5: Turns Out Trump Voters Aren’t the Same as ‘Conservatives’
A new study shows Republicans are way more divided on economic issues than we thought.
Donald Trump is many things to many people, but he is also a lesson. During the GOP primary campaign, Trump wasn’t shocking just for the crudeness of his rhetoric but the way he broke from normal Republican discourse. He was far more willing to flirt with outright white nationalism, but he also borrowed talking points from the left when attacking free trade agreements, famously promised “insurance for everybody” when discussing healthcare, swore he’d protect entitlement programs like Social Security, and dangled infrastructure spending. Republicans are supposed to tack rightward in primaries, prostrating themselves before the altar of self-reliance and anti-tax orthodoxy. Trump did the opposite, people loved it, and now he’s president.
That might be an oversimplification, but a massive new study of 8,000 voters—called the VOTER Survey—sheds some light on the hidden division in the Republican Party that helped lift Trump to the presidency. Participants were asked questions on a variety of topics ranging from how they felt about Muslims and black people to whether they thought Social Security and Medicare were important. The resulting data offers a rare look into how Trump voters differed from backers of Hillary Clinton—and the existential questions facing the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Vice News
4: US ‘mystified’ by Gulf states’ position towards Qatar
The US state department says it is “mystified” that Gulf states have not released details about their grievances towards Qatar more than two weeks after they imposed a blockade on the country.
Heather Nauert, the state department spokesperson, said in Tuesday’s press briefing that the more time goes by, “the more doubt is raised” about the anti-Qatar measures imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and their allies.
“At this point, we are left with one simple question: Were the actions really about their concerns regarding Qatar’s alleged support for terrorism or were they about the long-simmering grievances between and among the GCC countries,” she said, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Aljazeera
3: JEREMY CORBYN WANTS TO REQUISITION HOMES OF THE RICH FOR FIRE SURVIVORS — LIKE CHURCHILL DID IN WWII
BRITISH LABOUR PARTY leader Jeremy Corbyn has a bold proposal to house the survivors of a devastating fire at London’s Grenfell Tower apartment complex in empty luxury homes.
YouGov polling found that Corbyn’s idea is popular among the British public, with 59 percent supporting it. Yet there has been a harsh backlash from the U.K.’s right-wing government and press, which equated his plan with a Marxist plot. “Suggesting requisitioning empty properties when empty student accommodation is available locally is completely in line with his Marxist belief that all private property should belong to the state,” Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said.
But Corbyn’s plan has historical roots not in Marxist literature or state-run economies, but in his country’s own past.
During the Second World War, Great Britain faced one of the most powerful war machines in human history in a conflict with Nazi Germany. Its government responded by asking all of its citizens to contribute to the war effort in different ways.
The Intercept
2: US shoots down second Iran-made armed drone over Syria in 12 days
US forces in southern Syria have shot down an Iranian-made armed drone in the second such incident in 12 days, in a further sign that Washington and Tehran’s agendas are colliding along the Syrian-Iraqi desert frontier.
A US F-15 fighter jet opened fire on the drone in the early afternoon because it was approaching a US outpost near al-Tanf where US advisors were training an anti-Isis local militia, according to the Pentagon spokesman, Capt Jeff Davis.
“The F15 intercepted the armed UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] after it was observed advancing on coalition positions. It had ‘dirty wings’, meaning it was loaded with ordnance. The UAV did not make an attempt to divert, Davis said.
Al-Tanf is a strategic point near the Syrian, Iraq and Jordanian borders. In a similar incident on 8 June, an Iranian-made drone of the same kind dropped a bomb near US troops at the same training outpost before it was shot down by a US plane.
The Guardian
1: Chelsea Manning leaks had no strategic impact on US war efforts, Pentagon finds
The publication of hundreds of thousands of secret US documents leaked by army soldier Chelsea Manning in 2010 had no strategic impact on the American war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a newly released Pentagon analysis concluded.
The main finding of the Department of Defense report, written a year after the breach, was that Manning’s uploading of more than 700,000 secret files to the open information organization WikiLeaks had no significant strategic effect on the US war efforts.
The Guardian
