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Category: Politics

Prigozhin’s Wagner troops to stop march on Moscow as Belarus brokers deal

Prigozhin’s Wagner troops to stop march on Moscow as Belarus brokers deal

The Wall Street Journal reports: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner paramilitary group, said his forces will stop their march on Moscow and return to their camps to avoid bloodshed, as the Belarus president Aleksandr Lukashenko announced a deal to halt the armed confrontation threatening Russia. Lukashenko, who said he spent most of Saturday negotiating with Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin, said an agreement was reached “that unleashing a bloodbath on the territory of Russia was unacceptable.” The deal offered to Prigozhin…

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What Wagner Group veterans have to say about Yevgeny Prigozhin’s armed rebellion

What Wagner Group veterans have to say about Yevgeny Prigozhin’s armed rebellion

Meduza reports: Prigozhin “started to get restless” about two weeks ago, sources close to the Kremlin and the Russian government told Meduza, right after Putin said that mercenary groups would be required to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry if they wanted to continue serving in Ukraine. Putin himself explained that the change was necessary so that Wagner mercenaries could be “covered by social guarantees.” But Prigozhin categorically refused to sign an agreement with the agency and made unofficial…

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‘Everything is still ahead’: Inside a secret military base with top Ukraine general

‘Everything is still ahead’: Inside a secret military base with top Ukraine general

The Guardian reports: From the elevated deck of his command post, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, the head of Ukraine’s ground forces, peers down with pinched eyes and furrowed brow at the expanse of scrubland and forest laid out in front of him as an assault unit of soldiers seeks to cross a heavily mined field. It is evident that the general would like a little more speed. “This isn’t a show,” says Syrskyi. The men running from trench to armoured…

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Who wins in the Hunter Biden plea deal

Who wins in the Hunter Biden plea deal

Norman Eisen writes: We might have expected a fight from Hunter Biden and his lead trial counsel Abbe Lowell rather than news of Tuesday’s plea deal with the Justice Department. After all, Lowell did not become one of America’s most successful trial lawyers by pleading his clients out. But the deal, negotiated by Biden’s lead criminal counsel Chris Clark, requiring Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and to admit to felony gun possession, was a good one. That was true for Hunter Biden, his…

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Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unjustified

Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unjustified

The Moscow Times reports: The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group on Friday accused the country’s military leadership of ordering strikes on the group’s camps and killing a “huge” number of forces. In an extraordinary declaration against the Defense Ministry, with whom he has been feuding publicly for months, Yevgeny Prigozhin vowed to “stop” Russia’s top military brass and urged ordinary Russians to remain calm. [Continue reading…] A new FSB statement: "Prigozhin’s statements and actions amount to calls for the…

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Republicans are torching democracy to deny women abortions

Republicans are torching democracy to deny women abortions

Rolling Stone reports: Kierre Morgan has had an abortion, but it was the abortion she didn’t have that transformed her into an activist. She was 17 and in denial, at first, about being pregnant at all. Under Ohio law, she needed permission to terminate her pregnancy, and — after considering whether she could use a fake ID — she finally had a conversation with her adoptive parents. They overruled her decision. “Their options were: I could have my daughter, and…

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No Labels using dark money to fund campaign for unnamed third party candidate

No Labels using dark money to fund campaign for unnamed third party candidate

Politico reports: No Labels’ bid to run a third party presidential candidate in 2024 has sparked a number of questions about political motivations. Chief among them: Who, exactly, is paying for this thing? The centrist group consists of a constellation of entities, some of which disclose donor names. But the main one is a nonprofit which, unlike political parties, does not have to reveal the names of its funders. And in an interview with POLITICO, its CEO, Nancy Jacobson, declined…

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Pro-RFK Jr. Super PAC has deep ties to Marjorie Taylor Greene, George Santos

Pro-RFK Jr. Super PAC has deep ties to Marjorie Taylor Greene, George Santos

Rolling Stone reports: Last month, supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid created a Super PAC titled Heal the Divide. On its website, the group — whose name is borrowed from Kennedy’s own campaign slogan — advises voters that “Only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can unite the Nation to start healing America,” and allows visitors to donate both in dollars and cryptocurrency. There’s nothing abnormal about a candidate getting a Super PAC, even a candidate making a long-shot bid…

