Browsed by
Category: Politics

Inside Russia’s environmental influence operation targeting the Baltic Sea

Inside Russia’s environmental influence operation targeting the Baltic Sea

Michael Weiss and Holger Roonemaa report: In the first few days of October 2022, a group of Russians and Belarusians gathered in the Kaliningrad resort town of Svetlogorsk. The politicians, academics and activists discussed how the two countries, “truly striving for stability across the planet,” might resist the suite of international sanctions hitting both Russia and Belarus after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. One of the Svetlogorsk event’s most authoritative speakers was Alexander Dynkin, president of the prestigious Primakov National Research…

Read More Read More

Russian pilots tried to ‘dogfight’ U.S. jets over Syria, U.S. Central Command says

Russian pilots tried to ‘dogfight’ U.S. jets over Syria, U.S. Central Command says

CNN reports: Russian pilots tried to “dogfight” US jets over Syria, according to a spokesman for US Central Command, part of a recent pattern of more aggressive behavior. The attempts have happened in several of the most recent instances of aggressive behavior from Russian pilots, Col. Joe Buccino said. The Russian pilots do not appear to be trying to shoot down American jets, a US official told CNN, but they may be trying to “provoke” the US and “draw us…

Read More Read More

Chief Justice’s wife, Jane Roberts, made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms, whistleblower documents show

Chief Justice’s wife, Jane Roberts, made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms, whistleblower documents show

Insider reports: Two years after John Roberts’ confirmation as the Supreme Court’s chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms. Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge…

Read More Read More

Biden’s ‘freedom’ campaign taps into broad opposition to book banning

Biden’s ‘freedom’ campaign taps into broad opposition to book banning

Politico reports: Presidential campaigns often are waged on whether or not the country is ready to “turn the page.” President Joe Biden wants his reelection bid to hinge on whether or not there is a page to turn. The president’s team has made the issue of book banning a surprisingly central element of his campaign’s opening salvos. He referred to GOP efforts to restrict curriculum — Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” was the third most banned title in America last…

Read More Read More

In NH stop, Trump embraces woman convicted in Jan. 6 case

In NH stop, Trump embraces woman convicted in Jan. 6 case

The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump on Thursday praised and embraced a woman convicted of defying police orders on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. “Listen, you just hang in there,” Trump told the woman, Micki Larson-Olson, who was found guilty on a misdemeanor charge of resisting police efforts to clear the grounds after the insurrection by a pro-Trump mob. “You guys are gonna be okay.” Trump, who was campaigning here in New Hampshire, then agreed…

Read More Read More

Denied a gun license over school threat, accused leaker Jack Teixeira later got top-secret clearance

Denied a gun license over school threat, accused leaker Jack Teixeira later got top-secret clearance

The Wall Street Journal reports: As a high-school student, the Air National Guardsman charged with leaking classified intelligence documents admitted he made violent threats that prevented him from getting a firearms license. Two years later, however, he secured a top-secret security clearance. The episode, which was reported to local police, was one of several that Airman First Class Jack Teixeira of the Massachusetts Air National Guard admitted had been problematic—to authorities weighing his application for a gun license, to investigators…

Read More Read More

A second firm hired by Trump campaign found no evidence of election fraud

A second firm hired by Trump campaign found no evidence of election fraud

The Washington Post reports: Former president Trump’s campaign quietly commissioned a second firm to study election fraud claims in the weeks after the 2020 election, and the founder of the firm was recently questioned by the Justice Department about his work disproving the claims. Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview…

Read More Read More

Founder of the We Build The Wall group linked to Steve Bannon is sentenced to 4 years

Founder of the We Build The Wall group linked to Steve Bannon is sentenced to 4 years

NPR reports: The co-founder of a fundraising group linked to Steve Bannon that promised to help Donald Trump construct a wall along the southern U.S. border was sentenced to four years and three months in prison on Wednesday for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors. Brian Kolfage, a decorated Air Force veteran who lost both of his legs and an arm in the Iraq War, previously pleaded guilty for his role in siphoning donations from the We Build…

