UNDER CONSTRUCTION - MOVED TO MIDDLEBORO REVIEW AND SO ON
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Saturday, November 29, 2025
Week in Review | Trump's Cruelty and the Billionaires Destroying Our Media System
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"Completely identical language," said one observer.
By Jake Johnson • Nov 28, 2025
US President Donald Trump wasted little time exploiting the shooting of two National Guard troops to advance his lawless assault on immigrants and refugees, pledging on Thanksgiving Day to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries” and expedite the removal of people his administration doesn’t see as “a net asset” to the United States.
The president announced his proposal in a series of unhinged, racism-laced posts on his social media platform a day after two members of the West Virginia National Guard were shot in Washington, DC. The suspect was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who worked with CIA-backed military units in Afghanistan and was granted asylum earlier this year by the Trump administration.
Trump ignored that fact in his Truth Social tirade, blaming his predecessor for Lakanwal’s presence in the US and using the shooting to broadly smear migrants and refugees.
“These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process,” Trump wrote. “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for—You won’t be here for long!”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, highlighted Trump’s “outrageous claim” that most of the immigrant population in the US is “on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”
“As insulting as the ‘deplorables’ comment, and on Thanksgiving Day no less,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “This rhetoric is indistinguishable from the stuff you hear coming out of white nationalists. Completely identical language.”
How Trump’s rant will be translated into policy is unclear. Reutersreported Thursday that Trump “has ordered a widespread review of asylum cases approved under former President Joe Biden’s administration and Green Cards issued to citizens of 19 countries.”
Like the president, his administration did not provide a specific list of nations, but it pointed Reuters to “a travel ban Trump imposed in June on citizens of 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Laos, Togo, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, and Turkmenistan.”
Trump’s posts came days after US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced plans to reinterview hundreds of thousands of refugees admitted into the country under former President Joe Biden.
The advocacy group Refugees International condemned the move as “a vindictive, harmful, and wasteful attack on people throughout US communities who have fled persecution and cleared some of the most rigorous security checks in the world.”
“The decision retraumatizes families, undermines faith in the legal immigration system, disrupts integration, and misuses taxpayer dollars to scrutinize valuable new members of American communities,” the group added. “This is part of the Trump administration’s unprecedented delegalization of people who arrived on humanitarian pathways and erodes the US as a nation of refuge.”
While expressing relief, the 16-year-old's uncle noted the "hundreds of children like Mohammed, unjustly trapped in an Israeli military prison."
By Jessica Corbett • Nov 27, 2025
“Words can’t describe the immense relief we have as a family right now,” said Zeyad Kadur, the uncle of Mohammed Ibrahim, the 16-year-old Palestinian-American who was finally released on Thursday after over nine months in Israeli detention.
In February, Israeli forces arrested the Florida resident, then 15, at a family home in the illegally occupied West Bank over allegations that he threw rocks at Israeli settlers. Ibrahim’s release follows a monthslong pressure campaign from his relatives, rights groups, and American lawmakers, who have specifically urged President Donald Trump to demand the US citizen’s freedom.
“Israeli soldiers had no right to take Mohammed from us in the first place,” said Kadur. “For more than nine months, our family has been living a horrific and endless nightmare, particularly Mohammed’s mother and father, who haven’t been able to see or touch their youngest child for nearly a year, all while knowing Israeli soldiers were beating him and starving him.”
“We couldn’t believe Mohammed was free until his parents wrapped their arms around him and felt him safe,” he continued. “Right now, we are focused on getting Mohammed the immediate medical attention he needs after being subjected to Israel’s abuse and inhumane conditions for months. We just want Mohammed to be healthy and to have his childhood back.”
According to the Guardian, which first exposed Ibrahim’s case in July: “Relatives said he was taken to a hospital for intravenous therapy and blood work immediately after his release, and noted he is severely underweight, pale, and is still suffering from scabies contracted during his detention. Ibrahim had lost a quarter of his body weight in detention, his family said.”
Kadur said Thursday that “we’d like to thank the more than a hundred organizations, local Florida community members, volunteers, and members of Congress who continued to speak up for Mohammed and demand his immediate freedom. We are also deeply grateful to the countless people who refused to stop telling Mohammed’s story, and to those who called their representatives every single day to demand they act to free him. Thank you for bringing Mohammed’s story to the American people and the world.”
The uncle added:
There are hundreds of children like Mohammed, unjustly trapped in an Israeli military prison, being subjected to Israel’s abuse and torture. No mother, father, parent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, or child should ever have to go through what Mohammed just went through. As we support Mohammed and are beyond relieved he is free, we will continue to demand justice for Sayfollah Musallet, an American and Mohammed’s first cousin, who was beaten to death and murdered by a mob of Israeli settlers on July 11, 2025. We expect the American government to protect our families.
Mohammed was forced to spend his 16th birthday unjustly imprisoned by Israel, separated from the people who love him. Now that Mohammed is with his family, we can finally wish him a happy birthday. His mom, Muna, can prepare his favorite meal and be with her son. We are proud of Mohammed and love him dearly. The family requests time to be with their son after this painful experience.
The Institute for Middle East Understanding shared Kadur’s statement and also called for justice for Musallet.
Ibrahim’s freedom came as people in the United States celebrated Thanksgiving.
“Something to be thankful for today: Mohammed Ibrahim freed from captivity,” wroteDrop Site News’ Ryan Grim on social media.
US Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) similarly said, “On a day of thanksgiving we are so grateful Mohammed Ibrahim is on his way home.”
Robert McCaw, government affairs director at the largest US Muslim rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement that “Mohamed’s homecoming is a blessing, but it does not erase the torture and suffering he endured.”
“The US government has a responsibility to investigate Israel’s abuse of an American citizen and ensure that no other child—American or Palestinian—is subjected to the same treatment,” McCaw added.
The US government provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually, and has continued to do so over the past two years, as Israeli forces have waged a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip—a genocide that “is not over,” despite last month’s ceasefire agreement, as Amnesty Internationalhighlighted in a Thursday briefing. Amid that assault, there has also been a surge in Israeli soldiers’ and settlers’ violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
“Mohammed should have spent this year studying for his learner’s permit and enjoying time with his family—not locked in a military prison, beaten, starved, and terrified. His release is cause for celebration, but it must also be a turning point,” said CAIR’s Florida chapter. “The US cannot continue providing unchecked support to a government that tortures American children.”
“CAIR and CAIR-FL are calling on the US State Department, members of Congress, faith leaders, and civil society organizations to press for a full, public accounting of Mohammed’s treatment and to demand concrete consequences for the Israeli officials responsible,” the group added. “The organizations also reaffirm their commitment to supporting Mohamed and his family as he recovers from the trauma of his imprisonment and to advocating for all children subjected to abuse under Israel’s military system.”
"It is illegal to remove books from public libraries because some people do not like them," said a coalition of 33 library groups, publishing companies, and civil rights organizations.
By Stephen Prager • Nov 27, 2025
Public libraries in Tennessee have begun to shut down as they carry out an order from state officials to remove children’s books containing LGBTQ+ themes or characters.
For Popular Information, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims reported Tuesday that the “book purge” is required to be carried out at all 181 libraries in the Tennessee Regional Library System, which encompasses most of the state, aside from cities like Nashville and Memphis.
It comes after Tennessee’s Republican Secretary of State, Tre Hargett, sent a pair of letters earlier this fall. The first, sent on September 8, said that in order to receive state and federal grants, which run through his office, libraries needed to comply with a Tennessee law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices from agencies, as well as President Donald Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology,” which effectively ended the federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary individuals.
As the report notes, neither of these orders says anything about library books. However, Hargett argued that compliance with the executive order mandated book bans because it states that “federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.”
Not only do executive orders typically not apply to state and local governments, but the federal funds Tennessee’s libraries receive are not used to purchase books at all. Instead, according to the secretary of state’s website, they “provide all state residents with online access to essential library and information resources, including licensed databases, a statewide library catalog and interlibrary loan system, bibliographic services, and materials for the disadvantaged.”
