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  • The Impeachment Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The post The Impeachment Problem first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Republican Governors Quiet Amid Plans to Slash Medicaid Spending in Their States

    The last time a Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald Trump moved to slash Medicaid spending, in 2017, a key political force stood in their way: GOP governors. Now, as Congress steamrolls toward passing historic Medicaid cuts of about $1 trillion over 10 years through Trump’s tax and spending legislation, red-state governors are saying little publicly about what it does to…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘These cuts are death sentences’: Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ passes Senate

    Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s massive spending and tax bill, which will now go back to the House of Representatives for final approval. President Trump has publicly pushed his party to get the bill on his desk to sign by July 4. Dozens of peaceful protestors, including disabled people in wheelchairs, were arrested last Wednesday, June 25, in Washington, DC, while protesting Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which will slash taxes, dramatically increase funding for war and immigration enforcement, and make devastating cuts to vital, popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Lorraine Chavez, an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago, and Christine Rodriguez, a legal assistant from Pasadena, California, both of whom traveled to DC with the Debt Collective and were arrested for participating in the peaceful act of civil disobedience.

    Guests:

    • Lorraine Chavez is an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago. She is also a student debtor and traveled to the Washington, DC, protest with the Debt Collective.
    • Christine Rodriguez is a legal assistant and student debtor from Pasadena, California, who also traveled to the Washington, DC, protest with the Debt Collective.

    Credits

    • Studio Production / Post-Production: David Hebden
    Transcript

    The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s massive spending and tax Bill three Republican Senators, Susan Collins of Maine, Tom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined all Democrats in voting against the bill. But with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, the bill will now go back to the House of Representatives for final approval and Trump has publicly pushed his party to get the bill on his desk to sign by July 4th. Now, dozens of peaceful protesters, including disabled people in wheelchairs were arrested last Wednesday in Washington DC while protesting President Trump’s so-called one big beautiful bill, which will slash taxes and includes devastating cuts to vital, popular and lifesaving programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or snap.

    Dr. Richelle Brooks:

    These cuts are death sentences. Trump is proposing 1.4 trillion in cuts, 793 billion from Medicaid alone and 293 billion from a CA. This would result in 10.9 million people immediately losing their health insurance. If this bill is passed and its rules are codified, this will cause mass loss of insurance for many people in need for years to come. It’s not just going to affect us now. It’s going to affect us later. This bill doesn’t just remove care from those in need and who need access to it most. It adds barriers to access for everyone. They’re intentionally attacking Medicaid and benefits like Snap Pell grants and programs like public service loan forgiveness because they are the last remaining examples of what access to Repairative public goods can look like in this country. They don’t want us to think that we have a right to healthcare. They don’t want us to believe that we have a right to public goods. They want us to believe that we need to earn the access for our basic needs to be met with our labor, with our compliance, and with our silence.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Speaking to Republican colleagues who were worried about the public blowback to these deeply unpopular cuts, former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell reportedly said, I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid, but they’ll get over it now. These massive cuts to public programs like Medicaid and food stamps are part of a systematic overhaul that would place the biggest financial burden on poor and working people to pay for Trump’s staggering increases to war and immigration enforcement spending and to make permanent his tax cuts from 2017, which overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the rich as part of Trump’s plan to remove undocumented immigrants from the country. The Guardian reports Immigration and customs Enforcement will receive 45 billion for detention facilities, $14 billion for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029. And more than $50 billion is allocated for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.

    Now, the Senate version of the bill also includes over 150 billion in new military spending and decade after decade, Republican tax cuts have eroded the US tax base and enriched the wealthiest households all while funding for war policing and surveillance has continued to rise. Trump’s one big beautiful bill would reportedly increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion and someone has to pay for that. And Trump and the GOP think that that someone should be working people like you among other things. The so-called big beautiful Bill also includes a provision to bar states from imposing any new regulations on artificial intelligence or AI over the next 10 years. A move that critics say is both a massive violation of states’ rights and a dangerous relinquishing of government oversight on big tech and AI when oversight is most needed. The bill would also restructure the student loan and debt system imposing stricter limits on new borrowers who hope to attend college and much harsher repayment plans for current debtors.

