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Category: Politics

Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis

Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis

Mark Leibovich writes: Governor Ron DeSantis has a growing store of admirers. This includes many who have watched the cantankerous Floridian only from afar. They have heard glowing things. He was the biggest winner of an otherwise dark election cycle for Republicans. He has impeccable bona fides as a Donald Trump disciple—without being Trump himself, whom many see as the biggest loser of said dark election cycle. This has made DeSantis the GOP’s hottest molecule. He is full MAGA without…

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Why America’s railroad operators refuse to give their workers paid leave

Why America’s railroad operators refuse to give their workers paid leave

Eric Levitz writes: For months, the world’s largest economy has been teetering on the brink of collapse because America’s latter-day robber barons can’t comprehend that workers sometimes get sick. Or so the behavior of major U.S. rail companies seems to suggest. Since last winter, railroad unions and the managers of America’s seven dominant freight-rail carriers have been struggling to come to an agreement on a new contract. The key points of contention in those talks have been scheduling in general…

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Left-wing voices are silenced on Twitter as far-right trolls advise Elon Musk

Left-wing voices are silenced on Twitter as far-right trolls advise Elon Musk

The Intercept reports: Elon Musk claims to be “fighting for free speech in America” but the social network’s new owner appears to be overseeing a purge of left-wing activists from the platform. Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations. As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike…

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U.S. considers dramatically expanding training of Ukrainian forces, officials say

U.S. considers dramatically expanding training of Ukrainian forces, officials say

CNN reports: The Biden administration is considering a dramatic expansion in the training the US military provides to Ukrainian forces, including instructing as many as 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers a month at a US base in Germany, according to multiple US officials. If adopted, the proposal would mark a significant increase not just in the number of Ukrainians the US trains but also in the type of training they receive. Since the start of the conflict in February, the US has…

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Protests stretch China’s censorship to its limits

Protests stretch China’s censorship to its limits

The New York Times reports: In one video, a man sarcastically sings a patriotic song. In another, a group of protesters hold up blank pieces of paper and chant in unison. In a third clip, a group of mourners light candles around a vigil to those who died in a fire while in lockdown in western China. Signs of organized dissent are relatively rare in China; so is their survival in the country’s digital space. China’s censorship apparatus — the…

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Jury convicts Oath Keepers leader, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, of seditious conspiracy

Jury convicts Oath Keepers leader, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, of seditious conspiracy

Politico reports: A jury has convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes of masterminding a plot to violently subvert the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, finding that he entered into a seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government. The jury also convicted Rhodes ally Kelly Meggs, leader of the Florida Oath Keepers, of seditious conspiracy. But the jury acquitted three co-defendants — Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell — of joining Rhodes in that conspiracy. All five,…

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Jewish Texans see surge in antisemitism as a precursor to fascism

Jewish Texans see surge in antisemitism as a precursor to fascism

The Texas Tribune reports: As other kids in Austin recovered from trick-or-treating on Halloween last year, Sarah Adelman worried about white supremacists, her mom and their synagogue. After a series of antisemitic incidents around Central Texas, someone set fire to Congregation Beth Israel, where Sarah’s mother, Lori, is a leader. “It made me sad and really scared,” 10-year-old Sarah said last week. “It made me nervous for my mom.” The arson was part of an ongoing wave of antisemitic incidents…

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Elon Musk is turning Twitter into a haven for Nazis

Elon Musk is turning Twitter into a haven for Nazis

Vice News reports: Twitter has a problem with white supremacist and neo-Nazi content proliferating on the platform—and Elon Musk is making that problem worse. In recent days, the platform’s new CEO has reactivated the accounts of known neo-Nazis; shared a picture of a white supremacist who said he’d like Trump to be more like Hitler; failed to prevent users from posting videos of the Christchurch massacre; tweeted a popular alt-right meme; used a known antisemitic trope; and, inadvertently or not,…

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Inside the Saudi palace coup that brought MBS to power

