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Category: Politics

How Leonard Leo, architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, helped DeSantis flip the state Supreme Court

How Leonard Leo, architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, helped DeSantis flip the state Supreme Court

The Washington Post reports: For decades, the ambitions of Florida’s Republican governors were stymied by the liberal-leaning state Supreme Court. That is, until Ron DeSantis was elected. The court let him erase a congressional district with a large Black population. It opened the door to a law making it easier to impose the death penalty. Now, it’s poised to rule on the governor’s plan to outlaw most abortions in the third-most-populous state. The hard-right turn was by design. DeSantis seized…

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Team Trump suspects his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is a ‘rat’

Team Trump suspects his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is a ‘rat’

Rolling Stone reports: Earlier this year, Donald Trump sent some of his lawyers and political advisers on a “small fact-finding mission,” as a person with knowledge of the matter describes it to Rolling Stone. The former president wanted to know, according to that source and another person close to Trump: “What is Mark doing?” Trump was referring to his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Justice Department investigators and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office had been keen on…

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U.S. is rejecting asylum seekers at much higher rates under new Biden policy

U.S. is rejecting asylum seekers at much higher rates under new Biden policy

The Los Angeles Times reports: A new Biden administration policy has dramatically lowered the percentage of migrants at the southern border who enter the United States and are allowed to apply for asylum, according to numbers revealed in court documents obtained by The Times. Without these new limits to asylum, border crossings could overwhelm local towns and resources, a Department of Homeland Security official warned a federal court in a filing this month. The new asylum policy is the centerpiece…

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Legal experts say the charges against Hunter Biden are rarely brought

Legal experts say the charges against Hunter Biden are rarely brought

NBC News reports: The charges brought against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden are rarely prosecuted, legal experts say. Under a plea deal reached with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware — an office headed by Donald Trump appointee David Weiss — Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay taxes, which he later reimbursed. Biden also faces a felony gun charge — possession of a firearm by a person who is…

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FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in January 6 for more than a year

FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in January 6 for more than a year

The Washington Post reports: On Jan. 13, 2022, the department indicted Rhodes and 10 other Oath Keepers on charges of seditious conspiracy. It did not quiet the criticism, but instead put a spotlight on signs the Justice Department was not, in comparison with the House committee, working as actively to investigate Trump’s role in the attempted coup. Politico had reported that week that the House committee had demanded and received documents from several states about fake electors as well as…

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Well-funded Christian group behind U.S. effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights

Well-funded Christian group behind U.S. effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights

The Guardian reports: With the US besieged by a rightwing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people and others, blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures. But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded rightwing legal organization, experts say. Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has…

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As the nation celebrates Juneteenth, it’s time to get rid of these three myths about slavery

As the nation celebrates Juneteenth, it’s time to get rid of these three myths about slavery

John Blake writes: Temple “Tempie” Cummins stoically stares at the camera with her arms folded in her lap, sitting stiffly in a chair in her dusty, barren backyard with her weather-beaten wooden shack behind her. Her dark, creased face reflects years of poverty and worry. The faded black and white image of Cummins from 1937 was snapped by a historian who stopped by her home in Jasper, Texas, to ask her about her childhood during slavery. Cummins, who did not…

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What the hell happened to Biden’s human rights agenda?

What the hell happened to Biden’s human rights agenda?

Matthew Duss writes: As president, Donald Trump made no secret of his admiration for repressive rulers around the world. Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to change that. He regularly criticized Donald Trump’s silence about repressive regimes and promised that a Biden administration would “hold to account those who perpetrate human rights abuses.” Since taking office he has repeated the refrain that “human rights will be the center of our foreign policy.” Not only has Biden not honored this promise,…

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Russia sought to assassinate defector in Florida

Russia sought to assassinate defector in Florida

The New York Times reports: As President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil. The clandestine operation, seeking to eliminate a C.I.A. informant in Miami who had been a high-ranking Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, represented a brazen expansion of Mr. Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations. It also…

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Blinken and Xi pledge to stabilize deteriorated U.S.-China ties, but the main U.S. request is rebuffed

Blinken and Xi pledge to stabilize deteriorated U.S.-China ties, but the main U.S. request is rebuffed

The Associated Press reports: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and said they agreed to “stabilize” badly deteriorated U.S.-China ties, but America’s top diplomat left Beijing with his biggest ask rebuffed: better communications between their militaries. After meeting Xi, Blinken said China is not ready to resume military-to-military contacts, something the U.S. considers crucial to avoid miscalculation and conflict, particularly over Taiwan. Yet Blinken and Xi pronounced themselves satisfied with progress made…

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Bill Barr: Trump’s ‘a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s’

Bill Barr: Trump’s ‘a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s’

  ROBERT COSTA: Would he put the country at risk if he was in the White House again? FMR. ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR: He- he will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest, there’s no question about it. This is a perfect example of that. He’s like, you know, he’s like a nine year old, defiant nine year old kid who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the…

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How government rules for classified papers could help Trump delay his trial

How government rules for classified papers could help Trump delay his trial

The Washington Post reports: As former president Donald Trump prepares for trial on charges that he repeatedly violated government rules for handling classified information, his legal team may get a tactical timing advantage from an unlikely source: government rules for handling such secrets. Trump’s indictment on dozens of charges, including mishandling classified documents and trying to obstruct investigators’ efforts to recover that material, means his case will be tried under the rules of the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA…

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Native Americans are major victims of Minneapolis police racism: DOJ

Native Americans are major victims of Minneapolis police racism: DOJ

Mother Jones reports: After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Native Americans stood beside Black protesters in Minneapolis and called for changes to policing. Now, the Justice Department is highlighting how the city’s cops have been racist against them, too. On Friday, the department released a blistering report showing that for years, the Minneapolis police have discriminated against Native Americans as well as Black residents, creating the conditions that led to Floyd’s death. The police are much more likely to stop…

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‘They enjoyed this’: Ukrainian woman recounts five-month nightmare of torture and imprisonment

‘They enjoyed this’: Ukrainian woman recounts five-month nightmare of torture and imprisonment

The Observer reports: Olena Yahupova was first taken by the Russian occupiers in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar last October. Neighbours she knew had informed on her, telling the FSB secret police that her husband was a Ukrainian military officer. What followed, she says, was two days of torture with the secret police – which turned out to be only a prelude to a nightmare of five months of detention and forced labour, during which she also had to act…

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Americans describe harsh life in remote Russian labor camp

Americans describe harsh life in remote Russian labor camp

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Russian national anthem blares from loudspeakers each morning at the IK-17 penitentiary in Russia’s Mordovia region, awakening prisoners to another day in a labor camp known for hazardous work, limited nourishment and summary stints in solitary confinement. Guards and inmates refer to IK-17 as a “fashion colony,” mainly for its brightly painted exteriors meant to impress occasional visitors. But accounts from current American inmates paint a much darker picture of the remote penitentiary, 300…

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‘The fires here are unstoppable’

‘The fires here are unstoppable’

The New York Times reports: An out-of-control fire was advancing rapidly toward a logging road on Tuesday afternoon, tearing through Canada’s immense — and highly flammable — boreal forest with a force and intensity bewildering to a team of French firefighters. Surrounded by thick smoke, a handful of them headed into the forest to search for water. A veteran knelt down and used his right finger to sketch a plan on the gravel road, pressing to attack the fire head-on….

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