The Every Library Institute, an advocacy group that supports federal funding for libraries, said that Hargett’s instructions “contain significant errors, likely exceeding the secretary’s authority and reflecting a political agenda rather than a neutral or accurate interpretation of federal or state law.”
“Hargett is setting a dangerous precedent by placing Tennessee’s state and municipal government under the authority of any executive order by any president,” the group continued. “Executive orders are not laws.”
But Crosby and Sims argued: “Even if the executive order did apply to Tennessee local libraries, simply having books with LGBTQ stories and characters does not constitute ‘promoting gender ideology.’ The classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood involves a wolf eating a little girl, but does not promote violence. Children’s books are stories, not instruction manuals.”
On October 27, Hargett sent another letter, giving libraries 60 days to undertake an “age appropriateness review” of all books in their children’s section to find any books that may be inconsistent either with Tennessee’s age appropriateness law or with Trump’s executive order.
As Ken Paulson, the director of Middle Tennessee University’s Free Speech Center, noted, the age appropriateness law, which was last updated in 2024, “is modeled after obscenity laws and prohibits nudity, excessive violence, and explicit sexuality, hardly the stuff of children’s sections. Further, the law applies to school libraries, not public libraries.”
Though Hargett provided no criteria for how to assess what books would need to be purged, he did provide an example of one he felt violated both orders: Fred Gets Dressed, a 2021 picture book by the New York Times bestselling author Peter Brown. As Popular Information noted:
The book, which was written by a straight, cisgender man, does not feature any LGBTQ characters. Instead it is based on a childhood experience of the author in which he tried on his mother’s clothing and makeup. If a book about a boy trying on his mother’s clothes is the strongest example of “promoting gender ideology” that Hargett could identify, it raises questions about the necessity of the review.
Earlier this month, the state’s Rutherford County Library System, which serves the cities of Smyrna and Murfreesboro, shut down several of its library branches for up to a week to “meet new reporting requirements” from Hargett’s office.
It’s unclear why the Rutherford County system determined it needed to shut down in order to carry out the review, nor has it been made clear whether other library systems will be expected to do the same.
As former librarian Kelly Jensen noted for the blog Book Riot, the Rutherford County system has made its own efforts to ban transgender-friendly books, but backed off from the policy earlier this summer for fear of litigation after a Murfreesboro law branding “homosexuality” as a form of “public indecency” resulted in the city being forced to settle a lawsuit for $500,000.
Kelly wrote that for Rutherford library system’s board, Hargett’s order is “a convenient means of subverting their fears of litigation, which drove them to change their anti-trans book policy earlier this summer. If the directive is from the state, then they ‘have to’ comply. The Tennessee secretary of state is granting permission slips to public library boards to ban away.”
This week, a group of 33 major publishers, library advocacy groups, and free speech and civil rights organizations signed onto a letter to Hargett expressing “profound concern” over its review mandate.
The coalition included PEN America, the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the transgender rights advocacy organization GLAAD. Major publishing houses also signed on, including Penguin Random House, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster.
“These types of reviews create immense administrative burdens for library systems and often lead to illegal censorship, which raises liability risks for local communities and the state,” the groups said. “Many libraries, uncertain about the legal and procedural basis for the mandate, have had to redirect limited resources, with some temporarily closing branches to complete these reviews, which are implied to be necessary for future funding.”
“The demands in your letter need immediate clarification, as it is not reasonable to expect libraries to follow directives that would risk violating applicable law, including the US Constitution,” they added. “It is illegal to remove books from public libraries because some people do not like them. This is a well-settled legal principle.”
The Rutherford County Library Alliance, which has challenged municipal anti-LGBTQ+ laws as well as the censorship policies of the library’s own board, said that “we have seen firsthand the concrete harm of the Secretary’s directives—library closures during story time, intimidation of professional librarians, and the breakdown of democratic representation in our public library system.”
“We hope Secretary Hargett will fulfill their duty to promote library development by supporting our constitutionally-guaranteed rights and our highly trained librarians,” the alliance added, “rather than enabling censorship from 0.001% of our community for 100% of our community.”
"I've spoken to dozens of people held inside ICE detention centers in Arizona and this tracks," said Democratic Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari.
By Jessica Corbett • Nov 26, 2025
The libertarian Cato Institute this week further undermined the Trump administration’s claims that it is targeting “the worst of the worst” with its violent immigration operations in communities across the United States by publishing data about the criminal histories—or lack thereof—of immigrants who have been arrested and booked into detention.
David J. Bier, the institute’s director of immigration studies, previously reported in June that 65% of people taken by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had no convictions, and 93% had no violent convictions.
Monday evening, Bier shared a new nonpublic dataset leaked to Cato. Of the 44,882 people booked into ICE custody from when the fiscal year began on October 1 through November 15, 73% had no criminal convictions. For that share, around two-thirds also had no pending charges.
The data also show that most of those recently booked into ICE detention with criminal convictions had faced immigration, traffic, or vice charges. Just 5% had a violent conviction, and 3% had a property conviction.
“Other data sources support the conclusions from the number of ICE book-ins,” Bier wrote, citing information on agency arrests from January to late July—or the first six months of President Donald Trump’s second term—that the Deportation Data Project acquired via a public records request.
The data show that as of January 1, just before former President Joe Biden left office, 149 immigrants without charges or convictions were arrested by ICE. That number surged by 1,500% under Trump: It peaked at 4,072 in June and ultimately was 2,386 by the end of July—when 67% of all arrestees had no criminal convictions, and 39% had neither convictions nor charges.
Bier also pointed to publicly available data about current detainees on ICE’s website, emphasizing that the number of people in detention with no convictions or pending charges “increased a staggering 2,370% since January from fewer than 1,000 to over 21,000.”
In addition to publishing an article on Cato’s site, Bier detailed the findings on the social media platform X, where various critics of the administration’s immigration crackdown weighed in. Among them was Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), who said: “These are the facts. I’ve spoken to dozens of people held inside ICE detention centers in Arizona and this tracks.”
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) declared: “This is the scandal. Trump isn’t targeting dangerous people. He’s targeting peaceful immigrants. Almost exclusively.”
The US Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, also jumped in, as did DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. Responding to Murphy, McLaughlin said in part: “This is so dumb it hurts my soul. This is a made-up pie chart with no legitimate data behind it—just propaganda to undermine the brave work of DHS law enforcement and fool Americans.”
Bier and others then took aim at McLaughlin, with the Cato director offering the raw data and challenging her to “just admit you don’t care whether the people you’re arresting are threats to others or not.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that “DHS’s spokeswoman lies AGAIN,” calling out her post as “either a knowing lie or an egregious mistake.”
“The data David J. Bier published was distributed to multiple congressional staffers and is just a more detailed breakdown of data, which is publicly available on ICE’s own website,” he stressed.
Journalist Jose Olivares noted that this is “not the first time Tricia McLaughlin has said that ICE’s own data is ‘propaganda.’ Months ago, she slammed me and my colleague at the Guardian on PBS... even though we used ICE’s own data for our reporting.”
After previous plans by Israel for the mass expulsion of Palestinians, onlookers fear the proposal to house some displaced Palestinians in “compounds” they may not be allowed to leave.
By Stephen Prager • Nov 26, 2025
A new Trump administration plan to put Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied parts of Gaza into “residential compounds” is raising eyebrows among international observers, who fear it could more closely resemble a system of “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”
Under the current “ceasefire” agreement—which remains technically intact despite hundreds of alleged violations by Israel that have resulted in the deaths of over 300 Palestinians—Israel still occupies the eastern portion of Gaza, an area greater than 50% of the entire strip. The vast majority of the territory’s nearly 2 million inhabitants are crammed onto the other side of the yellow line into an area of roughly 60 square miles—around the size of St Louis, Missouri, or Akron, Ohio.
As Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations’ deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, explained Monday at a briefing to the UN Security Council: “Two years of fighting has left almost 80% of Gaza’s 250,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. Over 1.7 million people remain displaced, many in overcrowded shelters without adequate access to water, food, or medical care.”
