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Category: Politics

Republicans are trying to seize control over voting in Texas’ largest Democratic county

Republicans are trying to seize control over voting in Texas’ largest Democratic county

Mother Jones reports: The Texas legislature passed a series of bills on Monday that amounted to a sweeping power grab giving Republicans more control over how elections are run and administered in the state’s most populous Democratic county, which includes the city of Houston and is home to nearly 5 million people. One bill would allow the secretary of state, who is appointed by the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, to remove local election officials for “good cause” based on…

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You cannot hear these 13 women’s stories and believe the anti-abortion narrative

You cannot hear these 13 women’s stories and believe the anti-abortion narrative

Michelle Goldberg writes: It’s increasingly clear that it’s not safe to be pregnant in states with total abortion bans. Since the end of Roe v. Wade, there has been a barrage of gutting stories about women in prohibition states denied care for miscarriages or forced to continue nonviable pregnancies. Though some in the anti-abortion movement publicly justify this sort of treatment, others have responded with a combination of denial, deflection and conspiracy theorizing. Some activists have blamed the pro-choice movement…

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Harlan Crow: Investigating my gifts to Clarence Thomas is unconstitutional

Harlan Crow: Investigating my gifts to Clarence Thomas is unconstitutional

Mark Joseph Stern writes: Congress has regulated the Supreme Court for as long as the two institutions have existed. For more than a century, Congress compelled justices to travel around the country to serve as appellate judges, often on horseback. It forced the court to hear certain cases and denied it the ability to hear others. It added and subtracted seats, increased and decreased its budget, and postponed a term to avoid an adverse decision. According to attorneys for billionaire and GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow, however, there is one thing…

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The man in charge of knowing when the U.S. runs out of money

The man in charge of knowing when the U.S. runs out of money

The Washington Post reports: At the beginning of every workday, from his second-floor office in the U.S. Treasury Department, Dave Lebryk starts his morning looking at a color-coded dashboard tracking the most critical operations of the largest payment system in the world. More than $6 trillion flows out of the Treasury every year in payments, salaries and purchase orders, and more than $5 trillion flows in, mostly through tax collections and fees. Lebryk’s job is to make sure that these…

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How Russia’s FSB recruits former ISIS fighters — and tries to plant them in Ukrainian battalions

How Russia’s FSB recruits former ISIS fighters — and tries to plant them in Ukrainian battalions

Lilia Yapparova and Vera Mironova report: In January 2014, when Baurzhan Kultanov first joined the Islamic State, he wasn’t surprised by almost anything he encountered in Syria and Iraq’s occupied territories. While recounting his experiences there, he compared Raqqa, ISIS’s then-capital, to Istanbul, where he had met his recruiters, as well as to his hometown of Astrakhan, Russia. “People live their lives there, just like anywhere,” Kultanov told Meduza. “The women sit at home, they go to the bazaar —…

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Why Trump wants the U.S. to default on debt

Why Trump wants the U.S. to default on debt

Dennis Aftergut writes: Lest you have any doubt, the three exclamation points are Trump’s. You could be excused for thinking he wants a default. He loves chaos. But he also has a purely self-serving reason to seek an economic catastrophe. You don’t need to be a stable genius to know that a bad economy typically hurts the incumbent in a presidential race. And Trump is desperate to get the immunity from prosecution that being elected president would provide him. He’s…

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Concerns about Biden’s reelection swamped by fear of Trump in swing voter focus groups

Concerns about Biden’s reelection swamped by fear of Trump in swing voter focus groups

The Washington Post reports: Nearly all of the 15 gathered swing state voters described feeling negative emotions when they saw President Biden on a television or computer screens — “confused,” “concern,” “worry,” “sad,” “sorry” and even “panicked.” Every single one said they wished Biden and his old Republican foe Donald Trump were not running for reelection. Several offered dire assessments of Biden’s mental and physical capacities, calling him too old or speculating about the possibility of dementia. But as the…

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Texas forced this woman to give birth to a stillborn son. She’s suing

