Browsed by
Category: Politics

The CIA director in the middle of Trump’s deeply conflicted Ukraine policy

The CIA director in the middle of Trump’s deeply conflicted Ukraine policy

Shane Harris writes: Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky have never enjoyed a warm relationship, or even a stable one. But last week, it hit a new low. Trump called on the Ukrainian people to elect a new president, describing Zelensky as “more difficult to deal with” than Vladimir Putin. He accused Zelensky of prolonging Ukraine’s war with Russia. “He says he wants to settle, but he doesn’t,” Trump told Newsmax, without mentioning that it was Putin who started the war…

Read More Read More

‘Pure arrogance’: Anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for data center

‘Pure arrogance’: Anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for data center

The Guardian reports: Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone. After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of…

Read More Read More

Kyiv denies reports that Trump, Musk have restored Starlink speeds in Ukraine

Kyiv denies reports that Trump, Musk have restored Starlink speeds in Ukraine

Kyiv Independent reports: Ukraine’s military Starlink service is still operating at a speed cap of 161 kilometers per hour, a Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent on Oct. 22. The official’s statement contradicts claims quoted by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which reported on Oct. 22 that Starlink functionality was back to normal in Ukraine following a phone call between SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump called Musk on Oct. 21 to request he lift restrictions…

Read More Read More

Jared Kushner’s hacked phone revealed his secret negotiations — including over $700 million in transfers

Jared Kushner’s hacked phone revealed his secret negotiations — including over $700 million in transfers

Matthew Cole writes: In late spring 2020, a source I knew to be reliable called me with a story. The Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner’s phone and monitored him as he accessed a Dubai-based bank account. What was odd, the source said, was that the money in the account—hundreds of millions of dollars—had come from a bank in Azerbaijan. Most importantly, Kushner appeared to have transferred significant amounts of money from the Dubai account to other individuals, including…

Read More Read More

Judge restricts sprawling effort by DHS to find noncitizens registered to vote

Judge restricts sprawling effort by DHS to find noncitizens registered to vote

The New York Times reports: A federal judge in California on Wednesday blocked the Homeland Security Department from carrying out most field operations focused on uncovering voter fraud in nine states as part of a broader push to identify noncitizen voters. The ruling came less than two weeks before the midterm elections. The Trump administration has launched a blitz of operations focused on finding evidence of noncitizen voting or tying up election processes in states where it has dubiously claimed…

Read More Read More

Judge orders Trump to sit for a deposition in his defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11

Judge orders Trump to sit for a deposition in his defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump to sit for a deposition in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11. The order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett came as lawyers for the British broadcaster complained that Trump had delayed his appearance in his own lawsuit. Charles Tobin, attorney for the BBC, said that with two months left in the discovery period, “we still haven’t been able to depose the…

Read More Read More

U.S. and Israel draw up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after elections

U.S. and Israel draw up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after elections

The New York Times reports: The U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the American midterm elections, according to U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations. As planning for a short but intensive operation progresses, the U.S. and Israeli militaries have stepped up exercises, flying planes over Iraq to practice strike maneuvers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week to discuss new strikes, U.S….

Read More Read More

Billionaires want to buy this election. But it isn’t working

Billionaires want to buy this election. But it isn’t working

David Wallace-Wells writes: Two weeks from now, the midterm elections will deliver an explosion of narrative meaning: about the country and its future, the president and his movement and his legacy. But the election cycle has already taught us a couple of very important things about money’s place in our democracy. One, after about a decade of national confusion on this point, the Republicans have shown themselves to be the unmistakable party of wealth, particularly the smash-and-grab kleptocratic variety. And…

Read More Read More

Trump wants to punish Ilhan Omar for exercising her right to free speech

Trump wants to punish Ilhan Omar for exercising her right to free speech

Jamelle Bouie writes: You can understand the Trump administration as, in its essence, a cargo cult devoted to the illiberal tradition in American politics. At every turn, it seeks to instantiate a society where, as the historian Steven Hahn writes, “rights-bearing may be defined or limited by specific rulers or be based on communities of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender” and where “civil and political standing tend to be marked by social and cultural exclusions.” To this end, it uses…

