Oh man. Same old clown show, awash with boondoggles, each more cringey than the last. As the mad man-child deconstructs DC and slaps his hideous face and name everywhere - historic buildings, fascist arches, garish statues, possibly imaginary gold phones - others have taken his lead with their own patriotic spinoffs. Cue "Fuck You" upgrades, a Strait to Hell arcade for a video-game war, and a Trump/Epstein "Memorial Reading Room" packed with 3.5 million pages of files, where "the truth is hard to deny."

Trump's narcissistic vandalizing of D.C. - couldn't his KKK dad have just hugged him now and then? - is "something dictators have done throughout history," noted Bernie Sanders of his proposed SERVE Act, or Stop Executive Renaming for Vanity and Ego. Co-sponsored by six Senate Dems, the bill would bar any sitting president from naming federal properties after themselves, an act both "arrogant" and illegal. At this rate many weary Americans would likely argue, "Let the chiseling off begin," but for now the bill sits in legislative limbo and we're stuck with the resulting atrocities; they continue to multiply like locusts, even as he's proposed a $10-billion fund for more "beautification" projects around "the capital of the greatest Nation in the history of the world."

Though he increasingly nods off in public - or per the White House, blinks - he still clutches at a farcical show of dominance he's leaned on in the endless self-glorification campaign that is his execrable life. There are posts quoting fictional "fans": "Remarkable leadership,” "Master of the Deal,” "THE GREATEST PRESIDENT WE HAVE EVER KNOWN." From the guy who's "confused the country for his living room," there's D.C's re-branding: the plaques, name changes, razed East Wing for a billion-dollar "albatross" nobody wants. There are new massive Stalin-esque banners at construction sites proclaiming, “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP”- "like Michael Scott buying himself a World’s Best Boss coffee mug" we paid for - to which unenthused residents added, "Fuck You Cunt."

Snug in a delusional bubble where his approval is def not in the toilet, he feels free to rant, lie, melt down online without consequence. In one manic night, he posts 55 times in three hours: “Arrest Obama the traitor” and “DEMONIC FORCE,” also Hillary, Brennan, Comey, Kelly. Asked how much he thinks about the cost to Americans of his calamitous war, he blurts, “Not even a little bit.” His lackeys follow suit: Ka$h Patel yells, lies, hustles bourbon, pads his stats and takes a "VIP snorkel" in Pearl Harbor around the tomb of 900 U.S. soldiers as Sean Duffy takes his nine offspring on a "patriotic," seven-month Great American Road Trip filmed for YouTube and complete with "head-spinning" corporate sponsorship, both on the taxpayers' now-rapidly-shrinking dime.

Meanwhile, another project nobody asked for - draining and repainting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, aka "reflective pond," from traditional grey to garish blue - has shockingly veered off course. After boasting his bestest golf course pool painters could easy-peasy do a no-bid, $1.8 million, "smart and beautiful construction" that Dems stupidly opposed - "Dumacrats love sewage" - the cost has soared to $13.1 million, it's now by a contractor he "did not know and have never used before,” staff are worried the job is behind schedule, with "uneven application" leaving bubbles, holes and "mottled shades of blue" in the pool, and a judge has set a May 21 hearing for a lawsuit charging the project wasn't properly vetted, ditto a color "more appropriate to a resort or theme park."

More winning in Miami, where another lawsuit charges three acres of multi-million-dollar waterfront land were illegally grifted by DeSantis to Trump for $10 for his presidential “library,” actually a gaudy hotel with no books but more vitally two gold statues of, you know. They will presumably join in grotesque kinship with the $300,000, crypto-bro-funded, bronze and gold leaf Don Colossus just unveiled at Doral Miami, "where the Republic is currently moldering." Before "a robotic chorus of evangelical functionaries who (have) transformed themselves into the most theologically humiliated cohort in modern memory," the statue was honored as, not an idolatrous golden calf, insisted Pastor Mark Burns, but "a celebration of life" and symbol of "the hand of God over (Trump’s) life." Definitely not a cult.

Tacky is as tacky doesBluesky screenshot

Despite being heralded as God's second favorite son - one who "understands the Scriptures better than the Pope" - Trump is also widely deemed "an economic serial killer" presiding over an "America First Corporate Graveyard," skyrocketing inflation, national debt, farm bankruptcies, and energy costs, and possibly "the largest single act of grand larceny in American history" with a $10 billion payout by his own DOJ against his own IRS to settle his bullshit lawsuit for their leak of his tax returns, which every other president has released. Still, because grifting chutzpah thy name is, and because there's never enough money to fill the ugly gaping hole where a soul should be, he's still running penny-ante scams. Up next: Trump Mobile, "for the forgotten MAGA man."

Last June, his huckster spawn announced the launch of "a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance.” The T1 Phone, "proudly designed and built in the United States,” would be available in August at $499. For almost a year, they urged followers to make $100 "deposits" to "pre-order" the beauties; over half a million did, ponying up about $59 million. Then, the bait and switch. The terms of service quietly changed: The "deposit" provided "a conditional opportunity" to buy if Trump Mobile chose to sell. Pricing, production schedules, shipping costs were "non-binding." "Made in the USA" became "Proudly American Designed." "Delivery" dates got pushed back. Unexplained charges appeared. A reporter who called "Customer Service" got “Omega Auto Care." To date, no fantasy Trump phones have shipped. Cheap Crooks 'R Us.

"Service for the forgotten MAGA man"Image from Bluesky

Also, liars. With even neo-cons now deeming the Iran War potentially more of a debacle than Vietnam, the good folks at Secret Handshake, creators of the Trump/Epstein bestie statues, decided that with the regime hyping war like a video game, they might as well turn it into one. Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell , which is also online, features three working, arcade video games set up inside DC's War Memorial; they promise "high-octane, flag-waving, boots-on-the-ground...pure pixelated patriotism," or, per Hegseth, "laser-focused maximum reps annihilation mission crushing (with) sustained unrelenting pressure." Battles - by tweet, not gun - pit US forces against ”Iranian schoolgirl,“ "DEIyatollah,“ low-flow shower heads, the Pope and other "threats to American freedom."

Games open with Trump declaring, “Another big, beautiful day as the best President ever.” Options for the prompt, “Ready to ROCK Iran back to the Stone Ages?” are “Not Yet...” “Yes” and “Hell Yes.” Yells Pete, “Let’s liberate some oil!” Trump can order a Diet Coke or bomb Iran; search for barrels of oil, ideas for Truth Social posts, or endless threats that lead nowhere; he vows to “fight this war and win it by hamburger o’clock.” Melania: “I WAS NEVER ON THE EPSTEIN JET...Did you burn the files yet?” JD, fat-faced: “I love couch.” The only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania’s hand, which abruptly ends the game; otherwise, it’s impossible to end or win it. Irony never dies: Images have surfaced of bored National Guardsmen - a $1 million a day deployment - playing.

Another piece of protest art brings the truth of "one of the most horrific crimes in American history” to Trump's hometown. "The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” in New York's Tribeca, is a first-of-its-kind, 5,000-square-foot installation containing all the unsealed Epstein files - 3.5 million pages printed and bound into 3,437 volumes weighing 17,000 pounds, "a physical, undeniable record of corruption, cover-ups, and crime." The pop-up project in the Mriya Gallery was created by the non-profit Primary Facts; it took them about a month to print the files. The exhibit is on view through May 21; admission to groups for a one-hour session is free; organizers are raising funds to cover the New York premiere and bring it to other cities.

The Trumpsonian installation is built around a candlelit tribute to Epstein's more than 1,200 victims and survivors, whose names are all redacted here in closed binders - unlike at the DOJ, where they were badly, only partly redacted, a failure adding insult to injury along with an ongoing, multi-pronged cover-up. The Trump and Epstein Reading Room also includes a timeline documenting the decades-long crimes, legal proceedings and intersections between the two men's lives, all underlining the criminal absurdity of federal claims "there's nothing left to investigate." The vast trove of information, organizers say, is "what 3.5 million pages of evidence looks like." Trump, as deeply complicit as he is narcissistic, "wanted his name on stuff." Now, here it is.

From the TrumpsonianImage from Memorial Reading Room

The PPI reading comes just one day after the April CPI report revealed that consumers faced the sharpest inflation in nearly three years, and shows inflation pressures are still building. Rising diesel and jet fuel prices are increasing transportation-related costs. These upstream price increases indicate that families will face additional price hikes at the grocery store and across other everyday expenses in the months ahead.

Groundwork’s Executive Director, Lindsay Owens, shared her reaction to the news:

“Trump’s war in Iran has driven prices through the roof and today’s reading shows there is no end in sight. Inflation has now eaten through a year’s worth of wage gains, painting a brutal picture for working families’ budgets heading into summer. Rather than focus on making life more affordable for Americans, Trump is spending time – and taxpayer funds – on his billion dollar ballroom.”

BACKGROUND

• Wholesale inflation is running hot, signaling higher prices for consumers in the months ahead.
  • Final demand producer prices climbed 6% over the past year, the largest annual increase in three years, and 1.4% in April alone, while core wholesale prices (less foods, energy, and trade services) rose 4.4% over the past year and 0.6% in April alone. Wholesale inflation typically runs ahead of consumer prices, so today’s print suggests further price increases are on the horizon for consumers.