Texas forced this woman to give birth to a stillborn son. She’s suing

Rolling Stone reports: After multiple miscarriages, Kiersten Hogan thought she would never be able to carry a pregnancy to term. She’d nearly given up hope when in June 2021 she learned she was pregnant. But at just 19 weeks — days after Texas’ Senate Bill 8 went into effect — Hogan woke up at 5 a.m. in excruciating pain. She called 911 and was instructed to unlock her front door and lay on the ground until EMTs arrived. “It was…

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Pro-Ukrainian Russian partisans advance into Russia’s Belgorod region in surprise raid

Pro-Ukrainian Russian partisans advance into Russia’s Belgorod region in surprise raid

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: Russia may have taken the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut Sunday, but forces aligned with Ukraine apparently took a tiny part of Russia on Monday — or so video and photograph footage suggested as of just after noon local time. Ukrainian armored vehicles, including at least one tank, were seen attacking a border post, in the town of Kozinka, in the Belgorod region of southern Russia. Drone footage, taken from the Ukrainian side of the…

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Trump or DeSantis? Neither, say Ukrainian-American voters angry at war stance

Trump or DeSantis? Neither, say Ukrainian-American voters angry at war stance

Reuters reports: George Stawnyczyj voted for Donald Trump twice. On domestic policy, he gives the former president top marks. But he’ll stay home on Election Day should Trump win his party’s nomination to take on Joe Biden in 2024. Stawnyczyj is an official in the Republican Party in rural Carbon County, Pennsylvania. He’s also Ukrainian-American and can’t stomach Trump’s criticism of aid payments to war-torn Ukraine nor his habit of complimenting Vladimir Putin. “The way Trump is talking right now,…

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Most January 6 defendants (who are mostly white) are getting off easy

Most January 6 defendants (who are mostly white) are getting off easy

Rolling Stone reports: The first time Gina Bisignano ran afoul of the law in Washington, D.C., she was recorded standing on a ledge in front of a broken window on the U.S. Capitol Building’s West Terrace, adorned in a Louis Vuitton sweater and Chanel boots. “We the people are not going to take it anymore. You are not going to take away our Trumpy Bear!” the Beverly Hills cosmetologist bellowed through a bullhorn on Jan. 6. “Everybody, we need gas…

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He became convinced the school board was pushing ‘transgender bullshit.’ He ended up arrested — and emboldened

He became convinced the school board was pushing ‘transgender bullshit.’ He ended up arrested — and emboldened

ProPublica reports: An image of a shooting target — with two bullet holes to the head and five scattered around the chest — serves as a warning to visitors who climb the brick steps and pass the American flag to reach Eric Jensen’s front door. “If you can read this you’re in range,” the sign says. Another warning, posted near the doorbell, states: “No Solicitation. … This property charges $50 per minute to listen to any vaccine/medical advice.” He ordered…

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NAACP issues travel advisory for Florida, saying the state is ‘openly hostile toward African Americans’ under Gov. DeSantis’ administration

NAACP issues travel advisory for Florida, saying the state is ‘openly hostile toward African Americans’ under Gov. DeSantis’ administration

CNN reports: Another advocacy group is warning people of color about traveling to Florida – but for different reasons. The NAACP issued a travel advisory for the state “in direct response to Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools,” the group said in a written statement Saturday. The announcement came days after LULAC – the League of United Latin American Citizens – issued a travel advisory for…

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Christian nationalists worship God, guns and Trump

Christian nationalists worship God, guns and Trump

Susan Stubson writes: I first saw it while working the rope line at a monster-truck rally during the 2016 campaign by my husband, Tim, for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat. As Tim and I and our boys made our way down the line, shaking hands and passing out campaign material, a burly man wearing a “God bless America” T-shirt and a cross around his neck said something like, “He’s got my vote if he keeps those [epithet] out of office,” using…

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How Russia and Iran maintain their grip in Syria under the shadows of the Ukraine war

How Russia and Iran maintain their grip in Syria under the shadows of the Ukraine war

Omar Abu Layla writes: When assessing the effects of the Russia–Ukraine war on Syria, it is first necessary to mention that the former is the military ally with the single greatest impact on the course of the conflict. Russia seeks to maintain not only its influence in Syria but also its diplomatic and military ambitions in the Middle East, taking advantage of the withdrawal of American troops in 2019, which greenlit the way for Turkey to penetrate deep into Syrian…

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