Inside the Saudi palace coup that brought MBS to power

Anuj Chopra writes: The Saudi prince was detained all night. As daylight broke, he staggered out of the king’s palace in Mecca. His personal bodyguards, who tailed him everywhere, were missing. The prince was led to a waiting car. He was free to leave – but he would soon discover that freedom was not very different from detention. As his car pulled out of the palace gates, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef fired off a series of panicked text messages. “Be…

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With intimidation and surveillance, China tries to snuff out protests

With intimidation and surveillance, China tries to snuff out protests

The New York Times reports: Reacting to China’s boldest and most widespread protests in decades, the security apparatus built by Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is mobilizing on multiple fronts to quash dissent, drawing on its decades-old tool kit of repression and surveillance. In a meeting of the party’s top security leaders, reported in state media on Tuesday, officials were ordered to “resolutely crack down on illegal and criminal acts that disrupt social order.” And by evening, the demonstrations already…

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The yuan’s the new dollar as Russia rides to the redback

The yuan’s the new dollar as Russia rides to the redback

Reuters reports: Chinese entrepreneur Wang Min is delighted about Russia’s embrace of the yuan. His LED lights company can price contracts to Russian customers in yuan rather than dollars or euros, and they can pay him in yuan. It’s “win-win”, he says. Wang’s plans have been transformed by the conflict in Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions on Moscow that have shut Russia’s banks and many of its companies out of the dollar and euro payment systems. His contract manufacturing…

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Trump might have to face his worst nightmare — a D.C. jury

Trump might have to face his worst nightmare — a D.C. jury

Mitchell Epner writes: Federal prosecutors on Tuesday, under the direction of newly appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith, argued to the 11th Circuit Court that they should immediately shut down the Special Master process created by Judge Aileen Cannon. Under that process, former President Donald Trump has the opportunity to challenge the search warrant executed at his office and residence long before he is indicted. Virtually no other criminal defendant has ever been given that opportunity. The Oral Argument Shows That…

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The GOP’s great Trump reckoning begins at the state party level

The GOP’s great Trump reckoning begins at the state party level

Politico reports: For years, Lou Barletta counted himself among Donald Trump’s most diehard allies. The former Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate and congressman endorsed him at a time in 2016 when many GOP elected officials saw Trump as radioactive. He served as the co-chair of his first presidential campaign in Pennsylvania. Six years later, Barletta is finally disembarking from the MAGA train. “I’m not supporting him,” he said of Trump’s 2024 campaign in an interview with POLITICO. “I was one of…

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Trump doesn’t want to alienate his white supremacist and antisemitic supporters

Trump doesn’t want to alienate his white supremacist and antisemitic supporters

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump repeatedly refused to disavow the outspoken antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes after they spoke over dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort, rejecting the advice from advisers over fears he might alienate a section of his base, two people familiar with the situation said. The former US president was urged publicly and privately to denounce Fuentes in the aftermath of the dinner, which included the performer Ye, previously known as Kanye West, who has also recently…

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A peek inside the FBI’s unprecedented January 6 geofence dragnet

A peek inside the FBI’s unprecedented January 6 geofence dragnet

Wired reports: The FBI’s biggest-ever investigation included the biggest-ever haul of phones from controversial geofence warrants, court records show. A filing in the case of one of the January 6 suspects, David Rhine, shows that Google initially identified 5,723 devices as being in or near the US Capitol during the riot. Only around 900 people have so far been charged with offenses relating to the siege. The filing suggests that dozens of phones that were in airplane mode during the…

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Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests

Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests

The Washington Post reports: Twitter’s radically reduced anti-propaganda team grappled on Sunday with a flood of nuisance content in China that researchers said was aimed at reducing the flow of news about stunning widespread protests against coronavirus restrictions. Numerous Chinese-language accounts, some dormant for months or years, came to life early Sunday and started spamming the service with links to escort services and other adult offerings alongside city names. The result: For hours, anyone searching for posts from those cities…

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