• Trump’s war in Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz for more than two months, and the resulting energy shock is feeding into wholesale prices.
  • Final demand energy prices surged 7.8% in April alone, with wholesale gasoline up 15.6% in the month and 39.3% over the past year, diesel fuel up 12.6% in April and 73.8% over the past year, jet fuel up 36.4% in April and 103.8% over the past year, and natural gas is up 4.9% in April and 27.3 percent over the past year.
  • The energy shock is increasing wholesale transportation prices: transportation and warehousing is up 5% in April, which includes truck transportation of freight, rising 8.1%, and air transportation of freight, increasing 3.6%. These wholesaler price hikes will feed into price hikes for consumers in the months ahead.
• Trump’s war in Iran is layered on top of his tariffs that continue to raise wholesale prices for tariff-exposed goods.
  • Wholesale final demand goods (less food and energy) climbed 4.6% over the past year and 0.7% in April alone.
  • Wholesale prices for tariff-exposed goods continued rising, including metals up 35.6% in the past year, electronic components up 27.6%, and communication equipment up 11.9%.

The findings come as leading AI companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI, continue developing increasingly advanced models capable of identifying and exploiting critical software vulnerabilities. Google warned that malicious actors are already using AI to increase the speed, scale, and sophistication of cyberattacks, while researchers have observed state-backed hacking groups linked to China, Russia, and North Korea leveraging AI technologies to automate and refine offensive cyber operations. The developments have intensified concerns that powerful AI systems are being deployed faster than governments and regulators can establish meaningful safeguards to prevent catastrophic misuse.

In response to the growing concerns, Public Citizen’s AI governance and technology policy counsel, J.B. Branch, issued the following statement:

“Cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarm, yet AI companies continue racing to release increasingly powerful models with little regard for the societal consequences. It is unthinkable and irresponsible to release technologies capable of destabilizing critical systems and then worry about the fallout afterward. Americans are increasingly rejecting this destabilizing AI arms race. We need enforceable AI regulations that require rigorous safety testing, independent review, and meaningful oversight before these systems ever reach the public. Regulators cannot remain in a perpetual game of catch-up while Big Tech gambles with the safety and stability of modern society.”

In a separate comment filing in March, 11 state attorneys general concurred with the organizations’ findings that the Department of Energy ‘s new policy to exclude “pilot reactors” from both NRC licensing and environmental reviews violates existing law. In that case, the Department of Energy announced, in violation of federal law, that it would exempt previously untested reactors that it approves to be built and operated from any review of their environmental impacts.

“Along with the DOE’s environmental ‘free pass’ policy, the whole ‘expedited licensing’ regime the administration is attempting to set up appears to be illegal,” said Tim Judson, executive director of NIRS and co-author of comments filed to the NRC. “The White House is trying to create a ‘regulatory tunnel’ around NRC’s safety regulations. That would mean DOE’s biases and obviously false assumptions about the safety of nuclear power plants become the new normal, exposing the public to unacceptable dangers to our health and safety.”

The NRC’s proposed regulation would allow companies that want to build a nuclear reactor of the same design as one DOE has previously approved to merely submit documentation of that approval and claim that the previously built reactor “is safe.” Such companies would likely never have to go through a detailed safety review by NRC to build and operate such reactors. In 1974, Congress amended the Atomic Energy Act to prohibit such a scheme.

“Fifty years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission was abolished because they became too much of a promoter and lost the confidence of Congress and the public over safety,” said Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project at Beyond Nuclear. “The NRC was established to provide a regulator that prioritizes safety and is obligated not to take shortcuts for a production agenda. Instead, half a century later, we are on the same dangerous collision course, casting aside the NRC in favor of the DOE, which doesn’t have the experience or the staff to get the industry in line with safety and security. This capitulation to the Trump agenda could lead to the NRC being abolished altogether, because nobody will have confidence in them.”

The groups also told NRC that it cannot simply “rubber-stamp” reactors that the military builds, either. “And while the law allows the DOD to build its own nuclear reactors,” said Tim Judson of NIRS, “it does not allow the NRC to skip safety reviews for civilian nuclear plants just because they use the same designs. The military routinely exposes its personnel to dangers that civilians are supposed to be protected from.”

“In its eagerness to short-circuit reactor safeguards, the Trump administration is once again doing what it does best – demonstrating a complete disregard for the law,” said Linda Pentz Gunter, executive director of Beyond Nuclear. “But nuclear technology is too inherently dangerous to operate as an outlaw. Ignoring those dangers will put millions of Americans at risk of another catastrophic nuclear accident.”

• NIRS, BN, et al comments on NRC Proposed Rule — https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/DocketID_NRC-2025-1503_Comments_-BeyondNuclear-NIRS-etal.pdf
• Comments on DOE Categorical Exclusion Policy — https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026.03.04-NIRS-et-al-Comments-re-DOE-categorical-exclusion-for-advanced-nuclear-reactors.pdf

In a triumphal move back toward democratic rule, Hungary's new leader Péter Magyar took his oath of office Saturday in a "regime-change" ceremony rich with symbolism before thousands of jubilant constituents. The sense of a hopeful new political era resonated in Magyar's tribute to a victory for "ordinary, flesh-and-blood people" - and in the gleeful moves and air guitar of unstoppable "dancing machine" and new Health Minister Zsolt Hegedűs. Lookit this guy boogie. Damn, we can't wait.

The day's celebration" marked Magya's stunning defeat last month of authoritarian Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power. A 45-year-old lawyer who founded the center-right Tisza party in 2024, Magyar won a two-thirds majority over Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party, which will allow him to roll back many of Orbán’s policies. Tisza now controls 141 seats in the 199-seat Parliament, with over a quarter held by women; Fidesz won 52 seats, down from 135, and far-right Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) took six. Magyar has vowed to restore democratic institutions, clamp down on corruption, repair ties with the EU, where Orbán often vetoed key decisions including support for Ukraine, and unlock about $20 billion of EU funds to help jump-start Hungary's struggling economy,

Magya was sworn in at the sprawling Parliament building as tens of thousands of Hungarians gathered outside in Kossuth Square. Marking the sea change his victory represents, the EU flag flew for the first time since Orbán’ removed it in 2014, and the Beethoven-inspired European anthem Ode to Joy, symbolizing peace and solidarity, rang out. "Today, every freedom-loving person in the world would like to be Hungarian a little," Magya told the crowd in a message aimed at healing the deep divisions of Orbán's rule. "You have taught (the) world that the most ordinary, flesh-and-blood people can defeat the most vicious tyranny...Today is the fulfillment of a long journey made together (to) once again be a common homeland for all Hungarians."

As the party went all day and into the night - when Magyar took on DJ duties - the high point of its joy and fervor may have come after Magyar's speech when Zsolt Hegedűs, unable to restrain himself, broke out into dancing as the singer Jalja began performing The Hanging Tree: "Strange things have happened here." Hungary's new 56-year-old Health Minister and an internationally recognised orthopaedic surgeon who spent 10 years working for the UK's NHS, Hegedűs had already gone viral last month when, on stage after Magyar's landslide victory, he busted out some fiery dance moves and air guitar in his excitement. This time, he said he wasn't planning a repeat performance. Then the music started...And 140 Party members joined in.

"I could see the audience had been waiting for this," he said. "I didn’t want to let down the people.” So off he went, delighting everyone (except, possibly, his kids if he has any) with his slick moves. The next day, he ascribed it all to his "emotional roller-coaster" since Magyar's victory, with his chance to repair Hungary's health care system, take down Orbán's hate-mongering propaganda, urge people to focus on their mental health. "It's not that I'm going to start dancing in Parliament, but I want (to) encourage people to adopt a healthy lifestyle...Go outside, dance, be together," he said. "The weight has begun to lift from people’s shoulders." America, weary, ravaged, hungry for peace, just imagine the miracle of it. And for now enjoy his glee.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

The FCC had reportedly ordered Houston station KTRK-TV, which ABC owns and operates, to file a formal request asking whether The View qualified for the Equal Time Rule exemption when it booked an interview with Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico. The request wasn’t warranted as the FCC had specifically granted The View this exemption in a 2002 order.

The Equal Time Rule, under Section 315 of the Communications Act, requires that broadcast stations provide equal access and airtime to all legally qualified political candidates if they permit any one candidate to use their facilities. The rule does not apply to bona fide newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries or on-the-spot news events (like political debates).

“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” reads ABC’s filing. “It is therefore imperative that the Commission act quickly to assure broadcasters that it will uphold its long-established standards protecting broadcasters’ good faith news judgment in including political candidates in bona fide news programming.”

ABC has not always defended its free-speech rights. In December 2024, the company paid $15 million to resolve a meritless Trump defamation lawsuit against the network and its anchor George Stephanopoulos. In September 2025, Disney decided to temporarily suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night program after Chairman Carr threatened to take action following comments the comedian made during his opening monologue.

Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González said:

“I’m pleased that ABC has finally learned that bullies don’t stop when companies cower in a corner. The FCC chairman has blatantly and repeatedly abused his power to silence speech that displeases Trump. This doesn’t just violate the First Amendment rights of broadcasters on the receiving end of Brendan Carr’s tactics; it also harms the broadcasters’ audiences. People deserve access to diverse viewpoints over the airwaves, and the ways in which ABC and other broadcasters have repeatedly capitulated to the administration has chilled free expression and access to information.

“Chairman Carr’s overreach is startling and unpopular across the political spectrum. After Donald and Melania Trump demanded that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel for making a joke they didn’t like, Carr announced that he would conduct an early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses — an abuse of power that Senator Ted Cruz and people of all political stripes condemned. I urge ABC and its parent company Disney to continue fighting for free speech. Doing anything less deprives audiences of the diversity of viewpoints that are critical to the health of a democracy.”

“We commend ABC for standing up for itself and the First Amendment. The legal theories the FCC asserts against broadcast licensees are frivolous and unconstitutional, and FCC Chair Brendan Carr knows it, but he hopes broadcast licensees will nonetheless self-censor rather than pick a fight.