Read More Read More

Military heat ray weapon considered for use at border and also against citizens protesting

Military heat ray weapon considered for use at border and also against citizens protesting

CNN reports: The Pentagon has given the Department of Homeland Security permission to test a military-grade heat ray and develop tactics to potentially use it in operations at the southern US border, according to a memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last month and obtained by CNN. The heat ray, officially known as the Active Denial System, is a nonlethal weapon that shoots an invisible beam of electromagnetic waves that can reach a little more than half a mile…

Read More Read More

How ex-cops gained access to a massive surveillance network

How ex-cops gained access to a massive surveillance network

The Washington Post reports: When Andrae Wright left his job as an investigator at the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office in 2021, he handed in his gun and badge. But he kept something powerful: his log-in credentials for Flock, a police tool he used to search a vast network of roadside cameras tracking the locations of passing cars. In the five years after leaving the force, Wright searched the system more than 60 times without being stopped by anyone at the…

Read More Read More

Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case

Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case

CNBC reports: Meta was ordered to pay $25 billion in penalties by a New Mexico court on Wednesday as part of a data privacy case that stemmed from the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal from nearly a decade ago. The penalty, revealed in a court filing, comes after a jury in a Santa Fe courthouse found in September the social media giant liable for misleading state citizens about how it safeguards and collects user data and prevents harmful information from flourishing…

Read More Read More

Hegseth meets with Netanyahu in Israel ahead of elections and possible escalation of Iran war

Hegseth meets with Netanyahu in Israel ahead of elections and possible escalation of Iran war

CBS News reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quietly visited Israel on Monday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a senior U.S. military official who spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. A second source involved in the matter in Israel confirmed Tuesday morning that Netanyahu met Hegseth. The unannounced visit came just over a week before Netanyahu’s party faces elections. It also comes after President Trump floated resuming…

Read More Read More

Palestinian citizens face a painful choice in Israel’s election: To vote or not

Palestinian citizens face a painful choice in Israel’s election: To vote or not

Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court of Israel to protest attempts to disqualify Palestinian citizen candidates from running in the upcoming elections. Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images By Tamir Sorek, Penn State Elections are typically framed as a choice for voters. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, however, the country’s national ballots pose more of a dilemma. Constituting about one-sixth of eligible voters in Israel, Palestinian citizens could hold the difference in a race expected to be close. But voting involves…

Read More Read More

EU’s top diplomat accuses the U.S. of pushing Ukraine to ‘surrender on Putin’s terms’

EU’s top diplomat accuses the U.S. of pushing Ukraine to ‘surrender on Putin’s terms’

Euronews reports: High Representative Kaja Kallas has sharply accused the United States of pressuring Ukraine to capitulate on terms exclusively favourable to Russian President Vladimir Putin, just as a new round of peace talks unfolded in Oslo, Norway. “American negotiators have been trying to push Ukraine into surrender for already almost two years, one and a half years now,” she told the European Parliament on Tuesday. “Why Ukraine hasn’t surrendered on Putin’s terms is because Europe has been supporting Ukraine.”…

Read More Read More

How Trump’s FBI purge saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn from a bribery investigation

How Trump’s FBI purge saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn from a bribery investigation

By Molly Redden, Avi Asher-Schapiro, William Turton and Kirsten Berg This story was originally published by ProPublica On March 3, 2020, Sen. Lindsey Graham walked into a private dining room at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C. Graham’s time was expensive. He was meeting with two executives and a lobbyist from a Hawaiian naval defense contractor called Navatek. And he had required them to commit to $40,000 in campaign contributions for a 45-minute meeting. Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, was confident…

Read More Read More