Buried in the House’s budget reconciliation bill — now pending in the Senate — is a legislative provision that takes aim at the federal judiciary. Section 70302, titled “Restriction on Enforcement,” would undermine federal judges’ authority to enforce court orders by limiting their ability to hold government officials in contempt, a key tool for compelling compliance with court orders.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
China and the U.S. have come to a 90-day trade agreement. This was a clear victory in the first battle of the “trade war” for China — as was admitted even in the U.S. media.
As Bloomberg, a fiercely anti-China source, summarised the analysis of the overwhelming majority of Western media: “Xi Jinping’s decision to stand his ground against Donald Trump could hardly have gone any better for the Chinese leader.”
But it would be an error to mistake this decisive victory for China in the first battle with a belief that the U.S. will abandon the economic struggle against China – it will not. This is in economic terms a “protracted war”, not a single battle.
The post The Economic ‘Protracted War’ Between The US And China appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
During President Trump’s announcement on May 21, 2025, it was claimed the Golden Dome will consist of technology deployed across land, sea, and space capable of intercepting hypersonic, ballistic, and advanced cruise missiles, “even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.”
Former-US President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program (also known as the Strategic Defense Initiative) was repeatedly cited during the announcement. That program sought to use space-based weapons to void the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” allowing the US to conduct a nuclear or non-nuclear first strike on another nation and avoid what had otherwise been an inevitable nuclear retaliation that would destroy both nations in the process.
The post Washington’s ‘Golden Dome’ – Multi-Trillion Tax Dollar Heist At Best appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Amid the ongoing feud between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, some Democrats are advocating for courting Musk as an ally — a move that demonstrates the willingness of some members of the party to compromise principles to win elections. Over the past week, Musk has openly and frequently criticized Trump’s budget proposal — the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Progressive lawmakers, civil rights groups, and humanitarians responded with outrage and condemnation overnight and into Thursday after President Donald Trump announced a blanket travel ban on 12 countries and harsh restrictions on seven others, calling the move a hateful and “unlawful” regurgitation of a policy he attempted during his first term. In total, the executive order from Trump’s…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Donald Trump has issued a new travel ban for certain countries. The move echoes a travel ban from his first term which is popularly known as the Muslim ban. Whilst Joe Biden overturned that particular ban in 2022, this latest policy from Trump restricts travel into the US from:
Certain countries are also to have their visas restricted:
The US has a history of restricting travel from selected countries. During Obama’s tenure as president the 2015 Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act placed restrictions on travel from:
Somalia, Libya, and Yemen were later added as “countries of concern.” Trump’s original Muslim ban in 2017 was put into place via executive order. In other words, it bypassed the scrutiny of Congress. However, Obama’s travel restriction list was ratified by Congress. Now, in 2025, Trump’s latest travel ban cites a mix of national security and people overstaying their visa. But, the undercurrent remains one of the US using national security as carte blanche for xenophobia, Islamophobia, and racism.
Amnesty International immediately pushed back against the travel ban, stating:
President Trump’s new travel ban is discriminatory, racist, and downright cruel. By targeting people based on their nationality, this ban only spreads disinformation and hate.
Advocacy organisation, Human Rights First, were similarly robust in their criticism. Their Senior Director of Refugee Advocacy, Robyn Barnard, said:
This return to divisive and racist policies to target entire populations marks yet another anti-immigrant and punitive action taken by President Trump.
Barnard rejected the Trump administrations claims of the travel ban safeguarding the nation:
Bans do nothing to make our country secure, but rather undermine our national security and arbitrarily target those most in need of protection.
The White House has insisted that the travel ban won’t impede the upcoming sporting events the US is due to host. However, there is already concern over fans and athletes being deported for both the Olympics and men’s football World Cup. The Trump administration has undoubtedly created an atmosphere of fear for immigrants, and pre-existing legal challenges over human rights will undoubtedly be emboldened by this development. The curtailing of travel will mean disaster for businesses, particularly in technology, healthcare, and education. Current visa holders hailing from countries on the travel list are reportedly safe from deportation. However, coming from the administration that has deported its own citizens, this isn’t particularly reassuring.
In fact, Al Jazeera reported that:
The Trump administration has called for 3,000 daily immigration arrests, leaving migrant communities in the US in fear.
Setting immigration targets in such a manner can only be intended to inspire fear and confirmation of a hostile environment for immigrants.
Meanwhile, as with the continuing disaster over tariffs, the countries on the receiving end of Trump’s racist nonsense are less than impressed. Venezuelan interior minister for Caracas, Diosdado Cabello, said:
Being in the United States is a great risk for anyone, not just for Venezuelans. They persecute our countrymen, our people, for no reason.
Oxfam America’s CEO shared the professional opinion of other rights groups. Abby Maxman said:
By once again targeting individuals from Muslim-majority countries, countries with predominantly Black and brown populations, and countries in the midst of conflict and political instability, this executive order deepens inequality and perpetuates harmful stereotypes, racist tropes, and religious intolerance.
This policy is not about national security—it is about sowing division and vilifying communities that are seeking safety and opportunity in the United States.
The manner in which Trump carries out his travel bans is different than previous presidents. He rushes out policy after policy, aiming to sow chaos. He’s often met with legal challenges and condemnation from human rights organisations. However, the core of the policy – safeguarding of America’s borders and a stamping out of terrorism – has been central to the tenure of each president for many decades now. By claiming to be fighting terrorism, the American public and media will largely let their government get on with it. After all, it was under Bush and Obama that the decision to restrict travel from certain countries originated.
America won’t be made any safer by these bans. All they will do is further target and stigmatise immigrants. The travel ban will ruin lives, keep loved ones separated, and cause untold anguish. But, let’s not pretend that Trump is the source of this rot.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
US Vice President JD Vance has announced what he calls a “new era” in military strategy.
