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Category: Politics

X drums up ad business with threats and intimidation

X drums up ad business with threats and intimidation

The Wall Street Journal reports: Late last year, Verizon Communications got an unusual message from a media company that wanted its business: Spend your ad dollars with us or we’ll see you in court. The threat came from X, the social-media platform that has been struggling to resuscitate its ad business after many corporate advertisers fled over concerns about loosened content-moderation standards following Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase in late 2022. It worked. Verizon, which hadn’t advertised on X since…

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The first mass movement against the Trump regime has begun

The first mass movement against the Trump regime has begun

David A. Graham writes: For months, as Donald Trump has hollowed out the executive branch, defied courts, and worked to suppress dissent, his critics have rightly worried about the lack of visible public opposition. Democratic Party leaders are still obsessing over the 2024 election; outside organizations are fatigued; and mass protests such as those seen in the early months of Trump’s first term have been missing. That began to change over the past few days, as demonstrations arose in Los…

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For Trump, safeguarding Los Angeles was never the point

For Trump, safeguarding Los Angeles was never the point

Michelle Goldberg writes: Since Donald Trump was elected again, I’ve feared one scenario above all others: that he’d call out the military against people protesting his mass deportations, putting America on the road to martial law. Even in my more outlandish imaginings, however, I thought that he’d need more of a pretext to put troops on the streets of an American city — against the wishes of its mayor and governor — than the relatively small protests that broke out…

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The Trump regime is turning ICE raids and protests into reality TV

The Trump regime is turning ICE raids and protests into reality TV

Wired reports: Since the very beginning of the year, President Donald Trump’s administration has worked to build a self-sustaining digital media ecosystem in support of its controversial immigration policies. That system is now working overtime as protests bubble up in Los Angeles and get planned across the country, spawning an onslaught of AI-generated slop and reality television–style content. Protests broke out on Friday shortly afterImmigration and Customs Enforcement officers conducted a series of raids targeting Latino communities in Los Angeles….

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Who will be disappeared next?

Who will be disappeared next?

“We have seen people basically disappeared, without any sense of actual accountability.” Jonathan Blitzer, who covers immigration for The New Yorker, talks about the Trump Administration’s “terrifying” and unprecedented use of the Alien Enemies Act. pic.twitter.com/IIFxItUiDn — The New Yorker (@NewYorker) June 10, 2025

Justice Jackson warns the Supreme Court is manipulating the rules to benefit Trump

Justice Jackson warns the Supreme Court is manipulating the rules to benefit Trump

Ian Millhiser writes: The Social Security Administration v. AFSCME case arises on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the Court decides on an unusually tight schedule, without full briefing or oral argument. Prior to the first Trump administration, the Court rarely granted requests for shadow docket relief — indeed, lawyers were so discouraged from seeking shadow docket decisions that both the Bush and Obama administrations only requested it about once every other year….

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Sudanese people who depend on Starlink don’t have the luxury of hating Elon Musk

Sudanese people who depend on Starlink don’t have the luxury of hating Elon Musk

Yassmin Abdel-Magied writes: Once upon a time, my dream was to work for Elon Musk. I was a young mechanical engineering graduate with hopes of inventing the machines of the future. Unlike other tech billionaires whose inventions existed in boring binary and flat 2D, Musk seemed like a man from a different era, a man after my own heart. He wanted to revolutionize the automobile, travel to space, shift earth and change the world, and he wanted to do it…

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Perceived social breakdown fuels desire for authoritarian leaders, new study shows

Perceived social breakdown fuels desire for authoritarian leaders, new study shows

PsyPost reports: When people perceive society as falling apart, they may become more receptive to authoritarian leaders—those who promise order, control, and certainty. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which provides the first causal evidence linking the perception of societal breakdown, or “anomie,” to support for authoritarianism. According to the researchers, this link is explained by a sequential process: anomie leads people to feel politically powerless, which then creates political…

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America is on the brink of becoming a failed democracy

America is on the brink of becoming a failed democracy

Jonathan Sumption, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Britain, writes: As an observer of democracies and a constitutional lawyer in Britain, I have watched with rising alarm as many Western nations threaten to become failed democracies. They may not yet be like Venezuela, Peru, Hungary, Turkey or Russia. But these countries show what can happen when a democracy dies with a whimper, not with a bang. There may not be tanks on the lawns or mobs in the…

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Trump is making himself the enemy of workers across America

Trump is making himself the enemy of workers across America

CBS News reports: A top California union official was charged with interfering with law enforcement operations after he was arrested during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, according to court documents filed Monday. David Huerta, the president of the California division of the Service Employees International Union, is set to appear in court for an initial appearance on one felony charge of conspiracy to impede an officer after he was arrested Friday during protests over ICE raids. The protests lasted through…

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We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state

We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state

Robert Reich writes: History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes the infrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone. Trump and his regime are rapidly creating such an infrastructure, in five steps: (1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion”, “insurrection”, or “invasion”; (2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly on the use of force (Ice, the FBI, DEA, and the national guard) against civilians…

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A regime that rejects the legitimacy of protest will always accuse protesters of being violent

A regime that rejects the legitimacy of protest will always accuse protesters of being violent

Rebecca Solnit writes: I think maybe it’s begun, the bigger fiercer backlash against the Trump Administration which is itself a violent backlash against every good thing that’s happened over the past several decades – the advance of rights for nature, women, children, indigenous peoples, BIPOC and immigrants/refugees, queer people, trans people, people with disabilities, workers, the right of us all to be free from being poisoned by food, water, air. It’s begun in Los Angeles, the city of angels, a…

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Trump risks turning U.S. military into deadly political force, veterans warn

Trump risks turning U.S. military into deadly political force, veterans warn

The Guardian reports: The Trump administration’s deployment of national guard troops to Los Angeles to intervene in civilian protests in the face of opposition from the Californian governor is a major escalation that risks the politicisation of the US military, armed service veterans are warning. Former top military figures have told the Guardian that the decision to put up to 2,000 troops under federal control and send them into the streets of LA is a violation of the military’s commitment…

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Gov. Newsom unfazed by threats of arrest made by Trump’s deportation goon

Gov. Newsom unfazed by threats of arrest made by Trump’s deportation goon

NBC News reports: California Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against threats of arrest by Trump administration officials, remaining defiant as he oversees clashes between law enforcement agents and protesters in response to immigration raids across Los Angeles while also managing an ongoing power struggle with the federal government. Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, warned Saturday that immigration operations and the presence of federal personnel would continue in the city despite criticism from Democratic leaders who’ve warned it could further escalate…

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Overview and updates on the Abrego Garcia criminal case

Overview and updates on the Abrego Garcia criminal case

  A phony indictment? A corrupt “extradition” order to El Salvador? A prosecutor who won’t abide by corruption and resigns? All of this and so much more when Michael Popok updates you on Armando Abrego Garcia’s arraignment and developments in the Tennessee Federal criminal case, and explains why none of this gets the Trump Administration out of hot water with Judge Xinis in Maryland.

Time for non-violent civil disobedience

Time for non-violent civil disobedience

Robert Reich writes: Trump wants to escalate tensions. He wants a replay of the violence that occurred in the wake of the George Floyd murder — riots, mayhem, and destruction that allow him to escalate his police state further — imposing curfews, closing down parts of Los Angeles, perhaps seeking to subdue the entire state. And beyond. Please do not give him this. Don’t fall into his trap. We cannot be silent in the face of Trump’s dictatorial move. Silence…

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