Almost everyone who claims to care about democracy agrees that Citizen United was a terrible decision, and that getting big corporate money out of politics has to be a priority.
But most politicians, like Gov. Gavin Newsom, wring their hands and say: Nothing we can do. The Supreme Court has ruled.
But that might not be true.
Robert Reich, public policy professor at Berkeley and former secretary of labor, makes a good point (that had never occurred to me) in a substack post. He points out that corporations are creatures of the states, not the federal government.
Corporations are legal entities that have extensive rights, including the right to do business, to hire and fire people, to donate money … many of the things human beings can do. By creating a corporation, business people can avoid personal liability for a wide range of actions.
But those rights are entirely the purview of the state that grants the corporate license—and, Reich says, states can place any restrictions they want on those licenses.
For example, they could withhold the right to make political contributions.
When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning.
Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.
Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.
Of course, corporations can move their charters; lots of them already incorporate in Delaware, which has limited transparency and low taxes. But if a Delaware corporation wants to do business in California, and California denies corporations the right to spend money on politics, that corporation has to comply.
Maybe that’s a good issue for the Newsom for President campaign. He could start right here at home; the Legislature will be back in session in January.
After a series of hearings and a few amendments, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Rich Family Zoning Plan is headed for the Board of Supes Tuesday/2—and immediately, his new pick for D4 supervisor, Alan Wong, will be facing a tough vote
I called and texted Wong Sunday afternoon, but he hasn’t responded. I get that; his phone must be blowing up. And unlike Lurie’s previous pick, Wong has a lot of political experience; he’s not likely to stir up trouble for the mayor the same day his appointment is announced.
But he only has one free day before he has to cast a vote that could have a huge impact on his political future.
But the SFMTA staff argues that the additional private vehicles haven’t slowed transit service (yet), and recommends that “all day operations by service providers” be allowed to continue and expand.
The full SFMTA Board will hear a presentation on the project Tuesday/2, and it’s projected to come up around 4pm. Car-free Market advocates are encouraging people to show up and present public testimony. The meeting’s at City Hall Room 400.
48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.
This past Sunday I listened to a well-known Democratic influencer speak about the state of the country, particularly as it pertains to Donald Trump and the Republican party.
I agreed with his appraisal of Trump and the Republicans. His descriptions such as sociopath and psychopath work for me; I don’t think they’re hyperbole. But what struck me was a total lack of interest in looking at the mote in the eye of the Democratic party. No person, no organization, and no system that needs to reverse its fortunes can do so without looking in the mirror.
At one point he referred to George Lakoff’s description of the Republican party as the critical father and the Democratic party as the nurturing mother. I remember in the 1990’s when that seemed so astute, and perhaps at that time it was. But it isn’t now. Over the years the Republican party went from critical to abusive; the Democratic party became a mom standing outside the door while the abuse was happening, doing little to stop it, then offering the abused child milk and cookies when the beating was over.
Guess which one of those the abused child grows up to detest more?
One thing I will say about the Republicans; they’re willing to change on a dime if that’s what it would take to win. That’s hardly a compliment, just merely a statement about their corporate MO. More Republicans come from the business world, where if something isn’t selling on Wednesday then you’d better change something by Friday. And if you don’t, the business could shut down by Monday.
The Democrats simply do what they do. If things aren’t working on Wednesday, then you do them again on Friday. And if a disaster occurs on Monday, you just continue in zombie form. The mere mention of fundamental change is considered risky, critical, and unworthy of a “real Democrat.” The party is big on truth-tellers, as long as they’re talking truth about the other side.
The problem with the Democratic party is not just the Republicans. The problem with the Democratic party is that it stopped offering the American people a cohesive alternative to what Republicans were selling. Unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States was at one point the party’s heart and backbone. Democrats of old stood up to corporate overlords: they didn’t play footsies under the table with them. And if the overlords didn’t like, no big deal. Remember FDR’s response to his gilded critics? “I welcome their hatred.”