The New York Timesreported Tuesday that the new US proposal would seek to resettle some of those Palestinians in what the Trump administration calls “Alternative Safe Communities,”on the Israeli-controlled side of the yellow line.
Based on information from US officials and European diplomats, the Timessaid these “model compounds” are envisioned as a housing option “more permanent than tent villages, but still made up of structures meant to be temporary. Each could provide housing for as many as 20,000 or 25,000 people alongside medical clinics and schools.”
The project is being led by Trump official Aryeh Lightstone, who previously served as an aide to Trump’s first envoy to Jerusalem. According to the Times: “His team includes an eclectic, fluctuating group of American diplomats, Israeli magnates and officials from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—the sweeping Washington cost-cutting effort overseen earlier this year by Elon Musk.”
The source of funding for the project remains unclear, though the cost of just one compound is estimated to run into the tens of millions. Meanwhile, the newspaper noted that even if ten of these compounds were constructed, it would be just a fraction of what is needed to provide safety and shelter to all of Gaza’s displaced people. It’s unlikely that the first structures would be complete for months.
While the Times said that “the plan could offer relief for thousands of Palestinians who have endured two years of war,” it also pointed to criticisms that it “could entrench a de facto partition of Gaza into Israeli- and Hamas-controlled zones.” Others raised concerns about whether the people of Gaza will even want to move from their homes after years or decades of resisting Israel’s occupation.
But digging deeper into the report, critics have noted troubling language. For one thing, Israeli officials have the final say over which Palestinians are allowed to enter the “compounds” and will heavily scrutinize the backgrounds of applicants, likely leading many to be blacklisted.
In one section, titled “Freedom of Movement,” the Times report noted that “some Israeli officials have argued that, for security reasons, Palestinians should only be able to move into the new compounds, not to leave them, according to officials.”
This language harkens back to a proposal earlier this year by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who called for the creation of a massive “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah that would be used as part of an “emigration plan” for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
Under that plan, Palestinians would have been given “security screenings” and once inside would not be allowed to leave. Humanitarian organizations, including those inside Israel, roundly condemned the plan as essentially a “concentration camp.”
Prior to that, Trump called for the people of Gaza—“all of them”—to be permanently expelled and for the US to “take over” the strip, demolish the remaining buildings, and construct what he described as the “Riviera of the Middle East.” That plan was widely described as one of ethnic cleansing.
The new plan to move Palestinians to “compounds” is raising similar concerns.
“What is it called when a military force concentrates an ethnic or religious group into compounds without the ability to leave?” asked Assal Rad, a PhD in Middle Eastern history and a fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC.
Sana Saeed, a senior producer for AJ+, put it more plainly: “concentration camps within a mass concentration camp.”
The Times added that “supporters insist that this would be a short-term arrangement until Hamas is disarmed and Gaza comes under one unified government.” Lightstone has said that reconstruction of the other parts of Gaza, where the vast majority of the population still lives, will not happen unless Hamas, the militant group that currently governs the strip, is removed from power.
But while Hamas has indicated a potential willingness to step down from ruling Gaza, it has rejected the proposal that it unilaterally disarm and make way for an “International Stabilization Force” to govern the strip, instead insisting that post-war governance should be left to Palestinians. That plan, however, was authorized last week by the UN Security Council.
In addition to raising concerns that “those moving in would never be allowed to leave,” the Beirut-based independent journalist Séamus Malekafzali pointed to other ideas Lightstone and his group want to implement. According to the Times, “It has kicked around ideas ranging from a new Gaza cryptocurrency to how to rebuild the territory in such a way that it has no traffic.”
Malekafzali said, “Former DOGE personnel are attempting to make Gaza into yet another dumb tech experiment.”
Like Katz’s plan months ago, the new Trump proposal calls for a large compound to be built in Rafah, which Egyptian officials warned, in comments to the Wall Street Journal, could be a prelude to a renewed effort to push Palestinians across the border into the Sinai Peninsula.
But even if not, Jonathan Whittall, the former head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Palestine, said it hardly serves the humanitarian role the Trump administration and its Israeli co-administrators seek to portray.
“If plans for these ‘safe communities’ proceed, they would cement a deadly fragmentation of Gaza,” he wrote in Al Jazeera. “The purpose of creating these camps is not to provide humanitarian relief but to create zones of managed dispossession where Palestinians would be screened and vetted to enter in order to receive basic services, but would be explicitly barred from returning to the off-limits and blockaded ‘red zone.’”
He noted that there is a conspicuous lack of any clear plan for what happens to those Palestinians who continue to live outside the safe communities, warning that Israel’s security clearances could serve as a way of marking them as fair targets for even more escalated military attacks.
“Those who remain outside of the alternative communities, in the ‘red zone,’” he said, “risk being labelled ‘Hamas supporters’ and therefore ineligible for protection under Israel’s warped interpretation of international law and subject to ongoing military operations, as already seen in past days.”
"These are refugees who fled persecution... refugees who had been more thoroughly vetted than any other population before entering our country," said the head of the Refugee Council USA.
The AP reported on Tuesday that the abrupt change will not only apply to refugees awaiting green cards, but that some who have already received them could have their permanent residency status revoked.
The memo, signed by the director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Joseph Edlow, claims that during the previous administration, “expediency” and “quantity” were prioritized over the “detailed screening and vetting” of those who applied for refugee status.
Refugee status can be claimed by those outside the United States who fear persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a social group. Most refugees who have entered the US in recent years come from nations in the midst of severe upheaval from civil war or other forms of political instability.
Between October 2021 and September 2024, the Biden administration admitted 185,640 refugees. Last year, more than 100,000 were admitted, with the largest numbers coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Syria.
The memo states that these refugees will be subject to new investigations into their claims of past persecution or fear of persecution in their home countries. It also says USCIS will review the possible grounds for inadmissibility, which could place them at risk of losing their status. Those the agency determines did not meet the criteria for admission will have “no right to appeal.”
In addition to reassessing the validity of their claims of persecution, the review process will also reportedly involve an assessment of a refugee’s potential for “assimilation” into the United States.
The Refugee Council USA (RCUSA) said the directive violates the Refugee Act of 1980, which states that refugees shall be considered for a green card after one year of residence in the US.
“By ordering reinterviews and halting permanent residence processing for those admitted during the previous administration, the Trump administration is placing the entire resettlement system into legal limbo,” the group said.
The AP reports that the lives of many refugees in the US have been thrown into chaos by the rule change. One Syrian refugee who fled the nation’s deadly civil war roughly a decade ago said he now feared that he and his family would be sent back.
“It was, and it still is a dream to be in America,” said the man, who remained anonymous for fear of being targeted by US authorities. “If they start sending back people to their home countries, you don’t have the rights that you have here and the opportunities.”
Despite the administration’s claims, refugees already undergo an extraordinarily long and thorough vetting process to enter the US, which can take up to 36 months. The process involves screening of biographic and biometric information, extensive interviews, and security screenings by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense.
“This administration’s disdain for refugees and newcomers is well-documented, yet it continues to find new ways to outdo itself,” said Rick Santos, president and CEO of Church World Service (CWS), which provides support for refugees around the globe. “The decision to review and reinterview resettled refugees—who have already passed through the most stringent of vetting processes—is not merely a relitigation, but a retraumatizing of individuals who were assured of their safety and a chance to live free of persecution.”
“Just the threat of this is unspeakably cruel,” said Mark Hetfield, the president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, in a comment to CNN. “To threaten refugees with taking away their status would be retraumatizing and a vicious misuse of taxpayer money.”
CWS argued that “the resources it will take to relitigate refugees’ cases could be much better spent addressing USCIS’s backlog of approximately 4 million cases.”
As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted, “The same administration that redefined refugee status to cover white South Africans is now going to drown in red tape tens of thousands of refugees approved years ago, potentially even seeking to strip some of their status and deport them.”
