Senate Democrats are blasting President Donald Trump’s increasingly authoritarian behavior and congressional Republicans for shutting down the US government to preserve devastating healthcare cuts, but over half of them voted with the GOP late Thursday to give nearly $1 trillion to the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit. The final vote on the Senate’s $925 billion version of the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This week, President Donald Trump escalated his plans to send National Guard troops into blue cities — fighting in court to deploy them to Portland and sending others to Chicago ostensibly to fight crime and support federal immigration agents. He has repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act if courts rule against him. While images of soldiers on city streets offer a visible show of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As president Trump tears up the U.S. Constitution he twice swore to uphold, fierce backlash from an aroused John and Jane Public is not far off. Contempt for that document and Americans’ baked-in characteristic of feistiness when pushed too far is one of the four key factors preventing him and his regime from turning democracy into a dictatorial dynasty.
Three of the four historic factors buttressing America’s form of democracy against Trump’s autocracy were recently listed by Politico contributor Jonathan Schlefer. They should lift the spirits of the fearful and depressed a notch or two:
A careful comparison with countries that fought off autocratic attempts, as well as those which succumbed, suggests that American democracy might be more resilient than you think. At a minimum, it has crucial advantages over democracies that failed. Three main things stand out: None was nearly so rich [as the U.S.]. None was nearly so long-lived. And none had a legal establishment tracing its genealogy back to Magna Carta in 1215.
But the most powerful, unmentioned factor of all, however, is raising the dander of average Americans when their personal “ox is finally gored.” As consumer-advocate Ralph Nader warned Trump recently in Common Dreams:
Americans don’t like to be told to shut up; they don’t like to have things rightfully theirs taken from their families; they don’t like to be fired en masse without cause; they don’t like government contracts for vital services being arbitrarily broken. They also don’t like their government being overthrown by fascistic gangsters….
Once Trump’s voters and his business base start turning against him, with wide media coverage and dropping polls, the stage will be set for surging demands for his resignation and impeachment that starts with “impossible,” then “possible,” then “probable,” then conviction. If the GOP sees either its political skin at risk in 2026 versus Trump’s destructive, daily delusions and dangerous daily damage, politicians will put their political fortunes first. That is what Congressional Republicans did when they told Nixon to resign in 1974 over the Watergate scandal.”
Our history is punctuated by Americans initially made hot-tempered from being treated like medieval serfs with no rights by British kings and their swaggering local officials and troops. Most complaints were over British taxes and tariffs, but also tenants’ rights, starvation, cutting ship masts from trees, newcomer rivalries, Christian morality, and Parliament’s Navigation Acts mandating trade only with Britain.
The Boston Revolt of 1689, for example, had the longest list of grievances against the British governor: enforcing those Acts, restricting town meetings, promoting the Anglican church in a Quaker city, denying land claims, negating Boston’s city charter, assigning hated British officers to lead the local militia. The last straw may have been his creating a “Dominion of New England” for easier control of defiant subjects using litigation, civil disobedience, nettlesome newsletters like the Pennsylvania Journal, fists, and guns. Nearly 20 Colonial uprisings were recorded between 1676 and 1776.
At the lower social levels in those days were tavern brawls over politics, insults to women, cockfight boasts , and losing at cards and skittles. Not to mention collecting horseracing bets, or my indentured ancestor decking an officious British constable for missing a tax appointment on the Boston docks.
At upper-class levels, testiness in the early 1800s was exemplified by the famous duel between former Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton when he called his long-time political rival Vice President Aaron Burr “a dangerous man” at a dinner party. Burr called him out and fatally wounded him in a duel.
Fifty-six years later when abolition divided the nation, Massachusetts’ Sen. Charles Sumner had just made a major anti-slavery floor speech attacking a colleague (“a noisesome, squat, and nameless animal”). South Carolina’s fiery House member Preston Brooks marched into the Senate to avenge his friend. He aimed his metal-topped cane at Sumner’s head and nearly beat him to death.
Meantime out in the lawless West, cattle rustling, horse and hog thievery, and land disputes were involved in “the great range wars” usually settled by rifles, savage beatings, and impromptu hangings. One dustup was New Mexico’s “Lincoln County War” of the 1870s where Billy the Kid got his start as a posse member turned killer until he was gunned down. Jesse James was another. Hair-triggered and an unregenerate Confederate, he and his brother Frank formed a gang robbing banks, stagecoaches, and trains all over the Midwest. Jesse even issued press releases about their prowess—until he, too, took a bullet to the head.
It’s undeniable that the number of books about their deeds, the movies and television series reveals a rancorous public drawn to their murderous adventures as “speaking truth to power.” It strongly indicates millions still yearn for a Robin Hood—even though none of their booty ever went to the poor.
