the biggest…

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Betting against worst-case climate scenarios is risky business

Betting against worst-case climate scenarios is risky business

David Spratt writes: Would you live in a building, cross a bridge, or trust a dam wall if there were a 10 percent chance of it collapsing? Or five percent? Or one percent? Of course not! In civil engineering, acceptable probabilities of failure generally range from one-in-10,000 to one-in-10-million. So why, when it comes to climate action, are policies like carbon budgets accepted when they have success rates of just 50 to 66 percent? That’s hardly better than a coin…

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Trump’s co-defendants are already starting to turn against him

Trump’s co-defendants are already starting to turn against him

Politico reports: The finger-pointing among Donald Trump’s inner circle has begun. And as his four criminal cases march toward trials, some of his aides, allies and co-defendants are pointing at the former president. In court documents and hearings, lawyers for people in Trump’s orbit — both high-level advisers and lesser known associates — are starting to reveal glimmers of a tried-and-true strategy in cases with many defendants: Portray yourself as a hapless pawn while piling blame on the apparent kingpin….

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Can Joe Biden ride ‘boring’ to reelection?

Can Joe Biden ride ‘boring’ to reelection?

Molly Jong-Fast writes: “Do you want my most subversive hot take?” a friend recently asked me over dinner. I nodded, as a writer can never say no to a question like that. “Biden is the best president of our lifetime.” They might be right. Despite being very much on the fence about Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary, and even writing a Washington Post piece saying he should drop out after he lost primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire,…

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‘Stop Cop City’ activists hit with RICO charges by same grand jury that indicted Trump

‘Stop Cop City’ activists hit with RICO charges by same grand jury that indicted Trump

The Daily Beast reports: Georgia prosecutors have filed racketeering charges against 61 people accused of involvement with “Stop Cop City,” a protest movement against a controversial Atlanta police training facility. The charges were filed last week, according to online court records. Charging documents were not immediately available on Tuesday morning. But the list of defendants suggests that the case implicates people who have already been arrested on tenuous evidence, like a legal observer who was jailed while monitoring protests, activists…

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Elon Musk amplifies call by antisemites to ban the ADL from X

Elon Musk amplifies call by antisemites to ban the ADL from X

JTA reports: Elon Musk is engaging with white nationalists and antisemites who want to ban the Anti-Defamation League from Twitter, the influential social media platform he now calls “X.” Musk on Saturday asked his followers whether he should poll the platform about a hashtag, #BanTheADL, embraced in recent days by white nationalists and others on the far right. Musk had earlier “liked” the tweet launching the hashtag by Keith Woods, an Irish white nationalist and self-described “raging antisemite.” “The ADL’s…

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America’s surprising partisan divide on life expectancy

America’s surprising partisan divide on life expectancy

Colin Woodard writes: Where you live in America can have a major effect on how young you die. On paper, Lexington County, S.C., and Placer County, Calif., have a lot in common. They’re both big, wealthy, suburban counties with white supermajorities that border on their respective state’s capital cities. They both were at the vanguard of their states’ 20th century Republican advances — Lexington in the 1960s when it pivoted from the racist Dixiecrats; Placer with the Reagan Revolution in…

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What really happens when Americans stop going to church

What really happens when Americans stop going to church

Daniel K. Williams writes: Millions of Americans are leaving church, never to return, and it would be easy to think that this will make the country more secular and possibly more liberal. After all, that is what happened in Northern and Western Europe in the 1960s: A younger generation quit going to Anglican, Lutheran, or Catholic churches and embraced a liberal, secular pluralism that shaped European politics for the rest of the 20th century and beyond. Something similar happened in…

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The California megachurch pushing public schools to the far right

The California megachurch pushing public schools to the far right

The Daily Beast reports: Outside the California State Capitol last month, a fitness trainer turned school board president fired up the crowd at a parental rights rally, telling them they were all fighters in “a spiritual battle” for their kids and must answer the call from God. Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District board of education last November with an assist from a local megachurch and its Christian nationalist pastor, didn’t equivocate in naming…

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‘Everything is ahead of us’: Ukraine breaks Russian stronghold’s first line of defence

‘Everything is ahead of us’: Ukraine breaks Russian stronghold’s first line of defence

The Observer reports: Ukrainian forces have decisively breached Russia’s first defensive line near Zaporizhzhia after weeks of painstaking mine clearance, and expect faster gains as they press the weaker second line, the general leading the southern counteroffensive has said. Brig Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy estimated Russia had devoted 60% of its time and resources into building the first defensive line and only 20% each into the second and third lines because Moscow had not expected Ukrainian forces to get through. “We…

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Crimean Tatar set to become Ukrainian defense minister at critical moment in conflict

Crimean Tatar set to become Ukrainian defense minister at critical moment in conflict

CNN reports: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has tapped Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, to become his next defense minister, replacing Oleksii Reznikov at a critical time for Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Umerov will have a bulging in-tray if and when the Ukrainian parliament approves his appointment. The change in leadership comes as Ukraine’s relationships with allies and donors enter a new phase. Kyiv is trying to accelerate the training and deployment of F-16 combat planes and acquire a host of other equipment…

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Twitter accused of helping Saudi Arabia commit human rights abuses

Twitter accused of helping Saudi Arabia commit human rights abuses

The Guardian reports: The social media company formerly known as Twitter has been accused in a revised civil US lawsuit of helping Saudi Arabia commit grave human rights abuses against its users, including by disclosing confidential user data at the request of Saudi authorities at a much higher rate than it has for the US, UK or Canada. The lawsuit was brought last May against X, as Twitter is now known, by Areej al-Sadhan, the sister of a Saudi aid…

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Biden tours Florida hurricane damage: ‘Nobody can deny impacts of climate crisis’

Biden tours Florida hurricane damage: ‘Nobody can deny impacts of climate crisis’

The Guardian reports: Joe Biden said that no one can deny the impacts of the climate crisis anymore after he visited Florida on Saturday and surveyed the damage left behind by Hurricane Idalia. Speaking to reporters in front of fallen trees and debris, the US president pointed to this year’s extreme weather events and disasters, saying: “Nobody can deny the impact of climate crisis. There’s no real intelligence to deny the impacts of the climate crisis anymore.” “Just look around…

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Musk’s new Twitter policies helped spread Russian propaganda, EU says

Musk’s new Twitter policies helped spread Russian propaganda, EU says

The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has played a major role in allowing Russian propaganda about Ukraine to reach more people than before the war began, according to a study released this week by the European Commission, the governing body of the European Union. The research found that, despite voluntary commitments to take action against Russian propaganda by the largest social media companies, including Meta, Russian disinformation against Ukraine, thrived. Allowing the disinformation and hate speech to…

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Racism in online gaming is rampant. The toll on youth mental health is adding up

Racism in online gaming is rampant. The toll on youth mental health is adding up

USA Today reports: Not long ago, Amanda Calhoun, a periodic gamer, considered buying a video game with online multiplayer capability to play with other gamers online. But as she scrolled through the game’s reviews, she found complaints over the frequency with which the N-word was used by some on the platform. She decided not to buy it. For Calhoun, who is Black, the discovery was distressing, not just personally but professionally given her work in child and adolescent psychiatry. With so many…

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