VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump confronted on Epstein by Scottish press, instantly humiliates himself
Poor Donald Trump. Can't a guy spend $10 million in public money to fly to his Scottish golf course and play a couple rounds without having some reporters badgering him about his pedophile best friend? Luckily for Trump, there's always one solution available: crank the showtunes and run away!
Take Action: Tell the DOJ to stop spreading lies about President Obama!
We do not comply: how do we disrupt the momentum of Trump’s cruelty?
V, The Guardian: "he exterminating force of Project 2025 is plowing through the culture, the government and people’s hearts and bodies like a drunk on a violent tear. We wake each morning, holding our breath to bear witness to the new devastation: PBS and NPR defunded, cuts to the fight against human trafficking, Medicaid gone for millions, Ice working to surveil critics, tons of food for the poor ordered burned and wasted. The momentum of cruelty always feels inevitable. Cruelty is by definition 'a callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain." For those of us who have suffered physical, political, racial and emotional abuse, it feels like a familiar steamroller of violence. We only have to witness the cries of parents being separated from their children, men screaming out for 'libertad' from cages in Everglades detention center (AKA Alligator Alcatraz), non-violent protesters beaten for trying to stop a genocide, to be frozen in that same incapacitating dread and fear. What is the antidote to this destructive environment of mendacity possessing us now with fear, ennui and self-mutilating rage? This tyrannical white supremacist landscape is erasing our sense of existence and meaning. Daily forms of rebellion birth us back into our bodies and our purpose. Non-compliance is art, as art is meant to defy the status quo, question the givens, expand the boundaries of knowing and freedom. And as you courageously make your mark of refusal, you carve a path for others to be brave. Non-compliance is praxis, stretching and transforming the muscles of our discontent into impactful and embodied action. Meena Jagannath, a movement lawyer, is gathering artists and activists in salons to deepen our collective investigation and imaginative co-creation. She told me: 'Our charge in these times is to support each other in building protagonism – a sense that we have agency to contest fascist narratives about how the world is and should be. It needs to be a collective, creative and responsive process that takes in what’s going out there and alchemizes it into a more expansive imagination of what could and should be.' So in a nod to the late great Mary Oliver, I ask you, what is the one precious, wild creative act you are doing to impede this nightmare?
Take Action: Demand Congress investigate Trump's cuts to FEMA and the Weather Service!
Purple state Democrat Jonathan Nez takes on one of Trump’s most fanatical servants
Jonathan Nez for Congress: Former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez is launching his campaign to knock Freedom Caucus loony Eli Crane out of Congress. Crane, a man who calls Matt Gaetz "brother," is one of the most dangerous Republicans in Congress and a direct threat to our democracy: he still denies the 2020 election to this day and helped organize "poll watcher" goons to interfere in the 2024 election. Will you help make history by chipping in to elect the first Indigenous congressman from Arizona and retake control of Congress from Trump’s GOP enablers?
ICE’s deportation machine runs on private security
Katya Schwenk, Jacobin: "Some of the world’s largest private security firms are making millions by aiding Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) mass deportations — and now that the Trump administration’s megabill has granted ICE a multibillion-dollar windfall, they are lining up for an even bigger cut. That includes private equity–backed Allied Universal, the private security giant and the nation’s third-largest private employer, which provides vehicles and armed security guards to ICE through its subsidiary, G4S Secure Solutions. Compared to other immigration detention vendors — like the private firms building and operating so-called “Alligator Alcatraz,” President Donald Trump’s new Florida detention camp, which will cost an estimated $450 million a year — Allied Universal and the myriad security firms that provide “transportation” services and private security guards to ICE have faced less scrutiny. Yet they are a keystone of ICE’s expanding deportation machine, providing vehicles and personnel to transport immigrants to deportation flights and far-flung detention centers. In some cases, ICE’s private security guards have been accused of arresting people themselves, in violation of federal law. Many of these companies have long histories of abuse, from creating dangerous conditions in holding areas to allegedly sexually abusing detainees. Last year, a father and son — both asylum seekers — who were separated from each other for years during the Trump administration filed a lawsuit against MVM, Inc., a private security company, for transporting “thousands of abducted children away from their parents,” attorneys wrote in the case. Its armed guards escorted children into 'unmarked cars' and onto planes, they wrote, 'despite grave warnings that this practice inflicted severe mental suffering on parents and children.' In 2018, MVM admitted that it had held children overnight in a vacant building, in violation of its contract with ICE. Even after that revelation, and other concerns about MVM’s handling of children in its custody, the company was granted additional federal contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. Among other things, the case raised concerns about whether the private transportation officers had received proper training: 'There was no requirement that the individual be trained in childcare or trauma-informed services or possess other appropriate experiences unique to vulnerable children, much less abducted children,' the complaint in the case says. 'As we allege, we don’t believe that the people the contractor was employing to transport children were properly equipped for that role,' Van Houten Harper, one of the attorneys litigating the case, told the Lever. This is a frequent concern raised about the private security guards that ICE and other federal immigration authorities use to transport migrants, many of whom have been accused of misconduct over the years. One guard with private security contractor, New York–based ISS Action, Inc., was accused in a 2022 lawsuit of sexually assaulting a minor in Customs and Border Protection’s custody in McAllen, Texas, court records show. Many of these contractors are backed by private equity, including G4S — Allied Universal is backed in part by Canadian private equity firm CDPQ — and Acuity International, which is partially backed by DC Capital Partners. The fact that these vendors are privately held (unlike private prison firms such as GEO Group or CoreCivic, which are public companies) further shields them from public scrutiny and disclosure."