Economic victims in the late 1890s suffered under robber barons and their president William McKinley, a high-tariff, global conquistador. But at the 1901 New York exposition, he grandly extended a plutocratic handshake to a bitter, 28-year-old laid-off Ohio factory worker who had stalked him for weeks. The assassin threw off a handkerchief concealing a pistol, and fatally shot him.
What American today has not done a slow burn finally igniting a raging internal inferno over both molehills and mountains?
Watch a schoolyard of five-year-olds when an unintentional bump turns into fistfight. Or listen to a chorus of objections to line-jumpers at athletic events or the movies. The act of driving can transform peaceful Jekylls into near homicidal Hydes. Add resentments over barking dogs, unruly kids, driveway blockage, tree cutting or planting, spraying bushes, and grass clippings blown across a neighbor’s property line once too often.
As for loving a neighbor as “thyself,” Google lists pages of neighbor vs. neighbor lawsuits winding up in civil or criminal courts. Too often, they also turn into bloodletting.
One celebrated case involved Kentucky’s Sen. Rand Paul. He had just stepped off his mower when a surly neighbor raced over, struck him from behind, breaking six ribs and injuring his lungs. The cause? A bundle of yard debris crossing the property line (“He must have lost it,” said Paul).
However, testiness has grown far more serious these days with the availability of guns. Last year, an irate neighbor in Alabama “discharged multiple rounds” into his target’s house. Another pair of neighbors in Palm Beach, Florida last May evidently argued over moving a basketball hoop shared by both households to a new spot. One pulled a handgun and fatally shot the other—and his wife.
All of the evidence above brings us to the main point being made here: If Americans are so easily irked by the “small stuff,” consider what they’ll do about large and immediate issues affecting survival. Like Trump’s killing Medicaid. Or slowly strangling Social Security and Medicare. Or laying off hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants.
In Trump’s months-long blitzkrieg of more than 200 executive orders (EOs) to overthrow democracy for a dictatorship, he seems to count on his military’s use of flash-bang bombs, tear gas, beatings, jailings, and killings to silence Americans into groveling obedience.
He and his advisors somehow have forgotten the thousands of mutinous troops in Vietnam: fragging officers, disobeying direct orders for patrols and battles and the like. If they balked at killing an Asian enemy, wouldn’t they do the same when it involved fraternizatings from their fellow Americans (Sunday dinners, bowling, beer and TV sports invitations), a tactic suggested by one activist group in Portland?
Now, the July No Kings demonstration drew five million Americans to the streets (and millions more at home) 1.5 percent of the population . The second No Kings rally October 18 may well draw double that number, given Trump’s latest spate of illegal and cruel EOs. Crowd-counting statisticians such as Erica Chenoweth at Harvard’s Kennedy School have said that even a one percent protest has tumbled almost half of the world’s dictators.
Add to all these millions of angry “little people,” the anxious or furious 2.3 million Federal civil servants who’ve kept the wheels of government service running. They see the handwriting on the wall in viewing the treatment of 100,000 colleagues being summarily forced out of careers without the legality of reduction-in-force hearings. The economic impact alone on their families, landlords, producers and sellers of retail goods and services will be devastating.
True, the federal courts have temporarily halted some of the most unconstitutional of Trump’s orders so far, and he’s chosen to ignore their rulings. But not the temperament of most ticked-off Americans. And that could erupt at any time, despite Senators like Oregon’s Jeff Merkley writing to us Portland creative activists to “cool it.” He said:
“Trump’s play is right out of the authoritarian handbook: he wants to stoke violence, then use violence to justify tightening his authorian grip on our communities. We can’t play into his hand. I urge folks to remain peaceful, and to not take his bait.” Oregon’s governor Tina Kotek also told us that Trump’s federalizing 200 of our National Guard would cost state taxpayers $10 million. So we’re willing to stay calm, cool, and collected—for rhe moment.
But whether trying to bully, muzzle, and suppress feisty Americans into accepting Trumpian chains will never, ever work for long. For 400 years we have been fighting bullies and smiting would-be dictators. Here in Portland and other targeted cities, we’re unlikely to stop anytime soon.
The post American Defiance Will Ultimately Save Our Democracy first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Health insurance premiums will soon double for tens of millions of Americans on average as a result of Republicans’ marquee budget bill, a new report by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vermont) office reports, making health care even more unaffordable as the cost of living rises in the U.S. The roughly 24 million Americans who buy health insurance from the marketplace will soon see the impacts on…
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A government shutdown appears highly likely in the coming hours. Despite last-minute negotiations, this dramatic development is coming to pass for one fundamental reason: The Trump administration and the right wing in Congress is determined to destroy working people’s access to healthcare.
In a “government shutdown”, not every part of the federal government stops operating. ICE agents will continue to terrorize immigrant families. The Pentagon war machine will continue to threaten the world. The first programs to be imperiled will be vital lifelines like WIC or food stamps.
