Politics

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..I thought of the thousands of residents of Gaza killed in retaliation for the lives of Jews killed by Hamas. Then I thought that, if I were to state this publicly in Germany, I might get in trouble.

In 2008, when then Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke before the Knesset, on the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel (…) This, she went on, was part of Germany’s Staatsräson—the reason for the existence of the state.

But the statistics mix what Germans call Israelbezogener Antisemitismus—Israel-related antisemitism, such as instances of criticism of Israeli government policies—with violent attacks,

The Holocaust memory wars in Poland have run in parallel with Germany’s. The ideas being battled out in the two countries are different, but one consistent feature is the involvement of right-wing politicians in conjunction with the state of Israel.

Still, both before and after the October 7th attack, the phrase I heard in Ukraine possibly more than any other was “We need to be like Israel.”

For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time—in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.

Beijing is contrasting its approach with Washington’s in a bid to win favor from the Gulf states – while still treading cautiously.

Why the US and Israel are becoming "increasingly isolated."

Major aid groups say the Biden administration’s special envoy for humanitarian issues has not responded to requests for meetings, as experts warn desperation in Gaza will reach unimaginable levels.

AIPAC wields $50M political clout, rebukes Israel critics, and eyes an anticipated $100M for the 2024 elections.

The Biden administration has announced a proposal to “strengthen its Lead and Copper Rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the White House, more than 9.2 million American households connect to water through lead pipes and lead service lines and, due to “decades of inequitable infrastructure development and underinvestment,” many Americans are at risk of lead exposure.

The dispute between Broward County and the city of Fort Lauderdale over the choice of a tunnel or bridge for the New River railroad crossing has raised concerns among other cities that a long-await…

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Public support is building for changes to housing zoning codes and other laws that dominated American housing policy for decades.

$8.2 Billion from the President’s Investing in America Agenda to Deliver Transformative Passenger Rail in America

President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda – a key pillar of Bidenomics – is delivering world class-infrastructure across the country, expanding access to economic opportunity, and creating good-paying jobs. By delivering $66 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak 50 years ago – President Biden is delivering on his vision to rebuild America and win the global competition for the 21st century.

Projection has become a hallmark of today's Republican party. At any time a GOP lawmaker is accused of something, they and their surrogates quickly turn to accusing a Democrat of doing the same thing.

The 42-year-old son of U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer crashed into a North Dakota sheriff's vehicle during a police chase, pushing it into a deputy and killing him, according to authorities and the ...

Trump insiders are working behind the scenes on detailed plans to amass his power so that he can carry out an unprecedented restructuring of the U.S. government and expand executive authority.

"We don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” the House speaker said. His office later noted that DOJ already has the raw footage.

U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, an outspoken critic of ex-President Donald Trump, said she is weighing a third-party bid for the White House in 2024.

Federal prosecutors have charged Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, of Miami, Florida, a former U.S. Department of State employee who served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 and ultimately as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002, with committing multiple federal crimes by secretly acting for decades as an agent of the government of the Republic of Cuba.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Pfizer last week, claiming the pharmaceutical giant "deceived the public" by "unlawfully misrepresenting" the effectiveness of its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and sought to silence critics.

The lawsuit also blames Pfizer for not ending the pandemic after the vaccine's release in December 2020. "Contrary to Pfizer’s public statements, however, the pandemic did not end; it got worse" in 2021, the complaint reads.

"We are pursuing justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were coerced by tyrannical vaccine mandates to take a defective product sold by lies," Paxton said in a press release. "The facts are clear. Pfizer did not tell the truth about their COVID-19 vaccines."

In all, Paxton's 54-page complaint acts as a compendium of pandemic-era anti-vaccine misinformation and tropes while making a slew of unsupported claims. But, central to the Lone Star State's shaky legal argument is one that centers on the standard math Pfizer used to assess the effectiveness of its vaccine: a calculation of relative risk reduction.

This argument is as unoriginal as it is incorrect. Anti-vaccine advocates have championed this flawed math-based theory since the height of the pandemic. Actual experts have roundly debunked many times. Still, it appears in all its absurd glory in Paxton's lawsuit last week, which seeks $10 million in reparations.

An army of conservative activists is poring over state voter lists in search of registration errors that can be used to file what are known as voter challenges.

Rising antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred in Europe amid the recent hostilities in Israel-Palestine has prompted deep concern. Yet the response by EU governments has been partial and ineffective, in part because they lack adequate anti-discrimination data and protection strategies that address the daily lived experiences of discrimination faced by Jewish and Muslim people.

Both the EU Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020-2025, designed to structurally tackle racism in the European Union, and the EU Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life call on EU states to collect disaggregated equality data...

While comprehensive surveys, monitoring, and reporting conducted by national institutes and regional rights bodies are much needed, they cannot substitute for the failure of governments to adopt robust strategies to tackle the harms experienced by Muslims and Jews, including the collection of equality data.

Why does everyone besides the involved parties care so much when there are conflicts with much higher casualties in the same region that go largely unnoticed by the international public?

PHOENIX — Two Republican members of a county election board in southern Arizona were indicted by a state grand jury this week for allegedly flouting last year’s deadline to formally accept the results of the November 2022 midterm election.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) on Wednesday announced the felony indictments of Cochise County supervisors Peggy Judd and Terry Thomas “Tom” Crosby. The two are charged with interference with an election officer and conspiracy. Neither responded to requests for comment.

The indictments of the two Republicans from a deeply conservative county in the southeastern corner of Arizona mark a rare example of possible criminal consequences in battleground Arizona, where county officials, state lawmakers and GOP candidates have helped delegitimize election outcomes and procedures.

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Though no-fault divorce was first legalized more than 50 years ago, it has long been sneered at in conservative circles, who see it as a danger to the sanctity of marriage and the concept of the American family.

A campaign donor to Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to expand cruise ship operations in Key West, where voters have tried to restrict them.

On the first day of a four-day Gaza cease-fire agreement, Hamas released 24 hostages abducted by militants from southern Israel seven weeks ago. In return, Israel freed 39 Palestinians from prison on Friday.