Read More Read More

The coming Biden blowout

The coming Biden blowout

David Frum writes: The Republican plan for 2024 is already failing, and the party leadership can see it and knows it. There was no secret to a more intelligent and intentional Republican plan for 2024. It would have gone like this: (1) Replace Donald Trump at the head of the ticket with somebody less obnoxious and impulsive. (2) Capitalize on inflation and other economic troubles. (3) Offer plausible ideas on drugs, crime, and border enforcement. (4) Reassure women worried about…

Read More Read More

Trump at risk of being jailed for contempt

Trump at risk of being jailed for contempt

Politico reports: The federal judge overseeing the civil trial in which Donald Trump is accused of rape admonished the former president for a social media post in which he called the lawsuit “a made up SCAM.” Trump could be “tampering with a new source of potential liability,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan told one of Trump’s lawyers in court on Wednesday. [Continue reading…] Commentary from former federal prosecutor, Harry Litman:  

The real reason for the Supreme Court’s corruption crisis

The real reason for the Supreme Court’s corruption crisis

Ian Millhiser writes: The Supreme Court has run out of excuses. Earlier this month, after ProPublica revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas frequently takes lavish vacations funded by billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, Thomas attempted to defend himself by claiming that this sort of “personal hospitality from close personal friends” is fine because Crow “did not have business before the court.” As it turns out, that’s not true. As Bloomberg reports, the Supreme Court — including Justice Thomas — did briefly consider…

Read More Read More

Senators to introduce bipartisan bill mandating code of ethics for Supreme Court

Senators to introduce bipartisan bill mandating code of ethics for Supreme Court

The Wall Street Journal reports: Sens. Angus King (I., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) will introduce a bipartisan bill Wednesday that would require the U.S. Supreme Court to create its own code of conduct within a year, following media reports that raise questions about whether Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch properly disclosed their financial activities. “It’s pitiful that we’re having to introduce this bill—it’s pathetic that the Supreme Court hasn’t done this itself,” Mr. King said. The senator,…

Read More Read More

Justice Thomas helped kill eviction ban threatening his benefactor’s business

Justice Thomas helped kill eviction ban threatening his benefactor’s business

The Lever reports: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas voted to end federal tenant protections that his billionaire benefactor’s company says threatened its real estate profit margins, according to corporate documents reviewed by The Lever. Thomas did not disclose his relationship with real estate billionaire Harlan Crow, nor did he recuse himself from the 2021 case, despite its potential impact on Crow Holdings. Now, rent control — which Crow Holdings’ documents also say threatens the company’s business — could come before Thomas, and there…

Read More Read More

Senators join House lawmakers in pushing for bold Ukraine victory resolution

Senators join House lawmakers in pushing for bold Ukraine victory resolution

Yahoo News reports: At a time when many Americans, and some of the legislators who represent them in Washington, are growing weary of supporting the defense of Ukraine, a new bipartisan House resolution introduced Tuesday calls on the United States to support an outright victory over Russia. “We must not repeat the error of Sept. 1, 1939,” the resolution’s chief sponsor, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., told Yahoo News, referencing Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which followed desperate efforts to appease…

Read More Read More

China’s Xi calls Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, after weeks of intensifying pressure to do so

China’s Xi calls Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, after weeks of intensifying pressure to do so

NPR reports: Chinese leader Xi Jinping called Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, over a month after Xi’s summit in Moscow with Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin. Xi made the call to Zelenskyy after weeks of intensifying pressure from Western leaders to use his influence with Putin to broker a deal toward ending the war in Ukraine, which began with Russia’s invasion in late February 2022. It was the first call between Xi and Zelenskyy since the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government said….

Read More Read More

The analyst who saw through 2022’s red mirage has a prediction for Biden 2024

The analyst who saw through 2022’s red mirage has a prediction for Biden 2024

Greg Sargent writes: Throughout the 2022 elections, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg offered up a counterintuitive diagnosis: Confident GOP predictions of a “red wave” weren’t just wrong, they were designed to deenergize Democratic voters with “negative sentiment.” He insisted Democrats would ignore this script and that MAGA extremism would alienate the mainstream. Rosenberg was vindicated when Democrats vastly overperformed expectations last year. Abortion rights fired up Democratic voters, and MAGA’s hostility toward democracy and embrace of Donald Trump drove swing voters away from the GOP, puncturing the red-wave fantasy….

Read More Read More