Category: donald trump

  • In this episode, we explore the week in Australian politics and international affairs, starting with the media’s breathless fixation on whether Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will secure a face-to-face with US President Donald Trump.

    We examine how the Canberra press gallery and commercial breakfast TV – “When are you meeting Trump, Prime Minister?” – turn diplomacy into reality-show theatre.

    As Washington’s unpredictable trade war threatens Australian exporters, we argue that “Albo-meets-Don” photo-ops won’t protect the economy and that Canberra must diversify beyond the United States toward larger markets such as China and India. Along the way we revisit Kevin Rudd’s famous “village idiot” spray at Trump, JD Vance’s Hitler comparison, showing how partisan spin obscures the fundamentals of Australia–US relations.

    Then we go to Belmore in Sydney’s west, where police brutally assaulted former Greens candidate Hannah Thomas during an anti-war protest outside SEC Plating – one of at least twenty local contractors supplying F-35 fighter-jet parts used by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. Using the draconian NSW “Places of Worship” laws, officers fractured Thomas’s eye socket, proving our long-held warning that expanded police powers crush dissent and protect weapons manufacturers. We connect this incident to Australia’s $4.1 billion stake in the F-35 program, ask why Canberra denies any military link to Israel, and highlight how protest rights are being selectively policed to silence pro-Palestine voices.

    We then explore the Liberal Party’s gender crisis: just six women in the House of Representatives and 32 per cent female representation nationwide. While deputy leader Sussan Ley talks “quotas, merit lists, anything that works,” Angus Taylor and WA Liberals dig in against reform. Drawing on Labor’s 31-year journey to gender parity, we propose a radical but simple fix – women-only preselections for the next two elections – arguing that genuine democracy needs a parliament that reflects Australia’s diversity.

    Finally, we analyse the landmark Yoorrook Justice Commission report, which labels Victoria’s post-1834 treatment of First Nations peoples an act of genocide. With 100 recommendations spanning compensation, land returns and curriculum reform, Yoorrook sets a blueprint for truth-telling, treaty and justice – if governments stop dragging their feet. We explain why acknowledging genocide under UN definitions is essential, how similar truth commissions elsewhere have driven change, and why Australia can no longer afford selective amnesia about its colonial past.

    #auspol

    Support New Politics, just $5 per month:

    @ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/newpolitics

    @ Substack: https://newpolitics.substack.com


    Support independent journalism

    We don’t plead, beseech, beg, guilt-trip, or gaslight you and claim the end of the world of journalism is coming soon. We keep it simple: If you like our work and would like to support it, send a donation, from as little as $5. Or purchase one of our books! It helps to keep our commitment to independent journalism ticking over! Go to our supporter page to see the many ways you can support New Politics.


    The post The obsession of a date with Trump and more police brutality in NSW appeared first on New Politics.

    This post was originally published on New Politics.

  • The U.S. House of Representatives voted 218-214 on Thursday to pass President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill, greenlighting deep cuts to America’s social safety net and the decimation of the country’s only federal climate strategy. Democrats uniformly opposed the bill, while all but two House Republicans supported it. “This bill will leave America a far crueler and weaker place,”…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • President Donald Trump’s handpicked Social Security chief issued a statement Thursday applauding the passage of a Republican reconciliation bill that analysts say would negatively impact the New Deal program’s finances. Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano called the Republican legislation, which Trump is expected to sign on Friday, a “historic step forward for America’s seniors”…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.


  • President Donald Trump has just released fragrances for God-fearing, America-loving patriots. While proudly wearing Trump’s trademark red MAGA caps, they can now make an olfactory declaration of their love of the U S of A!

    The fragrances named “Trump Victory 45-47” — referring to his capturing the 45th and 47th presidencies — are available as cologne for men and perfume for women, and are bargain priced at only $249 for the limited edition 3.3 fl oz numbered collectors version. You can get them at the dedicated website. Hurry! They won’t last.

    I recognize that there are some nasty people out there, cynics who would want to portray Trump as being a crude, obnoxious opportunist, using his prominence as the world-renowned leader of the most powerful and wealthiest country in human history, to suck money out of the wallets of Trump loyalists and other gullible chumps. This would obviously be a grotesque and insulting abuse of power.

    But hey, let’s cut the man some slack.

    What’s his motto? It’s not MTRGA: ‘Make Trump Resorts Great Again’. It’s MAGA! ‘Make America Great Again!’ That says it all! That tells us where his loyalties really lie.

    Trump is not getting any younger. He probably hasn’t — especially considering his diet — got that many years left on this Earth. Yet he’s dedicating this final chapter in his life to service to our nation. His devotion to the United States of America limitless and beyond dispute.

    Look at the reality. He’s been a super-entrepreneur all his life, wheeling, dealing, perfecting the art of the deal. He could right now be in the private sector bankrupting companies. Instead, he is selflessly committed his life to the public sector, bankrupting the country.

    No, you negative nitpickers, ‘Trump Fragrances’ is not some scam. Trump Fragrances is our deeply patriotic, courageous, noble president’s bold and history-changing attack on the stench that now exhales from our bilious economy, the noxious cloud hovering over our whole putrid and stagnating society, the effluvium exuded by the political milieu of Washington DC.

    And what a stinky mess our governing institutions, including the Executive Branch, have become! The swamp creatures roaming the halls of power are exclusively beholden to the ruling elite — the extreme ultra wealthy — pathologically beguiled by American exceptionalism, addicted to war, paranoid, xenophobic, ill-informed, myopic, misinformed, insular, delusional, deaf, dumb, and blind. And that’s on a good day!

    But there is hope!

    Trump Fragrances will displace the putrefying off-gassing of our dying democracy, the foul stench of corruption and treachery, the malodor of malfeasance and incompetence, the rank miasma of hypocrisy and betrayal, and doggedly overpower the fetid reek of failure with the SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS … of winning and winning and winning again and again.

    Yes, good people, with Trump Fragrances, we are witnessing a revolution in the making!

    Call it the New World Odor.

    The post New World Odor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • As the country tumbles towards fascism, some members of the U.S. military have struggled with a choice: defy illegal orders, or participate in the dismantling of American democracy. In June, over the objections of local leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, President Donald Trump called up the National Guard and the U.S. Marines to quell protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US President Donald Trump signed a memorandum reinforcing the US blockade on Cuba and banning all US tourism to the island. The move targets Cuba’s economy and aims to isolate the Cuban government.

    On June 30, 2025, US President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum that dramatically tightens the longstanding US blockade against Cuba and prohibits all US citizens from traveling to the island. This policy shift overturns the more conciliatory approach adopted by the Biden administration and signals a renewed campaign to economically and politically isolate Cuba.

    The post Trump Tightens US Blockade On Cuba, Bans US Tourism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The first arrivals to Trump’s new controversial ICE detention facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Republican politicians for its location in the Florida wilderness, were set to arrive late on Wednesday, July 2.

    Since Trump came into office for the second time in January, his administration has been scrambling to meet the necessary benchmarks to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to deport between 15 to 20 million people. The newly-opened detention center is part of Trump’s latest bid to escalate his regime of mass deportations, beginning to accept prisoners a month after the Trump administration raised the quota of immigration arrests to 3,000 per day.

    The facility is set to open with 3,000 beds ready, with plans to expand to up to 5,000.

