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Category: Politics

Trump’s comments on Mar-a-Lago documents ‘like red meat to a prosecutor’

Trump’s comments on Mar-a-Lago documents ‘like red meat to a prosecutor’

NBC News reports: Former President Donald Trump’s comments Wednesday night about his handling of classified documents appeared to contradict statements by his lawyers, and provide potentially important evidence for federal prosecutors investigating whether to charge him with a crime, legal experts say. Trump’s lawyers told Congress last month that the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago compound got there by accident. But when questioned about the issue at a CNN town hall, Trump said he had “every right” to take…

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CNN’s Trump Town Hall was viewed by fewer than 1% of Americans

CNN’s Trump Town Hall was viewed by fewer than 1% of Americans

Just in: CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump averaged 3.1 million total viewers. The event outrated Fox and MSNBC, as expected, but these are not 2015/16 level numbers for Trump — not even close. — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 11, 2023 Wajahat Ali writes: With its Republican presidential town hall on Wednesday, CNN failed journalism, the American public, and its own employees by deciding to invite an arsonist who has spent the past seven years trying to burn down their…

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Manchin attacked EPA’s new rules that could cost him millions

Manchin attacked EPA’s new rules that could cost him millions

Politico reports: When Sen. Joe Manchin upbraided EPA on Wednesday for requiring power plants to reduce their carbon emissions, he didn’t mention that the agency’s rules could threaten his personal income. The West Virginia Democrat vowed to oppose President Joe Biden’s EPA nominees because the agency’s rules being proposed Thursday could push coal- and gas-fired power plants “out of existence,” he said. The risk to one plant, in particular, could jeapordize a lucrative source of money for Manchin. His family…

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New defamation suit against Fox signals continued legal threat

New defamation suit against Fox signals continued legal threat

The New York Times reports: Fox News was hit on Wednesday with another defamation lawsuit, this one from a woman who said the network promoted lies about her that generated serious threats to her safety and harmed her career prospects. The suit was filed on behalf of Nina Jankowicz, the former executive director of a short-lived Department of Homeland Security division assigned with coordinating efforts to monitor and address disinformation threats to national security. Right-wing pundits and politicians falsely portrayed…

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House Republican report finds no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden

House Republican report finds no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden

The New York Times reports: After four months of investigation, House Republicans who promised to use their new majority to unearth evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that they had yet to uncover incriminating material about him, despite their frequent insinuations that he and his family have been involved in criminal conduct and corruption. At a much-publicized news conference on Capitol Hill to show the preliminary findings of their premier investigation into Mr. Biden and his family,…

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UK sends Ukraine powerful Storm Shadow long-range missiles

UK sends Ukraine powerful Storm Shadow long-range missiles

Michael Weiss and James Rushton report: A year ago, it was said to be a direct path to “World War III.” Now it’s being announced as an accomplished fact. The United Kingdom is in the process of delivering Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine, the British government confirmed Thursday, giving Kyiv a much-needed and long coveted long-range precision strike capability. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that the supply of the missiles will “allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces…

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Quid pro quo: Clarence Thomas reversed position after gifts and family payments

Quid pro quo: Clarence Thomas reversed position after gifts and family payments

The Lever reports: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas changed his position on one of America’s most significant regulatory doctrines after his wife reportedly accepted secret payments from a shadowy conservative network pushing for the change. Thomas’ shift also came while he was receiving lavish gifts from a billionaire linked to other groups criticizing the same doctrine — which is now headed back to the high court. The so-called “Chevron deference” doctrine stipulates that the executive branch — not the federal…

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Clarence Thomas must resign

Clarence Thomas must resign

In order to preserve the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas must resign. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington today sent a letter to Thomas calling on him to resign and outlining why his resignation is a necessity. “This is not something we do lightly,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said. “This is a place we never wanted to be, but it has become clear that Justice Thomas likely violated civil and criminal laws and has created the…

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Trump has finally been held accountable for lying