In October, the Trump administration announced that it would limit the number of refugees accepted during this fiscal year to a historic low of 7,500, down from over 100,000 under former President Joe Biden, with most spots going to the white descendants of the Europeans who subjected South Africa’s majority Black population to apartheid for decades. The first of those refugees was admitted to the US earlier this week, just before the green card freeze was announced.
“The latest refugee policy announcement from the Trump administration is astounding, unprecedented, heartbreaking, and cruel,” said John Slocum, executive director of RCUSA. “These are refugees who fled persecution on account of their religion, race, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Refugees who had been more thoroughly vetted than any other population before entering our country. Refugees who had been promised, not a temporary sojourn, but a permanent grant of freedom, safety, and opportunity.”
"All those responsible for this mass slaughter must face accountability," said one campaigner in response to the new figures, "starting with Netanyahu and other members of his openly racist, genocidal, and warmongering regime.”
By Brad Reed • Nov 26, 2025
Israel’s two-year assault on Gaza has left a catastrophic death toll that is even worse than most official estimates, according to research from European researchers.
A study released on Tuesday by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany and the Center for Demographic Studies in Spain found that “the current violent death toll” in Gaza “likely exceeds 100,000” since the start of the war in October 2023.
In fact, the researchers estimate that the total death toll from the war among Palestinians in Gaza is between 99,997 and 125,915, with a median estimate of over 112,000 killed. Even the lowest death toll estimate in the study is significantly higher than the death toll estimates in most media reports, which as of this week totaled roughly 70,000 Palestinians killed.
The researchers said that the wide range of death toll estimates is a reflection of “distorted and incomplete data from conflict zones” that make precise estimates difficult.
Researcher Irena Chen, who co-led the project, told Turkish publication AA that “we will never know the exact number of dead” and added that “we are only trying to estimate as accurately as possible what a realistic order of magnitude might be.”
The study also found that the two-year Israeli assault led to a precipitous plunge in life expectancy. According to researcher Ana Gómez-Ugarte, life expectancy in Gaza “fell by 44% in 2023 and by 47% in 2024 compared with what it would have been without the war—equivalent to losses of 34.4 and 36.4 years, respectively.”
The study’s final estimates were based on data from multiple public sources, including including the Gaza Ministry of Health (GMoH), the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN-IGME), and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that the new study was “further evidence of genocide” being carried out by the Israeli government.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director for CAIR, called the study “only the latest reason why our government must stop sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel and why international courts must hold Israel accountable for its crimes.” Mitchell added that “all those responsible for this mass slaughter must face accountability, starting with Netanyahu and other members of his openly racist, genocidal, and warmongering regime.”
A report released by UN Conference on Trade and Development earlier this week found that Israel’s genocidal assault has had a devastating impact on Gaza’s economy, finding that its entire population is now living below the poverty line, with per-capita gross domestic product falling to just $161, one of the lowest figures in the world.
Additionally, the report found that the unemployment rate in Gaza was as high as 80%, while inflation in the exclave surged to nearly 240%, as the Israeli military blockade caused a widespread famine by preventing basic necessities from reaching Gaza residents.
"So glad there are some Senate Dems willing to fight back," said one progressive strategist.
By Jake Johnson • Nov 25, 2025
Angered by the Democratic leadership’s fecklessness and lack of a bold vision for the future, a group of senators including Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has formed an alliance to push back on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the party’s campaign arm ahead of next year’s critical midterm elections.
The existence of the group, known as the “Fight Club,” was first revealed Monday by the New York Times, which reported that the senators are pressing the Democratic Party to “embrace candidates willing to challenge entrenched corporate interests, fiercely oppose the Trump administration, and defy their own party’s orthodoxy.”
Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Tina Smith of Minnesota, and Chris Murphy of Connecticut are also members of the alliance, and other senators—including Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon—have taken part in group actions, according to the Times.
“The coalition of at least half a dozen senators... is unhappy with how Mr. Schumer and his fellow senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, the head of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, have chosen, recruited and, they argue, favored candidates aligned with the establishment,” the newspaper reported. “The party’s campaign arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has not made any formal endorsements in contested primaries. However, the senators are convinced that it is quietly signaling support for and pushing donors toward specific Senate candidates: Rep. Angie Craig in Minnesota, Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan, and Gov. Janet Mills in Maine.”
Members of the “Fight Club” have endorsed Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s bid for US Senate. In addition to Flanagan, Sanders has backed Abdul El-Sayed’s US Senate run in Michigan and Graham Platner’s campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine.
Platner’s top opponent in the primary race, Mills, was “aggressively recruited” by Schumer.
News of the “Fight Club” alliance comes after a small group of centrist Democrats, with Schumer’s tacit blessing, capitulated to President Donald Trump and Republicans earlier this month by agreeing to end the government shutdown without an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, even as health insurance premiums skyrocket nationwide.
The cave sparked widespread fury, much of it directed at Schumer. Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group that typically aligns with Democrats, has said it will not support any Senate Democratic primary candidate who does not call on Schumer to step down as minority leader.
“We must turn the page on this era of cowardice,” Indivisible said following Senate Democrats’ capitulation. “We must nominate and elect Democratic candidates who have an actual backbone. And we must ensure that the kind of failed leadership we see from Sen. Schumer does not doom a future Democratic majority.”
Thus far, no sitting member of the Senate Democratic caucus has demanded Schumer’s resignation. But the emergence of the “Fight Club” is the latest evidence that the Democratic leader’s support is beginning to crumble.
“Absolutely love to see this,” progressive strategist Robert Cruickshank wrote on social media in response to the Times reporting. “So glad there are some Senate Dems willing to fight back.”
That’s how one film and television producer responded to a Monday clip of US Rep. María Salazar (R-Fla.) discussing President Donald Trump’s potential military invasion of Venezuela on Fox Business.
Amid mounting alarm that Trump may take military action, Salazar said there were three reasons why “we need to go in” to the South American country. The first, she said, is that “Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day.”
After journalist Aaron Rupar noted her remarks on social media, many critics weighed in, including Justice Democrats, which works to elect progressives to Congress.
“They’re not even hiding it anymore. A US-led regime change war abroad to line the pockets of Big Oil—where have we heard this one before?” the group said, referring to the invasion of Iraq.
Fred Wellman, a US Army combat veteran and podcast host running as a Democrat in Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District, replied on social media: “They are sending our troops to war for the oil companies and not even pretending to lie about it. These sick SOBs are going to get our kids killed and it’s all a big joke.”
Salazar also described Venezuela as a launching pad for enemies of the US and claimed the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, leads the alleged Cartel de los Soles, or the Cartel of the Suns—which the Trump administration on Monday designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
Venezuela’s interior and justice minister, Diosdado Cabello, has long claimed the cartel doesn’t exist, calling it an “invention.” As the UK’s BBCreported Monday:
Cabello, who is alleged to be one of the high-ranking members of the cartel, has accused US officials of using it as an excuse to target those they do not like.
“Whenever someone bothers them, they name them as the head of the Cartel de los Soles,” he said in August.
Gustavo Petro, the left-wing president of Venezuela’s neighbour, Colombia, has also denied the cartel’s existence.
“It is the fictional excuse of the far right to bring down governments that do not obey them,” he wrote on X in August.
The terrorist designation and Salazar’s comments came as the Trump administration is under fire for blowing up boats it claims are running drugs off the coast of Venezuela, and after a CBS News/YouGov survey showed on Sunday that 70% of Americans—including 91% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans—are against the “US taking military action in Venezuela.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said no government rescue of artificial intelligence firms "as healthcare is being denied to everyday Americans."
By Jake Johnson • Nov 19, 2025
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday that the federal government should not consider a taxpayer bailout of the artificial intelligence industry as fears grow that the rapidly expanding sector poses systemic risks to the global economy.
“Should this bubble pop, we should not be entertaining a bailout,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said during a House subcommittee hearing. “We should not entertain a bailout of these corporations as healthcare is being denied to everyday Americans, as SNAP and food assistance is being denied to everyday Americans, precipitating some of the very mental crises that people are turning to AI chat bots to try to resolve.”