    The post Fight Against ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Unites Immigrant, Environmental, And Indigenous Movements appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The United States has lifted restrictions on exports to China for chip design software developers and ethane producers, a further sign of de-escalating US-Sino trade tensions including concessions from Beijing over rare earths. Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems and Siemens, three of the world’s largest electronic design automation (EDA) software developers, said on Wednesday (Thursday AEST)…

    The post US lifts chip design software curbs on China appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  •  

    Aggression is widely understood as the most serious form of the illegal use of force under international law. At the post–World War II Nuremberg Trials, British Judge Norman Birkett said:

    To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

    UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 lists seven acts that constitute aggression, including:

    • The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a state of the territory of another State….
    • Bombardment by the armed forces of a state against the territory of another state, or the use of any weapons by a state against the territory of another state.

    In a clear instance of such aggression, 125 US military aircraft (along with a submarine) unleashed 75 weapons against Iran on June 21, including 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), each of which weighs 30,000 pounds (BBC, 6/23/25). The MOPs are the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in the US arsenal (Democracy Now!, 6/23/25).

    ‘Brilliant military operation’

    NYT: Trump’s Courageous and Correct Decision

    The New York Times‘ Bret Stephens (6/22/25) acknowledged that US intelligence maintained that “Iran’s leaders had not yet decided to build a bomb”—but he argued that to act “amid uncertainty…is the essence of statesmanship.”

    Rather than condemning this blatant violation of international law, US corporate media commentators gushed over what the Boston Globe (6/24/25) called a “brilliant military operation.” The Wall Street Journal (6/22/25) gave President Donald Trump “credit…for meeting the moment.”

    To the New York TimesBret Stephens (6/22/25), Trump made “a courageous and correct decision that deserves respect.” “The president acted before it was too late,” he wrote. “It is the essence of statesmanship.”

    For the Washington Post’s Max Boot (6/25/25), it’s “good news…that both Israel and the United States showed they can bombard Iranian nuclear facilities and other targets at will.”

    Rather than toasting aggression, these observers could have used their platforms to try to help foster a political climate that prioritizes peace and the international legal principles that could help create a less violent world.

    Meanwhile, some opinion mongers thought the US was at risk of insufficiently violating international law. The Post’s editorial board (6/22/25) said Trump

    should ensure that Iran’s nuclear program is demolished, as he appeared to claim it was on Saturday. This would mean the destruction of the targeted sites plus any residual weapons-building capacity.

    In other words, the authors are glad that the US bombed Iran in violation of international law, and think it might be best to do more of the same.

    A Journal editorial (6/23/25) put forth a similar view, warning that Trump will “squander” any “gains” that the US and Israel may have made against Iran if he “lets Iran take a breather, retain any enriched uranium it has secretly stored, and then rearm. But the last fortnight creates a rare opportunity for a more peaceful Middle East.” I’m not a big Orwell fan, but there’s something to his vision of the propaganda slogan “war is peace.”

    Upside-down world

    WSJ: Trump Meets the Moment on Iran

    Iran “now knows Mr. Trump isn’t bluffing,” the Wall Street Journal (6/22/25) wrote. Does the paper imagine that Iran thought Trump was “bluffing” when he assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the nation’s top military leader, in 2020?

    These celebrations of bomb-dropping occur in an upside-down world, where Iran is an aggressor against the United States. One form of this lie is accusing Iran of wantonly killing Americans or seeking to do so. The Journal (6/22/25) cited “1,000 Americans killed by Iran-supplied roadside bombs and other means”—referring to the dubious claim that Iran is responsible for US soldiers killed during the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq (Progressive, 1/7/20). Thus, to the editors, “Mr. Trump had to act to stop the threat in front of him to protect America.”

    For Boot (6/22/25), Iran is a “predator” that the United States and Israel “will still have to deal with…for years to come.”

    It would be nice to be able to assess the evidence for these allegations, but the authors don’t so much as hint at any. What is well documented, though, is that the US has been the aggressor in its longrunning war with Iran.

    The US ruling class initiated the conflict by overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 (NPR, 2/7/19), propping up the Shah’s torture regime for 26 years (BBC, 6/3/16; AP, 2/6/19), sponsoring the Iraqi invasion of Iran and helping Iraq use chemical weapons against Iran (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13), supporting Israel’s years-long campaign of murdering Iranian scientists (Responsible Statecraft, 12/21/20), and asphyxiating Iran’s civilian population through economic sanctions (Human Rights Watch, 10/29/19).

    In other words, the US has been prosecuting a war against the Iranian people for more than 70 years, and Iran hasn’t done anything remotely comparable to the US, but the corporate media pretends that the inverse is true.

    The consent manufacturers went even further, characterizing Iran as a threat to the world more generally. The Journal (6/22/25) said “Iran has been waging regional and terrorist war for decades,” and that “the world is safer” because the US bombed the country. Stephens proclaimed the Iranian government “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” a claim Boot (6/25/25) echoed, writing that the nation has a “decades-long track record as the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.” Sickeningly, Antony Blinken (New York Times, 6/24/25), a leading architect of the genocide of Gaza’s civilian population, called Iran “a leading state sponsor of terrorism; a destructive and destabilizing force via its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Yemen and Iraq.”

    As usual, none of these writers bothered to say which acts of “terrorism” Iran has backed, never mind provide proof. Of course, if one wanted to make a serious argument that Iran has won the planet’s “state sponsor of terrorism” gold medal, then it would be necessary to show how they trumped, say, US support for Al Qaeda in Syria. For such a case to be convincing, it would furthermore be necessary to assess where bankrolling a genocide ranks in the terror-sponsoring Olympics.

    ‘A grave nuclear threat’

    WaPo: Iran’s nuclear program is damaged — not ‘obliterated’

    Max Boot (Washington Post, 6/25/25): “The good news is that both Israel and the United States showed they can bombard Iranian nuclear facilities and other targets at will.”

    In the fantasy world where Iran is a grave danger to the US and indeed the world, then wrongly implying that it has or is about to have nuclear weapons packs a heavier punch. The Journal (6/22/25) said, “President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s three most significant nuclear sites on Saturday helped rid the world of a grave nuclear threat.” The editorial would later add, “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted a bomb more than peace.”

    Boot (6/25/25) wrote that “preliminary Israeli intelligence assessments [of the US bombing of Iran] conclude that the damage to the Iranian nuclear weapons program was more extensive—enough to set back the program by several years.” Stephens began his piece:

    For decades, a succession of American presidents pledged that they were willing to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But it was President Trump who, by bombing three of Iran’s key nuclear sites on Sunday morning, was willing to demonstrate that those pledges were not hollow and that Tehran could not simply tunnel its way to a bomb because no country other than Israel dared confront it.

    As FAIR contributor Bryce Greene (6/23/25) recently demonstrated, there is no proof that Iran has nuclear weapons or is close to having any. Yet the op-ed pages are peppered with insinuations that Iran’s imaginary nukes legitimize the US’s aggression against the country.

    A Boston Globe editorial (6/24/25) read:

    After years of insisting it would not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, Israel followed through by launching a wide-ranging attack earlier this month, assassinating nuclear scientists and military leaders and destroying many sites associated with Iran’s decades-long nuclear program. Trump initially stayed on the sidelines, until Saturday when US bombers delivered the coup de grâce, destroying—or at least heavily damaging—a key underground site that only American bunker-buster bombs could reach….

    Stopping Iran, whose unofficial national motto is “Death to America,’’ from gaining a nuclear weapon has rightly been a US priority for decades.

