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Of all the democratic socialists who piled into a Manhattan church on Wednesday evening, none had the cachet of the man handed a microphone toward the meeting’s close.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani offered some pleasantries — “Hello friends, Zohran, he/him, Queens D.S.A.” — before launching into his mission: torpedoing the candidacy of a left-leaning ally, Councilman Chi Ossé, who is attempting to unseat Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat.

The remarkable scene was both a reflection of the tricky political calculuses Mr. Mamdani confronts as he prepares to take office next year and the egalitarian nature of a group that served as the grass-roots organizing machine of his political success.

A federal judge dismissed the criminal indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after finding the prosecutor who brought the cases, former Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan, was not lawfully appointed.

"I agree with Mr. Comey that the Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid. And because Ms. Halligan had no lawful authority to present the indictment, I will grant Mr. Comey’s motion and dismiss the indictment," U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie wrote in her ruling, finding the indictment should be tossed because the appointment of former Donald Trump personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan was invalid and she'd lacked the authority to present a case to a grand jury.

"All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey’s indictment, were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside," the judge wrote.

She issued a separate, similar ruling dismissing the James case.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2024 diary has revealed regular close contact with Republican senators in the US and former British prime minister Tony Blair.

The diary, which was published this week at the request of the non-profit group Hatzlaha, showed that Netanyahu held seven meetings and nine phone calls with Republican Senator Lindsay Graham.

The diary, much of which was redacted on national security grounds, also reveals that Blair and Netanyahu met seven times.

On 29 October 2024, the Israeli prime minister spoke with UAE President Mohammed Bin Zayed, a call that was unreported at the time.

Federal prosecutors have filed a new indictment in response to a July 4 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer was shot.

There are numerous problems with the indictment, but perhaps the most glaring is its inclusion of charges against a Dallas artist who wasn’t even at the protest. Daniel “Des” Sanchez is accused of transporting a box that contained “Antifa materials” after the incident, supposedly to conceal evidence against his wife, Maricela Rueda, who was there.

But the boxed materials aren’t Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, or whatever MAGA officials claim “Antifa” uses to wage its imaginary war on America. As prosecutors laid out in the July criminal complaint that led to the indictment, they were zines and pamphlets. Some contain controversial ideas — one was titled “Insurrectionary Anarchy” — but they’re fully constitutionally protected free speech. The case demonstrates the administration’s intensifying efforts to criminalize left-wing activists after Donald Trump announced in September that he was designating “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” — a legal designation that doesn’t exist for domestic groups — following the killing of Charlie Kirk.

https://archive.ph/2KJDu

Katie Wilson, who narrowly defeated the incumbent, Bruce Harrell, emerged from the city’s left-wing activist class and brings with her little experience in governing.

In a state without an income tax, the mayor-elect has promised to pursue what she calls “progressive” new sources of revenue to pay for housing and other basic services, including potential local taxes on capital gains, digital advertising and buildings purposely left vacant. She has pledged to push a $1 billion bond to build more homes and new protections for renters, who make up 56 percent of the city.

“There was a time when we saw Seattle as kind of a laboratory for progressive policy,” Ms. Wilson said in an interview this fall. “And that time’s not now anymore. But why can’t it be?”