Ocasio-Cortez echoed the concerns of industry insiders and analysts who have warned in recent weeks that the AI investment boom created a bubble whose rupture would cause far-reaching economic carnage.
“We’re talking about a massive economic bubble,” the New York Democrat said Tuesday. “Depending on the exposure of that bubble, we could see 2008-style threats to economic stability.”
“The Trump administration’s close ties with AI executives and donors—including millions of dollars of contributions to President Trump’s new ballroom project—raise concerns that the administration will bail out AI executives and shareholders while leaving taxpayers to foot the bill,” Warren wrote in a letter to the White House’s AI czar, David Sacks.
OpenAI, a firm at the center of the nascent industry, has reportedly been in discussion with the Trump administration about the possibility of receiving federal loan guarantees for the construction of chip factories in the United States. Robert Weissman, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, warned earlier this month that “it is entirely possible that OpenAI and the White House are concocting a scheme to siphon taxpayer money into OpenAI’s coffers, perhaps with some tribute paid to Trump and his family.”
“Perhaps not so coincidentally, OpenAI president Greg Brockman was among the attendees at a dinner for donors to Trump’s White House ballroom, though neither he nor OpenAI have been reported to be actual donors,” Weissman added.
Writing for the Wall Street Journal last week, Sarah Myers West and Amba Kak of the AI Now Institute observed that “the federal government is already bailing out the AI industry with regulatory changes and public funds that will protect companies in the event of a private sector pullback.”
“The Trump administration is rolling out the red carpet for these firms,” they wrote. “The administration’s AI Action Plan aims to accelerate AI adoption within the government and military by pushing changes to regulatory and procurement processes. Government contracting offers stable, often lucrative long-term contracts—exactly what these firms will need if the private market for AI dips.”
“Federal policy has jumped the gun: We don’t yet know if AI will transform the economy or even be profitable,” West and Kak added. “Yet Washington is insulating the industry from all sorts of risk. If a bubble does pop, we’ll all be left holding the bag.”
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Lindsey Halligan, attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump, looks on during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House, on March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)
From professional whitewasher of American history to one of the most high-profile examples of legal malpractice ever witnessed by a federal prosecutor—all in service to the endless narcissism and corruption of Donald J. Trump.
By Steven Harper • Nov 26, 2025
In the service of President Donald Trump, Lindsay Halligan, Trump’s second interim appointment as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, may lose her license to practice law.
Competence is a key requirement for obtaining and retaining a law license. But nothing in Halligan’s education, experience, or training qualified her to prosecute federal crimes, much less lead a US Attorney’s office of more than 300 attorneys and staff in four divisions in Alexandria, Richmond, Norfolk, and Newport News. For starters, she has never tried a criminal case. But Trump always prefers loyalty over competence.
Halligan attended a private Catholic high school and a Jesuit university where she studied politics and broadcast journalism. She competed in the Miss Colorado USA pageant in 2009 and 2010 and received her law degree from the University of Miami School of Law. Upon graduation, she went to work in a Miami law firm, representing insurance companies against homeowners and businesses.
Even if Halligan manages to keep her law license, she will never recover her professional reputation. It’s the Trump effect.
Halligan met Trump in November 2021 at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. In early 2022, he made her part of his legal team on the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
After the election, she worked on Trump’s project to whitewash US history by cleansing the Smithsonian Institution of historically accurate but unpleasant facts. In August, she co-signed a letter instructing eight of the Smithsonian’s museums to replace exhibits that include “divisive or ideologically driven” material with “unifying, historically accurate” displays.
Answering Trump’s Call…
Based on the weakness of the cases against former FBI director James Comey and another Trump target, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump’s first interim US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Eric S. Siebert, refused his demand to indict them. Trump responded by declaring that he wanted Siebert “out.” Hours later, he resigned.
With the statute of limitations on charges against Comey expiring in days, Trump told Attorney General Pam Bondi to appoint 36-year-old Halligan—a senior White House staff secretary and special assistant to the President—as Siebert’s replacement.
“Lindsay Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you a lot,” Trump posted in a public message to Bondi.
Two days later, Halligan was sworn in as the new interim US Attorney. Her singular mission was to secure indictments against Comey and James.
Two days after that, on September 24, she succeeded. Halligan presented the case against Comey personally to the grand jury. Federal judges are now exposing her incompetence.
November 17: A federal magistrate judge found that the government may have violated Comey’s constitutional rights and his attorney-client privilege. The court listed 11 bases upon which the government’s misconduct—including Halligan’s statements to and conduct before the grand jury—may have violated the Constitution and require dismissal of Comey’s indictment.
November 19: Halligan admitted to another federal judge that she never showed the final indictment to the entire grand jury after it had rejected her first submission – a remarkable prosecutorial failure.
November 24: In rulings that invalidated the Comey and James indictments based on Trump’s unlawful appointment of Halligan, a third court began its opinion with this shot:
On September 25, 2025, Lindsey Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, appeared before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. Having been appointed Interim U.S. Attorney by the Attorney General just days before, Ms. Halligan secured a two-count indictment charging former FBI Director James B. Comey, Jr….
…And Suffering the Consequences
Every attorney requires a license to practice law. The bar examiners who issue and renew those licenses promulgate rules of conduct that every lawyer must follow. Even before the latest judicial revelations, Halligan was defending complaints that she had violated those rules. But with the latest court rulings, she is in a whole new world of hurt. And Trump’s pardons won’t help her.
Here’s a partial list of the Model Rules that could pose problems for Halligan:
Rule 1.1: Competence
A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.“
[Halligan has never tried a criminal case.]
Rule 3.1: Meritorious Claims and Contentions
A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous,….“
[Halligan’s predecessor found that the case against Comey was too weak to pursue.]
Rule 3.8: Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor
The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:
(a)refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;….“
[Here, again, her predecessor found that any case against Comey was a loser for the government.]
Rule 8.4: Misconduct
It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:
(d) engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice;….“
[The circumstances surrounding Trump’s appointment of Halligan and her subsequent indictment of Comey suggest an abuse of power and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.]
Special rules for federal prosecutors echo and reinforce the Model Rules. They too require probable cause for charges, investigations and prosecutions that are conducted fairly and without vindictiveness, and a ban against politicized or partisan prosecutions.
In fact, the Justice Department has a “longstanding threshold requirement that a prosecutor may commence or recommend federal prosecution only if he/she believes that the person will more likely than not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an unbiased trier of fact and that the conviction will be upheld on appeal.”
Even if Halligan manages to keep her law license, she will never recover her professional reputation. It’s the Trump effect.
Maybe she can get Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s old job at Fox News.
Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool/Getty Images)
In an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.
By Robert Reich • Nov 26, 2025
The richest man on earth owns X.
The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS — and could soon own Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.
The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The fourth-richest man owns The Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.
Another billionaire owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.
Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic — some might say sinister — reason.
As vast wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, this small group of the ultra-wealthy may rationally fear that a majority of voters could try to confiscate their wealth — through, for example, a wealth tax.
If you’re a multibillionaire, in other words, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. New York City real estate and oil tycoon John Catsimatidis, whose net worth is estimated at $4.5 billion, donated $2.4 million to support Trump and congressional Republicans in 2024 — nearly twice as much as he gave in 2016. Why? “If you’re a billionaire, you want to stay a billionaire,” Catsimatidis toldThe Washington Post.
But rather than rely on Republicans, a more reliable means of stopping majorities from targeting your riches might be to control a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets.
As a media mogul, you can effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of yourself and other plutocrats and discouraging any attempt to tax away your wealth.
And Trump has been ready to help you. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.
So it wasn’t surprising that the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos — the fourth-richest person — stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris last year, as Trump rose in the polls. Or that, once Trump was elected, Bezos decreed that the Post‘s opinion section must support “personal liberties and free markets.” And that he bought a proposed documentary about Melania Trump — for which she is the executive producer — for a whopping $40 million.
Bezos’s moves have led several of the Post‘s top editors, journalists, and columnists to resign. Thousands of subscribers have cancelled. But the Post remains the biggest ongoing media presence in America’s capital city.