    Iran’s nuclear program is now damaged but not destroyed.

    What’s missing from this chatter is that, even if we lived in an alternate reality where Iran had nuclear weapons or was hours away from having them, attacking them on these grounds would not be legitimate. After all, international law does not grant states a right to attack each other on a preventive (Conversation, 6/18/25) or pre-emptive basis (Conversation, 6/23/25). This crucial point was entirely absent in the coverage I’ve discussed.

    Also overlooked are the 90 nuclear warheads that Israel is believed to have, as well as the more than 5,200 that the US reportedly possesses, none of which apparently constitute “a grave nuclear threat,” even as it’s not Iran but the US and Israel that routinely carry out full-scale invasions and occupations of nations in West Asia.

    Whether it’s Iran’s supposed support for terrorism or Iran’s nonexistent and non-imminent nuclear weapons, the propaganda follows the same formula: make an unsubstantiated claim about Iranian malfeasance, and use that as a premise on which to defend Washington openly carrying out acts of aggression, perhaps the gravest violation of international law.

    If you want the US and Israel to stop killing and immiserating people in Iran, remember this pattern and get used to debunking it. Because, last week’s ceasefire notwithstanding, the US/Israeli war on Iran isn’t over.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • I wish U.S. academics would spend less time fantasizing choices between various murders with trollies, or playing games with theories about how greedy robots might do diplomacy, and more time on the impeachment problem.

    The United States has an impeachment problem. Impeachment was put into a Constitution that made no mention of, allowance for, or plans to survive the existence of political parties. Presidents are now generally not impeached for any abuse or outrage unless there is one party that doesn’t itself engage in that same abuse or outrage and that party is in the majority in the House. The use of a sex scandal for the impeachment of Bill Clinton was part of the process of destroying the impeachment power, but we’re now probably past sex scandals, for better or worse. We’re reduced to obscure or even fictional offenses, or physical attacks on Congress Members. And even those can be impeachable only when the non-presidential party has a House majority. And even then, the same party would have to have a two-thirds majority in the Senate to get a conviction, since a president’s party’s members will do virtually anything a president commands.

    This impeachment problem, unless it is solved, effectively means that a popular nonviolent movement to oust a lawless dictator from the throne on Pennsylvania Avenue must turn out the entire government and start over. The reason the proper course is not the one everyone has been conditioned to mindlessly follow, namely waiting for a distant election, is the same reason impeachment was put into the Constitution: some abuses and outrages should never be tolerated. They do too much massive damage, and they set precedents that are very hard to undo. When Bush-Cheney and then Obama were allowed to finish out and not be removed, warmaking became more acceptable than ever, as did warrantless spying, lawless imprisonment, torture, murder by missile, etc. Criminal thuggery became firmly a policy choice, not an impeachable or prosecutable offense — unless of course you’re not the president. The top impeachable offenses by Bush are in this list of 35. Partway into the Obama presidency, I documented his continuation of 27 of those 35.

    The Trump-Biden-Trump era has iced the cake of acceptable and legalistic monstrosities.  In 2019, RootsAction put together a list of 25 articles of impeachment for Trump:

    Violation of Constitution on Domestic Emoluments
    Violation of Constitution on Foreign Emoluments
    Incitement of Violence
    Interference With Voting Rights
    Discrimination Based On Religion
    Illegal War
    Illegal Threat of Nuclear War
    Abuse of Pardon Power
    Obstruction of Justice
    Politicizing Prosecutions
    Collusion Against the United States with a Foreign Government
    Failure to Reasonably Prepare for or Respond to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria
    Separating Children and Infants from Families
    Illegally Attempting to Influence an Election
    Tax Fraud and Public Misrepresentation
    Assaulting Freedom of the Press
    Supporting a Coup in Venezuela
    Unconstitutional Declaration of Emergency
    Instructing Border Patrol to Violate the Law
    Refusal to Comply With Subpoenas
    Declaration of Emergency Without Basis In Order to Violate the Will of Congress
    Illegal Proliferation of Nuclear Technology
    Illegally Removing the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
    Seeking to Use Foreign Governments’ Resources Against Political Rivals
    Refusal to Comply with Impeachment Inquiry

    One could go on piling up the articles of impeachment or documenting their continuation and expansion. But what’s missing is not the documentation. Here’s a guy who incited violence at his campaign events prior to his first stint on the throne. RootsAction proposed his impeachment for open financial corruption on his first inauguration day. The case was beyond solid, and has been built up ever since. Every weapons shipment for genocide by Biden, Trump, or a harmoniously bipartisan Congress violates numerous U.S. laws. The corruption is gradiose, fantastic, megalithic. The wars, the lies, the kidnappings by masked thugs, the environmental destruction, the promotion of bigotry and hatred — it’s a festival of flagrantly overly justified grounds for removal from office. But what’s missing is the will to make removal happen. On June 24, a huge, happy, bipartisan majority voted not to impeach Trump for making himself a king, just 10 days after huge demonstrations all across the country denouncing Trump for having made himself a king.

    I’m afraid of what will happen instead of impeachment. President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. And there is nobility in that idea. But there is no such thing as making nonviolent revolution impossible. And the powers of nonviolent action are virtually unknown in U.S. culture. Mildly objecting to mass murdering foreign people is a lot for us. The notion that we might actually learn from the successes of foreign people could be asking too much. And so the vast panoply of options between demanding impeachment and hitting Capitol Police officers with flag poles may be lost on too many of us. It may be lost on us beyond our ability to recognize the absurd insufficiency of choosing between two disastrous candidates every four years. We may realize what a scam this so-called democracy is, but not realize our latent power to take it over without counterproductive violence. That does not bode well.

    The post The Impeachment Problem first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In this wide-ranging episode, we explore the United States’ surprise bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, the ceasefire that followed, and the way Australia’s 24-hour silence morphed into a reflex endorsement of Washington’s strike.

    Our analysis looks at how Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong framed the raid under the tired mantra of “alliance obligations”, even as experts warned the gamble could ignite a region-wide war which has been designed to prop up Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump and the military-industrial complex. We track the media narrative that magnifies “Iranian aggression”, while treating Israel’s right to self-defence as gospel, highlighting the ABC’s decision to give Scott Morrison – now on the board of a major arms contractor – and disgraced bureaucrat Mike Pezzullo prime airtime without disclosing their conflicts of interest.

    We test Australia’s claim to a “rules-based international order”, which essentially is rubber-stamp diplomacy that refuses even to name breaches by the United States or Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We ask whether Penny Wong has abandoned the national interest, comparing her record to past foreign-policy low-lights by Alexander Downer and Gareth Evans, and explore Ed Husic’s call for genuine balance as a rare sign of Labor spine. The Coalition’s Andrew Hastie demands transparency on Pine Gap and AUKUS – even though his own party stitched up the $380 billion submarine deal in total secrecy –revealing the bipartisan habit of saying one thing in opposition and another in power.

    Will complacency threaten Labor’s huge post-2025 majority now that the “we don’t comment on national security matters” has returned as part of the political lexicon? And will failing to manage foreign-policy crises risk the same slow credibility bleed that started with the Voice to Parliament referendum in 2023. It didn’t cost Labor at the last election, but could it have an effect at the next one? Finally, we also look the Federal Court win for journalist Antoinette Lattouf – sacked by the ABC after reposting a Human Rights Watch report on Israel’s starvation tactics – showing how the Israel lobby still warps Australia’s public broadcasters.