    The fact that so many millions of Americans will be directly impacted by this bill is exactly what brought so many different groups out to Washington DC last week to protest it, including popular Democracy in Action, the Service Employees, international Union, planned Parenthood, Federation of America, the Debt Collective Standup, Alaska Action, North Carolina, Arkansas Community Organizations and American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or Adapt. Now, I spoke with Lorraine Chavez, an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago, as well as Christine Rodriguez, a legal assistant from Pasadena, California, both of whom were arrested in DC last week for participating in the Peaceful Act of Civil Disobedience and both of whom are student debtors themselves and traveled to DC with the Debt Collective. A union of debtors

    Lorraine Chavez:

    I came to DC having followed the Debt Collective for a number of years, and I came because I personally have student loan debt that I have no capacity to pay. I’m a single mother. I put my two kids who are twins both 33 through college, and they did not receive any financial assistance at all from their college professor, father, so it was all on me. So I have no capacity to pay back my own debt, and I know others have all kinds of medical debt. I know there are all kinds of cutbacks coming to the disabled community of which I had been a part of and an advocate for in Chicago. So I didn’t mind getting arrested. I was really thrilled to be with all these other advocates from all over the country.

    Christine Rodriguez:

    So all these things that are just interconnected. And then on top of this, all these tax cuts are going to basically allocate for funding for increased military defense, which I live near Los Angeles. I’ve definitely seen a lot heavier military presence along with our police, but specifically federal military, the Marines coming into Los Angeles, all these tax cuts, that’s just where our money is going to go to armed people who want to just lock us up and silence us. I came in for student loan forgiveness, but just in that introduction round, I had now become a part of other folks who were fighting for Medicaid, fighting for to reduce, to not cut the spending for the SNAP program or for the food stamp program.

    Lorraine Chavez:

    It just speaks to the crisis that we have around all debt on all levels and these really horrific policies that are about to or will be passed. And some of the banners that people had, which I fully support, said that people are going to die if these policies are put in place. How are Medicaid recipients going to get medical care? We are in a deep, profound crisis of health in the country, and these cutbacks will drastically increase the death rate for sure of millions of Americans who will be denied access to healthcare.

    Christine Rodriguez:

    And when we get to the Rotunda area, there’s already a lot of police presence there. I guess they got word because there’s so many of us at the hearing, they even tried to tell us like, you guys cannot, woo. You guys can’t chant. You can’t be too loud. You could only clap. So kind of in that moment at the press hearing, we could already see they’re trying to keep us quiet in a sense. The Capitol police were really almost waiting for us at the rotunda, definitely at the second floor where we wanted to do our banner drop at the rotunda at the time, we could already hear that the demonstration was going on. As we’re trying to drop our banner, we could already kind of hear that the plan of people are going to have a die-in at the bottom. They’re going to have a banner shush over us. And I think from the videos that I’ve seen already, when people were lying on the floor, banners were being taken away and people were already getting arrested just from, they could see their association with the Diane. So people were just getting arrested. We say arrest is really, it’s a dramatic citation. It is what happened because they let us go for $50. But again, it’s why does this need to be so dramatic of us advocating our First Amendment rights to express how much we don’t want the government to go through with this big disastrous plan?

    Lorraine Chavez:

    We were a peaceful group of demonstrators, totally peaceful, exercising our first amendment rights, and even within the holding center where we were, no air conditioning, it looked like a gigantic empty garage. There were fans, but it was excruciatingly hot the whole time. And I counted how many police men and women. There were about 30 of us there, and there were about 25 policemen and women. I mean, it was it absurd. And to see dozens and dozens and dozens of police, men and women swarming the Senate building as well. There must have been a police man or woman for every single one of us that was there. It was ridiculous, quite frankly, and also terrifying because we were just there exercising our First Amendment rights about issues that impact all of us. And there was an enormous crowd, enormous group of protestors in wheelchairs and amongst the disabled, their hands were tied in front or in back of them. It was a really dangerous situation. I actually had bruises on my wrist until the next day because of the plastic ties were just gripped around my wrists, and I wasn’t even allowed really to drink water. I mean, it was a dangerous situation given the heat and given the fact there was no air conditioning virtually in the police fans, there was no air conditioning at all in the holding center.

