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Category: Politics

Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake electors plot in seven states

Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw fake electors plot in seven states

CNN reports: Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme. The sources said members of former President Donald Trump’s campaign team were far more involved than previously known in the plan, a core tenet of the broader plot to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory when Congress counted the electoral votes on January 6. Giuliani and…

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Ukraine fears minor attacks are in Russia’s plan to destabilize the country

Ukraine fears minor attacks are in Russia’s plan to destabilize the country

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia wants to destabilize Ukraine using a variety of attacks, Ukrainian officials said, pushing back against a suggestion from President Biden that the U.S. and its allies would respond differently to a small-scale incursion than a full-on invasion. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday responded to Mr. Biden’s comment suggesting that Western nations weren’t in tandem on how to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the…

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Is Ginni Thomas a threat to the Supreme Court?

Is Ginni Thomas a threat to the Supreme Court?

Jane Mayer writes: In December, Chief Justice John Roberts released his year-end report on the federal judiciary. According to a recent Gallup poll, the Supreme Court has its lowest public-approval rating in history—in part because it is viewed as being overly politicized. President Joe Biden recently established a bipartisan commission to consider reforms to the Court, and members of Congress have introduced legislation that would require Justices to adhere to the same types of ethics standards as other judges. Roberts’s…

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80 years ago the Nazis took just 90 minutes to plan the ‘final solution’

80 years ago the Nazis took just 90 minutes to plan the ‘final solution’

The New York Times reports: On Jan. 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking officials of the Nazi bureaucracy met in a villa on Lake Wannsee on the western edge of Berlin. Nibbles were served and washed down with cognac. There was only one point on the agenda: “The organizational, logistical and material steps for a final solution of the Jewish question in Europe.” Planning the Holocaust took all of 90 minutes. Eighty years after the infamous Wannsee Conference that meticulously mapped it…

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How antisemitic conspiracy theories contributed to the recent hostage-taking at the Texas synagogue

How antisemitic conspiracy theories contributed to the recent hostage-taking at the Texas synagogue

Law enforcement officials outside Congregation Beth Israel synagogue on Jan. 15, 2022, in Colleyville, Texas. AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez By Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University The man who took a rabbi and three congregants hostage in Colleyville, Texas, on Jan. 15, 2022, believed that Jews control the United States of America. He told his hostages, as one revealed in a media interview, that Jews “control the world” and that they could use their perceived power to free Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani…

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A dam in Syria was on a ‘no-strike’ list but the U.S. bombed it anyway

A dam in Syria was on a ‘no-strike’ list but the U.S. bombed it anyway

The New York Times reports: Near the height of the war against the Islamic State in Syria, a sudden riot of explosions rocked the country’s largest dam, a towering, 18-story structure on the Euphrates River that held back a 25-mile-long reservoir above a valley where hundreds of thousands of people lived. The Tabqa Dam was a strategic linchpin and the Islamic State controlled it. The explosions on March 26, 2017, knocked dam workers to the ground and everything went dark….

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U.S. military emits more CO2 into atmosphere than entire countries like Denmark or Portugal

U.S. military emits more CO2 into atmosphere than entire countries like Denmark or Portugal

Sonner Kehrt reports: In the fall of 2018, Neta C. Crawford, a political science professor at Boston University, prepared to teach a class on climate change designed to help students think about the issue in a big-picture way. Crawford’s research expertise is in war, so she wanted to include a statistic on the military’s contribution to greenhouse gases. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should just tell them what the emissions are for the U.S. military,’” Crawford says. “It was meant…

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Allies wait on U.S. approval to arm Ukraine as invasion worries mount

Allies wait on U.S. approval to arm Ukraine as invasion worries mount

Politico reports: At least three European allies are waiting for the U.S. State Department to approve their requests to send U.S.-made weapons to Ukraine, as fears grow of a multi-front invasion by Russian forces and the Biden administration prepares to ship a new batch of weapons to Kyiv. Baltic NATO allies Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are looking to transfer American-made lethal weapons such as anti-armor and ground-to-air missiles to Ukraine, according to officials from those countries and people familiar with…

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New York attorney general outlines pattern of possible fraud at Trump business

New York attorney general outlines pattern of possible fraud at Trump business

The New York Times reports: The New York State attorney general, Letitia James, accused Donald J. Trump’s family business late Tuesday of repeatedly misrepresenting the value of its assets to bolster its bottom line, saying in court papers that the company had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices. The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s recent effort to block Ms. James from questioning him and two of his adult children under oath as part of a civil investigation of…

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Is Justice Dept. investigating the forged documents Trump used in his coup attempt?

