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Category: Politics

Drop in immigration and Trump’s tax cuts accelerate expected shortfall in Social Security

Drop in immigration and Trump’s tax cuts accelerate expected shortfall in Social Security

The Washington Post reports: Social Security’s trust fund is now due to run low on money beginning in 2032. And in announcing that new date Tuesday, the government acknowledged that the Trump administration’s immigration policies and tax cuts are expected to contribute to the insolvency. The trust fund that pays retiree and survivor benefits is expected to reach depletion by the fourth quarter of 2032, one quarter earlier than projected in last year’s annual report. Social Security’s trustees said notable…

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Largest ICE detention facility wasted millions and put detainees at risk, report finds

Largest ICE detention facility wasted millions and put detainees at risk, report finds

The Associated Press reports: Mismanagement at a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas created unsafe conditions that contributed to detainee deaths and suffering even as millions of wasted tax dollars enriched contractors, according to a federal report released Tuesday. The Government Accountability Office report documents serious problems at Camp East Montana, a sprawling tent facility at Fort Bliss in El Paso where three detainees have died in little more than six months. Evidence in one of those deaths,…

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With waning influence, Trump struggles to rein in Netanyahu’s strikes on Iran and Lebanon

With waning influence, Trump struggles to rein in Netanyahu’s strikes on Iran and Lebanon

The Wall Street Journal reports: As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu weighed how to respond to waves of Iranian missile attacks Sunday night, President Trump called with a message: Stand down. But as it became clear the Israeli leader wouldn’t ignore a direct attack, Trump shifted his tone. Keep it limited, and don’t let it escalate, he said according to people familiar with the conversation. Trump had hoped to contain the flare-up in fighting to keep it from disrupting work…

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Israeli aggression threatens to fray its financial and diplomatic lifeline to the United States

Israeli aggression threatens to fray its financial and diplomatic lifeline to the United States

Megan K. Stack writes: Emboldened by unstinting U.S. support during its devastation of Gaza, and with American forces by its side in attacking Iran, Israel is moving with disorienting speed on multiple fronts. Mr. Netanyahu attributes his country’s aggression to the bloody lessons of Oct. 7, which he insists was an attack not just by Hamas but “by the Iran axis, to try to annihilate us through a noose of death.” “I said, ‘We’re going to change the Middle East,’”…

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MAHA moms who helped elect Trump are feeling betrayed by ‘business as usual’

MAHA moms who helped elect Trump are feeling betrayed by ‘business as usual’

Politico reports: The Make America Healthy Again coalition, made up largely of women who followed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into the MAGA fold, has reached the end of its rope with the Trump administration. Now many among the group of vaccine skeptics and healthy food crusaders say their vote is up for grabs in the midterms after a string of perceived losses on pesticides and chemical regulations, not to mention disappointing leadership picks and an unpopular war in Iran. “We…

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Profits before people: EPA scientists are being pushed to downplay potential risks of household products

Profits before people: EPA scientists are being pushed to downplay potential risks of household products

CNN reports: Inside the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, scientists say they’re under pressure to alter safety reviews of chemicals commonly found in consumer products like household cleaners and cosmetics to make risks to human health and the environment disappear on paper. Multiple current and former career employees at the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention recounted being pushed by supervisors to downplay the potential risk of chemicals that are already used in products on shelves. With President…

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Trump administration killed criminal investigation of GOP senator’s coal companies

Trump administration killed criminal investigation of GOP senator’s coal companies

By Molly Redden and Avi Asher-Schapiro This story was originally published by ProPublica Trump administration officials earlier this year killed a federal criminal investigation into the coal empire owned by Sen. Jim Justice, a Republican from West Virginia and a close ally of the president’s. The investigation examined potential criminal violations of the Clean Water Act by the multistate mining operations largely run by Justice’s son, Jay, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter. The criminal probe…

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Andrew Tate’s manosphere empire of abuse

Andrew Tate’s manosphere empire of abuse

Heidi Blake writes: Just north of Bucharest is a neat development of red-gabled houses known as American Village. It is an unlikely place to be the center of an international criminal intrigue, but on its western border is a sprawling compound, patrolled by armed guards, that belongs to the British American influencer Andrew Tate and his younger brother, Tristan. The Tates moved to Romania a decade ago to build an online-pornography empire, and American Village was where they kept their…

