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Mother Jones

NY Fund Manager Linked to Russian Oligarch Invested Big with Santos. Now He Claims He Was Conned.

There is something odd about the relationship between GOP fabulist George Santos and Andrew Intrater, a sophisticated and wealthy New York financier, Republican donor, and cousin to sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Intrater was one of Santos’ top political donors. At Santos’ behest, he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars with a firm where Santos […]

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If Trump Returns to Twitter and Facebook, His Own Social Media Company Could Be Screwed

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is mulling a return to Twitter and Facebook for the former tweeter-in-chief. Such a move might help his stalled political operation, but it could also seriously undermine his most prominent current business endeavor, the social media platform Truth Social. Shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp.—a company that’s supposed to one day merge […]

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Amazon Potentially Fined 0.000013 Percent of 2021 Revenue Over “Serious Worker Injuries” at Warehouses

Three Amazon warehouses exposed workers to safety issues that put them at risk for “lower back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders,” the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced today. Amazon faces a proposed penalty of $60,260—or roughly 0.000013 percent of its reported $469,822,000,000 2021 revenue. Safety inspections at warehouses in Deltona, Florida; Waukegan, Illinois; and New […]

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“An Extreme Amount of Pain”: How a Notorious Jail Failed a Disabled Transgender Inmate

When Kara Sternquist was arrested and jailed in MDC Brooklyn—a scandal-plagued federal detention center—she already had what a prosecutor described as “unique medical challenges.” After receiving surgery to address a spinal compression prior to her arrest, Sternquist was left with “very limited sensation in the bottom half of her body” and used devices like canes to […]

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Two Years Ago This Brazilian Expert on the Far Right Predicted Their Insurrection

Two years and two days after the invasion of the US Capitol by pro-Trump insurrectionists, much of the world appeared to be astonished as an angry mob stormed Brazil’s seat of power, calling for a military intervention and attacking the congressional building, the presidential offices, and the Supreme Court. David Nemer, a Brazil-born assistant professor at […]

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Sinema and Manchin High-Five Over Refusing to Reform the Filibuster In a Room Full of the Richest People on Earth

Two years after Sen. Kyrsten Sinema voted against raising the minimum wage with an exaggerated thumbs-down, the Arizona Independent once again reduced political debate to an infuriatingly twee hand gesture. This time, she initiated a high-five with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) over their shared refusal to reform Senate rules. At a World Economic Forum event […]

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Former Trump Fixer Meets With Manhattan Prosecutors

Michael Cohen, the longtime fixer for Donald Trump, met with New York City prosecutors on Tuesday afternoon, signaling that those prosecutors may be gearing up for more criminal cases related to the former president. Cohen spent just over a year in prison after pleading guilty to tax fraud, campaign finance, and perjury charges stemming from […]

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Why Ron DeSantis Won’t—or Shouldn’t—Run for President

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter is written by David twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the day; film, book, television, podcast, and music recommendations; interactive audience features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a […]

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Revealed: Exxon Made “Breathtakingly” Accurate Climate Predictions in 1970’s and 80’s

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found. A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established […]

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How a Sunken Slave Ship Set Off “a Search for Ourselves”

This story was originally published by Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2015, a delegation from the Smithsonian Institution travelled to Mozambique to inform the Makua people of a singular and long-overdue discovery. Two hundred and twenty-one years after it sank in treacherous waters off Cape Town, claiming the lives of 212 enslaved people, the […]

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The GOP Sent 61 Insane Emails Begging Me to Buy a $35 Membership

It started innocuously enough. A week after the election, I got an email the National Republican Congressional Committee. Having just taken back the House, the GOP’s campaign arm was very excited to offer me an “exclusive” chance to pay $35 for a “House Majority Membership Card.” But I had to act fast. “If you do […]

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House Republicans Want Visitor Logs for Biden’s House—But Not for Mar-a-Lago

House Republicans are eager to investigate the mishandling of classified documents—some classified documents, anyway. On Sunday, James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, appeared on CNN and released a letter demanding visitor logs for Joe Biden’s Wilmington home, where classified material from Biden’s time as vice president was recently discovered. “Without a list of […]

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Federal Judge Orders Bannon Ally to End Harassment Campaign Against Creditors

A federal bankruptcy judge slapped exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui with new restrictions this week after finding that Guo had defied an earlier order to stop a harassment campaign by his fans aimed at lawyers for his creditors. Guo, an ally and patron of Steve Bannon, fled China in 2014 ahead of corruption charges. In the United States, […]

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The DNA of Deadly Pathogens Is Easy to Obtain

This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In November 2016, virologist David Evans traveled to Geneva for a meeting of a World Health Organization committee on smallpox research. The deadly virus had been declared eradicated 36 years earlier; the only known live samples of smallpox were in the […]

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The Delicate Dance of Antarctic Tourism

This story was originally published by Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Down at the bottom of the Earth during this southern summer, a delicate dance is under way each day, as captains of cruise ships struggle to keep their vessels out of one another’s sight and so preserve the icy continent’s image of […]

