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Category: Politics

U.S. corporate profits soar with margins at widest since 1950

U.S. corporate profits soar with margins at widest since 1950

Bloomberg reports: A measure of US profit margins has reached its widest since 1950, suggesting that the prices charged by businesses are outpacing their increased costs for production and labor. After-tax profits as a share of gross value added for non-financial corporations, a measure of aggregate profit margins, improved in the second quarter to 15.5% — the most since 1950 — from 14% in the first quarter, according to Commerce Department figures published Thursday. The data show that companies overall…

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Out of office, Trump’s ‘ready, fire, aim’ reflex compounds his legal peril

Out of office, Trump’s ‘ready, fire, aim’ reflex compounds his legal peril

The New York Times reports: On Tuesday, a Florida judge informed two lawyers representing former President Donald J. Trump, neither of them licensed in the state, that they had bungled routine paperwork to take part in a suit filed following the F.B.I.’s search this month of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club. “A sample motion can be found on the Court’s website,” the judge instructed them in her order. Mr. Trump has projected his usual bravado, and raised millions…

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Trump tells his lawyers: Get ‘my’ top secret documents back

Trump tells his lawyers: Get ‘my’ top secret documents back

Rolling Stone reports: In the weeks after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, former President Donald Trump repeatedly made a simple-sounding but extraordinary ask: he wanted his lawyers to get “my documents” back from federal law enforcement. Trump wasn’t merely referring to the alleged trove of attorney-client material that he insists was scooped up by the feds during the raid, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president has been demanding that his team find a way to recover…

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Canceling student debt could help close the wealth gap between white and Black Americans

Canceling student debt could help close the wealth gap between white and Black Americans

Santul Nerkar wrote in May: America’s racial wealth gap is well-documented, even if many continue to underestimate its existence. Black Americans’ net worth is, on average, less than 15 percent of white Americans’, the legacy of centuries of systemic anti-Black racism. Moreover, both political parties have failed time and again to address the inequities facing Black Americans. But what if I told you that an effective way to start closing this gap was within reach? According to the scholars I…

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California plans to ban the sale of new gasoline cars

California plans to ban the sale of new gasoline cars

The New York Times reports: California is expected to put into effect on Thursday its sweeping plan to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a groundbreaking move that could have major effects on the effort to fight climate change and accelerate a global transition toward electric vehicles. “This is huge,” said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert who headed the Environmental Protection Agency’s transportation emissions program under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “California…

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Dangerous Russian plan to disconnect Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from grid

Dangerous Russian plan to disconnect Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from grid

The Guardian reports: A detailed plan has been drawn up by Russia to disconnect Europe’s largest nuclear plant from Ukraine’s power grid, risking a catastrophic failure of its cooling systems, the Guardian has been told. World leaders have called for the Zaporizhzhia site to be demilitarised after footage emerged of Russian army vehicles inside the plant, and have previously warned Russia against cutting it off from the Ukrainian grid and connecting it up to the Russian power network. But Petro…

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What if Netanyahu wins?

What if Netanyahu wins?

Neri Zilber writes: Last fall, a few months after Benjamin Netanyahu was finally toppled from his perch as Israeli prime minister, a challenger arose from within his right-wing Likud party. Yuli Edelstein, a former Knesset speaker and senior minister, stated that he would run against Netanyahu for party leader ahead of any new election. “Netanyahu has already tried four times; how can we succeed with him the fifth time?” Edelstein posited, alluding to the four general elections held in Israel…

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Poll indicates Cheney presidential run would hurt Biden more than Trump

Poll indicates Cheney presidential run would hurt Biden more than Trump

Yahoo News reports: Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has vowed to do “whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office” — including possibly embarking on a White House bid of her own. “It is something that I am thinking about,” she said last week. Yet a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that if Cheney were to run for president as an independent in 2024, she could actually do the opposite. She could single-handedly swing…

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Documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago were among government’s most highly classified, letter shows

Documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago were among government’s most highly classified, letter shows

Politico reports: The National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified material — including “special access program materials,” some of the most highly classified secrets in the government — in 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in January, according to correspondence between the National Archivist and his legal team. The May 10 letter — posted late Monday on the website of John Solomon, a conservative journalist and one of Trump’s authorized liaisons to the National…

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Conservative activists want library books approved by the supreme conservative they call God

Conservative activists want library books approved by the supreme conservative they call God

NBC News reports: For months, a group of conservative Christians have inundated the staff and board of a public library in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, with complaints about books they didn’t want to see on the shelves. Their list of more than 400 titles predominantly focuses on young adult books with LGBTQ characters, scenes describing sexual activity or invoking the occult. The only problem: None of the books are in the library’s collection. Still, the activists in this town of 2,500…

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White House launches new war on secrecy

White House launches new war on secrecy

Politico reports: The government keeps way too many secrets, the Biden administration asserts. The sprawling spy community — made up of 18 separate intelligence agencies — sees it quite differently. But despite differing worldviews, the White House is quietly gearing up to try to pierce the veil, according to eight government officials and secrecy experts and internal documents. And it is enlisting a leading advocate for greater government transparency in the effort. The National Security Council initiated a review this…

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What’s the dispute between Imran Khan and the Pakistan government about?

What’s the dispute between Imran Khan and the Pakistan government about?

By Samina Yasmeen, The University of Western Australia Tensions between former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan and the current coalition government are coming to a head. Khan made a speech in the northern city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad on Sunday, August 21, seeking a return to office after losing a no-confidence vote in April and being ousted as prime minister. Just hours beforehand, Pakistan’s electronic media regulator prohibited Khan’s rallies from being broadcast live on all satellite TV channels. As…

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Dark money: $1.6 billion donation to Leonard A. Leo’s group bolsters conservatives

Dark money: $1.6 billion donation to Leonard A. Leo’s group bolsters conservatives

The Lever reports: An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court. Through a series of opaque transactions over the past two years, Barre Seid, a 90-year-old manufacturing magnate, gave the massive sum to a nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the…

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Gang of eight wants to see Trump Mar-a-Lago search documents

Gang of eight wants to see Trump Mar-a-Lago search documents

Politico reports: The group of congressional leaders charged with reviewing the most sensitive intelligence information has asked the Biden administration for access to the documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s private residence in Florida, according to two people with direct knowledge of the request. The inquiry from the so-called “Gang of 8” comes as lawmakers from both parties seek to learn more about the unprecedented investigation into the former president. And it suggests that Congress is unwilling to be…

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Mike Pence owes the nation an explanation

Mike Pence owes the nation an explanation

George Thomas writes: On January 6, 2021, from a parking garage under the Capitol Visitor Center, then–Vice President Mike Pence ordered the military to defend the Capitol against a violent insurrection. According to a taped deposition of General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pence “issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders” to him and Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller: “Get the military down here. Get the Guard here. Put down this situation.” This is a…

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In the Kremlin-controlled news media, the war is about Western plans to subjugate Russians

In the Kremlin-controlled news media, the war is about Western plans to subjugate Russians

The New York Times reports: “Vesti Nedeli,” the flagship weekly roundup of Kremlin-controlled television news, recently portrayed a long history of predatory Western powers coming to grief when they invaded Russia: Sweden in the 18th century, France in the 19th, Germany in the 20th. Enemies now seek to reverse those losses, said Dmitry Kiselyov, the show’s host, blaming the West for the war that Russia instigated in Ukraine. The goal to finish off Russia is “centuries old and unchanging,” he…

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