    And here we were simply exercising our first amendment rights for free speech and to protest, which we are allowed to do under the Constitution. So it was really terrifying, honestly, to observe all of that going on around us

    Christine Rodriguez:

    And let the record show that I do not want my student loan forgiveness money to be funding ice my community in Pasadena. Just last week, two weeks ago, we experienced two raids within a week, and these raids were within walking distance of my apartment That’s happening right in my backyard. And as we saw with our action that we did earlier this week, there’s a lot of people who are going to suffer if these funding cuts happen. Unfortunately, it’s the opposite. That’s what should be happening. We should be giving more money to Medicaid. We should be giving more money to food stamps. People are barely getting by and this is their one lifeline that could be cut.

    Lorraine Chavez:

    I personally feel in such kind of a desperate state about all of this that I said, I don’t care if I get arrested. I mean, what else are we going to do? But unfortunately, put our bodies on the line. I don’t know. Of course, I’ve written 500 emails to my representatives. I’ve been an advocate myself for the fight for 15 in 2013, marching on the streets of Chicago for blocks and blocks. So I’ve done this before, but I just feel this incredible feeling of desperation right now.

    Christine Rodriguez:

    Are you tired of seeing the system fall in front of you? Are you tired of seeing injustice? Step number one, talk to your neighbors, right? We have to be our own kind of networks, and a lot of that takes just talking to strangers, but neighbors, but also strangers. Lorraine was a stranger a week ago, and now we’re buddies for life because we had this amazing experience. Say, definitely visit your local city council, city, town hall, any local thing, try to get tapped in because there’s a lot of information and drama there that’s not advertised, and it could cause a little change in your community and it could really push you to be more involved.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • JD Vance Says Medicaid Cuts for Millions “Immaterial” Compared to Funding ICE

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

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Political Blowback to GOP’s Medicaid Cuts Has Already Begun

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

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • After All-Night Session of Wrangling, GOP Still Lacks Votes to Pass Budget Bill

    Even after an all-night session of amendment votes and wrangling behind closed doors, Senate Republicans still did not have enough support to pass their reconciliation package as of Tuesday morning, leaving party leaders scrambling to placate GOP holdovers who are purportedly nervous about the legislation’s unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance. Sen. Chris Murphy (D…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • America’s Republicans’ Hatred of the Poor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Will Democrats or Republicans be the party of peace?


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Right Incites Blatant Islamophobia After Zohran Mamdani’s Win

    Right-wing lawmakers and commentators have responded to New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s landmark win on Tuesday with blatantly Islamophobic and xenophobic hatred, inciting violence against the left-wing politician who was already recently subject to a hate-related death threat. Mamdani, who is Muslim, faced threats of a car bomb last week from a caller who left repeated…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Voters Will “Get Over It,” McConnell Tells GOP Colleagues About Medicaid Cuts

    During a closed-door meeting of Republican senators on Tuesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) tried to tamper down fears of voter blowback against the proposed cuts to Medicaid spending in the GOP’s budget reconciliation bill, claiming that voters will ultimately “get over it.” The former Republican Senate leader’s comments came after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), one of the most…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump’s ICE Agents Are Arresting US Citizens. GOP Budget Would Hire 10,000 More.

    Polls show the so-called “big, beautiful” budget bill championed by President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress is becoming deeply unpopular as more people learn about the deadly consequences of proposals to slash the health care safety net. However, the legislation’s massive investment in Trump’s mass deportation campaign has received far less attention from Democrats and critics…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • On Being Trump’s Director of National Intelligence

    On 17 June, a member of the media asked Trump: “Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.”

