StatusWire — Clear Updates for Your U.S. Journey

Congress seeks to recast Ayodhya narrative amid Ram Temple donation row

The Hindu – National

2h ago

Congress seeks to recast Ayodhya narrative amid Ram Temple donation row

Summary

Subscribed with another email? The latest controversy over the alleged misappropriation of donations at the Ram Mandir has, however, given the Congress an opportunity to frame its attack around the Sangh Parivar’s control over the management of the temple. “The BJP-RSS have captured the temple administration in an unauthorised manner,” former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said while addressing a press conference at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) office on July 7. The Congress has mounted an unusually sustained campaign demanding action against the office-bearers of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust with Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) backgrounds. It has also asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to break his “silence” on the issue and order a Supreme Court-monitored investigation. The latest campaign reflects yet another nuanced repositioning by the Congress on Ayodhya, an issue on which the party’s approach has evolved repeatedly over the past four decades. The Congress government led by Rajiv Gandhi was accused of facilitating the early stages of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement when, in 1986, the locks of the disputed structure were ordered to be opened, allowing Hindu worshippers access to the site after a district court in Faizabad ruled that there was no valid executive order requiring the premises to remain locked. Three years later, in November 1989, the Narayan Dutt Tiwari-led Congress government in Uttar Pradesh permitted the shilanyas (foundation-laying ceremony) adjacent to the disputed structure. After the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, the Congress sharply distanced itself from the movement. The Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict in November 2019 marked another turning point. But the Congress’ top leadership avoided attending the pran pratishtha (consecration) ceremony on January 22, 2024, describing it as a VHP-RSS event from which the Shankaracharyas were kept away.

From the source

As the Ram Temple donation controversy unfolds, the Congress targets the Trust’s management and seeks to shift the political narrative around Ayodhya by demanding accountability and transparency

Read the full article

Published by The Hindu – National on thehindu.com

Open on thehindu.com ↗

The fight against AI data centers is just beginning

Community pushback from across the US and beyond is making some companies reconsider their data center buildout plans. OPT (work permit after graduation) in for The Stepback here . With the approval from the local government and plans to give back to the community, Apple likely didn’t anticipate the lengthy battle it was about to face. In 2017, the Irish High Court ruled in favor of Apple, but the pair of activists behind the appeal wanted to bring the decision before Ireland’s Supreme Court — and that was finally enough for Apple to call it quits. From January to March alone, protesters have blocked or delayed at least 75 projects in the US valued at $130 billion, according to a study from Data Center Watch , a research project backed by the AI security company 10a Labs. “The number of active opposition groups more than doubled from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 by the end of Q1 2026, now spanning 49 states,” the study says. “Over 235,000 petition signatures were collected in this quarter alone.” In January, the Blackstone-owned data center company QTS dropped plans to build a $12 billion campus in DeForest, Wisconsin, following protests from community members. As protests in communities across the US and beyond play out, a political battle is breaking out in Congress. Data centers are a key part of President Donald Trump’s plan to win the AI race against China, which is why he signed an executive order last year to fast-track the construction of the sprawling facilities. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a bill that would pause the construction of new AI data centers until Congress passes laws that would prevent the facilities from raising utility prices or harming the environment. Tech Policy Press reports that both Democrat- and Republican-led states have enacted 28 laws related to AI data centers, including Florida, which introduced rules to prevent data centers from passing on costs to residents. The current patchwork of local laws isn’t enough to rein in the buildout, and the federal-level bills still have to make their way through Congress, leaving many communities to fend for themselves.

