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Category: Politics

Prominent conservatives issue report rebutting Trump election claims

Prominent conservatives issue report rebutting Trump election claims

CNN reports: A group of conservatives, including prominent lawyers and retired federal judges, issued a 72-page report on Thursday categorically rebutting each of the claims made in court by former President Donald Trump and his supporters over the 2020 election results. The report, “LOST, NOT STOLEN: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election,” looked at more than 60 court cases Trump and his supporters filed and lost in six key battleground states. It reached…

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Young voters are fed up with their elderly leaders

Young voters are fed up with their elderly leaders

The New York Times reports: Alexandra Chadwick went to the polls in 2020 with the singular goal of ousting Donald J. Trump. A 22-year-old first time voter, she saw Joseph R. Biden Jr. as more of a safeguard than an inspiring political figure, someone who could stave off threats to abortion access, gun control and climate policy. Two years later, as the Supreme Court has eroded federal protections on all three, Ms. Chadwick now sees President Biden and other Democratic…

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What’s next after Supreme Court’s climate ruling?

What’s next after Supreme Court’s climate ruling?

Dana Nuccitelli writes: The Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling in the West Virginia v. EPA, as detailed by Lexi Smith on this site, substantially curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate climate pollutants. Though the language of the decision itself appears to be narrow – limiting the extent of regulatory options for existing power plants under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act – it also elevated the newly-conceived “major questions doctrine.” That principle holds that any “major” new…

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‘Ancient ethnic hatreds’ is poor shorthand and dangerous

‘Ancient ethnic hatreds’ is poor shorthand and dangerous

Marko Attila Hoare writes: The pop group U2 staged a concert in Sarajevo in September 1997 that I attended when I was a 25-year-old student doing fieldwork in the city. I got talking to another foreign visitor who was sitting next to me, a young North American about my age. He told me he preferred women with dark features, so in Sarajevo he was most attracted to the Muslim girls. It was a comment that exemplified the way visitors often…

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The threat of political violence is now at the heart of the MAGA Republican movement

The threat of political violence is now at the heart of the MAGA Republican movement

The Center for American Progress Action Fund reports: The insurrection on January 6, 2021, underscored the growing threat of political violence in the United States. Far from being an isolated incident, American right-wing political violence and domestic terrorism has increased in recent years. Some of this violence comes in the form of mass shootings; some comes in the form of specific threats against politicians and poll workers; and some comes in the form of the insurrectionist riot at the Capitol…

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U.S. calls for end of forced deportations of Ukrainians being sent to Russian concentration camps

U.S. calls for end of forced deportations of Ukrainians being sent to Russian concentration camps

Politico reports: The United States has called on Russia to immediately stop its systematic “filtration” and forced deportation of millions of Ukrainians in territories under Moscow’s control and to allow outside observers access to camps through which they pass. “The unlawful transfer and deportation of protected persons is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians and is a war crime,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Wednesday. Blinken said Russian authorities have “ interrogated, detained, and forcibly…

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Nature is in crisis. A UN report says short-sighted economics is to blame

Nature is in crisis. A UN report says short-sighted economics is to blame

Grist reports: When governments make decisions, economic considerations often trump everything else — human well-being, social connections, the health of the environment. According to a new report from the United Nations, this imbalance is driving the global biodiversity crisis and the human suffering associated with it. “Despite the diversity of nature’s values,” the report says, “most policymaking approaches have prioritized a narrow set of values at the expense of both nature and society, as well as future generations.” It calls…

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More than 200 congressional staffers urge Pelosi and Schumer to act on climate or risk dooming younger generations

More than 200 congressional staffers urge Pelosi and Schumer to act on climate or risk dooming younger generations

CNN reports: In a rare move, more than 200 congressional staffers have sent a letter to Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, demanding they close the deal on a climate and clean energy package and warning that failure could doom younger generations. “We’ve crafted the legislation necessary to avert climate catastrophe. It’s time for you to pass it,” the staffers wrote in a letter, sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday evening….

