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Category: Politics

After Bondi Beach shooting, Republicans are calling for a purge of Muslim immigrants

After Bondi Beach shooting, Republicans are calling for a purge of Muslim immigrants

The New Republic reports: MAGA world is calling for a mass deportation of Muslims, following a mass shooting in Australia—ignoring the reality that it was a member of the local Muslim community who intervened and stopped the violence. At least 15 people were killed Sunday in a horrific attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Two men—a father-son duo—allegedly opened fire on a crowd of Jewish Australians on the first night of Hanukkah. The country’s leadership has declared the incident a terrorist…

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BBC will fight Trump’s $10bn lawsuit, saying it should be dismissed

BBC will fight Trump’s $10bn lawsuit, saying it should be dismissed

The Guardian reports: The BBC is preparing to argue Donald Trump’s $10bn court case against it should be dismissed, arguing it has no case to answer over the US president’s claims he was defamed by an episode of Panorama. The development comes after Trump filed a 33-page complaint to a Florida court on Monday, accusing the broadcaster of “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious depiction” of the president in the documentary. On Tuesday, the BBC said it would…

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Trump’s callous attack on Rob Reiner shows a shameful moral failure

Trump’s callous attack on Rob Reiner shows a shameful moral failure

Anita Chabria writes: In a town — and a time — of selfishness and self-serving, Reiner was one of the good guys, always fighting, both through his films and his politics, to make the world kinder and closer. And yes, that meant fighting against Trump and his increasingly erratic and authoritarian rule. For years, Reiner made the politics of inclusion and decency central to his life. He was a key player in overturning California’s ban on same-sex marriage and fought…

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Trump officials celebrated with cake after slashing aid. Then people died of cholera

Trump officials celebrated with cake after slashing aid. Then people died of cholera

By Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy This story was originally published by ProPublica On the one-month anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, a group of his appointed aides gathered to celebrate. For four weeks, they had been working overtime to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, freezing thousands of programs, including ones that provided food, water and medicine around the world. They’d culled USAID’s staff and abandoned its former headquarters in the stately Ronald Reagan…

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John Roberts has been working to neuter the Voting Rights Act since the beginning of his career

John Roberts has been working to neuter the Voting Rights Act since the beginning of his career

David Daley writes: In 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was up for reauthorization, the Reagan Justice Department had a goal: preserve the VRA in name only, while rendering it unenforceable in practice. A young John Roberts was the architect of that campaign. He may soon get to finish what he started. Last month, at the oral argument in Louisiana v. Callais, a majority of the conservative justices seemed to signal their willingness to forbid any use of race data…

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The goal of AI development is ownership of the means of thinking

The goal of AI development is ownership of the means of thinking

Matthew B. Crawford writes: As near as one can tell, the business rationale for artificial intelligence rests on the hope that it will substitute for human judgment and discretion. Given the role of big data in training AI systems, and the enormous concentrations of capital they require to develop, the AI revolution will extend the logic of oligopoly into cognition. What appears to be at stake, ultimately, is ownership of the means of thinking. This will have implications for class…

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‘I didn’t vote for this’: DOGE cuts for public lands are waking a sleeping political giant in Montana

‘I didn’t vote for this’: DOGE cuts for public lands are waking a sleeping political giant in Montana

Cassidy Randall writes: The road to the tiny hamlet of Marion in northwest Montana is lined with the thick trees of the Flathead National Forest, with modern homesteads of trailers and modest homes dotting clearings here and there. Outside a timber frame café called the Hilltop Hitching Post, one of the only gathering spots for Marion’s population of less than 1,200, hunter Terry Zink pulled up in a dusty, well-used F-150 pickup and got out wearing a camo jacket against…

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Intoxicated by their wealth, power, and insularity, the billionaires are unprepared for a societal backlash

Intoxicated by their wealth, power, and insularity, the billionaires are unprepared for a societal backlash

Michael Hirschorn writes: An ever-more-stratified scale of luxury allows the staggeringly rich to avoid coming into contact with even the merely wealthy, let alone the rest of the world, “to glide through a rarefied realm unencumbered by the inconveniences of ordinary life,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. Chuck Collins, who gave away his family fortune and who now investigates inequality, describes it this way: “Wealth is a disconnection drug that keeps people apart from one another and from building…

