Tag: Breitbart News

The Story: Kris Kobach continues to lead in the polling for Kansas' Republican primary for the US Senate seat slated to be filled this year....

It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. In Russia, it is impossible to tell where the decisions of government end and the interests of Vladimir Putin and his circle of oligarchs begin. We must understand that these authoritarians are part of a common front. The Mercer family, for example, supporters of the infamous Cambridge Analytica, have been key backers of Trump and of Breitbart News, which operates in Europe, the United States and Israel to advance the same anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda. Our job is to fight for a future in which new technology and innovation works to benefit all people, not just a few. Together governments of the world must come together to end the absurdity of the rich and multinational corporations stashing over $21tn in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying their fair share of taxes and then demanding that their respective governments impose an austerity agenda on their working families. In order to effectively combat the rise of the international authoritarian axis, we need an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people, and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power. While the authoritarian axis is committed to tearing down a post-second world war global order that they see as limiting their access to power and wealth, it is not enough for us to simply defend that order as it exists now. We must take the opportunity to reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity, an order that recognizes that every person on this planet shares a common humanity, that we all want our children to grow up healthy, to have a good education, have decent jobs, drink clean water, breathe clean air and live in peace. It is high time that Democrats from across the world form a Progressive International in the interests of a majority of people on every continent, in every country.

(As these are annual numbers, only larger counties have large enough populations for statistical significance, and, therefore, not all counties are included on the charts below.) When we consider the foreign-born population, we often think largely of immigrants from Latin America. But as our analysis last year noted and as Brookings Institution analysis of the new Census Bureau data suggests, more foreign-born residents of the United States come from Asia than from Latin America. The larger the circle on the chart above, the larger the percentage of the foreign-born population in that county which is from Latin America. They did so in 2016, as the chart below indicates. There’s a correlation between the urban population in a county and its vote. (In that chart, we’ve rescaled the circles to represent the overall population of foreign-born individuals in the county, not just those from Latin America.) If we consider the change in the foreign-born population, particularly the change in noncitizen foreign-born residents per county from 2008 to 2016, the places with the biggest increase in that population since 2008 were more likely to vote Republican. If we scale the circles to the populations of the county, the chart looks like this: Clearly Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, often echoing Bannon’s, was resonant in the 2016 campaign. Clearly, too, places with more foreign-born residents voted more heavily against him.

Prominent US climate scientists have told the Guardian that the Trump administration is holding up research funding as their projects undergo an unprecedented political review by the high-school football teammate of the US interior secretary. Don't blame wildfires on climate change – it's environmentalists' fault, says Zinke Read more Steve Howke, one of Zinke’s high-school football teammates, oversees this review. Until Zinke appointed him as an interior department senior adviser to the acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget, Howke had spent his entire career working in credit unions. The department, which manages a significant portion of the US landmass, has attributed the slower pace of funding approval to efforts to reduce “waste, fraud and abuse”. One of the largest programs affected is the Climate Adaptation Science Centers, a network of eight regionally focused research centers located at “host” universities across the country. “[Our stakeholders] want answers sooner rather than later, especially if they’re undergoing severe drought conditions right now or they just had extensive flooding.” Every administration brings new priorities to the cabinet departments, but in agencies that fund science, this is usually reflected in the subject areas of calls for proposals. “We are not used to an additional political review on top of that,” McPherson said. Many scientists affiliated with the climate adaptation centers concurred. “My concern is, are they creating an environment that will prevent us from being successful as an excuse then to not fund us in the future?” Dennis Ojima, a professor of ecosystem science and sustainability at Colorado State University who heads the North Central Climate Adaptation Center, complained of months-long delays. “For teams that are trying to initiate new research it’s difficult to get the graduate students and postdocs lined up.” Neither Howke nor the interior department responded to a request for comment.

When Donald Trump visited the UK, Steve Bannon wasn't far behind. The president's former chief strategist breezed effortlessly into TV and radio studios, trying to sanitise his old boss' politics and keep himself relevant. On his foray across the Atlantic, he unveiled his new plans: a foundation called "The Movement". But Bannon is just one man and within days of him making this announcement far-right figures from across Europe signalled they weren't all that interested in his plans. From Brexit to EU elections, what people like Bannon thrive off is the "culture war" narrative. Take Bannon's endorsement of far-right, anti-Muslim figure Tommy Robinson when he was in the UK. In an off-air conversation, he described Robinson, who was in prison for contempt of court, "the f**king backbone of this country". The far-right are in ascendance across significant parts of the world, and in places where they aren't in power, they're influencing the people that are in a frightening way. But they're a sign of what the far-right, who use this culture wars narrative, want to help pave the way for: aggressive state control, marginalising minorities and going after migrants. The Movement could prove a dangerous vehicle for these very ideas, but without it or not, the far-right is already helping set the political agenda in a significant way.

The intervention of former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon in European politics could help rightwing parties become the biggest bloc in the European parliament next year, according to Nigel Farage. Farage told the Observer that, Eurosceptics could become the largest political grouping on the continent and predicted that anti-EU MEPs could secure between 176 and 235 seats in the European parliament elections next May. With a bit of luck and a following wind it could even be the biggest,” Farage added. Bannon’s foundation, called The Movement, will be based in Brussels and dedicated to campaigning aggressively for a large, anti-EU faction in the European elections next spring. Bannon said last week he had already started raising funds amid speculation that former English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson, currently in jail, might be offered a leading role in its UK wing. Robinson, whose imprisonment has made him a cause célèbre among the international far-right, could be released this week following his appeal against a 13-month sentence for contempt of court in May. Farage also revealed that Bannon wanted to offer a rightwing antidote to the centre-right European People’s party (EPP), currently the largest party in the European parliament, and the European Socialists (PES), a social-democratic political grouping that includes the British Labour party, the Italian Democratic party and French Socialist party. Even though Britain is floundering with Brexit, across the rest of Europe, the Eurosceptics are on the march. All three are potential rivals to the prime minister and Bannon believes all of them could help deliver his ambition to undermine and eventually paralyse the EU. “I think shares in Bannon are overvalued.