“What we are seeing from President Trump is a generational shift in [foreign] policy”, he claimed.
The Donald Trump administration is abandoning the US government’s previous emphasis on soft power, Vance explained, and is instead focusing on “hard power” and “overwhelming force”, in a return to blatant, 19th century-style imperialism.
According to Vance, Washington’s top priority is now “great power competition”, and preparation for potential war with China.
The vice president laid this out in a speech at the commissioning ceremony of the US Naval Academy on 23 May.
The post JD Vance Announces New Strategy Of Blatant Imperialism, Aimed At China appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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In a letter sent to Senate leaders on June 3, a team of health experts at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania warn that funding cuts included in the budget reconciliation package narrowly passed by House Republicans last month would lead to 51,000 more people dying across the United States each year. The package, labeled the “big beautiful bill” by President Donald Trump…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On May 30, the Trump administration released its most comprehensive look yet at its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The proposal heightened concerns that the disability community and advocacy groups have voiced in recent months regarding the administration’s plan to eliminate the Administration for Community Living (ACL) and related grant programs. If these programs are not…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Trump White House on Tuesday formally asked Congress to rescind over $9 billion in approved spending, taking aim at lifesaving foreign aid programs as well as funding for U.S. public broadcasting outlets targeted by the president. The $9.4 billion rescission request, expected to be the first of several, is laid out in a memo authored by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On the one hand, there are the words.
In the analysis of Oleg Tsarev, the leading Ukrainian opposition leader now in Crimea, the end-of-war terms presented by the Russian side at Istanbul on Monday afternoon are “’not an ultimatum at all,’ [Russian delegation head Vladimir] Medinsky has stressed. Of course, Medinsky (lead image, left) is right. This proposal is not an ultimatum, but only a requirement for the complete and unconditional surrender of Zelensky.”
On the other hand, there is the force.
Moscow military blogger reports and the Defense Ministry bulletin on the battlefield operations of Monday indicate little change in the volume of Russian drone attacks, the Ukrainian casualties, and territorial gains around the May average. In fact, Monday’s casualty rate was fractionally below Sunday’s. While the Russian Army continues its westward advance along each of the five army group directions, there has been no resumption of the Russian electric war campaign. There has also been no reply to the Ukrainian operation of June 1 striking the strategic bomber airfields at Murmansk, Irkutsk, Amur, Ryazan and Ivanovo, and the bridge and railway attacks at Kursk and Bryansk. “I hope”, commented Boris Rozhin, author of the influential Colonel Cassad military blog, “that the military-political leadership will find a way to adequately respond. The blow should be painful… As long as we are waging a limited war, the enemy is waging a total war, the purpose of which is the destruction of our country and people. And no peace talks will change this. The longer it is in coming, the more unpleasant surprises.”
On the one hand, at the Çırağan Palace on June 1, there was the meeting of 12 Russian negotiators (unchanged from the first meeting) with 14 Ukrainian negotiators (minor changes ) for just over one hour. The Russian delegation leader, Vladimir Medinsky, then briefed the press for nine minutes. He followed the press briefing by Rustem Umerov (lead image, right) for the Ukrainian side, also reading from a notepaper like Medinsky. Umerov, the Ukrainian Defense Minister, was the nominal delegation leader but outranked by Andrei Yermak, the chief policymaker for Vladimir Zelensky in the presidential office. Yermak told the press: “The Russians are doing everything not to cease fire and continue the war. New sanctions are very important now. Rationality is not about Russia.”
On the other hand, before the three o’clock session Medinsky met in private with the nominal head of the Ukrainian delegation, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, for two and a half hours. There has been no disclosure of who also attended on each side and what was said, except that, according to Tass, “this predetermined the effective course of further negotiations.”
This fatuity cannot conceal that real negotiations had taken place. But the realities on the ground had already overtaken the agenda, as leading Moscow security analyst Yevgeny Krutikov points out. Because the Russian side had already received the Ukrainian term sheet on May 28, and the Russian term sheet was drafted before the Sunday rail, bridge and airfield attacks, “those two memorandums…no longer correspond to the changed realities, but they will have to be discussed, because this was announced in advance, this agenda cannot be abandoned… so the main task of the Russian delegation is to translate the negotiations into a constructive course, if there is any possibility.”
On the one hand, in Moscow on Monday President Vladimir Putin had just one official meeting in the morning; this was with Maria Lvova-Belova to discuss Children’s Day and the welfare of orphans across the country.
On the other hand, in Washington President Donald Trump’s schedule for the day was empty except for lunch, which he ate at one o’clock. He has issued no tweet or press statement on Russia and President Putin since May 27 when Trump announced: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
Interpreted in the warfighting context, as it must be, Trump was saying that the US, including its European allies and the Kiev regime, is holding escalation dominance and intends to keep it. This means the firepower to decide what happens to Russia next without being deterred by anything Russia says or does. The “fire”, Trump meant, he intends to keep for the US and its allies in the European war. The “fire” doesn’t and won’t belong to Russia – Trump means to deter Putin from “playing” with it.
Calling the five airfield strikes terrorism rather than acts of war; dating the operational plan to the Biden Administration, not to Trump; minimizing the physical damage, cost, and number of Tupolev bombers hit; unravelling the logistical details from source of explosives to drone launch; and faulting Russian internal security and airbase defence – these details, comments a well-informed Moscow source, are “beside the point. The reality of this is on Putin. So what did he tell Lavrov to tell Trump through Rubio on Sunday night? What did he tell Medinsky to tell Umerov and Yermak for Zelensky on Monday afternoon? This is now simple strategic either/or and yes or no – no more operational tit for tat. Either Putin told Trump to order de-escalation, or Russia will escalate and destroy the enemy’s capabilities to fight on. This is the Oreshnik moment.”
