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Category: Politics

U.S. oil blockade of Venezuela is pushing Cuba toward economic collapse

U.S. oil blockade of Venezuela is pushing Cuba toward economic collapse

The Wall Street Journal reports: Cubans are going hungry, suffering from spreading disease and sleeping outdoors with no electricity to power fans through the sweltering nights. A quarter of the population has fled during the island’s most prolonged economic crisis. And it’s about to get worse. The U.S. is ratcheting up pressure on Havana’s key benefactor, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which has kept the Communist-ruled nation afloat with cheap oil. Now Venezuelan oil exports are at risk thanks to…

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Tucker Carlson at center of raging battle for MAGA’s future

Tucker Carlson at center of raging battle for MAGA’s future

The Washington Post reports: Tucker Carlson had some concerns. So he called President Donald Trump. The right-wing podcaster and provocateur wanted to understand why the U.S. was attacking alleged drug smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela, and he warned against pursuing regime change there — a prospect that has alarmed the more isolationist “America First” Republicans in Trump’s movement. The conversations last weekend, which Carlson recalled in an interview, show how the Fox News castoff is at the center…

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Turning Point USA is lining up behind a JD Vance presidential bid

Turning Point USA is lining up behind a JD Vance presidential bid

The Wall Street Journal reports: Before Charlie Kirk was fatally shot, he was readying for JD Vance to become the next president of the United States. Now, Erika Kirk is determined to make that happen. In her kickoff remarks for Turning Point USA’s first major event since his death, Kirk’s widow told the 31,000 attendees: “We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.” The vice president will be the…

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Paulina Borsook predicted the rise of tech fascism

Paulina Borsook predicted the rise of tech fascism

  Tech fascism didn’t rise in secret — it grew in plain sight. Why didn’t most journalists or politicians notice? In this episode of The Nerd Reich Podcast, host Gil Duran speaks with legendary tech critic Paulina Borsook, author of Cyberselfish, the prophetic book that warned about the rise of Silicon Valley authoritarianism and technofascism decades before Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and the far-right tech elite took power. We dive deep into how Silicon Valley’s toxic libertarianism evolved into a…

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If you are an American who isn’t white, you are at risk of being kidnapped by federal agents

If you are an American who isn’t white, you are at risk of being kidnapped by federal agents

Adam Serwer writes: Last July, while on his way to his job as a security guard at a cannabis farm in California, George Retes was tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and arrested by federal agents conducting an immigration raid. The agents ignored the license plate on Retes’s car and the sticker on his windshield, both of which identified him as a U.S. Army veteran, and did not even bother to determine whether he was a citizen before strip-searching him and locking him up…

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Reps. Khanna and Massie seek to find Bondi in contempt over Epstein files

Reps. Khanna and Massie seek to find Bondi in contempt over Epstein files

The Washington Post reports: Reps. Ro Khanna (D-California) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) said Sunday that they will seek to find Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress for not releasing more documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bondi’s top aide, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he didn’t take their threats seriously. Khanna and Massie wrote legislation that passed Congress nearly unanimously and was signed by President Donald…

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U.S. government’s historic role as trusted information source is under threat

U.S. government’s historic role as trusted information source is under threat

The Washington Post reports: The covid.gov website says covid-19 most likely originated in a Chinese lab, although scientists are in fact deeply divided over its origin. A widely read report posted on energy.gov/topics/climate concludes that humans’ impact on climate is relatively small, a finding sharply at odds with the scientific consensus. On DHS.gov, the government informs Americans that nearly 2 million undocumented migrants have “self-deported” this year, an assertion that mystifies researchers. And cdc.gov/vaccine-safety dismisses the conclusion that vaccines do…

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Adventure capitalism on the precipice: Climate denying grifters go into fusion

Adventure capitalism on the precipice: Climate denying grifters go into fusion

Announcing the planned merger of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and fusion power company, TAE Technologies, Michael B. Schwab (son of Charles Schwab, who just launched “Trump Accounts”), who is expected to be the chairman of the new company said: With the infusion of TMTG’s significant capital, TAE is on the precipice of scaling its leading technology to usher in a new era of energy abundance. The world needs energy, and fusion is the clear answer. The New York…

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China is pouring vast resources into fusion research

