These proposed laws are "aimed at police brutality protests, not right-wing insurrection."
Progressives are sounding the alarm that a handful of Republican lawmakers are exploiting the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 by an insurrectionist pro-Trump mob to push for anti-protest bills that critics say do not aim to stem the tide of right-wing extremism but instead criminalize dissent by those seeking social change and justice. Continue reading →
On January 11, in his final days before leaving office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added one parting blow to the series of bludgeons his administration has inflicted on Cuba for four years: putting the island on the list of “state sponsors of terror” that includes only Iran, North Korea and Syria. The designation drew swift condemnation from policymakers and humanitarian groups as a decision widely characterized as “politically motivated.” It comes six years after the Obama administration had removed Cuba from the same list as part of his policy of rapprochement. Continue reading →
As the US ruling elites have fully succumbed to Israel’s political discourse on Palestine, the Israeli government of right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may feel that it, alone, is capable of determining the future of the Palestinian people. Continue reading →
"Their complicity endangers America, erodes our democracy, and it must end."
A Republican congressman from West Virginia on Monday blocked a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Donald Trump from office, a move that came as Democratic lawmakers unveiled articles of impeachment against the president that are expected to receive a vote later this week. Continue reading →
"If another head of state came in and ordered an attack on the United States Congress, would we say that that should not be prosecuted?" the New York Democrat said Sunday.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday stressed a need for President Donald Trump’s removal from office, saying that failing to hold him accountable for Wednesday’s violent attack on the Capitol could ensure “it will happen again.” Continue reading →
"He shouldn't just be impeached or removed from office. He should be in jail."
Demands that President Donald Trump be fully held to account for inciting the fascist mob that rampaged through the U.S. Capitol building proliferated Wednesday as all hell broke loose in Washington, D.C., with members of Congress and journalists forced to seek shelter as the lame-duck incumbent’s supporters shattered windows and clashed with law enforcement. Continue reading →
On December 21, the United States Congress passed the COVID-19 Relief Package, as part of a larger $2.3 trillion bill meant to cover spending for the rest of the fiscal year. As usual, US representatives allocated a massive sum of money for Israel. Continue reading →
"PGE throwing another lawsuit at us to try to bring us to heel, when our community has overwhelmingly said 'hell no' multiple times."
In a clear signal of how the fossil fuel industry feels about efforts to enact Rights of Nature protections that safeguard communities and the environment from the impacts of coal, gas, and oil development, an energy company has—yet again—filed a federal lawsuit challenging a local law in Grant Township, Pennsylvania Continue reading →
Civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow police to seize property without trial, are frequently justified as tools to seize millions from kingpins. A new study reveals the median amount taken is as low as $369 in some states.
In 2015, New Mexico lawmakers unanimously passed a bill to all but end civil asset forfeiture, the process that lets police keep cash or property they seize, even if they never charge the owner with a crime, so long as they suspect that it’s linked to criminal activity. High-profile lawsuits and press attention had prompted some states to reexamine their forfeiture laws. Continue reading →
"Major tax cuts for the rich since the 1980s have increased income inequality, with all the problems that brings, without any offsetting gains in economic performance."
Neoliberal gospel says that cutting taxes on the wealthy will eventually benefit everyone by boosting economic growth and reducing unemployment, but a new analysis of fiscal policies in 18 countries over the last 50 years reveals that progressive critics of “trickle down” theory have been right all along: supply-side economics fuels inequality, and the real beneficiaries of the right-wing approach to taxation are the super-rich. Continue reading →
"Haul Louis DeJoy in front of a criminal grand jury for his postal sabotage and subversion of our elections," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr.
Nearly four months after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first demanded that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy turn over his daily calendar, the U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday released documents rendered almost completely useless by heavy redactions concealing who DeJoy met with as he worked to implement his destructive overhaul of mail operations. Continue reading →
The modern chicken industry is among the most egregious in the world. Worker abuse, animal abuse, abuse of small farmers, pollution of waterways, contaminated food products and financial wrongdoing regularly appear in the news. Big fines have no effect on an industry in which one company can make as much as $41 billion a year. Yes billion. Continue reading →
Erik Prince, the founder of the discredited former mercenary firm Blackwater USA and brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, has apparently landed a major secret Pentagon contract for mercenary services in Africa. The announcement of the contract was practically simultaneous with Donald Trump’s order to withdraw some 7,000 U.S. military personnel from Somalia. The moves by Trump and the Pentagon, which has seen several Trump loyalists embedded in key positions after Trump’s firing of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and other Pentagon officials on November 9, is yet another monetization of government services by Trump and his grifter supporters prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Continue reading →
"Joe Biden needs to undo these cruel regulations—and clean house at SSA—on day one."
Just weeks away from relinquishing power to incoming President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration is quietly launching a last-minute assault on Social Security by rushing ahead with a rule that, if implemented, could deny critical benefits to hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities. Continue reading →
The home of Rebekah Jones, a Florida state official who was fired for refusing to manipulate coronavirus data to justify premature re-opening of the economy, was raided Monday by the Florida Department of Law enforcement. Continue reading →
"It's sad that even on his way out, President Trump still can't resist the opportunity to stick it to the government workers."