A western military source responds: “I’ve read the [Russian] terms from beginning to end but I can’t find a correlation between them and what we’re seeing, full spectrum, on the battlefield. Either Putin releases the General Staff to assert escalation dominance now, or there is no point in continuing negotiations on the memorandums and term sheets, no point in ceasefires, no point at all in meeting Trump or letting him grandstand for peace. The discipline, if I can call it that, of the Russian warfighters is unrealistic.”
June 1 — here is the map of the Ukrainian strikes against the Russian nuclear bomber force:
Anticipation of an attack on these airbases, where the nuclear-capable Tupolev-95 and Tu-22M3 bombers are parked in the open to comply with Russia-US treaty inspection requirements, was published in this US source in April 2024. The satellite imagery of the five airfields and their bomber and tanker aircraft since the Sunday strikes which have been published so far does not substantiate the Ukrainian damage claims. Analysis by Oleg Tsarev of reports in Kiev of competition between the military intelligence agency GUR, headed by Kirill Budanov, and Vasily Maslyuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), suggests the former was in charge of the railway attacks in Kursk and Bryansk, while the SBU was responsible for the airfield operation. “Many write that behind the attack on the strategic airbases are the British. Possibly but unlikely – the GUR in Ukraine is under the MI6 while the SBU is under the CIA. These agencies compete fiercely…The consequences of competition between the GUR and the SBU will have far-reaching consequences.”
June 2 — Follow the timeline and the details of the daylong proceedings in Istanbul reported by the state press agency, RIA Novosti.
This source also revealed that an hour and a half before the main session began, the Ukrainian delegation had “met with the representatives of Germany, Italy and the UK and coordinated positions.”
Western and Ukrainian media reports indicate this meeting was at deputy ranking level, not at the level of principals. It is unclear, so far unreported, who represented the US and France following General Keith Kellogg’s announcement last week that “we’ll have what we call the E3 with us, that is the national security advisors from Germany, France, and Great Britain.” The British representative yesterday, for example, was Nicholas Catsaras, nor Jonathan Powell who was at the first Istanbul round on May 16.
No name and country identifications have been published by these sources of the deputy officials in their Istanbul meeting photograph. Sources: https://x.com/Barnes_Joe/status/1929512752793432076 and https://x.com/SpoxUkraineMFA/status/1929474274865115430
This downgrade on the western side, in parallel with the secretive Medinsky-Umerov talks, and the absence of Rubio as US national security advisor and Kellogg as Trump’s negotiator indicate there was preliminary understanding that nothing more significant would take place than public exchange of term sheets; announcement of agreement on a new and large exchange of prisoners and corpses; and the names of children Kiev is claiming for return.
Umerov has intimated that the June 2 session was little more than a mail drop and PR show. “Our teams will have a week to study the documents, after which we will be able to coordinate further steps”, he reportedly said, according to Moscow press reports. The third round is proposed by the Ukrainians between June 20 and 30.
Umerov is also reported as telling reporters in Istanbul: “If the Russians were ready for a ceasefire, their planes would not have been blown up. Russian journalists asked Umerov questions about the passenger train blown up in the Bryansk region, but he ignored them.”
The principals in the Russian delegation include Alexander Fomin (2rd from left, Defense Ministry), Igor Kostyukov (GRU), Vladimir Medinsky (Kremlin), and Mikhail Galuzin (Foreign Ministry).
Here is the full verbatim text of the Russian term sheet published in Istanbul as “Proposals of the Russian Federation (Memorandum) on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.”
The post When the Strategy of Words Fights the Strategy of Force, Who Wins the War first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
With the second coming of Trump, many who profess left credentials again proclaim fascism is back, after we voted “fascism” out in 2020. Every four years we hear the story: “this election is the most important in our lifetime.” Republicans are the new fascism, Democrats are the lesser evil. No matter corporate interests fund both parties and dictate their policies. No matter Democrat Biden green-lighted the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. No matter Biden deported more than Trump did, no matter every year the police killed more under Biden than Trump. Trump is the Hitler, not Biden. So once again, time for a reality check on actually existing fascism.
The post Trump Fascism: A Reality Check appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Janine Jackson interviewed guitarist Tom Morello about music as protest for the May 30, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Rolling Stone (5/20/25)
Janine Jackson: We know the roll by now: Trump blurts out his latest hateful fever dream, and then anyone seeking favor scrambles to, if not make it make sense, make it happen. Among the latest is a demand that the Federal Election Commission launch a “major investigation” of Bruce Springsteen, who described the Trump White House as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” in a UK concert, even after Trump tweeted that Springsteen “ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT,” and “we’ll all see how it goes for him.”
If there’s a “musicians to threaten” list going around, our guest is for sure on it. I suspect he’d be curious if he weren’t. Guitarist Tom Morello has been a member of bands Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave, along with myriad other projects, including supergroup Prophets of Rage with Chuck D, and his solo work as the Nightwatchman. He’s also, I understand, co-directing a documentary, and who knows what else. He joins us now by phone from LA. Welcome to CounterSpin, Tom Morello.
Tom Morello: Thank you very much for having me, Janine. Nice to hear your voice.
JJ: This is all as ham-fisted as everything Trump does, and yet that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.
TM: Sure.
JJ: Intimidation doesn’t have to hit its ostensible target to have effects. So maybe no one thinks Taylor Swift, for example, is shaking in her boots, but less-powerful and less-protected artists might feel some kind of way. So how would you speak to artists trying to make their way, about how you see the potential role of, in particular, musicians in Trumpian times?
