In August 2022, two important acts of resistance hinted at a sea change in attitudes toward invasive surveillance technologies. First, New York University’s Brennan Center sued the Department of Homeland Security for violating a Freedom of Information request regarding how the agency utilizes social media to monitor U.S. citizens. Days later, it was announced that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing data brokerage company Kochava for the sale of geolocation information that may violate the privacy of women seeking reproductive health care. Continue reading →
As what is mainly a western caused climate disaster continues to hammer Africa, with tens of millions facing famine and starvation in the Horn of Africa, the small, underdeveloped country of Eritrea is leading the fight to prevent this from happening. Continue reading →
On September 18, President Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t” use nuclear weapons in retaliation for severe battlefield losses in Ukraine. While Putin dismissed Biden’s worries as unfounded, the specter of nuclear Armageddon drove U.S. antiwar activists to the streets days before in a September Week of Action organized by the Peace in Ukraine Coalition. Continue reading →
Heinrich Himmler’s SS adopted the Teutonic runic Black Sun—Schwarze Sonne—as its favorite symbol. In May 2022, the neo-Nazi who massacred ten black people at a Buffalo supermarket wore the Black Sun on his body armor. On September 1, the would-be neo-Nazi assassin of Argentina’s Vice President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, wore a Black Sun tattoo. And, in keeping with the theme, Florida’s far-right Governor Ron DeSantis has quickly turned the Sunshine State into the “Black Sunshine State,” in homage to the Nazi Schwarze Sonne. Continue reading →
“This is not a regular airport,” Margaretta D’Arcy said to me as we heard a C-130T Hercules prepare to take off from Shannon Airport in Ireland after 3 p.m. on September 11, 2022. That enormous U.S. Navy aircraft (registration number 16-4762) had flown in from Sigonella, a U.S. Naval Air Station in Italy. A few minutes earlier, a U.S. Navy C-40A (registration number 16-6696) left Shannon for the U.S. military base at Stuttgart, Germany, after flying in from Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia. Shannon is not a regular airport, D’Arcy said, because while it is merely a civilian airport, it allows frequent U.S. military planes to fly in and out of it, with Gate 42 of the airport functioning as its “forward operating base.” Continue reading →
Carl Asher clung to a wooden post on his porch for three hours—yelling for help in the darkness, water lapping at his neck—before risking it all. Continue reading →
"We're truly fearful that at some point we will see a librarian arrested for providing constitutionally protected books on disfavored topics," said one free speech advocate.
Right-wing attempts to ban books are showing no sign of slowing down, according to a report released Friday by the American Library Association—and in fact have reached an unprecedented level, with libraries and bookstores increasingly facing legal threats over the materials on their shelves. Continue reading →
Indigenous women and girls in Canada continue to face disproportionate levels of violence and insecurity rooted in colonialism.
Violence against Indigenous women is “escalating like never before,” the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) has warned. A series of tragedies have rocked the city of Vancouver (unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh lands) in recent months, including the discovery of the body of a 14-year-old Indigenous child, Noelle O’Soup, in May. Continue reading →
Nancy Davis was forced to carry a fetus with a deadly skull deformity for six weeks due to her state's post-Roe trigger law banning most abortions.
A Louisiana woman denied an abortion despite carrying a fetus with a fatally flawed skull revealed Wednesday that she traveled nearly 2,500 miles round trip to New York City in order to undergo the procedure. Continue reading →
"Frankly, men who treat women like that in public," said the New York Democrat, "I fear how they treat them in private."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday paused before proceeding to her line of questioning at a House Oversight Committee hearing, expressing shock over the treatment Republican Rep. Clay Higgins subjected an expert witness, Raya Salter, to moments earlier. Continue reading →
"He just turns away from her and starts yelling about Democrats to drown her out," said one rights advocate. "Sort of a metaphor for the Republican Party."
Sen. Lindsey Graham garnered condemnation from rights groups on Tuesday after brushing off a question from a woman who shared her personal story of a pregnancy that she found out was nonviable at 16 weeks, at a press conference where the South Carolina Republican proposed a nationwide 15-week abortion ban. Continue reading →
"The difference between me and my opponent couldn't be clearer," said Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock.
GOP U.S. Senate hopeful Herschel Walker on Wednesday reaffirmed his support for a national abortion ban, saying that he would vote for the policy if elected in November and if Republicans regain control of the upper chamber. Continue reading →
Geoffrey Berman has a new book out, “Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department,” laying out chapter and verse of how Bill Barr corrupted the Department of Justice on behalf of Donald Trump. Barr’s coverups for Trump range, in my read, from criminal activity to treason. Continue reading →
"Senate Republicans are showing us exactly what they plan to do if they get power," said the president of Planned Parenthood. "It's dangerous—and the stakes have never been higher."
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced legislation Tuesday that would ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a proposal that reproductive rights defenders warned is a signal of the draconian policy agenda the GOP intends to pursue if it retakes Congress in the upcoming November midterms. Continue reading →
Legalization opponents have lost the hearts and minds of the public, so they’re trying to take the public out of the equation.