“It’s about time news outlets start telling Carr and his Donald Trump lapel pin to kick rocks. Otherwise, he’ll continue manufacturing bogus pretexts to harass and jawbone licensees that air content his boss doesn’t like. News outlets should be emboldened after seeing The New York Times, Media Matters, The Washington Post, and others go on offense against the administration in court and win. Carr won’t stop until a judge forces him to, and hopefully ABC plans to make that happen, both here and in Carr’s equally ridiculous retaliatory license renewal proceeding in response to comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes.”

Groundwork’s Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy Elizabeth Pancotti released the following statement:

“While the president touts this lukewarm headline jobs report, Americans can look at their own paychecks to take the temperature of the labor market. Price hikes fueled by Trump’s senseless war and misguided tariffs are forcing Americans to stretch already-thin budgets to the brink. Working families are being crushed under the weight of Trump’s misguided economic agenda as wages slip behind the skyrocketing price of gas, groceries, and everyday goods.”

With no grown-ups in sight, a feckless war lurches and whipsaws on, run by a regime full of clowns, drunks, losers, grifters, all steadfastly defying the will of the people. Trump rants, Hegseth lies, Rubio punts, and shameless, "bad paranoid mess" Ka$h Patel, who actually likes to spell his name that way, is gifting bottles of personally branded bourbon - "KASH PATEL, FBI Director," boasting "strong notes of insecurity" - on all sides. Nothing to see here.

The dizzying pivots on Iran go on, with Dear Leader "paralyzed" by what he started and can't for the life of him figure out how to end. The military blockade of Iran's ports is "the greatest military maneuver in history"; also, if Iran doesn't give in to his demands, they will be "blown off the face of the earth." The "already legendary Epic Fury" is almost over, and the Hormuz Strait will be "OPEN TO ALL" if Iran just agrees to the 14-point US plan they dismiss as "a wish-list." One day, Project Freedom is "a gift to the world" that will get all 2,000 stranded ships through the Strait; the next day, with two ships through and Navy commanders resisting, he pulls the plug in the name of an almost-here "complete and final agreement" that doesn't exist. It turns out he veered away because the Saudis, angry and mistrustful, wouldn't let him use their bases or air space; NATO countries are also increasingly.barring the US from their bases. Iran's chief negotiator: "Operation Trust Me Bro failed.”

There’s more bad if unsurprising news: Pete and Donnie "lied through their teeth" about how the war's gone: Iranian airstrikes did far more damage to US military sites - hitting or destroying at least 228 hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft, key radar, defense, communication systems - than they've acknowledged, and Iran's military might is far from "obliterated." The lies flew through, in part, because they “requested” that several large satellite imagery providers withhold images of the war to tightly control a bogus “winning” narrative. The result, critics say: “Not since Vietnam has there been a more systematic effort by an administration to lie about the costs, consequences, and results of a war.” Meanwhile, NATO is increasingly moving on without the US - who can blame them - and even Australia is pissed at the economic chaos: “Interest Rates Rise Because Some (Emotionally-Stunted) Fuckwit in America Wasn’t Hugged Enough As A Child."

Amidst the carnage, a “once-in-a-lifetime stupid“ Trump posts bonkers AI memes - Biden as ”COWARD," Obama as ”TRAITOR" - and proof the Iran war is shorter than Afghanistan: "Wow! Study this chart!“ His clowns flail. Todd Blanche wants SCOTUS to let the DOJ trash E. Jean Carroll's $83.3 million win. Howard Lutnick told the House his relationship with Epstein was "inexplicable.” Hegseth still inexplicably pursues Mark Kelly for obeying the law though multiple judges tell him to stop; Pete also posted a cringe video of "performative dipshittery wrapped in fictional jingoism," insisting a proposed $1.5 trillion military budget is “putting the American taxpayer first.” Also: "Arsenal for freedom" WTF? GOP tax cuts for the rich and slashing of Obamacare tax credits will see millions lose health care and food stamps, which they call cutting fraud: "Let them eat ballrooms." ICE promises, "Mass deportations are coming." America wants none of this shit.

They also likely don't want much of what Trump's FBI - which boasts, "Law and order is back," complete with vows to hunt down "bad guys" at the World Cup - is selling. Especially given its alleged director, fresh off drunken drunken revels celebrating with his hockey "friends" in Milan and reportedly, perennially panicking about being fired after a series of scandals, is now facing yet more bad press thanks toThe Atlantic's Sarah Fitzpatrick, who's been lauded as "a fearless badass" for staying on his sketchy trail. Her first story, on April 17, cited two dozen FBI sources "alarmed" by Patel's erratic behavior, "conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences" after nights of boozing. Patel responded with a sputtering, typo-riddled, $250-million lawsuit charging Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic with an elaborate, organized-crime-like conspiracy. The FBI also reportedly launched a criminal leak investigation, usually reserved for "insider threats" involving classified documents, into who told Fitzpatrick what.

This week, Fitzpatrick followed up with another boozy story: Patel travels with a stash of personalized, bespoke, presumably taxpayer-funded Ka$h Patel bourbon he regularly hands out wherever he goes, including on official FBI business. The bottles bear the label, “KASH PATEL FBI DIRECTOR” with the rendering of an FBI shield; around it, text reads, with his preferred spelling, Director Ka$h Patel. An eagle holds the shield in its talons; sometimes the 750-milliliter bottles bear Patel’s signature. They also bear the imprint of Kentucky distillery Woodford Reserve, who have helped out MAGA before. In 2025, they gifted bottles to attendees of the 2025 inauguration luncheon, part of the swag arranged by Mitch McConnell's team. They also created a commemorative "Trump Presidential Woodford Reserve Whiskey, part of their Spirited Gifts line. It's unclear to what extent they've been impacted by or spared from Trump's infamous tariffs.

Patel is already known to have "a great affection" for swag: "He is known as being very merch forward." The Ka$h-branded crap on his website - “Choose Freedom. Shop Based" - has included t-shirts, beanies, faux-camo Fight with Kash hoodies, Fight With Kash Punisher scarf, “Justice for All” #J6PC tees to support Jan, 6 rioters, “government gangsters” playing cards, tacky juvenile "Steel Wall Art," and his children's book The Plot Against the King, about a heroic wizard, Kash the Distinguished Discoverer, who helps "King Donald" uncover conspiracies and crush his enemies. Profits supposedly go to a non-profit Kash Patel Foundation that “supports whistleblowers, education, defamation cases, etc." Patel was also already a bourbon fan during Trump's first term; he reportedly kept a barrel of bourbon at the National Security Council which was regularly brought out to celebrate successes.

In her account, Fitzpatrick lists places and occasions, including FBI events, where Patel has given out bottles of his bourbon. She reports that, when a bottle went missing during a March FBI "training seminar" with Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes in Quantico, Virginia, the incident caused Patel to "lose his mind"; he was so angry he threatened to make his staff take polygraph tests and face prosecution if they were found to have been involved. The FBI did not deny Patel gives out the whiskey; they defended the gifts as "routine" within the FBI, where Bureau officials "exchange commemorative items in formal gift settings consistent with ethics rules." A spokesperson "declined to clarify which ethical rules he is following, or which past directors also did it. When Fitzpatrick asked a former longtime senior official if he'd ever seen personally branded booze gifted, "He burst out laughing."

Several current and former FBI leaders said the action was "unheard-of," noting, "The FBI has traditionally had a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized use of alcohol on the job or its misuse off duty.” Said one, "Handing out bottles of liquor at our premier law-enforcement agency - it makes me frightened for the country." Others called it "weird," "uncomfortable," "a "shitshow," "a misunderstanding of the Bureau's culture of quiet professionalism," “demoralizing because it suggests one set of standards for the director and another for the rest of the Bureau." Then again, said one, "If you make allegations against Patel, you're screwed." "The Kash Patel bourbon has strong notes of insecurity, narcissism, incompetence and alcohol-fueled national security risk,” wrote Dem lawmakers online. "Pairs well with taxpayer-funded getaways and the occasional SWAT-assisted wake-up call.”

"I knew one day I'd have to watch powerful men burn the world down. I just didn't expect them to be such losers." - Rebecca Shaw in The Guardian

Ka$h Patel, FBI Director and MoonshinerPhoto from The Atlantic

In the first quarter of 2026, the combined $21.7 billion* in quarterly profits recorded by bp, Repsol, TotalEnergies, Eni and Equinor was 43% higher than the same period last year, reflecting a significant windfall from volatile oil prices caused by the US-Israel war in Iran.

According to Global Witness’ analysis of quarterly filings, these six fossil fuel giants have not collectively generated this much money since Q4 2022. The three biggest European majors - Shell, BP and TotalEnergies - have earned $252 billion since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Global Witness head of news investigations Patrick Galey said: “As lives are destroyed through war and people everywhere fear rising bills, it’s galling to see oil giants like Shell raking in obscene amounts of money.

“Sadly, we all know this isn’t the first time oil giants have cashed in from war - when Russia invaded Ukraine 4 years ago, our energy bills spiralled as fossil fuel firms raked it in.

“And now we’re seeing the same pattern repeat itself: the combined profits of Europe’s six biggest oil firms were up by 43% compared to the same period last year. These are clearly the spoils of war.

“It’s time to break free from the fossil fuel doom loop – we need robust taxes on big polluters to insulate households from price shocks and to fund a cheaper, cleaner, more stable energy future for all.”

In April, analysis by Global Witness and the Guardian found that the world’s top 100 oil and gas producers banked more than $30m every hour in excess profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war on Iran, with the conflict pushing up oil prices above $100 (£74) a barrel in March.

Although US oil majors Chevron and ExxonMobil are yet to cash in on the windfall from higher prices thanks to stalled deliveries and supply disruptions in the region, European majors like bp and TotalEnergies are already enjoying a boon from higher prices thanks to their substantial trading operations, which allows them to monetize market volatility.

The shareholders in these companies stand to gain considerably from these profits. The three largest European supermajors – bp, Shell, and TotalEnergies, rewarded shareholders a combined $10 billion in Q1 2026 – since the war in Iran that sent oil prices spiralling began.