Typically, shutdowns have been caused by Republican members of Congress who refuse to pass budget bills unless they include massive cuts to social programs.
The post Government Shutdown: It Will Take A People’s Movement To Defeat Trump appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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A calculated pattern is emerging in Donald Trump’s planned National Guard deployments: After wobbling on sending the military into Chicago earlier this month, his administration has pivoted toward targeting blue cities in deep red states. Memphis and New Orleans — the two cities Trump has announced he plans to target next — are both Democratic cities in Republican-controlled states…
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I gotta get back to doing stand-up comedy. I mean the **** is so smelly and deep no matter where you look. Don’t you just love those countless television and radio commercials showing Americans how those lovely corporations are there to help you? I mean, everything being sold, even healthcare and medicines, is there to make our lives better. Thank God they haven’t yet taken away the listing of side effects on most of the drugs Big Pharma insists we need to take in order to live. (Of course, there are cases when a [slight] percentage of us are in quite dire straits, in actual life and death struggles). How about those commercials where everyone taking the newest miracle drug dances around with each other like they did on VE Day 1945?
The car commercials are great. Especially when the average price of a new car or SUV or pickup truck is well over $50k, or with a BMW or Mercedes well over $70k. Factor in the overwhelming number of working stiffs out there, duh, like 90% of us, who have trouble affording a $20k used car. The bandits in corporate Amerika have the whole deck rigged when $20k a year covers about six month’s rent for so many families. We haven’t even gotten to health care costs yet:
A few years ago my wife, who was not yet eligible for Medicare, was costing us $7k a year in hospitalization insurance premiums. For the first time in her life she gets a kidney stone. Knowing how much an ambulance costs ($ 600-700 for the ride over to the ER) she was in so much pain she could not literally get out of bed. Between the ambulance and the ER charge ( and let me say that everyone involved in caring for her, from the paramedics to the nurses and doctor, were top shelf human beings). The next month we get a bill for over $2500 as Blue Cross only paid like $400 or $500 of the $3000 visit to the ER. You see, technically she was not admitted to the hospital, only to the ER. Blue Cross was shrewd enough to call their plan Hospitalization, so we got squat!
It seems like the politicians, from both parties, have copied the accident attorneys with their mantra: “I’m out there fighting for you!” No boxing gloves needed for these jokers. We should know by now that the Republicans are only out there fighting for YOU when they send undocumented laborers away from their **** jobs. They are fighting to keep the top bracket of Americans (duh, like less than one percent of us) from paying their fair share, as the rest of us pay through the nose for housing, food, clothing, doctor bills etc. Let’s call a spade a spade (No pun intended). The Republican Party has a history of making sure that people with black (and now brown) skin don’t live near us white people or go to school with our kids… except the high school football and basketball stars who they find a way in. Now, the Democrats, who say they “Feel your pain,” with 10% few exceptions suck up to their corporate or billionaire donors and turn a blind eye to the needs of us working stiffs. Instead of fighting to stop funding phony wars and other foreign interventions, they go right ahead with this empire. Lip service is what they decide to give us.
So, that is why this writer says you must be careful where you step when you walk outside of your little cocoon.
The post Please Don’t Step In It! first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
An extremist House Republican’s attempt to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) failed by just one vote on Wednesday, after Democrats maneuvered against it. A vote to table the censure resolution succeeded 214 to 213, with all Democrats and four Republicans voting to kill the measure. The resolution, introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina), would have removed Omar from her…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
After four days of backlash, Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade has apologized for saying that authorities should “just kill” people experiencing homelessness and mental health crises with “involuntary lethal injection” — but it appears that he will remain in his role at “Fox & Friends.” Kilmeade made his original comment during a “Fox & Friends” discussion on a woman who was stabbed and killed…
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As of this writing, the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, the founder of the highly influential conservative organization Turning Point USA, on Wednesday during his “America Comeback Tour” at Utah Valley University, is still at large; their motivation a mystery. While numerous studies over the past 10-15 years have shown that the extreme right is responsible for most political murders and attempted murders in this country, it didn’t take long for the right to weaponize Kirk’s murder.
While the weapon, a high-powered bolt-action rifle, has been recovered, the hunt for the shooter goes on. Law enforcement officials also announced this morning that they believe they have video of the suspect, and that they have tracked his movements before and after the shooting.
As veteran investigative reporter David Weir noted on his Substack this morning: “It’s likely only a matter of time before they apprehend him. Then, and only then will a motive possibly be discovered, assuming the suspect survives his arrest.”
Weaponizing Kirk’s Murder
It didn’t take long for the president and some on the far right to weaponize Kirk’s shocking murder. President Trump and a cohort of right-wing politicians and influencers are claiming Democrats have “blood on their hands.” Some are calling for mass arrests of Democrats and leftists.
