Elon Musk lived in apartheid South Africa until he was 17. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who has become a fundraiser for Donald Trump and a troll of Ukraine, left aged five, and grew up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee. Peter Thiel spent years of childhood in South Africa and Namibia, where his father was involved in uranium mining as part of the apartheid regime's clandestine drive to acquire nuclear weapons. And Paul Furber, an obscure South African software developer and tech journalist living near Johannesburg, has been identified by two teams of forensic linguists ... read more
The cost of imprisonment -- including who benefits and who pays -- is a major part of the national discussion around criminal justice policy. But prisons and jails are just one piece of the criminal justice system and the amount of media and policy attention that the various players get is not necessarily proportional to their influence. In this first-of-its-kind report, we find that the system of mass incarceration costs the government and families of justice-involved people at least $182 billion every year. read more
The influence of Christianity has declined in America in recent years, but a Gallup poll published in March showed that 68% of Americans still identify as Christian. In 2020, 71% of white Americans who attended church regularly voted for Trump. In 2016, white evangelicals made up one fifth of all voters ' and they overwhelmingly supported Trump over Hillary Clinton (77% to 16%). According to the Pew Research Center, 85% of white evangelicals favor the GOP in 2024. In recent years, many evangelical voters have moved from backing a particular candidate or party into Christian nationalism. (Christianity Today defines Christian nationalism as the "belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.") But God, Trump and the Republican Party are not synonymous. North Carolina event, Guillermo Maldonado, a pastor from Miami and longtime Trump ally, told attendees this election wasn't just about American politics. read more
A group of more than 70 House Republicans introduced legislation this week that would make elements of the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, delivering a huge windfall to the rich and choking off more federal revenue at a time when Republican fearmongering over the national debt is at a fever pitch. read more
They'll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record's clear: It was segregation. read more
"But Russia Russia Russia for #1253 time gets the front page"
But in 1937 the whine of isolationists and we had plenty of industrialists visiting Germany and kissing Hitler's ass just as they do today with Putin. tgen it was Hitler, Hitler, Hitler because that was the threat to democracy and western civilizationtoday it's Putin but you don't think we should be concerned or talk about it? Do you even realise how stupid that would be? Probably you don't!;