Building on previous research published in Health Affairs, the authors find that California’s heat standard, which requires common-sense workplace protections including access to water, shade, and regular rest breaks for workers, resulted in a 51% reduction in heat-related deaths compared to neighboring states that lack similar protections. If a similar heat standard was adopted federally, the authors estimate these basic regulations could save up to 1,500 lives annually.

But, the paper’s authors find that corporate and industry interests are preventing federal action to protect their workforces from heat exposure. Attempts at regulation in Washington have stalled while worker safety and wellbeing relies entirely on geography and political will. As the Biden administration’s life-saving heat rule remains stalled, Trump has failed to extend protections, instead siding with corporate interests.

In the paper, the authors write:

“As extreme heat intensifies, the cost of inaction will be measured in lives lost. The question facing policymakers is no longer whether effective protections exist, but whether they have the political will to stand up to unscrupulous employers lobbying hard to block them.”

Background

Extreme heat threatens thousands of workers each year with no relief in sight.

• Extreme heat is rapidly becoming one of the most dangerous and least regulated workplace hazards in the United States. As climate change drives hotter, longer, and more frequent heat waves, millions of workers – especially in agriculture, construction, warehousing, and transportation – face increasing risks of injury, illness, and death.
• In 2024, nearly 3,000 heat-related deaths were recorded among outdoor workers, and in 2023, high temperatures contributed to an estimated 28,000 injuries on the job. These estimates likely understate the true extent of heat-related incidents in the workplace.

Common-sense heat protections are proven to improve worker safety and decrease the risk of heat-related deaths, but the lack of a federal standard leaves workers at the whims of their employers and reliant on uneven state policies.

• California’s robust heat protections were associated with a 51% reduction in worker deaths between 2015 and 2020, compared to neighboring states without protections.
• Meanwhile, governors in Texas and Florida have signed legislation to bar municipalities in their states from implementing heat protections for workers following stringent opposition from business groups.
• A long-term, coordinated pressure campaign from industry lobbyists, including Amazon, UPS, and the Associated Builders and Contractors, have blocked efforts at state and federal levels to enact worker protections, while companies tout their “commitments” to worker safety.

In the absence of a uniform standard, an ineffective patchwork of state-by-state protections has emerged, leaving the lives of thousands of vulnerable workers in the hands of policymakers captured by their corporate backers and at the mercy of changing political tides. The only way forward, the authors argue, is a strong, enforceable national standard.

Public Citizen Co-President Lisa Gilbert issued the following statement:

“The idea of using a simple majority process to fund billions more in ICE cruelty is abhorrent, but now the Senate has piled corrupt absurdity on top of that inhumane move, by adding in 1 billion dollars to fund the grandiose, bombastic, vanity project—the golden White House ballroom. Using taxpayer dollars to toady to a wannabe-dictator is both pandering and pathetic.”

Hoo boy. The stupid and evil, somehow accelerating, burn. America's so-called leader, the "Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath," manifests ever more cognitive dissonance on steroids. Absurd, addled, vindictive, looming above "a circus of death and chaos," he commits war crimes, guts voting rights, plots devastation, abases decency, murders mercy, yet whines about mean jokes. But as America reels, Banksy, Bruce, Platner and others increasingly declare, "We are not fucking doing this anymore."

Amidst what the head of Amnesty International calls "the year of the predators," humanity itself is under attack, most notably by our ludicrous narcissist and his "casual, bewildering cruelty." Despite his foolishness, Nesrine Malik writes, "This is what evil looks like": See history's portrayals of Hitler - "the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog" - and Mussolini, "that funny man, that consummate buffoon." Trump's "farcical puniness," Malik notes, is "a projection onto the world, not of large intent, but of smallness and fear...The consequences of his violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it (to) erase his terror of humiliation (and) feed his sociopathic appetite for escalation." Thus can deeply silly still equal dangerous.

Daily, the large and small atrocities are both, albeit without the resonance of the label "fascist" only because he lacks the wit, intent and coherence it requires. The war in Iran veers on: "Another day, another pivot. Trump flails." It's won, not, won but not by enough, it's not a war, we made a deal, we don't want a deal, talks are going well, we don't wanna talk, Iran struck a school full of young girls, or if we did it's Obama's fault. Give me ballroom or give me death: The solution to gun violence that kills 12 children a day, wounds 32 more and has affected over 390,000 kids since Columbine - is to build one rich white guy who's never expressed any grief over any of them a gilded bunker of his own. The way to keep more people safe is to kill as many as possible, including by firing squad.

Also, Bill Maher, Hakeem Jeffries, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are low IQ losers, James Comey tried to kill and "inflict bodily harm on" him with "aggravated beachy seashell pictures," he's so "young, vital, vibrant" he could've joined the Artemis II astronauts easy like he aced his three screening tests for dementia - "A lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. Which one is the bear?" - which the Villages audience def couldn't do, ditto sketchy Harvard Law graduate Hussein Obama. America's response to his musing what we'd do if a con man moron turned up - "How do you get to be president and you're stupid?": "That would suck - we'd probably have unprovoked wars, high gas prices and all our allies would hate us," "He's so close to getting it," "The Irony Meter is dead after spontaneously combusting," and "You're a fucking moron." Also, so grotesquely weird.

Latest bonkers Jesus/doctor post with an umbilical-cord-eating eagle. Nothing to see here.Image from Truth Social

Meanwhile, the Orwellian rules for what you can/can’t see/say keep spooling out, lies sold as half-truths to justify a brazen, racist, whitewashing of both present and past under the shameless moniker of content “inappropriately disparaging Americans past or living,” but always white. Among dozens of changes at our National Parks, gone are signs about the contributions of Native Americans and women, warnings about climate change "not grounded in real science," evidence of Founding Fathers owning slaves and explorers' atrocities against Native tribes. But you do get Trump's loathsome mug plastered on park passes, like on our money, buildings, passports ad nauseum. Happily, fighting back for years have been patriots like the Resistance Rangers, the Alt National Park Service and whatever genius slapped these "Sex Offender" flyers across D.C.'s parks.

Hence incrementally, far too slowly but feeding vital hope and our frayed spirits, the flip side of our grim absurdist timeline begins to emerge as Trump and his monstrous clowns flail, fail, dig their own dank holes. So many horrors should have sparked it -Gaza, ICE, USAID, the boundless greed, cruelty, stupidity. Instead, prices did it, a non-stop, staggering incompetence that saw people being screwed once too often and lied to about one too many senseless wars. Last week, Banksy registered his own anti-imperialist protest in a middle-of-the-night dropping into the heart of ceremonial London a large statue mocking such Blind Patriotism. Mirroring the classical style of surrounding monuments celebrating the British Empire's inglorious colonial past, he presents a suited man, his flag flying into his face, one foot poised to step off into his own demise. Much like, you know.

Banksy's new Blind Nationalism art work amidst London's colonial monumentsImage from Banksy Instagram page

Kicking off his Land of Hope and Dreams American tour several weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen offered his own fiery rebuttal to "a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration," which drew roars from a huge first night crowd in Minneapolis. Equal parts celebration and call to action, The Boss insisted, "This is still America, and - shades of the Big Lebowski, "this will not stand." Summoning "the righteous power of art, music and rock and roll in dangerous times," he asked the crowd to "join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over....(lights come up to segue into) "WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!" complete with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello shredding a solo. A righteous, dynamic pair.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

In contrast, standing grotesque and slumped-shouldered in a dingy, empty corner, is the small, mad man-child who spent Monday bellowing to a weary world that Iran will be "blown off the face of the Earth" if it targets U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which his inane recklessness closed in the first place. Online, in "the most desperate shit" to ever make its demonic way from the White House, a juvenile lackey posted him saying, "Winning it" on a loop for over 60 minutes, which still didn't make it so. The text read, "Can't stop, won't stop." Please fucking do. A horrified America: "This is a real tweet from a real account about a real man who leads a real country." Kyle Kulinski, on "the war criminal of all war criminals" who makes genocidal threats and bleats about insults: “We are not fucking doing this anymore. You don't get to say shit."

Still, one Tom Wellborn says it best in, “A Eulogy for the Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath,” subtitled “Being a Complete and Unflinching Account of the Most Loathsome Specimen Ever to Consume Resources, Occupy Space, and Insult the Patience of a Universe That Deserved So Much Better." "There are villains, and then there are monsters, and then there are creatures so cosmically, transcendently... terrible that language itself recoils," he begins. "Grammar buckles. Syntax weeps...He is this thing. He is the thing past the thing past the thing. He is the sub-basement of the human condition, the moldy crawlspace beneath that sub-basement, and the writhing centipede beneath that."

"He has no morals. Not a single one. Not even the bad morals that at least imply a moral framework: the corrupt cop who loves his dog, the mob boss who goes to church. No. He exists in a morality vacuum so total that ethicists have proposed naming it after him...A being entirely without moral content. Not evil, because evil requires intention. Simply absent of the entire apparatus...A moral negative space shaped vaguely like a man...He has no empathy....like a raisin...He is incapable of the most basic social theater that even sociopaths manage....He takes without asking. He takes everything without asking. He takes things that aren’t takeable...The principle being: I can....He is stupid in a way that is almost majestic...His stupidity (is) total. Unified....He has been wrong about everything, always, without exception..."