China is pouring vast resources into fusion research

The New York Times reports: China’s government has made fusion a national priority, marshaling resources at daunting speed. Recently, a Shanghai start-up essentially matched an engineering breakthrough by America’s best-funded fusion company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, in much less time. Over the summer, the Chinese government and private investors poured $2.1 billion into a new state-owned fusion company. That investment alone is two and a half times the U.S. Energy Department’s annual fusion budget. The two countries’ progress could soon be…

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Epstein files: ‘They’re delusional if they think this is going to go away’

Epstein files: ‘They’re delusional if they think this is going to go away’

Sarah Fitzpatrick writes: Jeffrey Epstein’s victims began the day believing they might finally get something they’d been requesting for years: a direct conversation with the nation’s top law-enforcement official before the Justice Department made public a full trove of long-buried documents and photos. The release of the Epstein files, as the department’s hundreds of thousands of investigative materials have come to be known, might finally provide clarity on what the government knew about Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme and when it knew…

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MAGA infighting over Israel and 2028 erupts at the Turning Point USA conference

MAGA infighting over Israel and 2028 erupts at the Turning Point USA conference

NBC News reports: For a second day in a row, a long-brewing internal fight among MAGA influencers spilled onto the stage of Turning Point USA’s first annual conference since the September slaying of Charlie Kirk, the organization’s co-founder. Podcaster Ben Shapiro, speaking on the AmericaFest convention’s opening night Thursday, ripped into right-wing broadcasters Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly, as well as white nationalist Nick Fuentes. At the core of his argument is a case that Owens…

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Steve Witkoff’s other backer in his unlikely diplomatic ascent: Vladimir Putin

Steve Witkoff’s other backer in his unlikely diplomatic ascent: Vladimir Putin

The Wall Street Journal reports: Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real-estate developer and longtime golfing partner of Donald Trump, was just days into his job as the new president’s special envoy to the Middle East when he received a tantalizing message from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Vladimir Putin was interested in meeting Witkoff—so interested that he might consider releasing an American prisoner to him. The invitation came from a Kremlin moneyman named Kirill Dmitriev, using the de facto Saudi…

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Trump is so sharp he can spot the difference between a hippopotamus and a giraffe, he claims

Trump is so sharp he can spot the difference between a hippopotamus and a giraffe, he claims

The Independent reports: President Donald Trump once again boasted about having “aced” three cognitive tests in wide-ranging remarks. As concerns around the 79-year-old president’s health and mental fitness continue to mount — particularly after his rambling speech earlier this week, apparently falling asleep at several events including a Cabinet meeting, and his controversial Truth Social post about late filmmaker Rob Reiner — Trump reminded a North Carolina crowd on Friday that he’s “aced” several cognitive exams and is in “perfect…

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Trump-appointed judge threatens to hold government in contempt over ICE detainee living conditions

Trump-appointed judge threatens to hold government in contempt over ICE detainee living conditions

The New Republic reports: A Trump-appointed judge was so upset with the living conditions in which ICE detained an immigrant in Long Island, New York, that he threatened to hold the government in contempt. U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, issued a 24-page ruling Thursday vehemently castigating the Department of Homeland Security for refusing to provide photos of a holding room that illegally held a noncitizen for multiple nights, calling it “putrid and cramped.”…

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Trump’s fraudulent pardons wipe out payments to defrauded victims

Trump’s fraudulent pardons wipe out payments to defrauded victims

The Washington Post reports: By the time a federal judge in 2023 sentenced convicted fraudster Trevor Milton to four years in prison, Salt Lake City businessman Liejo Supoto had long given up hope of recovering the more than $100,000 he had invested in Milton’s hydrogen-powered truck company. Supoto didn’t know that a federal law requires certain criminal offenders to pay what’s called restitution to compensate their victims for losses. In Milton’s case, prosecutors argued that the former CEO of Nikola…

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Trump moves to denaturalize American citizens, end birthright citizenship, and halt visa lottery

Trump moves to denaturalize American citizens, end birthright citizenship, and halt visa lottery

  The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to strip more naturalized immigrants of their U.S. citizenship, with The New York Times reporting that officials are seeking 100 to 200 cases per month. The news comes less than two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to decide the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship.