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Category: Politics

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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The real crime isn’t shoplifting — it’s wage theft

The real crime isn’t shoplifting — it’s wage theft

Jason Linkins writes: Last weekend, I stumbled across a viral tweet thread that provided a rather thorough debunking of one of my big bugbears: the insipid shoplifting panic that’s been coursing through the media the past two years. Over several posts, WBAI radio host Rafael Shimunov punctures what’s become a classic “too good to check” story and discovered that many of the foundational ideas behind what’s been sold as a bona fide crisis were falsehoods—and not particularly well-constructed ones at that. Once the evidence…

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Cats with bird flu? The threat grows

Cats with bird flu? The threat grows

Zeynep Tufekci writes: The global H5N1 avian flu outbreak, already devastating wild birds and poultry, keeps spreading to mammals, bringing it one step closer to a potential human outbreak. Of course, since the coronavirus pandemic taught us the importance of responding early and aggressively to outbreaks … Sorry, I’m joking. We don’t seem to have learned much from the Covid outbreak, and it’s not funny. Not enough has been done about an out-of-control H5N1 outbreak at fur farms in Finland or…

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The GOP’s populist wing poses a threat to the North Atlantic alliance and the defense of Ukraine

The GOP’s populist wing poses a threat to the North Atlantic alliance and the defense of Ukraine

Phillips Payson O’Brien writes: Europe and the United States are on the verge of the most momentous conscious uncoupling in international relations in decades. Since 1949, NATO has been the one constant in world security. Initially an alliance among the United States, Canada, and 10 countries in Western Europe, NATO won the Cold War and has since expanded to include almost all of Europe. It has been the single most successful security grouping in modern global history. It also might…

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The alleged election office breach in ‘crooked’ Coffee County was part of a years-long pattern, some locals say

The alleged election office breach in ‘crooked’ Coffee County was part of a years-long pattern, some locals say

CNN reports: The breach of the Coffee County elections office can seem almost out of place in the 97-page Georgia indictment of former President Donald Trump and associates. The sprawling racketeering allegations spread from centers of power with pressure on the vice president to ignore the Constitution, reported calls to secretaries of state to change vote counts, and the creation of slates of fake electors for Congress. They also include the invitation of a tech team to a non-public area…

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Why Biden just can’t shake Trump in the polls

Why Biden just can’t shake Trump in the polls

Ronald Brownstein writes: Like so many bands of wind and rain, hurricane-strength squalls of bad news have battered former President Donald Trump all year. Since April, he’s been indicted four times, on 91 separate felony charges, compared with zero counts for all of his White House predecessors. Trump often likes to claim that anything associated with him is the most spectacular, even when it’s not, but when it comes to accumulating criminal charges, he’s the undisputed champ of former presidents….

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The sleeper legal fight that could define 2024: Is Trump even eligible to run?

The sleeper legal fight that could define 2024: Is Trump even eligible to run?

Politico reports: If Donald Trump wants to be on the ballot next year in all 50 states, he might first have to win an unprecedented courtroom battle over the “insurrection clause” of the 14th Amendment. Under a legal theory that’s gaining traction among Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, that seldom-used clause arguably disqualifies Trump from ever holding office again due to his attempts to undermine the 2020 election and his role in stoking the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6,…

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Election workers have gotten death threats and warnings they will be lynched, the U.S. government says

Election workers have gotten death threats and warnings they will be lynched, the U.S. government says

The Associated Press reports: More than a dozen people nationally have been charged with threatening election workers by a Justice Department unit trying to stem the tide of violent and graphic threats against people who count and secure the vote. Government employees are being bombarded with threats even in normally quiet periods between elections, secretaries of state and experts warn. Some point to former President Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen and…

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A new Rudy scandal: FBI agent says Giuliani was co-opted by Russian intelligence

A new Rudy scandal: FBI agent says Giuliani was co-opted by Russian intelligence

Mother Jones reports: It was big news when Rudy Giuliani, once hailed as America’s Mayor, was indicted last month by a district attorney in Atlanta for allegedly being part of a criminal enterprise led by Donald Trump that sought to overturn the 2020 election results. Giuliani was back in headlines this week when he lost a defamation suit filed against him by two Georgia election workers whom he had falsely accused of ballot stuffing. Giuliani’s apparent impoverishment, caused by his…

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State election officials prepare for efforts to disqualify Trump under 14th Amendment

State election officials prepare for efforts to disqualify Trump under 14th Amendment

ABC News reports: Efforts to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment are gaining momentum as election officials in key states are preparing for or starting to respond to legal challenges to Trump’s candidacy. The argument to disqualify Trump from appearing on primary or general election ballots in 2024 boils down to Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states that an elected official is not eligible to assume public office if…

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‘Trump isn’t funding any of us’: Co-defendants in Georgia case are struggling with mounting legal bills

‘Trump isn’t funding any of us’: Co-defendants in Georgia case are struggling with mounting legal bills

CNN reports: Some of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the sprawling election subversion case in Georgia are trying all sorts of ways to fund their mounting legal bills – yet the costs of the 2020 election fallout may quickly exceed their abilities to pay. At least four have turned to crowdfunding online, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for defense lawyers. One now has a political action committee to help with legal fees. Another has an ally in Congress…

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Mitch McConnell may be experiencing focal seizures, doctors suggest

Mitch McConnell may be experiencing focal seizures, doctors suggest

The New York Times reports: A four-line letter, signed by the attending physician of Congress and released by Senator Mitch McConnell on Thursday, suggested that his recent spells of speechlessness were linked to “occasional lightheadedness” perhaps brought on by his recovery from a concussion last winter or “dehydration.” But seven neurologists, relying on what they described as unusually revealing video of Mr. McConnell freezing up in public twice recently, said in interviews Thursday and Friday that the episodes captured in…

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Coup evidence bomb goes off: Trump’s Jan. 5 Roger Stone outreach echoes amidst smoking gun tape

Coup evidence bomb goes off: Trump’s Jan. 5 Roger Stone outreach echoes amidst smoking gun tape

Donald Trump’s indictments bring new heat on the coup’s “team effort,” after new footage that first aired on “The Beat” showed Trump vet Roger Stone pushing the elector plot before all votes were in.   In accordance with Stone’s rules — “Admit nothing, deny everything…” he responded to Ari Melber’s report: Trump veteran Roger Stone replies to a report on the The Beat, and denies Cassidy Hutchison’s testimony under oath that Mark Meadows called him on January 5, 2021. pic.twitter.com/b9dLof2lsJ…

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Proud Boys lieutenant, Joseph Biggs, sentenced to 17 years in Jan. 6 sedition case

Proud Boys lieutenant, Joseph Biggs, sentenced to 17 years in Jan. 6 sedition case

The New York Times reports: Mr. Biggs recorded a podcast after the riot in which he declared that the attack on the Capitol was “a warning shot to the government.” Mr. Biggs’s contacts in the world of right-wing politics were never restricted solely to the Proud Boys. Like Mr. Tarrio, he has long had ties to Roger J. Stone Jr., one of Mr. Trump’s political advisers. He has also been involved at the edges of far-right disinformation campaigns like the…

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