Sun: Previous Guy Promises to Increase Inflation.

Hero to Homeless

Wakeel Hasan had to climb his neighbour’s 1.8-metre (six-foot) wall to enter the rubble-filled plot of land where his house stood only a day earlier.

The police had barricaded the front of the land where his home, a single-floored, two-bedroom house that his family had called home for over a decade, was demolished on Wednesday by the authorities in Khajuri Khas, a densely populated neighbourhood in India’s capital, New Delhi.

A day later, he stood on the rubble of his house, tears rolling down his face as he overturned bricks and wood planks to try and recover his 15-year-old daughter Aliza’s textbooks, who had to miss her 10th standard annual examination on Thursday.

“I can’t even look at this demolished home and not cry,” Hasan told Al Jazeera.

Only three months ago, Hasan was a national hero and had made headlines for rescuing 41 construction workers trapped in a Himalayan tunnel for more than two weeks.

His team of so-called “rat-hole miners” was called to the northern Uttarakhand state after professional rescuers armed with tunnel drilling machines repeatedly failed to reach the trapped workers. A nation of 1.5 billion people held its collective breath as the rat-hole miners dug by hand for 26 hours to free the buried men in November.

Hasan and his team received national recognition for their feat, including praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a selfie with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. Cash awards were announced and TV channels interviewed Hasan and his team of rat miners for days.

Only three months later, Hasan’s life turned upside down when he got a frantic call from his daughter while at a shop buying groceries.

Aliza said police officers had arrived at their house to demolish it and that she, along with her older brother Azeem, was standing against the door to prevent the police from entering. It was about 9:30 in the morning.

Soon, half a dozen police officers, some of them female, barged into the house and allegedly hit Aliza and Azeem, the assault caught on camera by people in a crowd that had gathered by now.

“I was slapped by the female police personnel and Azeem was pushed around, slapped and verbally abused. We were then dragged out of the house and thrown into a police car,” Aliza told Al Jazeera.

When Hasan reached home, he saw officials from the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the government organisation in charge of planning and development of infrastructure projects in the capital, attempting to demolish his house with large hammers.

Before Hasan could do or say anything, a bulldozer began tearing the structure down.

The DDA claimed Hasan’s house was built illegally on government land. In a statement, it said Hassan’s family was informedbeforeo the demolition and that they were given enough time to evacuate.

Hasan says no prior notice was given and that he had the legal documents to prove it was his house, including an electricity bill issued by the government.

“They claim the act was part of a demolition drive of illegal properties, yet they only demolished one property: mine,” he told Al Jazeera.

House of Muslim man behind India tunnel rescue demolished

A Five-Year Old Could Have Predicted This.  I Guess That Rules Out SCOTUS.

The difference in turnout between white and nonwhite voters has grown over the last decade, a report released Saturday from the Brennan Center for Justice found — and a major contributor appears to be a Supreme Court decision weakening the Voting Rights Act.

The findings of the report have sparked fears about the health of American democracy from experts at the Brennan Center, a left-leaning think tank that analyzes voting rights, elections, money in politics, gerrymandering and more.

“It is just not acceptable to have a democracy that not only systematically sees lower participation from voters of color, but where that gap in participation is consistently growing,” Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center, told NBC News.

“The sheer magnitude of the racial turnout gap, I think, is alarming and should alarm all of us,” Weiser added.

The report found that the growing racial turnout gap is in part due to the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which suspended Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The racial turnout gap “is growing most quickly in parts of the country that were previously covered under Section 5,” the report found.

The turnout gap between white and Black voters is growing, study finds

Move Over Charles Koch

From the Ambien and Dramamine in millions of bathroom medicine cabinets, to the sugar substitute that makes diet sodas sweet, to the first-ever birth control pill, some of America’s most common medicines and supplements can be traced back to the G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company.

Now, more than a century after the company’s founding, the massive family fortune built from those scientific advances has emerged as a major benefactor of the right, mostly out of the public eye.

The Searle Freedom Trust, a foundation funded by the company’s former chairman, has doled out more than $200 million in grants over the last decade, sending more money to conservative nonprofits than nearly any other private foundation in recent years, according to a CNN analysis.

This year, the Searle trust is poised to play an even bigger role as it empties out its coffers. Following the wishes of its founder, the late Daniel C. Searle, the trust is closing down in 2025 and planning to award most of its last major grants in 2024. That means a potential windfall during a key election year for groups that push conservative policies: as of the beginning of 2023, according to its most recent tax return, the trust had more than $59 million left to spend.

While several of its top beneficiaries are think tanks that have focused on economic policy and loosening government regulations, others have worked to weaken child labor laws, advocate for stricter voting rules, gut affirmative action policies, and push climate change denial. Its recent beneficiaries include a nonprofit run by former Trump administration officials that is laying the groundwork for a second Donald Trump term by preparing policy plans and drafting potential executive orders.

How the family fortune behind a major American pharma company has quietly funded conservative causes

Who Won the Week?

The NATO alliance, as Sweden clears the final hurdle to become a card-carrying member

New York Attorney General Letitia James, for keeping everyone updated via Twitter on the growing total Trump owes from his massive real-estate fraud judgment

The jury who found NRA ghoul Wayne LaPierre liable for diverting millions in member dues to lavish personal spending, and the NRA itself for failing to manage its finances

President Biden: glides to Michigan primary win; signs order to protect Americans’ health & financial data; visits border; aces annual physical

Karma, as Illinois Judge and MAGA-head Robert Adrian is removed from the bench for misconduct after reversing his own rape ruling to help a man avoid prison time

Cannabis connoisseurs in Germany, as the Bundestag legalizes recreational marijuana

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as former prof. Ruth Gottesman donates $1 billion to the Bronx school to guarantee free tuition to current and future students

U.S. District Judge David Ezra, for stopping the new Texas law overstepping its authority by siccing police on people they suspect of crossing into the U.S. illegally

The thousands of Russians who turned out for Alexei Navalny's funeral and burial, in defiance of Putin

Previous Guy Promises to Increase Inflation.

Donald Trump said he will impose tit-for-tat tariffs if he is reelected president, reiterating one of his isolationist policy goals that has already raised concern at home and overseas.

“I will pass the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” Trump said Saturday at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. “If China or any country makes us pay a 100 or 200% tariff, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100 or 200% right back.”

Trump has previously suggested raising tariffs by more than 60% on Chinese goods, as well as revoking the global superpower’s “most favored nation” status for US trade. He has also floated a 10% tariff on all goods imported to the US.

The proposals follow a series of tariff increases made during Trump’s presidency aimed at curbing imports of Chinese goods. The tariffs, which began in early 2018, eventually escalated to duties on goods ranging from seafood to chemicals by the fall of that year. That prompted China to respond with retaliatory levies on some US imports such as soybeans and poultry.