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Category: Politics

Trump’s East Wing blitz triggers chorus of disgust

Trump’s East Wing blitz triggers chorus of disgust

The Guardian reports: When Barack Obama roasted Donald Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the icing on the cake was a cartoon illustration of what the White House might look like if Trump ever became US president. The name “Trump” was emblazoned across the top in giant capital letters, followed by “the White House” in lurid purple cursive, then “hotel  casino  golf course” and “presidential suite”. The parody imagined gold pillars, a giant crystal chandelier and two scantily clad…

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The only check-and-balance that actually matters isn’t written in law

The only check-and-balance that actually matters isn’t written in law

Garrett Graff writes: The destruction this week of the East Wing of the White House has been uniquely shocking, a physical manifestation of what Donald Trump is doing to our presidency and our country — the excavators and heavy equipment demolishing a 120-year-old literal piece of American history feels in many ways a microcosm of so many Trump controversies. It came out of left field, with no real warning or public debate, no permissions asked or given, to serve Donald…

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Prominent Jews across the globe call on UN and world leaders to sanction Israel

Prominent Jews across the globe call on UN and world leaders to sanction Israel

The Guardian reports: Prominent Jewish figures around the world are calling on the United Nations and world leaders to impose sanctions on Israel over what they describe as “unconscionable” actions amounting to genocide in Gaza. Over 450 signatories, including former Israeli officials, Oscar winners, authors and intellectuals have signed an open letter demanding accountability over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The letter’s release comes as EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday amid reports…

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Trump considering offering ‘refugee’ status to white far-right English-speakers who oppose immigration

Trump considering offering ‘refugee’ status to white far-right English-speakers who oppose immigration

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans and Europeans who oppose migration, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The proposals, some of which already have gone into effect, would transform a decades-old program aimed at helping the world’s most desperate people into one that conforms to Mr. Trump’s…

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Generals and senior officers say trust in Hegseth has evaporated

Generals and senior officers say trust in Hegseth has evaporated

The Washington Times reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders, with his public “grandstanding” widely seen as unprofessional and the personnel moves made by the former cable TV host leading to an unprecedented and dangerous exodus of talent from the Pentagon, said current senior military officers and current and former Defense Department officials. Numerous high-ranking officers painted Mr. Hegseth’s Sept. 30 speech to hundreds of generals and admirals gathered at Marine…

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Federal thugs head to San Francisco Bay Area to incite ‘backlash, chaos and violence.’ Don’t be baited

Federal thugs head to San Francisco Bay Area to incite ‘backlash, chaos and violence.’ Don’t be baited

San Francisco Chronicle reports: The Trump administration has dispatched more than 100 federal agents, including from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to Coast Guard Base Alameda and they will begin to arrive Thursday, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and a source familiar with the operation. The surge of federal agents was seen as a likely precursor to President Donald Trump deploying National Guard troops to San Francisco. In other cities around the nation, the administration has increased immigration enforcement…

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A veteran journalist opens up on the censorship that led to his resignation

A veteran journalist opens up on the censorship that led to his resignation

Alan Greenblatt writes: The censorship you never hear about may be the worst, or at least the most insidious. Thankfully, many journalists are speaking out at a crucial moment for the press. Virtually every major outlet refused the Pentagon’s edict that they publish or broadcast only information handed to them by the Department of Defense (which the administration calls the Department of War). And there have been several other examples just in recent days of journalists leaving their jobs in…

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‘Access to good food should be a universal right’

‘Access to good food should be a universal right’

Hannah Goldfield writes: One morning in late September, the writer and former Times columnist Mark Bittman walked into the Lower East Side Girls Club, a rec center in Alphabet City and the site of what would become, in less than eight hours, his first restaurant. At 6 P.M., an inaugural group of guests would arrive for the soft opening of Community Kitchen, a not-for-profit fine-dining experiment that Bittman spent years concocting, and which had found a home—for the next few…

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Stephen Miller is directing Trump’s war on drug boats