Tom Morello: “I’ve always had the firm belief…that history is not something that happens, it’s something that we make.” (Creative Commons photo: Ralph_PH)
TM: Yeah. I mean, I’ve always believed that dangerous times demand dangerous music, and especially in these troubled times, music, joy and even laughter have suddenly become acts of resistance. There may come a time in the not-so-distant future, we may be at it right now, where the ideas expressed in our songs, and the people who write them and play them, and maybe even those who sit in the audience, may find themselves censored, smothered, evicted and erased. But not today.
I’ve always had the firm belief, and expressed over 22 albums in my career, that history is not something that happens, it’s something that we make, and so I try to encourage both myself and my audience to head out into that world and confront injustice wherever it rears its ugly head, whether it’s in your school, in your place of work, or in your country at large: the threats of the Trump administration is to not just artists, but it’s a McCarthyite fervor that seems to be on the rise. And there’s two ways to respond to it. One is to duck and cover. And the other is to meet the moment.
I’ve been very encouraged; the way that Bruce Springsteen has continued—his response to Trump’s diatribe was to release an album of the show that infuriated Trump. I played a couple of days ago at my alma mater, Harvard University, with a set that not only supported Bruce, but supported the university stance of not bending the knee and kissing the ring and allowing private education facilities to be under the governance of a proto-fascist regime.
So people have to make up their minds who they are and what they’re going to be. My take has always been, if you do have convictions, you need to weave them into your vocation, and let the chips fall where they may. If you don’t have convictions, then by all means, don’t pretend to have them for Tom Morello.
Boston.com (5/26/25)
JJ: Boston Media described the atmosphere at your recent set at Boston Calling as “cathartic defiance.” I suspect you’re happy with that.
TM: I felt that, and I think that it’s cathartic because we live in a world where people don’t know if anyone’s feeling the same way that they do, if anyone’s willing to speak out when the right-wing choir is so loud, it’s like, will anyone stand against it? And when you play a set of my own music, Rage Against The Machine songs, some Bruce Springsteen songs, and rile them up with a good Fred Hampton–like fervor in between songs, people recognize that, “Oh, we are not alone,” and that music is a force that can really steel the backbone of people in times of turmoil and struggle.
JJ: I was bemused by one headline I saw that called that set “expletive-laden,” and that was the headline, and I thought, “Wow, we’ve got ‘grab them by the pussy’ in office, but it’s still worth noting when people don’t show decorum.”
AlterNet (5/26/25)
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is funny. The fact that that’s news, with the rollback of democracy and the mass murder of children and whatnot, if someone uses a cuss word, that that’s going to make the headline, feels absolutely ridiculous.
JJ: It’s ridiculous. Well, all right. Mother’s Day, which just passed, has become about buying flowers for underappreciated women, but some will know that it began as Mother’s Day for Peace, when activists were calling for husbands and sons not to be killed in war. Its founders hated that it became a Hallmark holiday.
Part of what I see you doing is waking present-day listeners to the history of protest music, and music as protest. Using Woody Guthrie‘s “This Land Is Your Land” is a great example of censored, semi-understood, sanitized history. Why does that song mean so much to you?
TM: Sure, sure, sure. Well, I learned “This Land is Your Land,” like most of us did, in the third grade, where they censored out the verses that explained what the song was really about. “This Land is Your Land” is a radical anthem about economic leveling. It was written by Woody Guthrie, and Woody Guthrie knew that music could be a binding force. It could be an elevating power, an uplifting, unifying and transcendent thing, that music can be both a defensive shield and a weapon for change. Authoritarians and billionaires think that this country belongs to them. Woody Guthrie’s song insists that this land is your land.
Woody Guthrie
JJ: And yet the very verses—it’s remarkable, in the sense that we learned to sing it and celebrate it and say, “Yeah, we all believe in this, but not this part that we’re not going to talk about.” It seems emblematic in some ways.
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah:
As I was walking, I saw a sign there
And that sign said “private property.”
On the other side, it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple,
Near the relief office, I see my people.
And some are grumbling and all are wondering
If this land is still made for you and me.
And then he sings the chorus, “This land was made for you and me,” answering his own question in a very powerful way.
YouTube (8/17/15)
JJ: I’m pretty sure that anyone singing that today would be told to shut up and sing.
I want to take you, just for a second—I’ve been to Rage shows, and I have seen oceans of young white men scream full-voice, “Some of those who work forces! Are the same who burn crosses!” since before George Floyd, before Michael Brown, before “I can’t breathe.” It’s…interesting, I will say. And it must mean that you’ve seen, for many, many years, a kind of energy, in a kind of place that I suspect many folks didn’t think existed.
TM: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of different buckets the people who enjoy Rage Against The Machine exist in. Some are people who come to the music because they pre-diagnosed to agree with the politics of it.
Some simply enjoy it for the raw power and the aggression and the screaming guitar solos and whatnot, and have no idea what’s going on in the lyrics, that sort of shout along. They’re more than welcome.
Loudwire (7/11/22)
Then there are those that are drawn to the songs because of the heaviness of the music, or the aggression of the music, and they come away with a different set of ideas, because that band has a different set of ideas than the other bands that play similar music. Sometimes you see that Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment, where their eyes are opened.
And then there’s the unique bucket of those that believe the songs are right-wing anthems, and are shocked to find that the members of Rage Against The Machine have politics very, very different from their own.
JJ: It’s got to be strange. It’s got to be strange. You know, if I put up a Facebook post and it gets more than 20 views, I get nervous: I’m not trying to be a spokesperson, I’m just trying to speak. You cannot answer every objection to what you’re doing. You cannot come along with every record and interpret it for people. So you have to relax and let it speak, right?
TM: Yeah. The Rage Against The Machine music, and the music in my 22-album career, it’s not a Noam Chomsky lecture. The idea is to make art that is compelling, and makes people jump up and down, or shake their butts or whatever, and then there is a message that’s contained in it. And you can check all the boxes, or one of the boxes, and it’s totally all right.