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Russia’s war against Ukraine has turned into terrorism

Russia’s war against Ukraine has turned into terrorism

Anne Applebaum writes: Red Cross packages are lined up along the sidewalk in Serhiivka, a small town in the southwestern corner of Ukraine. A man is unloading plastic bags stamped WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN from a truck whose front windshield has been completely shattered. On the other side of the plaza, people are sifting through used clothes provided by a Ukrainian charity. Someone points out a mother standing beside two young boys who, miraculously, were not at home the night that…

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Biden to visit a Saudi Arabia that is closer to Russia than ever

Biden to visit a Saudi Arabia that is closer to Russia than ever

The Wall Street Journal reports: As President Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich kingdom is closer than ever to Russia and has no plans to disengage from Moscow or help Washington by pumping more crude, Saudi officials said. The burgeoning partnership between Russia and the Saudis, rooted in their vast petroleum production capacity, has upended an oil-for-security arrangement between Washington and Riyadh that has lasted nearly half a century and been a central fixture of the post-World War…

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Putin set to visit Iran next week

Putin set to visit Iran next week

The Associated Press reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Iran next week, the Kremlin said Tuesday, a day after the U.S. warned that Tehran could provide Moscow with drones for its action in Ukraine. During a trip to Tehran next Tuesday, Putin will attend a trilateral meeting with the leaders of Iran and Turkey, the so-called Astana format of meetings for Syria-related talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Putin’s visit to Iran will follow U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip…

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How Russia is profiting from climate change

How Russia is profiting from climate change

Courtney Dobson writes: On Feb. 24, the Yakov Gakkel, a 3-year-old, ice-class tanker, departed from Montoir Port, France, for Sabetta Port within the Arctic Circle in Russia. For as long as the war in Ukraine has raged on, the Yakov Gakkel has made four return trips to Montoir Port and has since moved on to ports in Spain and Belgium, delivering one of Russia’s principal revenue generators: liquefied natural gas, or LNG. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s former chief economic adviser,…

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Germany braces for ‘nightmare’ of Russia turning off natural gas for good

Germany braces for ‘nightmare’ of Russia turning off natural gas for good

The Guardian reports: Germany is bracing itself for a potentially permanent halt to the flow of Russian gas from Monday when maintenance work begins on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that brings the fuel to Europe’s largest economy via the Baltic Sea. The work on the 759-mile (1,220km) pipeline is an annual event and requires the gas taps to be closed for 10 to 14 days. But never before in the pipeline’s decade-long history has Germany seriously been asking whether…

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Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina: ‘We have a new Hitler in Russia’

Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina: ‘We have a new Hitler in Russia’

The Guardian reports: When Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina left Russia in April this year, she went to Iceland, essentially a political refugee. She had been repeatedly arrested since early 2021, on specious charges – “violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules”, social media activity, attending a demonstration in support of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. She is no longer in Iceland, and speaks to me, as her fellow Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova did earlier this year, from an unnamed…

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January 6 committee zeroes in on Trump’s ‘clarion call’ to extremists

January 6 committee zeroes in on Trump’s ‘clarion call’ to extremists

Politico reports: The Jan. 6 select committee plans to make its most complex case yet at its public hearing Tuesday: that Donald Trump’s words and actions influenced extremists and brought them to the steps of the Capitol. “Be there. Will be wild,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, 2020, barely two weeks before a mob seeded with members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers besieged the Capitol and threatened the transfer of power to Joe Biden. That tweet will…

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Half Republican voters ready to dump Trump

Half Republican voters ready to dump Trump

The New York Times reports: As Donald J. Trump weighs whether to open an unusually early White House campaign, a New York Times/Siena College poll shows that his post-presidential quest to consolidate his support within the Republican Party has instead left him weakened, with nearly half the party’s primary voters seeking someone different for president in 2024 and a significant number vowing to abandon him if he wins the nomination. By focusing on political payback inside his party instead of…

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