Those who wish to perpetuate the failed public policy of cannabis criminalization have lost the hearts and minds of the American public. And they know it. Continue reading →
“We are at a precipice and we’re counting on the American people to come through—and I have hope that people will realize that we have to turn this clock back.” Continue reading →
The history of abortion in the U.S. guided some of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Alito argued that abortion has never been a “deeply rooted” constitutional right in the United States. Continue reading →
"Dr. Oz's far-right position tearing away the right to safe, legal abortion care puts him in the radical right wing of our politics and woefully out of step with Pennsylvania voters."
With eight weeks to go until the midterm elections, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the state’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, called on physicians on Friday to weigh in on the threat his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, poses to reproductive rights if he wins a Senate seat. Continue reading →
Donald Trump, the New York real estate mobster who fled Gotham City for Florida during his twice-impeached presidency to avoid the arm of justice in the Empire State, needed a corrupt and inexperienced federal judge to stymie the Justice Department’s investigation of his theft of thousands of highly-classified and other official documents from the White House. He found one in Judge Aileen Mercedes Cannon, a right-wing Federalist Society Cuban-American. Continue reading →
"This is a massive win for LGBTQ+ youth out of Washington," said one advocate.
LGBTQ+ rights advocates on Tuesday applauded a ruling by a federal court in Washington State which upheld the state’s ban on “conversion therapy,” saying the ban will continue to save lives. Continue reading →
"This is, quite simply, a speech intended to incite domestic terrorists to kill FBI agents and members of the Biden administration," said one attorney.
Former President Donald Trump was accused of inciting domestic terrorism following a Saturday rally speech in which he called President Joe Biden an “enemy of the state” while threatening a “backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen” in response to the federal investigation into his possession of classified documents. Continue reading →
"If Clarence Thomas had any shame, he would resign immediately," said one advocacy group. "But he doesn't."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faced fresh calls to step down Thursday after new reporting revealed that his wife’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election was broader than previously known, extending to the battleground state of Wisconsin as well as Arizona. Continue reading →
Social Security advocates on Wednesday applauded Democrats including U.S. President Joe Biden for their defense of the popular program as Republicans recycle false claims that the nation will soon be unable to pay for the program’s benefits, making the monthly payments that help support more than 65 million Americans a key issue ahead of the midterm elections. Continue reading →
“Green” Gavin Newsom, the California governor who would be president, has gone intensely anti-solar and pro-nuke. Continue reading →
Losing two coworkers to domestic violence over a three-year span left Emily Brannon and other members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 310L reeling. Continue reading →
When the Dobbs decision came down from six Republicans on the Supreme Court, many folks were wondering how long it would take before vigilantes and GOP-controlled states might start tracking women seeking abortion services. Continue reading →
Rivers around the world are drying up. Some perennial rivers will eventually dry up permanently—many within this century—because the glaciers that feed them are disappearing at a rapid rate. This could be the plot line of a science fiction movie but this is science fact. Aside from the scientists, meteorologists, and environmentalists, too many people remain clueless about the Earth’s impending ecological crisis. One of the main reasons for this ignorance is the anti-science Luddism promoted by a gaggle of right-wing climate change deniers, medical quacks, junk scientists, lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians who have no business weighing in on subjects about which they have no ability or desire to understand. Continue reading →
If the world halted planet-heating pollution today, the ice sheet would lose more than 3% of its mass in the coming decades, scientists warn. To prevent even worse outcomes, immediate climate action is needed.
The fossil fuel-driven climate emergency has already locked in so much ice melt in Greenland that sea levels will surge by nearly a foot in the coming decades, peer-reviewed research published Monday warns, underscoring the need to rapidly transform virtually all aspects of the global political economy. Continue reading →
"How many post offices will be closed?" asked one union official. "How many clerks and drivers will lose jobs?"
Postal union officials are sounding the alarm about the potentially damaging impacts of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s effort to consolidate post offices across the U.S. as part of his widely condemned 10-year plan to reshape the public mail agency. Continue reading →
The United States is in the same vulnerable position today as Weimar Germany was in the early 1930s. German democracy died amid acts of violence by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. The United States now finds itself in a similar perilous position. The Republican Party under the Hitler-admiring Donald Trump eschews democracy and embraces fascism. Republican candidates for office this year are as violent, anti-Semitic, and racist as Hitler’s Nazi Brownshirts. Continue reading →
"I don't think we're responding with the urgency these authoritarian moves deserve," warned one civil rights attorney.
Progressives are sounding the alarm about the lengths to which GOP officials appear willing to go to advance their deeply unpopular and reactionary agenda after Louisiana’s State Bond Commission, at the urging of right-wing Attorney General Jeff Landry, once again denied flood prevention resources to New Orleans due to the city’s opposition to the state’s new abortion ban. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON (PAI)—Crunch. And a shortage of everything. That’s the warning rail union leaders are sending to consumers as the nation approaches the holiday season. Continue reading →
