Politics

Dan Drezner considers the possibility that some Republican policy elites could start moving to the Democrats, but remains skeptical:

The thing is, that polarization has been going on for four decades now. Elites within the major political parties of 2016 are more ideologically distant than they were in, say, 1971. Indeed, this election cycle has exacerbated that polarization at the presidential level. So disaffected GOP intellectuals would have to travel a much longer ideological space to feel comfortable as Democrats.

Following Saudi threats to destabilize the financial system if the US were to enact a Bill that would allow an investigation into Saudi Arabia's support of September 11 terrorist attacks, many were watching closely how Obama would react. The president made it clear last night when as CNN reports, the White House threatened to veto the bipartisan bill to let families victimized by the 9/11 terrorist attacks sue Saudi Arabia while a GOP senator privately sought to block the measure.

ISIS militants are using drone warfare more widely in Iraq and Syria as the group comes under increasing military pressure from all sides. The Iraqi army in western Anbar has shot down its second ISIS unmanned aerial vehicle during the past 24 hours, according to a senior commander.  Abna24 reports: The commander of Anbar Operations Command, General Ismail al-Mahalawi, said in a press statement that the Iraqi soldiers shot down an ISIL UAV by medium and light weapons over al-Ameriyat, 23 km South of Fallujah.

Sweden’s minister for housing and IT has announced he is stepping down following a week of controversies including the emergence of footage where he compared the treatment of Palestinians by Israel to that of the Jews by the Nazis. Mehmet Güner Kaplan recently come under fire for his alleged ties to Islamic organisations and Turkish ultranationalists. The pressure increased over the weekend when Swedish media published seven-year-old footage of him comparing Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians to the Nazis persecution of the Jews.

The New Yorker‘s James Surowiecki writes this week about how Big Business has been a massively effective force for gay rights. He writes that progressives are used to seeing Big Business as the bad guy, but the pro-LGBT activist role corporations have taken on complicates matters. More: