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Category: Politics

Saudi Arabia and Iran agree to restore ties, in talks hosted by China

Saudi Arabia and Iran agree to restore ties, in talks hosted by China

The New York Times reports: After years of open hostility and proxy conflicts across the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Iran have agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties, they announced on Friday, in a significant pivot for the two regional rivals that was facilitated by China. China hosted the talks that led to the breakthrough, highlighting Beijing’s growing role as a global economic and political power, and counterbalance to Washington — particularly in the Middle East, a region that was long…

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Can Georgia Republicans really fire a prosecutor for indicting Trump?

Can Georgia Republicans really fire a prosecutor for indicting Trump?

Norman L. Eisen and Fred Wertheimer write: Under the Georgia Constitution, district attorneys are elected to four-year terms from the electorate in local judicial circuits, and they have immunity from private suits for actions arising from their performance of their duties. Powers of review and oversight of attorneys for allegations of misconduct is, in Georgia, like throughout the country, exclusively reserved for judges. This separation of powers works the same way in many other state constitutional frameworks. For example, when…

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Trump is losing his grip on the grassroots

Trump is losing his grip on the grassroots

Seth Masket writes: Republican grassroots leaders are increasingly losing interest in former President Donald Trump — and eyeing Ron DeSantis for the 2024 presidential campaign. That’s according to a new survey I conducted with GOP county chairs across the country, the first survey in an ongoing project that will be featured in POLITICO Magazine over the next year. It’s designed to track the shifting state of what’s often called the “invisible primary,” that lengthy, and critical, period between now and…

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Global freedom has declined for the 17th consecutive year

Global freedom has declined for the 17th consecutive year

The 2023 edition of Freedom in the World from Freedom House reports: The global struggle for democracy approached a possible turning point in 2022. The gap between the number of countries that registered overall improvements in political rights and civil liberties and those that registered overall declines was the narrowest it has ever been through 17 consecutive years of deterioration. The most serious setbacks for freedom and democracy were the result of war, coups, and attacks on democratic institutions by…

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Prosecutors signal criminal charges for Trump are likely

Prosecutors signal criminal charges for Trump are likely

The New York Times reports: The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. The prosecutors offered Mr. Trump the chance to testify next week before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in…

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Inside the ‘private and confidential’ conservative group that promises to ‘crush liberal dominance’

Inside the ‘private and confidential’ conservative group that promises to ‘crush liberal dominance’

ProPublica reports: A few months ago, Leonard Leo laid out his next audacious project. Ever since the longtime Federalist Society leader helped create a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, and then received more than a billion dollars from a wealthy Chicago business owner to disburse to conservative causes, Leo’s next moves had been the subject of speculation. Now, Leo declared in a slick but private video to potential donors, he planned to “crush liberal dominance” across American life. The…

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Massive protests prompt Georgia to withdraw Russian-style ‘foreign agents’ law

Massive protests prompt Georgia to withdraw Russian-style ‘foreign agents’ law

Kato Kopaleishvili reports: Tens of thousands of Georgians occupied the main thoroughfare of the capital, Tbilisi, for the second night in a row Wednesday, holding EU flags and posters protesting a Russian-style draft law that would label some nongovernmental groups and media outlets “foreign agents.” The law is seen as an attempt to suppress civil society and amplify the government’s propaganda that Western partners are not acting in the interests of Georgians. Some protesters stormed the barricades in front of…

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A mass wave of Israeli army refusal could be a transformative moment

A mass wave of Israeli army refusal could be a transformative moment

Shimri Zameret writes: During the Second Intifada, as the Israeli army was killing thousands of Palestinians in its effort to suppress the uprising, I was part of a movement of Israeli youth and soldiers who refused to serve in the army. From the age of 18 to 20, I spent 21 months under arrest and in prison, alongside many others, in protest of the occupation and its brutal policies. It was one of the largest campaigns of conscientious objection seen…

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Pentagon blocks sharing evidence of possible Russian war crimes with Hague court

