Tell the media to call out special counsel Robert Hur’s lies about Biden!

Daily Dose of Democracy:

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump team crashes and burns in disastrous clash with judge
The task of trying to convince Judge Merchan that Donald Trump shouldn't be punished for violating his gag order no less than ten (10!) times since it was handed down proved impossible for the silly saps who made the extremely poor decision to defend the disgraced ex-president. You know it's going great when the judge tells you that you're "losing all credibility" as an attorney.

Take Action: Demand Clarence Thomas recuse himself from Trump’s disqualification case!

US bans noncompete agreements in HUGE win for American workers
The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own. This is a HUGE, HUGE win for American workers, who now have the freedom to leave abusive or exploitative workplaces at their leisure. Chair Lina Khan remarked that the stories she'd heard from workers — the FTC received 26,000 public comments — "pointed to the basic reality of how robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms." It is a travesty that American corporations have been able to hold their workers hostage for so long. Remember, you'd never, ever, EVER see transformative change like this under a Republican administration, which we can only assume would try to reinstate state-sanctioned indentured servitude at the first possible opportunity.

Take Action: Tell the Biden administration to ban deep sea mining now!

New report exposes GOP’s abortion catastrophe
Kristin Lyerly for Wisconsin: A new AP report describes in chilling detail how countless Americans across the country are being forced to endure agonizing pain and psychological trauma as their pregnancy complications are left untreated by hospital staff too scared of GOP abortion bans to treat them. This has to stop — and the best way to do that is to send people like Dr. Kristin Lyerly to Congress. Dr. Lyerly is ready to take her fight for reproductive rights to Congress, bringing years of OB/GYN experience to a legislative body dominated by men who will never experience pregnancy and are supremely unqualified to write legislation governing human bodies. But she can’t get there alone. Will you chip in to send Dr. Kristin Lyerly to Congress to restore Roe v. Wade and end this national nightmare?

Senate passes Ukraine aid, Israel funding, and TikTok crackdown, sending bill to President Biden's desk
The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a $95 billion aid package, including $60 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion in assistance to Israel and humanitarian relief in Gaza, and $8 billion for security in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific. Also tucked into the omnibus bill was a crackdown on the social media app TikTok over concerns of covert surveillance of Americans by China...just days after the Senate reauthorized Section 702 of the FISA act, which Sen. Ron Wyden has called "one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history." The passage of yesterday's bipartisan package was an embarrassing defeat for Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, who worked for months to obstruct aid to Ukraine on behalf of what increasingly appears to be Russian patrons.

Take Action: Tell the media to stop giving Trump a free pass!

"It's just like McCarthyism": NYU students and faculty push back on protest crackdown
The day after 120 protestors were arrested at NYU, students and faculty alike walked out of their classrooms to call out alleged lies from the administration used to suppress peaceful political protest over the ongoing slaughter and starvation of Palestinians by the Israeli military and its American patrons. While the university and the NYPD allege "disorderly, disruptive, and antagonizing behavior" and "intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents," the protestors told a very different story. "I was actually there at the moment that, supposedly, students stormed the plaza — and it actually seemed quite orderly to me," said Jon Ritter, Clinical Professor of Art History at NYU, while Lisa Duggan, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, said that the allegations of antisemitism are "disingenuous," comparing it to the way that Republicans weaponize critical race theory or anti-trans hysteria. "It’s just like McCarthyism…from the top down, dissent is deliberately misdescribed as threatening in order to excuse an attempt to control." Campus protests continued to erupt around the nation as university administrators have called in the cops and dealt out heavy-handed punishments, including evictions, to silence the voice of young people. And if young people love anything, it's being told they can't do something. Let us know how that works out for ya!

Take Action: Tell news networks to stop hiring election deniers!

