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Category: Politics

What helped Biden get elected is now harming his ability to be heard

What helped Biden get elected is now harming his ability to be heard

Lili Loofbourow writes: How many speeches would you guess that President Joe Biden has made—since Nov. 1, say—on the landmark infrastructure bill that just got passed in Congress? How many have you heard or caught snippets of or had someone mention to you? If your answer to the former is nowhere near the correct number (six), and your answer to the latter is somewhere closer to zero, you are not alone. Biden isn’t a major attraction, and that may be…

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Justice Department sues Texas over Republican-approved redistricting maps

Justice Department sues Texas over Republican-approved redistricting maps

CNN reports: The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Monday challenging legislative maps adopted by Texas Republicans in recent weeks that it says fail to recognize growth in the Latino population. The lawsuit alleges that the redistricting plan drawn by Texas lawmakers violates the Voting Rights Act. “The Legislature refused to recognize the State’s growing minority electorate,” the lawsuit, states. “Although the Texas Congressional delegation expanded from 36 to 38 seats, Texas designed the two new seats to have Anglo voting…

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Israel and Iran are on a ‘collision course,’ says Israel’s ex-head of Military Intelligence research

Israel and Iran are on a ‘collision course,’ says Israel’s ex-head of Military Intelligence research

The Times of Israel reports: Several months after the 2013 election of former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, Aviv Kohavi submitted a position paper to then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he pointed to a significant, strategic shift underway in the Islamic Republic. Kohavi, who currently serves as IDF chief of staff, was the head of the Military Intelligence unit at the time, and he relayed his assessment that Iran was becoming more moderate and willing to negotiate an agreement with…

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Facing economic collapse, Afghanistan is gripped by starvation

Facing economic collapse, Afghanistan is gripped by starvation

The New York Times reports: One by one, women poured into the mud brick clinic, the frames of famished children peeking out beneath the folds of their pale gray, blue and pink burqas. Many had walked for more than an hour across this drab stretch of southern Afghanistan, where parched earth meets a washed-out sky, desperate for medicine to pump life back into their children’s shrunken veins. For months, their once-daily meals had grown more sparse as harvests failed, wells…

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China seeks first military base on Africa’s Atlantic coast, U.S. intelligence finds

China seeks first military base on Africa’s Atlantic coast, U.S. intelligence finds

The Wall Street Journal reports: Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials. The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings. But they said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at…

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Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

NPR reports: Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. That’s according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic. NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across…

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Why I stopped writing about Syria

Why I stopped writing about Syria

Asser Khattab writes: When the war broke out in 2011 and many of us quickly grew accustomed to its horrors, programming my days around the possibility of rockets or mortar shells falling around me became increasingly ordinary, like picking clothes appropriate for the weather. And when I had to escape, it was just another thing that I had to do. The night before I left, I went to the bar, raised a glass to the good old days with the…

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What happened to the ideal of multi-religious Arab modernity?

What happened to the ideal of multi-religious Arab modernity?

Ussama Makdisi writes: By the time I was born in 1968, my grandfather was an emeritus professor and a pillar of Ras Beirut’s small and highly educated Protestant community. But by then, as well, the optimism of the first half of the 20th century had receded dramatically. European empires had long since cynically partitioned the Ottoman Empire and created several new states including Lebanon. The Arab East, of which the small Mediterranean country was an inseparable part, witnessed the vibrant…

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U.S. intelligence sees Russian plan for possible Ukraine invasion

U.S. intelligence sees Russian plan for possible Ukraine invasion

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration’s growing alarm about a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine is based in part on U.S. intelligence that Moscow has drawn up plans for a military offensive involving an estimated 175,000 troops as soon as early next year. An unclassified U.S. intelligence document details some of the intelligence findings, including the positioning of what officials say could eventually be 100 battalion tactical groups, as well as heavy armor, artillery and other equipment. The…

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Meet the Trump fanatics who have taken over elections in a critical swing state

Meet the Trump fanatics who have taken over elections in a critical swing state

Roger Kerson writes: When Donald Trump was scrambling in November of 2020 to overturn an election he clearly lost, my home state of Michigan was directly in his crosshairs. Nancy Tiseo, a Republican activist from Macomb County—home to the legendary “Reagan Democrats”—was ready to join him on the ramparts. Tiseo’s prescription: The president should declare martial law, call off the December meeting of the Electoral College, and cancel January Senate runoffs in Georgia. “Military tribunals” are needed, Tiseo wrote on…

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Hamas terror listing is yet another UK betrayal of the Palestinians

Hamas terror listing is yet another UK betrayal of the Palestinians

Avi Shlaim writes: British Home Secretary Priti Patel has declared her intention to proscribe the whole of Hamas – the Islamic resistance movement that rules the Gaza Strip – as a terrorist organisation. The military wing of the group was proscribed in the UK back in March 2001. Twenty years on, the home secretary proposes to extend this ban to the political wing by arguing that the distinction between the two wings is no longer tenable. The truth of the…

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The Supreme Court will gaslight us until the end

The Supreme Court will gaslight us until the end

Dahlia Lithwick writes: Perhaps it would be refreshing if the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court no longer felt the need to lie to us. The lying, after all, is becoming nearly untenable—especially for an institution that relies on public confidence. After confirmation hearings in which they promised that stare decisis was a deeply felt value and that Roe v. Wade was a clear “precedent of the court” and “the law of the land.” there’s something sort of soothing about…

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Trump voters mirror Germany’s right-wing extremists

Trump voters mirror Germany’s right-wing extremists

Jonathan Chait writes: A recent international YouGov/Global Progress survey, which came to my attention via the Liberal Patriot, framed the political choice facing the public in an interesting way. It asked which position comes closest to the poll taker’s own belief: “We need to be vigilant against groups trying to impose new cultural values and views about religion, gender, immigration, or race that don’t reflect our society’s traditional values” or “We need to be vigilant against groups that undermine democracy…

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Steve Bannon’s Jan. 6 legal strategy: ‘Blowing up the whole system’

Steve Bannon’s Jan. 6 legal strategy: ‘Blowing up the whole system’

The Daily Beast reports: Steve Bannon—the right-wing media personality turned adviser to Donald Trump turned right-wing media personality again—became the first person in nearly 40 years to be indicted on a charge of criminal contempt of Congress last month after he refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Now, Bannon appears to be using his criminal case to go after the committee that went after him. Bannon is attempting to force investigators to potentially expose…

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The mantra of white supremacy

The mantra of white supremacy

Ibram X. Kendi writes: Below a Democratic donkey, the Fox News graphic read ANTI-WHITE MANIA. It flanked Tucker Carlson’s face and overtook it in size. It was unmistakable. Which was the point. The segment aired on June 25—the height of the manic attack on, and redefinition of, critical race theory, which Carlson has repeatedly cast as “anti-white.” It was one of his most incendiary segments of the year. “The question is, and this is the question we should be meditating…

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Raid the Republican Party to save the party

Raid the Republican Party to save the party

Martin Skladany wrote in March (and his argument is just as strong now): Democrats’ instinct after winning the White House and Congress in 2020 might be to stand back and let the Republican Party slowly self-destruct. Such inaction would not necessarily preserve democracy. A Trumpist GOP would continue to win elections, maintain power over certain states, and could regain control of the Senate or House in 2022. The responsibility of saving the Republican Party — and the rule of law…

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