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Category: Politics

Lock him up? A new poll has some bad news for Trump

Lock him up? A new poll has some bad news for Trump

Ankush Khardori writes: To hear Donald Trump tell it, the fact that he keeps getting indicted by prosecutors is a boon to his reelection effort. “Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls,” he said at a dinner shortly after he was charged by the Justice Department with attempting to overturn the 2020 election. This counterintuitive claim is questionable on its face — if not demonstrably false upon close examination — but it is one…

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The Georgia election case against the Trump gang is about to get ugly. Here’s why

The Georgia election case against the Trump gang is about to get ugly. Here’s why

USA Today reports: For former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and their 17 other co-defendants, the threat of jail time is getting very real for those charged, arrested and booked in the Georgia election fraud case. After trying desperately to avoid arrest by having his case transferred to federal court, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows surrendered Thursday afternoon. He is now in the same boat as his 18 fellow defendants in the Georgia case, even as Meadows…

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Georgia GOP gears up to remove Atlanta prosecutor who indicted Trump

Georgia GOP gears up to remove Atlanta prosecutor who indicted Trump

The Intercept reports: A little over a week after a prosecutor in Georgia indicted former President Donald Trump for trying to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 presidential election, Republicans said they will use a new law to remove her from office. In May, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the law that created a new commission of political appointees with the power to remove and discipline elected prosecutors over decisions or policies not to prosecute certain offenses. The law…

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‘He’s an insider’: Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins revealed

‘He’s an insider’: Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins revealed

The Guardian reports: Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests. But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle. Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and…

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Newly declassified U.S. intel claims Russia is laundering propaganda through unwitting Westerners

Newly declassified U.S. intel claims Russia is laundering propaganda through unwitting Westerners

CNN reports: Russian intelligence is operating a systematic program to launder pro-Kremlin propaganda through private relationships between Russian operatives and unwitting US and western targets, according to newly declassified US intelligence. US intelligence agencies believe that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is attempting to influence public policy and public opinion in the West by directing Russian civilians to build relationships with influential US and Western individuals and then disseminate narratives that support Kremlin objectives, obscuring the FSB’s role through…

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Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as offsets deemed ‘worthless’

Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as offsets deemed ‘worthless’

The Guardian reports: Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as scientific evidence shows many offsets they have bought have no environmental worth and have become stranded assets. Amid growing evidence that huge numbers of carbon credits do nothing to mitigate global heating and can sometimes be linked to alleged human rights concerns, there is a growing pile of carbon credits equivalent to the annual emissions of Japan, the world’s fifth largest polluter, that are unused in the unregulated voluntary market,…

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‘Climate change agenda is a hoax,’ says surging GOP candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, at debate

‘Climate change agenda is a hoax,’ says surging GOP candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, at debate

Rolling Stone reports: Vivek Ramaswamy presents himself as a man for this political moment — a 38-year-old entrepreneur without the baggage of a politician, who is not a “SuperPAC puppet” (as he calls Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) and can tell the truth. But faced with an unexpected question about climate change at the first GOP presidential primary debate, Ramaswamy chose to lie. “The climate-change agenda,” he declared, “is a hoax.” Republicans being wrong on climate change is nothing new, of…

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Mark Meadows, a Jan. 6 ‘ringleader,’ released on $100,000 bond; Trump mugshot released

Mark Meadows, a Jan. 6 ‘ringleader,’ released on $100,000 bond; Trump mugshot released

CNBC reports: Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was booked and released from an Atlanta jail Thursday in connection with the Georgia criminal case accusing ex-President Donald Trump and his allies of illegally trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Meadows is charged with racketeering and soliciting a violation of an oath by a public officer. His bond was set at $100,000 earlier Thursday. The same day, the bond for Jeffrey Clark, a pro-Trump former Department of…

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U.S. officials see missile strike, other theories, behind crash of Prigozhin plane

U.S. officials see missile strike, other theories, behind crash of Prigozhin plane

Reuters reports: The United States is looking at a number of theories over what brought down the plane presumed to be carrying mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, including a surface-to-air missile hitting it, U.S. officials told Reuters on Thursday. Russian air authorities have said Prigozhin, his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin and eight other people were on the private plane that crashed with no survivors north of Moscow on Wednesday. Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that it…

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Prigozhin’s death heralds even more spectacular violence

Prigozhin’s death heralds even more spectacular violence

Anne Applebaum writes: Vladimir Putin’s Russia has long been a land of mysterious deaths. In 1998, soon after he had been appointed head of the security services, Galina Starovoitova, a parliamentarian who believed in bringing democracy to Russia, was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment building in St. Petersburg. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had learned too much about the Chechen wars that Putin used to propel himself to power, met the same fate in the…

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Wagner boss Prigozhin killed in jet ‘crash’ in Russia

Wagner boss Prigozhin killed in jet ‘crash’ in Russia

Brian Klaas writes: Initial reports suggest that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the ruthless mercenary leader of the Wagner Group, has been killed. Although confirmed details are scant, his private plane has allegedly crashed or been shot down, an event that many have interpreted as an assassination. Prigozhin probably knew to stay away from windows in high buildings, so it seems plausible that Vladimir Putin took him out at 28,000 feet instead. Coup plotters rarely die of old age. Prigozhin sealed his fate…

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Federal judge rejects bids to halt Georgia prosecution of Trump aides over 2020 election

Federal judge rejects bids to halt Georgia prosecution of Trump aides over 2020 election

Politico reports: A federal judge quickly shot down bids Wednesday by two former Trump administration officials — Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark — to derail the criminal proceedings against them in Fulton County, where they’re charged alongside Donald Trump with a sprawling racketeering conspiracy to subvert the results of the 2020 election. In two six-page rulings by Atlanta-based U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones effectively ensures that Meadows and Clark will face arrest this week, a result both men attempted…

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Emails reveal Secret Service liaising with Oath Keepers

Emails reveal Secret Service liaising with Oath Keepers

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reports: Internal Secret Service emails obtained by CREW show special agents in close communication with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, while failing to acknowledge the group’s ties to white nationalists and clashes with law enforcement. In September 2020, a Secret Service agent sent an email to others within the agency, informing them that he had just spoken to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes about an upcoming visit by then-President Trump to Fayetteville,…

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South Carolina’s all-male Supreme Court upholds abortion law, reversing earlier decision

South Carolina’s all-male Supreme Court upholds abortion law, reversing earlier decision

The New York Times reports: The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the state’s new near-total ban on abortion by a 4-1 vote, reversing a decision it had made in January that struck down a similar ban and declared that the State Constitution’s protections for privacy included a right to abortion. The court’s decision was not unexpected, because the makeup of the bench had changed, and Republicans in the State Legislature had passed a new abortion law in the…

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No, Biden hasn’t messed up an opportunity to end the war in Ukraine

No, Biden hasn’t messed up an opportunity to end the war in Ukraine

Fred Kaplan writes: Did President Joe Biden miss an opportunity to end the war in Ukraine diplomatically nine months ago? Some commentators and at least one U.S. official are starting to think he might have. I disagree. The queasy feeling was first articulated last week in a Politico article that recalled a speech last November by Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The war was getting brutal, both sides had suffered horrible casualties, civilians were under…

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