"He is callous the way concrete is callous: not through malice, not through choice, but through an utter material inability to register (another) person’s pain...You could show him the face of grief, and he would wonder aloud if there was parking nearby...He is vicious the way a blunt instrument is vicious: through sheer, undirected force, through the momentum of his own awfulness...He is smelted fury with no purpose, unforged, unbent, uselessly molten....(He is) a statistical outlier so extreme that evolution seems to be embarrassed by him, a glitch in the long project of civilization...And the most horrifying part...He will never know any of this. He will never know what he is." Name it, damn it, take it down. Maine's Graham Platner hopes to help do that. We wish him well.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Following is reaction from Anthony Swift, a longtime leader in the fight against the project and current Senior Strategist for Global Nature at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):

“No matter what you call the project, the environmental concerns that animated the fight over Keystone XL are no less acute today. Keystone Light will threaten water supplies and exacerbate climate change. This is the moment to get off the oil roller coaster, not double down on the dirtiest oil on the planet.

“The Trump administration has been lobbing gifts to Big Oil since its first day in office. This is the latest in a long, long, long list of favors that show the oil industry is getting a great return on its billion-dollar investment in the President’s campaign.”

“President Trump has repeatedly said that America does not need Canada’s oil, so we certainly don’t need Keystone Light.”

Chief executives of the world’s largest corporations enjoyed a 11 percent real-terms pay hike last year, while the average global worker saw real wages increase by just 0.5 percent, reveals new analysis by the ITUC and Oxfam ahead of International Workers’ Day (1 May).

The analysis covers the top-paying 1,500 corporations across 33 countries which have reported CEO pay for 2025. The average CEO pocketed $8.4 million in pay and bonuses last year, up from $7.6 million in 2024. It would take the average global worker 490 years to earn the same amount.

So far, four corporations, including Blackstone, Broadcom and Goldman Sachs, have reported paying their CEO more than $100 million in 2025. The top 10 highest-paid CEOs collectively made over $1 billion.

The gender pay gap for the workforce across these 1,500 corporations averages 16 percent, meaning that these women workers effectively work for free from 4 November each year.

The growing chasm between CEO compensation and average worker pay is part of a long-term trend in which executives and shareholders are capturing an ever-larger slice of the global economic pie.

Global real wages for workers have fallen by 12 percent since 2019. This means they have effectively worked 108 days for free between 2019 and 2025 (31 days for free last year alone). Meanwhile, CEO pay has skyrocketed ―from an average of $5.5 million in 2019 to $8.4 million in 2025, a 54 percent increase in real terms.

The ITUC and Oxfam’s analysis of shareholdings reveals that the super-rich are receiving significant payouts from the corporations they control. Nearly 1,000 billionaires whose investment portfolios were identified collectively received $79 billion in dividends in 2025 —equivalent to $2,500 per second. The average billionaire made more in dividends in less than two hours than the average worker earned in pay in an entire year.

Some of the largest payouts in 2025 went to Bernard Arnault, owner of luxury brand LVMH, who pocketed $3.8 billion and Amancio Ortega, owner of Inditex (Zara), who received $3.7 billion.

Payouts from corporations are often funneled into undermining workers’ rights and democracy.

• Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, has used his wealth to become a major stakeholder in Paramount, which was purchased by his son’s company and includes major broadcast networks CBS.
• In France, far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré now controls CNews, and has rebranded it as the French equivalent of Fox News.
• In 2024, Oxfam filed a formal UN complaint against Amazon and Walmart’s systematic human rights violations. Amazon and Walmart’s outsized wealth and power in the economy have enabled them to clamp down on unionization efforts and collective organizing.

Billionaires are also leveraging their wealth to buy political influence. A global survey found that half of people believe “the rich often buy elections” in their countries. Oxfam estimates that billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people. Many super-rich politicians have sought to erode workers’ rights, cut public services, and deliver tax cuts to the richest.

“This analysis exposes the billionaire coup against democracy, and its costs for working people. Companies promise us a virtuous cycle, but what we see is a vicious cycle led by mega corporations —they undermine collective bargaining and social dialogue while billionaire CEOs capture the wealth created by productivity gains. The super-rich then use enormous resources to fund anti-democratic political projects,” said ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle.

“These projects shift the blame for growing inequality onto marginalized groups, such as migrants, women and minorities in order to distract from the true culprits: their rich benefactors. They divide working people while dismantling and undermining democratic institutions and promoting policies that allow the super-rich to become even richer, at the expense of workers’ rights, safety and livelihoods. They attack democratic organizations like unions and block any avenues for popular reform, ensuring that the vicious anti-worker cycle continues.”

Billionaire wealth has reached record highs in 2026. In just 12 months, they have gained $4 trillion —bringing their wealth to $1.5 trillion more than that of the poorest 4.1 billion people combined. There are 400 more billionaires compared to last year, and 45 of these new billionaires have made their fortunes in artificial intelligence.

“We can’t continue to let a handful of super-rich people siphon off the rewards of work that belong to millions. Governments must cap CEO pay, fairly tax the super-rich and ensure minimum wages at the very least keep pace with inflation and ensure a dignified living. And workers must be able to exercise, without fear or obstruction, their rights to organize, to strike, and to bargain collectively. They are the ones who generate society’s wealth; they should be able to claim, as a matter of justice, what they are due,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.

"These measures can do far more than redistribute income; they can create economies that reward work, invest in communities, and hold powerful interests accountable. This is how we turn a system rigged for the few into one that works for everyone."

In a devastating blow to what John Lewis called “the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy,” a right-wing, illegitimate SCOTUS finally gutted the Voting Rights Act they’ve long been chipping away at, ensuring communities of color will increasingly be denied “a voice in their own destiny.” By striking down a new Louisiana voting map as a bogus “racial gerrymander,” the court’s extremist hacks betrayed generations who fought and bled, said Fannie Lou Hamer, “to live as decent human beings.”

The court’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais kneecapped “our nation’s most important federal civil rights law," effectively voiding the last remaining provision of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 that allowed voters of color to legally challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps. Specifically, they rejected Louisiana's redrawn 2024 Congressional map that created a second majority-Black district - in a one-third Black state - aimed at righting the GOP’s racist wrongs of the past, defying precedent, context and common sense to argue the move, already upheld by two courts, was ”an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.“

In another outlandish opinion, Samuel Alito, the hackiest of a cabal of hacks, didn’t directly strike down Section 2, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race; writing for the majority, he argued he was simply “properly” re-interpreting it to require proof of intentional discrimination - which Congress didn’t write into the law, which defies past rulings that redistricting must only result in discrimination, intended or no, and which is almost impossible to prove. Thus, wielding “sleight of hand and legal gibberish,” did Alito give license for corrupt politicians to further rig the system by silencing entire communities of color.

The potential death knoll for a vital law that's curtailed racial gerrymandering and discrimination for 60 years comes, of course, after years of whittling away by Roberts Court zealots, using tactics from voter ID laws to limiting registration. One advocate: "This ruling isn’t about the law, it’s about power, and giving Republicans more seats they (could) win at the ballot box." One "pernicious" result, writes Rick Hasen: To "bleach the halls" of Congress, state legislatures and city councils, the life's work of judges who see their constituency as aggrieved white men hostile to the rights of minorities - a stance that puts them "at odds with democracy itself."

In a fiery dissent, Justice Elena Kagan charged the majority “straight-facedly holds the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders." The law they “eviscerate", she wrote, "is - or, now more accurately, was - one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history. It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers, and repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed - not the Members of this Court.”

Above all, critics decry the hubris and perfidy of those heedless Court members blithely stripping from millions of Americans the elemental rights so many of their descendants struggled, suffered and died for. The Rev. William Barber eviscerated a court, ignorant of the painful history of "the rights that cost our people so much," that has "decided their job is to enable extremism and systemic racism by arguing that race has no place in the American Democratic process. Race has always had a place in the process. And claiming that partisan decisions are not racist is a form of racism." "Some of us," John Lewis humbly noted of his lifetime of good trouble, "gave a little blood for (that) right."

John Lewis called the fight for voting rights "the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes."Photo from Getty Archives

So did Fannie Lou Hamer, who fought against a Jim Crow South she'd grown up in because, "I was sick and tired of being sick and tired." The granddaughter of slaves and youngest of 20 children of sharecroppers, she was 45 in 1962 when she went to a SNCC meeting at a church in Sunflower County, Mississippi and learned Black people could register to vote. The next day, she took a bus with 17 others to the county seat in Indianola. Police only let her and another person take the literacy test; she failed, but kept going back until she passed: "If I'd had any sense, I’d a been scared. But the only thing (whites) could do was kill me, and it seemed they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember."

On the way back, police stopped them and brought them back to Indianola, where the bus driver was fined for "driving a bus the wrong color." Back at the plantation, her children said the owner was angry she'd gone to vote; he told her to leave that night "because we are not ready for that in Mississippi." "I didn’t try to register for you," she said.. "I tried to register for myself." Then she left: "They set me free. It’s the best thing that could happen. Now I could work for my people." For the rest of her life, she did. She joined the voter registration campaign, helped organize Freedom Summer, became SNCC's oldest field secretary, ran for Congress.

Left with a limp after surviving childhood polio, she embraced her identity as a Black working-poor woman with a disability and little formal education, upending preconceptions of both Black colleagues and white foes. When Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. once challenged her expertise, she retorted, "How many bales of cotton have you picked?” In 1963, she became more disabled after she was arrested with other activists in Winona MS, taken to jail and brutally beaten by cops and, on their order, other black prisoners, suffering permanent damage to her eyes, legs and kidneys. She was still in jail when Medger Evers was murdered.

In August 1964, she recounted that ordeal at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, days after the funerals of murdered Freedom Riders Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Testifying to the Credentials Committee, she challenged the seating of Mississippi's all-white delegation - from still-all-white primaries - demanding the party seat Black members of an integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party she'd helped found. In the end, MFDP delegates were not seated - party leaders offered a compromise of 2 seats, which she declined - but she had confronted them on a national stage about their own discrimination, famously asking, "Is this America?"

