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Category: Politics

DOJ is growing bolder yet, cutting legal corners to get Trump the headlines — and revenge — he wants

DOJ is growing bolder yet, cutting legal corners to get Trump the headlines — and revenge — he wants

Quinta Jurecic writes: The Justice Department is entering a hyperaggressive new era, cutting legal corners in service of getting President Trump the headlines—and revenge—he wants. Last month, Trump pushed out Attorney General Pam Bondi, reportedly because he was unhappy with her failure to secure legal victories against his enemies. Todd Blanche, for now the acting attorney general, seems to be campaigning for Trump’s nomination to replace Bondi: On his watch, the department has announced a spate of new prosecutions and…

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The last days of Butter Ridge Farm

The last days of Butter Ridge Farm

Eli Saslow writes: Their farm was called Butter Ridge, 326 acres of pastoral valleys and rolling hillsides just south of the New York State border. From his house at the top of the ridge, Brad’s father, Brian, could turn in every direction and see land that his family had once farmed. His grandfather Ivan Watson had run a large dairy operation just to the west, near the Susquehanna River. Ivan’s nine children had all gone on to become dairy farmers,…

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Majority of U.S. bases in Middle East damaged in Iranian strikes

Majority of U.S. bases in Middle East damaged in Iranian strikes

  At least 16 American military sites have been damaged in Iranian strikes, making up the majority of US positions in the Middle East, a new CNN investigation can reveal. The damage includes high-value targets, raising questions about America’s footprint in the region. CNN’s Tamara Qiblawi reports.

Trump sees himself as a world-historical figure — like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon

Trump sees himself as a world-historical figure — like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon

Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer write: Had President Trump, we wondered, possibly been reading or at least thumbing through—just maybe—the works of … Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel? Impossible. And yet. Hegel’s theory of “world-historical individuals,” men who redirected the course of humanity, focused on three figures: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Hegel described them as unlikely “heroes of an Epoch” for upending established orders that had previously seemed fixed. They were “practical, political men” who were each…

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Calling Trump a tyrant is not a call to violence

Calling Trump a tyrant is not a call to violence

Jonathan Chait writes: To describe Donald Trump as a corrupt aspiring authoritarian is not to conclude that he should be murdered. This ought to be a simple point to understand. Yet it is lost on a large swath of the American right, who insist that calling Trump what he is causes at least some of his opponents—among them, the accused shooter Cole Tomas Allen—to believe that violence is justified against the president. In an interview with CBS following the White…

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How Bernie Sanders convinced Democrats to oppose arming Israel

How Bernie Sanders convinced Democrats to oppose arming Israel

Politico reports: When Bernie Sanders moved last April to block a U.S. arms sale to Israel, only 14 Democratic senators joined the Vermont independent. What a difference a year makes: When Sanders objected to another Israeli arms sale this month, 39 other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus joined him — a sea change that has raised eyebrows from Washington to Jerusalem. In a recent interview, Sanders reflected on the sudden and massive shift, one that has some observers saying…

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Mirroring Gaza, Israel is destroying towns and villages in southern Lebanon

Mirroring Gaza, Israel is destroying towns and villages in southern Lebanon

NPR reports: The center of the village lies in ruins. A row of single-story shops blown out, goods scattered on the ground, glass shattered along the sidewalk. Homes and buildings are crumpled into themselves, unrecognizable. The mosque is blackened and burned, the minaret split in two. A Lebanese civil defense emergency vehicle is crushed next to the rubble, its windshield smashed. Mansouri, a small village in the undulating hills of Lebanon’s south is about six miles from the country’s ‘s…

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The race to mine critical minerals for AI and clean energy is creating ‘sacrifice zones’ that harm water and health of world’s poor

The race to mine critical minerals for AI and clean energy is creating ‘sacrifice zones’ that harm water and health of world’s poor

An artisanal miner holds a cobalt stone at a mine near Kolwezi, Congo, in 2022. About 20,000 people work there among toxic materials. Junior Kannah/AFP via Getty Images By Abraham Nunbogu, United Nations University and Kaveh Madani, United Nations University There is a troubling contradiction at the heart of the global transition to a cleaner, greener, tech-driven future: Modern technologies – everything from AI to wind turbines, as well as cellphones, electric vehicles and defense systems – depend on critical…

