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Category: Politics

Ukraine begins firing U.S.-provided cluster munitions at Russian forces

Ukraine begins firing U.S.-provided cluster munitions at Russian forces

The Washington Post reports: Ukraine has begun firing U.S.-provided cluster munitions against Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine in a push to break up well-fortified Russian positions that have slowed Ukraine’s summer offensive, according to Ukrainian officials familiar with the matter. The munitions debuted as Russian missiles pummeled the country’s Black Sea port region of Odessa for the third night in a row, while an attack on the nearby port city of Mykolaiv left 19 people wounded, including five children. The…

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Florida schools will teach how slavery brought ‘personal benefit’ to black people

Florida schools will teach how slavery brought ‘personal benefit’ to black people

The Daily Beast reports: Middle school students in Florida will soon be taught that slavery gave Black people a “personal benefit” because they “developed skills.” After the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for African American history on Wednesday, high school students will be taught an equally distorted message: that a deadly white mob attack against Black residents of Ocoee, Florida, in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” Dozens of Black residents were killed…

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Influential activist Leonard Leo helped fund media campaign lionizing Clarence Thomas

Influential activist Leonard Leo helped fund media campaign lionizing Clarence Thomas

The Washington Post reports: The 25th anniversary of Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court was approaching — a moment that would draw attention to his accomplishments on the bench but also to the misconduct claims that had nearly derailed his rise. Among the wave of retrospective accounts set to come out that year, 2016, was a star-studded HBO film dramatically recounting Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations. That spring, a flurry of opinion articles defending Thomas and railing against the…

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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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