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Category: Politics

Democrats, you can’t ignore the culture wars any longer

Democrats, you can’t ignore the culture wars any longer

Jamelle Bouie writes: Almost 60 years ago, the historian Richard Hofstadter described what he saw as the true goal of McCarthyism. “The real function of the Great Inquisition of the 1950’s was not anything so simply rational as to turn up spies or prevent espionage,” he wrote, “or even to expose actual Communists, but to discharge resentments and frustrations, to punish, to satisfy enmities whose roots lay elsewhere than in the Communist issue itself.” Likewise, in a much more recent…

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The battle for Donbas: Why the weapons the U.S. is rushing to Ukraine are so critical

The battle for Donbas: Why the weapons the U.S. is rushing to Ukraine are so critical

ABC News reports: As Russia’s military gears up for what it hopes will be a decisive victory over Ukraine in the eastern part of the country, the U.S. is rushing to send weapons and equipment needed to hold off the larger invading force in the rural and open Donbas terrain — a far different battlefield from the urban fighting where Ukrainian forces held an advantage. What could make all the difference now is the new $800 million military aid package…

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‘What we now know … they lied’: How big oil companies betrayed us all

‘What we now know … they lied’: How big oil companies betrayed us all

The Guardian reports: There is a moment in the revelatory PBS Frontline docuseries The Power of Big Oil, about the industry’s long campaign to stall action on the climate crisis, in which the former Republican senator Chuck Hagel reflects on his part in killing US ratification of the Kyoto climate treaty. In 1997, Hagel joined with the Democratic senator Robert Byrd to promote a resolution opposing the international agreement to limit greenhouse gases, on the grounds that it was unfair…

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Fewer Americans see climate change as a priority than they did a year ago, CBS News poll

Fewer Americans see climate change as a priority than they did a year ago, CBS News poll

CBS News reports: With issues like the economy and inflation, crime, and the war in Ukraine weighing most on Americans’ minds, the percentage who think climate change needs to be addressed right now has dipped some since one year ago. This dip in urgency, while not steep, is widespread. Fewer people across age, race, and education groups, as well as partisan stripes, think climate change needs to be addressed right away than thought so a year ago. Still, most Americans…

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Obama warns social media disinformation is hurting democracy

Obama warns social media disinformation is hurting democracy

HuffPost reports: Former President Barack Obama said Thursday that disinformation on social media is hurting democracy, and that social media companies should be subject to regulation. “One of the biggest reasons for democracy’s weakening is the profound change that’s taken place in how we communicate and consume information,” Obama said in a speech at Stanford University. Obama noted that most people rely on search tools and social media as main sources for news and information, but warned a constant feed…

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‘We Build the Wall’ leaders who worked with Bannon plead guilty to fraud

‘We Build the Wall’ leaders who worked with Bannon plead guilty to fraud

NBC News reports: “We Build the Wall” campaign crowd-funders Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato pleaded guilty Thursday for their roles in pocketing donations solicited to help build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Kolfage, 39, and Badolato, 57, each pleaded guilty in federal court in New York City to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Kolfage, a triple-amputee Air Force veteran, also pleaded guilty to tax…

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Moral equivalence and Ukraine

Moral equivalence and Ukraine

Gabriel Schoenfeld writes: The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a criminal act: waging aggressive war, the supreme crime for which the Nazis were punished at Nuremberg. And Russian forces have also engaged in other crimes of war: the unremitting shelling and bombing of civilian targets like the martyr city of Mariupol, widespread rape, and the torture and murder of civilians, as seen in Bucha and other Kyiv suburbs as revelations come before the world. With every passing day, Ukrainian suffering…

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Some Kremlin insiders alarmed over growing toll of Putin’s war in Ukraine

Some Kremlin insiders alarmed over growing toll of Putin’s war in Ukraine

Bloomberg reports: Almost eight weeks after Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, with military losses mounting and Russia facing unprecedented international isolation, a small but growing number of senior Kremlin insiders are quietly questioning his decision to go to war. The ranks of the critics at the pinnacle of power remain limited, spread across high-level posts in government and state-run business. They believe the invasion was a catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years, according to ten…

