Moments before he left office and as one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, an 80-year-old Native American activist and political prisoner who has been incarcerated for nearly half a century for a crime he maintains he did not commit. Biden’s commutation is not a full pardon — Peltier, who was charged under dubious circumstances for the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On January 20, 2025, Joseph R. Biden will no longer be president of the United States. Unlike other one term presidents he was not defeated in a re-election effort. He was undone by the same wealthy donors who rigged the process to make him the Democratic Party’s nominee in 2020. Biden was already not up to the task of running in 2020 but his obvious state of debility had noticeably worsened by 2024. He could no longer rely on claims that he only had a stutter when there were so many strange outbursts, verbal miscues, handshakes with invisible people, and wandering off as a toddler would do.
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Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace. It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.
If this latest three-phase ceasefire deal is ratified — and there is no certainty that it will be by Israel — it will, I expect, be little more than a presidential inauguration bombing pause.
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In an address announcing the ceasefire agreement in Gaza that was reached on Wednesday, President Joe Biden boasted that he had actually introduced the framework for the deal seven months ago, last May. Israel has killed at least 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza since then, and likely far more. “The elements of this deal were what I laid out in detail this past May, which was embraced by countries…
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When Joe Biden was vice president under President Barack Obama, he was part of an administration that waged an unprecedented war on leaks.
President Biden may not have been as zealous as Obama, however, he periodically harnessed the very machinery that Obama and President Donald Trump wielded to enforce secrecy and silence whistleblowers.
With the Espionage Act, the Obama Justice Department prosecuted more United States government employees and contractors who disclosed information to the press than all previous presidents combined.
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United States President Biden has announced that he will remove Cuba from the US’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in his final days as President, reversing Donald Trump’s addition of Cuba to the list in 2021. The Biden administration said on Tuesday, January 14, that this move is meant to facilitate the release of individuals detained in Cuba. “I transmit herewith a report to the Congress with respect to the proposed recission of Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism,” Biden announced.
Countries are added to the US’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list by the State Department that have allegedly “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism”.
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Pam Bondi, president-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Justice Department as attorney general of the United States, refused to acknowledge Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election while being questioned by senators during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Bondi — a former attorney general for Florida who previously worked as a defense counsel for Trump during one of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Ever since Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, I felt as if time had stopped. Every day was the same, stripped of meaning or hope. My family and I witnessed atrocities beyond description. From the siege of tanks surrounding us to the terrifying evacuations under constant bombardment, every moment was a struggle for survival. I will never forget the sight of my mother bleeding before…
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On January 14, the Biden administration decided to remove Cuba from the U.S. State Department’s list of alleged “state sponsors of terrorism,” to suspend Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, and to ease a few other financial sanctions on Cuba. These reversed measures were imposed by Donald Trump during his first presidential term as layers added on to the existing blockade, and the Biden government…
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Hamas has gained as many members as it lost amid Israel’s invasion of Gaza — despite Israeli forces claiming that their relentless slaughter of countless Palestinian civilians over the past 15 months was necessary in order to defeat Hamas. “We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost,” Blinken said on Tuesday…
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken was giving a speech on the Middle East on Tuesday when he was interrupted by protesters condemning the outgoing official’s role in enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In an address at the Atlantic Council, a NATO military think tank, Blinken was offering a view of U.S.’s plans for the future of the Middle East, including Gaza, when a protester began yelling.
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January 11 marked the twenty-third anniversary of the opening of the US military prison on occupied land in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Clearing the FOG speaks with Andy Worthington, an investigative journalist and author of The Guantanamo Files. Worthington explains that the United States opened the prison in Guantanamo to avoid legal restrictions. He describes the connections between Guantanamo and the CIA ‘black sites’ where prisoners were tortured and who the men are that were recently released as well as who remains. There are calls for Joe Biden to release all of the men and end the scandal of the prison at Guantanamo Bay before he leaves office.
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A group of civil society organizations is urging President Joe Biden to issue a pardon for environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, saying that the “scorched-earth” campaign against him pursued by Chevron is a “stain” on the U.S. legal system. The groups said that Donziger has been the subject of a series of abuses of the U.S. court system, pointing out that a UN working group…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Australia is one of a select few countries exempt from sweeping new controls to limit the export of US-developed advanced computing chips and sharing of closed-weight AI models as the AI arms race heats up. The outgoing Biden Administration announced the rules on Monday in an 11th-hour bid to bolster AI hegemony, leading to immediate…
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Former U.S. officials have spoken out about the Biden administration’s deep complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, highlighting that the assault would not be possible without U.S. assistance and that the State Department is censoring those within the agency who speak out against it. In a new interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, Josh Paul, who formerly oversaw arms shipment…
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It is hard to call people into a political project that is deeply incompatible with their sense of what it means to act morally in the world.
This post was originally published on Dissent Magazine.
Outgoing US President Joe Biden will not lift the terrorist designation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) US officials revealed on 8 January, leaving the decision to the government of President-elect Donald Trump.