General U.S. News2h ago

Israel’s war in Gaza dominates US midterm races as Democrats split

Tensions between progressive and moderate camps of Democratic party on display in key Senate race in Michigan The Israel-Gaza war created gaping divisions in the Democratic party and contributed to a resounding loss in a critical presidential election year in 2024. Two years later, the issue continues to dominate races across the country, as progressives try to seize on Israel’s falling popularity and a broad anti-war sentiment ahead of November’s midterms. A recent debate among two Democrats vying for one of the most competitive US Senate seats in the country openly displayed the tension between progressive and moderate camps of the party. “They clearly want one individual and it’s not me,” Michigan Democratic contender Abdul El-Sayed said, referring to pro-Israel groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that are spending against him. “So long as our politicians continue to be bought off by Aipac, do not be surprised when we fight wars that are in their best interest to annex Lebanon, or to do genocide in Gaza.” Haley Stevens, the moderate US representative benefiting from pro-Israel spending in the Senate race, retorted that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “trashing” her on CNN that day, saying she wasn’t afraid to stand up to Israel either. “No one owns my vote and no one owns my policies,” she said during the debate. “Anyone who is contributing to my Senate campaign is doing so because of my proven record of fighting for Michigan.” The careful balance of rhetoric and policy required of candidates trying to capture American sentiment on Israel has become a fraught litmus test. A poll by the Associated Press in June shows a third of US adults of all political backgrounds, and roughly half of Democrats, believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The share of Democrats who said the US was too supportive of Israel was nearly 60%, up from 45% in January 2024. While younger Democrats were more likely to hold this view, older Democrats increasingly share it too , the poll found. Even among the American Jewish community, the US-Israel relationship is not typically the number one issue bringing people to the polls, deGroot said. (And this demographic is contending with its own shifts on the issue; a recent poll found that Zohran Mamdani, the face of the rising left, is more popular than Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu among Jewish Americans.) Foreign policy usually doesn’t crack the top five issues voters rank as important in a general election, deGroot noted. But it is one area where Democratic primary voters can see differences between candidates. “A candidate’s willingness to buck the status quo of our foreign policy is a good example, a good symbol for them to show that they’re going to be willing to buck the status quo on all kinds of issues that people care about right now,” she said. Darrin Madison, a state representative in Wisconsin who is also a democratic socialist, said voters in the state want to stand up against special interests trying to buy elections, such as when Elon Musk poured tens of millions in a supreme court race in the state. Scott Wiener, a state senator running for Congress in California, was hounded by protesters at a trans pride march and said people were “cornering me, touching me or trying to physically bully me out of a public event”.

theguardian.com Read ↗

Stephen Miller is outraged over birthright citizenship. His arguments are nonsense | Sidney Blumenthal

Trump’s immigration architect calls the supreme court’s decision ‘outrageous’ as he pushes for policy rooted in genetics, not law N either of the supreme court majority opinions in Trump v Barbara , the 5-4 decision upholding the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, mention the true architect of the case. Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14160, which would deny citizenship to children born on American soil if their parents are undocumented immigrants or on temporary visas, is extensively noted, but not the man responsible for it . He posted on X: “One of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the long history of the Supreme Court. American citizenship is not the birthright of the world. He has driven the strategies of aggressive mass deportations and harsh ICE (immigration enforcement agency) tactics, restrictive immigration, and voter suppression schemes on the disproven assertion of mass illegal voting by undocumented immigrants. Miller helped draft Trump’s so-called “ Save Act ” to limit voter participation by requiring proof of US citizenship through often costly documents, in effect a new poll tax, a ploy which is paralyzing the Republican Congress. In the category of air travel, apart from the designer of the Nasa rocket used in the Apollo program (ex-Nazi immigrant Wernher von Braun), an immigrant invented the helicopter (Igor Sikorsky), enclosed cabin aircraft (Giuseppe Mario Bellanca), cargo transport (Michael Stroukoff), and the son of an immigrant invented assembly line airplane manufacturing (William Boeing). The patterns of immigration coursing through the genealogy of the Trump family reveal how unquestionably they were regarded without suspicion in terms of birthright citizenship under the 14th amendment. At the time of John G Trump’s birth, his mother, Elizabeth Christ Trump, an immigrant from Germany, was not a naturalized citizen like her husband Frederick, a German immigrant. Fred would marry a Scottish immigrant, Mary MacLeod, a maid in the household of the most famous immigrant of his age, Andrew Carnegie, who revolutionized industrial organization from mass production of steel to vertical integration.

Congress seeks to recast Ayodhya narrative amid Ram Temple donation row

From the source

More in General U.S. News

The fight against AI data centers is just beginning

Israel’s war in Gaza dominates US midterm races as Democrats split

Stephen Miller is outraged over birthright citizenship. His arguments are nonsense | Sidney Blumenthal