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Category: Politics

Trump wants to purge the FBI and DOJ of officials investigating his criminal actions

Trump wants to purge the FBI and DOJ of officials investigating his criminal actions

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump just needs a few names. In recent months, the former president has asked close advisers, including at least one of his personal attorneys, if “we know” all the names of senior FBI agents and Justice Department personnel who have worked on the federal probes into him. That’s according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter and another person briefed on it. Trump has then privately discussed that should he return to the White…

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Mick Mulvaney: Trump mobilizes opponents as much as supporters

Mick Mulvaney: Trump mobilizes opponents as much as supporters

HuffPost reports: Mick Mulvaney thinks Donald Trump will be the GOP nominee in the 2024 presidential election. But in an interview with Sky News Australia on Tuesday, the onetime acting chief of staff in Trump’s White House predicted Trump will lose in the general election. “The Republican primary will be about Donald Trump and he will probably win,” Mulvaney said. “And then the general election will be about Donald Trump and he will probably lose.” Mulvaney described Trump as a…

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U.S. tech mogul bankrolls pro-Russia, pro-China news network

U.S. tech mogul bankrolls pro-Russia, pro-China news network

William Bredderman reports: A slick online media machine has recruited a slew of characters from Russian state-affiliated outlets—and joined a sprawling multinational network of pro-Moscow, pro-Beijing content creators backed by a U.S. businessman reportedly probed in India for ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Since it started posting to Instagram and Youtube in early 2020, nearly all BreakThrough News’ camera-facing personalities have been veterans of Kremlin-backed outfits: former Radio Sputnik host Eugene Puryear; pundit Rania Khalek of video generator ‘In the Now;’ Kei Pritsker, Abby Martin, and Brian…

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Imagine a renters’ utopia. It might look like Vienna

Imagine a renters’ utopia. It might look like Vienna

Francesca Mari writes: When Eva Schachinger married at 22, she applied for public housing. Luckily, she lived in Vienna, which has some of the best public housing in the world. It was 1968. Eva was a teacher, and her husband, Klaus-Peter, was an accountant for the city’s public-transportation system. She grew up in a public-housing complex in the center of the city, where her grandmother, who cared for her from 6 in the morning until 6 at night, lived in…

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Biden is more fearful than the Ukrainians are

Biden is more fearful than the Ukrainians are

Kori Schake writes: “The language of escalation is the language of excuse.” That’s how Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, dismisses anxiety that assistance to Ukraine could provoke Russia to either expand the war to NATO countries or cross the nuclear threshold. The country most concerned about Russia expanding its aggression beyond Ukraine is the country least likely to be the victim of it: the United States. The Biden administration has been unequivocal in its policy declarations. The president has said,…

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Denmark plans $2.6 bln more for Ukraine, Zelenskiy praises ‘major contribution’

Denmark plans $2.6 bln more for Ukraine, Zelenskiy praises ‘major contribution’

Reuters reports: Denmark plans to increase its spending on military aid to Ukraine by 17.9 billion crowns ($2.59 billion) over this year and next, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday, winning thanks for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Denmark, with a population of less than 6 million, in March established a $1 billion fund for military, civilian and business aid to Ukraine in 2023. Frederiksen, seen as a possible contender to become new NATO chief, on Monday told Danish public…

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Pandemic-era policies reversed the trend toward a widening income gap. Now those gains are under threat

Pandemic-era policies reversed the trend toward a widening income gap. Now those gains are under threat

Politico reports: For the past three years, low-income workers have made historic gains in wages even after inflation, reversing the trend of advances for upper-income workers and stagnating pay for laborers that dominated the previous four decades, according to a POLITICO analysis of data from the U.S. Labor Department. The gains were the product of a series of dramatic changes in the structure of the labor market and government policies to aid the economy during the pandemic. Fueled by the…

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Under Elon Musk, Twitter has approved 83% of censorship requests by authoritarian governments

Under Elon Musk, Twitter has approved 83% of censorship requests by authoritarian governments

