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Category: Politics

U.S. feared Trump’s mishandling of intelligence files put spies’ lives at risk

U.S. feared Trump’s mishandling of intelligence files put spies’ lives at risk

The New York Times reports: They risk imprisonment or death stealing the secrets of their own governments. Their identities are among the most closely protected information inside American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Losing even one of them can set back American foreign intelligence operations for years. Clandestine human sources are the lifeblood of any espionage service. This helps explain the grave concern within American agencies that information from undercover sources was included in some of the classified documents recently…

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It’s over: Trump will be indicted

It’s over: Trump will be indicted

Brad Moss writes: I have finally seen enough. Donald Trump will be indicted by a federal grand jury. You heard me right: I believe Trump will actually be indicted for a criminal offense. Even with all its redactions, the probable cause affidavit published today by the magistrate judge in Florida makes clear to me three essential points: (1) Trump was in unauthorized possession of national defense information, namely properly marked classified documents. (2) He was put on notice by the…

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Possibility of obstruction looms over Trump after thwarted efforts to recover documents

Possibility of obstruction looms over Trump after thwarted efforts to recover documents

The New York Times reports: When the Justice Department proposed redactions to the affidavit underlying the warrant used to search former President Donald J. Trump’s residence, prosecutors made clear that they feared the former president and his allies might take any opportunity to intimidate witnesses or otherwise illegally obstruct their investigation. “The government has well-founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed,” prosecutors said in…

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Intel officials to assess national security fallout from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents

Intel officials to assess national security fallout from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents

Politico reports: The U.S. intelligence community will evaluate the potential national security risks stemming from former President Donald Trump’s possession of top-secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told top lawmakers. In a letter obtained by POLITICO and dated Friday, Haines told House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) that her office will lead an “assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from…

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Russia blocks UN nuclear treaty agreement over Zaporizhzhia clause

Russia blocks UN nuclear treaty agreement over Zaporizhzhia clause

The Guardian reports: Russia has blocked an agreement at the United Nations that was aimed at bolstering the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) because Moscow objected to a clause about control over the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Ukraine. The failure to agree to a joint statement after four weeks of debate and negotiation among 151 countries at the UN in New York is the latest blow to hopes of maintaining an arms control regime and keeping a lid on a rekindled…

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Probing the mystery of Japan’s light Covid toll

Probing the mystery of Japan’s light Covid toll

Neil Seeman writes: In light of Japan’s decision last week to waive pre-departure COVID-19 tests for vaccinated inbound travelers, it is worthwhile to consider that its strong performance over the first two years of the pandemic may have had less to do with policy than with culture. In a study published this summer in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Fahad Razak and colleagues at the University of Toronto examined COVID-19 outcomes in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the…

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The redacted affidavit shows Trump’s actions posed a clear risk to our national security

The redacted affidavit shows Trump’s actions posed a clear risk to our national security

Andrew Weissmann writes: Trump knows the answers to the most important unanswered questions: What material did Mr. Trump take from the White House, why did he take it, what had he done with it and what was he planning to do with it? There is nothing that prevented Mr. Trump for over a year from publicly answering those questions; he surely has not remained silent because the answers are exculpatory. Above all, the newly released redacted affidavit (and an accompanying…

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Inside Trump’s public bravado and private resistance over Mar-a-Lago documents

Inside Trump’s public bravado and private resistance over Mar-a-Lago documents

CNN reports: Not long after the National Archives acknowledged in February that it had retrieved 15 boxes of presidential records from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump began fielding calls from Tom Fitton, a prominent conservative activist. Fitton, the longtime head of the legal activist group Judicial Watch, had a simple message for Trump — it was a mistake to give the records to the Archives, and his team should never have let the Archives “strong-arm” him…

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A strong Ukraine is the best solution to Europe’s Russia problem

A strong Ukraine is the best solution to Europe’s Russia problem

Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s Minister of Defense, writes: August 24 was Ukrainian Independence Day. For the first time in three decades since Ukraine regained its independence, there was a real danger this year that the holiday would not take place at all. Exactly six months earlier on February 24, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country with the aim of crushing Ukrainian statehood and extinguishing the Ukrainian nation. The genocidal war unleashed by Vladimir Putin in early 2022 is unparalleled…

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A Putin critic fell from a building in Washington. Was it really a suicide?