    #auspol

    Support New Politics, just $5 per month:

    @ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/newpolitics

    @ Substack: https://newpolitics.substack.com


    Support independent journalism

    We don’t plead, beseech, beg, guilt-trip, or gaslight you and claim the end of the world of journalism is coming soon. We keep it simple: If you like our work and would like to support it, send a donation, from as little as $5. Or purchase one of our books! It helps to keep our commitment to independent journalism ticking over! Go to our supporter page to see the many ways you can support New Politics.


    The post The End Of The Rules Based International Order appeared first on New Politics.

    This post was originally published on New Politics.

  • At last week’s NATO summit, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that his country would be buying a dozen F-35A fighter jets from the U.S., each one capable of carrying a payload of tactical nuclear weapons. It marks the first time since shortly after the end of the Cold War that U.S. nuclear weapons capable of being dropped from aircraft are to be stationed in the U.K.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The U.S. government has fallen into the hands of people who lack proper metaphors; all they know is business. The nation should be ​“run like a business” according to these unimaginative suits among the GOP, who haven’t read or studied enough to consider how the government might be run like anything else. The problem with this thinking is it will, by inevitably following the profit motive, lead to a terminal phase. With the House passage of President Donald Trump’s budget legislation ​“One Big Beautiful Bill,” the United States has reached the private equity looting stage of the metaphor.

    The logic of this scheme will collapse, but it might bring us all down with it.

    The post America For Sale! Everything Must Go! appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Faramarz Farbod speaks with Yves Engler, a Canadian activist and author of 13 books, including most recently Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy and Stand on Guard for Whom? (A People’s History of Canadian Military). The conversation explores Canada’s role in the world, its relationship with US capitalism and imperialism, Canada’s policies toward Iran and Cuba, misperceptions of Canada in the US, and the concept of Canadianism.

    The post Faramarz Farbod in Conversation with Yves Engler on Canada, the US, and Imperialism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • One summer day in 2017, a front-page story in the StarNews of Wilmington, North Carolina, shook up the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The drinking water system, it said, was polluted with a contaminant commonly known as GenX, part of the family of “forever” PFAS chemicals. It came from a Chemours plant in Fayetteville, near the winding Cape Fear River. Few knew about the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The parent company of CBS News, Paramount Global, announced Tuesday that it has agreed to pay U.S. President Donald Trump $16 million to settle what legal experts called an entirely meritless lawsuit over the media organization’s handling of a pre-election “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Under the reported terms of the settlement, the money will go toward Trump’s legal fees and his…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Atlanta, July 2, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Paramount Global’s $16 million settlement with U.S. President Donald Trump reached on Tuesday, with deep concern that such a concession by a major news network will set a harmful precedent of media self-censorship.  

    “This is a major blow for press freedom in the United States: A network news outlet has just caved to groundless threats from the president over its coverage,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg in New York. “This signals that the current administration–as well as any future administrations–can interfere with, or influence, editorial decisions.” 

    In a lawsuit filed last year, Trump accused CBS, whose parent company is Paramount Global, of deceptively editing a ’60 Minutes’ interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris to interfere with the election. Paramount Global will pay the settlement amount, including legal fees, to Trump’s future presidential library, according to news reports.

    Last month, CPJ wrote to the chair of Paramount Global, Shari Redstone, warning her that a settlement would signal that political figures can pressure news organizations into altering or censoring editorial decisions.

    The FCC is investigating a merger deal between CBS parent company Paramount and Skydance, a deal that could have been endangered by the possibility of litigation from Trump. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this year re-opened a news distortion investigation into CBS.

    CPJ’s request to Paramount Global for comment on the settlement’s editorial implications did not receive an immediate reply.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On July 1, CBS ‘News’ and Yahoo News headlined “Comparing the Medicaid cuts in House and Senate ‘big, beautiful bill’,” and presented news that was actually an analytical or “opinion” article which was 860 words of gobbledygook that enumerated minor differences between the House-passed and the Senate-passed versions of Trump’s budget-and-tax bill that he insists must be on his desk to sign on July 4th and that in BOTH versions increases spending on ‘Defense’ (aggression) and cuts billionaires’ taxes and cuts health care and disability coverage for the nation’s poor in order to pay for a tiny percentage of the thereby-increased federal deficit — the bill increases the suffering of the poor in order to increase the profits to firms such as Lockheed Martin and to reduce the taxes on those firms’ controlling billionaires, but none of this information was so much as even mentioned in that 860-word ‘news’-report.

    The most up-voted and least down-voted of the 650 reader-comments to it at Yahoo News as-of this writing was only 94 words but vastly more informative than that 860-word CBS ‘News’ story was:

    George

    So every one of you Medicaid recipients who voted for Trump can congratulate Trump and every MAGA member of Congress for either stripping you of health care or making it more difficult to qualify while these guys you voted for have 100% coverage that costs them nothing for life. The money they’re ripping from you is going to help pay for a tax break to people like Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who just spent $50 million on his wedding reception. Make America Great Again for the billionaires by taking from the poor and disabled.

    That too is analytical about Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” but it is meaningful instead of meaningless from the standpoint of informing the public about the realities that the public needs to know in order to be able to carry out intelligently their voting-responsibilities.

    The ‘news’-media should fire the ‘journalists’ such as Caitlin Yilek who wrote that CBS ‘News’ article and hire ones such as ‘George’ who is not merely far pithier but far more informative. Then these ‘news’-media will become news-media.

    Today at another of my articles, “America’s Republicans’ Hatred of the Poor,” I got a reader-comment about the type of elected public-office-holders that we get from such a billionaires-controlled press:

    nameless

    Eric, at the very beginning of the lock down, I attended a zoom round table set by Steve Kirsch, a former Silicon Valley executive. I forgot his name but the guest was a West Point Graduate. And he said in Sacramento, there was  a bill that was about to be passed that was not to the benefit of the population at large. So a bunch of voters gathered with picket signs asking for the bill not to be passed, and ready to get together and talk about it right at the front of whatever they call that place. Well, guess what happened? The thugs who refer to themselves as “our” law makers and legislators closed the doors behind them completely ignoring the protesters, went Inside and passed it anyway!!!!! This is what the cattle in this country refer to as “democracy”.

    If the amount of money to one’s name is what determines one’s worth, then drug dealers, contract killers, murderers and child traffickers should be allowed a piece of the pie, and why not, let’s allow the drug cartel a seat in the Congress!!! LOL. All of these criminals get a piece of that pie, so why not allow the other Party a piece of their pie?! One of the DAs who were after Trump was caught to have no less than 15 million $ in one of her bank accounts, her official salary being like only a mere 100K$ a year!!! I mean you cut the mortgage payment, car payment, food, etc., and there will be virtually nothing left. But she has 15 million $ in the Bank!!!! Where did she get that from if not from drug money laundering, bribes and what have you?…They are all criminals. Thank you for Lincoln’s priceless speech. Awesome!!!

    People tell me that my proposed solution to such problems as these is ‘too radical’ but have none of their own to propose instead. I can’t respect anyone who merely complains and who just ignores that the prevailing governmental and political rottenness REQUIRES a radical solution. So, if you don’t like mine, then please contact me and tell me why and tell me your own. And if you like mine, then tell me so, because all that I’ve gotten so far is people who still think that competitive elections by the public are essential in order to have a democracy, and who ignore the massive data proving that to be rabidly false. It seems that everybody is so elitist they can’t get out of that groove, not even to CONSIDER an alternative to it. In ‘democratic’ politics, the natural result is for the scum — no ‘elite’ — to rise to the top. Does NOBODY yet recognize this fact — not even with people such as Biden and Trump being in the White House? This is NOT a passing phenomenon; it has been like this ever since 1945 and is getting worse over time. How much worse does it have yet to be before people start opening their minds to the reality and acting on it?

