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Category: Politics

Let the tragedy in my homeland be a lesson

Let the tragedy in my homeland be a lesson

Tahir Hamut Izgil writes: About seven years ago, people around me started disappearing. It began slowly, quietly. The editors of a well-known literature textbook were suddenly nowhere to be found. A friend of mine left for work and never came home. My family and I are Uyghurs, and at the time we were living in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China. The political situation in our region had been growing gradually more tense for…

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Trump faces major new charges in documents case

Trump faces major new charges in documents case

The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors on Thursday added major accusations to an indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with mishandling classified documents after he left office, saying he told a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago that he wanted security camera footage there to be deleted. The new accusations were revealed in a superseding indictment that named the maintenance worker, Carlos De Oliveira, as a new defendant in the case. The revised indictment also added three serious charges against…

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Trump needed $225 million. A little-known bank came to the rescue

Trump needed $225 million. A little-known bank came to the rescue

The Washington Post reports: As Donald Trump considered another White House run last year, his company’s finances were at risk of spiraling into crisis. The former president’s longtime lender and several banks with his deposits had cut ties in the days around the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, at a time when Trump had hundreds of millions in loans coming due. In February 2022, the accounting firm that had worked for him for two decades dropped…

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Moms, a target of the right, lean heavily left

Moms, a target of the right, lean heavily left

Philip Bump writes: To hear prominent Republicans tell it, theirs is the party of parents. This is somewhere downstream from Donald Trump’s eagerness to turn the corner on the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, which intertwined with parents’ frustration about their kids not being in school. After President Biden was inaugurated, the party and its media allies elevated and stoked parental discontent about how race was taught and gender addressed in schools. Stephen K. Bannon advocated that conservatives run for local…

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U.S. intel report details increasing importance of Chinese technology to Russia’s war in Ukraine

U.S. intel report details increasing importance of Chinese technology to Russia’s war in Ukraine

CNN reports: China is providing technology and equipment to Russia that is increasingly important to Moscow’s war in Ukraine, according to a newly released report compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The report, titled “Support Provided by the People’s Republic of China to Russia” and dated 2023, is unclassified and largely cites open-source data and western press reporting to support its claims. But it includes the US intelligence community assessment that China “has become an increasingly…

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U.S. recovered non-human ‘biologics’ from UFO crash sites, former intel official says

U.S. recovered non-human ‘biologics’ from UFO crash sites, former intel official says

NPR reports: Three military veterans testified in Congress’ highly anticipated hearing on UFOs Wednesday, including a former Air Force intelligence officer who claimed the U.S. government has operated a secret “multi-decade” reverse engineering program of recovered vessels. He also said the U.S. has recovered non-human “biologics” from alleged crash sites. But while the topic of “little green men” did come up, much of the discussion centered on improving processes for reporting unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs — the military’s term…

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A return to the White House offers Trump his best opportunity to avoid legal accountability

A return to the White House offers Trump his best opportunity to avoid legal accountability

Paul Rosenzweig writes: If, as seems likely, Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee next year, the 2024 elections will be a referendum on several crucial issues: the prospect of authoritarianism in America, the continuation of a vibrant democracy, the relationship between the executive branch and the other two branches of government, and much else of grave significance. It will also be a referendum on whether Trump will ever be held legally accountable for his actions. Trump faces multiple civil…

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The myth of the effective dictator

The myth of the effective dictator

Brian Klaas writes: Last week, at a Fox News town hall (where else?), former President Donald Trump called China’s despot, Xi Jinping, a “brilliant” guy who “runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” Lest anyone doubt his admiration, Trump added that Xi is “smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy.” Trump is not alone. Many in the United States and around the globe see the allure of a dictator who gets things done and makes…

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Rising number of Americans say political violence is justified