A Putin critic fell from a building in Washington. Was it really a suicide?

Michael Schaffer writes: The mysterious death last week of a prominent critic of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in Washington’s West End neighborhood is drawing fury from some of the Kremlin’s best-known global detractors — but scant notice in Washington, where police say they don’t suspect foul play was behind Dan Rapoport’s fall from a luxury apartment building on the night of Aug. 14. “I think the circumstances of his death are extremely suspicious,” says Bill Browder, the formerly Moscow-based…

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California’s gas car ban will change how everyone drives

California’s gas car ban will change how everyone drives

Vox reports: California, the state that buys the most cars and trucks in the United States, will ban the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2035. This represents the largest government move against gasoline and diesel to date, with the potential to ripple throughout the country and the global auto industry. The California Air Resources Board, which regulates pollution in the state, voted unanimously on Thursday to approve a proposal that will require 100 percent of all cars sold in…

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Has the fight against antisemitism lost its way?

Has the fight against antisemitism lost its way?

Peter Beinart writes: Over the past 18 months, America’s most prominent Jewish organizations have done something extraordinary. They have accused the world’s leading human rights organizations of promoting hatred of Jews. Last April, after Human Rights Watch issued a report accusing Israel of “the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” the American Jewish Committee claimed that the report’s arguments “sometimes border on antisemitism.” In January, after Amnesty International issued its own study alleging that Israel practiced apartheid, the Anti-Defamation League predicted…

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Putin’s vision of the future rooted in the past

Putin’s vision of the future rooted in the past

Fiona Hill and Angela Stent write: Vladimir Putin is determined to shape the future to look like his version of the past. Russia’s president invaded Ukraine not because he felt threatened by NATO expansion or by Western “provocations.” He ordered his “special military operation” because he believes that it is Russia’s divine right to rule Ukraine, to wipe out the country’s national identity, and to integrate its people into a Greater Russia. He laid out this mission in a 5,000-word…

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How fracking billionaires, Ben Shapiro, and PragerU built a climate crisis-denial empire

How fracking billionaires, Ben Shapiro, and PragerU built a climate crisis-denial empire

Vice News reports: It was the height of summer and Pastor Farris Wilks was warning that if we didn’t all stop sinning, God was going to scorch the Earth and melt the polar ice caps. “We’re going to reap what we have sown, and what we have sown has not been good,” Wilks explained in his self-assured Texas drawl. “Think of all the murder that has happened in this country… all the babies that have been murdered… sexual perversion of…

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Growing evidence against a Republican wave

Growing evidence against a Republican wave

The New York Times reports: At the beginning of this year’s midterm campaign, analysts and political operatives had every reason to expect a strong Republican showing this November. President Biden’s approval rating was in the low 40s, and the president’s party has a long history of struggling in midterm elections. But as the start of the general election campaign nears, it’s becoming increasingly hard to find any concrete signs of Republican strength. Tuesday’s strong Democratic showing in a special congressional…

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J.D. Vance appeared with podcaster who once said ‘feminists need rape’

J.D. Vance appeared with podcaster who once said ‘feminists need rape’

Mother Jones reports: J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, is typically described as the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, a venture capitalist, and a Never Trumper who came to embrace Donald Trump. But that snapshot doesn’t do justice to Vance, a reactionary extremist who yearns to destroy what he calls the “American leadership class” and to implement an extensive and possibly illegal program to cleanse US society of liberal influence. He compares this project to the de-Nazification…

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