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Category: Politics

The FBI investigation ‘was always about Russia. It was about what Russia was, and is, doing and planning’

The FBI investigation ‘was always about Russia. It was about what Russia was, and is, doing and planning’

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Benjamin Wittes writes: What is this investigation about? In his congressional testimony this fall, as [New York Times reporters] Schmidt and Goldman had discovered, Baker made an arresting comment: the investigation “was about Russia, period, full stop.” The purpose of the investigation, he explained, was to assess what the Russians were up to with respect to the 2016 election. The FBI was trying to learn what the Russians had done and whether any Americans had done things in support of…

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Tulsi Gabbard claims to represent the rising left but has ties to authoritarianism and Islamophobia abroad

Tulsi Gabbard claims to represent the rising left but has ties to authoritarianism and Islamophobia abroad

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Akbar Shahid Ahmed reports: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) told CNN on Friday that she definitely will seek the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, ending months of speculation. Her bid makes sense on its face: Democrats swept the 2018 midterm elections with a crop of young candidates like Gabbard, many of them with public service backgrounds and from historically underrepresented communities. (She is a military veteran and was the first Hindu member of Congress.) Much of the party also associates her…

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Tulsi Gabbard’s support for Hindu nationalists

Tulsi Gabbard’s support for Hindu nationalists

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Soumya Shankar reports: Long before the Indian strongman Narendra Modi became prime minister of the world’s largest democracy, he was a prominent leader of the Hindu right. He rose as a public figure through the nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, whose ideology includes a desire to carve out a Hindu nation in which Muslims and Christians are considered second-class citizens. It was a well-known activist who once had links to the RSS who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, accusing him…

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Farm country stood by Trump. But the shutdown is pushing it to breaking point

Farm country stood by Trump. But the shutdown is pushing it to breaking point

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The New York Times reports: In Georgia, a pecan farmer lost out on his chance to buy his first orchard. The local Farm Service Agency office that would have processed his loan application was shut down. In Wisconsin’s dairy country, a 55-year-old woman sat inside her new dream home, worried she would not be able to pay her mortgage. Her loan had come from an Agriculture Department program for low-income residents in rural areas, but all of the account information…

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Has the Saudi govt helped another criminal suspect flee?

Has the Saudi govt helped another criminal suspect flee?

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Middle East Eye reports: Mohammed Zuraibi Alzoabi, 28, a Saudi citizen who studied at a university in Nova Scotia, Canada, and faces multiple criminal charges failed to show for a court date and authorities don’t know where he is, according to the local Chronicle Herald newspaper. Alzoabi was to face charges of sexual assault, assault, forcible confinement, uttering threats, criminal harassment, dangerous driving and assault with a weapon (a vehicle) in separate trials related to two incidents that occurred in…

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Trump target of FBI counterintelligence investigation to determine if he was working for Russia

Trump target of FBI counterintelligence investigation to determine if he was working for Russia

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The New York Times reports: In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation. The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also…

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Trump sold $35 million of real estate in 2018

Trump sold $35 million of real estate in 2018

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Forbes reports: Donald Trump sold an estimated $35 million worth of real estate while serving in the White House last year, according to a Forbes analysis of local property records and federal filings. Although the president delegated day-to-day management of his assets to his sons Eric and Don Jr. upon taking office, he maintained ownership of his business, which continued to liquidate properties. More than half of that $35 million came from a single deal, in which Trump and business…

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Saudi woman fleeing family flies to Canada after gaining asylum

Saudi woman fleeing family flies to Canada after gaining asylum

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The Guardian reports: An 18-year-old Saudi woman who said she was abused by her family and feared for her life if deported back home has left Thailand for Canada, which has granted her asylum, officials said. The fast-moving developments capped an eventful week for Qunun. She fled her family while visiting Kuwait and flew to Bangkok, where she barricaded herself in an airport hotel to avoid deportation and grabbed global attention by mounting a social media campaign for asylum. Her…

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U.S. equipment, but not troops, begins exiting Syria in chaotic withdrawal

