Browsed by
Category: Politics

Trump’s national security strategy is now aligned with Russia’s vision, Kremlin says

Trump’s national security strategy is now aligned with Russia’s vision, Kremlin says

The Guardian reports: The Kremlin has heaped praise on Donald Trump’s latest national security strategy, calling it an encouraging change of policy that largely aligns with Russian thinking. The remarks follow the publication of a White House document on Friday that criticises the EU and says Europe is at risk of “civilisational erasure”, while making clear the US is keen to establish better relations with Russia. “The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision,” the Kremlin…

Read More Read More

Trumpian corruption is worse than Ukrainian corruption

Trumpian corruption is worse than Ukrainian corruption

Anne Applebaum writes: A few days ago I called Oleksandr Abakumov, a senior detective at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. I wanted to ask him about his investigation into a kickback scheme in his country’s energy industry. While we were talking, I got interested in Abakumov himself. As he was explaining his motivations, I was struck by the surprising contrast between people like him—the Ukrainian civil servants and civil-society activists who have been demanding transparency from their leaders for…

Read More Read More

The Ellisons: The billionaire family poised to rewire U.S. media in Israel’s favor

The Ellisons: The billionaire family poised to rewire U.S. media in Israel’s favor

Will Alden writes: In early September, the Hollywood producer Lawrence Bender — known for his work with Quentin Tarantino on films including “Pulp Fiction” and “Inglourious Basterds” — had what he later described as “a really tough conversation” with the investors in “Red Alert,” an Israeli miniseries that dramatizes the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. With just weeks remaining before the anticipated release on the second anniversary of the attacks, the show, produced by Israeli mass media company Keshet…

Read More Read More

Echoes of 1938 in 2025

Echoes of 1938 in 2025

Timothy Snyder writes: In certain ways, the autumn of 2025 in the United States has recalled the autumn of 1938 in Nazi Germany. The mass deportation of undocumented people was one of Hitler’s largest coercive policies before the war. That fall, the German police and SS rounded up Jews who lacked German citizenship and dumped them on the Polish side of the German-Polish border. This set off a chain of events which can give us a useful perspective on where…

Read More Read More

How a cryptocurrency helps criminals launder money and evade sanctions

How a cryptocurrency helps criminals launder money and evade sanctions

The New York Times reports: Smugglers, money launderers and people facing sanctions once relied on diamonds, gold and artwork to store illicit fortunes. The luxury goods could help hide wealth but were cumbersome to move and hard to spend. Now, criminals have a far more practical alternative: stablecoins, a cryptocurrency tied to the U.S. dollar that exists largely beyond traditional financial oversight. These digital tokens can be bought with a local currency and moved across borders almost instantly. Or they…

Read More Read More

Three-year-old child forced to serve as her own attorney in Tucson immigration court

Three-year-old child forced to serve as her own attorney in Tucson immigration court

The Copper Courier reports: Three-year-old Lucy approached the lawyer’s table wearing a multi-colored and floral dress and bright red pants. The child, barely old enough to talk, was one of 25 immigrant children forced to fight removal efforts by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at the Pima County immigration courthouse in Tucson on Nov. 24. Unable to reach the chair on her own, Lucy was lifted into the seat by Ana Islas, a lawyer with the Florence Immigrant and…

Read More Read More

During the Trump era, political violence has become an increasingly urgent problem

During the Trump era, political violence has become an increasingly urgent problem

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: Around two in the morning on April 13th, an out-of-work car mechanic named Cody Balmer climbed over a metal perimeter fence outside the Pennsylvania governor’s residence. In a backpack, he’d brought a sledgehammer and several Molotov cocktails, which he’d made by pouring gasoline siphoned from a lawnmower into Heineken bottles. It took just a few seconds for Balmer to cross a small, well-kept courtyard and reach the south side of the building, a twenty-nine-thousand-square-foot Georgian mansion overlooking…

Read More Read More

America must reject nationality-based discrimination

America must reject nationality-based discrimination

Amanda Frost writes: Sixty years ago, the United States abolished immigration restrictions based on nationality alone. By 1965, such discrimination had become an embarrassment. In an emotional ceremony by the Statue of Liberty, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared that the legislation he was signing “corrects a cruel and enduring wrong” and makes Americans “truer to ourselves both as a country and as a people.” Now the Trump administration is reviving nationality-based discrimination. After an Afghan refugee was arrested in the…

