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Category: Politics

Jack Smith named special counsel to lead DOJ probes of Donald Trump

Jack Smith named special counsel to lead DOJ probes of Donald Trump

The Wall Street Journal reports: Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a former federal and international war-crimes prosecutor as special counsel on Friday to oversee Justice Department investigations into former President Donald Trump. Jack Smith, who once led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption and since 2018 was the chief prosecutor at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, will be the third special counsel in five years to examine issues involving Mr. Trump. He will lead both the…

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New York Post takes aim at Trump, and hits a nerve

New York Post takes aim at Trump, and hits a nerve

The New York Times reports: Since Election Day last week, The New York Post’s front pages have been merciless to former President Donald J. Trump. First, the paper heralded his political rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, as “DeFUTURE.” A day later, it illustrated Mr. Trump as Humpty Dumpty about to have a great fall. Then, on Wednesday, the paper relegated Mr. Trump’s announcement about his latest run for president to a small headline at the bottom of the page:…

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GOP megadonor Mercer family has no plans to boost Trump’s 2024 campaign as former president loses more allies

GOP megadonor Mercer family has no plans to boost Trump’s 2024 campaign as former president loses more allies

CNBC reports: GOP megadonors Robert Mercer and Rebekah Mercer have no current plans to help former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign for the White House, according to people familiar with the matter. The Mercers, a father and daughter who were among Trump’s major benefactors during his first run for president in 2016, are distancing themselves from the ex-president’s third White House bid and cutting back their overall campaign fundraising, these people said. The people who spoke to CNBC did so…

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Key evangelical figures turn on Trump: ‘He used us’

Key evangelical figures turn on Trump: ‘He used us’

HuffPost reports: Evangelical figures who previously supported Donald Trump are backing off now that he’s announced his third bid for the presidency. “Donald Trump can’t save America,” Mike Evans told The Washington Post. “He can’t even save himself.” Evans was part of a group of evangelicals who met with Trump at the White House, and at one point gave him an award. Now, he says he’s done with Trump. “He used us to win the White House. We had to…

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Under Republican control, will the House become an unmanageable mess?

Under Republican control, will the House become an unmanageable mess?

Carl Hulse writes: Republicans managed to make their victory in the House seem like a loss by underperforming so badly. But while they did not win control by anywhere near the margin that they anticipated, they did win. And in the House, even the barest majority can work its will if it can hold together to produce 218 votes. The main question going forward is whether Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who was nominated on Tuesday to lead the new…

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Pelosi, first woman speaker, to depart Democratic leadership in seismic shift

Pelosi, first woman speaker, to depart Democratic leadership in seismic shift

Politico reports: Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful speakers in modern U.S. history, will cede the helm of House Democratic leadership after 20 years and take on an unfamiliar role: Rank-and-file member. Since she reclaimed the top gavel in 2018, the first woman speaker — whose legislative prowess has powered her party’s agenda under four presidents — planned to give it up after this term. Yet her decision became more complicated, she has said, by the brutal assault of…

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Inside liberated Kherson, a major hub retaken by Ukrainian forces

Inside liberated Kherson, a major hub retaken by Ukrainian forces

James Rushton and Michael Weiss report: The road to Kherson, scattered with burned-out tanks and vehicles, at one point stops being functional due to a collapsed bridge, requiring a hastily constructed dirt track. The postapocalyptic scenery around Ukraine’s recently liberated city is unsurprising, considering that until about a week ago this area of otherwise unremarkable countryside was among the most fiercely contested pieces of land on Earth. Almost every building on both sides of the road shows some sign of…

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GOP operative found guilty of funneling Russian money to Donald Trump

GOP operative found guilty of funneling Russian money to Donald Trump

The Washington Post reports: A Republican political strategist was convicted of illegally helping a Russian businessman contribute to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Jesse Benton, 44, was pardoned by Trump in 2020 for a different campaign finance crime, months before he was indicted again on six counts related to facilitating an illegal foreign campaign donation. He was found guilty Thursday on all six counts. Elections “reflect the values and the priorities and the beliefs of American citizens,” Assistant U.S….

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Trump ally, billionaire GOP megadonor Ronald Lauder won’t back Trump’s 2024 run for president

Trump ally, billionaire GOP megadonor Ronald Lauder won’t back Trump’s 2024 run for president

CNBC reports: Billionaire and GOP megadonor Ronald Lauder won’t help finance Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign for president, his spokesman told CNBC on Wednesday. Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder fortune, is the latest Republican megadonor to distance himself from Trump as the former president launches a third bid for the White House. Lauder contributed almost $100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2019 when the political organization was helping Trump get reelected, according the nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets….

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Democrats are openly rooting for another Trump presidential bid

Democrats are openly rooting for another Trump presidential bid

Chris Cillizza writes: As Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he is running for president for a third time, one unlikely group was cheering him on: Democrats. “As an American, the idea of another Trump campaign and all of his lies and divisiveness and his efforts to undermine American democracy is an absolute horror show,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, told The New York Times ahead of Trump’s announcement. “On the other hand, I…

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Kari Lake’s loss in Arizona destroys ‘Stop the Steal’

Kari Lake’s loss in Arizona destroys ‘Stop the Steal’

In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal says: If anyone needs more evidence that “Stop the Steal” was a loser for the GOP this year, the party’s Arizona wipeout is definitive. On Monday Kari Lake joined the list of Republicans in the Grand Canyon State who ran on the stolen 2020 election and lost. Ms. Lake, a former TV news anchor, had all the sparkling charisma that Donald Trump’s other favorite candidates lacked. She loved telling off journalists. She called…

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Ukraine tells allies it may not be able to recover from more Russian attacks on energy systems

Ukraine tells allies it may not be able to recover from more Russian attacks on energy systems

Politico reports: The Ukrainian government is warning Western allies that it is anticipating increased Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure in the coming days and that Kyiv does not have enough replacement parts to bring heat and power back online if those occur, according to two congressional officials and one Western official briefed on U.S. intelligence. Ukrainian officials have in recent days asked their American counterparts and more than half a dozen European countries for assistance preparing for a prolonged…

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What really caused the missile explosion in Poland

What really caused the missile explosion in Poland

Anne Applebaum writes: The precise chain of events doesn’t matter. Whether the missile that landed in the Polish border village of Przewodów yesterday was, as President Joe Biden, Polish President Andrzej Duda, and other NATO officials have suggested, the result of a Ukrainian antimissile defense barrage, or whether it was, as some initially suspected, a Russian targeting mistake makes no difference. The real cause of this explosion and the deaths of two people is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an…

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NATO says missile that hit Poland was likely Ukraine air defense

NATO says missile that hit Poland was likely Ukraine air defense

The Wall Street Journal reports: Top NATO officials said a missile that crashed in Poland and killed two people was likely a Russian-made weapon fired by a Ukrainian air-defense system, and that there was no evidence it was directed there intentionally. “Ukraine defended itself, which is obvious and understandable, by firing missiles whose task was to knock down Russian missiles,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said Wednesday. “The Russian side is to blame for this tragic event.” Russia unleashed one of…

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Poland explosion unlikely to spark escalation – but risks of NATO-Russia clash are real

Poland explosion unlikely to spark escalation – but risks of NATO-Russia clash are real

Julian Borger writes: If it was a Russian missile that struck a Polish village on Tuesday, killing two people, it would be the first time a Russian weapon has ever come down on Nato territory. The Soviet Union and the US managed to get through the whole cold war without making such a mistake, because Washington and Moscow were well aware of the risks of going to war by accident or miscalculation. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a far less predictable…

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Europe should shape the clean fuel market now

Europe should shape the clean fuel market now

By Benjamin Görlach and Michael Jakob, Knowable magazine, November 11, 2022 The war on Ukraine — a major exporter of natural gas — has wreaked havoc on energy markets in Europe. Faced with imminent energy shortages, governments have ramped up coal use and expanded import of liquified natural gas from other nations. The International Energy Agency estimates that coal use in Europe could increase by 7 percent in 2022, after a 14 percent jump in 2021. This is a problem….

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