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Category: Politics

Is there anything FBI Director Kash Patel won’t do for Trump before the midterms?

Is there anything FBI Director Kash Patel won’t do for Trump before the midterms?

Sarah Fitzpatrick writes: Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed before God, Fox Nation, and Donald Trump that he would punish the “deep state” for its manifold transgressions, especially the (actually nonexistent) conspiracy to steal the 2020 election. “I’ve been with the president nearly since day one on this,” he said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo. “I can announce on your show that we’ve got all the information we need. We’re working with our prosecutors at the Department…

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Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel’s liberal elite

Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel’s liberal elite

Sebastian Ben Daniel (John Brown) writes: For decades, the liberal camp in Israel has cultivated a convenient and effective defense mechanism. When faced with uncomfortable moral questions about Israel’s actions, responsibility could usually be assigned to the political fringes. The culprits were always the “bad apples”: hilltop youth, far-right ministers, a rogue infantry unit, settlers nobody in north Tel Aviv would invite to dinner. This division of labor was remarkably convenient. The right committed the crimes; the liberals supplied the…

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National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion in funds mandated by Congress

National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion in funds mandated by Congress

The New York Times reports: The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times. The extraordinary move — holding back about one-fifth of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget — is the latest sign of how the Trump administration is finding creative ways to work around Congress. Lawmakers from both parties…

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How Jared Kushner has profited from the Gaza genocide

How Jared Kushner has profited from the Gaza genocide

CNN reports: At the same time Jared Kushner has acted as a key negotiator in the war in Gaza, his private equity company, Affinity Partners, has held the largest stake in an Israeli firm backing businesses involved in Israel’s military campaigns, a CNN investigation has found. Kushner has skirted deeper scrutiny of this potential conflict of interest by acting as a volunteer envoy, rather than accepting a government job that would require him to disclose his finances. In the process,…

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Hegseth puts the future of warfare in the hands of major MAGA donors

Hegseth puts the future of warfare in the hands of major MAGA donors

The Guardian reports: By installing the tech billionaires Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey to advisory roles in a Pentagon project about the future of warfare, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, bestowed extraordinary influence on two of Maga’s most significant campaign donors – and both men own companies that benefit from federal defense contracting. The new project, which Hegseth dubbed “Project Meridian” in an event in Quantico, Virginia, on Wednesday, will be led by Pentagon official Emil Michael, a former Uber…

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Competitive authoritarianism in America

Competitive authoritarianism in America

Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way write: When we began writing about competitive authoritarianism a quarter-century ago, we never imagined applying the concept to the United States. Our initial study of 35 post–Cold War competitive authoritarian regimes centered overwhelmingly on postcommunist and lower- and middle-income countries with weak states and weak civil societies. But in the early twenty-first century, a set of “new” competitive authoritarian regimes emerged in countries with more established democratic institutions, such as Hungary, India, Poland, Turkey,…

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Renee Good’s family sues U.S. government and immigration officials over her killing in Minneapolis

Renee Good’s family sues U.S. government and immigration officials over her killing in Minneapolis

The Associated Press reports: Renee Good’s family sued the U.S. government and the architects of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown on Thursday, saying “the time is absolutely now for accountability” after her killing in January by a federal agent in Minneapolis. Good’s partner, Becca Good, and brother, Brent Ganger, accused the government and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot into her SUV and killed her, Jonathan Ross, of unjustified and excessive use of force. The Jan. 7 shooting,…

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Oil jumps 4% on reports China halts fuel exports, 10,000 more U.S. troops head to Middle East

Oil jumps 4% on reports China halts fuel exports, 10,000 more U.S. troops head to Middle East

Reuters reports: Oil prices ‌jumped on Thursday and settled up more than $4 a barrel, after a report said the US was sending more troops and carriers to the Middle East and China suspended oil products exports, stoking fears that global fuel shortages could worsen. The new front-month December Brent crude futures contract settled at $102.31 a barrel, up 4.37% or $4.28. US West Texas Intermediate crude futures finished at $92.87 a barrel, up 2.71%, or $2.45. A Wall Street…