    The post The Difference between “News”-Reporting and News-Reporting first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • When campaigning in 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump was delighted by leaked, hacked or disclosed material that wound its way to the digital treasure troves of WikiLeaks. The online publisher of government secrets had become an invaluable resource for Trump’s battering of the Democratic establishment hopeful, Hillary Clinton, with her nonchalant attitude to the security of email communications and a venal electoral strategy. “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks,” he tooted on what was then Twitter. “So dishonest! Rigged system!” After winning the keys to the White House, he mysteriously forgot the organisation whose fruit he so merrily feasted on.

    During the Biden administration, the fate of the founding publisher of WikiLeaks, an Australian national who had never been on American soil and had published classified US defence and diplomatic material outside the country (Cablegate was a gem; Collateral Murder, a chilling exposure of atrocity in Baghdad), was decided. Kept in the excruciating, spiritually crushing conditions of Belmarsh Prison in London for over five years, Julian Assange was convicted under the US Espionage Act of 1917 in June 2024, the victim of a relic dusted and burnished for deployment against the Fourth Estate. Assange’s conviction on one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information has paved a grim road for future prosecutions against the press, a pathway previously not taken for its dangers.

    With this nasty legacy, recent threats by Trump against journalists who published and discussed the findings of a leaked preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency are hard to dismiss. The report dared question the extent of damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear facilities by Operation Midnight Hammer, which involved 75 precision guided munitions in all. “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” Trump asserted with beaming confidence. “Obliteration is an accurate term!”

    CNN and the New York Times duly challenged the account in discussing the findings of the short DIA report. Damage to the program had not been as absolute as hoped, setting it back by a matter of months rather than years. This sent Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth into a state of apoplexy, haranguing those press outlets who “cheer against Trump so hard, it’s like in your DNA and in your blood”. For his part, Trump accused the Democrats on a Truth Social post of leaking “information on the PERFECT FLIGHT on the Nuclear Sites in Iran”, demanding their prosecution. He further charged his personal lawyer to harangue the New York Times with a letter demanding it “retract and apologize for” the article, one it claimed was “false” and “defamatory”.

    To Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business, Trump also added that reporters could be forced to reveal their sources on “National Security” grounds. “We can find out. If they want to, we can find out easily. You go up and tell a reporter, ‘National security, who gave it?’ You have to do that, and I suspect we’ll be doing things like that.”

    According to RollingStone, the President has already queried whether the press could be snared by the Espionage Act. While the magazine misses a beat in ignoring the Assange precedent, it notes the current administration’s overly stimulated interest in the statute. Prior to returning to the White House, Trump and his inner circle considered how the Act could be used not only to target leakers in government and whistleblowers “but against media outlets that received classified or highly sensitive information”. The publication relies on two sources who had discussed the matter with the President.

    One source, a senior Trump administration official, insists that the Act has again come up specifically regarding reports on the efficacy of the US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Members of the administration are “looking for the right case to launch their ‘maiden voyage’ of an unprecedented type of Espionage Act prosecution”, one designed to deter news outlets from publishing classified government information or concealing the identities of their leaking sources. “All we’d really need is one text or email from a reporter telling a source: ‘Can you pull something for me?’ or something very direct of that nature’.” A less ignorant source would not have to look far for the one existing, successful example in the US prosecutor’s kit.

    When pressed on the issue of whether the espionage statute would become the spear for the administration to target leakers and journalists, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly was broad in reply: “Leaking classified information is a crime, and anyone who threatens American national security in this manner should be held accountable.”

    The unanswered question regarding Assange’s prosecution and eventual conviction remains the possible and fundamental role played by the Constitution’s First Amendment protecting press freedom. Unfortunately, the central ghastliness of the Espionage Act is its subversion of free speech and motive. Given the Australian publisher’s plea deal, the mettle of that defence was never tested in court.

    Some members of Congress have shown a worthy interest in that valuable right, notably in the context of defending Assange. In their November 8, 2023 letter to President Joe Biden, sixteen lawmakers spanning both sides of politics, including Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene and progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, declared their commitment “to the principles of free speech and freedom of the press” in urging the withdrawal of the US extradition request for Assange. Unfortunately, and significantly, that request was ignored.

    Where Greene and other MAGA cheerleaders sit on Trump’s dangerous enchantment with the Espionage Act remains to be seen, notably on the issue of prosecuting publishers and journalists. MAGA can be incorrigibly fickle, especially when attuned to the authoritarian impulses of their great helmsman.

    The post Trump, Leakers, and Journalists first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In March, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, began receiving top secret messages from national security officials in the Trump administration after he’d been inadvertently added to an internal Signal chat. Many of those same officials oversaw recent military strikes against Iran. On this week’s More To The Story, host Al Letson sits down with Goldberg to discuss what “Signalgate” taught him about the Trump White House and his concerns for the future of American democracy.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn, with help from Steven Rascón, Artis Curiskis, and Julia Haney | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson 

    Listen: In Fallujah, We Destroyed Parts of Ourselves (Reveal)

    Read: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans (The Atlantic)

    Read: All the Ways Trump Officials Are Downplaying the “War Plans” Group Chat (Mother Jones)

    Read: New Report: Trump Administration Just Got Hit With Another Signal Chat Scandal (Mother Jones)

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • By the end of the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in The Hague in June 2025, it became clear that everything was about money. In fact, the final communiqué was perhaps the shortest of any NATO meeting – only five points, two about money and one to thank the Netherlands for hosting the summit. The Hague Declaration was only 427 words, whereas in the previous year, the Washington Declaration was 5,400 words and ran to 44 paragraphs. This time, there was not the granular detail about this or that threat, nor the long and detailed assessments of the war in Ukraine and how NATO supports that war without limit (“Ukraine’s future is in NATO”, the alliance said in 2024, a position no longer repeated in the brief statement of 2025).

    The post The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Hallucinations appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  •  

    The Sunday morning talkshows have for decades played an important part in shaping political narratives in the United States. They typically bring on high-profile Washington guests for one-on-one interviews, aiming to set the political agenda for the week ahead. But these shows also have consistently marginalized the voices of women and BIPOC people, and those who might represent the public interest, rather than the interests of a narrow, wealthy elite (Extra!, 9–10/01, 4/12).

    After Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 and 2024 elections, the Sunday shows had an opportunity to hold up both his campaign promises and his cabinet picks to scrutiny. With his campaigns’ racist attacks on immigrants and diversity initiatives, as well as his movement’s assaults on the rights of women and trans people, inviting guests who more accurately reflect the diversity of the country would seem to be a journalistic imperative. Yet a new FAIR study finds that the Sunday shows’ coverage of the Trump transitions were even more heavily white and male than usual.

    We also found that in 2024, when Trump’s rhetoric and cabinet picks became even more extreme, fewer guests voiced criticism of Trump and his cabinet than in 2016. By downplaying critiques of Trump, these shows used their inside-the-Beltway influence to tell insiders that the MAGA presidency should get a more deferential reception the second time around.