Democrats in those days didn’t care what rich donors thought of them – partly because prior to the Koch brothers they didn’t have to, but also because it would have been against their principles to do so. Keep that word in mind: principles. The Democratic party, starting mainly in the 1990’s, decided we could compete with the Republicans for the big boy money if we simply made enough deals with the big boys. As a party, the Democrats went from “We feel your pain and we’re here for you no matter what,” to “We feel your pain, and we’ll do whatever we can to help you up as long as it doesn’t threaten our donor base.” The party took the big money, thinking it could have it both ways. Yet too often, it simply could not. The party sacrificed its spine at the expense of its principles. One has to ask “What did that get us?” The answer, of course, is that it got us two terms of Donald Trump.
You can’t just blame the thief who came in during the night, if you opened every window and door and then went to sleep.
A perfect example, of course, is Obamacare. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said universal health care would be the top priority during his first term. Once he got into office, however, insurance companies clearly had a talk with him: You can go this far, but no further. There was to be no more mention of universal coverage or a public option.
What emerged was the Affordable Care Act. Yes it helped a lot of people, but none so much as the insurance companies themselves. It still left tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured. It still left over a million people rationing their insulin. It still left over half of our bankruptcies, medical bankruptcies. It still left many people mad.
I remember a young man being forcibly removed from a Congressional hearing on health care because he kept shouting out, Public Option! In the 2010 midterms, Obama told Democratic candidates he wouldn’t campaign for them if they mentioned the phrase. Such was the new Democratic party. Little compromises here and little compromises there.
In the first two years of both Obama’s and Biden’s presidency, both men had a trifecta. The House and Senate were theirs. Obama could have passed universal healthcare in his first two years, and Biden could have repealed that 2017 Trump tax cut in his first two years in office (immediately putting back in the middle class cuts). No one thing has done more to create our obscene income inequality – the $50T transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top .001 per cent – than that tax cut. Blaming Republicans for “cutting needed services so they could pay for a tax cut for billionaires” was really something this year, when for the first two years of Biden’s term the Democrats could have gotten rid of the damn thing themselves.
Compromise your principles a little here, a little more there, and over time you’ve lost your moral authority. You can do a lot for people, but what they’ll remember is what you didn’t do.
All this happened because the neoliberal corporatists – once treated by the party with appropriate and healthy skepticism – came to be seen as the grown-ups who were going save it. They would be the experts in the room, arguing that you had to run the party like a business. They didn’t listen too much to those they considered the “riff raff” in the party, who in their minds weren’t sophisticated enough to navigate real power. They huddled in safe spaces like the Hamptons and Sun Valley, knowing nothing, not even a clue, about real lives lived by people outside their enclaves. I mentioned at a bigwig fundraiser once that we’d probably get some good advice if we were to ask a few questions of the servers. I remember being looked at like I had two heads. Such were the new breed of neoliberal donors and the operatives they trained to serve them. They posed as saviors and clearly thought that they were. In fact they were invaders.
Under the sway of this elite, the party lost touch with its core principles. Losing touch with its core principles, it began to lose touch with its base. “America won’t have to worry about a fascist takeover,” said President Franklin Roosevelt, “as long as democracy delivers on its promises.” Too often Roosevelt’s own party didn’t heed those words, and now we are where we are.
After the 2024 elections, I ran for Chair of the DNC. I did so because of all I had seen, all I experienced, and what I could see coming down the road. I knew the culture of the party would need to change, were it to survive as a powerful political force. I had seen the corruption inside the belly of the beast, and I knew it had to be expunged if the party was to emerge victorious in the future.
The DNC convention to elect its next Chair was mind boggling. Having won the Presidency again, Trump was putting together his next administration. And to me the dark clouds were looming. This wasn’t a conservative government that was on its way in, but a neo-fascist coup that was revving up to destroy our government. How anyone could have not seen this even then, I can’t imagine. Yet the convention was more like a frat party than a wake. People didn’t seem to me to register the horror that to me matched the moment. I expected us to at least be somber. But there was more singing and dancing than there was serious conversation. I saw corruption at the top, cluelessness in the middle, and childishness at the bottom. It’s not that I didn’t encounter individuals who saw through the charade, because I did. But no one seemed willing to counter the establishment narrative, that “Basically, it’s okay. We just need to make sure we win next time.” Obviously it wasn’t okay, and it’s not okay. Just blaming Republicans is not the answer.