Trump has finally been held accountable for lying

RonNell Andersen Jones and Dahlia Lithwick write: [N]o one should lose sight of the fact that Carroll’s win actually represents a staggering turning point: Even under the most free-speech-protective standard imaginable, Trump is accountable for his lies about her. At its core, and understandably, the two-week Carroll trial homed in on the dominant harm Trump inflicted on the former columnist—a traumatizing and life-altering sexual attack in a dressing room of a department store near Trump Tower. (Disclosure: One of us…

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Terrible timing of Trump’s town hall on CNN has allies freaking out

Terrible timing of Trump’s town hall on CNN has allies freaking out

The Daily Beast reports: For Donald Trump, the initial plan seemed simple. By agreeing to an exclusive town hall in New Hampshire with his biggest cable news nemesis—CNN—the 2024 Republican frontrunner was poised for a made-for-primetime clash to delight his followers, set off his critics, and suck up the political oxygen in the critical early primary state. Just over 24 hours before Trump’s scheduled sit-down, however, whatever hopes he had to ambush CNN turned into what one of his former…

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The book-bans debate has finally reached a turning point

The book-bans debate has finally reached a turning point

Ronald Brownstein writes: Across multiple fronts, Democrats and their allies are stiffening their resistance to a surge of Republican-led book bans. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the past month have conspicuously escalated their denunciations of the book bans proliferating in schools across the country, explicitly linking them to restrictions on abortion and voting rights to make the case that “MAGA extremists” are threatening Americans’ “personal freedom,” as Biden said in the recent video announcing his campaign…

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The West must be ready for this moment of opportunity and risk in Ukraine

The West must be ready for this moment of opportunity and risk in Ukraine

Timothy Garton Ash writes: As you read this, thousands of young Ukrainian men and women are going through their last training drills, checking their weapons and waiting for D-day. In the big Ukrainian counteroffensive that may start any time now, some of them will be killed and many more will be wounded. None will emerge unchanged. We thought we had said goodbye to all that in 1945, but this is Europe in 2023. Nobody knows what will happen in this…

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What could turn Biden’s reelection upside down

What could turn Biden’s reelection upside down

David Frum writes: I argued recently that political fundamentals point to a strong Biden reelection in 2024: The economy is growing, employment is rising, and Republican culture-warring is alienating crucial groups of voters. But big trends can be punctuated by unexpected events—the X factors that bump history off its predicted course. The 2016 election cycle was dominated by two important last-minute shocks: Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood recording and FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that he was reopening an investigation into…

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Timothy McVeigh’s dreams are coming true

Timothy McVeigh’s dreams are coming true

Michelle Goldberg writes: Timothy McVeigh, the right-wing terrorist who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, cared about one issue above all others: guns. To him, guns were synonymous with freedom, and any government attempt to regulate them meant incipient tyranny. “When it came to guns,” writes Jeffrey Toobin in “Homegrown,” his compelling new book about the Oklahoma City attack, “McVeigh did more than simply advocate for his own right to own and use firearms; he joined an…

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Harlan Crow sure isn’t paying for your kid’s school

Harlan Crow sure isn’t paying for your kid’s school

Dahlia Lithwick writes: In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas resigned his seat at the Supreme Court for accepting $15,000 in exchange for a series of paid lectures at American University. Part of the Fortas scandal also involved news of him accepting a stipend for doing legal work for a very rich friend (money he had actually returned when the benefactor was indicted and before the outcry). None of Fortas’ colleagues defended him for this. No one blamed the press or even…

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William Burns, a CIA spymaster with unusual powers

William Burns, a CIA spymaster with unusual powers

The New York Times reports: To mark the 20th anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, stood in the lobby of the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., and sought to exorcise the ghosts of the prewar intelligence failures that haunt the building to this day. Addressing some 100 C.I.A. officials on March 19, Mr. Burns acknowledged how the agency catastrophically blundered in its assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he noted,…

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