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A CERN for AI

A CERN for AI

Elliot Jones, Senior Researcher, Ada Lovelace Institute, writes: Efforts such as the UK’s AI Safety Summit, and the follow-up AI Seoul Summit, have aimed to start an international discussion around AI safety and have led to the creation of national AI safety institutes in the UK, the US, Japan and Canada. There is a shared ambition to create an international AI safety network, and these institutes have begun to sign bilateral cooperation agreements. However, there is not currently a single,…

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Bill Gates: AI ‘makes nuclear weapons look like nothing’

Bill Gates: AI ‘makes nuclear weapons look like nothing’

  Ezra Klein: Bill Gates thinks A.I. alarmism hasn’t gone far enough. He believes the years ahead will be marred by catastrophic cyberattacks, bio-terrorism and mass job loss, unless the government acts. And he thinks the idea that the A.I. industry can just self-regulate is “insane.” I was struck in the conversation by how genuinely afraid Gates seemed to be that we are not ready for the consequences of what we are building, and how emphatic he was that so…

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FTC launches broad investigation into Anthropic, OpenAI

FTC launches broad investigation into Anthropic, OpenAI

The Washington Post reports: The Federal Trade Commission has opened a broad investigation into the safety of artificial intelligence systems made by Anthropic and OpenAI, a senior agency official said Wednesday. The full extent of the probe was not clear, but the FTC has wide authority to investigate unfair and deceptive practices that hurt American consumers. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an investigation that has not been made public. The investigation could provide backing for…

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OpenAI’s Greg Brockman backs out of second $25 million donation to AI super PAC

OpenAI’s Greg Brockman backs out of second $25 million donation to AI super PAC

The New York Times reports: The OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, have pulled out of a $25 million donation that they had planned to give to a leading artificial intelligence advocacy group, a sign of how sensitive the company has become to the growing backlash to A.I. The group, a super PAC called Leading the Future, said last summer and repeated in later comments that the Brockmans planned to donate a total of $50 million,…

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The FBI was hacked. We’ve seen the data

The FBI was hacked. We’ve seen the data

  Garrett Graff writes: In what might turn out to be the gravest intelligence breach of the FBI in history — and perhaps one of the worst in all of US history — a criminal hacking group is claiming to have compromised the bureau’s hiring and personnel records. The group, known as ShinyHunters, appears to have “exfiltrated” data on perhaps tens of thousands of current and former FBI employees, both agents and not, perhaps even effectively everyone who has been…

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The coming AI economic meltdown

The coming AI economic meltdown

Robert Kuttner writes: A new report to be presented today at the Brookings Institution shows that the total cost of the AI build-out through 2032 will be $10.3 trillion. That amounts to 3.63 percent of GDP per year, many times that of previous large-scale infrastructure investments, from the 19th-century canals, the railroads, telephone, and electric grids, to the interstate highway system. And unlike AI, whose benefits are speculative, unproven, and with hard-to-fathom risks, these earlier investments in infrastructure more than…

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Trump is ‘literally stealing’ $20M in taxpayer funds for pro-Trump ads

Trump is ‘literally stealing’ $20M in taxpayer funds for pro-Trump ads

The Associated Press reports: The Department of Homeland Security has tapped $20 million to pay for the campaign-style ads glorifying President Donald Trump that have drawn widespread criticism from Republicans and Democrats as a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars that likely runs afoul of anti-propaganda law. In a letter Tuesday to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, two top Democratic senators said that the money is being drawn from Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” and was supposed to go for…

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‘A massive power grab’: White House proposal threatens funding that helps disabled Americans vote

‘A massive power grab’: White House proposal threatens funding that helps disabled Americans vote

By Lisa Song This story was originally published by ProPublica Without Amy Miller, some elderly and disabled people wouldn’t be able to vote. The attorney for Disability Rights Nebraska travels the state, investigating the quality of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. As she reminds the residents how they can report abuse or neglect, she also offers voter registration forms. Last month, she helped a veteran with a traumatic brain injury fill out change-of-address paperwork so he could vote in…

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