    Trump brusquely responded, “I don’t care what she said. I think they are very close to having one.”

    This is just another instance of the rudeness, arrogance, and imbecility of Trump. First, Trump chose Gabbard to be his director of national intelligence.

    Second, the assessment of Iran having a nuclear weapon program or not is not Gabbard’s assessment. It is, as she testified, on the “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community”: “the collective assessment of the 18 U.S. intelligence elements making up the U.S. Intelligence Community and draws on intelligence collection, information available to the IC from open-source and the private sector, and the expertise of our analysts.”

    During the 25 March threat assessment, Gabbard testified:

    The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.

    Third, since Gabbard, the messenger, was belittled by Trump as “wrong,” then the U.S. Intelligence Community must likewise be held by Trump to be wrong. People are then left with Trump’s uncertainty, revealed by his “I think…,” as to Iran working on developing nuclear weapons. That begs the question of whether Americans want to see their sons and daughters go to war based on what Trump thinks over the assessment of 18 intelligence agencies?

    Nonetheless, Gabbard has tried to regain Trump’s good graces by, like Trump, discrediting the media. She posted on X.com:

    However, if one watches the linked source above, it corroborates that the media, in this case, accurately reflected the intelligence community’s assessment as related by Gabbard. Thus, Gabbard’s X post makes her come across as sycophantic. Not a good look for a politician or non-politician.

    If the ins and outs of politics is Gabbard’s bag — and it certainly seems to be — then she is in a tough spot. She already was forced, more-or-less, to leave the Democratic Party. And besides the Republican Party, there is no other major party to join in the United States,

    Part 2: Nonetheless, Tulsi Gabbard still has her supporters in some independent media circles.

    The post On Being Trump’s Director of National Intelligence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Turning Political Repression into Movement Building

    My first years of progressive activism and organizing took place during the presidency of Richard Nixon, who, without a doubt, led one of the most repressive presidential administrations we have experienced in the United States in the modern era, prior to this Trump regime. It was under Nixon that the Republican Party, with its “southern strategy,” began to move toward becoming the kind of regressive entity that allowed pathological liar, racist, and convicted sexual abuser Donald Trump to be elected president in November 2016 and again in 2024.

    During Nixon’s first term, from 1969 to 1973, he oversaw the use of government agencies to attempt to destroy groups like the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement and the Young Lords, including armed attacks by police that resulted in deaths. Newly enacted conspiracy laws were used to indict leaders of the peace movement and other movements. An entirely illegal and clandestine apparatus was created to sabotage the campaigns of his political opponents in the Democratic Party, leading to the midnight break-in at the Watergate Hotel that eventually led to the exposure of this apparatus and Nixon’s forced resignation from office in 1974.

    I learned several things during those Nixon years about how to deal with government repression. Unfortunately, given Trump/MAGA’s attempts to replace US democracy with a fascist regime, those are very relevant lessons for today.

    One critical lesson is that there is a disparity in the government treatment of people of color—Black, Latino/a, Indigenous and Asian—compared with the treatment of people of European descent—white people. The historical realities of settler military aggression, broken treaties, slavery, Jim Crow segregation, assumed white dominance, and institutionalized racism continue to have their negative, discriminatory impacts.

    We are seeing this play out right now with the Trumpist arrests of Brown and Black immigrants, over 90% of whom, according to AI, have no criminal record. There can be little doubt that the intention is to use this racist campaign to establish a wholly new “justice” system which will increasingly come after not just immigrants but anyone who is consistently resisting their efforts to overturn democracy and install an authoritarian, repressive regime.

    Those of us of European descent must be conscious of these realities and act accordingly, prioritizing right now the defense of immigrant rights. Very big numbers of us are stepping up, demonstrating and engaging in nonviolent action, risking and getting arrested, in opposition to what is happening with ICE in particular.