Trump railed only against “radical left-wing political violence”; Elon Musk claimed, “The Left is the party of murder”; Silicon Valley’s Shaun Maguire said “the Left lectured us for the last decade about the dangers of violence from the Right” but “the danger was actually on the Left.”
(Whatever happened to “thoughts and prayers” being the right’s first response? And their usual response after a horrific shooting: “it’s too soon to inject politics into shootings”?)
Political Violence: The Facts Point to America’s Right
At these moments, which hopefully will not be an inflection point for more political violence, it is important to look at some facts.
While there have been incidents of leftist violence, studies have consistently shown that the vast majority of extremist-related murders were committed by the far-right.
At the Zeteo Substack Medhi Hasan pointed out a series of recent right-wing violent actions:
* The man who targeted and killed Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home in Minnesota in June was a Trump supporter.
* The man charged with the attempted assassination of Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro in April was a Trump supporter.
* The man convicted of orchestrating a series of shootings at the homes of four Democratic elected officials in New Mexico in 2022 was a Trump supporter.
* The man who tried to kidnap then Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosiand assaulted her husband Paul in 2022 was a Trump supporter.
* The men who wanted to hang Mike Pence on Jan 6, 2021, were Trump supporters.
* The man who killed the son of Obama-appointed District Judge Esther Salas in 2020 was a Trump supporter.
* The men who were convicted of trying to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 were Trump supporters.
* The man who sent pipe bombs to the homes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and other top Democrats in 2018 was a Trump supporter.
* The man who killed left-wing activist Heather Heyer after driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville in 2017 was a Trump supporter.
The post Trump & Conservative Supporters Weaponizing Kirk’s Murder: Dems “Have Blood on Their Hands” first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
If hallmarks of economic decline are everywhere apparent, it is Washington’s shameless participation in human genocide that has awakened many an American from their dogmatic slumbers. The United States has been a partner in human slaughter in Gaza, arming and funding, providing intelligence to and political cover for Zionist forces in Israel in their fanatical quest to establish a Greater Israel.
This blatant moral failing is the surest sign yet that the liberal West has failed. Liberalism was once a symbol of progress, bourgeoisie and workers and rural peasants banding together to overthrow feudalism and the divine right of kings.
Now it lists in the winds of modernity, an ethical cipher that maintains—like the artificial distortions of Mannerist art—a rhetorical posture of piety. Conservatives declare themselves part of an unfathomable messianic mission to establish mythical free markets and Christian rule, while liberal politicians repeat their multicultural platitudes in data-poor and poorly constructed sophistry that nobody believes.
Both—through their Republican and Democrat political wings—refuse to acknowledge their culpability, reflecting the absolute arrogance that accrues to those too long in power.
We Knew All Along
As the world comes awake to the sickening tango of death being tapped out on the rooftops of Gaza, statements like the following float through the media sphere, unaddressed and unpunished by the world’s leading states:
Evidently calling for collective punishment outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said, “It’s an entire nation that is out there that is responsible.”
Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi said Israel needs to “erase Gaza”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich transparently disguising ethnic cleansing as “the right humanitarian option”
Revital Gottlieb of the Israeli Knesset said, “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be flattened…We need to stop talking about ‘humanitarian aid’.”
Another member of the Knesset, Nissim Vaturi, added, “Burn Gaza now. No more excuses.”
The New York Times reported that American leaders understood that mass civilian casualties were acceptable to Israeli leadership
Israeli lawmaker Moshe Saada justified widespread calls to “destroy Gaza”
Western corporate media has provided extensive cover for Israel’s criminal campaign, often by insisting everyone on air first answer the slighting question, “Do you condemn Hamas?”, as if this is the moral bedrock on which any opinion on Gaza must establish itself. Yet the corporate media deliberately hides the fact that under the Geneva Conventions, an occupied people have every right to resist, including employing violent means. None of the international rulings from 1967 onward are included in discussions that are ahistorical at best, farcical at worst. Gore Vidal was prescient when he called America the United States of Amnesia.
The feigned outrage and disgust by American pundits over the initial Hamas attack, liberal and conservative alike, only illustrates by contrast the utter callousness and emptiness of the public discourse. Seventy five years of oppression, racism, and bloodshed against Palestinians produced no such horror among the corporate intelligentsia.
And as author Chris Hedges rightly pointed out, “How can you trap 2.3 million people in Gaza, half of whom are unemployed, in one of the most densely populated spots on the planet for 16 years, reduce the lives of its residents, half of whom are children, to a subsistence level, deprive them of basic medical supplies, food, water and electricity, use attack aircraft, artillery, mechanized units, missiles, naval guns and infantry units to randomly slaughter unarmed civilians and not expect a violent response?”