Senior officials who spoke with the Washington Post said HTS “must demonstrate they have made a clean break with extremist groups, in particular Al-Qaeda before the label can be lifted.” “Actions will speak louder than words,” an unnamed official told the US daily.
According to the reports, Washington has “lingering concerns” after Syria’s de facto new ruler Ahmad al-Sharaa – the former deputy commander of ISIS and founder of Al-Qaeda in Syria – green-lighted the promotion of foreign extremists to the ranks of officers in the newly formed armed forces.
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President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son and President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to set free people who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, bring back memories of what’s considered the most controversial pardon ever: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford’s pardon of the former president in 1974 sparked outrage among politicians and the American people.
“I had a visceral feeling that the public animosity to Mr. Nixon was so great that there would be a lack of understanding, and the truth is that’s the way it turned out,” Ford said in an interview broadcast for the first time on Reveal. “The public and many leaders, including dear friends, didn’t understand it at the time.”
This week on Reveal, we look at the politics of pardons and discover that beyond those that make headlines, there is a backlog of thousands of people who’ve waited years—even decades—for presidents to make a decision about their petitions for clemency.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2019.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
Biden’s time in office is coming to an end, but not before a parting gift for Israel.
The State Department recently announced that it would notify Congress about another massive arms deal, this one worth $8 billion. It includes medium-range air-to-air missiles, Hellfire missiles, 500-pound bombs, and more.
The announcement comes amid a deluge of dire news out of Gaza. Flood. Famine. Extreme cold. Israel killed more than 234 Palestinians during the first 4 days of 2025. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International recently published reports saying Israel is committing genocide.
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Democrats in Congress cheered as President Joe Biden moved on January 6 to withdraw 625 million acres federal ocean waters off United States coastlines from consideration for future offshore oil and gas drilling. Democratic lawmakers say the waters are “permanently” protected, although Republicans could use their majority in Congress to force the government to lease underwater drilling rights to the industry.
However, Biden’s last-minute effort to secure his climate legacy before Donald Trump takes office does nothing to prevent offshore drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, where intense fossil fuel exploitation already causes pollution and oil spills as climate change brings intensifying floods and storms to coastal communities.
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The Democratic Party, still reeling from its resounding loss to Donald Trump and the Republicans, will try to set a new course for the party at the Democratic National Committee’s upcoming winter meeting. This will be no small task; the party just endured a chaotic presidential campaign that saw the sitting president opt not to run for reelection after considerable pressure from inside the…
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Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.
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As President Biden greenlights another $8 billion in weapons to Israel in his last days in office and Secretary Blinken gives a parting New York Times interview in which he denies that a genocide is taking place in Gaza, many pro-Palestine activists are anxiously counting down the days until “Genocide Joe” and his crew exit the White House. But what will activists have to contend with under the Trump presidency?
Donald Trump proved his pro-Israel agenda in his first term by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, supporting West Bank settlements, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and enacting the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states, while disregarding the plight of Palestinians.
The post From Genocide Joe To Trump’s Israel First: What’s Next For Palestine? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Joe Biden has set a record-breaking number of clemencies and commutations into motion as his presidency comes to an end. On December 12, Biden commuted the sentences of 1,499 people who had committed nonviolent crimes and had “been serving their sentences at home for at least one year under the COVID-era CARES Act.” Less than two weeks later, he commuted the death sentences of 37 out of 40 people…
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has pledged that he will do everything in his power to block an $8 billion sale of weapons to Israel announced by the Biden administration last week, as Israeli forces are entering the 16th month of their genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. On Friday, the Biden administration notified Congress of the weapons package, which reportedly contains thousands…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As Donald Trump’s return to the White House looms, dismantling the most dangerous weapons in the arsenal of executive power should be the Biden administration’s highest priority for its last days. The most obvious of these relate to the president’s war-making powers, particularly authority over nuclear deployment. But there is another apparatus of coercion that will be at Trump’s fingertips…
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Outgoing President Joe Biden marked the fourth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of loyalists to Donald Trump by calling on Americans to stand guard against future attacks on democracy. The Capitol attack took place on January 6, 2021, following weeks of Trump insisting that his loss to Biden in the 2020 presidential race was due to election fraud — a claim that…
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Outgoing President Joe Biden on Monday moved to permanently ban offshore oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, protecting swaths of the East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, and Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from fossil fuel exploitation just before President-elect Donald Trump is set to retake power. Biden said in a statement that…
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The administration of US President Joe Biden announced on Saturday an arms sale to Israel valued at $8 billion, just ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Biden has repeatedly rejected calls to suspend military backing for Israel because of the number of civilians killed during the war in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza…
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The Israeli military has announced that it carried out over 1,400 air strikes on Gaza in December alone, amounting to dozens of strikes a day on average on Palestinians also suffering under famine conditions due to Israel’s enduring aid blockade. This is the equivalent of over 45 airstrikes a day, with the attacks carried out by Israeli aircraft like fighter jets and drones…
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