Read More Read More

Minneapolis police chief warns officers: Stop unlawful force by ICE or lose your job

Minneapolis police chief warns officers: Stop unlawful force by ICE or lose your job

MS Now reports: Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara issued a stern warning to his officers on Thursday: Intervene when you see Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents using unlawful force or lose your job. “If unlawful force is being used by any law enforcement officer against any person in this city and one of our officers is there, absolutely, I expect them to intervene, or they’ll be fired,” O’Hara said when asked how his officers should respond to excessive force by…

Read More Read More

Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed

Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed

Rebecca Solnit writes: As Donald Trump deteriorates and his grasp on power fades, he has been lashing out furiously at female journalists and ethnic groups, most recently Somali Americans. His insults land because of their animosity and his power, not their accuracy. Likewise, his administration’s attacks on immigrants are sloppy and driven by lies. It’s strikingly clear that the target is not individuals with criminal records. It’s anyone and everyone guilty of being brown. Native Americans with tribal identification cards,…

Read More Read More

Pete Hegseth is seriously testing Trump’s ‘no scalps’ rule

Pete Hegseth is seriously testing Trump’s ‘no scalps’ rule

The Atlantic reports: The suspected drug traffickers, the lone survivors of a U.S. airstrike, were sprawled on a table-size piece of floating wreckage in the Caribbean for more than 40 minutes. They were unarmed, incommunicado, and adrift as they repeatedly attempted to right what remained of their boat. At one point, the men raised their arms and seemed to signal to the U.S. aircraft above, a gesture some who watched a video of the incident interpreted as a sign of…

Read More Read More

U.S. leader of global neo-Nazi terrorist group signals retribution for arrests in Spain

U.S. leader of global neo-Nazi terrorist group signals retribution for arrests in Spain

The Guardian reports: After Spanish police and Europol’s counter-terrorism section arrested three suspected members of the Base – a globally proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group – in the eastern province of Castellón, its American leader living in Russia was defiant and signaled further actions. In a text message to the Guardian, Rinaldo Nazzaro called the arrests another “example of political persecution” by world governments that are “further justifying our resistance to its hegemonic rule by any means necessary”. The group’s presence…

Read More Read More

The end of the Israel exception: A new paradigm for American policy

The end of the Israel exception: A new paradigm for American policy

Andrew P. Miller writes: The bond between the United States and Israel has remained extraordinarily close for three decades. The United States has remained in lockstep with Israel through the heady days of the 1990s peace process with the Palestine Liberation Organization; the second intifada, the five-year Palestinian uprising that began in 2000; and then, over the next two decades, a series of conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. The bond endured through Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel…

Read More Read More

Why doesn’t Trump pay a political price for his racism?

Why doesn’t Trump pay a political price for his racism?

Adam Serwer writes: During a White House meeting on Tuesday, surrounded by his Cabinet, President Donald Trump referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage” and said, “We don’t want them in our country.” No one in Trump’s Cabinet stood up to this expression of gutter racism, although Vice President J. D. Vance enthusiastically banged on the table. The president’s remarks were ostensibly in response to real events—in Minnesota, dozens of members of the Somali diaspora have been implicated in fraud related…

Read More Read More

Trump threatens European sovereignty by promoting ‘resistance’ and ethnonationalism

Trump threatens European sovereignty by promoting ‘resistance’ and ethnonationalism

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s administration has said Europe faces “civilisational erasure” within the next two decades as a result of migration and EU integration, arguing in a policy document that the US must “cultivate resistance” within the continent to “Europe’s current trajectory”. Billed as “a roadmap to ensure America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history and the home of freedom on earth”, the US National Security Strategy makes explicit Washington’s support for Europe’s nationalist far-right…

Read More Read More

Trump’s pardons for drug traffickers and fraudsters is upending the justice system

Trump’s pardons for drug traffickers and fraudsters is upending the justice system

The Financial Times reports: It took dozens of special agents the best part of a decade to bring Juan Orlando Hernández to justice for flooding US cities with cocaine. Then, in a single social media post last week, Donald Trump set the former Honduran president free. “People risked their lives for this investigation,” said a former agent at the US Drug Enforcement Administration, one of several law enforcement officials involved in tracking Hernández who voiced their frustration to the Financial…

Read More Read More