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IRS agent told Congress of Hunter Biden invoking his father in business deal

IRS agent told Congress of Hunter Biden invoking his father in business deal

The New York Times reports: The lead I.R.S. agent investigating whether Hunter Biden committed tax crimes told Congress his team uncovered evidence that Mr. Biden had invoked his father, who was then out of office, while pressing a potential Chinese business partner in 2017 to move ahead with a proposed energy deal, House Republicans said. In testimony made public on Thursday, Gary Shapley, an I.R.S. agent since 2009 who supervised the tax agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden, said his team…

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How Andrew Tate and the far right made common cause with Islamists

How Andrew Tate and the far right made common cause with Islamists

Rasha Al Aqeedi and Lydia Wilson write: Tommy Robinson has come a long way on the subject of Islam. Born Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, he rose to prominence as the leader of the anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic English Defence League. In a speech in Denmark in 2016, he claimed that there was an ongoing “military invasion” of Europe, referring to the increasing numbers of refugees from Muslim countries. In his self-published book, “Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill for Islam,” Robinson instructs any potential…

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Dictators’ dark secret: They’re learning from each other

Dictators’ dark secret: They’re learning from each other

An editorial in the Washington Post says: In the spring of 2012, Vladimir Putin was feeling the pressure. For months, anti-Putin protests had surged through the streets of Moscow and other cities following fraudulent parliamentary elections the previous December. Mr. Putin, who was about to be sworn in for a third term as president, harbored a fear of “color” revolutions — the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine — as well as other popular revolts…

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims Russia acted in ‘good faith’ in Ukraine invasion

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims Russia acted in ‘good faith’ in Ukraine invasion

HuffPost reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday he believes Russia acted in “good faith” amid the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, adding the U.S., in fact, bore heavy responsibility for the ongoing war. Kennedy, who announced his bid for the Democratic nomination in April, made the comments on SiriusXM’s “The Briefing with Steve Scully.” Scully asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued effort to seize part of Ukraine despite international condemnation. Kennedy claimed the way forward involved “baby steps” toward…

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Will Judge Cannon give Trump a favorable jury?

Will Judge Cannon give Trump a favorable jury?

Jeffrey Abramson, Eugene R. Fidell, and Dennis Aftergut write: On Tuesday, Federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon launched the Florida trial for Donald Trump’s national security case on a “rocket docket,” setting the trial date on August 14. That date will likely not hold, but it might reassure those who have worried about her assignment to the case, concerned that she might, among other things, slow-walk it. That reassurance won’t end the concerns, of course. Legal experts (among others) lost…

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Dobbs turned abortion into a huge liability for Republicans

Dobbs turned abortion into a huge liability for Republicans

FiveThirtyEight reports: When Theresa M. started attending a support group for breast cancer survivors, she didn’t expect political issues like abortion to be a part of the conversation. But since last summer, when her home state of Florida — freed from the requirements of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court — began imposing new abortion restrictions, younger women who were newly diagnosed with breast cancer started to voice concerns. “They worry if you find out you’re pregnant, you might…

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The government must say what it knows about Covid’s origins

The government must say what it knows about Covid’s origins

Zeynep Tufekci writes: Three researchers at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, who had fallen ill in November 2019 had been experimenting with SARS-like coronaviruses under inadequate biosafety conditions, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing current and former U.S. officials. The Journal had reported in 2021 that some researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had sought hospital care that November, around the time that evidence suggests Covid first began to spread among people. It was not publicly known,…

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Ex-FBI analyst who, like Trump, kept classified documents in her bathroom, receives nearly four-year prison sentence

Ex-FBI analyst who, like Trump, kept classified documents in her bathroom, receives nearly four-year prison sentence

The Kansas City Star reports: A former FBI intelligence analyst from Dodge City, Kansas, who kept hundreds of classified documents at her home, including in her bathroom, was sentenced to nearly four years in prison by a federal judge in Kansas City on Wednesday for violating the same part of the Espionage Act that former President Donald Trump is accused of breaking. The sentencing for willful retention of national defense information was the first since a federal grand jury indicted…

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