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Category: Politics

Don’t create panic, Ukraine’s Zelensky tells West

Don’t create panic, Ukraine’s Zelensky tells West

BBC News reports: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West not to create panic amid the build-up of Russian troops on his country’s borders. He told reporters that warnings of an imminent invasion were putting Ukraine’s economy at risk. On Thursday, US President Joe Biden said he believed Russia could attack its neighbour next month. Russia, however, denies it is planning to invade and on Friday its foreign minister said Moscow did not want war. While Russia has…

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Russia sends medical units to Ukrainian front

Russia sends medical units to Ukrainian front

The Wall Street Journal reports: Moscow has put what appear to be final preparations for an invasion of Ukraine by sending medical units to the front, moving to a level of readiness that it hadn’t reached in past buildups, according Western defense officials. While the moves don’t mean an attack is certain, they are prerequisites for battle and have intensified debates among Western allies over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions. The U.S. and European allies, particularly Germany and France, appear…

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Fox News is increasingly out of step with Republicans on Russia

Fox News is increasingly out of step with Republicans on Russia

David Frum writes: Night after night, the host of the top-rated show on Fox News repeats Vladimir Putin’s talking points justifying aggression against Ukraine and opposing U.S. aid to that threatened sovereign country. Tucker Carlson’s influence is felt across right-wing social media, where it is amplified by figures such as Steve Bannon, Mike Cernovich, Glenn Greenwald, and Mollie Hemingway. A highly visible coterie of socially conservative intellectuals also argues the case against helping Ukraine. Meanwhile, day after day, Republican officeholders…

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The Supreme Court is political and always has been

The Supreme Court is political and always has been

Jack Shafer writes: Everybody is two-faced about the Supreme Court. First, they fuss about the court having become a venue for politics. This was the position Justice Sonia Sotomayor took last month. Someone who votes reliably with the minority of justices who were appointed by Democratic presidents, she received a chorus of hallelujahs from her comrades when she worried aloud during oral arguments in an abortion case that if the court did not decide her way in the case, the…

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In GOP-run Georgia, forty-five times more people were denied the right to vote by mail in 2021 than in 2020

In GOP-run Georgia, forty-five times more people were denied the right to vote by mail in 2021 than in 2020

Mother Jones reports: “States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared last year. Facts on the ground in Georgia tell a different story. A new data analysis by Mother Jones shows that the number of voters disenfranchised by rejected mail ballot applications skyrocketed after the GOP-controlled legislature passed sweeping new restrictions on mail voting last year. The law enacted in March 2021 shortened the time people have to request and return…

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Americans’ trust in science now deeply polarized, poll shows

Americans’ trust in science now deeply polarized, poll shows

The Associated Press reports: Republicans’ faith in science is falling as Democrats rely on it even more, with a trust gap in science and medicine widening substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, new survey data shows. It’s the largest gap in nearly five decades of polling by the General Social Survey, a widely respected trend survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago that has been measuring confidence in institutions since 1972. That is unsurprising to more than a dozen…

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No, America is not on the brink of a civil war

No, America is not on the brink of a civil war

Musa al-Gharbi writes: According to a number of polls and surveys, significant majorities of Republican-aligned voters seem to believe the big lie that Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 US presidential election and, consequently, the Biden administration is illegitimate. Taking these data at face value, a growing chorus insists that we’re living in a “post-truth” era, where members of one political party, the Republican party, can no longer tell facts from falsehood. As a result of the Republican…

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What if Putin is bluffing?

What if Putin is bluffing?

Owen Matthews writes: The evidence for Vladimir Putin’s apparent intent on reinvading Ukraine is familiar enough, not least because it has been trumpeted by top officials in Washington and London over recent weeks with unusual and increasing emphasis. Some 170,000 Russian troops have been building up on Ukraine’s borders since October. According to U.S. intelligence sources, those troops’ commanders have been given orders to prepare detailed tactical plans for a land invasion. Russian agents have been preparing attacks and provocations…

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Ukraine crisis: Nord Stream 2 pipeline could be axed

Ukraine crisis: Nord Stream 2 pipeline could be axed

BBC News reports: Germany and the US have warned they could target a key Russian gas pipeline if the country invades Ukraine. A US state department spokesman said the Nord Stream 2 pipeline “will not move forward” if Russia were to attack. The controversial energy project is designed to double gas flow and runs from Russia direct to Germany under the Baltic Sea. It circumvents Ukraine, which relies on existing pipelines for income and is under threat from Russian forces….

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As ISIS resurges, U.S. is drawn back into the fray

As ISIS resurges, U.S. is drawn back into the fray

The New York Times reports: An audacious attack on a prison housing thousands of former ISIS fighters in Syria. A series of strikes against military forces in neighboring Iraq. And a horrific video harking back to the grimmest days of the insurgency that showed the beheading of an Iraqi police officer. The evidence of a resurgence of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is mounting by the day, nearly three years after the militants lost the last patch of…

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Overclassification of information undermines national security and erodes public trust, spy chief says

Overclassification of information undermines national security and erodes public trust, spy chief says

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. intelligence community’s approach to classifying vast amounts of information is so flawed that it harms national security and diminishes public trust in government, according to Avril Haines, President Biden’s director of national intelligence. The acknowledgment of such concerns about how the nation’s spy agencies choose what information to keep secret under various classification levels is among the most significant by a president’s sitting intelligence chief, government transparency advocates said, and could indicate broader…

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Putin is no chess master

Putin is no chess master

Eliot A. Cohen writes: A terrible thing may be impending in Ukraine. Undoubtedly, subversion, sabotage, and murder await, although such miseries have been going on for some time without the West paying much attention. But a Russian onslaught, to include air and missile strikes followed by an invasion, would be a lot worse. Thousands of people may die, and the foundations of European security would be rocked as they have not been since the early days of the Cold War….

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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is among the leading candidates to succeed Justice Breyer

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is among the leading candidates to succeed Justice Breyer

The New York Times reports: Attention quickly turned on Wednesday to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as one of a small number of likely options who could fulfill President Biden’s pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, after the disclosure that Justice Stephen G. Breyer has decided to retire. Judge Jackson, 51, already successfully went through the Senate confirmation process last year, when Mr. Biden elevated her from the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia…

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San Jose just voted to institute first-in-the-nation gun ownership requirements

San Jose just voted to institute first-in-the-nation gun ownership requirements

CNN reports: The San Jose, California, city council voted Tuesday night to adopt a first-in-the-nation ordinance requiring most gun owners to pay a fee and carry liability insurance, measures aimed at reducing the risk of gun harm by incentivizing safer behavior and easing taxpayers of the financial burden of gun violence. The council in the Silicon Valley city split the vote into two parts: the first approving the bulk of the proposal, including the insurance provisions, and the second approving…

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Biden says a Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘would change the world’

Biden says a Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘would change the world’

CNBC reports: President Joe Biden cast a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine in stark historical terms Tuesday, saying, “it would be the largest invasion since World War II.” “It would change the world,” said Biden, if the tens of thousands of Russian troops who have been amassing on the Russian-Ukrainian border were to launch an incursion into Ukrainian territory. Biden’s remarks reflect a growing consensus among experts that any conflict in Ukraine is unlikely to be confined to a small…

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