EL PAÍS reports: Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in a tumultuous $44 billion deal completed last October, the social network has turned down very few requests for content restriction or censorship from countries like Turkey and India, which have recently passed laws limiting freedom of speech and the press. Although the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla presents himself as a free speech absolutist, the social network he controls has bowed to hundreds of government orders during his first six…

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A day in the life of a woke third-grade teacher, as imagined by a far-right politician

A day in the life of a woke third-grade teacher, as imagined by a far-right politician

Ashley Ingle writes: The alarm blares, and I wake up with a renewed vigor to indoctrinate America’s youth. I ride my bike to work, smugly turning up my nose at real Americans who drive trucks. As I pedal, my thoughts are preoccupied with how I will infect children with my liberal agenda. No other ideas flow in and out of my mind on my commute, like wondering if I should donate plasma this weekend to make some extra cash to…

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You’ve never heard of him, but he’s remaking the pollution fight

You’ve never heard of him, but he’s remaking the pollution fight

The New York Times reports: This spring the Biden administration proposed or implemented eight major environmental regulations, including the nation’s toughest climate rule, rolling out what experts say are the most ambitious limits on polluting industries by the government in a single season. Piloting all of that is a man most Americans have never heard of, running an agency that is even less well known. But Richard Revesz has begun to change the fundamental math that underpins federal regulations designed…

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In pursuit of consensus, did Biden find the reasonable middle or give away too much?

In pursuit of consensus, did Biden find the reasonable middle or give away too much?

Peter Baker writes: After weeks of tense wrangling between the White House and House Republicans, the fiscal deal reached on Saturday to raise the debt ceiling while constraining federal spending bolsters President Biden’s argument that he is the one figure who can still do bipartisanship in a profoundly partisan era. But it comes at the cost of rankling many in his own party who have little appetite for meeting Republicans in the middle and think the president cannot stop himself from giving away…

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Turkey’s Erdogan defies odds to win presidential election

Turkey’s Erdogan defies odds to win presidential election

The Wall Street Journal reports: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won Sunday’s runoff presidential election, establishing him as one of the great survivors in recent political history and securing his outsize role in global affairs for what could be years to come. The head of Turkey’s election board declared Erdogan the victor. Erdogan won 52.13% of the votes, with his challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, claiming 47.87% with more than 99% of ballot boxes opened. The president’s victory also opens a new phase of his…

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‘The intensity is increasing’: Ukraine says first steps in counteroffensive have begun

‘The intensity is increasing’: Ukraine says first steps in counteroffensive have begun

The Observer reports: Preliminary operations have already begun to pave the way for a counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces, a Ukrainian presidential adviser has said. “It’s a complicated process, which is not a matter of one day or a certain date or a certain hour,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s an ongoing process of de-occupation, and certain processes are already happening, like destroying supply lines or blowing up depots behind the lines. “The intensity is…

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Clarence Thomas’s newest opinion would literally bring back child labor

Clarence Thomas’s newest opinion would literally bring back child labor

Ian Millhiser writes: On Thursday, the Supreme Court imposed strict new limits on the Clean Water Act. The Court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA is likely to do serious harm to the government’s ability to quell water pollution, including in major waterways such as the Mississippi River and the Chesapeake Bay. Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that would so severely limit Congress’s power to legislate that he might as well have taken several volumes of the United…

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Study: At all levels of public office, threats now come with the job

Study: At all levels of public office, threats now come with the job

The Washington Post reports: Since taking office in 2021, Oakland City Council member Carroll Fife has received threats by phone, social media and in person, an extreme level of harassment she never imagined would come with serving her community. Fife said she has found animal parts strewn on her car, her tires flattened, and trash dumped at her doorstep. She tried in vain to get a restraining order against a man who said she would “feel the Second Amendment.” A…

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The far right is splintering

The far right is splintering

Juliette Kayyem writes: As Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Stewart Rhodes yesterday to 18 years in prison—the longest yet for a defendant involved in the January 6 insurrection—he explained why the leader of the far-right group the Oath Keepers needed to be behind bars for a long time. “You pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta told Rhodes. Mehta was right about that. At his sentencing, Rhodes was unrepentant. In a 20-minute…

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