Trump’s Vulgar Sycophancy
Though not the first to support the present ethnic cleansing, President Trump has embraced the Israeli mission with an enthusiasm that betrays his utter subjugation to those that would keep him in power, notably AIPAC. His love for Israel seems to be the means by which he has made a measure of peace with the National Security State, which wanted him imprisoned in his first term for his friendliness with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Now his administration has ratcheted up the vulgarity of American complicity in the Gaza genocide. For instance, he has:
Tied state aid to each state’s stance on Israel. This is a despicable policy that hitches domestic support to support for a foreign power, which no American citizen should be compelled to provide
Lifted a pause on 2,000-lb bombs, and a couple of ‘human rights’-linked oversight procedures, that had been put in place by the Biden administration as part of its feckless PR campaign to pretend to oppose the slaughter
Approved $7B in munitions and $3B in “emergency” bombs in February 2025 alone
Continues the Memorandum of Understanding from the Obama era under which the United States finances weapons procurement by Israel from U.S. defense firms
Congressional Reporting Service (CRS) notes enhanced military intelligence cooperation with Israel
Vetoed another UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate unconditional ceasefire
Conducted “limited” strikes on Yemen Houthis, which are pro-Palestinian allies of Iran
Has floated various real-estate fantasies about turning Gaza into another riviera once all the unwanted Arabs are removed, while children are trampled by tanks, in a kind of breathtaking display of utter callousness
And much else, though he’s only been in office 8 months
Biden’s Liberal Narcissism
Setting aside the current administration, lest we slip into the fanaticism of the liberal, the more important point to remember is that Democrats are also morally bankrupt, if not as crass, and if marginally better in social uplift statistics. Because if we do not recognize this, the electoral pendulum that swings between corrupt neoliberal capitalist Democrat and corrupt neoliberal capitalist Republican will continue, while the majority suffer economic debasement at home and slaughter abroad.
The conservative critique that liberals prefer virtue signaling to principle is correct. It has been ever since Bill Clinton demonstrated that the New Democrats could win corporate money, co-opt business-friendly Republican policies, and sell them with the rhetoric of social empathy with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Coupled with a vigorous identity politics and companion campaign of discrimination against privileged and majority ethnic groups, it was a winning electoral strategy.
Clinton’s triangulation model proved an irresistible rationale for members of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), who claimed to hope to ‘do well by doing good.’ In the end, doing well meant maintaining their class privileges and material advantages while looking askance as their party practiced counterrevolutionary imperialism abroad, and instead hyping token reform at home.
Where has this left the liberal class? With the following:
The Biden administration was Israel’s most important military, financial, and political backer from the beginning of the genocide to the end of his term in office. We should set aside anonymously-sourced reports of Biden’s anger with Bibi and attend to the facts.
Aside from $3.8B in annual military aid, the Democrats sent emergency arms shipments, and provided additional financial and political support, including:
Military Supplies:
14,000 tank shells in an October 2023 shipment
More than 2,000 2,000-pound bombs, great for mass casualty attacks
15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells in a December 2023 shipment, including bunker busters
F-35 fighter jet parts and $1B in new arms shipments approval in March 2024, the second time Biden used the Arms Export Control Act to bypass pesky Congress to arm the genocidaires
Ongoing intelligence sharing, including satellite imagery and location tracking
Military advisors dispatched by the Pentagon to assist in Israeli attacks
Deployed U.S. warships to block regional intervention
Launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect Israeli shipping
The Costs of War Project at Brown University, the United States spent nearly $18B in military aid to Israel in a single year
In August 2024, Biden approved a $20B arms shipment to Israel
Political Cover:
Vetoed three UN Security Council Resolutions calling for a ceasefire, and abstained from a fourth despite a death toll of some 30,000
Attacked the ICJ finding on Gaza as meritless and threatened sanctions on ICC officials
Financial Support:
Continued ongoing $3.8B annual military support deal, inked by the Obama administration, with no stoppage or even threat of stoppage
Added $14.5B in a Supplemental Aid Package in April 2024
Cut funding to UNRWA over unproven Israeli claims, devastating aid delivery. This means that the administration was blocking aid to Gaza while arming Israel
All of this despite a death toll exceeding 30,000 people (likely far higher), the vast majority of which were women and children. And despite famine. And despite hundreds of reported potential violations of international law (rendering bootless the token human-rights verifications attached to some aid).
And despite two leading Israeli rights organizations—B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel—both released reports declaring Israel’s conduct in the war on Palestinians constitutes genocide.
(Even Grok wasn’t having it: “Israel’s actions in Gaza align with genocide indicators per ICJ’s plausible ruling, the UN’s “Anatomy of a Genocide” report, and Amnesty’s findings on intentional mass killings. US funding enables this horror—stop the slaughter.”)