U.S. equipment, but not troops, begins exiting Syria in chaotic withdrawal

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The New York Times reports: The American military has started withdrawing some equipment, but not yet troops, from Syria as part of President Trump’s order to wind down that battleground against the Islamic State, two Defense Department officials said on Friday amid continuing confusion over plans to disengage from one of the Middle East’s most complex conflicts. The officials said the number of American troops might actually increase slightly in Syria, to help protect the final process of pulling out…

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‘People’s vote’ on Brexit: Backers bide their time to force Labour’s hand

‘People’s vote’ on Brexit: Backers bide their time to force Labour’s hand

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The Guardian reports: Backing for a second Brexit referendum in parliament is unlikely to be tested until after next week’s meaningful vote, as campaigners weigh up the best moment to try to win over the Labour leadership. The Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston has scrapped plans to table a “doctors’ amendment” calling for the public to be allowed to exercise “informed consent” about Theresa May’s deal. Wollaston said she would wait until after Tuesday in the hope that “Labour will by…

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Trump and the Brexiters must own the mess they lied us into

Trump and the Brexiters must own the mess they lied us into

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Gary Younge writes: We start a new year in a state of transatlantic political paralysis. In Britain, parliament has taken back control from a flailing government in pursuit of the least bad option. Brexit, it transpires, does not mean Brexit; it means whatever we can agree on, which may be nothing at all. In the US, it turns out, not only will the Mexicans not pay for the wall, but the Americans aren’t too keen on stumping up for it…

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Before Trump, Steve King set the agenda for the wall and anti-immigrant politics

Before Trump, Steve King set the agenda for the wall and anti-immigrant politics

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The New York Times reports: Years before President Trump forced a government shutdown over a border wall, triggering a momentous test of wills in Washington, Representative Steve King of Iowa took to the House floor to show off a model of a 12-foot border wall he had designed. And long before Mr. Trump demonized immigrants — accusing Mexico of exporting criminals and calling for an end to birthright citizenship — Mr. King turned those views into talking points, with his…

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Turkey issues ultimatum to Trump: Pull out of Syria or we strike

Turkey issues ultimatum to Trump: Pull out of Syria or we strike

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Haaretz/Reuters reports: A military operation against the Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey has pledged to carry out in northern Syria, is not dependent on a U.S. pull-out from the region, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday. “If the [pullout] is put off with ridiculous excuses like Turks are massacring Kurds, which do not reflect the reality, we will implement this decision,” Çavuşoğlu said, referring to Turkey’s threat to launch an incursion into Kurdish controlled Syria. In an interview…

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U.S. will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, says Mike Pompeo

U.S. will expel every last Iranian boot from Syria, says Mike Pompeo

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The Guardian reports: The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has vowed the US and its allies will “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria as he sought to reassure Middle Eastern nations it was not withdrawing from the region despite Donald Trump’s call for troops to return home. In a keynote speech delivered in Cairo, pitched as the centrepiece of his nine-country regional tour, Pompeo called for a common stand against Tehran. “It’s time for old rivalries to end,…

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The Saudi engine of repression continues to run at full speed

The Saudi engine of repression continues to run at full speed

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David Ignatius writes: One hundred days after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pressing ahead with anti-dissident campaigns and remains in regular contact with Saud al-Qahtani, the media adviser whom the CIA believes helped organize Khashoggi’s killing, according to U.S. and Saudi sources. The Saudi crown prince, far from altering his impulsive behavior or signaling that he has learned lessons from the Khashoggi affair, as the Trump administration had hoped, appears instead to be…

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Trump is the wall

Trump is the wall

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Jorge Ramos writes: The wall has become a metaphor to Mr. Trump and his millions of supporters. It represents a divide between “us” and “them,” a physical demarcation for those who refuse to accept that in just a few decades, a majority of the country will be people of color. This is about more than just a wall. Mr. Trump promised it in 2015, in the same speech in which he announced his candidacy, the same speech in which he…

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