Take Action: Protect the Endangered Species Act from Trump and GOP attacks!
Israel’s food points are not just death traps — they’re an alibi for the starvation of Gaza
Alex de Waal, The Guardian: "hen mass starvation grips a community, something rare and terrible occurs. Starvation is not only the biological phenomenon of the body wasting away. It’s also the death rattle of society. Famine is the sight of people scavenging for food in a garbage heap. It’s a woman cooking in secret, hiding food from her starving cousins. It’s a family selling its grandmother’s jewellery for a single meal, their faces blank and emotionless, their eyes glazed. This is the degradation, the humiliation, the shame – and, yes, the dehumanisation – that happens when human beings scrabble for food like animals. This is a reality that no statistics can capture. And the methods for measuring food emergencies and assigning them grades – “famine” being the worst – break down when society breaks down in this way. But just as an experienced physician can diagnose a fever without having to send blood samples to the laboratory, veteran humanitarian workers, who witnessed the depths of human suffering in Biafra in 1969 or in Ethiopia in 1984, recognise these symptoms when they see them. And they see it in Gaza today. Turn to the statements of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – the US and Israel-backed organisation that began operating in May – and you enter a different world. The GHF presents itself as a professional, compassionate operation designed for the 21st century. You will see images of order and efficiency, and a proud announcement that it delivered more than 2m meals yesterday from its four 'secure distribution sites.' But that rosy picture doesn’t stand even the simplest scrutiny. There are four reasons why it’s at best an improvisation by amateurs and at worst a cover for the crime of ongoing mass starvation. First, the numbers just don’t add up. The GHF rations may have slowed the march of starvation, but not by much. Second, you can’t relieve famine by numbers alone. The GHF system is like standing at the edge of a big pond and feeding the fish by throwing breadcrumbs. Who gets to eat its rations? Third, the assistance must be designed for what people really need. Top of the list are specialised foods to care for malnourished children who cannot consume regular meals, such as Plumpy’Nut, a ready-to-use therapeutic food. The GHF ration box typically contains flour, pasta, tahini, cooking oil, rice and chickpeas or lentils. No baby food. No Plumpy’Nut. And it has no trained nurses or nutritionists in the community to actually provide therapeutic care to starving children. And last and most tellingly, a truly humanitarian operation supports the afflicted people, respecting the dignity of those in need, working with the communities. The GHF, essentially, does the opposite: it humiliates and undermines. The social breakdown that we are witnessing, the degrading of human beings, is not a byproduct of the harm that Israel is inflicting. That’s the central element of the crime: destroying Palestinian society. The government of Israel shows no indication that it cares in the slightest whether Palestinians live or die. It wants to avoid the stigma of being accused of starvation and genocide, and the GHF is its current alibi. Let’s not be fooled."
Trump's "South Park" problem
Calder McHugh, POLITICO: "They said last year they were done with Donald Trump. They didn’t know what more they could say about him. But in the return to the airwaves of Comedy Central stalwart South Park — the first episode since March 2023 — the creators of the irreverent, long-running cartoon series just couldn’t resist. Trump is skewered for his connections to Jeffrey Epstein, and he is depicted as a man who has lined the walls of the White House with naked photos of himself. He’s also portrayed as being in a relationship with the Devil, who is concerned Trump is starting to act a lot like one of his former lovers, Saddam Hussein. 'It’s weird that whenever [the Epstein list] comes up, you just tell everyone to relax,' the Devil tells Trump. It’s the latest sign that Trump has lost control of the Epstein narrative, and that the saga has broken Washington containment and permeated deep into popular culture. That makes it the worst kind of White House mess. The show — which isn’t explicitly ideological and is more anti-establishment in tone, often delighting in puncturing political correctness — has gone after Trump before. But not so clearly or directly. Its latest attack on the president puts it in the company of many other comedians or online influencers who have been teeing off on Trump over Epstein in recent weeks — prima facie evidence that Trump has misread the priorities of the young men who powered him back into office. When Trump swept back into office, he did so in large part by convincing often non-political young voters to head to the polls and pull the lever for him. Last fall, he was ubiquitous on podcasts and streams that appeal to many of those voters — the kind where the subject matter had ostensibly nothing to do with politics. Trump seemed to understand from decades of experience in front of a camera how to talk about anything and everything. He was unafraid of long, unscripted media hits. Suddenly, though, he’s sounding just like the enemies he vanquished. Democrats are naturally seizing on his missteps, but the real problem is the issue has extended far beyond the D.C. universe, where it is animating those whose comprehension of the government is marked by vague distrust. The Epstein affair is now a cultural phenomenon, rather than purely political one. In 2024, Trump seemed to have mastered the art of talking to and connecting with a burgeoning online group of young, disaffected Americans. Now we’re seeing there are limits to his control of these largely cultural spaces. As comedians known for their edginess continue to attack him, it’s a sign that he’s beginning to resemble so many other politicians."
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