    Government repression can’t be allowed to paralyze or divide organizations or movements. This is one of the objectives of an unjust government trying to repress those who challenge its policies and practices. That is one of the reasons why we need to be about the development of a movement culture that is respectful and healthy. Such a supportive cultural environment can help us weather this storm we are in and emerge from it stronger and better both as individual activists and organizers and as a mass progressive movement.

    This is one of the necessary elements for successful resistance to government repression.

    When I say “successful” I don’t mean that there won’t be casualties on our side, people behind bars, some for months or years, or people physically attacked and injured or worse, or deportation, job losses or greater economic hardship. It is clear that under a Trump/MAGA regime this is already happening and will continue and likely get worse, particularly for immigrants, people of color and low-income people generally.

    Other things which can defend our rights and our movements are these:

    -effective legal representation in court. It is good to see the way that many lawyers and progressive legal organizations are stepping up to defend immigrants and challenge the Trump executive orders issued so far;

    -broad community support when repression happens. There are instances when ICE has attempted to arrest people and, on the spot, neighbors and others have prevented those arrests or, by their actions, have brought media attention to what is being attempted and, over time, have gotten people released from jail. It is a fact that there is a strong and extensive network of organizations nationally which is having an impact.

    All of this can immediately or over time serve to undercut support for the Trumpists, strengthen our justice movement and hasten the time when the power of the organized people overcomes them on the way to the worldwide social, economic, environmental and cultural changes needed for humanity and all life forms to avoid ecosystem and societal breakdown.

    Ultimately, what I have learned is that government repression can have a disruptive impact on our work, but we can turn a negative into a positive. The extent to which we can creatively, intelligently, and fearlessly demonstrate the truth of what we are about when responding to what they are doing to us is the extent to which we can have confidence that yes, we will win. Si, se puede!

    The post Turning Political Repression into Movement Building first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Bipartsan Lawmakers Push To Limit Trump’s War Powers On Iran

    In response to Donald Trump’s recent declaration that the U.S. could become involved in Israel’s attacks on Iran, U.S. lawmakers are pushing efforts to curb the President’s war powers.

    Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY.) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) are introducing a bipartisan bill that would force Trump to obtain congressional approval to enter the war.

    “This is not our war,” tweeted Massie. “But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution. I’m introducing a bipartisan War Powers Resolution tomorrow to prohibit our involvement. I invite all members of Congress to cosponsor this resolution.”

    The post Bipartsan Lawmakers Push To Limit Trump’s War Powers On Iran appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Senate GOP Budget Draft Proposes Even Bigger Cuts to Medicaid Funding

    Senate Republicans on Monday proposed cutting Medicaid even more aggressively than their House colleagues to help offset the cost of trillions of dollars in tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. The legislative text unveiled by the GOP-controlled Senate Finance Committee is a central component of the sprawling reconciliation package that Republicans are…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US Lawmakers Cheer Israeli Attack on Iran UN Expert Says Is Likely War Crime

    United States lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have lauded Israel’s strikes on Iran and are stoking more violence, even as a UN expert has warned that the attack was likely a war crime in which U.S. politicians may be complicit. Numerous members of Congress took to social media to condemn Iran after Israel’s strikes on residential buildings and nuclear sites on Friday…

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  • GOP Budget Puts at Least 200 Planned Parenthood Clinics Nationwide at Risk

    If the budget reconciliation package before the U.S. Senate becomes law in the coming weeks, reproductive health advocates say the provision that would cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood clinics could serve as a backdoor nationwide abortion ban, eliminating access to 1 in 4 abortion providers. The Republican-led bill, which already passed the House by a slim margin, is more than 1,000…

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  • Senate Republicans want to sell 3 million acres of public land

    Over 3 million acres of public land could be sold in the next five years, after Senate Republicans on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee reintroduced land sales into the party’s major spending bill. 

    Released on Wednesday night, the megabill text includes a proposal for extensive transfers of U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, supposedly for housing but with leeway for other uses. The new bill text escalates a recent GOP push to sell federal land. In May, the House Natural Resources Committee passed a version of the spending bill that called for 500,000 acres of public land sales in Nevada and Utah.