- YouTube www.youtube.com

During Hamer's testimony, then-president Lyndon Johnson had hastily called a news conference to divert attention for white Dem voters alarmed by her insistence on true equality. Cameras duly cut away from Hamer, but networks later showed her speech. "Hamer had pulled back the curtain," read one account. "The United States could not claim to be a democracy while withholding voting rights from millions of its citizens." Ultimately, Hamer's inclusive political vision, along with a groundswell of civil rights activism, led to Johnson's finally signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ensuring government could not “deny or abridge the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color.”

Hamer remained active through the 1960s and 1970s. She spoke with Malcolm X in Harlem, at the '68 and '72 DNC, at 1969's Vietnam War Moratorium rally in Berkeley. In 1971, she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus, aimed at recruiting, training and supporting women to run for office. The titles of her speeches reflected her resolve, her anger, her fierce hope: "We're On Our Way," "Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free,” "The Only Thing We Can Do Is Work Together," ""What Have We To Hail," "America Is A Sick Place," "To Make Democracy A Reality," and, in 1976, "We Haven't Arrived Yet."

Clearly, sorrowfully, we damn sure still haven't. Unlike so many others, Hamer lived to do her work and tell her story, for a while. She died in Mississippi on March 14, 1977, aged just 59, of breast cancer exacerbated by high blood pressure, diabetes, and complications from her jail beatings. She died, too, "from being poor, Black, and an activist in Mississippi at a time when all of that was lethal." Andrew Young gave her eulogy, telling mourners "the seeds of social change in America were sown here by the sweat and blood of you and Fannie Lou Hamer." Then they sang her favorite song: “This little light of mine." Her gravestone reads, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." May we honor her labors, and may she rest in well-earned peace and power.

“The wrongs and the sickness of this country have been swept under the rug. But I’ve come out from under the rug, and I’m going to tell it like it is.” - Fannie Lou Hamer

"To the Justices Who Took What Others Bled For: History will have its say. But so will the bridge. So will the blood on the pavement. So will the people who were told to wait, then beaten for praying, then buried for believing the Constitution meant what it said....You’ll wear this shame for the rest of your lives." - Derek Penwell

AFGE National President Everett Kelley issued the following statement:

“For the past 76 days, tens of thousands of AFGE members at the Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, and many other DHS agencies have continued to show up each and every day without the guarantee of a paycheck.

“While AFGE is pleased that Congress finally stepped up to do their jobs and fund DHS, it is unacceptable that it took them this long to do so.

“Too many times we have seen lawmakers use patriotic federal employees’ livelihoods as leverage for political gains. Federal employees are not political pawns. They are not leverage. They are Americans – and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

“Today, I am calling on Congress to pass the Shutdown Fairness Act, which would pay federal employees during government shutdowns and ensure they’ll never be used in this way again.”

Demand Progress is part of a bipartisan coalition urging Congress to close loopholes in the law that allow the government to bypass the courts to surveil Americans.

The following is a statement from Demand Progress Executive Director Sean Vitka:

“Tom Cotton and the Senate should accept Sen. Wyden’s deal if they don’t want Section 702 to expire. As we’ve seen over and over again in the House, any path forward that lacks meaningful privacy reforms is doomed to fail. Further, the American people deserve, and policymakers need to see, what violations the FISA court found. It is alarming that those who are fearmongering most over the statutory expiration of Section702 are now embracing it to hide the truth.

Sen.Cotton is trying to keep his colleagues and Americans in the dark about how the government is violating the law to surveil us—the very same law some claim is never abused. Senators opposing this deal risk plunging us into uncharted waters, including a sunset of FISA and cancellation of the upcoming recess to sort this all out. Unlike Speaker Johnson and Tom Cotton, Sen. Wyden is offering a viable path forward, instead of incompetent, bad faith machinations to thwart any votes on real reforms.”

“Major pesticide issues haven’t been debated on the House floor in a very long time” said Jason Davidson, Senior Food and Agriculture Campaigner with Friends of the Earth U.S. “For the people to win over the size, influence and money of the pesticide industry is a remarkable display of grassroots power and a tremendous victory for Americans’ ability to hold these companies accountable.”

In a significant victory for public health and environmental advocates, the House voted 280-142 to strip Cancer Gag Act language including Sections 10205-7 from the bill. Over 70 Republicans voted to strip the provision alongside all but six Democrats. The provision would have shielded pesticide manufacturers from health-related lawsuits. The vote comes on the heels of Supreme Court oral arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, where the Trump administration is backing Roundup producer Bayer in related litigation.

Despite staunch opposition, the House Farm Bill still includes the unpopular EATS Act (Save Our Bacon Act), to strip state and local governments of the ability to pass agricultural policies within their borders; fails to reverse HR 1 cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and cuts more than $1 billion from a key conservation program.

In response, Food & Water Watch Senior Food Policy Analyst Rebecca Wolf issued the following statement:

“Industrial agriculture’s pesticide addiction is poisoning America. From the fields of Iowa to the halls of Congress, advocates have made our voices clear: Bayer’s cruel Cancer Gag campaign has no place in our communities. U.S. farm policy must support farmers and consumers, not the corporate overlords pulling the strings at our expense.

“This Farm Bill has industry fingerprints all over it. By shrinking markets for high-welfare sustainable farmers, and doubling down on devastating cuts to federal food assistance, this pro-factory farm bill will do more harm than good.

“It’s time to end the corporate power grab in Washington. This Farm Bill must be dead on arrival in the Senate.”

Stand Up America’s Managing Director of Policy and Political Affairs, Brett Edkins, issued the following statement:

“This is a tragic day for the freedom to vote and representative democracy. The Supreme Court just eviscerated the last remnants of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and opened the door to even more extreme gerrymandering that will try to drown out the voices of Black and brown voters, particularly in the South.

“The Court’s decision will escalate the arms race of partisan gerrymanders across the country and could lead to Republican-controlled states redrawing election maps to add an additional 19 GOP House seats. This partisan Court has handed a major election-year gift to Donald Trump and congressional Republicans who are trying to cling to power despite their growing unpopularity with voters.

“It’s time for Congress to act as a check on this rogue Court through major reforms, including term limits, an enforceable code of ethics, and adding more justices who will defend our fundamental freedoms once Trump leaves office.”

Since 2021, Stand Up America has been at the forefront of the fight for Supreme Court reform, mobilizing its members to take nearly one million actions in support of Supreme Court term limits, expansion, and a binding code of ethics. In 2025 and 2026, Stand Up America has been deeply engaged in efforts to oppose the White House’s mid-decade redistricting scheme, driving nearly 33,000 constituent calls, emails, and letters to state lawmakers in Indiana, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Utah, and Florida. Stand Up America members have also made hundreds of thousands of constituent calls and emails in support of federal voting rights legislation.

The report, “Conflict Coin: How the Trumps’ Billion-Dollar Crypto Stake Depends on a Company That Helped Iran Evade Sanctions”, reveals how Trump has leveraged investments in cryptocurrency to enrich himself and officials in his administration, specifically through working with Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, to conduct deals. Binance has hosted accounts used by at least eight entities and individuals that the Treasury Department has sanctioned for supporting terrorism or terrorist-designated groups linked to Iran, some of whom were sanctioned or prosecuted by Trump's own administration, according to court filings. In 2023, Binance reached settlements with the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department, pleading guilty to anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting and sanctions violations, with the U.S. government saying the exchange failed “to implement programs to prevent and report suspicious transactions with terrorists.”

The report states, “The Trump family's entanglement with Binance exposes a dangerous contradiction at the heart of U.S. foreign policy: The same exchange that built the infrastructure for and holds the vast majority of Trump's USD1 stablecoin has facilitated billions of dollars in transactions for Iran and designated terrorist organizations. The opacity that defines crypto isn't a bug. It's the feature that makes it useful to both speculators and sanctioned regimes, and the president of the United States is profiting from it.”

“Binance is the world's largest crypto exchange. It pleaded guilty in 2023 to sanctions and money laundering violations, and paid $4.3 billion in penalties to the United States, one of the largest corporate penalties ever. Its CEO and founder, CZ, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain effective anti-money laundering programs, and served four months in prison,” said Zach Everson, Research Director for Public Citizen’s Trump Accountability Project. “Now, this happened in 2023, about a year before World Liberty Financial launched. But the Trumps made the decision to go into business with these guys anyway, which is just flagrantly corrupt. Recent media reports suggest that Binance has continued to support Iranian interests. And yet rather than pull back, the Trumps’ company has been strengthening its relationship.”

Leave it to this still-repugnant regime to instantly twist a Keystone Cops security breach - not a so-distant-it-was-on-another-floor "assassination attempt" - to their own skeevy purposes: blaming Democrats for "this dark moment," demanding a $400 million gold ballroom for "national security," burnishing the Brave Dear Leader myth of an addled old man who barely registered it, and what gun control issue? Meet the Epstein class: When shots (again) ring out, they get a friggin' ballroom, kids get thoughts and prayers.

The latest "clown show on steroids" - and grim proof of Trump's relentless corrosion of political discourse - unfolded Saturday night at an evidently sloppily unsecured Washington Hilton, where in 1981 John Hinckley shot Reagan, who survived. The already contentious White House Correspondents' Dinner drew the black-tied, preening, profit-driven remnants of a craven legacy media - and a growing right-wing slopaganda brigade - both willing to pretend it was normal to party with an abusive enemy of free speech who's spent years attacking, belittling, suing, bullying and name-calling them as an "enemy of the people" for seeking to do their jobs and tell the truth, thus turning the evening into a queasy "case study in institutional self-abasement."