Is Justice Dept. investigating the forged documents Trump used in his coup attempt?

Slate reports: Last week, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel referred to federal prosecutors a criminal investigation into who was behind a Dec. 14, 2020, certificate falsely attesting that Donald Trump won Michigan’s electoral votes. The next day, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas made a similar referral to federal prosecutors in his state. Those who had a hand in crafting and attempting to submit false certificates of electors may have committed multiple crimes, including forgery and fraud. The actions of…

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Inspired by King’s words, experts say the fight for climate justice anywhere is a fight for climate justice everywhere

Inspired by King’s words, experts say the fight for climate justice anywhere is a fight for climate justice everywhere

Inside Climate News reports: Terms like “environmental racism” or “environmental justice” were not yet part of the national lexicon when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. And while insider records reveal that the nation’s oil and gas lobby was being briefed that same year on the dangers of rising greenhouse gas emissions, the term “global warming” wasn’t credited with being coined until 1975, seven years after the civil…

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How Exxon is using an unusual law to intimidate critics over its climate denial

How Exxon is using an unusual law to intimidate critics over its climate denial

The Guardian reports: ExxonMobil is attempting to use an unusual Texas law to target and intimidate its critics, claiming that lawsuits against the company over its long history of downplaying and denying the climate crisis violate the US constitution’s guarantees of free speech. The US’s largest oil firm is asking the Texas supreme court to allow it to use the law, known as rule 202, to pursue legal action against more than a dozen California municipal officials. Exxon claims that…

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White House warns Russian invasion of Ukraine may be imminent

White House warns Russian invasion of Ukraine may be imminent

NBC News reports: The White House believes Russia could launch an invasion of Ukraine at any moment, press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday, warning that an “extremely dangerous situation” is building along the Ukrainian border. “We believe we’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point launch an attack on Ukraine. I would say that’s more stark than we have been,” Psaki said during her daily press briefing. The assessment comes as Secretary of State Antony Blinken travels…

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The big business of Uyghur genocide denial

The big business of Uyghur genocide denial

New Lines magazine reports: Around the time that [Vijay] Prashad denied the Uyghur genocide in the article for Globetrotter, he also appeared on a YouTube channel called The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow, casting doubt on the plight of the Uyghurs, which human rights monitors had by that time labeled a genocide. “What’s the evidence?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, there’s none, really.” There is plenty, according to Amnesty International. “Amnesty has documented how Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic…

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Tentative Mideast reconciliations may grow with Iran deal

Tentative Mideast reconciliations may grow with Iran deal

Bloomberg reports: The Middle East, long known for rivalries, may be looking at a more peaceful future. Saudi Arabia and Qatar held a summit in January 2021 and ten months later the UAE foreign minister met the Syrian president, while its de facto ruler paid a visit to Turkey. This trend looks set to resume this year, with further tightening of ties between Iran and Gulf states potentially easing regional sectarian conflicts. This past week, a UAE renewables developer struck…

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How sympathy got displaced by scorn

How sympathy got displaced by scorn

Andrea Stanley writes: After Andreea’s mom died of COVID-19 in April, the harassment started. Noxious messages started coming in after she wrote a Facebook post letting friends and family know about her loss. One person messaged her to say they couldn’t believe her mother hadn’t protected herself. Andreea has since deleted most of the other messages, but she remembers people saying things like “I can’t believe your mom was an anti-vaxxer” and “I can’t believe she didn’t understand that COVID…

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