    Methodology

    FAIR documented all guests on ABC‘s This Week, CBS‘s Face the Nation, CNN‘s State of the Union, Fox News Sunday and NBC‘s Meet the Press from November 13, 2016, through January 22, 2017, and from November 10, 2024, through January 19, 2025. We used the Nexis news database, Archive.org and news outlet websites to obtain complete transcripts. We included all guests invited to speak on the show with the host, whether individually or in groups. (Most panel discussions—which were typically journalist roundtables—were excluded; the exceptions were those conducted in an interview format.)

    We documented the guests’ occupation, gender and race or ethnicity, as well as whether they voiced critical or supportive opinions of Trump, his campaign and his cabinet picks. For politicians and other political professionals, we recorded partisan affiliation.

    We counted 162 guests in the first Trump transition period, and 186 in the second. (Much of the difference can be accounted for by the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday in 2016, resulting in only three guests across all shows, rather than the usual 15 to 17.)

    From the first to the second transition period, there were some notable shifts in the shows’ guest demographics and views on the president-elect, particularly from nonpartisan guests and guests from the defeated Democratic Party.

    Focus on Beltway insiders

    Occupations of Sunday Show Guests During Trump Presidential TransitionsThe vast majority of guests in both time periods were current and former government officials, in line with the Sunday shows’ focus on Washington insiders. This habit has the effect of marginalizing other kinds of people with deep knowledge about various policy areas, such as academics, NGO leaders, labor leaders, activists or other public interest voices.

    In 2016, current and former US officials and politicians made up 86% of all guest appearances. In 2024–25, that number stayed nearly the same, at 84%. In 2016, journalists came in a distant second, at 7%. In 2024, that distinction went to former military officials, with 6%.

    Of the partisan sources, Republicans outnumbered Democrats (and independents who caucused with the Democrats) 56% to 40% in 2016–17. Interestingly, Democrats slightly outnumbered Republicans in 2024–25, 49% to 47%. (The remainder were primarily people who had served as appointees under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and one Green Party guest in 2016.)

    Historically, Republicans have been overrepresented on the Sunday shows. It’s noteworthy that that wasn’t the case in the transition to the second Trump administration. But at the same time, the number of invited guests who voiced criticism of Trump or his cabinet picks decreased from 2016 to 2024, from 28% to 22%. This can be largely attributed to the fact that far fewer of the Sunday shows’ Democratic guests and nonpartisan guests took a critical position on Trump in 2024—a phenomenon that will be discussed in more detail below.

    Skewing (more) male

    Gender of Sunday Show Guests during Trump Presidential Transition 2016-17

    The Sunday show guests were highly skewed toward men (81% of guests) in 2016; they were even more skewed (84%) in 2024. This was driven primarily by the shift in GOP guests, whose 3.5:1 male-to-female ratio in 2016 skyrocketed to an astounding 24:1 ratio in 2024. (Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway accounted for 15 of the 17 female GOP appearances in the first time period.)

    Not every Sunday show guest talked about Trump; other interview topics ranged from political issues, like Middle East policy or the opioid epidemic, to largely apolitical interviews about things like sports or books. In 2024–25, there were 19 of these guests, and they were nearly evenly split along gender lines—meaning the gender split among those talking about Trump was even more skewed towards men.

    Fox News was consistently the worst in this category, inviting 89% male guests in 2016 and 90% in 2024, but most of the others weren’t far behind. The high mark in female representation for any show in the study was CNN in 2016, when just 27% of its guests were women. In 2024, CBS bucked the trend as the only show that increased its female representation, moving from 20% to 25%, and also was the only show to invite a trans guest (Rep. Sarah McBride, 11/24/24) during either study period.

    Gender of Sunday Show Guests during Trump Presidential Transition 2024-25In other words, as Trump retook office under the shadow of Project 2025, with its promises to reverse decades of gains on gender equity and reproductive rights, nearly every show moved toward a greater silencing of women’s voices.

    Marginalizing women’s voices is consequential. For instance, State of the Union host Jake Tapper (1/5/25) directed questions about Trump nominee Pete Hegseth to two white male guests, Republican Sen. Jim Banks and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. Asked directly by Tapper about the sexual assault claim against Hegseth, Banks waved it off; the only “concerns” Kelly expressed were about Hegseth’s lack of experience.

    When CBS Face the Nation (11/24/24) asked similar questions of Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth, she responded directly: “It’s frankly an insult and really troubling that Mr. Trump would nominate someone who has admitted that he’s paid off a victim who has claimed rape allegations against him.” Female guests won’t always raise issues of women’s rights, gender equity or misogyny, nor should they be expected to shoulder that responsibility alone—but they are certainly more likely to.

    Overwhelmingly white

    Race/Ethnicity of Sunday Show Guests during Trump Presidential Transition 2016-17The shows also invited overwhelmingly white guests to interview, though that number decreased from 2016 to 2024, from 85% to 78%. While not quite as extreme an overrepresentation as gender, the percentage of white guests still far exceeded their proportion among the general public: In 2024, 58% of the US population identified as non-Hispanic white, down from 62% in 2016.

    From 2016 to 2024, Black representation on the Sunday shows decreased from 10% to 5%, while Asian-American guests increased, from less than 1% to 8%. This increase was in part due to repeat appearances by Democrats Duckworth and Rep. Ro Khanna. GOP guests also increased in diversity, due largely to four appearances by Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation.

    During the 2024–25 time period, neither CBS nor CNN invited any Black guests, and Fox invited no Latine guests, as the Trump team geared up for Day One attacks on anti-racism initiatives and on immigrant communities.

    Race/Ethnicity of Sunday Show Guests during Trump Presidential Transition 2024-25In 2016, then–Rep. Keith Ellison (D–Minn.) said of Trump on ABC (11/13/16):

    We oppose his misogyny. We oppose his picking on people of different ethnic and religious groups. And we want to be making clear that if he tries to deliver on his word, that we will be there to say no.

    Ellison appeared the next week on CBS (11/20/16), similarly decrying Trump’s “racism, misogyny,” and declaring, “It’s hard to normalize that, and we can never do it.” But eight years later, that racism and misogyny were repeatedly normalized by Sunday show guests—mostly of the white male variety.

    Guestlists are not entirely determined by the shows themselves, as administrations choose who to make available as guests, and not every invited guest will agree to appear. Because shows lean so heavily on congressmembers for guest interviews, they also draw from a pool that is demographically skewed (76% non-Hispanic white, 72% male). But the Sunday shows clearly aren’t making any effort to offer voices more representative of the US population, tilting even further white and male than Congress does.

    Democrats’ shift on Trump

    Comments About Trump From Sunday Show Guests, 2016-17When a guest spoke about Trump, his campaign or his cabinet picks, FAIR coded those comments as positive, neutral or critical. We defined those who praised Trump, his cabinet picks or his policy positions (as opposed to general Republican positions) as positive; those who do not take an explicit stance on these as neutral; and those who disparaged these as critical. Statements about Trump’s opponents, like Vice President Kamala Harris or Sen. Hillary Clinton, were not considered unless they also included specific references to Trump. The balance of these comments changed markedly between the first and second Trump transitions—particularly among Democratic and nonpartisan guests.