Bezos is a businessman first and foremost. His highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. And he knows Trump can wreak havoc on his businesses by imposing unfriendly Federal Communications Commission rulings, or enforcing labor laws against him, or breaking up his companies with antitrust laws, or making it difficult for him to import what he sells.
On the other hand, Trump can also enrich Bezos — through lucrative government contracts or favorable FCC rulings or government subsidies.
It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, the second-richest man.
Paramount’s CBS settled Trump’s frivolous $16 million lawsuit against CBS and canceled Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Trump loyalist flak Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, then approved an $8 billion merger of Paramount Global, owner of CBS, and Skydance Media.
Larry Ellison’s son, David, became chief executive of the new media giant, Paramount Skydance.
In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship “Sixty Minutes” resigned, presumably because they were pressured by Paramount not to air stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake.
I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public.
Like Bezos, Larry Ellison is first and foremost a businessman who knows that Trump can help or hinder his businesses. In 2020, he hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home. According to court records, after the 2020 election, Ellison participated in a phone call to discuss how Trump’s defeat could be contested. In June 2025, he and his firm, Oracle, were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington.
After taking charge of CBS, David Ellison promised to gut DEI policies there, putright-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein into a new “ombudsman” role, and made anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms.
The Guardianreports that Larry Ellison has told Trump that if Paramount gains control of Warner Bros. Discovery — which owns CNN — Paramount will fire CNN hosts whom Trump doesn’t like.
Other billionaire media owners have followed the same trajectory. Despite his sometimes contentious relationship with Trump, Elon Musk has turned X into a cesspool of right-wing propaganda. Rupert Murdoch continues to give Trump all the positive coverage imaginable. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time magazine, has put Trump on the cover.
It is impossible to know the extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by these billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited.
But we can say with some certainty that in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, and when a thin-skinned president is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.
What to do about this? Two important steps:
1. At the least, media outlets should inform their readers about any and all potential conflicts of interest, and media watchdogs and professional associations should ensure they do.
Recently, The Washington Post’s editorial board defended Trump’s razing of the East Wing of the White House to build his giant ballroom, without disclosing that Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s Defense Department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors but failed to mention Bezos’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington, D.C.'s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington, D.C. market.
These breaches are inexcusable.
2. A second step — if and when America has a saner government — is for anti-monopoly authorities to block the purchase of a major media outlet by someone with extensive businesses that could pose conflicts of interest.
Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently from the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.
3. A third step, as several of you have pointed out, is to support independent and local news media as much as possible. And read it and share it on social media.
***
As TheWashington Post‘s slogan used to say, democracy dies in darkness. Today, darkness is closing in because a demagogue sits in the Oval Office and so much of America’s wealth and media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few people easily manipulated by that demagogue.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of press aboard Air Force One on November 14, 2025 while in flight from Washington, DC to West Palm Beach International Airport.
(Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
Under Trump’s neofascist worldview, the only “legal” act is obedience, while defiance of his whims and illegal orders is a crime.
By Thom Hartmann • Nov 24, 2025
I’ve been feeling something unusual these past few weeks: optimism.
Not naïve optimism or the kind that ignores danger, but the real kind that arrives when you see people waking up, standing up, and refusing to bow before a lawless president who believes rules are for suckers and the Constitution is a mere suggestion rather than the foundation of our republic.
We’re now governed by a man who treats legal limits as personal insults. Donald Trump doesn’t just violate our nation’s norms and laws: like every wannabe third-world tinpot dictator before him, he despises the idea that any law can constrain him at all.
Trump and the spineless sycophants in his administration have rejected the entire idea of a rules-based society. He and his lickspittles are turning the presidency into a throne, trying to transform you and me into its subjects, and painting as enemies anyone who insists soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen (and others in government) should follow the law.
Trump has declared war on the American Way.
Under Trump’s neofascist worldview, the only “legal” act is obedience, while defiance of his whims and illegal orders is a crime. We saw this when Trump lashed out at lawmakers who reminded our military that their sworn oath is to the Constitution and not to him personally.
He posted a rant about those six CIA and military veterans/lawmakers and wrote “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” in response to their message that both history and law — including military law — require soldiers to refuse illegal orders. Then he reposted a message calling for them to be hanged.
That wasn’t a rhetorical flourish: it was Trump’s declaration of war on the rule of law, something so essential that it’s the basis of every democracy and civilized society in history throughout the world. Instead of respecting American ideals, he’s sounding more like his “good friend,” the murderous dictator of Saudi Arabia (who’s given Trump’s family billions, with more billions on their way).
You’d think that after the My Lai massacre, the horrors committed at Abu Ghraib, and the Nuremberg trials, Americans — and Trump and those around him — would have gotten the message, but over at the Fox propaganda channel and on other rightwing media they’re actually defending this obscene behavior.
It’s also criminal behavior: 18 U.S. Code § 610 makes it a crime for any federal official — including the president — to use their authority to intimidate, threaten, or punish citizens for their political expression, voting behavior, or dissent. Threatening members of Congress with execution for following the law is an extreme, textbook violation.
Meanwhile, the country is learning how this un-American philosophy plays out on the ground. In cities like Charlotte, Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc., masked, anonymous secret police-style federal agents descend without warning, kicking in doors and smashing car windows, arresting U.S. citizens, stealing people’s possessions, invading trusted community spaces, shuttering businesses, and sending tens of thousands of students home in fear.
This isn’t border enforcement or public safety: it’s warfare against due process and America itself. It’s gotten so bad that Senator Elissa Slotkin and her peers are getting death and bomb threats.
Our nation’s Founders warned us that America’s greatest threats to liberty would come not from abroad, but from leaders who’d try to turn our legal system and military against us. James Madison said the means used against foreign dangers too easily become instruments of tyranny at home. That warning wasn’t theoretical: it was aimed directly at moments like this.
Yet we’re also see something the Founders hoped for, something that echoed their heroic efforts against King George III: average Americans refusing to be cowed.
Impeachment isn’t a political act: it’s a constitutional obligation when a president becomes a danger to the Republic. And Trump crossed that line long ago.
People are documenting abuses, flooding the streets in peaceful protest, forming rapid-response networks, hauling the government into court again and again. Ordinary citizens are doing the job Congress has been too afraid, too compromised, or too divided to do.
It’s the most patriotic thing happening in America today.
Which is why Trump’s response to lawful dissent has been so horrific: he’s demanding Saudi-style executions.
He wasn’t being metaphorical: he demanded actual executions (although he later pretended to walk it back). That’s the language of a dictator. It’s the purest expression of Trump’s governing philosophy: if the law gets in his way he simply ignores it.
This isn’t merely corruption. It’s not even ordinary authoritarianism. It’s a direct repudiation of the entire American experiment. Defiance of courts and the law is a poison that says the only legitimate authority is the will of the leader, and Trump’s entire presidency has featured a nonstop campaign to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump.
He enriched himself in office (he’s made billions off his position in just 10 months), he wielded the government as a tool of reprisal, he attacked judges, he extorted foreign governments, he stole government property and lied about it to federal investigators, he’s using public office to reward loyalists and punish critics, and he now presides over masked, unaccountable paramilitary raids that terrorize American communities.
The Constitution offers a clear remedy for a president who behaves like this.
Impeachment isn’t a political act: it’s a constitutional obligation when a president becomes a danger to the Republic. And Trump crossed that line long ago.
The only way to restore the rule of law is for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings immediately. Half measures are complicity. Silence is complicity. Delay is complicity.
But impeachment alone isn’t enough. There must also be criminal prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators. Real prosecution, by real prosecutors, following real evidence, for real crimes.
And while we’re at it, DOGE deserves a pretty good looking at, too. And what happened to all those government investigations of billionaire donors’ companies?
Trump and those doing his bidding must face justice. His children who participated must face it. His bagmen and loyalists who broke laws to carry out his will must face it. A nation can’t heal if high office becomes a shield from justice.
Equality before the law is the foundation of any functioning democracy. If we abandon that principle now, we abandon the Republic itself.