The largest federal workers union in the United States condemned President Donald Trump on Thursday for throwing his support behind the Senate GOP’s effort to freeze the pay of civilian government employees in 2021, a move that would effectively slash their pay given rising insurance premiums. Continue reading →
During the most severe Main Street economic collapse in US history—with over one-fourth of working-age Americans jobless—additional calamity looms in the coming weeks. Continue reading →
"McConnell is making it pretty clear that if Dems don't win the Georgia Senate races, he will cripple the American economy, hoping it will let the GOP win the midterm."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday began circulating a coronavirus relief proposal whose contents offer so little assistance to the tens of millions of jobless, hungry, and eviction-prone Americans that critics warned the Kentucky Republican is actively working to ensure the U.S. economy remains mired in deep recession as the Biden administration takes charge next month. Continue reading →
“Enough is enough,” an emotional George Sterling of Georgia’s Election Commission declared at a nationally televised press conference Tuesday. Continue reading →
While Donald Trump has continually lambasted the FBI for wiretapping his Trump Tower in New York—legally authorized by court orders as a result of the amount of organized crime activity taking place there—there is evidence that he had at least one condominium outfitted with audio and video bugs during its use by contestants on Trump’s NBC reality show, “The Apprentice.” Moreover, there are fears being expressed from informed quarters that Trump has been blackmailing individuals who have stayed at his Trump International Hotel, located in the Old Post Office building, on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—A group of 40 Democratic senators has joined the House-led effort to block GOP Oval Office occupant Donald Trump’s return to the long-discredited and corrupt spoils system. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—Augmented by progressives, notably from the group Our Revolution, thousands of Postal Workers, other unionists, and their supporters turned out from coast to coast on Nov. 17 to campaign against Trump Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s resumed destruction of the U.S. Postal Service. Continue reading →
"I say to the Walton family: Get off welfare," declared Sen. Bernie Sanders in response to the government study he commissioned. "Pay your workers a living wage—at least $15 an hour."
Pinpointing a reality denounced as “morally obscene” by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a new government study shows how some of the nation’s largest and most profitable corporations—including Walmart, McDonald’s, Dollar General, and Amazon—feast upon taxpayer money by paying their employees such low wages that huge numbers of those workers throughout the year are forced to rely on public assistance programs such as Medicaid and food assistance just to keep themselves and their families afloat. Continue reading →
Belgium is furious. On November 6, the Belgian government condemned Israel’s destruction of Belgian-funded homes in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. Understandably, Brussels wants the Israeli government to pay compensation for the unwarranted destruction. The Israeli response was swift: a resounding ‘no.’ Continue reading →
"It is literally sickening to see Mitch McConnell continue to indulge his partisan obsession with confirming far-right judges, instead of taking action on the COVID pandemic that continues to spin out of control."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is under renewed fire from progressives for refusing to act on a pandemic relief package for struggling Americans while moving to advance more of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. Continue reading →
"The administration's proposal is unneeded, unwanted, and unacceptable."
The Trump administration was accused of firing a “vindictive, illegal parting shot” following Interior Secretary Bernhardt’s Friday executive order sabotaging funding of a key conservation program. Continue reading →
The discussion on institutional Israeli racism against its own Palestinian Arab population has all but ceased following the final approval of the discriminatory Nation-State Law in July 2018. Indeed, the latest addition to Israel’s Basic Law is a mere start of a new government-espoused agenda that is designed to further marginalize over a fifth of Israel’s population. Continue reading →
‘We don't need slumlords running our country—we need to cancel rent and ensure that housing is a human right.’
An apartment company co-owned by President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner is reportedly moving to evict hundreds of tenants who are behind on their rent payments, threatening to force low-income families onto the streets in the midst of an intensifying pandemic and nationwide economic crisis. Continue reading →
Mohammad Ibrahim Ali al-Deirawi was born on January 30, 1978, in Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. His family is originally from Bir Al-Saba’, an ethnically cleansed Palestinian town located in the southern Naqab desert. Mohammad was arrested by the Israeli army at a military checkpoint in central Gaza on March 1, 2001. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the armed Palestinian resistance, and was freed on October 18, 2011, in a prisoner exchange between the Palestinian resistance and Israel. Continue reading →
The vicious war against the Armenian Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) and Armenia by Azerbaijan, Turkey, and thousands of their jihadist terrorists has passed the one month mark. Continue reading →
Here in the heart of Florida’s retirement community, that swath consisting of gated communities, condominiums, and apartment complexes that surround Interstate 4 from Tampa through Lakeland, Kissimmee, and Orlando to Daytona Beach, Donald Trump’s promises to senior citizens and veterans have never produced any results. The laissez-faire public health policies enacted by Trump, aided and abetted by Florida’s incompetent Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, have resulted in needless deaths among seniors and veterans. These vulnerable members of society with co-morbidities, including heart disease, diabetes, and for veterans, combat-related injuries, were made more susceptible to Covid-19 super-spreading resulting from Trump campaign rallies in Sanford, The Villages, and Ocala. Continue reading →
As the multi-sector, global response to the coronavirus tightens the noose around civil liberties, CommonPass stands out as one of the most appalling and dangerous attacks on basic human rights in the name of public health.
Imagine standing at a TSA security checkpoint on your way home for the holidays. You’re getting ready to go through the awkward travel procedures instituted almost immediately after 9/11 when the Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) was created and air travel in the United States morphed into a search and seizure operation with the implied possibility of your detention and interrogation. Continue reading →