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Trump’s Iran war reaches Iraq- and Vietnam-era disapproval levels, poll finds

Trump’s Iran war reaches Iraq- and Vietnam-era disapproval levels, poll finds

The Washington Post reports: President Donald Trump’s war in Iran is as unpopular among Americans as the Iraq War during the year of peak violence in 2006 and the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, amid growing economic pain and fears of terrorism as a result of the military campaign. Sixty-one percent of Americans say that using military force against Iran was a mistake, with fewer than 2 in 10 Americans believing that…

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Supreme Leader says Iran is planning for ongoing control of Strait of Hormuz

Supreme Leader says Iran is planning for ongoing control of Strait of Hormuz

The New York Times reports: Iran’s supreme leader issued a rare statement on Thursday saying that the United States had no place in the future of the Persian Gulf region and making clear that his country planned to manage the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway going forward. In the defiant message, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei also vowed that Iran would retain its nuclear capabilities. The lengthy statement from the Iranian leader, who has not been seen in public since he was…

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Trump family set to profit from Iran war through major drone deal

Trump family set to profit from Iran war through major drone deal

The Daily Beast reports: The Trump family is officially set to cash in on the president’s war on Iran by selling drones to the Air Force. Donald Trump’s elder sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, joined the board of drone-maker Powerus after a golf club company they backed merged with it in March to take it public. Powerus, based in West Palm Beach, the home of Trump International Golf Club, now stands to gain from its links to the first family….

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Pakistan opens up road trade routes into Iran amid Hormuz blockade

Pakistan opens up road trade routes into Iran amid Hormuz blockade

Al Jazeera reports: Pakistan has opened six overland transit routes for goods destined for Iran, formalising a road corridor through its territory as thousands of containers remain stranded at Karachi port because of the United States blockade of Iranian ports and ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The Ministry of Commerce issued the Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026 on April 25, bringing it into immediate effect. The order allows goods originating from third…

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Silicon Valley may summon a permanent underclass through its own market logic

Silicon Valley may summon a permanent underclass through its own market logic

Jasmine Sun writes: Most people I know in the A.I. industry think the median person is screwed, and they have no idea what to do about it. I live in San Francisco, among the young researchers earning million-dollar salaries and the start-up founders competing to build the next unicorn. While Silicon Valley has long warned about the risk of rogue A.I., it has recently woken up to a more mundane nightmare: one in which many ordinary people lose their economic…

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A dark-money campaign is paying influencers to frame Chinese AI as a threat to Americans

A dark-money campaign is paying influencers to frame Chinese AI as a threat to Americans

Wired reports: In an Instagram video posted on April 1, lifestyle influencer Melissa Strahle poses outdoors before an American flag as soft instrumental music plays. “AI lets me focus on what matters most,” she tells her 1.4 million followers. “We need to invest in American-made AI to ensure America leads the way in innovation and job creation.” Strahle labeled the post an advertisement, but she didn’t disclose what organization had paid for it. It turns out the funding came from…

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The Roberts Court is defending white supremacy

The Roberts Court is defending white supremacy

Adam Serwer writes: For the conservative editor and columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick, the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation was an atrocity. Brown v. Board of Education, he wrote in the 1950s, was a “revolutionary act by a judicial junta which simply seized power.” He warned in 1963 that the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would destroy “the whole basis of individual liberty.” And in a 1965 National Review cover story, he argued that in order to “give…

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Supreme Court paves the way for largest-ever drop in Black representation in Congress

Supreme Court paves the way for largest-ever drop in Black representation in Congress

NPR reports: A historic drop in representation by Black members of Congress may be on the way after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision Wednesday to further weaken the Voting Rights Act. Now that the high court’s conservative majority has reinterpreted longstanding provisions against racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Republican calls for new rounds of map drawing for the House of Representatives have already begun. How much of that redistricting can be done in time…

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