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Trump’s most loyal lawmakers are actually losing money

Trump’s most loyal lawmakers are actually losing money

The Daily Beast reports: Last year, it was a fundraising feast for the MAGA Goon Squad. But in 2022, without the donor stimulus of an attempted insurrection, things are going in the wrong direction. The first three months of the year took more than $275,000 combined out of the pockets of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)—the foursome of America First, Donald Trump-loving, exhibitionist election objectors. All told, it was their…

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Bleak assessments of the Russian economy clash with Putin’s rosy claims

Bleak assessments of the Russian economy clash with Putin’s rosy claims

The New York Times reports: Russia’s central bank chief warned on Monday that the consequences of Western sanctions were only beginning to be felt, and Moscow’s mayor said that 200,000 jobs were at risk in the Russian capital alone, stark acknowledgments that undermined President Vladimir V. Putin’s contention that sanctions had failed to destabilize the Russian economy. The bleak assessments from two senior officials align with the forecast of many experts that Russia faces a steep economic downturn as its…

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The U.S. can prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes

The U.S. can prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes

Tom Nachbar writes: Since April 4, when President Biden accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a war criminal, many commentators have focused on how Russian leaders might be subject to international war crimes trials. But there is another option that should be on the table: a U.S. prosecution. It is a remarkable thing for the president of the United States to personally accuse a foreign leader of being a war criminal. Such an allegation should not be made unless…

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Rep. Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

Rep. Jamie Raskin on the climate crisis: ‘We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species’

The Guardian reports: When it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change – two of Jamie Raskin’s top priorities – the whole thing feels a bit like a game of chicken and egg to the Democratic congressman. On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit that is safe and necessary for human survival, while Congress stalls on a $555bn climate package. On the other, a pernicious movement, spurred by Donald Trump and other…

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Democratic state activists are working to decarbonize trillions. They don’t need Joe Manchin’s permission

Democratic state activists are working to decarbonize trillions. They don’t need Joe Manchin’s permission

The Nation reports: Republican state leaders are on the warpath against BlackRock, the largest financial asset manager in the nation. The company’s sin? Statements by BlackRock leadership that climate change is a long-term threat, and that the company will pursue investments that promote a reduction in emissions. In January, West Virginia declared that it was barring the company from managing its state pension funds. Texas passed legislation in February prohibiting any firm divesting from fossil fuels from managing state assets….

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Atrocities in Ukraine war have deep roots in Russian military

Atrocities in Ukraine war have deep roots in Russian military

The New York Times reports: In a photograph from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine, a woman stands in the yard of a house, her hand covering her mouth in horror, the bodies of three dead civilians scattered before her. When Aset Chad saw that picture, she started shaking and hurtled 22 years back in time. In February 2000, she walked into her neighbor’s yard in Chechnya and glimpsed the bodies of three men and a woman who had been…

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Here’s what the Facebook Papers say about Donald Trump, the 2020 Election, and January 6

Here’s what the Facebook Papers say about Donald Trump, the 2020 Election, and January 6

Gizmodo reports: In the hours following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, employees at Facebook tasked with preventing “potential offline harm” found themselves under siege by a mob of a different sort. Reports of abusive content from users were flooding in. As one employee put it in an internal forum, many of the flagged posts “called for violence, suggested the overthrow of the government would be desirable, or otherwise voiced support for the protests.” The same day, Instagram employees…

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Elizabeth Warren: Democrats can still avoid disaster in November

Elizabeth Warren: Democrats can still avoid disaster in November

Elizabeth Warren writes: Democrats are the party of working people. Ahead of the 2020 election, we advanced ideas and plans that we believed would, in ways big and small, make our democracy and our economy work better for all Americans. Across this country, voters agreed with us — and gave us a majority in Washington so that we could deliver on those promises. Republican senators and broken institutions have blocked much of that promised progress. Now Republicans are betting that…

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