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Category: Politics

Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as uprising spreads

Iranian protesters attack Khomeini’s childhood home as uprising spreads

The New York Times reports: Three months into a nationwide uprising, Iranian protesters have turned their fury against the founder of the Islamic revolution and of the country’s theocracy, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Protesters set ablaze the museum of childhood home of Mr. Khomeini, who died in 1989, in his hometown, Khomein, on Thursday night, videos showed. Crowds of men smashed and stomped on a street sign bearing his name in the town of Khash, according to a video posted online….

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How to pay for climate justice when polluters have all the money

How to pay for climate justice when polluters have all the money

Bill McKibben writes: The climate summit just concluding in Egypt ran hard into one of the world’s greatest structural problems: most of the money is in the Global North, but most of the need is in the Global South. Nearly three hundred years of burning fossil fuels have produced much of that northern wealth, and now the resulting greenhouse gases are heating the planet and producing much of that southern need. So is there some way to mobilize that money…

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Iran will help Russia build drones for Ukraine war, Western officials say

Iran will help Russia build drones for Ukraine war, Western officials say

The Washington Post reports: After weeks of savaging Ukrainian cities with Iranian-made drones, Moscow has quietly reached an agreement with Tehran to begin manufacturing hundreds of unmanned weaponized aircraft on Russian soil, according to new intelligence seen by U.S. and other Western security agencies. Russian and Iranian officials finalized the deal during a meeting in Iran in early November, and the two countries are moving rapidly to transfer designs and key components that could allow production to begin within months,…

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Kherson’s resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces

Kherson’s resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces

The Washington Post reports: Ihor didn’t even know the first name of the person who contacted him. The man said he was a member of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and wanted to know if Ihor was interested in helping fight the Russians occupying his city of Kherson. “Sign me up,” Ihor responded. For months, the two kept up a coded communication over the Telegram messaging app. Sometimes Ihor would be asked to help pinpoint locations from which the Russians were…

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This week, billionaires made a strong case for abolishing themselves

This week, billionaires made a strong case for abolishing themselves

Anand Giridharadas writes: In recent years, a swelling chorus of Americans has grown critical of the nation’s bajillionaires. But in the extraordinary week gone by, that chorus was drowned out by a far louder and more urgent case against them. It was made by the bajillionaires themselves. One after another, four of our best-known billionaires laid waste to the image of benevolent saviors carefully cultivated by their class. It is a commendable sacrifice on their part, because billionaires, remember, exist…

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Ex-Russian spy flees to the NATO country that captured him, delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow

Ex-Russian spy flees to the NATO country that captured him, delivering another embarrassing blow to Moscow

Michael Weiss reports: “The Russians have no idea,” Alexander Toots, the head of Estonian counterintelligence, tells me, laughing. “They have absolutely no idea he is here. You can be the one to tell them.” Toots was referring to the defection of a Russian spy to Estonia. But Artem Zinchenko isn’t just any spy. He was the first agent of Russia’s military intelligence arrested by Estonia, in 2017, then traded back to Moscow a year later for an Estonian citizen in…

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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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