National Enquirer publisher says he was "eyes and ears" of 2016 campaign
During Donald Trump's porn star hush money trial on Tuesday, David Pecker gave explosive testimony about his role in the MAGA cult leader's 2016 election campaign. "They asked me what can I do – and what my magazines could do — to help the [election] campaign … I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr. Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents, and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears because I know that the Trump Organization had a very small staff," said Pecker, who admitted to helping suppress harmful stories and even arranged to purchase the silence of a doorman with dirt on Donald. Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo pointed out that Pecker's use of the "catch-and-kill" story suppression method was also deployed following the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tapes in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women because, as he put it, "when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything." The Trump team feared that any negative stories would harm their efforts to paint the Hollywood Access tape comments as little more than locker room talk. "This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures — to silence people with something bad to say about his behavior. It was election fraud, pure and simple!" Colangelo told the jury. That. Checks. Out.

Mass graves in Gaza show victims’ hands were tied, says UN rights office
The exhumation of a mass grave at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis revealed that some of the 283 victims had been executed with their hands tied. "Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes," said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. More victims with their hands tied were found in a similar mass grave at the al-Shifa Hospital complex. Both hospitals had been the target of Israeli military operations. UN High Commissioner Volker Türk has called for an independent investigation and decried the ongoing indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of civilians. "Every 10 minutes a child is killed or wounded. They are protected under the laws of war, and yet they are ones who are disproportionately paying the ultimate price in this war...The latest images of a premature child taken from the womb of her dying mother, of the adjacent two houses where 15 children and five women were killed, this is beyond warfare," said Türk, referencing an April 19 airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza.

Trump finally meets his match as his campaign craters
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen: There it is.

Justice Department pays $138 million over FBI failures in Larry Nassar case
The FBI has finally paid some measure of dues for its shocking mismanagement of the investigation into serial sexual predator Larry Nassar, the US Gymnastics doctor who freely molested hundreds of patients for years, despite dozens of documented accusations and complaints. The DOJ found the FBI mishandled the case against Nassar and repeatedly failed to respond to the allegations with "the utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved and required." The DOJ also said in its July 2021 report that the FBI made numerous and fundamental errors and violated multiple policies along the way. The settlement with the FBI comes more than two years after USA Gymnastics agreed to pay hundreds of Nassar's female survivors $380 million to settle their claims.

David Pecker says he published attacks on Ted Cruz at the request of Trump's personal fixer
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker revealed during Donald Trump's ongoing criminal trial that he planted numerous stories against the serially indicted fraudster's political opponents during the 2016 election, including a fake photo of Ted Cruz's father Rafael alongside Lee Harvey Oswald and a made-up accusation that surgeon Ben Carson had accidentally left a sponge in someone's brain on the operating table. How predictable that Trump, who famously coined the phrase "fake news," was in fact running a literal fake news operation.

Israeli defense minister rebukes US for sanctioning IDF unit accused of heinous crimes: "No one in the world will teach us what morality is"
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited the members of the notorious 97th Netzah Yehuda Battalion of the Kfir Brigade, who are facing sanctions from the US government for a long rap sheet of war crimes dating back to 2015. Gallant essentially endorsed the unit's actions by declaring, "No one in the world will teach us what morality is and what norms are." The battalion stands accused of torture, physical assault, sexual assault, and shooting and killing unarmed civilians. It is extremely disturbing to hear this kind of nihilistic, violent rhetoric from one of the top cabinet members of a close military ally and raises serious questions about how deeply these kinds of sentiments pervade the Israeli military.

Squad member Summer Lee cruises to primary victory despite interference from GOP billionaire
Pittsburgh-area Rep. Summer Lee crushed her centrist primary opponent by 21 points despite the latter's support from the Moderate PAC, a slush fund for right-wing billionaires to try to topple progressive Democrats and replace them with right-wing "centrists." Lee's outspoken support for Palestinian human rights and demands for a ceasefire in the Gaza War earned her the ire of centrist and right-wing political groups like AIPAC, but she refused to back down or compromise her ideals — and the people of Pittsburgh rewarded her. "We won’t be ashamed and put our heads down when we say that we want no more wars, when we say that people deserve dignity and human rights and self-determination whether they are Jewish or Muslim or Black or white or if they’re in Gaza or in Pakistan or in Haiti!" declared Lee in her victory speech.