Florida strips company of self-governing power for opposing Governor Ron DeSantis’s ‘don’t say gay’ law
For Joe Biden, the vote by Florida Republicans on Thursday to strip Disney of its self-governing powers was a step too far.
“Christ, they’re going after Mickey Mouse,” the president exclaimed at a fundraiser in Oregon, in apparent disbelief that state governor Ron DeSantis’s culture wars had reached the gates of the Magic Kingdom.
Continue reading...Analysis: 20 years on from Jean-Marie Le Pen’s advance to second round, his daughter’s ‘detoxification’ bears fruit
Throughout his forensic, if at times patronising, dismantling of Marine Le Pen’s arguments during their nearly three-hour live TV debate on Wednesday night, there was one term that Emmanuel Macron never employed: “far right”.
In the opinion of most French commentators – and voters, 59% of whom found the incumbent a convincing presidential candidate, against 39% who said the same for the Rassemblement National (National Rally) leader – Macron won the clash.
Continue reading...Site’s founder, Alex Jones, was found liable for damages in lawsuits related to lies he spread about 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting
Facing multiple defamation lawsuits, the far-right website InfoWars on Sunday voluntarily filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Texas.
Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedures put a hold on all civil litigation faced by companies that file for the protection and allows them to prepare turnaround plans while remaining operational.
Continue reading...Policies of far-right candidate put under spotlight, while both contenders try to woo leftwing voters
Emmanuel Macron has consolidated his lead over Marine Le Pen as France’s presidential race enters its final week, according to polls, suggesting harsher scrutiny of the far-right challenger’s plans may be shifting the race’s dynamic.
Six days from the runoff that will decide who occupies the Élysée Palace for the next five years, all 16 polls carried out since the first-round vote on 10 April have put the incumbent ahead, by between seven and 12 percentage points.
Grant police a “presumption of self-defence” and the right to file anonymous complaints.
Radically boost the number of prison sentences handed down.
Deny healthcare to undocumented migrants.
“Restore neutrality” to an education system based on “traditional values”.
Continue reading...Charles Donohoe will co-operate, giving prosecutors a boost in pursuit of high-ranking members of the far-right group
A member of the far-right Proud Boys group has pleaded guilty to conspiring to attack the US Capitol in a bid to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, giving prosecutors a win in their pursuit of high-ranking members.
As part of an agreement with prosecutors that will require him to cooperate against co-defendants, Charles Donohoe, 34, pleaded guilty on Friday in US district court in Washington to charges of conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding and assaulting Capitol police.
Continue reading...National Rally leader is closing gap on Emmanuel Macron in polls for this month’s presidential election
From her housing estate in northern Marseille, Elisabeth, 68, who once voted for the left, will return a ballot for the far-right Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election this month. “People used to think Marine was nasty,” she said. “Now they realise she’s not. Other politicians are taking her ideas. They all talk like her now.”
Elisabeth left school at 16 and worked at a shoemaker’s, in factories and as a housekeeper, but her €800 pension barely covers bills and food. “I live on credit, overdrawn by the middle of the month,” she said. “I make a weak stew and it lasts me three days. But Le Pen will cut taxes and put money in our pockets.” She agrees with Le Pen’s anti-immigration stance. She feels “Europeans” are becoming outnumbered in multi-ethnic northern Marseille and worries about crime. “I’ve been mugged twice, once for a necklace, once for a cigarette,” she said. Society is tense and divided, she feels, but Le Pen will “calm things down”.
Continue reading...Prosecutors show jurors social media posts which defense says do not show plot to snatch Michigan governor
Jurors on Tuesday saw provocative social media posts written by a key figure charged in a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, including a photo of a noose and a question: which governor would be “dragged off and hung for treason first?”
Federal prosecutors were close to finishing their case after 12 days of trial in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They are trying to show that four men charged with conspiring to kidnap the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in 2020 were committed to a plan without influence by informants or undercover FBI agents.
Continue reading...Testimony could play a major role in establishing whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy in efforts to overturn 2020 election
Behind closed doors in a nondescript conference room at the foot of Capitol Hill, the House select committee investigating 6 January next week expects to hear testimony about the connections between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys militia groups and the Capitol attack.
The panel expects to hear how the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys coordinated their plans and movements in the days before the insurrection to the same level of detail secured by the justice department and referenced in recent prosecutions for seditious conspiracy.
Continue reading...Enrique Tarrio possessed document titled ‘1776 Returns’, with details to invade and occupy seven buildings, New York Times says
The former leader of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right nationalist group whose members were prominent in the January 6 riot, was found in possession of comprehensive plans to “surveil and storm” government buildings, prosecutors said.
Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former chairman who was arrested last week and charged with conspiracy over the deadly attack, had a nine-page document entitled “1776 Returns”, named for the year of American independence, the New York Times reported.
Continue reading...People’s party’s deal with extremist rivals in Castilla y León called ‘pact of shame’ by Socialists
The far-right Vox party is set to form part of a regional Spanish government for the first time after cutting a deal to run the north-western autonomous community of Castilla y León with its bitter rivals in the conservative People’s party (PP).
The deal, which comes almost a month after the PP’s decision to call regional elections failed to produce the absolute majority it had hoped for, follows weeks of wrangling amid a PP leadership crisis.
Continue reading...Analysis: His British friend tried to help but the former president did not want to forget his voter fraud obsession and focus on the future. CPAC loved it but Republicans hoping to take Congress know they are courting disaster
The sagest advice given to Donald Trump all week came from a man who is neither a Republican nor an American.
Nigel Farage, the British politician, broadcaster and demagogue whose Brexit campaign coincided with Trump’s rise to power, warned his old pal against endlessly fixating on the 2020 election.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Vincent Bresson says he witnessed casual racism and covert posts by ‘shadow Facebook army’
A reporter who infiltrated Éric Zemmour’s presidential election team has claimed he witnessed a culture of casual racism and a covert online campaign involving a “shadow Facebook army” and repeated rewrites of the far-right polemicist’s Wikipedia page, the most viewed in France.
Vincent Bresson, 27, says he spent more than three months as an increasingly trusted member of “Génération Z”, as Zemmour’s young supporters’ group is known. He said he witnessed multiple racist remarks from both volunteers and senior staff.
Continue reading...Public safety minister speaks after arrest of extremists accused of plotting to kill police officers in Canada border town of Coutts
Canada’s public safety minister has warned of ties between protesters occupying the country’s capital and a group of far-right extremists who were charged earlier this week in the border town of Coutts, Alberta, over an alleged plot to kill police officers.
“Several of the individuals at Coutts have strong ties to a far-right extreme organization with leaders who are in Ottawa,” the minister, Marco Medicino, told reporters on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Les Républicains’ presidential choice promises crackdown after defections to Macron and rise in far-right’s polling
The rightwing French presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse vowed to crack down on immigration as she held her first big rally on Sunday amid competition from the growing far right and defections from her party to the centrist leader Emmanuel Macron.
“There is no sovereignty without borders,” Pécresse said on stage in Paris as more than 6,000 people waved French flags in support of the first female presidential candidate for Les Républicains, the traditional rightwing party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Continue reading...Thinktank linked to government has extended an invitation to the former US president
Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán is hoping Donald Trump will travel to Budapest in the coming weeks to boost his reelection campaign.
A thinktank linked to the Orbán government, the Centre for Fundamental Rights, has issued an invitation to Trump, a government source told The Guardian.
Continue reading...Prime minister follows Donald Trump playbook by tacitly endorsing wild conspiracy theory to score points
What started out as a conspiracy meme on the outer reaches of the internet has, with the help of Boris Johnson, swiftly established itself amid the cocktail of ideas and conspiracies that define the new extreme right.
The protesters who surrounded Keir Starmer on Monday night mostly shouted the word “traitor” – once a term of abuse against pro-EU MPs during the Brexit crisis – as well as “paedophile protector”, a reference to false claims about the Labour leader’s links to the Jimmy Savile case.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mandalay to Montevideo
Continue reading...Does movement against vaccine mandates herald Canada’s tea party moment?
For nearly a week, Paul Aubue has lived and slept in the cab of his truck, parked in downtown Ottawa.
The 64-year-old grandfather travelled from New Brunswick to join hundreds of others as they descended on the Canadian capital. Aubue, the owner of a trucking company, said he’d been driven to protest by a recent requirement that truckers crossing from the US into Canada be vaccinated against Covid.
Continue reading...Analysis: Absolute majority frees António Costa from having to rely on allies as he leads economic recovery
In 2016, Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, issued a lighthearted rebuke to his prime minister: António Costa, the president noted, was prone to “a chronic and slightly irritating optimism”.
Almost six years on, Costa’s optimism appears fairly well founded. On Sunday night the 60-year-old leader of Portugal’s Socialist party (PS) defied the polls, as well as political trends elsewhere in Europe, to secure a surprise outright majority in a snap general election.
Continue reading...Anti-Roma rhetoric, attacks on benefits recipients and lambasting of corrupt elite strike chord with voters
Portugal is voting in a snap general election that is unlikely to result in a majority government but which could lead to the far-right Chega party becoming the third largest group in parliament.
Sunday’s election was triggered in December after the long-running deal between prime minister António Costa’s minority Socialist government and its allies in the Portuguese Communist party and the Left Bloc broke down during negotiations to pass the 2022 budget.
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