I believe we’re at or very near a turning point. People are rising up. Communities are resisting. Judges are pushing back. Journalists are exposing what the administration wants hidden. The illusion of Trump’s invincibility is cracking.
The billionaires who believed he could terrorize the country into submission on their behalf are discovering that Americans refuse to bow.
This country was built by people who rejected kings. It can survive this counterfeit king, too.
But only if we act. Only if we insist that the Constitution still has meaning. Only if we refuse to let a lawless president redefine the rule of law as disloyalty.
Trump has declared war on the American Way. The only acceptable response is the full force of our constitutional system: impeachment, prosecution, and the unrelenting assertion that no man, no family, and no political movement is above the law.
I realize the political reality is that Mike Johnson won’t allow such a vote in the House and the Senate is now controlled by Republicans so timid and cowed by Trump that a GOP senator who’s a physician is afraid to criticize Bob Kennedy. But we’re only 12 months away from an election that could sweep both bodies and we must lay the foundation now for that.
That means waking up as many people as possible (share this newsletter and others!), engaging with groups like Indivisible, and supporting litigators and progressive Democrats across the board.
We can do this. We just need resolve, passion, and to begin the hard work of reclaiming the American Way and the American Dream, as Democrats did in the 1930s and the 1960s, and both parties did to oust Nixon and imprison his cronies in the 1970s.
Phil White, a British millionaire poses with a placard reading: “Tax the rich” next to the Congress centre during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 18, 2023.
(Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP via Getty Images)
This is not rocket science and the global majority, the 99%, have the answers and are already putting them into practice.
By Jenny Ricks,Deepak Xavier • Nov 22, 2025
This year’s G20 Leaders Summit is taking place in Johannesburg, a short distance from Constitution Hill, a former prison complex that once held Nelson Mandela and other South African democracy fighters. As the world’s most powerful leaders meet behind closed doors, this former apartheid prison turned museum will publicly write another page in the history of global economic emancipation.
Movements, workers, activists, thinkers, creatives, artists, and communities from across South Africa, Africa, Asia, and Latin America are gathering for a three-day People’s Summit for Economic Justice — a counter to the G20 — to build the power of the 99 percent. The Constitution Hill’s Old Fort, Women’s Jail, and former men’s prison cells are hosting radical conversations, art, music, and action for the Global Majority to tell their own story, share struggles and solutions, and show that another world isn’t just possible — it’s already being built by communities writing their own future.
The G20 member countries account for over 85 percent of the global GDP. Over this forum’s two and half decades of existence, the G20 has failed to use its combined economic weight to steer global financial, trade, development, and fiscal policies to address global economic and environmental challenges. Instead, it has served the interest of the 1 percent: elites, corporations, and billionaires.
As a result, a handful of billionaires and super rich people globally have amassed far more wealth than they need, abusing the power they possess. They are wrecking democracies across the world as they make rules in their favor at the expense of the 99 percent and the planet.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed an “Extraordinary Committee” of independent experts that published the first-ever G20 global inequality report earlier this month. The report shows that the richest 1 percent has captured 41 percent of all new wealth since 2000, while the bottom half of humanity received just 1 percent. The report notes that one in four people globally now face food insecurity even as the wealth of billionaires reaches levels equivalent to up to 16 percent of global GDP. Those words will not mean much to those on the frontlines of inequality without action, without redistribution.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other bodies have also acknowledged that extreme inequalities are thwarting the pace and sustainability of economic growth, eroding social cohesion and trust, and undermining democratic institutions and political stability that is fueling conflict and social unrest. However, they are still part of the problem, not the solution.
Enraged young people from Morocco to Madagascar, Kathmandu to Lima continue to lead street protests worldwide demanding accountability and challenging economic systems because they are not working for them. They are frustrated by poor service delivery, abuse of power concentrated in the hands of a few, unfulfilled promises, economic systems that continue to squeeze the little they earn, unemployment, unjust debt and climate breakdown.
They are drawing a red line against the failed systems and saying loud and clear, “Enough is enough.”
This is a time bomb and a bigger explosion threatens the planet and everyone on it, regardless how fat their bank account is. But we have solutions. This is not rocket science and the global majority, the 99%, have the answers and are already putting them into practice.
Wealth taxes are a progressive solution to address extreme inequalities — far better than the consumption taxes that many governments in the Global South are imposing on their people to service unjust debt and compensate for unpaid taxes by the super-rich. Taxing the super-rich can generate significant recurring revenue and restore public trust. Tax revenues from the super-rich are enough to fund essential services, such as education, healthcare, and social safety nets, which are key drivers of long-term inequality reduction.
Participants in the People’s Summit are also demanding that rich polluters pay for just transitions to clean energy. They are calling for redistributing health care to guarantee reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. And they are demanding protection of civic space and cultural rights by defending the freedom to speak, organize, and create.
The 2025 G20 Leaders Summit taking place not far from the We the 99 Peoples Summit has an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past by listening to the global majority that are gathered at Constitution Hill. Global leaders, including the G20, must stop turning for solutions to the same elites who created and continue to fuel the inequality crisis. Instead, they need to listen to the voices of the 99% – the people who have endured inequality and survived against all odds.
The 99% hold the answers. And the answer is clear: replace the system built by the 1% with a system designed for and by the 99%.
US President Donald Trump speaks in front of a map of Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system in the Oval Office at the White House on May 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Job number one in rolling back the Golden Dome boondoggle is simply making it clear that no missile defense system will protect us in the event of a nuclear attack.
By Ashley Gate,William Hartung • Nov 17, 2025
Kathryn Bigelow’s new nuclear thriller, A House of Dynamite, has been criticized by some experts for being unrealistic, most notably because it portrays an unlikely scenario in which an adversary chooses to attack the United States with just a single nuclear-armed missile. Such a move would, of course, leave the vast American nuclear arsenal largely intact and so invite a devastating response that would undoubtedly largely destroy the attacker’s nation. But the film is strikingly on target when it comes to one thing: its portrayal of the way one US missile interceptor after another misses its target, despite the confidence of most American war planners that they would be able to destroy any incoming nuclear warhead and save the day.
At one point in the film, a junior official points out that US interceptors have failed almost half their tests, and the secretary of defense responds by bellowing: “That’s what $50 billion buys us?”
In fact, the situation is far worse than that. We taxpayers, whether we know it or not, are betting on a house of dynamite, gambling on the idea that technology will save us in the event of a nuclear attack. The United States has, in fact, spent more than $350 billion on missile defenses since, more than four decades ago, President Ronald Reagan promised to create a leak-proof defense against incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Believe it or not, the Pentagon has yet to even conduct a realistic test of the system, which would involve attempting to intercept hundreds of warheads traveling at 1,500 miles per hour, surrounded by realistic decoys that would make it hard to even know which objects to target.
Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out that the dream of a perfect missile defense—the very thing President Donald Trump has promised that his cherished new “Golden Dome” system will be—is a “fantasy” of the first order, and that “missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for defending the United States from nuclear weapons.”
Trump’s pledge to fund contractors to build a viable Golden Dome system in three years is PR or perhaps PF (presidential fantasy), not realistic planning.
Grego is hardly alone in her assessment. A March 2025 report by the American Physical Society found that “creating a reliable and effective defense against even [a] small number of relatively unsophisticated nuclear-armed ICBMs remains a daunting challenge.” Its report also notes that “few of the main challenges involved in developing and deploying a reliable and effective missile defense have been solved, and… many of the hard problems we identified are likely to remain so during and probably beyond” the 15-year time horizon envisioned in their study.
Despite the evidence that it will do next to nothing to defend us, President Trump remains all in on the Golden Dome project. Perhaps what he really has in mind, however, has little to do with actually defending us. So far, Golden Dome seems like a marketing concept designed to enrich arms contractors and burnish Trump’s image rather than a carefully thought-out defense program.