    Comments About Trump From Sunday Show Guests, 2024-25Overall, guest interviews became more neutral in the second transition. In 2016–17, 94% of guests made comments about Trump, and in 2024–25, 90% did so. But in the first transition, 30% of those guests spoke critically, while in the second, only 24% were critical. Neutral takes rose from 19% of sources to 28%. Nearly half the guests who commented on Trump had positive things to say in both transitions: 51% in the first, 48% in the second. It’s notable that there was a marked shift toward neutrality among guests, even as Trump’s rhetoric and cabinet picks became more extreme.

    This was particularly noteworthy among those Democratic guests (and independents who caucused with Democrats) who made comments about Trump. In 2016–17, the combined Democratic and independent guests’ comments about Trump were critical 62% of the time, and only 4% of such comments were positive. In contrast, in 2024–25, when far more such guests were invited to appear, only 49% spoke critically, while 11% spoke positively. Trump-related commentary from Democrats shifted from 35% to 40% neutral.

    Senators, who make up a large portion of partisan guests, didn’t shift their perspectives much between the years, from 63% to 62% critical. Representatives tilted a little more neutral, but the biggest shift can be seen in which Democrats the Sunday shows invited: more former White House officials in 2016–17 (10, vs. 4 in the second transition), and more officials of the current/outgoing White House in 2024–25 (13, vs. five in the first).

    All the guests representing the outgoing administration were either neutral or voiced support for Trump. Meanwhile, in the first time period, seven of the critical Democratic interviews about Trump (and three of the neutrals) were from former presidential appointees. Only three former appointees were asked about Trump in the second transition—all of whom were critical.

    It’s predictable that former officials, who are not representing the current White House team that is seeking a smooth transition, feel more free to speak critically. For instance, Norm Eisen, a former special counsel on ethics to Barack Obama, spoke to This Week (12/11/16) about Trump’s conflicts of interest, predicting, “He’s going to be tainted by scandal.”

    In contrast, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan offered a more flattering perspective (NBC Meet the Press, 12/1/24):

    First I would just say that we’ve had good consultations with the incoming team. We’ve been transparent with them. We are committed to ensuring a smooth transition. Second, I’m glad to see the incoming team is welcoming the ceasefire.

    Interestingly, Republican guests also trended slightly more toward neutral comments in the second transition period. Five Republicans (6%) spoke about Trump critically in the first time period, while only three (4%) did so in the second. At the same time, the percentage of Republicans making pro-Trump comments dipped from 87% to 84%. GOP guests making neutral comments increased from 6% to 12%.

    A different kind of nonpartisan

    Nonpartisan guests, who accounted for 15% of guests in both time periods, shifted even more markedly: Half of those who made comments about Trump expressed criticism in 2016–17, and none did so in 2024–25. Meanwhile, positive comments increased from 21% to 50%.

    The types of guests dominating this category also changed: In 2016, the largest group consisted of journalists invited for one-on-one interviews (8); these often made critical remarks about Trump, as when the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius told Face the Nation (12/18/16), “I was struck…by his reluctance to do what typically happens in national security matters, which is seek some kind of bipartisan unified consensus.” Or when the New York Times‘ Dean Baquet said to Meet the Press (1/1/17), “I think that there are a lot of question marks about Donald Trump.”

    In 2024, there was only one journalist (radio host Charlamagne tha God—This Week, 11/12/24), while business elites (4) and foreign diplomats (3) dominated.

    As one might expect, diplomats tended to express more enthusiasm for the incoming president. “I know they share our goal of wanting to have security and stability,” British Ambassador Karen Pierce said of the incoming Trump administration (Face the Nation, 11/10/24). Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova told Face the Nation (12/15/24): “Let me thank President Trump. He is the one who made a historic decision…to provide us with lethal aid in the first place.”

    Business leaders likewise tended to praise Trump. “The American consumer today, as well as corporate America, is quite excited about what the Trump administration is talking about,” IBM vice chair Gary Cohn—a Trump advisor—told Face the Nation (12/15/24). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said to Fox News Sunday (12/1/24): “We need to be able to have the best AI infrastructure in the world….. I believe President-elect Trump will be very good at that.”

    With Trump’s threats of retribution a major factor in the second transition, it’s not necessarily surprising that partisan guests might be more wary of voicing criticism—which is all the more reason for the Sunday shows to look outside their usual suspects. Instead, the few nonpartisan guests they invited came from occupations much more likely to say flattering things of the incoming president in order to curry favor.


    Research assistance: Wilson Korik, Emma Llano

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States next week to meet with President Donald Trump and other top officials in the U.S. administration, supposedly to “capitalize on the success” of the 12-day war against Iran. This comes after nearly 21 months of Israel’s war on Gaza that has killed at least 56,000 Palestinians, with daily violence only increasing.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Vice President J.D. Vance has callously called the GOP’s massive cuts to Medicaid and other anti-poverty programs “immaterial,” saying the maintenance of such programs is trivial compared to boosting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the rogue immigration agency ravaging communities across the U.S. In a series of social media posts on Tuesday, Vance downplayed the impact of the cuts…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • As Senate Republicans rushed to pass a massive budget package known as the “big, beautiful bill,” the political consequences of pushing for the deepest cuts in decades to Medicaid and other safety net programs serving millions of people are already becoming clear. After working overnight to vote on a number of amendments and pass the package ahead of an entirely symbolic July 4 deadline imposed by…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • On Monday 30 June, US Senators held an overnight voting session to decide the fate of Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’. So far, the session has lasted 22 hours and is still ongoing.

    The 940-page bill would make sweeping cuts to healthcare and food programmes, whilst increasing spending on border security, defence, and energy production.

    The Congressional Budget Office is estimating that the bills’ sweeping tax and spending cuts will increase US debt by $3.3 trillion.

    Over the weekend, Senators passed a procedural vote (59-49) to advance the huge tax and immigration bill.

    Now, a megavote is underway on proposed amendments to the bill. If it passes in the Senate, it will go back to the House, for them to consider the changes.

    Trump: what does the bill include?

    The main focus of the Republicans’ debate so far has been how much to cut welfare programs.

    According to the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agencythe proposed cuts would strip nearly 12m Americans of their health insurance.

    According to the BBC, the Democrats, who have criticised the cuts, have proposed several amendments to the bill. One of these included deleting provisions which would force rural hospitals to either limit their services or completely close down.

    As it stands, the Republicans are struggling to get the 50 votes needed for their bill to pass. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told the BBC this was because it is a “moral monstrosity”.

    Republicans are also trying to permanently extend the tax rates that Trump signed into law in 2017. They are set to expire at the end of the year. These tax cuts had one clear objective – making the rich, richer.

    The White House claims:

    MYTH: The One Big Beautiful Bill is “just a tax break for billionaires.”
    FACT: The One Big Beautiful Bill delivers the largest middle- and working-class tax cut in U.S. history. The President’s legislation will put more than $10,000 a year back in the pockets of typical hardworking families. This is the most pro-growth, pro-worker, pro-family legislation ever crafted.

    The government provided households in the top 1% with average tax cuts of more than $60,000, compared to less than $500 for households in the bottom 60%. It also failed to deliver any of the economic benefits that Trump promised.

    According to NBC News, the bill will give Customs and Border Patrol $46.5bn to build their border wall, $2bn for the Department of Homeland Security, and $29.9bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The government would provide another $25bn for a “Golden Dome” missile defence system, $29bn for shipbuilding and $15bn for nuclear deterrence.

    Welfare, not warfare

    Just like the UK government, the US is taking from the poorest to make the rich richer, whilst also propping up their colonial and genocidal extra-curricular activities.