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Germany’s Chancellor Merz compares Putin to Hitler: ‘He won’t stop’

Germany’s Chancellor Merz compares Putin to Hitler: ‘He won’t stop’

Politico reports: Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech Saturday evening, warning that the Kremlin leader’s ambitions won’t stop with Ukraine. “Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz said, referring to a part of Czechoslovakia that the Allies ceded to the Nazi leader with an agreement. Hitler continued his expansion into Europe after that. “If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop there,” Merz said, referring to…

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Cuba denounces U.S. seizure of oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast as ‘piracy’

Cuba denounces U.S. seizure of oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast as ‘piracy’

The Guardian reports: Cuban officials have denounced the US seizure of the Skipper oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday, calling it an “act of piracy and maritime terrorism” as well as a “serious violation of international law” that hurts the Caribbean island nation and its people. “This action is part of the US escalation aimed at hampering Venezuela’s legitimate right to freely use and trade its natural resources with other nations, including the supplies of hydrocarbons to Cuba,” the…

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American contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead

American contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead

The Guardian reports: Trump administration insiders and well-connected Republican businesses have been jostling to dominate pending humanitarian aid and reconstruction logistics in the shattered Gaza Strip, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Guardian. With three-quarters of Gaza’s structures damaged or destroyed by two years of Israeli strikes, the rebuilding effort to come – estimated at $70bn by the United Nations – could be a rich prize for companies that specialize in construction, demolition, transportation and logistics. But there’s…

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White-supremacist influencer, Nick Fuentes, is laying the groundwork to go even bigger

White-supremacist influencer, Nick Fuentes, is laying the groundwork to go even bigger

Ali Breland writes: Before each episode of America First With Nicholas J. Fuentes begins, a surreal mix of images and video clips runs, like a screen saver, for an unpredictable and seemingly eternal amount of time. Gentle plains of swaying grass, trickling streams, and the show’s logo flash across the screen. EDM kicks in. Psychedelic depictions of Christian imagery, including Jesus’s crucifixion, come and go. So do snippets of Fuentes talking about, among other things, borders, drag queens, and his…

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New Yorkers band together to protect street vendors from ICE

New Yorkers band together to protect street vendors from ICE

The Guardian reports: On a December day when temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, Street Vendor Project staff walked along a busy commercial street in the Bronx, handing out “know your rights” information to vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Several vendors mentioned they were scared after watching videos of immigration raids across the city. “We used to go around helping vendors apply for permits so they wouldn’t get fined,” said Eric Nava-Pérez, Street Vendor Project’s Spanish-speaking member organizer. “But now, we’re…

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Federal grand jury indicts Cincinnati ICE officer for sexually assaulting immigrants under his care

Federal grand jury indicts Cincinnati ICE officer for sexually assaulting immigrants under his care

CityBeat reports: A former Cincinnati-based officer with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency was indicted Dec. 8 for allegedly sexually assaulting detained immigrants under his care. Documents from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Ohio show that Andrew Golobic, 51, was arrested Dec. 7 for allegedly coercing sex from vulnerable immigrants. Golobic was an ICE officer between 2006 and 2020, operating from the agency’s office in Blue Ash. A federal grand jury charged Golobic with…

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Cincinnati ICE supervisor accused of strangling woman held on $400k bond

Cincinnati ICE supervisor accused of strangling woman held on $400k bond

CityBeat reports: A Cincinnati-based Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) supervisor is being held in Hamilton County Jail on $400,000 bond after allegedly strangling his partner. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations official Samuel Saxon, 47, was arrested on Dec. 5 after police say he attacked a woman he lives with in their Corryville apartment. In court Monday, an officer testified that police have been called to the apartment roughly two dozen times in the last year and a half. Prosecutors also…

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ICE is holding a Chinese man who documented Uyghur prison camps

ICE is holding a Chinese man who documented Uyghur prison camps

The Wall Street Journal reports: A Chinese citizen who fled the country after gathering evidence of alleged human-rights violations against the nation’s Uyghur population is at risk of being returned there after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his supporters said. Heng Guan is jailed in upstate New York awaiting an immigration hearing on Monday that could lead to his removal from the U.S. and ultimately land him back in China, according to his lawyer and a New…

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