Month: May 2023

BDN’s opinion section operates independently and does not set newsroom policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or bangordailynews.com. Matthew Gagnon of Yarmouth is the executive director of the Maine Policy Institute, a free-market policy think tank based in Portland. A native of Hampden, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, DC. On Monday, US Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina made his entrance official in the 2024 presidential race at an event at Charleston Southern University, his alma mater. His announcement had been highly anticipated for months,…

The Israeli government has approved a new two-year budget that solidifies the religious and settlement-friendly agenda of the ruling coalition, as thousands of protesters demonstrated against the spending package outside the Parliament building. The 2023 and 2024 budgets were approved early Wednesday by a 64-56 vote, deadlocked by overnight debate and after weeks of negotiations. The budgets are 484 billion shekels ($131 billion) for this year and 514 billion shekels ($139 billion) for next year, according to a parliament statement after the vote. “This budget is good for all citizens of Israel,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in the statement….

CNN — Ron DeSantis’ decision to announce his 2024 White House bid in a conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter Wednesday will make a typically blunt statement about his campaign, the unruly populism of the modern Republican Party and a conservative media revolution that accelerates Florida’s governor will finally jump into the race by throwing a gauntlet at former President Donald Trump with a launch strategy that frames him as the race’s true anti-establishment rebel who is willing to smash the conventions of traditional presidential politics. His choice of venue on Twitter Spaces, the site’s audio platform, also exemplifies the…

Islamabad, Pakistan – Since his controversial arrest and the violence that followed, more than two dozen leaders of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have left the party, which it blames for the exodus to the government’s continued repression. In the biggest setback for Khan’s party since the exodus began, Shireen Mazari quit the PTI on Tuesday after the former human rights minister was detained several times since she was first arrested on May 12 by the deadly protests that followed Khan’s arrest. In a press conference at her residence in Islamabad on Tuesday evening, the 57-year-old politician…

Ministers played no role in handing police new Partygate information about Boris Johnson, the justice secretary said after allies of the former prime minister claimed he was the victim of a “political corset”. Alex Chalk told GB News he had not seen the relevant information and it was now up to the police to “opinion on it” as Mr Johnson faces further allegations of possible breach of Covid rules. The cabinet minister said: “Officers without any input from ministers, I want to stress that, took the decision to pass it on to the police. “You were talking about fairness, I…

So it’s useful to think about why the intuitive response for, say, an Iowa Republican might be very different from the natural response in New York, Boston, or Washington, DC. Consider some recent analysis by politics and religion writer Ryan Burge, who tried to analyze whether there was some sort of “Trump effect” in religious practice after 2016. Specifically, he looked at the proportion of Americans who never attended church in the six years since Trump’s election in compared to that share during Barack Obama’s last six years as president. Overall, the rate of church non-attendance has been rising for…

Oprah Winfrey.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images California Gov. Gavin Newsom has named media mogul Oprah Winfrey yes Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat it is vacant amid increasingly intense health problems. According to the Associated Press, Winfrey is one of the names Newsom is considering nominating should Feinstein willingly give up her seat. The 89-year-old senator from California returned to Washington on May 10, after a shingles diagnosis and treatment that kept her sidelined for 10 weeks. And while the idea of ​​inducting a celebrity with no political experience into the high-profile seat may seem random, there may be some planning behind it. In 2021,…

Several major coal operators in the commonwealth of Kentucky made a surprising political move Tuesday, announcing their support for Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for re-election over his Republican challenger, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron. The endorsements, which included the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and several Kentucky coal industry leaders, come amid what many have described as the Biden administration’s war on coal and the rush of Democratic Party towards green energy. However, Beshear appears to be bucking that trend, similar to one of his fellow Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, another pro-coal state. DEMOCRAT ANDY BESHEAR…