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Scott Pelley: Bari Weiss tried to make 60 Minutes lie about the killing of Renee Good

Scott Pelley: Bari Weiss tried to make 60 Minutes lie about the killing of Renee Good

  Lulu Garcia-Navarro: You’ve now accused Weiss of injecting “falsehoods and bias” into at least one of your politically sensitive stories. What did she specifically ask for? What story? Scott Pelley: That’s February, and my team and I are doing a story about the protests in Minneapolis against the ICE crackdown there. We’ve interviewed Senator Rand Paul, Republican, because he’s going to hold hearings into this, and the fact that a Republican was going to do that was quite newsworthy….

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States preparing lawsuit to block Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros, sources say

States preparing lawsuit to block Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros, sources say

Reuters reports: A group of U.S. ​states including California and New York are preparing a lawsuit ‌to block Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. The lawsuit is expected to be filed in the coming weeks, the ​sources said. The case would mark the boldest move yet by the ​states in their effort to be at the forefront of U.S. ⁠antitrust enforcement, as their better-funded counterpart agencies in the Trump…

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Trump urges Netanyahu not to escalate latest round of attacks Israel started with strikes on Beirut

Trump urges Netanyahu not to escalate latest round of attacks Israel started with strikes on Beirut

Axios reports: President Trump will call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and press him not to retaliate for Iran’s missile attack, Trump tells Axios. “I am going to call Bibi right now and tell him not to retaliate. Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike, and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one,” Trump said. Why it matters: The ceasefire in the Middle East is teetering after Israel struck Beirut and Iran fired multiple waves of missiles in response. Trump…

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Congress wants to tie the U.S. to Israel with this new legislation. It’s a trap

Congress wants to tie the U.S. to Israel with this new legislation. It’s a trap

Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick write: Congress is considering legislation that would embed Israel’s military deeply within the US military-industrial complex. Stunned by the cratering of public support for Israeli policies in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank and towards Iran, Israel’s advocates are frantically seeking to preserve and even escalate US support for the Jewish state in ways that do not rely on defense of its policies or permit scrutiny of the manipulations involved. Politically, this means avoiding public…

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Ukraine’s technological advances could mark a change in the nature of warfare

Ukraine’s technological advances could mark a change in the nature of warfare

Anne Applebaum writes: In a field outside of Kyiv last weekend, a van was parked discreetly behind some trees. Inside the van there were no passenger seats, just a long desk, two office chairs, two laptops, extra screens. Outside appearances to the contrary, this was a mobile drone-interceptor base, one of hundreds of similar vehicles now scattered around Ukraine. It’s also part of something much bigger: a set of technological advances that have changed the war with Russia, and maybe…

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Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’

Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’

The Guardian reports: The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been accused by historians and rights campaigners of “grotesque stupidity” and desecrating the memory of the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy after he sought to link immigration to the D-day anniversary, saying Europe was facing a different “invasion” of its shores. Speaking in north-west France on Saturday to mark the 82nd anniversary of the D-day landings, Hegseth seized on the moment marking the wartime liberation of Europe to…

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The Trump-shaped shadow over the 2026 World Cup

The Trump-shaped shadow over the 2026 World Cup

Chris Jones writes: It’s hard to imagine a more fraught combination for what was supposed to be a fun Friday night: Seattle’s Pride celebration will feature a World Cup match on June 26 between Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, and Egypt, where homosexual activity is punishable by up to three years in prison. When FIFA’s schedulers announced the Pride Match pairing after December’s draw, it felt a little like a sick joke. The Egyptian Football Association has said…

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Pentagon sees Israel as critical counterintelligence threat to the U.S.

Pentagon sees Israel as critical counterintelligence threat to the U.S.

The New York Times reports: Recent U.S. intelligence reports have raised concerns about Israeli spy agencies eavesdropping on American negotiators working on a peace deal with Iran, amid rising concern over a more general counterintelligence threat by Israel. Israel and the United States have long known, and tolerated, that each was spying on the other. But an intensified Israeli effort to learn about U.S. positions in talks with Iran has crossed a line, according to some American officials. The reports…

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