VIDEO OF THE DAY: Karoline Leavitt snaps as Trump corruption called out
Fed up with being asked question after question about the wildly corrupt "gift" of a multimillion dollar "flying palace" from an authoritarian regime to Donald Trump, Karolin Leavitt lost her cool in a big way. How dare anyone have concerns about blatant criminality playing out before our very eyes?
Take Action: Demand Trump restore bird flu vaccine funding ASAP!
Palestinians gunned down while trying to reach food aid site in Gaza
More than 30 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday as they went to receive food at an aid distribution point set up by an Israeli-backed foundation in Gaza, according to witnesses,, with a hospital run by the Red Cross confirming it was treating many wounded. Witnesses told the Associated Press that Israeli forces had opened fire as they headed toward the aid distribution site in Rafah run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). “There were many martyrs, including women,” Ibrahim Abu Saoud, 40, told the Associated Press. “We were about 300 metres away from the military.” Saoud said he saw many people with gunshot wounds, including a young man who he said had died at the scene. “We weren’t able to help him,” he said.
Take Action: Demand Congress protect our veterans from DOGE cuts!
Iowa mechanic fights to put a spine back in the Senate
Nathan Sage for Senate: The GOP Senate’s utter refusal to do ANYTHING to stop Trump from trampling our rights and the rule of law makes it clear we need to put a spine back in Washington. That’s why mechanic, marine veteran, and local Iowa sports host Nathan Sage is launching a bid to unseat Trump-enabler Joni Ernst, fight for the needs of working-class Americans, and be the xxxxxx against the tides of fascism unleashed by Trump and his cronies. Will you chip in to help jump-start his campaign? A new poll has him leading by two points, 47-45!
So long, Elon: the cuts didn’t go to plan, but you completely shredded your reputation
Marina Hyde, The Guardian: "I can’t believe that Elon Musk is leaving Doge, the government department he named after a tired and basic meme that most of the internet had moved on from around a decade ago. 'As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end,' Musk wrote this week (capital letters: model’s own), 'I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful government spending.' Oh man. At some level you have to salute Donald Trump’s ability to turn even the world’s richest man into an Apprentice candidate who leaves in week four after completely wiping out in the hotdog stand task. Musk arrived in government promising to slash spending by $2tn. He leaves it a mere $1.86tn short of that target, even by his own estimations. Meanwhile, the president’s new tax bill is set to add $2.3tn to the deficit. I imagine Musk thought his government finale would be a spectacular extravaganza – 'you’re welcome, Washington!' – involving 2,000 chainsaw-wielding chorus girls. Instead, it’s a tweet. And yes – we DO all still call them tweets. Ironically, the thing that Musk has been most stunningly effective at slashing is his own reputation. Think about it. He arrived in Trump’s orbit as a somewhat mysterious man, widely regarded as a tech genius, and a titan of the age. He leaves it with vast numbers of people woken up to the fact he’s a weird and creepy breeding fetishist, who desperately pretends to be good at video games, and wasn’t remotely as key to SpaceX or Tesla’s engineering prowess as they’d vaguely thought. Also, with a number of them apparently convinced he had a botched penile implant. Rightly or wrongly convinced – sure. I’m just asking questions. As for where Musk goes next, he’s obviously building a Texan compound for the mothers of his many babies. But, psychologically, Mars would seem to be the answer. After a humiliation this big, only colonising another planet feels like the appropriately sized salve. It doesn’t matter that Mars is an obvious shithole that looks like the least appealing disused quarry on Earth – a place so bleak and empty that if they found one single fossilised flower it would be celebrated like the holy grail, even though the impossible majesty of the Amazon rainforest is right here. But of course, the point of Mars is that it would be the place of Elon, Teslamandias, king of kings. And you know, I feel more confident than ever that we could all look upon his works and despair."
Take Action: Demand NYU stop withholding pro-Palestine student Logan Rozos's diploma!