Contrary to both logic and history, Trump has claimed that his supposedly leak-proof system can be produced in a mere three years for $175 billion. While that’s a serious chunk of change, analysts in the field suggest that the cost is likely to be astronomically higher and that the president’s proposed timeline is, politely put, wildly optimistic. Todd Harrison, a respected Pentagon budget analyst currently based at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, estimates that such a system would cost somewhere between $252 billion and $3.6 trillion over 20 years, depending on its design. Harrison’s high-end estimate is more than 20 times the off-hand price tossed out by President Trump.
As for the president’s proposed timeline of three years, it’s wildly out of line with the Pentagon’s experience with other major systems it’s developed. More than three decades after it was proposed as a possible next-generation fighter jet (under the moniker Joint Strike Fighter, or JSF), for example, the F-35, once touted as a “revolution in military procurement,” is still plagued by hundreds of defects, and the planes spend almost half their time in hangars for repair and maintenance.
Proponents of the Golden Dome project argue that it’s now feasible because of new technologies being developed in Silicon Valley, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. Those claims are, of course, unproven, and past experience suggests that there is no miracle technological solution to complex security threats. AI-driven weapons may be quicker to locate and destroy targets and capable of coordinating complex responses like swarms of drones. But there is no evidence that AI can help solve the problem of blocking hundreds of fast-flying warheads embedded in a cloud of decoys. Worse yet, a missile defense system needs to work perfectly each and every time if it is to provide leak-proof protection against a nuclear catastrophe, an inconceivable standard in the real world of weaponry and defensive systems.
Of course, the weapons contractors salivating at the prospect of a monstrous payday tied to the development of Golden Dome are well aware that the president’s timeline will be quite literally unmeetable. Lockheed Martin has optimistically suggested that it should be able to perform the first test of a space-based interceptor in 2028, three years from now. And such space-based interceptors have been suggested as a central element of the Golden Dome system. In other words, Trump’s pledge to fund contractors to build a viable Golden Dome system in three years is PR or perhaps PF (presidential fantasy), not realistic planning.
Who Will Benefit from the Golden Dome?
The major contractors for Golden Dome may not be revealed for a few months, but we already know enough to be able to take an educated guess about which companies are likely to play central roles in the program.
The administration has said that Golden Dome will be built on existing hardware and the biggest current producers of missile defense hardware are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon (a major part of RTX Corporation). So, count on at least two of the three of them. Emerging military tech firms like SpaceX and Anduril have also been mentioned as possible system integrators. In other words, one or more of them would help coordinate development of the Golden Dome and provide detection and targeting software for it. The final choice for such an extremely lucrative role is less than certain, but as of now Anduril seems to have an inside track.
Even after the breakup of the Donald Trump-Elon Musk bromance, the tech industry still has a strong influence over the administration, starting with Vice President JD Vance. He was, after all, employed and mentored by Peter Thiel of Palantir, the godfather of the recent surge of military research and financing in Silicon Valley. Thiel was also a major donor to his successful 2022 Senate campaign, and Vance was charged with fundraising in Silicon Valley during the 2024 presidential campaign. Emerging military tech moguls like Thiel and Palmer Luckey, along with their financiers like Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, view Vance as their man in the White House.
Should the Golden Dome system indeed be launched (at a staggering cost to the American taxpayer), its “gold” would further enrich already well-heeled weapons contractors, give us a false sense of security, and let Donald Trump pose as this country’s greatest defender ever.
Other military tech supporters in the Trump administrationinclude Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg, whose company, Cerberus Capital, has a long history of investing in military contractors and is already pressing to reduce regulations on weapons firms in line with Silicon Valley’s wish list; Michael Obadal, a senior director at the military tech firm Anduril, who is now deputy secretary of the Army; Gregory Barbaccia, the former head of intelligence and investigations at Palantir, who is now the federal government’s chief information officer; Undersecretary of State Jacob Helberg, a former executive at Palantir; and numerous key members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which took a wrecking ball to civilian bodies like the US Agency for International Development while sparing the Pentagon significant cuts.
Some analysts foresee a funding fight in the offing between those Silicon Valley military tech firms and the Big Five firms (Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX) that now dominate Pentagon contracting. But the Golden Dome project will have room for major players from both factions and may prove one area where the old guard and the Silicon Valley military tech crew join hands to lobby for maximum funding.
The nation’s premier defense firms and missile manufacturers will likely enjoy direct access to Golden Dome, since the project is expected to be headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, the “Pentagon of the South.” That self-described “Rocket City” houses the US Missile Defense Agency and a myriad of defense firms (including Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, and Boeing). It will also soon host the new Space Force headquarters.
While Huntsville has been a hub for missile defense since President Ronald Reagan’s failed ICBM defense efforts, what makes this placement particularly likely is the significance of Huntsville’s Republican representatives in Congress, particularly Rep. Dale Strong. “North Alabama has played a key role in every former and current US missile defense program and will undoubtedly be pivotal to the success of Golden Dome,” he explained, having received $337,600 in campaign contributions from the defense sector during the 2023-2024 election cycle and cofounded the House Golden Dome Caucus.
His advocacy for the project dovetails well with the power vested in House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (also from Alabama), who received $535,000 from the defense sector during the 2024 campaign. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Katie Boyd Britt, a member of the Senate Golden Dome Caucus, round out Alabama’s Republican Senate delegation.
Many of the leading boosters of the Golden Dome represent states like Alabama or districts that stand to benefit from the program. The bicameral congressional Golden Dome caucuses include numerous members from states already enmeshed in missile production, including North Dakota and Montana, which house ICBMs built and maintained by Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, among other companies.
Those same weapons companies have long been donating generously to political campaigns. And only recently, to curry favor and prove themselves worthy of Golden Dome’s lucrative contracts, Palantir and Booz Allen Hamilton joined Lockheed Martin in donating millions of dollars to President Trump’s new ballroom that is to replace the White House’s devastated East Wing. And expect further public displays of financial affection from arms companies awaiting the administration’s final verdict on Golden Dome contracts, which will likely be announced in early 2026.
The Gold of the Golden Dome
Golden Dome is already slated to receive nearly $40 billion in the next year when funds from President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” and the administration’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2026 are taken into account. The 2026 request for Golden Dome is more than twice the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and three times the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, essential pillars of any effort to prevent new pandemics or address the challenges of the climate crisis. In addition, Golden Dome will undoubtedly siphon into the military sector significant numbers of scientists and engineers who might otherwise be trying to solve environmental and public health problems, undermining this country’s ability to deal with the greatest threats to our lives and livelihoods to fund a defense system that will never actually be able to defend us.
Worse yet, Golden Dome is likely to be more than just a waste of money. It could also accelerate the nuclear arms race between the US, Russia, and China. If, as is often the case, US adversaries prepare for worst-case scenarios, they are likely to make their plans based on the idea that Golden Dome just might work, which means they’ll increase their offensive forces to ensure that, in a nuclear confrontation, they are able to overwhelm any new missile defense network. It was precisely this sort of offensive-defensive arms race that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of the era of President Richard Nixon was designed to prevent. That agreement was, however, abandoned by President George W. Bush.
A no less dangerous aspect of any future involving the Golden Dome would be the creation of a new set of space-based interceptors as an integral part of the system. An interceptor in space may not actually be able to block a barrage of nuclear warheads, but it would definitely be capable of taking out civilian and military satellites, which travel in predictable orbits. If the unspoken agreement not to attack such satellites were ever to be lifted, basic functions of the global economy (not to speak of the US military) would be at risk. Not only could attacks on satellites bring the global economy to a grinding halt, but they could also spark a spiral of escalation that might, in the end, lead to the use of nuclear weapons.
Should the Golden Dome system indeed be launched (at a staggering cost to the American taxpayer), its “gold” would further enrich already well-heeled weapons contractors, give us a false sense of security, and let Donald Trump pose as this country’s greatest defender ever. Sadly, fantasies die hard, so job number one in rolling back the Golden Dome boondoggle is simply making it clear that no missile defense system will protect us in the event of a nuclear attack, a point made well by A House of Dynamite. The question is: Can our policymakers be as realistic in their assessment of missile defense as the makers of a major Hollywood movie? Or is that simply too much to ask?
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