From Europe, Trump special counsel Jack Smith takes over Mar-a-Lago, Jan. 6 probes

From Europe, Trump special counsel Jack Smith takes over Mar-a-Lago, Jan. 6 probes

The Washington Post reports: Newly appointed special counsel Jack Smith continues to work remotely from Europe as he assembles a team, finds office space, and takes over two high-stakes investigations into former president Donald Trump — complex cases that officials insist will not be delayed by Smith’s appointment, even as they also said they do not know when he will return to the United States. Smith, a war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, injured his…

Read More Read More

Rebelling against Trump is not the same as rebelling against Trumpism

Rebelling against Trump is not the same as rebelling against Trumpism

Adam Serwer writes: Republican elites are done with Donald Trump, and this time, they mean it. Since the conservative “red wave” splashed on shore like gentle foam at low tide, some Republican Party bigs have begun reconsidering the GOP’s relationship with Donald Trump. Republicans took back the House with a slim margin, but Democrats kept the Senate, a dismal result given President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and the continued toll of inflation. The consensus among the right-wing intelligentsia is…

Read More Read More

Ukraine launches assault to oust Russia from key Black Sea peninsula

Ukraine launches assault to oust Russia from key Black Sea peninsula

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ukraine’s military said it launched an operation to push Russian forces from a strategic peninsula on the country’s Black Sea coast, as Kyiv looks to open up its besieged ports and build on significant gains through the country’s south. Ukrainian forces have begun an assault on the Kinburn Spit, a strip of land jutting into the sea south of Mykolaiv, that has been occupied for months by Russian forces cutting off access to the port…

Read More Read More

Associated Press fires reporter behind retracted ‘Russian missiles’ story

Associated Press fires reporter behind retracted ‘Russian missiles’ story

The Daily Beast reports: The Associated Press scared much of the world last Tuesday when it alerted readers that “a senior U.S. intelligence official” said “Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.” That report, which was widely cited across the internet and on cable news, was taken offline the following day and replaced with an editor’s note admitting the single source was wrong and that “subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired…

Read More Read More

Chaos on Twitter leads a group of journalists to start an alternative on Mastodon

Chaos on Twitter leads a group of journalists to start an alternative on Mastodon

The New York Times reports: It’s one thing to hope for a better community online, and another, very different one, to build it. Just ask the users and administrators of journa.host, which was started by journalists concerned over the direction of Twitter. “Come on in, the water’s confusing but fine — and more swimmable,” the journalist Virginia Heffernan wrote on journa.host on Nov. 6. On Nov. 7 the MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan posted: “I feel like a new kid in…

Read More Read More

Trump family’s newest partners: Middle Eastern governments

Trump family’s newest partners: Middle Eastern governments

The New York Times reports: When former President Donald J. Trump returned briefly last week to his office at Trump Tower in New York, he was joined by his son Eric Trump and the top executive of a Saudi Arabian real estate company to sign a deal that creates new conflict-of-interest questions for his just-launched presidential campaign. The deal is with a Saudi real estate company, which intends to build a Trump-branded hotel, villas and a golf course as part…

Read More Read More

Manhattan prosecutors move to jump-start criminal inquiry into Trump

Manhattan prosecutors move to jump-start criminal inquiry into Trump

The New York Times reports: The Manhattan district attorney’s office has moved to jump-start its criminal investigation into Donald J. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter, seeking to breathe new life into an inquiry that once seemed to have reached a dead end. Under the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, the prosecutors have returned to the long-running investigation’s original focus: a hush-money payment to a porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump….

Read More Read More

Trump White House bid has hardly any Senate GOP support

Trump White House bid has hardly any Senate GOP support

The Hill reports: Only one Republican senator has announced publicly that he will support former-President Trump’s 2024 reelection bid, a sign of the uphill battle Trump faces in his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination and a second term in the White House. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told reporters this week that he will support Trump’s candidacy for president and praised his track record in the Oval Office. The rest of the Senate GOP conference is holding back, skeptical…

Read More Read More

Republicans keep telling Trump to stay away from Georgia

Republicans keep telling Trump to stay away from Georgia

Rolling Stone reports: As Republicans pour party resources into the Georgia Senate runoff, Donald Trump is getting irritated at the idea that virtually no one of importance in the GOP wants him to campaign in Georgia. In the lead-up to the contest between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Trump-endorsed challenger Herschel Walker, several GOP figures and Trump allies have already implored him not to hold a Georgia rally ahead of the runoff, according to two people familiar with the matter…

Read More Read More

How Iran’s security forces use rape to quell protests

How Iran’s security forces use rape to quell protests

CNN reports: A trickle of people passes through a normally busy border crossing in the mountains of northern Iraq. “It’s a big prison over there,” one Iranian woman says, gesturing to the hulking gate that marks the border with Iran’s Islamic Republic, which has been convulsed by protest for over two months. A portrait of the founder of Iran’s clerical regime, Ruhollah Khomeini, looms against a backdrop of rolling hills studded with streetlights. Snatches of travelers’ muted conversations punctuate an…

Read More Read More

How the global rise of border walls is stifling wildlife

How the global rise of border walls is stifling wildlife

Fred Pierce writes: Pity the tiny band of lynx in the Polish half of Europe’s most ancient forest. In June, their home, the Białowieża Forest, was cut in half when the Polish government completed construction of a wall on its border with Belarus. The aim was to repel refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere being channeled to the border by the Belarus government. But the 115-mile wall — which towers 18 feet above the forest floor, stretching almost into…

Read More Read More

Why doesn’t physics help us understand the flow of time?

Why doesn’t physics help us understand the flow of time?

Gene Tracy writes: I have a memory, a vivid one, of watching my elderly grandfather wave goodbye to me from the steps of a hospital. This is almost certainly the memory of a dream. In my parent’s photo album of the time, we have snapshots of the extended family – aunts, uncles, and cousins who had all travelled to our upstate New York farm to celebrate my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. I am in some of the photos along with…

Read More Read More

Shooting in Colorado Springs follows six brutal years of Republican anti-LGBTQ rhetoric

Shooting in Colorado Springs follows six brutal years of Republican anti-LGBTQ rhetoric

Robin Maril writes: This latest shooting, in which at least five people in Colorado were killed late Saturday night when a gunman once again opened fire inside an LGBTQ nightclub, follows six years in which far-right leaders have led American politics down a fearful blame spiral fueled by homophobia, xenophobia and racism. This past election, Republican candidates ran on a platform that characterized queer and transgender people as “groomers.” They targeted the families that support them as criminals. And many…

Read More Read More

How the Pelosi attack suspect plunged into online hatred

How the Pelosi attack suspect plunged into online hatred

The New York Times reports: Bitter over the end of a long relationship, estranged from his children and working carpentry jobs to keep a roof over his head after a time living on the streets, David DePape retreated into isolation, spending hours each day in the online worlds of gaming and chat rooms. Mr. DePape, the suspect in the brutal attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, had an obsession with video games as a boy, and at some point in…

Read More Read More