    The Senate bill instructs the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to dispose of 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent of all BLM and Forest Service lands, respectively. While the percentage appears small, each agency manages huge swaths of land, mostly in the Western U.S. The BLM oversees 245 million acres, equating to 1.23 million to 1.84 million acres for sale under this proposal. The Forest Service manages 193 million acres, which would mean 970,000 to 1.45 million acres would be sold off if the bill passes.

    In all, the total amount of public lands for sale could be as high as 3.29 million acres. The bill text would allow sales in all western states, except Montana.

    An aerial view from the Book Cliffs, Bureau of Land Management land, across the Grand Valley towards Grand Junction, Colorado. Luna Anna Archey/High Country News

    “It’s a travesty that Senate Republicans are putting more than 3 million acres of our beloved public lands on the chopping block to sell at fire-sale prices to build mega mansions for the ultrarich,” Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an emailed statement. He noted that the proposal’s broad language differed from the House version that focused on lands already identified for disposal in resource management plans. 

    “This Senate version is just open season on public lands,” Donnelly added. 

    If passed into law, the new proposal would create a process for states, local governments and tribes to have a “right of first refusal” on public land sales — suggesting that if these entities did not want to purchase these parcels, private buyers would be considered. The proposal also prohibits the sale of national parks (which are not managed by the BLM or the Forest Service), national monuments, wilderness areas and national recreation areas, as well as land with mining claims, grazing permits, mineral leases, and right of ways. 

    Local governments near parcels that sold would get 5 percent of the proceeds “for essential infrastructure directly supporting housing development or other associated community needs,” while the public land agency would get 5 percent for deferred maintenance.

    Attempts to sell public land are not new. But during President Donald Trump’s second term, opponents of federal land management have couched transfers as a solution to the housing crisis. The Senate committee’s one-page summary of the plan blames the federal government for “depriving our communities of needed land for housing and inhibiting growth.” 

    The Hughes Fire burns Forest Service land near Castaic, California, this January. Andrew Avitt/U.S. Forest Service

    A recent analysis by Headwaters Economics found that public land transfers offer little promise as a housing solution.

    “Our findings show that opportunities are limited to a few states, and are complicated by wildfire and drought risks, as well as other development challenges,” the researchers wrote. They found that less than 2 percent of Forest Service and Department of Interior land is close enough to population centers to make sense for housing development.

    The only viable chunks of Forest Service land — defined as 5,000 acres or more — near towns are in Arizona, Utah, and Oregon. Department of Interior parcels that could work for housing development are primarily in Nevada, Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Utah, according to the analysis. Economists also found that more than half of federal lands within a quarter-mile of towns needing more housing and a population of at least 100 people had high wildfire risk.

    Research also shows that creating more housing in scenic resort towns and gateway communities doesn’t usually result in more affordable housing. “If you build more housing and your community is a very popular place to visit, then often that housing gets consumed by short-term rentals” or second homes, Danya Rumore, founder and co-director of the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region Initiative at Utah State University, told High Country News last year. 

    A broad bipartisan coalition opposes selling public land, especially among Western voters. Some members of the committee, like Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana, have specifically said they would not support disposing of federal land. “Senator Daines opposes public land sales,” spokesperson Matt Lloyd told the Montana Free Press on June 4. Idaho Senator James Risch, a Republican, has also publicly opposed such sales. Montana Republican Representative Ryan Zinke — also Trump’s former DOI secretary — was instrumental in removing land sales from the House spending bill. 

    Chairman Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, has long championed attempts to sell federal land or transfer it to the states. Other Energy and Natural Resources Committee members represent Wyoming, Idaho, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, California, Arizona, and Alaska — all states with thousands of acres of public land. 

