Joyce Vance writes: Jack Smith has filed his 404(b) notice, advising the Court and Trump of other crimes and bad acts committed by Trump that he intends to offer as evidence when the D.C. election interference case goes to trial. The notice is nine pages long, you can read the whole thing here. It contains a tremendous amount of new information about the case Smith intends to make against Trump. This is the best window we’ve had in on his…
The New York Times reports: Republicans on Wednesday blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine, demanding strict new border restrictions in exchange and severely jeopardizing President Biden’s push to replenish the war chests of American allies before the end of the year. The failed vote highlighted waning support in the United States for continuing to fund Ukraine’s war effort at a perilous time in the conflict, with Kyiv’s counteroffensive failing to meet its objectives and Russia’s…
Wired reports: For months, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has been dog-whistling to supporters of extremist far-right ideologies and wild conspiracy theories like QAnon. On Wednesday night, at the fourth Republican presidential debate, Ramaswamy went full tilt: After blasting the three other debaters for turning on former president Donald Trump, Ramaswamy argued, without evidence, that the January 6 Capitol riot was an inside job, the 2020 presidential election was stolen, the government had lied about 9/11, and the “deep state”…
The Guardian reports: Russian spies have been targeting British MPs, peers, civil servants, journalists and others with cyber-hacking since 2015 as part of a concerted attempt to meddle in British politics, a Foreign Office minister has said. Leo Docherty, a minister under David Cameron, told the House of Commons that the Russian federal security service was using “cyber interference” to target politically connected people. He said one Russian group was behind the 2018 hack on the Institute for Statecraft, and…
Scientists still debate the origins of Earth’s life-sustaining elements. BlackJack3D/E+ via Getty Images By Shichun Huang, University of Tennessee and Wenzhong Wang, University of Science and Technology of China For many years, scientists have predicted that many of the elements that are crucial ingredients for life, like sulfur and nitrogen, first came to Earth when asteroid-type objects carrying them crashed into our planet’s surface. But new research published by our team in Science Advances suggests that many of these elements,…
Robert A. Pape writes: Since October 7, Israel has invaded northern Gaza with some 40,000 combat troops and pummeled the small area with one of the most intense bombing campaigns in history. Nearly two million people have fled their homes as a result. More than 15,000 civilians (including some 6,000 children and 5,000 women) have been killed in the attacks, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, and the U.S. State Department has suggested that the true toll may be…
No water. No sanitation. No food. Just bombs. #Gaza pic.twitter.com/uffX8iM53r — James Elder (@1james_elder) December 6, 2023
Thomas B. Edsall writes: The predictive power of horse-race polling a year from the presidential election is weak at best. The Biden campaign can take some comfort in that. But what recent surveys do reveal is that the coalition that put Joe Biden in the White House in the first place is nowhere near as strong as it was four years ago. These danger signs include fraying support among core constituencies, including young voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, and…
Politico reports: The most potent effort to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot lands Wednesday in the lap of Colorado’s highest court — and a ruling there could send the case hurtling toward the U.S. Supreme Court just as the election year arrives. The Colorado case is one of dozens around the country that have challenged Trump’s eligibility to return to the presidency. The cases argue that he is disqualified under section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states…
The Washington Post reports: In a legal settlement Wednesday, the 10 Republicans who signed official-looking paperwork falsely purporting Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2020 have agreed to withdraw their inaccurate filings, acknowledge Joe Biden won the presidency and not serve as presidential electors in 2024 or in any election where Trump is on the ballot. Wednesday’s civil settlement marks the first time pro-Trump electors have agreed to revoke their false filings and not repeat their actions in the next presidential…
The Daily Beast reports: Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon tore into Fox News for cutting away from a Donald Trump speech over the weekend and fact-checking the former president’s election conspiracies, calling the conservative cable giant “TV for stupid people” and an “absolute disgrace.” Briefly covering the GOP frontrunner’s campaign rally in Iowa on Saturday, Fox News anchor Arthel Neville pulled away from the twice-impeached ex-president’s tirade to remind viewers that Trump’s claims about a “rigged” election remained baseless. “Well,…
Scientific American reports: The number of birthdays you’ve had—better known as your chronological age—now appears to be less important in assessing your health than ever before. A new study shows that bodily organs get “older” at extraordinarily different rates, and each one’s biological age can be at odds with a person’s age on paper. The new research, published on Wednesday in Nature, identified about one in five healthy adults older than 50 years old as an “extreme ager”—a person with…
Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future Sweden write: More than 15,000 people, of whom at least 6,000 were children. That’s how many people Israel has reportedly killed in the Gaza Strip in a matter of weeks – and those numbers are still rising. Israel has bombed basic societal infrastructure and civilian targets such as hospitals, schools, shelters and refugee camps. Israel has imposed a siege, preventing food, medicine, water and fuel from reaching the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the occupied Gaza…
David Frum writes: If Trump is elected, it very likely won’t be with a majority of the popular vote. Imagine the scenario: Trump has won the Electoral College with 46 percent of the vote because third-party candidates funded by Republican donors successfully splintered the anti-Trump coalition. Having failed to win the popular vote in each of the past three elections, Trump has become president for the second time. On that thin basis, his supporters would try to execute his schemes…