    To fund their tax cuts for the rich and ICE agents who are too afraid to show their faces, Republicans will be cutting Medicaid by nearly a trillion dollars over the next ten years. This will include forcing people to work at least 80 hours per month in order to be eligible for Medicaid, to complex changes to financing the program. 

    They are also aiming to save $52m by defunding Planned Parenthood or other organisations that provide abortions.

    Defending the indefensible

    Trump has one objective: stirring up racism and hatred towards immigrants, while making his billionaire pals even richer. Some Republicans have even had enough of Trump’s BS.

    The Whitehouse Press Secretary claims Trump is a “businessman first”. Yet he went bankrupt six times, and the US economy isn’t exactly in the best of health.

    What more is there to say? Trump – a moral, upstanding member of the community.  A great guy. A really great guy. A fantastic businessman. The best. Only has the people’s interests at heart.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The budget-and-tax bill that President Trump has placed before America’s U.S. Senators and Representatives to pass by a majority in each of the two houses of Congress is a total repudiation of the first Republican U.S. President (and the only progressive Republican U.S. President), Abraham Lincoln, as will here be documented.

    The Republican Party was basically started by Lincoln, who (if he had lived) would have repudiated and condemned virtually all of his Republican successors. The assassination that killed him transformed his Party into its exact opposite, in the most important ways.

    Here is Lincoln speaking, so that the transformation wrought by that bullet is made clear by Lincoln himself, in his own time:

    It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

    Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

    Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — neither work for others nor have others working for them.

    Lincoln was profoundly opposed to coerced labor, and he recognized that it can take many forms — not ONLY the form called ”slavery.” He also recognized that the few individuals who, as a group, own the most wealth and consequently hire a substantial percentage of the U.S. population, will possess, by their ability to hire and fire, enormous power, which might enable them to coerce their employees to accept unjustifiably low wages for their work. On this basis, he spoke publicly on the record as siding with the oppressed against their oppressors — even outside the context of merely slavery.

    The poor are the lowest class of workers, and Lincoln there was making explicitly clear that — directly opposed to today’s Republican Party, which makes policy on the basis of the principle that a person is worth only whatever his/her net worth is, and so a billionaire is worth as much as a thousand millionaires — a person’s worth has no necessary relationship to his/her wealth — none.

    Polling proves that vast majorities of the U.S. public detest Trump’s budget-and-tax priorities. Furthermore, an extraordinarily extensive Yale poll of nearly 5,000 Americans, published on June 27th, found that when respondents are informed of what is in Trump’s budget-and-tax bill, only 11% approve, 78% disapprove of it. Would it become law in a democracy? Of course not!

    Today’s Republican Party — this Party that Lincoln would consider an abomination — is the exact opposite of anything that would become law in any democracy. If Trump’s bill, or anything like it, becomes law in America, this will be announcing to the entire world that America is a dictatorship by its super-rich. Such a Government used to be called an “aristocracy.” At every election-time, America’s public are being asked to side with one group of billionaires (the Republicann ones) against another group of billionaires (the Democratic ones), instead of to side with themselves and the rest of the public, against all billionaires — the remarkably few individuals who actually control the U.S. Government. This applies both in national U.S. politics and in state U.S. politics, so that the billionaires have veto-power to prevent ANY candidate they don’t control, from even getting their Party’s nomination (much less winning the final campaign). It is the aristocratic type of dictatorship — and Lincoln condemned it.

    The post America’s Republicans’ Hatred of the Poor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike by the US Air Force on three nuclear facilities in Iran authorized by President Donald Trump on June 22, was raucous and triumphant. But that depended on what company you were keeping. The mission involved the bombing of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility in Isfahan.  The Israeli Air Force had already attacked the last two facilities, sparing Fordow for the singular weaponry available for the USAF.

    The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned by protective concrete. For its purported destruction, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were used to drop GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs. All in all, approximately 75 precision-guided weapons were used in the operation, along with 125 aircraft and a guided missile submarine.

    Trump was never going to be anything other than optimistic about the result. “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” he blustered. “Obliteration is an accurate term!”

    At the Pentagon press conference following the attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bubbled with enthusiasm. “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.” The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, was confident that the facilities had been subjected to severe punishment. “Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.” Adding to Caine’s remarks, Hegseth stated that, “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.”

    Resort to satellite imagery was always going to take place, and Maxar Technologies willingly supplied the material. “A layer of grey-blue ash caused by the airstrikes [on Fordow] is seen across a large swathe of the area,” the company noted in a statement. “Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility are blocked with dirt following the airstrikes.”

    The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, also added his voice to the merry chorus that the damage had been significant. “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted airstrikes.” The assessment included “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

    Israeli sources were also quick to stroke Trump’s already outsized ego. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission opined that the strikes, combined with Israel’s own efforts, had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir’s view was that the damage to the nuclear program was sufficient to have “set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

    The chief of the increasingly discredited International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, flirted with some initial speculation, but was mindful of necessary caveats. In a statement to an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, he warned that, “At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.” Cue the speculation: “Given the explosive payload utilised and extreme(ly) vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”

    This was a parade begging to be rained on. CNN and The New York Times supplied it. Referring to preliminary classified findings in a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment running for five pages, the paper reported that the bombing of the three sites had “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months”. The strikes had sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities, but they were not successful in precipitating a collapse of the underground buildings. Sceptical expertise murmured through the report: to destroy the facility at Fordow would require “waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots.”

    Then came the issue of the nuclear material in question, which Iran still retained control over. The fate of over 400 kg of uranium, which had been enriched to 60% purity, is unclear, as is the number of surviving or hidden centrifuges. Iran had already informed the IAEA on June 13 that “special measures” would be taken to protect nuclear materials and equipment under IAEA safeguards, a feature provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location, however, would have to be declared to the agency, something bound to be increasingly unlikely given the proposed suspension of cooperation with the IAEA by Iran’s parliament.

    After mulling over the attacks for a week, Grossi revisited the matter. The attacks on the facilities had caused severe, though “not total” damage. “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.” Tehran could, “in a matter of months,” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.” Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.

    Efforts to question the thoroughness of Operation Midnight Hammer did not sit well with the Trump administration. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt worked herself into a state on any cautionary reporting, treating it as a libellous blemish. “The leaking of this alleged report is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she fumed in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets.”

    Hegseth similarly raged against the importance placed on the DIA report. In a press conference on June 26, he bemoaned the tendency of the press corps to “cheer against Trump so hard, it’s like in your DNA and in your blood”. The scribblers had to “cheer against the efficacy of these strikes” with “half-truths, spun information, leaked information”. Trump, for his part, returned to familiar ground, attacking any questioning narrative as “Fake News”. CNN, he seethed, had some of the dumbest anchors in the business. With malicious glee, he claimed knowledge of rumours that reporters from both CNN and The New York Times were going to be sacked for making up those “FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites because they got it so wrong.”

    A postmodern nonsense has descended on the damage assessments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, leaving the way clear for overremunerated soothsayers. But there was nothing postmodern in the incalculable damage done to the law of nations, a body of acknowledged rules rendered brittle and breakable before the rapacious legislators of the jungle.

    The post Operation Midnight Hammer: Were Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Damaged? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Continuing in their shameful deference to the president, Donald Trump’s lackeys on the Supreme Court once again affirmed the superiority of the executive over the other two branches of government. Last year, the high court ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution when they carry out official functions. Now, that same court has stripped federal judges of their authority to protect people…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.