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Category: Politics

As RFK Jr. gets boosted by the GOP, his popularity among Democrats plummets

As RFK Jr. gets boosted by the GOP, his popularity among Democrats plummets

Aaron Blake writes: The right’s thinly veiled campaign to elevate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for its own political purposes culminated Thursday with his invitation to testify at a congressional hearing. It was a remarkable scene: a Democratic presidential candidate, who just last week suggested that the coronavirus could have been a “deliberately targeted” bioweapon to spare Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish people while attacking White and Black people disproportionately, and who has regularly espoused debunked vaccine claims, welcomed by Republicans to…

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Russia’s spies say Putin faces more coups

Russia’s spies say Putin faces more coups

Michael Weiss reports: For Russian spies and soldiers, the biggest shock from last month’s abortive coup in Russia is that Yevegeny Prigozhin didn’t succeed in overthrowing a regime that they say curries little devotion. The Insider has spoken with several sources in Russia’s special services. Prigozhin, the rogue catering magnate turned mercenary financier, they insist, faced little resistance because he enjoys widespread support within the ranks of the very institutions meant to safeguard the state and Vladimir Putin. To most…

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Iran’s hijab-industrial complex

Iran’s hijab-industrial complex

Kourosh Ziabari writes: The Iranian government is handicapped by unrelenting sanctions that do not look as though they are going away anytime soon. The country’s economic paralysis is compounded by the inadequacies of a squad of callow officials and corrupt functionaries, whose nepotism triggers frequent scandals these days. While the sanctions have almost irreversibly insulated the national economy from the outside world and rendered Iran’s banking and financial sectors irrelevant, the iron-fisted establishment has been unable to tame its top-tier…

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Trump’s conspirators are facing the music, finally

Trump’s conspirators are facing the music, finally

Norman Eisen and Ryan Goodman write: We’ve reached a turning point in the effort to ensure there are consequences for those who deliberately attempt to undermine our democracy: Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, charged 16 Republican leaders in her state on Tuesday for their role as fake electors working to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The charges, coming on the heels of news that the special counsel Jack Smith has informed Donald Trump that he’s a target of…

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Michigan beats DOJ to bring first charges against Trump’s ‘false electors’

Michigan beats DOJ to bring first charges against Trump’s ‘false electors’

Shan Wu writes: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is apparently tired of waiting on the U.S. Department of Justice to act on the ‘false electors’ scheme that occurred in December of 2020. The scheme allegedly consisted of a plan to submit fake certificates stating that former President Trump had won seven battle ground states. The plan was simple but audacious. As described by Professor Ryan Goodman, co-director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School,…

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Judge confirms: Trump is indeed a rapist

Judge confirms: Trump is indeed a rapist

Aaron Blake writes: After Donald Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, his legal team and his defenders lodged a frequent talking point. Despite Carroll’s claims that Trump had raped her, they noted, the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense. Instead, jurors opted for a second option: sexual abuse. “This was a rape claim, this was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that — made other findings,” his…

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Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades, report says

Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades, report says

The Guardian reports: Robert Kennedy Jr, a long-shot Democratic candidate for US president, has a long history of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, and should be denied a national platform, according to a damning report [PDF] seen by the Guardian. Kennedy, who provoked anger last week when he was filmed falsely suggesting that the coronavirus could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, is due to testify at the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday. The Congressional…

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Senators propose ban on U.S. lawmakers, executive branch members owning stock in individual companies

Senators propose ban on U.S. lawmakers, executive branch members owning stock in individual companies

The Wall Street Journal reports: Two U.S. senators are set this week to introduce bipartisan legislation to bar members of the federal executive branch and lawmakers from owning stock in individual companies, as new polling shows broad public support for such a measure. The bill from Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) would permit the president, vice president, lawmakers, Capitol Hill aides and employees of the executive branch to own mutual funds and broad industry and…

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‘A wild goose chase’: Giuliani associate urges House GOP to abandon Biden probe

‘A wild goose chase’: Giuliani associate urges House GOP to abandon Biden probe

NBC News reports: Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian businessman who figured prominently in Rudy Giuliani’s effort to dig up dirt on Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, said Tuesday that a GOP-led House committee should end its probe into the Biden family. In a 10-page letter obtained by NBC News, Parnas told House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., that there is “no evidence” that the president or his son Hunter interfered with Ukrainian politics, “and there never has been.”…