Pentagon blocks sharing evidence of possible Russian war crimes with Hague court

The New York Times reports: The Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the International Criminal Court in The Hague gathered by American intelligence agencies about Russian atrocities in Ukraine, according to current and former officials briefed on the matter. American military leaders oppose helping the court investigate Russians because they fear setting a precedent that might help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans. The rest of the administration, including intelligence agencies and the State…

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Protesters in Tbilisi, Georgia hold more demonstrations over a ‘Kremlin-inspired’ law

Protesters in Tbilisi, Georgia hold more demonstrations over a ‘Kremlin-inspired’ law

The New York Times reports: Thousands of demonstrators marched toward Georgia’s Parliament on Wednesday, protesting a draft law on “foreign agents” that critics say highlights the country’s democratic backsliding and pushes it closer to Moscow. As the evening went on, a group of protesters tried to storm the government building, but were repelled by police officers who used water cannons, stun grenades and tear gas to deter the crowd. Later, riot police officers in helmets and with shields used all…

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Russia tried to influence U.S. elections in 2022 and will do it again, nation’s top intel agency says

Russia tried to influence U.S. elections in 2022 and will do it again, nation’s top intel agency says

CNBC News reports: Russia conducted malign influence operations in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections and is using increasingly clandestine means to “penetrate the Western information environment,” the U.S. intelligence community said in a new report Wednesday. Moscow will also work to “strengthen ties” to Americans in media and politics as it works to carry out “future influence operations,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in the latest edition of its annual assessment of worldwide threats to U.S….

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Is the poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran a new front in the war against girls’ education?

Is the poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran a new front in the war against girls’ education?

Shutterstock By Shireen Daft, Macquarie University Recent media attention has drawn global focus on an escalating number of Iranian schoolgirls falling ill over the past few months because of suspected chemical attacks. Accounts differ, but many reports cite more than 1,000 cases of poisoning at schools across Iran. At least 58 schools in ten provinces across the country have been affected. The first known cases were reported in the city of Qom in November. There has been an escalation of…

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The Boogaloo Bois are plotting a bloody comeback: ‘We will go to war’

The Boogaloo Bois are plotting a bloody comeback: ‘We will go to war’

Vice News reports: With their trademark Hawaiian shirts, tactical gear, and AR-style rifles, the Boogaloo Bois burst onto the American protest scene in 2020, testing the limits of open-carry laws while rallying around shared fantasies of armed insurrection. At the center of their movement was Mike Dunn, then a 19-year-old baby-faced former marine, who’d built a name for himself organizing militia groups across Virginia. But it wasn’t just flashy displays of defiance and edgy memes that made the Boogaloo Bois…

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‘We’re all embarrassed’: Inside Fox News as Dominion revelations rattle the network

‘We’re all embarrassed’: Inside Fox News as Dominion revelations rattle the network

Brian Stelter writes: Last month Fox News producers in New York, Washington, and other bureaus were summoned for mandatory training sessions. The topic: libel law. With Fox facing down two defamation lawsuits that could cost the company billions of dollars, management decided to set up lengthy meetings about legal concepts like “actual malice.” That’s what Dominion Voting Systems and another voting technology company, Smartmatic, are trying to prove: that Fox aired lies about their firms while the people involved knew…

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New intelligence suggests pro-Ukrainian saboteurs attacked pipelines, U.S. officials say

New intelligence suggests pro-Ukrainian saboteurs attacked pipelines, U.S. officials say

The New York Times reports: New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months. U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction…

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Western allies take note: If you want to beat Putin in Ukraine, target Lukashenko in Belarus

Western allies take note: If you want to beat Putin in Ukraine, target Lukashenko in Belarus

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya writes: Last week, residents of Machulishchy were intrigued as soldiers and police swarmed across their small town on the edge of Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Cordons and checkpoints were hastily erected for miles around the local airbase, which has played host to Russia’s forces during its abominable war against Ukraine. It was clear to anyone out and about on that frosty winter morning that Belarusian security services – known as the KGB – were panicking. The Belarusian…

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