JJ: Right. Right. Well, you’re a musician because you love music, and you are political because you’re political, and these things come together. So, I mean, unless it’s an article about what strings you prefer, there’s really hardly a way for a music critic to talk about your career, and your various projects, without talking about social and racial justice, or what many insist on calling “politics,” as though that were somehow a separate, denatured category of interest. So I just said, “Shut up and sing.” That’s never made sense as a complaint with you, but it’s really dumb, whoever it’s aimed at?
TM: Well, I mean, “shut up and sing” is exclusively reserved for artists whom you disagree with. It’s not “shut up and sing” if you’re politically aligned. It’s when the cognitive dissonance occurs—like, “I really like this music, but I can’t stand the fact that I’m having my nose shoved in my own prejudices.”
Real Time with Bill Maher (6/10/16)
JJ: You’ve been interviewed, you’ve been spoken to a lot, and I can imagine some of the things that reporters come at you with. I remember, years ago, you went on Bill Maher, and had that experience. I wonder, do you ever feel like you need to redirect? I find sometimes I have to say, “Well, I’m not going to respond to that question. I’m going to say something different.” Do you ever need to redirect reporters, mid-conversation?
TM: I would say that I wish sometimes that there was more thoughtful reporting than what I’m exposed to, because to most people who cover music, I’m a unicorn. They don’t have a lot of artists that they’re exposed to that have a lifetime of political engagement. So a casual music journalist tends to ask the same seven questions, over the course of 30 years. I actually look forward to stuff that’s a little bit more on the Bill Maher end of the spectrum, where it’s a little bit more sparring, or it’s a little bit more thoughtful or more in-depth. Because they’re like, “So what’s it like being in a political band?” –that level of discourse.
JJ: Exactly. Well, I would say a word that I would use to describe you, Tom, is “jovial.” You’ve made yourself this big fat target, and you seem to be enjoying yourself, like, “This is what I trained for.” To what do you attribute this willingness to be misunderstood, and even hated?
TM: Well, I mean, I’m not jovial because people hate, let me just make that very, very clear.
JJ: No, clear, clear. You’ve been jovial the 30 years I’ve known you.
WMMR (5/30/24)
TM: Yeah, I think that’s independent. It’s independent. I mean, part of it is having a really, really clear North Star. From 16- or 17-years-old, I can attribute a large measure to my mom, Mary Morello, who is currently 101 years old, and still the most radical and popular member of the Morello family. But there’s always been this social justice North Star that is unbending and uncompromising, and I know what I was put here to do.
I didn’t choose to be a guitar player. That chose me. So I’m kind of stuck finding a way to express my convictions in my vocation, and just no two ways about it. Countless opportunities go away when you say the things I say, play the things I play and believe the things that I believe, and it’s totally fine. There’s a contingent of the audience that is smaller than it would be otherwise. But when people make music, make any art, that is widely and generally loved and absorbed by the vast majority of the population, it tends to be shitty art, and I’ve never been interested in that.
JJ: Jim and I used to say we live our life between two Marx quotes: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” and “I have spoken and saved my soul.”
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
JJ: It’s a difficult engagement; for many people, it’s more difficult today than it ever has been, but for many of us, it’s been difficult our whole lives, and knowing when to speak, and how to also keep ourselves safe, and all of that.
Spin (2/11/25)
But I’ll say, I’ll just read a quote from you:
It’s not a time to shy away from resistance. It’s a time to lean in. On a cultural front, that’s what these shows are, my small contribution to withstanding the fascist gale that is blowing.
Just talk, finally, Tom Morello, about how you see the present moment, your role within it, and what you’d like folks to think about.
TM: Well, having been engaged in activism of some sort for, my gosh, 40+ years now, it’s a realization that each of us are a link in the chain. Those of us that have a conviction that the world can be a more peaceful, a more equal, a more just place: The arc of history may bend towards justice, but sometimes it swings back the other way, and that doesn’t mean that you should despair. That means you should realize what is moving the meter are people, no different than anyone listening right now. When there’s been progressive, radical, even revolutionary change, it has come from people no different from anyone listening to this right now.
So while that may sound daunting, the good news is that those people who have moved the meter, from Spartacus to today, have been no different from the people—like, no more money, power, influence, courage, intelligence, creativity. It’s a matter of standing up in your time, and doing it to the best of your ability, and recognizing that, in this particular historical moment, it’s a little bit now or never. If you’ve got feelings, you’ve got to express them. Apply yourself in your place of work, in your school, in your union, in your town, in your country right now. The cavalry is not coming. You’re it.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with guitarist, activist, now filmmaker Tom Morello. Thank you, Tom. Love to your mother. Thank you for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
TM: Thank you so much. Say hi to the family for me.
JJ: I will do.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
President Donald Trump has quietly commuted the sentence of a Florida health care executive convicted of leading a Medicare fraud scheme to pilfer $205 million from the program through false means — even as the GOP claims that their massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs are aimed at weeding out “waste, fraud and abuse.” Last Wednesday, Trump granted clemency to two dozen…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
With the second coming of Trump, many who profess left credentials again proclaim fascism is back, after we voted “fascism” out in 2020. Every four years we hear the story: “this election is the most important in our lifetime.” Republicans are the new fascism, Democrats are the lesser evil. No matter corporate interests fund both parties and dictate their policies. No matter Democrat Biden green-lighted the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. No matter Biden deported more than Trump did, no matter every year the police killed more under Biden than Trump. Trump is the Hitler, not Biden. So once again, time for a reality check on actually existing fascism.
Actually existing fascism in Hitler’s Germany
Hitler’s rule began January 30, 1933, but even prior to this, Germany’s political climate bore no similarity to our own. In the summer 1932, Germany, then with 66 million people, had 30% unemployment, up from 8.5% in 1929, while industrial production dropped 42%.