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The Death of a DC Teacher Renews Calls for Defunding LA Police

On January 3, Los Angeles police officers killed 31-year-old Keenan Anderson, a Washington, DC, high school English teacher, who was visiting family. He went into cardiac arrest after being repeatedly tased by police responding to a traffic accident, according to body camera footage and his family’s account. Newly released body camera footage shows LAPD officers […]

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6-Year-Old School Shooter Case Grows Even More Disturbing

Before a 6-year-old intentionally shot his teacher in Newport News, Virginia, last Friday, school officials learned that the boy may have had a gun in his possession but failed to find it, the school system’s superintendent said late this week. According to reports from a local TV station and the Associated Press, superintendent George Parker said during […]

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Trump Organization Fined $1.6 Million in Criminal Tax Fraud Case

A New York judge has imposed a $1.6 million fine—the maximum allowed by law—on two of Donald Trump’s companies for their role in a criminal tax fraud scheme. Last month, a jury convicted both companies following a trial that featured testimony from Trump’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. Weisselberg admitted that he and other executives had […]

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Amazon Loses Bid: The NLRB Just Upheld the Historic Staten Island Union Win

More than eight months after workers at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island voted to unionize, the National Labor Relations Board has certified the election results, bringing the fledgling union one step closer to entering contract negotiations. Amazon workers won their 2022 union election by a margin of 523 votes, according to an NLRB filing. […]

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England Will Ban Single-Use Cutlery and Plates

This story was originally published by Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Single-use items such as plastic cutlery, plates, and trays are to be banned in England in a bid to reduce pollution, the government has confirmed. Figures suggest that every year England uses about 1.1 billion single-use plates and 4.25 billion pieces of such cutlery, […]

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Merrick Garland Appoints Special Counsel in Biden’s Classified Documents Case

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday that he is appointing a special counsel to investigate how classified documents wound up in President Joe Biden’s post-vice-presidency office and in Biden’s Delaware home. At a press conference, Garland said he had appointed Robert K. Hur, a former federal prosecutor who served as the US attorney for Maryland […]

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More Classified Documents Found—This Time in Biden’s Garage

President Joe Biden acknowledged on Thursday that a second batch of classified documents from the Obama administration had been found, this time in his garage in Wilmington, Delaware. Earlier this week, the White House acknowledged that Biden’s attorneys found a batch of classified documents in the closet of a think tank in Washington, DC, that […]

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Republicans Are Now Flipping Out Over Gas Stoves

First, they were incandescent lightbulbs. Then, low-flow showerheads. Now, in their seemingly neverending quest to remove“wokeness” from their appliances, Republicans have set their sights on waging a war on behalf of gas stoves. The brewing battle comes amid reports that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission that it is considering a ban on the beloved kitchen […]

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Another Santos Money Mystery: He Struck a Curious Business Deal with a Veteran GOP Operative

This past weekend, George Santos, the Republican fabulist from New York, was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives, even as serious questions remained about his personal and political finances, particularly the source of the millions of dollars in income he claimed on financial disclosure forms and of the $705,000 he loaned […]

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In Brazilian Media, Even More Reports of George Santos’ Lies

In 2008, Bruno Simões was working as a clerk at a store called The Salt in Niterói, a city that neighbors Rio de Janeiro. One day, a 20-year-old George Santos walked in. Simões watched as Santos picked out several pieces of clothing and shoes. His total added up to $1,313—”a lot of money at the […]

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What the Lesbian Best Friend Trope Leaves Out

As I was watching the new Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s 2017 novel, Conversations With Friends, I kept waiting for something to happen that was never going to happen. The show follows two young women in Dublin, Frances and Bobbi, who become romantically entangled with an older married couple. As the series progressed, I was […]

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Activists Sue Global Food Giant Danone Over Use of Plastics

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Danone, the French yogurt and bottled water company, is being taken to court by three environmental groups who accuse it of failing to sufficiently reduce its plastic footprint. The company behind Evian and Volvic mineral water was failing in its duties […]

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House May Vote on Abolishing the IRS—and Income Taxes

On Tuesday, Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) introduced the Fair Tax Act, a House bill that proposes to abolish the IRS and replace the progressive federal income tax with a national consumption tax. “Instead of adding 87,000 new agents to weaponize the IRS against small business owners and middle America,” Carter said in his […]

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Florida Congresswoman Explains What It’s Like to Be Forced to Carry a “Dead Baby” to Term

Until today, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) had kept the story of her traumatic, pre-Roe pregnancy private. But during a congressional debate on abortion policy, she opened up about being forced to carry a dead baby to term—and warned lawmakers of the deadly consequences of a federal abortion ban. Wilson said that she became pregnant, intentionally, […]

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Madagascar’s Unique Creatures Face a Wave of Extinction

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. From the ring-tailed lemur to the aye-aye, a nocturnal primate, more than 20 million years of unique evolutionary history could be wiped from the planet if nothing is done to stop Madagascar’s threatened mammals going extinct, according to a new study. […]

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