The only “judicial coup” in this country is by Trump against judges
Michael Tomasky, The New Republic: "So Donald Trump got a temporary win Thursday when a federal appeals courts stayed the decision from the International Court of Trade, which ruled that his tariffs were illegal. Trump aides went on Fox News to crow about their big victory, but they may be back to eating crow soon: The stay was granted on an administrative basis only. In addition, a second federal court has also issued a ruling blocking the tariffs. Meanwhile, the administration suffered another huge legal setback this week when a different federal judge ruled that Harvard University can keep admitting foreign students for the time being, overruling the administration’s efforts to derail the university. Naturally, the attack on Harvard is just phase one in Trump’s attempt to Orbánize, if I may put it that way, American higher education. It’s a nakedly ideological and authoritarian attack, for which the administration—while asking to see the coursework of every international student—is presenting to the courts no actual evidence of wrongdoing, and it will lose. The administration is losing these cases for a simple reason: They’re breaking the damn law. They’re invoking old and obscure laws and insisting that they confer upon them the authority to do things they don’t have the authority to do. They’re trying to stretch other laws and regulations to suit their authoritarian purposes. In other words, these initiatives and the way the Trump administration is going about them—using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act as ostensible legal cover for obviously illegal deportations—are part of a larger plan...they’re all just smaller parts of a broader assault on the rule of law itself. They’re pieces of a puzzle, and the puzzle, once filled in, will show a Republican-dominated legislative branch that has willingly conceded most of its authority, a judicial branch that has been stripped of its own, and a unitary executive—King Donald—with all the power in his hands. So Stephen Miller is right, in a way. There is a judicial coup going on in this country. It’s just that it’s being waged by Trump, Miller, and their gang of rogues against the judges, not the other way around."
The debt economy is eating everyone alive
Casey Wetherbee, Jacobin: "Last month, Billboard reported that around 60 percent of general admission attendees of the music festival Coachella financed their tickets through a “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) payment plan. These programs function as short-term loans, allowing consumers to pay for purchases in a series of installments — often with low or no interest. Now, while this figure was troubling, it was not inherently alarming: in theory, BNPL offers flexible access to short-term credit, and as long as each installment is paid on time, no additional costs are incurred. But that caveat is proving more than hypothetical, as more and more US consumers fail to repay their loans. In its Q1 earnings release, Klarna, one of the largest BNPL providers, reported a net loss of $99 million — up more than 100 percent from the previous year. Klarna also posted a 17 percent year-over-year increase in customer credit losses, meaning that it made more money off of late fees than last year, both in total and as a share of total lending. Much of that growth increase stems from the BNPL industry’s aggressive expansion in the United States, exemplified by Klarna’s partnership with DoorDash in March and the announcement just days ago that Costco would partner with Affirm on purchases above $500. In other words, US consumers are increasingly taking out loans to attend concerts, order takeout, and buy groceries — and are increasingly failing to pay back those loans on time. The troubling trends related to BNPL programs are merely one small symptom of a broader economic sickness, exacerbated by the extreme instability of the first few months of the second Trump administration. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that total household debt increased in Q1 2025 to $18.2 trillion, while aggregate delinquency rates increased as well, with 4.3 percent of outstanding debt in some stage of default. A considerable portion of this phenomenon owes to the resumption of student loans’ inclusion on credit reports, amid an overall crackdown on student debt holders, undoubtedly worsening the debt strain on American families. Of course, Trump’s tariff policy carries with it the promise of a price burden that disproportionately falls upon the millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, and the threat of a recession looms large. The expansion of BNPL debt is just one more frontier in the capitalist quest to commodify as much of the human experience as possible, with predatory corporations continuing to push the envelope under a government that is unwilling to curb their unethical practices. It is not normal to go into debt to order a pizza or attend a concert, yet these companies seek to normalize exactly that. The fact that so many people take the bait, especially those in younger generations, is indicative of the broader economic anxiety and hopelessness that characterizes our broken economy."
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