Even before the vitriolic and incendiary Trump - who led a Jan. 6 riot, urged fans to “knock the crap out” of protesters, bade Proud Boys "stand by," mused "the 2nd Amendment people" could do something" about his opponents, warned of "a bloodbath" if he was defeated, killed schoolgirls and threatened genocide in an illegal war he doesn't know how to end - let loose with what he dubbed "the most inappropriate speech ever made" (which Press Barbie called "shots fired") - before all that came a few muffled thuds of a dud of an assassination attempt, on the floor above, by a suspect who ran past a security checkpoint before being tackled. One shot was fired - it's unclear by whom - and one cop was wounded through a bulletproof vest; he is expected to be okay.

On the floor below, meanwhile, "absolute chaos" reigned. Panicked women in gowns and men in tuxedos hit the floor, flipping over chairs, lunging under tables and sometimes holding phone cameras aloft as a horde of Secret Service agents swarmed the ballroom, leaping on stage, yelling "Get down! Get down!", running in all directions at once, weapons poised and flailing. A crowd of security guys whisked J.D. Vance out of his chair first; then another cluster went for Trump, dazed and stumbling, guys holding him up on both sides. Video later showed alleged FBI head Kash Patel crouching absurdly behind a chair and RFK Jr. heroically leaving his wife behind; an idiotic "USA!" chant that "absolutely nobody wanted to hear" flared briefly before dying a well-earned death.

The suspect was identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a Torrance, CA. mechanical engineer, game developer and teacher with a Masters degree in computer science; on Facebook, he also called himself "an amateur entomologist, casual composter and occasional artist." When he tried to breach the metal detectors above the ballroom, he was armed with a shotgun - loaded with buckshot not slugs "to minimize casualties" - a handgun and several knives. He was charged with two counts: Using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon. Earlier, he'd posted a lucid, relatively mild missive from "a Friendly Federal Assassin" to explain his actions; it began with, "Hello everybody!" and apologies to "everyone whose trust I abused."

He apologized to his parents "for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for 'Most Wanted,'" to his colleagues and students, to "everyone abused or murdered before this or after, any "person raped in a detention camp, fisherman executed without trial, schoolkid blown up, child starved... I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." As a Christian, he noted, "Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is rather complicity in the oppressor’s crimes." He blasted the "insane" incompetence of the lax security he encountered, said he felt "awful" about what he thought he had to do, and expressed "rage thinking about everything this administration has done...Stay in school, kids."

Despite its placid tone, MAGA world promptly dubbed it "a manifesto" of "anti-Christian bile" from "a depraved crazy person." Press Barbie blasted the "demonization (and) hateful rhetoric directed at Trump...Nobody has faced more bullets and violence." Similarly, nobody in the cult wants to admit they're adamantly declining to acknowledge years of vicious Trump rhetoric that have shaped "an angry, polarized nation," or the role of rabid MAGA responses, say, to AOC noting she's glad everyone was safe - "There is a special place in hell for demons like you," "Go fuck right off with the other Commie losers" - or the "vibes for security" so lax - no photo ID, attendee list, checkpoint to enter the ballroom, basic competence - even attendees and the would-be assassin both denounced it.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Despite faux-thoughtful deadlines - "Stunned Washington Faces Searching Questions About Political Violence" - Trump entirely missed the point, rambling and deflecting in his clueless, bonkers, self-serving way. He said he wanted the dinner to go ahead: The show must go on. He (weirdly) crooned about the "very strong, really attractive law enforcement." He babbled he'd "studied assassinations...The most impactful people, they're the ones they go after. Like Abraham Lincoln. I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot." He called the presidency "a dangerous profession," worse than bullfighting. He declared the "manifesto" “strongly anti-Christian," and the perp "a very sick person...a lone wolf whack job," though he's an incomparably more dangerous one.

Mostly, relentlessly, he shilled for his ballroom: "This event would never have happened...The conditions that took place, I didn't wanna say it but this is why we have to have it...We need levels of security probably like no one's ever seen...This is exactly the reason our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and every President for the last 150 years have been demanding a large, safe, secure Ballroom be built," which is bullshit 'cause only he's demanding it. Still, miraculously, within six minutes of the lone shot fired, MAGA pivoted, lockstep, online to the same skeevy, amidst-a-war-and-ravaged-economy-how-is-this-a-thing refrain: This is why Trump needs the ballroom. Also, the lawsuit against it "puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk."

As if the whole corrupt ballroom shtick, "the definition of a non-sequitur,” wasn't grotesque enough, there was the right's virtual ignoring of any recognition of guns as a relevant part of the deadly equation - this, in a country with more guns than people, with 120 mass shootings since the start of the year, with over 3,800 people dead and over 6,500 wounded, with 100 people shot every day, with Trump having dismantled gun safety and mental health measures, with as yet no accountability for Renee Good and Alex Pretti being gunned down in the street, with the awful, prevailing, willfully blind, "gun violence for thee but not for me" admonishment that, "Every few months, Americans are asked to resume their banquet, and pretend a shooting didn’t just happen."

Which is what we regularly ask of our kids. "Last night, powerful people hid," wrote Digital Drumbeat. "Journalists, lobbyists, and politicians dove under tables, pressed against walls, and ran for exits..Secret Service moved. Protocols activated. And within hours, everyone went home. Welcome to the reality American children, teachers, and parents live every single day. Except they do not get the protocols. They do not get the security detail. And not all of them get to go home." It was not "crouching in a locked, darkened classroom for three hours while your phone dies and you cannot call your mother," or a teacher saying "to be very, very quiet," which is "a Tuesday in America." What we can't imagine: "Wanting an entire secure ballroom for one man, and not wanting gun reform for every child."

Other obscenities abound: The billions in ballroom funding from corporations, most of which are seeking billions more in federal contracts; the latest grift of secretly awarding the ballroom-building company a no-bid $17.4 million contract to repair two fountains in Lafayette Park that Biden estimated would cost $3.3 million; the "brazen inversion of reality" that is the MAGA claim criticism of Trump's hateful, violent rhetoric is what somehow incites more violence, when he's done more than anyone in recent history to normalize it; the righteous indignation - Fire Jimmy Kimmel (again) for joking Melania looks like an expectant widow! - when anyone notes the gross hypocrisy. Color America skeptical: "Fuck him, he can only go to the well so many times."

Also, we're still gonna need those Epstein files. See Trump lash out at CBS' Norah O'Donnell when she quotes Cole Allen's "pedophile, rapist, and traitor": "I was waiting for you to read that (because) you're horrible people..I'm not a rapist...I'm not a pedophile... You're disgraceful." Will Bunch: "This is our country now." The Rude Pundit: "We live in the goddamn United States. We're never far away from someone shooting a gun. It's what we are debased enough to call 'freedom.'" And in the two days before the shooting, Trump made a racist attack against Hakeem Jeffries, called for Hillary and Obama to be arrested, boasted of more war crimes. In brief, "We don't have to pretend that a motherfucker isn't a motherfucker just because someone wanted to kill him."

Update: It seems CBS cut out more paranoid babbling in his "I'm not a rapist" interview. His brain is oatmeal and grievance.

NORAH O’DONNELL: What did security tell you about what may have been his motives?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, see, they– the part– the reason you have people like that is you have people doing No Kings. I’m not a king. What I am– if I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you. No, I’m not a king. I– I get– I– I don’t laugh. I don’t– I– I see these No Kings, which are funded just like the Southern Law was– funded– you saw all that? Southern Law is financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups.

“The Trump policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Cuba has killed a lot of babies — and, although we don’t yet have data for the last few months, it’s highly likely that more babies are dying now, and at an even higher rate than last year as a result of the current US fuel blockade targeting Cuba,” CEPR Director of International Policy and report coauthor Alexander Main said. “The question is how many more babies will have to die before the current economic siege against Cuba is lifted.”

The report notes that “In Cuba, where for decades the state has invested substantially in health care services, the IMR was … among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere, and lower than in the US,” but that “Since 2018 … Cuba’s IMR has increased from an annual rate of 4.0 per 1000 live births to a rate of 9.9 as of 2025.”

The paper also notes that Cuba, unlike its neighbors in the region, has not rebounded economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, averaging just 0.4 percent annual per capita GDP growth from 2020 to 2024, versus 3.2 percent for the Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole.

The report looks at the economic and social effects of the hardening of US sanctions since 2017, focusing in particular on the impact on Cuba’s health-care sector. Trump administration pressure on Cuba has included restrictions that have sharply diminished the island’s important tourism sector; severely limited exports of goods to Cuba — including essential medication and medical equipment; cut Cuba’s access to international financial markets by putting the country back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list; curbed remittances; pressured countries to end their partnerships with Cuba’s medical missions, and notably imposed a recent fuel blockade that prevents Venezuelan oil from reaching the island.

“US sanctions have targeted Cuba’s key sources of export earnings, such as tourism, remittances from Cuban Americans to their family members, and even by putting pressure on other countries to end primary care programs staffed by Cuban doctors. These measures sharply reduced Cuba’s capacity to pay for needed food and medicines,” CEPR International Research Fellow and coauthor Joe Sammut said. “Cutting off medical services exports is doubly cruel as these programs mostly serve marginalized communities in poorer countries, while bringing in foreign currency revenues to Cuba in a mutually beneficial trade. As such the increasing US sanctions have a negative health-care spillover even beyond the island of 10 million people.”

As the report discusses, recent research has shown that unilateral, broad economic sanctions are as deadly as armed conflict, killing some 564,000 people annually, according to a study by CEPR economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot published in August in The Lancet Global Health. More than half of these deaths are children under five, and deaths of infants are even more disproportionate, since they are three-quarters of the under-five population.

“The sanctions on Cuba starkly illustrate how these economic sanctions work: they target the civilian population, often with the goal of provoking regime change,” said Mark Weisbrot, CEPR Co-Director. “This can dramatically increase death rates, as shown statistically in the Lancet Global Health study of economic sanctions throughout the world. The increased mortality in Cuba fits this pattern, and the causality is visible.”