Coda to a Catastrophe
Whatever the particular violent exploitation, there is bipartisan consensus. Whether participating in genocide in Gaza; sparking a bloody proxy war against nuclear-powered Russia in Ukraine; facilitating the wholesale destruction of Syria and whitewashing its terrorist leaders; aggressively working to disarm Iran while arming Israel; encircling China with military force; sanctioning every country that pursues a different model of economic development than Washington’s hegemonic system; or strip-mining Argentina through the IMF with the help of comprador elite. In any and every case, liberals and conservatives will always side with violent fascist imperialism over peaceful socialist mutualism because fascism doesn’t threaten capitalist profits. Rather it reinforces and amplifies them. Historical examples abound.
Is there a difference, then, between the two electoral fronts for corporate power? Let’s ask Hedges, “Of course, there’s a difference. It’s how you want corporate fascism delivered to you. Do you want it delivered by a Princeton educated, Goldman Sachs criminal or do you want it delivered by racist, nativist, Christian fascist?”
A quote from Noam Chomsky should suffice to close this chat: “I don’t know what word in the English language—I can’t find one—applies to people who are willing to sacrifice the literal existence of organized human life so they can put a few more dollars into highly stuffed pockets. The word ‘evil’ doesn’t even begin to approach it.”
The post America’s Bipartisan Shame first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The U.S. ambassador to Turkey sparked fury on Tuesday for chiding a group of Lebanese journalists to “act civilized” and not be “animalistic,” saying such behavior is responsible for the strife in the Middle East. During a press conference in Beirut on Tuesday, as reporters asked questions and clamored for his attention — a typical practice in news conferences around the world — Tom Barrack…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
More To The Story: The Voting Rights Act turned 60 years old this month. The landmark piece of legislation is considered one of the most effective laws protecting the right to vote for racial minorities around the country. But the conservative movement has successfully hollowed out much of the law, thanks to Supreme Court decisions over the last decade. On this week’s episode, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie sits down with host Al Letson to talk about how the Voting Rights Act has been defanged by the Supreme Court, why the Democratic Party is made up of “a bunch of weenies,” and why he believes the country is now in a constitutional emergency.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
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Progressives rallied across the country on Saturday to protest against US President Donald Trump’s attempts to get Republican-run state legislatures to redraw their maps to benefit GOP candidates in the 2026 midterm elections. The anchor rally for the nationwide “Fight the Trump Takeover” protests was held in Austin, Texas, where Republicans in the state are poised to become the first in the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The popular protest sign “They’re eating the checks, they’re eating the balances” exactly captures the destruction Donald Trump has wrought in his first six months in office as he follows the Project 2025 roadmap to change every aspect of American government and American life. No American institution has escaped Trump’s wrath: the U.S. Constitution’s three branches of government, the media (including Rupert Murdoch), higher education, large law firms, free trade, the corporate sector, and even the very definition of who is an American, not to mention windmills, EVs, and showerheads. Trump uses extortion like a mafia Don to back these changes while his MAGA foot soldiers threaten violence. However imperfect, our American form of democracy has functioned for nearly 250 years not only because of the rule of law but also because of all the informal rules and traditions that allow our two-party system to govern. Regime change is not merely a change in players. It is a change in the very structure and norms of government and its relationship to the governed. We are witnessing regime change.
Much ink has been spilled on the White House’s invocation of “unitary executive theory,” its appeal to 18th century emergency powers to legitimize assaults on immigration, DEI, elite law firms, universities, and most especially the federal government itself. But it is important not to miss the forest for the trees. When one branch of government moves aggressively and successfully to subordinate all others to its will, basic principles of checks and balances and separation of powers are not only trampled, they are abandoned, lost. Donald Trump and his team are building new political norms, new political habits, new rules of the game. The most important one is, Trump is Supreme Ruler and anything he says goes. It is difficult to overstate how radical President Trump’s claims for his executive power really are. They effectively eradicate the intricate machinery of our constitutional system, our republican form of democracy. The outward institutional forms remain, but the political substance of our form of government is disintegrating right before our eyes.
There is no point more critical in America’s founding texts than the Framer’s fear and caution against concentrated, monopolized state power. As James Madison declared in Federalist 48, power is “of an encroaching nature” and to maintain the separation of powers the separate branches of government need to have “a constitutional control” over one another. That means each branch has significant independent power, not just the executive. Trump won’t tolerate this. Ergo, there goes the old regime.
Regime change can only happen when politicians allow it. Squeezed between Trump’s threats to “primary” them and Maga’s threats to harm them and their families, virtually all congressional Republicans have prioritized saving their seats rather than preserving our constitutional principles. That’s why elections are still important. With the off-year election rapidly approaching and Trump’s poll numbers plunging, Democrats are already envisioning a “Blue Wave.” But the challenge to Democrats cannot be overstated. First, they must stop Trump’s reckless rampage. Given the senate’s sixty-vote standard to pass a bill and a two-third majority in both houses needed to override a presidential veto, a Blue Wave isn’t enough. The Dems need a tsunami to get that super majority to stop Trump and the larger MAGA movement he feeds. At the same time, they must also rebuild the institutions of our procedural democracy. After all, despite its many limitations, a bourgeois democracy is better than a fascist autocracy. It’s a long way to November 2026 and much can change, but even a Blue Tsunami may not be enough to stop what may be irreversible changes in the form and substance of the republic.