The three contending parties in the July 1932 election, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party [Nazis], the Social Democrats, and the Communists – each won millions of votes. The German Communist Party, the largest in Europe, numbered 360,000 members, and possessed its own paramilitary organizations. The Social Democratic Party was one million strong, many in their own paramilitary group. The Nazis numbered 1.5 million, with 445,000 Stormtroopers or Brownshirts.
Clearly this reality bears no relation to the US today: we have no mass unemployment, let alone fascist, communist and Social Democratic parties as the leading contenders. In Germany, socialism or fascism – or, three versions of “socialism” – stood as the alternatives in the election. Here we may choose a traditional corporate party run by the 1%, and on “the other side of the aisle,” another one.
William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (p. 165) describes the1932 German election climate, alien to our own. In Prussia, with two thirds of Germany’s population, “between June 1 and 20 there were 461 pitched battles in the streets which cost 82 lives and seriously wounded 400 men…. In July, 38 Nazis and 30 Communists were among the 86 dead.” On July 10, 18 were killed, and a week later, July 17, “when the Nazis, under police escort, staged a march through Altona, a working class suburb of Hamburg, 19 persons were shot dead and 285 wounded.”
In six weeks, 200 were murdered in a part of Germany where 40 million lived. To make it simple for “Trump fascism” folk, that would mean 1700 killed in fascist – antifascist combat during a six-week period in the 2024 presidential campaign.
In the November 1932 election, the two socialist parties obtained 37.3% of the votes compared to 39% for the Nazis and the German Nationalists. Just over two months later, on January 30, Hitler was appointed Chancellor.
He quickly purged the nation’s police forces, replacing all police chiefs with Nazis. The police were ordered not to interfere with the work of Stormtroopers and the Nazi SS. Nazism 1919-1945, A Documentary Reader Vol. 1, The Rise to Power presents the February 17, 1933 Nazi police order: “The activities of subversive organizations are … to be combated with the most drastic methods. Communist terrorist acts are to be proceeded against with all severity, and weapons must be used ruthlessly when necessary.”
Just two weeks in power, Hitler’s Stormtroopers had license to beat, even kill leftists and Jews. Here, Trump’s main target was non-white immigrants, though deportation numbers have actually declined since Biden left office.
February 22, 1933, with fascism in power only three weeks, 50,000 Stormtroopers and SS men were made part of the police. Did “fascist” Trump incorporate an equivalent of 250,000 Klansmen into the police forces here?
In just three weeks Hitler had the German police forces in Nazi hands, while another two million Stormtroopers patrolled the streets. Mass arrests began, public buildings and homes raided to seize political opponents, often placed in newly constructed “camps.” Meanwhile, Trump, a supposed Hitler, into his second term, has done none of this.
February 27, not a month in power, the German Reichstag, their version of Congress, was torched, which the Nazis immediately pinned on the Communists. The Nazi’s Emergency Degree declared, “Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” (Nazism 1919-1945, A Documentary Reader Vol. 1).
So began their anti-Communist witch hunt. Truckloads of Stormtroopers rounded up targets, carting them off for beatings and torture. The Nazis seized Communist Party headquarters. Their meetings were banned, their press shut down, party funds confiscated, Communist deputies in parliament arrested. Social Democrats’ meetings were likewise banned, their press shut down; their party outlawed in June. It took a month for the new Nazi regime to behead the left. This was fascism in action.
Reality Check
For those fantasizing Trump fascism, a reality check: in his first month Hitler had licensed imprisonment without trial, turned over policing and the judicial system to the equivalent of the KKK, and imprisoned or driven underground thousands of liberal, Communist and Social Democratic opponents. Stormtroopers and SS thugs took over town halls, trade union offices, newspapers, businesses, and courts, removing “unreliable” officials.
Before even 60 days in power, on March 21, it now became a crime to criticize the Nazi party, with trial by military style courts, no jury and often with no right to defense.
April 7, all Jews were dismissed from civil service jobs; Nazi governors were appointed in all German states, having the power to appoint and remove local governments, dissolve state assemblies, and appoint and dismiss state officials and judges.
On May 2, Hitler destroyed the trade union movement. After the Nazis had cynically made May Day a national holiday, all the trade union offices were occupied, all union property and funds confiscated, trade union leaders arrested and the trade unions reorganized as the Nazi’s German Labor Front.
On May 6 huge book burnings began, with 25,000 at the University of Berlin. Soon, all professionals in the fine arts, music, theater, literature, press, radio and film had to join their respective Nazi cultural organizations whose directives became law.
We can only wonder how some imagine Trump is following Hitler’s footsteps.
There were now two million Nazi Stormtroopers; given Germany’s 66 million population, a comparable Trump fascist gang would number 10 million. These “brown-shirted gangs roamed the streets, arresting and beating up and sometimes murdering whomever they pleased while the police looked on without lifting a nightstick…. Judges were intimidated; they were afraid for their lives if they convicted and sentenced a storm-trooper even for cold-blooded murder.” (Shirer, p. 203). Do we see 10 million government fascist thugs doing this here?
On July 14 all political parties besides the Nazis were prohibited, the fascists could confiscate the property of any organization it considered anti-Nazi, and could revoke anyone’s citizenship.
By 1935, 20% of German Communist Party members, 30,000, were in concentration camps. These were the most militant element of the anti-Nazi resistance. Another 10-20% of members continued underground work, but the Nazis soon rounded up, imprisoned, and executed a high percent of them. By 1939, 30,000 communists had been executed and 150,000 more sent to Nazi concentration camps.