The other compromise with ethics, integrity, and most importantly democracy that the Democratic party engaged in was with free and fair primary elections. Everyone knows by now that the DNC tipped the scales in favor of Hillary in the 2016 primaries. The proverbial grown-ups I mentioned earlier – the new iteration of Tammany Hall party bosses – considered Bernie Sanders an unacceptable choice.
It’s important to remember the traditional, more ethical role of a political party. First of all, parties are not mentioned in the Constitution; their outsized power today is preposterous. George Washington warned in his Farewell Address that they could form “factions of men” more loyal to their party than to their country. Our second President, John Adams, considered them the biggest threat to our democracy.
And in the words of Thomas Jefferson, “The only safe repository for power is in the hands of the people.” Nothing should ever be considered a more important American creed. A party’s appropriate role is to stand in the background until the voters have chosen the party’s nominee. Only then are they to step in and help that person win.
Millions of volunteers, mainly young people, came out to support Bernie in 2016, yet the party bosses simply weren’t having it. If nothing else worked, their system of super-delegates would make sure voters wouldn’t have a chance to make what the bosses considered an unwise decision. Those voters used to be called their base, by the way.
If the DNC hadn’t put their finger on the scales that year, I don’t know who would have won the election, Hillary or Bernie. But I do know this. Millions of Democrats wouldn’t have been in a foul mood that year. The general election would have had a much different energy and I don’t think Trump would have won.
After the 2016 election, a group of Bernie supporters sued the DNC for unfair practices. Incredibly, the DNC’s defense was “Hey, we don’t owe people fairness! We’re a private corporation!” Yes, they’re a private corporation but they perform a quasi-governmental function; if they don’t play fairly they are betraying the public. Even more incredibly, the DNC won the case!
At that point, all constraints were removed. In 2020 – and I would know – the party recognized, however begrudgingly, its responsibility to let any FEC registered candidate have a chance to present their message to the public. But by 2024, they figured to hell with that. A small group of White House insiders decided that there would be no primary, that the threat Trump posed to our country was so great that the only way to save democracy was to suppress it. This was far too important a decision to leave in the hands of the people!
The DNC put out the word: Biden would be the candidate, and that was that. No other voices would be heard, or even tolerated. “We will all line up and support the President.” I remember standing at the baggage carousel at the airport in Charleston, South Carolina, reading on my phone that DNC Chairman Jaimie Harrison had just said, “helping Joe Biden win is our top priority,” when the primary race had hardly even started. I thought, “Wow, that’s not the role of the party Chair to say that.” I had no idea what was coming.
Partnering with their media cohorts, the primary was effectively cancelled but not cancelled. It reminded me of the Soviet Union, when the party would brag of free elections yet they themselves had chosen the candidates. No lies, no infiltration, no shaming was too low to go in the effort to peripheralize whoever’s voice they intended to shut out. When fate stepped in and President Biden gave a disastrous debate performance, the bosses simply appointed his successor. Yes, there could have been a blitz primary; many supported it. And yes, it could have been taken to the floor of a convention. It would have actually been very exciting, and a boost of energy we sorely needed.
Don’t let anyone tell you the problem was that the President should have gotten out sooner. They’re all saying that now simply to cover their own asses. It should not have mattered whether or not the President was still running. Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy Sr. ran against Lyndon Johnson, and McCarthy doing so well in New Hampshire is what made Johnson drop out. “We don’t have a primary when there’s an incumbent President” was just one of the many gaslights put on the internet, constantly repeated, and allowed to roam freely in people’s heads.
