From California to Chicago, the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino is seen making race-based arrests

From California to Chicago, the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino is seen making race-based arrests

Chicago Sun-Times reports: On the morning of Jan. 7, Jesús Ramírez and other day laborers huddled in a Home Depot parking lot in Bakersfield, California, hoping for work. Suddenly, they were surrounded by U.S. Homeland Security vehicles. One agent demanded Ramírez show his papers. When he pulled out his wallet, the agent “snatched” it and took his ID without asking questions, Ramírez said. “It was clear to me the agents did not know who I was,” Ramírez, 64, said in…

Read More Read More

Israel heavily bombs Gaza in major ceasefire violation

Israel heavily bombs Gaza in major ceasefire violation

Middle East Eye reports: Heavy Israeli bombing rocked the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing at least 15 Palestinians, in a major violation of the ceasefire. More than 100 air strikes were reported in Rafah and Khan Younis in the south, Jabalia in the north, and parts of central Gaza. Among the sites hit were a cafe, a mobile phone charging station, a group of journalists and a house sheltering displaced people. The Israeli military said the strikes were in response…

Read More Read More

Wokeness is alive and well — on the right

Wokeness is alive and well — on the right

  Language policing. Cancel culture. Victimhood contests and cultural grievances. Despite attacking the left for partaking in such practices, there’s an emerging set of individuals on the right who have became exactly what they’ve criticized. Meet the woke right.

Between sleep and awareness are many types of liminal states

Between sleep and awareness are many types of liminal states

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: The pillow is cold against your cheek. Your upstairs neighbor creaks across the ceiling. You close your eyes; shadows and light dance across your vision. A cat sniffs at a piece of cheese. Dots fall into a lake. All this feels very normal and fine, even though you don’t own a cat and you’re nowhere near a lake. You’ve started your journey into sleep, the cryptic state that you and most other animals need in some form…

Read More Read More

‘No Kings’ protests against Trump bring a street party vibe to America’s fictitious ‘war zones’

‘No Kings’ protests against Trump bring a street party vibe to America’s fictitious ‘war zones’

The Associated Press reports: Protesting the direction of the country under President Donald Trump, people gathered Saturday in the nation’s capital and communities big and small across the U.S. for “No Kings” demonstrations that the president’s Republican Party disparaged as “Hate America” rallies. With signs such as “Nothing is more patriotic than protesting” or “Resist Fascism,” in many places the events looked more like a street party. There were marching bands, a huge banner with the U.S. Constitution’s “We The…

Read More Read More

‘This is not the end, just the beginning’: Sen. Bernie Sanders addresses No Kings rally in DC

‘This is not the end, just the beginning’: Sen. Bernie Sanders addresses No Kings rally in DC

  “Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, called these rallies ‘hate America’ events. Boy, does he have it wrong. Millions of Americans are coming out today not because they hate America. We’re here because we love America. We’re here because we’re going to do everything we can to honor the sacrifices of millions of men and women who over the last 250 years fought and sometimes died to defend our democracy and our freedoms.”

Unfettered and unaccountable: How Trump is building a violent, shadowy federal police force

Unfettered and unaccountable: How Trump is building a violent, shadowy federal police force

By J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam This story was originally published by ProPublica When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system. Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way…

Read More Read More

Russ Vought, the king of the shutdown

Russ Vought, the king of the shutdown

Politico reports: In an administration full of disruptors, Russ Vought is a different beast. Vought, as head of the White House’s budget arm, has assembled one of the most powerful and exacting teams in Washington, all aimed at slashing the federal bureaucracy and ensuring what’s left bends to the administration’s will. He has increased the number of policy lieutenants typically operating at the Office of Management and Budget and supercharged their mandate to ensure White House priorities are pushed into…

Read More Read More

Public health professor warns the Trump’s ‘eugenics’ policy echoes Nazism

Public health professor warns the Trump’s ‘eugenics’ policy echoes Nazism

The Daily Beast reports: An eminent ER doctor and health policy expert has warned that President Donald Trump’s government shutdown talk about “deserving” patients mirrors a “eugenics” policy adopted by the Nazis. The shutdown is about to enter its fourth week after Congress failed to pass full-year funding. The White House and Speaker Mike Johnson are demanding spending cuts and immigration concessions, while Senate Democrats insist on extending ACA subsidies and undoing the summer healthcare cuts before reopening agencies. Dr….

Read More Read More

Small businesses are being crushed by Trump’s tariffs. Economists say it’s a warning for the economy

Small businesses are being crushed by Trump’s tariffs. Economists say it’s a warning for the economy

CNBC reports: Viresh Varma can’t sleep. The CEO of AV Universal Corp., a small footwear company that sells through retailers like Macy’s, Nordstrom and DSW, said he needed to take out a $250,000 loan to pay his tariff bill on a container of shoes he imported from India for the holiday shopping season. Varma didn’t have the cash on hand to pay the duties, which he said used to be around $7,500 for a similar-sized container before President Donald Trump’s…

Read More Read More

There are more of us than there are of them

There are more of us than there are of them

Garrett Graff writes: It’s easy to lose sight of how weak this administration’s popular support actually is. Two-thirds of Americans are not Trump voters — and even many who did support him are beginning to question or turn against what it’s like to live in Donald Trump’s America. Many days it seems like Trump is on an unstoppable roll; he’s not. He is historically unpopular. The percent of Americans saying the country is on “the wrong track” has hit a…

Read More Read More

In revolutionary times, it is the talent to stir public imagination that is at the heart of politics

In revolutionary times, it is the talent to stir public imagination that is at the heart of politics

Ivan Krastev writes: Late in life, the 18th-century French liberal thinker Abbé Sieyès was asked what he had done during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. He replied, “I survived it.” Reflecting on Sieyès, Michael Ignatieff counsels that it is through survival that liberals can withstand revolutionary times. They need to work hard to remain politically relevant, so that once the revolution has run its course (if they are lucky enough to have survived it), they can try to preserve…

Read More Read More

Judges have learned to mistrust the Trump DOJ

Judges have learned to mistrust the Trump DOJ

Politico’s West Wing Playbook reports: The Trump administration’s strained relationship with federal courts began as cracks in a windshield: refusing to identify the true head of DOGE; suggesting that a judge’s oral ruling in an emergency case wasn’t binding; dismissing the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in an apparent quid pro quo over immigration policy. Nine months into President Donald Trump’s second term, however, those cracks have spread across the glass. Judges are routinely skeptical of…

Read More Read More