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The revolutionary Republicans who are determined to establish a Judeo-Christian theocracy in Tennessee

The revolutionary Republicans who are determined to establish a Judeo-Christian theocracy in Tennessee

Anne Applebaum writes: Drive along the outer rim of the exurbs north of Nashville, past structures that might be barns or might be wedding venues, around developments called Vineyard Grove or New Hope Village, and eventually you will arrive at what is meant to be the new headquarters of the election commission of Sumner County, Tennessee. A featureless one-story brick warehouse with some makeshift offices attached, it has just enough space for the tiny handful of election-commission employees, the 275…

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Special counsel’s Jan. 6 target letter to Trump mentions conspiracy, tampering

Special counsel’s Jan. 6 target letter to Trump mentions conspiracy, tampering

Rolling Stone reports: The special counsel’s letter to Donald Trump related to Jan. 6 listed the federal statutes under which Trump is expected to be charged, including conspiracy, obstruction, and civil rights violations, according to a source with knowledge of the contents of the target letter. Special counsel Jack Smith sent the letter to Trump on Sunday, informing him he was a target of the Justice Department. Trump on Tuesday announced he’d been sent the letter via a post on…

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Judge Aileen Cannon signals 2024 election won’t be deciding factor on Trump trial date

Judge Aileen Cannon signals 2024 election won’t be deciding factor on Trump trial date

The Messenger reports: “We feel it is very important that we have a trial date to work from, realizing that the trial date may not be set in stone,” said Jay Bratt, the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Such a schedule may depend on whether the cases against Trump and Nauta are labeled complex, a designation that the government has opposed. Cannon appeared inclined to find that it was, pressing…

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Ukraine adopts slow approach to counteroffensive: ‘Our problem everywhere is the sky’

Ukraine adopts slow approach to counteroffensive: ‘Our problem everywhere is the sky’

The Wall Street Journal reports: Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Capt. Anatoliy Kharchenko and his reconnaissance company were supposed to be wreaking havoc miles behind Russian defensive lines pierced by Western-supplied armored vehicles. Instead, after many of the vehicles got bogged down in minefields, Kharchenko and his men are training how to advance methodically on foot, moving from one line of trees to another, faced with the prospect of taking back their country one field at a time. “We’ve got…

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The biggest obstacle to Ukraine’s counteroffensive: Minefields

The biggest obstacle to Ukraine’s counteroffensive: Minefields

The Washington Post reports: In a painstakingly slow process that has come to define the speed of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, small groups of sappers on the front lines are crawling across minefields — sometimes literally on their stomachs — to detonate Russia’s defenses and clear a path for troops to advance. The long buildup to the counteroffensive, which began about a month ago across multiple segments of the battlefield in the country’s east and south, gave the Russians time to…

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Putin’s military supply routes blocked by Russian tourists; he encouraged them to vacation in Crimea, report says

Putin’s military supply routes blocked by Russian tourists; he encouraged them to vacation in Crimea, report says

Insider reports: Russian tourists are snarling up crucial military supply routes as the Kremlin continues to encourage civilians to visit the occupied Crimea peninsula despite it being a war zone, a report says. The traffic jams caused by tourists were made worse this week after an explosion tore through the Kerch road bridge on Sunday, with Russia blaming the attack on drones launched by Ukraine. Ukraine Monday claimed responsibility for the attack. The attack forced the temporary closure of the…

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My brave, brilliant friend was kidnapped in Iraq. Will the world stand up for her?

My brave, brilliant friend was kidnapped in Iraq. Will the world stand up for her?

Rachel Sharansky Danziger writes: Liza [Elizabeth Tsurkov, who is being held by a militia in Iraq] and [her sister] Emma, like us, grew up hearing prison stories and about the legacy of fighting repression in the name of what was right. Our father was a Zionist, while Liza’s parents, Arkady and Ira Tsurkov, were Marxists. But they all advocated a more democratic state, drawing international attention to the Soviet Union’s blatant abuse of its citizens. Most important, they all knew…

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