“Within twelve months he had overthrown the Weimar Republic, substituted his personal dictatorship for its democracy, destroyed all the political parties but his own, smashed the state governments and their parliaments and unified and defederalized the Reich, wiped out the labor unions, stamped out democratic associations of any kind, driven the Jews out of public and professional life, abolished freedom of speech and of the press, stifled the independence of the courts and ‘coordinated’ under Nazi rule the political, economic, cultural and social life of an ancient and cultivated people.” (Shirer, p.189)
That was fascism in real life, not the make-believe one liberal-leftists see today. Trump has not thrown out the Constitution, wiped out the AFL-CIO, banned political parties, nor sent his political opponents to concentration camps.
Why this infantilism about Trump fascism?
In almost every presidential election going back generations, people on the liberal-left continuum resort to this scare tactic of Republican “fascism.” They may admit corporate America owns the two parties – as Bernie still does – yet vote Democratic as some “lesser evil.” They may even provide a class perspective on corporate rule of the US. They may accurately explain why our living conditions steadily worsen, that it continues regardless of who is the president. But note: very few say this during election year.
Instead, in election season we are told we must first defeat the fascist threat, then build our movement. This has been an effective strategy to trap our movement in the Democratic Party for generations. Not only does it reinforce domination by corporate America, not only does it miseducate people about fascism, but it also obstructs the working class struggle to combat our ever-worsening living conditions.
This infantile Trump “fascism” story has even led many liberal-leftists to become defenders of national security state operations by affirming the anti-Trump Russiagate hoax and by their support for the US war on Russia in Ukraine.
This has given “lesser evil” Republican pundits a wider hearing among working people with their exposes of these operations – the milieu including Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Judge Napolitano, and Ron Paul.
When the ruling class needs fascism
So long as corporate America has the working class – and the liberal-left – tied to their two party system, they have no need for fascism. They need fascism only when their customary methods of rule break down and they face a very direct threat of losing control to revolutionary forces.
The historic function of fascism, as Nazi rule shows, is to smash the radicalized working class and its allies, destroy their organizations, and shut down political liberties when the corporate rulers find themselves unable to govern through their charade of democracy. That is far from the case in the US today.
Unfortunately, it has been habitual for the liberal-left to emphasize the crimes Republicans engineer against working people here and abroad, but underplay those committed by Democrats. This only helps to misdirect discontent towards the Democratic Party.
Labelling the crimes of Trump and Republicans as fascist propagates the just-so story that imperialist rule is nicer under Democrats. A Democrat oversaw the slaughter of 20% of the North Korean population (US’ own admission), a level equal to the Nazis in Belarus; a liberal Democrat, Nazi-style, imprisoned a whole ethnic group; a liberal Democrat brought mass slaughter to Vietnam; a liberal Democrat legalized indefinite military detention of US citizens without charge; a liberal Democrat brought us to the very edge of nuclear holocaust. It miseducates people to spread the myth that imperial brutality is somehow less barbaric than the Nazis, or depends on which party rules.
Caitlin Johnstone goes after believers in Democrats as “lesser evil,” pointing out that the Democratic Party exists to make sure good people do nothing. She forgets about believers in Republicans as “lesser evil,” and that party also exists to make sure good people do nothing. Both parties funnel popular movements into channels the corporate elite can control.
Advocates of Trump as fascist not only discredit and isolate themselves from more politically aware working people. Those who push the Trump fascism story are signaling to all their own attachment to the Democrats and the two party system. Historically, they have been a powerful obstacle in the way of the need to build a working class movement politically independent of the 1%.
The post Trump Fascism? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
President Donald Trump’s acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reportedly told staff that he was not aware that the U.S. has a hurricane season — despite leading the agency primarily responsible for responding to disasters in the U.S. FEMA chief David Richardson made the comment during a meeting on Monday, according to four sources who spoke to Reuters.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Following a court hearing on Thursday, May 29, a federal judge extended an order blocking Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting 21-year-old college student Yunseo Chung. Chung, like fellow Columbia students and graduates Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Ranjani Srinivasan, has been targeted by the Trump administration amid its broader attacks on immigrants, institutions of higher education, and the pro-Palestine movement. The temporary restraining order on Chung’s detention by ICE is now extended until her next court hearing on June 5.
The post Swell Of Support For Pro-Palestine Student Yunseo Chung appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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President Donald Trump argued that any revived nuclear accord with Iran should permit the United States to destroy the country’s nuclear infrastructure and send inspectors to Iranian facilities at any time.
The president outlined his vision for a new agreement during a White House presser on Wednesday, calling for a “very strong document” that would effectively give Washington carte blanche over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.
“I want it very strong – where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but [with] nobody getting killed,” he told reporters.
The post Trump: New Iran Deal Must Allow US To ‘Blow Up Whatever We Want’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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For just $61 billion, Canada can get in on Donald Trump’s latest scheme: a space-based North American missile defense system that Trump has called the “Golden Dome.”
Trump posted the amount of money he would expect Canada to pay on his Truth Social account on May 27 — the same day that King Charles was in Ottawa to read the Speech from the Throne to open a new session of Parliament. Trump told Canadians that if Canada became the 51th state, the cost of being part of the program would drop to zero — something that Global News reports that the Prime Minister’s Office had not heard from Trump.
Trump’s plan revives a version of Ronald Reagan’s spaced-based missile plan, popularly known as “Star Wars.”