    If the committee passes this version of their megabill, a vote on public land sales would go to the entire Senate, and then, the House of Representatives. If this becomes law, it could “establish a model for members of Congress to liquidate America’s lands at any time to pay for their pet projects, with little benefit to local communities,” said Michael Carroll, director of the BLM campaign at The Wilderness Society, in a statement.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Senate Republicans want to sell 3 million acres of public land on Jun 13, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kylie Mohr.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • CBO: GOP Bill Would Sap $1.6K From Poorest Households, Give $12K to the Richest

    President Donald Trump’s budget bill would sap resources away from the poorest households in the U.S. while giving tens of thousands of dollars to the richest Americans on an annual basis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found in a new analysis. Last month, CBO reported that Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” would decrease the wealth of the poorest 10 percent of households by 4…

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  • Ahead of 2026 Midterms, Trump and Texas GOP Mull Possible Gerrymander Scheme

    Republicans in Texas are reportedly in talks with President Donald Trump’s political team over a plan to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries in an effort to gain seats (or mitigate losses) in the House of Representatives for the 2026 midterm elections. The political party of an incumbent president typically loses seats in the House in midterm races that occur after their own…

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  • Dem says Trump/Musk feud has Republicans hiding from the Big Beautiful Bill, dodging constituents


    This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

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  • Orwell, Bradbury, Burgess, and Atwood’s 20th Century Dystopian Tales Becoming 21st Century Reality

    Dystopia2.jpg

    Works of dystopian fiction, from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, once seemed like dark fantasies of an authoritarian future. Their themes were warnings, not forecasts. Now, in 21st Century America, with the political landscape being fashioned by Donald Trump, MAGA, the Republican Party, Elon Musk’s DOGE, and their Christian nationalist and white supremacist allies, literary nightmares are no longer speculative.  What once was fiction is now the stuff of daily headlines.

    Dystopian themes such as: Big Brother watching; censorship threatening; women’s rights eroding; history rewritten; and violent white gangs roaming the political landscape, once viewed as hyperbolic, are now today’s reality.

    American politics is being shaped by hundreds ofexecutive orders, social media rants, and an alarming number of reactionary proposals by Republican controlled in states across the country. Some of these actions are more horrifying than plots cooked up by the best of our speculative fiction writers. And while dystopian legislation is being crafted, right-wing domestic terrorist groups are metastasizing.

    The election of Donald Trump, with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint at his fingertips, has set these disruptive events into motion. And the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a woman’s right to abortion opened the floodgates to proposals that were once thought of as pure fiction.

    Big Brother is Watching—And Tweeting

    The Orwellian surveillance state has evolved in real-time. But it’s not just government agencies monitoring citizens; private tech giants, partisan watchdogs, and shadowy right-wing influencers are mining data, tracking dissent, and amplifying disinformation. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter—rebranded as “X” — turned the site into a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and extremist propaganda. This once dystopian future, now present, isn’t just being surveilled; it’s being promoted, curated and manipulated by billionaires and bots.

    In MAGA’s America, Trump is attempting to stretch surveillance society, as dissenters are targeted, reporters vilified, and protesters charged as criminals. And as state governments push for laws that would allow tracking of women’s pregnancies and menstrual cycles, Orwell’s vision seems almost quaint by comparison.

    Burning Books Without Flames

    Bradbury envisioned a world where books were burned to control thought. In today’s America, while book burning is rare, books are being removed from the shelves of public schools and libraries, and military academies. Conservative lawmakers and school boards are banning books en masse—particularly those that discuss race, gender, sexuality, or America’s darker historical truths. Librarians are being harassed, even doxxed.

    The control of knowledge and information is power, and the MAGA movement knows it.

    Reproductive Dystopia

    The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade opened the floodgates to extremist legislation that was once confined to the realm of dystopian fiction. In Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of autonomy and used as vessels for reproduction. Today, in America, state legislators openly float proposals to track pregnancies, criminalize miscarriages, and prosecute women for seeking abortion care. Some have even suggested the death penalty. The right’s Rolling Thunder project aims to outlaw the use of mifepristone.

    No longer a slippery slope—it’s a full-on sprint toward theocracy. Red cloaks and white bonnets are no longer costumes for protest. They are warnings of what’s to come.

