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One of the biggest upsets from Democratic primary elections this month was Donavan McKinney's defeat of two-term Congressmember Shri Thanedar in the House primary to represent parts of Detroit and Wayne County in Michigan's 13th District. McKinney, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, won on a platform to get corporate money out of politics, support Medicare for All and end military aid to Israel, among other issues. Like many other insurgent Democrats running for office, he has also proposed strict limits on artificial intelligence data centers. He took no corporate PAC money, and his campaign was supported by the Justice Democrats, Working Families Party, Democratic Socialists of America and major labor unions.
"We built the biggest and baddest coalition in the country," says McKinney of his win. "People have come together and realized that our district deserves better."
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As expected, the Reform UK leader easily won the Clacton by-election but was nowhere to be seen after the result.
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The Reform leader wins the by-election he triggered, and gains more votes than last time.
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(First column, 4th story, link)
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We speak with Tennessee lawmaker Justin J. Pearson, who just won the Democratic primary to represent part of Memphis in the state's 9th Congressional District. Pearson's campaign focused in part on opposing large artificial intelligence data centers, particularly Elon Musk's Colossus 1 and Colossus 2, which are in the Memphis area.
"People don't want toxic data centers polluting the air that they breathe," says Pearson. "It's not a fight of right versus left; it's a fight of those who are at the top and the rest of us."
Pearson is a longtime environmental justice organizer and advocate who first gained national prominence three years ago, when he was expelled from Tennessee's House of Representatives for protesting Republicans' inaction on gun violence. He is now running in a congressional district that was recently gerrymandered to dilute Black voting power in the state following a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act. His opponent in November is Republican state Senator Brent Taylor, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump.
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A lawsuit filed this week alleges that the product is unconstitutional, and other experts warn it could violate securities laws.
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(Third column, 4th story, link)
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Life-threatening flooding... MORE
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(Second column, 4th story, link)
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Both parties face hurdles heading into the fall.
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The planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom is estimated to cost $400 million and is part of the president's broader effort to remake Washington in his own style.
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The investigation into a £5m gift received by Farage reopens, as he returns as the MP for Clacton.
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Kevin Rideout, a pilot, had been abducted from his home in the country's capital, Niamey, last fall. His mission organization said he was in "good health" after his release.
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(First column, 9th story, link)
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Anxiety about AI becoming political force in midterms...
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(First column, 5th story, link)
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The new documentary American Doctor tells the story of how the besieged hospitals of Gaza have continued to treat the sick and wounded throughout Israel's genocidal war on the Palestinian territory, with local medical staff risking their own lives in the process. According to Palestinian officials, Israeli attacks have killed about 1,700 healthcare workers in Gaza since October 2023. The documentary follows three U.S. doctors as they volunteer in Gaza hospitals.
Director Poh Si Teng says the film rose out of her "deep despair" over what was happening in Gaza, including deadly Israeli attacks on her former Al Jazeera colleagues. American Doctor is her attempt "to bring Palestine back to the United States," Teng says.
We also speak with two of the subjects of the film: trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and emergency physician Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who is Palestinian American.
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Democratic Socialists are capturing more votes than ever before — even as they run up against the limits of their appeal.
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(First column, 9th story, link)
Related stories:
Epansive surveillance, infiltrated group chats, obtained financial records...
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Militaries across the world are in an "AI arms race," says Heidy Khlaaf, a chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, which just released a joint report with Airwars titled "Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain."
"What it is is a series of different types of AI algorithms that are chained together, each with their own pitfalls, each with their own flaws," she says. "And these systems build off of each other and feed into one another to, unfortunately, end up resulting in civilian casualties."
This can lead to faulty targeting because "humans are prone to just accepting recommendations of AI algorithms without corroborating that evidence," adds Khlaaf.
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U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee issued a rare condemnation of settler "terrorists."