The US Senate may vote as early as Tuesday, April 28, on a War Powers Resolution introduced by Senators Tim Kaine, Adam Schiff, and Ruben Gallego to “to prevent [US] Armed Forces from engaging in hostilities [against Cuba] unless authorized by Congress.”

“This legislation pending in Congress right now argues persuasively that the current blockade constitutes a military participation in hostilities that is unlawful according to the US Constitution and law because it has not been authorized by Congress,” Weisbrot said.

“The collective punishment of civilians is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention when there is armed conflict, and can be prosecuted as a war crime. This would appear to be applicable now that the current naval blockade involves the US military.”

The report also describes the vulnerability of newborn babies in Cuba to the impact of blackouts and fuel scarcity — as recently reported by The New York Times. “The blockade has had a particularly dire effect on Cuba’s health-care infrastructure, with frequent power outages interrupting the use of critical equipment for the treatment of patients, including incubators for premature babies, and ventilators to help sick newborns breathe,” Guillaume Long, CEPR Senior Research Fellow and coauthor said.

The report notes: “Given the effects of the US energy blockade, it is highly likely that Cuba’s infant mortality rate has increased significantly since December of 2025, when it had reached 9.9 per 1000 live births. Other key health indicators, such as life expectancy and maternal mortality have also very likely deteriorated since the beginning of the year.”

And it is why today, as Jewish New Yorkers, we welcome Mayor Mamdani’s decision to veto Intro 175B, which would have limited our right to protest in front of educational institutions. We remain outraged with the City Council members who passed the other bill, Intro 1B, to undermine protest in front of houses of worship, with a veto-proof super majority.

Eliza Klein, JVP New York City Organizer:

“These bills are not about Jewish safety. Especially at a time when the federal government is attacking our cities — including specifically targeting those who speak out for Palestinian freedom — New Yorkers want elected leaders to protect our constitutional rights, not limit them.”

Organizing matters. Thanks to meetings, calls, letters, and testimony from thousands across the city, these anti-democratic bills were watered down and no longer have an enforcement mechanism. However we are clear-eyed about the dangerous precedent these anti-Palestinian City Council bills send: that if you want to violate international law or US law, you need only to do it inside a house of worship and you will be insulated from protest.

Despite what some have claimed, these bills are not about Jewish safety. They were introduced following protests outside houses of worship hosting non-religious political events, including auctioning off occupied Palestinian land from the West Bank – which is illegal under international law, federal fair housing law, and state and local anti-discrimination law.

We call on New York City’s legislators to stop weaponizing our identities to justify repression of dissent – which is sacred to our Jewish tradition. Rather than limit our Constitutional right to protest, our legislators should end the sales of stolen Palestinian land in our city.

The City Council has failed New Yorkers by passing these bills. We affirm Mayor Mamdani’s decision to veto Intro 175B. This fight is not over – we have one month to prevent the City Council from trying to override Mayor Mamdani’s veto, and we will continue to organize and protect the right to protest in our city.

Not in our synagogues. Not in our name.

The vote follows a week of protests against the deal led by a coalition of First Amendment advocates, unions, democracy defenders and even famous Hollywood actors and directors who say that the deal would give one company the power and incentives to raise prices, lay off thousands of workers and limit consumer options, while giving one family — the Ellisons — the power to shape public discourse to suit their political agenda and that of their allies in the Trump White House.

Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron said:

“Today, Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted for their short-term financial gains, not for the public good. While shareholders voted against fat pay packages for departing executives — a symbolic rebuke, since the board doesn’t have to listen to them — they’ve opened the door to wholesale layoffs across the news and entertainment industry, more propaganda in news coverage, higher prices for consumers and fewer choices for audiences across the United States and around the world. But shareholders don’t get the final word.

“That’s why we have antitrust enforcers and courts of law. With Trump officials cheering on this deal, state attorneys general must investigate this massive industry consolidation and step in to stop Paramount’s takeover. This mega-merger will diminish creativity and diversity in entertainment, weaken journalists’ ability to expose wrongdoing and hold those in power accountable and further endanger our democracy. It also concentrates far too much media power in the hands of one company and one family, the Ellisons.

“This corrupt merger is far from a done deal. Just because Paramount shareholders won’t take a stand against billionaire and White House control of the media, it doesn’t mean we can’t. While Paramount is flaunting its corruption and fêting Trump officials, we’re standing with the workers and artists at the heart of the news and entertainment industries — and with the American public, which deserves more than an ever-shrinking circle of control over what they see, hear and read.”

Background:
April has seen widespread and growing popular opposition to the Paramount/WBD merger. Last week, nearly 4,000 professionals across the film and television industry signed an open letter declaring their opposition to the pending deal.

On Wednesday, Free Press and the American Economic Liberties Project hosted a press call with former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, Writers Guild of America West President Michele Mulroney, former CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta and Oscar-winning director David Borenstein to detail the many reasons this deal should not go through and call on state attorneys general to investigate and oppose the merger. Free Press and allied organizations also delivered 171,000 signed petitions to Rob Bonta’s office, urging the California attorney general to investigate.

On Thursday morning, protesters gathered with New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Congressman Dan Goldman outside WBD’s New York City headquarters, where they urged action to stop this dangerous merger from going forward. In addition, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a statement via social media: “Today, as Warner Bros. and Paramount shareholders vote, New York City is on record: this merger should be stopped.”

“Restructuring the Forest Service in this way will dramatically reduce its ability to conduct scientific research,” said Lois Parshley, research director with Public Citizen’s Climate Program and author of the report. “These relocations will undermine key data collection needed to understand climate change.”

Schultz’s restructuring of the USFS would close two-thirds of the agency’s research stations, disrupting data collection on long-running experiments. The shift will reduce the agency’s ability to collect environmental data, weaken its capacity to track conditions, and hamper research that informs land management decisions.

The agency’s headquarters, which have been located in Washington for more than a century, would be relocated to Salt Lake City, and approximately 260 employees have been informed they must relocate or lose their jobs—a move that echoes the first Trump administration’s relocation of the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colorado.

The two leaders at the center of the evisceration have longstanding conflicts with the USFS. Before Schultz’s appointment to lead the USFS, he worked at the Idaho Forest Group, one of the country’s largest lumber producers. Within months of taking office, Schultz began implementing policies aligned with positions he advocated as a timber industry representative.

Michael Boren, the USDA’s Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, which oversees the agency, once faced a restraining order for allegedly buzzing a U.S. Forest Service trail crew at low altitude in a helicopter. Boren also ran afoul of the government by building a private airstrip on national recreation land and an unauthorized cabin on national forest land.

“As an industry executive, Schultz advocated to reduce environmental reviews and more recently testified to Congress in support of an industry wish list,” said Parshley. “DOGE cuts and an early retirement program drove nearly a fifth of Forest Service employees to leave the agency last year. Fewer people are being asked to do more, at the same time as fire seasons are growing longer and forests are under mounting stress from climate change.”

Read the full report here.

Martin and four other DNC officers have received more than 9,000 emails from nearly 2,000 individuals in the last few days urging them to make public the entire autopsy. Those emailed include DNC Vice Chair Artie Blanco, DNC Vice Chair Shasti Conrad, DNC Vice Chair and Association of State Democratic Committees President Jane Kleeb, and DNC Secretary Jason Rae. They have not replied.

RootsAction brought attention to this issue during the recent DNC meeting in New Orleans, with a mobile billboard out front, flyers handed out by allies, and RootsAction senior strategist and former Democratic nominee for mayor of Buffalo India Walton speaking up and being forcibly removed from the meeting.

A recent NBC News story, “Democrats Want the Full 2024 Election Autopsy Released – No Matter the Findings,” quotes RootsAction national director Norman Solomon about Martin's decision to renege on his promise to release the autopsy report. “There’s a real elitism that is inherent in Martin’s backtrack on releasing the autopsy,” Solomon said.

As the DNC continues to ignore popular demand, Walton comments: “It has been said that those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. We who are prudent would like to know what mistakes were made that thrust us into this nightmare we are living. Now is not a time for saving face. Releasing the autopsy will help us understand what voters really want heading into midterms and the next presidential election. That’s the least we deserve.”

Solomon summed up the DNC leadership’s approach this way: “We learned a lot, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at least doing interviews in 50 states, and now we know a lot more about what went wrong and how to fix it, but we’re not going to tell the thousands and thousands of Democratic candidates around the country what we found out. We’re not going to tell the millions of people who donated money to the Democratic Party candidates in the last few years what we learned.”

While the emails pouring into DNC officials’ inboxes can be edited and augmented by each person sending them, they usually begin like this:

"You conducted a comprehensive autopsy of the last election. It reportedly reached conclusions that many of us had long been warning you about before the election, such as that it would be hard to win while supporting an unpopular genocide.

"The truth is not just embarrassing but also inconvenient to those who want to persist in making the same mistake, in arming Israel, in shifting more and more of our resources into wars that devastate millions of lives.

"But the truth is better than continuing to lose. It would be hard not to blame future defeats on your refusal to allow examination of past defeats.

"Release the full and unedited autopsy right away. Then we can all get to work on doing a much better job in future elections."

RootsAction might be viewed as having a particular credibility to make this demand. On Nov. 14, 2022, long before it became mainstream to urge that President Biden not run for reelection – when there was still time to hold an open primary process to pick a stronger candidate rather than a last-minute fill-in – RootsAction began a campaign it called "Don't Run Joe."

RootsAction was founded in 2011 by two longtime progressive advocates and journalists, Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, and quickly grew, pursuing a fresh approach to defending the public interest and expanding social justice. RootsAction is dedicated to galvanizing people who are committed to economic fairness, equal rights for all, civil liberties, environmental protection – and defunding endless wars.