The post Despite Anti-Trump Mandate, Canada’s New PM Pushes ‘Golden Dome’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Republicans are mocking and belittling Americans who have expressed concerns that they are going to lose Medicaid coverage under the party’s major legislative push that puts tens of millions of people at risk of losing that crucial lifeline. In recent statements, Republicans have either outright lied about the effects that their reconciliation bill will have —claiming they are not pursuing…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On June 3, South Korea will conclude a snap election prompted by the impeachment of former president Yoon Seok-yeol on insurrection charges for a failed coup. The strong frontrunner in the race is Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party pro-peace candidate. While Lee’s election could open the window for peace talks, progressives must learn from the last peace process that began in 2018.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Thomasville, Georgia, has a water problem. Its treatment system is far out of date, posing serious health and environmental risks. “We have wastewater infrastructure that is old,” said Sheryl Sealy, the assistant city manager for this city of 18,881 near the Florida border, about 45 minutes from Tallahassee. “It’s critical that we do the work to replace this.” But it’s expensive to…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Far-right candidate Karol Nawrocki emerged Monday as the narrow winner of Poland’s presidential election, a contest in which the Trump administration in the U.S. and Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, weighed in on the side of their ideological compatriot. Nawrocki’s victory over Rafał Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor who was representing the party of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
While drastically cutting spending on essentials like healthcare, US president Donald Trump has given a massive boost to those who profit from death and destruction. As the empire’s global dominance wanes, Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile shield project has essentially started a new arms race. And evil tech giant Palantir is at the heart of it. The company’s aim is to use its increasing power and control of people’s data to help secure or reassert Washington’s violent stranglehold over large swathes of the planet.
Palantir has experience helping to smear left-wing causes and back right-wing ones, while mistreating vulnerable people. It is also deep within the military and police establishment in the UK. It already has its grubby hands on our NHS data too, and more may be coming. So it was no surprise that compromised prime minister Keir Starmer quickly prioritised a shady meeting with the company when he visited the US in February. Coincidentally, his key donor (which “stood to profit” from Israel’s genocide in Gaza) has invested in the heavily pro-Israel Palantir.
Palantir is absolutely a threat to humanity. And we allow its power to grow further at our peril.
Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel is one of the many pro-Israel billionaires close to Trump. The company “has been vocally supportive of Israeli military action” and critics long suspected that the apartheid state used its technology to identify its targets and guide its bombs. It has even earned itself the title of “the AI arms dealer of the 21st century”. And in the last year of genocide, its stock has soared.
Amid brutal government cuts across the board under Trump, companies like Palantir which are dependent on state funds don’t seem to be worrying too much. The tech giant gets more than half of its money from contracts with the US government, and it just recently “won a new $795 million contract with the DOD” (the Department of Defense). In a cosy arrangement that’s typical of US politics, a chunk of this money makes it back to politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) in the form of donations and lobbying.
Palantir CEO and co-founder Alex Karp, however, is perhaps the perfect personification of the company’s attitudes. Despite trying to portray himself as a moral and intellectual sage, he’s actually a vile warmonger, arrogant gaslighter, and misanthropic authoritarian. When a protester recently challenged him by saying “AI technology from Palantir kills Palestinians”, he simply shrugged soullessly and responded “mostly terrorists, that’s true”.
Israel has killed at least one Palestinian child every hour in Gaza since October 2023. It has murdered around 17,000 children, including about 825 babies, 895 one-year-olds, 3,266 preschoolers, and 4,032 six-to-10-year-olds. The UN recently estimated that Israel has murdered over 28,000 women and girls in Gaza since October 2023. And data in late 2024 highlighted that the genocide in Gaza had killed more women and children in one year than in “any other recent conflict“. Karp, however, called people opposing this mass slaughter and destruction “idiots”.
Karp doesn’t just think Israel’s genocide is good, though. He also wants to expand the concept of collective punishment of resistance throughout the world. Talking about people who resist US global dominance, he has said:
something really bad is going to happen to you and your friends and your cousins and your bank account and your mistress and whoever was involved
Your friends. And your cousins.
Although Israel has been working hard to normalise collective punishment, it remains a war crime. Yet here we have the CEO of an incredibly powerful corporation advocating it – again, like Trump himself does.
Meanwhile, Karp believes that technology should:
power the West to its obvious, innate superiority… [and] bring violence and death to our enemies.
This has long been the strategy of US imperialism. But rarely do we see its backers say this kind of thing so openly – which is endemic of Trump. Karp even quoted controversial theorist Samuel Huntington in a letter to shareholders, saying the West didn’t use ideas to dominate the world, but “its superiority in applying organized violence”.
Whether we refer to the US as a plutocracy, an oligarchy, or even a fascist power, the fact remains that billionaires like Alex Karp dominate its political system today. And when they tell us who they are and what they want, we should believe them, and resist.
Feature image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
California public schools are the latest target of Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which is ramping up an investigation into high school sports after a transgender girl qualified for three track and field events at the upcoming state championships.
The DoJ is alleging that the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) allowing transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports could violate Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex.
The New York Times (5/28/25) covered this latest right-wing attack on trans youth in a fashion all too common for the paper (FAIR.org, 5/11/23): devoid of any perspectives from trans individuals.
The post Once Again, NYT Coverage Of Anti-Trans Attacks Leaves Out Trans Voices appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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A single paragraph buried deep in a spending bill that passed the GOP-controlled House of Representatives earlier this month is causing growing concern among democracy watchdogs who warn the provision will make it so only the well-to-do would be in a good position to launch legal challenges against a Trump administration that has shown over and over again its disdain and disregard for oversight or…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
US President Donald Trump would have the power to retaliate against countries that impose special digital service taxes on large US technology companies like Amazon and Alphabet, under a provision in the sweeping tax bill that Congress is considering. “If foreign countries want to come in the United States and tax US businesses, then those…
The post A ‘sledgehammer’ for US to retaliate against foreign digital taxes appeared first on InnovationAus.com.
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The clean energy transition that the Biden administration touted as the focus of its industrial policy required large amounts of mineral inputs. Batteries for electric vehicles depend on lithium, solar panels contain gallium and molybdenum, and powerful magnets in wind turbines can’t be built without rare earth elements. Biden’s landmark legislation, such as the 2022 Inflation Adjustment Act…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.