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Progressive Democrats have been gaining ground in primaries across the country, but recent wins and losses in Michigan and Wisconsin show the strength and the limits of the movement.
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When the dust settles on this contest, it will probably be the man who critics said was too boring to win statewide in Wisconsin, that deserves most of the plaudits.
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Supporters and detractors agreed that voters appeared to be increasingly worried over whether Hong could beat GOP nominee Tom Tiffany.
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The party establishment is breathing a sign of relief that democratic socialist Francesca Hong, who led the pre-election polls by double-digits, will not be topping their ticket.
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From London, we revisit the Gaza Tribunal, an independent, nongovernmental inquiry into the United Kingdom's complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The tribunal, held nearly one year ago, was chaired by our three guests: former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Israeli professor of human rights law Neve Gordon and Palestinian legal scholar Shahd Hammouri. Their new book is titled The Gaza Tribunal: Britain's Complicity in Genocide. We discuss the recent apology from Prime Minister Andy Burnham over the Labour Party's early support for Israel's assault on Gaza, the United Kingdom's crackdown on the Palestine Action protest group under counterterrorism laws, and whether British policymakers will face any accountability for participating in "one of the biggest crimes in humanity."
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Kansas state Senator Cindy Holscher won Tuesday's primary race to become the Democratic nominee in the state's gubernatorial race, facing Republican Ty Masterson in November. Holscher clinched the nomination over fellow state lawmaker Ethan Corson, who was backed by the outgoing Democratic Kansas Governor Laura Kelly. Holscher's victory is seen as another resounding defeat for establishment Democrats in Kansas and nationwide. The fight over data centers became a defining issue in the Kansas race.
"We see [data centers] suck up the resources in terms of water. We see energy usage causing utility bills to skyrocket. So, certainly not things that you want to have happen during an affordability crisis," Holscher tells Democracy Now!
Holscher also celebrates the defeat of a ballot measure to change how state Supreme Court justices are elected, which she calls a "backdoor attempt" to attack abortion rights, voting access and public education.
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President Trump said Thursday he may temporarily withdraw his nomination of Todd Blanche for attorney general after two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said they would not vote to advance Blanche's nomination until they received written assurances that he would limit some of the terms in the controversial deal reached between the Department of Justice and President Trump to settle his personal lawsuit against the IRS.
Blanche, currently acting attorney general, is "refusing to make a clear commitment that American tax dollars aren't going to go to the rioters of January 6th," says Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna. "He's refusing to make a clear commitment that Trump's family could still be held liable for violating financial laws."
Khanna also speaks about his ongoing efforts to bring justice for survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse, about which he says Blanche "has been the biggest obstacle to justice," his recent trip to the occupied West Bank where he was detained by armed Israeli settlers and more.
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We speak with Democratic Congressmember Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, in a wide-ranging conversation about Iran, Cuba, ending military funding for Israel and more. Last week, McGovern joined the entire Democratic caucus and four Republicans to pass a resolution calling on President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran.
"It's just like Iraq," says McGovern. "We're getting involved in a quagmire here, an endless war."
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Israeli settlers torched two mosques over the weekend in a new wave of violence targeting Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli military forces on Saturday detained over 70 Palestinians in raids across the occupied territory. This follows the killing of at least four Palestinians in the village of Tal on Friday, when Israeli settlers and soldiers opened fire on residents attempting to protect their homes; two Israelis were also killed.
Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti says the Israeli army and Israeli settlers "should not be seen as separate" as they carry out "a familiar pattern of collective punishment." She also stresses that anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank cannot be divorced from Israeli repression in Jerusalem and its genocide in Gaza.
"This is a colonial regime that is engaging in crimes against humanity," says Barghouti. "How those crimes look may differ, but in the end they serve the same purpose, and that is ethnically cleansing Palestinians in order to build this Greater Israel in the region."
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An Emerson College Poll found that the GOP has a slight lead on the generic congressional ballot and that more Americans would vote for Trump if the election were held today.
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