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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin.
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Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), one of the richest people in the Senate, said on Wednesday that Congress shouldn’t be banned from trading stocks because the basic anti-corruption rule would make it “unattractive” to run for office. During debate on a congressional stock ban introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) on Wednesday, Johnson said that he was concerned about “unintended…
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Early this year, and seemingly out of the blue, a group of Republican lawmakers in the North Carolina House introduced an alarming new bill. “Revise the Law on the Death Penalty,” otherwise known as HB 270, proposes bringing back the electric chair and implementing a firing squad as a means of forcing incarcerated people to choose their own ghastly method of execution. Should the person not want…
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One of the most inflammatory Republican representatives in the House was appointed to the high-powered House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday — the same day he called for Israel to “starve” Palestinian civilians in Gaza. On social media Tuesday morning, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Florida) cheered a report saying that 15 Palestinians in Gaza, including four children, had died from famine in a…
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New polling this week indicates that there is a strong desire among U.S. voters for a third political party, to counter both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, when asked if they’d join a party created by billionaire Elon Musk, voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea. After hinting for several weeks that he’d start a new party after he and President Donald Trump had a public…
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The U.S. House passed legislation early Friday that would provide roughly $832 billion in funding for military programs for the coming fiscal year, a vote that came shortly after the chamber approved a $9 billion rescissions package that takes an axe to public media and foreign aid. Five House Democrats — Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas…
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This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.
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During President Donald Trump’s second term, education has remained a central battleground in American politics. Republicans claim that classrooms have become hotbeds of “woke” indoctrination, accusing educators of promoting progressive agendas and tolerating antisemitism. In contrast, Democrats argue that conservatives are systematically defunding and dismantling public and higher education precisely because it teaches values like diversity, equity, and inclusion. While these partisan skirmishes dominate headlines, they obscure a much deeper and more enduring issue that encompasses all of these issues and more: the influence of corporate and military power on public education.
For decades, scholars have warned that corporations have steadily infiltrated the classroom—not to promote critical thinking or democratic values, but to cultivate ideologies that reinforce capitalism, nationalism, and militarism. Critical media literacy educators, in particular, have drawn attention to the convergence of tech firms and military entities in education, offering so-called “free” digital tools that often serve as Trojan horses for data collection and ideological control.
One striking example is the rise of programs like NewsGuard, which uses public fears over fake news to justify increased surveillance of students’ online activity. Relatedly, in 2018, the Atlantic Council partnered with Meta to perform “fact-checking” on platforms such as Facebook. In 2022, the US Marine Corps discussed developing media literacy training. It remains to be seen what training, if any, they will develop. However, what is known is that a large global player has entered the media literacy arena: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). While NATO presents its initiatives as supportive of media literacy and democratic education, these efforts appear to be oriented more toward reinforcing alignment with its strategic and political priorities than to fostering critical civic engagement.
NATO was created in 1949, during the Cold War, as a military alliance to contain communism. Although the war officially ended in 1991, NATO has expanded both its mission and membership. Today, it encompasses more than thirty member nations and continues to frame itself as a global force for peace, democracy, and security. But this self-image masks real conflicts of interest.
NATO is deeply intertwined with powerful nation-states and corporate actors. It routinely partners with defense contractors, tech firms, think tanks, and Western governments—all of which have a vested interest in maintaining specific political and economic systems. These relationships raise concerns when NATO extends its reach into education. Can a military alliance—closely linked to the defense industry and state propaganda—credibly serve as a neutral force in media education?
In 2022, NATO associates collaborated with the US-based Center for Media Literacy (CML) to launch a media literacy initiative framed as a strategic defense against misinformation. The initiative included a report titled Building Resiliency: Media Literacy as a Strategic Defense Strategy for the Transatlantic, authored by CML’s Tessa Jolls. It was accompanied by a series of webinars featuring military personnel, policy experts, and academics.
On the surface, the initiative appeared to promote digital literacy and civic engagement. But a closer look reveals a clear ideological agenda. Funded and organized by NATO, the initiative positioned media literacy not as a means of empowering students to think critically about how power shapes media, but as a defense strategy to protect NATO member states from so-called “hostile actors.” The curriculum emphasized surveillance, resilience, and behavior modification over reflection, analysis, and democratic dialogue.
Throughout their webinars, NATO representatives described the media environment as a battlefield, frequently using other war metaphors such as “hostile information activities” and “cognitive warfare.” Panelists argued that citizens in NATO countries were targets of foreign disinformation campaigns—and that media literacy could serve as a tool to inoculate them against ideological threats.
