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Category: Politics

DOJ to appeal Trump special-master order that has halted national-security risk assessment

DOJ to appeal Trump special-master order that has halted national-security risk assessment

Bloomberg reports: The US Justice Department will appeal a federal judge’s order for a special master to review documents the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, saying the ruling has thwarted a review of the potential national-security impact. The department also is seeking emergency approval to continue using the classified materials — including some with highest top-secret rating — that were removed from Mar-a-Lago as part of its ongoing criminal investigation into whether Trump or anyone else…

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Frontline: Lies, politics and democracy

Frontline: Lies, politics and democracy

  In “Lies, Politics and Democracy,” FRONTLINE examines how officials fed the public lies about the 2020 presidential election and embraced rhetoric that led to political violence. An epic examination of former President Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican Party, the documentary presents startling details from GOP insiders on how the indulgence of Trump’s authoritarian impulses and embrace of his rhetoric enabled his power over the American political system, leading the nation to a precarious moment in which most Republican…

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Federal grand jury probing formation and fundraising efforts of Trump’s Save America PAC

Federal grand jury probing formation and fundraising efforts of Trump’s Save America PAC

ABC News reports: A federal grand jury investigating the activities leading up the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the push by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the result of the 2020 election has expanded its probe to include seeking information about Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, sources with direct knowledge tell ABC News. The interest in the fundraising arm came to light as part of grand jury subpoenas seeking documents, records and testimony…

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Twenty-five percent of Republicans see Trump’s MAGA as threat to democracy, poll indicates

Twenty-five percent of Republicans see Trump’s MAGA as threat to democracy, poll indicates

Reuters reports: Days after Democratic President Joe Biden gave a fiery speech attacking former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies as an extremist threat, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Wednesday found a majority of Americans believe Trump’s movement is undermining democracy. Fifty-eight percent of respondents in the two-day poll – including one in four Republicans – said Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement is threatening America’s democratic foundations. Biden’s Sept. 1 speech marked a sharp turn for his efforts…

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Trump’s Truth Social in limbo as merger partner grapples with another failed vote

Trump’s Truth Social in limbo as merger partner grapples with another failed vote

The Washington Post reports: Former president Donald Trump has failed to win another vote — this time, from the shareholders of an investment ally his social network Truth Social had been counting on for cash. Digital World Acquisition, a special-purpose acquisition company, said Thursday it had not yet gained enough shareholder votes to extend its deadline for merging with Trump’s start-up — a necessary step to unlock $1.3 billion in raised funds. The company was scheduled for liquidation Thursday unless…

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In Moscow, the war is a world away

In Moscow, the war is a world away

The New York Times reports: On a recent evening in Red Square, a corps of elite paratroopers dressed in camouflage performed a battle-like dance with pyrotechnics. An Egyptian performer dressed as a pharaoh rode back and forth in a chariot wielding an ankh, the ancient Egyptian symbol of life, as a band played “Katyusha,” a Soviet-era patriotic war song. Nataliya Nikonova, 44, was one of thousands of spectators cheering from the bleachers at a festival celebrating the militaries of Russia…

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Michael Flynn: From government insider to holy warrior

Michael Flynn: From government insider to holy warrior

  The Associated Press reports: The crowd swayed on its feet, arms pumping, the beat of Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” thumping in their chests. The people under the revival tent hooted as Michael Flynn strode across the stage, bopping and laughing, singing the refrain into his microphone and encouraging the audience to sing along to the transgressive rock anthem. “We’ll fight the powers that be just/Don’t pick our destiny ’cause/You don’t know us, you don’t belong!” The…

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Elected officials, police chiefs on leaked Oath Keepers list

Elected officials, police chiefs on leaked Oath Keepers list

The Associated Press reports: The names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that’s accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report released Wednesday. The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work…

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‘They’re getting killed among women’: Skeptical female voters stand in way of GOP Senate

‘They’re getting killed among women’: Skeptical female voters stand in way of GOP Senate

Politico reports: Republicans this election cycle thought they had finally achieved a breakthrough with suburban women after years of losing support. Now, as the primary season has all but ended, the GOP is back where it once was: Appealing directly to skeptical female voters, the women whose support will make or break the party’s drive to retake the Senate majority. A sure sign: One after the other, Republican nominees in top Senate battlegrounds have softened, backpedaled and sought to clarify…

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Belarusian volunteers fighting against Russia in Ukraine

Belarusian volunteers fighting against Russia in Ukraine

Anne Applebaum writes: No revolutionary posters line the streets, “flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues,” as they did when George Orwell left Barcelona to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Nor can you hear loudspeakers “bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night,” as Orwell did in 1936. Instead, gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, the Belarusians preparing to leave Warsaw to join the Ukrainian army look more like a bunch of…

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Anatomy of an exodus from Russia

Anatomy of an exodus from Russia

Nick Foretek writes: On March 1, in a Moscow therapist’s office, Alevtina “Alya” Borodulina chose to leave Russia. The invasion of Ukraine had begun five days earlier. People called the new world “After 24,” marking the invasion’s date and the ruthless and irrevocable division of time it had created. Daily routines no longer structured life but instead gave way to existential concerns. Nostalgia now tinted the immediate past. It was her first therapy session, scheduled prior to the war’s outbreak…

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Indigenous Americans ruled democratically long before the U.S. did

Indigenous Americans ruled democratically long before the U.S. did

Bruce Bower writes: On sunny summer days, powerboats pulling water-skiers zip across Georgia’s Lake Oconee, a reservoir located about an hour-and-a-half drive east of Atlanta. For those without a need for speed, fishing beckons. Little do the lake’s visitors suspect that here lie the remains of a democratic institution that dates to around 500 A.D., more than 1,200 years before the founding of the U.S. Congress. Reservoir waters, which flooded the Oconee Valley in 1979 after the construction of a…

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Should the Justice Department appeal Judge Cannon’s incredibly flawed Trump special master ruling?

Should the Justice Department appeal Judge Cannon’s incredibly flawed Trump special master ruling?

Norman L. Eisen and Fred Wertheimer write: On Aug. 27, Judge Aileen Cannon issued a preliminary order indicating that she was inclined to grant Donald Trump’s request that she appoint a special master to review the documents that the government seized during its court-approved search of Mar-a-Lago last month. So her order on Monday enjoining the Department of Justice from using those materials in its ongoing criminal investigation until a special master completes his or her review was in some…

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Judge Cannon’s ruling is untethered to the law

Judge Cannon’s ruling is untethered to the law

Andrew Weissmann writes: One of the most dispiriting aspects of the decision yesterday by Federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon—which granted former President Donald Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI—is that it undermines the work of all the other judges who have tried to adhere to their oath to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and … faithfully…

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Legal experts question judge’s ‘deeply problematic’ intervention in Trump inquiry

Legal experts question judge’s ‘deeply problematic’ intervention in Trump inquiry

The New York Times reports: A federal judge’s extraordinary decision on Monday to interject in the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents at his Florida residence showed unusual solicitude to him, legal specialists said. This was “an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at University of Texas. Siding with Mr. Trump, the judge,…

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Video shows fake Trump elector escorted operatives into GA county’s elections office before voting machine breach

Video shows fake Trump elector escorted operatives into GA county’s elections office before voting machine breach

CNN reports: A Republican county official in Georgia escorted two operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump into the county’s election offices on the same day a voting system there was breached, newly obtained video shows. The breach is now under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and is of interest to the Fulton County District Attorney, who is conducting a wider criminal probe of interference in the 2020 election. The video sheds more light on…

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