Stephen Miller is directing Trump’s war on drug boats

Jonathan Blitzer writes: Late this summer, James Story, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela for three years of Donald Trump’s first term and for two of Joe Biden’s, felt that anything was possible in the relationship between Washington and Caracas. It had been six years since the U.S. closed its Embassy in Venezuela, to protest the rule of the Socialist authoritarian Nicolás Maduro. The issue of how to dislodge Maduro’s regime has been an American political conundrum for at…

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Fired Justice Department lawyer blows the whistle on abuses of power at the DOJ

Fired Justice Department lawyer blows the whistle on abuses of power at the DOJ

  60 Minutes reports: Erez Reuveni, a fired Department of Justice lawyer who’s now blowing the whistle, says he witnessed a disregard of due process and for the rule of law at the DOJ. Reuveni previously won commendations for his work and was so effective defending President Trump’s first-term immigration policy that he was promoted quickly in Mr. Trump’s second term. But he says he was put on leave and then fired after refusing to sign a brief in the…

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North Carolina’s racial gerrymandering is a preview of what a post-Voting Rights Act America will look like

North Carolina’s racial gerrymandering is a preview of what a post-Voting Rights Act America will look like

Mother Jones reports: The GOP-controlled North Carolina legislature, which has already gone to extreme lengths to undermine the will of the voters, is set to pass a new Trump-inspired gerrymandered congressional map this week that is expected to give Republicans one additional seat heading into the midterms. It will make one of the most gerrymandered states in the country even more gerrymandered, likely giving Republicans nearly 80 percent of US House seats in an otherwise closely divided swing state where…

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‘We come offering bread and prayer, hope for justice and healing — we leave washing pepper spray out of each other’s eyes’

‘We come offering bread and prayer, hope for justice and healing — we leave washing pepper spray out of each other’s eyes’

Religion News Service reports: Last Friday (Oct. 17), the Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist minister in the Chicago area, stood alongside other protesters demonstrating outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Illinois. As a line of Illinois State Police began marching toward her and other demonstrators, gripping wooden batons, footage shows the pastor with her hands raised in prayer. Officers then pushed into the protesters, forcing them back. One officer shifted his stance, reared back and…

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Trump promised ‘total respect to the existing building’ then demolished part of the White House

Trump promised ‘total respect to the existing building’ then demolished part of the White House

CNBC reports: The White House on Tuesday dismissed anger over the demolition of parts of the building’s East Wing to build a new ballroom at the behest of President Donald Trump. “In the latest instance of manufactured outrage, unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies are clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately funded ballroom to the White House,” the White House said in a statement. The White House called the ballroom “a…

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What can we do?

What can we do?

Paul Waldman writes: In my years of writing about politics, there’s one question I’ve gotten more than any other from readers, attendees at bookstore events, and my own friends and family: “But what can we do?” It’s an earnest question born of a dilemma faced by every member of a giant democratic polity such as ours. We’re more attuned than ever to the goings-on in politics and government; the average American living 50 or 100 or 150 years ago had…

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Civil resistance confronts the Trump autocracy

Civil resistance confronts the Trump autocracy

Paul Krugman writes: Last Saturday’s No Kings Day 2 was awesome to behold. The very best of America shone through. From coast to coast, in big cities and small, in red states as well as blue states, Americans peacefully marched to uphold our humanity as a country and to show our solidarity against autocracy and lawlessness. And also awesome were the right-wing attacks on Kings Day 2 participants in the days before the rallies. They were so extreme and so…

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What you should know about Russ Vought, Trump’s shadow president

What you should know about Russ Vought, Trump’s shadow president

By Andy Kroll This story was originally published by ProPublica On the second day of the federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video set to the classic song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult. The star of that video, which quickly went viral, was Russell Vought, the president’s top budget adviser. More than that, Vought is the architect of Trump’s broader plan to fire civil servants, freeze government programs and dismantle entire agencies, and he’s…

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