    Rewriting the Past to Control the Future

    “Who controls the past controls the future,” Orwell wrote. In some states slavery is being reframed as “involuntary relocation” or a jobs program! “Don’t Say Gay” laws muzzle teachers from acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ+ people. AP African American Studies is gutted. Teaching truth becomes a revolutionary act.

    Disappearing or re-written school textbooks and on government websites, history is being edited, erased and repackaged to fit Trump and his acolytes white nationalist agenda.

    A Clockwork Orange America

    Meanwhile, political violence is becoming normalized. From the January 6th insurrection to armed extremists intimidating voters, the American far-right is increasingly militant and unrepentant. Anthony Burgess’s vision of a violent youth culture run amok feels unnervingly familiar—except now it’s grown men in camo, tactical gear, and MAGA hats, and ramping up talk of civil war. The MAGA movement is a coordinated ideology that seeks to replace democracy with an authoritarian state.

    Project 2025: The Authoritarian Blueprint

    The blueprint for much of what we are seeing is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a roadmap for dismantling the administrative state, purging government agencies of dissenters, and centralizing executive power in the White House. After claiming during the presidential campaign that he knew nothing about it, Trump has peopled his administration with Project 2025 contributors including Russel Vought Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Navarro, Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing, and Brendan Carr, of the Federal Communications Commission. Trump’s goal: a government loyal to him above all else.

    We Are Living the Plot Twist

    What were once speculative fantasies, are now the substance of our daily news. The line between fiction and reality has blurred. Orwell, Bradbury, Atwood, and Burgess wrote to warn us. They hoped their worlds would remain on the page. But in Trump’s America, the 20th century’s worst literary nightmares are becoming the 21st century’s political reality.

    The post Orwell, Bradbury, Burgess, and Atwood’s 20th Century Dystopian Tales Becoming 21st Century Reality first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” Will Lead to 51,000 Preventable Deaths Each Year

    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…

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  • David Hogg’s Fight for the Future of the Democratic Party

    David Hogg is disrupting the Democratic National Committee. He’s well known for his gun control advocacy work after surviving the horrific mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, seven years ago. Today, he’s taken on a new role as a DNC vice chair, the first member of Gen Z to hold the position. But his political action committee is spending $20 million to replace Democratic incumbents with younger candidates, which he says could get him kicked out of the DNC.

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  • Trump Grants Clemency to Executive Who Orchestrated $205M Medicare Fraud Scheme

    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…

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  • Republicans Are Mocking Americans They Want to Take Medicaid Away From

    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…

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  • State Voter Suppression Bills Could Disenfranchise Millions Ahead of Midterms

    As part of a broader push to both vilify immigrants and suppress voting rights, Republicans in Congress and multiple states are pushing legislation requiring voters to produce documents, such as passports and birth certificates, to prove their citizenship before registering to participate in elections. Experts are warning that proof of citizenship bills would disenfranchise millions of people as…

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  • Lindsey Graham Fantasizes About Sinking Gaza Aid Ship Carrying Greta Thunberg

    Senior Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina) openly fantasized about sinking a civilian ship staffed with activists aiming to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel is targeting and killing Palestinians trying to reach food and water. In a post on X on Sunday, Graham shared an article about the ship bound for Gaza, operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

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  • GOP Senator’s Defense of Medicaid Cuts: “Well, We All Are Going to Die”

    A Republican senator has dismissed her constituents’ concerns that the GOP’s sweeping cuts to Medicaid could kill people by saying that “we all are going to die” in a comment on Friday. As Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst answered a question about the GOP’s cuts in a town hall, constituents concerned over the future of crucial lifesaving programs yelled, “people are going to die.” “Well…

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  • GOP State Lawmakers Are Attempting to Undermine Ballot Measures Passed by Voters

    Across the country, Republican lawmakers have been working to undermine or altogether undo the will of the voters by making it harder to pass amendments and laws through citizen-led initiatives. In Missouri, the 2025 legislative session was dominated by Republican lawmakers trying to reverse two major measures that voters had put on the ballot and approved just months before…

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