A critical review of NATO’s media literacy initiative reveals several troubling themes. First, it frames media literacy as a protectionist project rather than an educational one. Students are portrayed less as thinkers to be empowered and more as civilians to be monitored, molded, and managed. In this model, education becomes a form of top-down, preemptive defense, relying on expert guidance and military oversight rather than democratic participation.
Second, the initiative advances a distinctly neoliberal worldview. It emphasizes individual responsibility over structural analysis. In other words, misinformation is treated as a user error, rather than the result of flawed systems, corporate algorithms, or media consolidation. This framing conveniently absolves powerful actors, including NATO and Big Tech, of their role in producing or amplifying disinformation.
Third, the initiative promotes a contradictory definition of empowerment. While the report and webinars often use the language of “citizen empowerment,” they ultimately advocate for surveillance, censorship, and ideological conformity. Panelists call for NATO to “dominate” the information space, and some even propose systems to monitor students’ attitudes and online behaviors. Rather than encouraging students to question power—including NATO itself—this approach rewards obedience and penalizes dissent.
Finally, the initiative erases the influence of corporate power. Although it criticizes authoritarian regimes and “hostile actors,” it fails to examine the role that Western corporations, particularly tech companies, play in shaping media environments. This oversight is especially problematic given that many of these corporations are NATO’s partners. By ignoring the political economy of media, the initiative offers an incomplete and ideologically skewed version of media literacy.
NATO’s foray into media literacy education represents a new frontier in militarized pedagogy. While claiming to promote democracy and resilience, its initiative advances a narrow, protectionist, and neoliberal approach that prioritizes NATO’s geopolitical goals over student empowerment.
This should raise red flags for educators, policymakers, and advocates. Media literacy is not a neutral practice. The organizations that design and fund media literacy programs inevitably shape the goals and methods of those programs. When a military alliance like NATO promotes media education, it brings with it a strategic interest in ideological control.
Educators must ask: What kind of media literacy are we teaching—and whose interests does it serve? If the goal is to produce informed, critically thinking citizens capable of questioning power in all its forms, then NATO’s approach falls short. Instead of inviting students to explore complex media systems, it simplifies them into a binary struggle between “us” and “them,” encouraging loyalty over literacy.
True media literacy must begin with transparency about who and what is behind the curriculum. It must empower students to question all forms of influence—governmental, corporate, and military alike. And it must resist the creeping presence of militarism in our classrooms. As educators, we must defend the right to question, not just the messages we see, but the institutions that shape them.
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David Sirota is a journalist, former speechwriter to Bernie Sanders, and co-writer of the Oscar-nominated movie Don’t Look Up, about the threat of climate change. On this week’s More To The Story, Sirota joins host Al Letson to discuss how climate change is fueling more intense weather events like the recent floods in Texas, how the country’s leaders are failing to address climate disasters while avoiding accountability, why Trump’s domestic policy bill is “class war in legislative form,” and why some Democrats still don’t know how to react to socialist Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary win in New York City.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
Listen: Master Plan (The Lever)
Listen: 2024 Broke The Democrats. Can They Put Themselves Back Together? (Reveal)
Read: How Zohran Mamdani Tied Climate Policy to Voters’ Pocketbook Issues (Mother Jones)
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has called for every member of Congress who voted for Republicans’ reconciliation bill to be ousted from their seat, saying that the bill is “disastrous” and will only make the U.S. health care system even worse. “Our broken health care ‘system’ is the most expensive and inefficient in the world. Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ will make it even worse…
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If there is one thing Americans love, it’s our national parks. A record-setting 331 million people visited the 63 national parks in 2024 — a number roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. population. Park visitors spend tens of billions each year on lodging, restaurants, and travel expenses, significantly boosting local economies. The National Park Service is the most popular government agency…
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Missouri’s Republican governor on Thursday signed legislation repealing the paid sick leave portion of a ballot measure that the state’s voters approved with nearly 60% support in the 2024 election. The short-lived provision, which will officially be repealed on August 28, required Missouri employers to provide workers with an hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours of work.
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Donald Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which was signed into law last week, has been described as a monstrous piece of legislation. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, world-renowned progressive economist Robert Pollin provides an overview of this “disgraceful” federal budget bill. Pollin is distinguished professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research…
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A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a provision of the new Republican budget law that bars Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood health centers across the United States, an attack that reproductive rights advocates warn could shutter hundreds of clinics nationwide. The decision by Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, an Obama appointee…
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Republican Congressman Robert Bresnahan of Pennsylvania got publicly shamed by many of his congressional colleagues on Thursday after it was revealed he unloaded a Medicaid-related stock before voting for a massive budget package that enacted historically devastating cuts to the program. Quiver Quantitative, an investment data platform that tracks stock trades made by politicians and other…
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