Rising number of Americans say political violence is justified

The Guardian reports: The June federal indictment of Donald Trump is “radicalizing” support for the use of force on behalf of the former president and current presidential candidate, according to the author of a recent survey about threats to democracy. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, support for violence to restore the federal right to an abortion has also increased over the last few months, researchers found, although there’s little indication that any organized groups support acting on…

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Russians see Ukrainian progress where others don’t

Russians see Ukrainian progress where others don’t

Michael Weiss and James Rushton write: One of the difficulties in covering the Russo-Ukraine War as a journalist is the tendency of so many in this profession to assemble facts in favor of whatever the prevailing narrative of the day is. Sixteen months ago, it was hard to find many people in prominent Washington think tanks or at major broadsheets who did not think Kyiv would fall in three days. When it didn’t, those wedded to the notion that Russia…

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South Korea emerges as key partner for America’s energy transition

South Korea emerges as key partner for America’s energy transition

Inside Climate News reports: On June 22, the U.S. The Department of Energy announced that it will grant a $9.2 billion loan to BlueOval SK LLC (BOSK), a joint venture between Ford and SK On, a Korean battery manufacturer. The loan will be used to construct three manufacturing plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. Once operational, the facilities have the potential to displace 455 million gallons of gasoline annually by propelling the shift toward low-carbon transportation. The loan, dubbed the “biggest…

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Putin is running out of options in Ukraine

Putin is running out of options in Ukraine

Lawrence Freedman writes: Governments start wars in pursuit of various objectives, from conquering territory to changing the regime of a hostile state to supporting a beleaguered ally. Once a war begins, the stakes are immediately raised. It is one of the paradoxes of war that even as its original objectives drift out of reach or are cast aside, the necessity of not being seen as the loser only grows in importance—such importance, in fact, that even if winning is no…

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‘Trying to make the world starve’: Russian drones destroy grain warehouses at Ukraine ports

‘Trying to make the world starve’: Russian drones destroy grain warehouses at Ukraine ports

The Guardian reports: Russian drones launched a four-hour attack on Ukraine’s Danube ports of Reni and Izmail, destroying grain warehouses and other facilities, as Moscow appeared to escalate its attempts to strangle Kyiv’s globally important agricultural exports. The attacks, using Iranian-supplied drones, follow Russia’s withdrawal this month from the Black Sea deal that allowed Ukraine to export its grain and threats by both Moscow and Kyiv to target civilian carriers visiting ports. Ukrainian officials said 15 Shahed-136 drones were launched…

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Putin appeared paralyzed and unable to act in first hours of rebellion

Putin appeared paralyzed and unable to act in first hours of rebellion

The Washington Post reports: When Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, launched his attempted mutiny on the morning of June 24, Vladimir Putin was paralyzed and unable to act decisively, according to Ukrainian and other security officials in Europe. No orders were issued for most of the day, the officials said. The Russian president had been warned by the Russian security services at least two or three days ahead of time that Prigozhin was preparing a possible…

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Striking new data about young voters should alarm Trump and the GOP

Striking new data about young voters should alarm Trump and the GOP

Greg Sargent writes: Something is happening among young voters in America — even if, to paraphrase the old Bob Dylan song, we don’t know what it is. Consider: Youth turnout exploded during the 2018 midterm elections under President Donald Trump. Then in 2020, energized opposition to Trump among young voters was critical to his defeat. And in the 2022 midterms, surging youth participation helped fend off the widely predicted “red wave.” Even some Republicans fear that expanding youth populations in…

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Trump is developing a new form of fascism

Trump is developing a new form of fascism

Christopher R. Browning writes: Until the final weeks of Trump’s term, the guardrails of American democracy seemed to hold firm. The institutions of the federal government remained relatively intact, and civil servants largely secure and uncorrupted. The United States experienced democratic backsliding but not democratic collapse. In a second term, however, a newly emboldened Trump could well attack democracy itself. The MAGA Republican Party of his making has openly explored ways to transform states where they control all branches of…

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