Rehashing history is not my intent. My concern is not with the past but with the future. Do I want the Democrats to win next year? I want them tocrush it. Do I want a Democratic presidential candidate to win in 2028? I want him or her to crush it. But it won’t happen if the party doesn’t reclaim its principles, because without them it lacks what Martin Luther King Jr. called “cosmic companionship.” There is more to win than individual elections; we have to win the hearts and minds of people who no longer trust we will do what we say. Democrats will only win those voters if we return to our core: an unequivocal dedication to things that actually serve the average American. And to a dedication to the democratic process. Just complaining about Trump won’t win the future for the Democrats. Looking at ourselves, and cleaning our own house, is the only power great enough to override the darkness.
I agree with Sunday’s speaker that the crisis we face now is as great as any in our nation’s history. For those of us who see in the Trump administration a neo-fascist threat to democracy, nothing could be more important than that the Democratic party be strong. But the needed strengthening will not occur without some brutal self-awareness and acknowledgements of the party’s defects. We won’t be able to help course-correct the country if we’re not willing to course-correct ourselves. When and if we do, everything will change. If we recognize the mistakes we made, with humility and sincerity, heeding the call to make good on democracy’s promises and our responsibility to its principles, then the future will be ours.
Experienced phonebankers needed: Let’s get out the vote for Aftyn Behn and flip TN-07 blue! Tonight is our final phonebank for Aftyn Behn, a former Indivisible organizer who could score a major upset in Tennessee’s deep red seventh district. A win in tomorrow’s election would narrow the GOP House majority to a sliver and send a powerful message to the Republican Party about how politically toxic Trump’s agenda has become.
Note: Our phonebanks are normally open to all and start with a training for new phonebankers. Tonight we have a limited number of households remaining to be contacted, so we’re skipping the training and suggesting that only experienced phonebankers join (we wouldn’t want anyone to go through the entire training and then discover we’ve run out of numbers!).
Support immigrants under attack this Giving Tuesday. We normally don’t include fundraising asks in our weekly to-dos, but with the Trump regime escalating its attacks on immigrant communities, we want to encourage this movement to support the Defending Our Neighbors Fund. The fund helps individuals and families caught up in our increasingly draconian immigration system get the legal assistance they deserve.
Happening This Week December 1-7 Monday: “All in for Aftyn” Virtual Phonebank (6pm ET) Call Tennessee voters to help Aftyn Behn flip TN-07 (we won’t have a training on tonight’s call, so we encourage only those with prior phonebanking experience with us to join) Wednesday: Indivisible Red and Rural Caucus Call (8pm ET) Connect with other activists organizing in red and rural communities Thursday: “What’s the Plan?” with Leah + Ezra (3pm ET) An interactive Q&A with our co-founders Thursday: Resilience for Sustainable Activism Training (7pm ET) Because authoritarians want us overwhelmed and exhausted, rest and joy are critical components of successful resistance. Learn strategies for sustainable activism from expert organizers. Thursday: Indivisible’s Primary Launch Call (8:30pm ET) In 2026 we’re going to fight for Democratic leaders who’ll fight for us. This call is primarily intended for Indivisible group leaders, but anyone who wants to learn about our 2026 primary program is welcome to join.
Applications Now Accepted From Entire Animal Kingdom
Published: December 1, 2025 (TheOnion.com)
WASHINGTON—In an effort to expand recruitment for President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that it would waive the species requirements for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
At a press conference, Home- land Security Secretary Kristi Noem said eligibility requirements that previously limited ICE applicants to the species Homo sapiens would now permit any animal to join, opening the door for countless birds, primates, and reptiles to participate in raids of immigrants’ workplaces, conduct ambushes at immigration courts, and pilot fast-track deportation flights to cooperating foreign countries.
“By removing restrictions on tentacles, hooves, talons, and the number of legs an applicant may possess, we’ve made it possible for countless nonhuman patriots to do their part cleaning up America’s streets,” said Noem, dressed in a pith helmet and ICE-emblazoned safari gear while flanked by a gorilla and an ostrich. “A bison can love its country just as much as any person, and if it wants to use its large, powerful horns to toss illegals into the back of a van, we say, ‘Welcome aboard.’ ”
“There are many kinds of patriots in this country, even if some of them can only communicate by hooting or growling,” Noem added.
Secretary Kristi Noem with newly sworn-in animal agents who quickly became distracted and searched the briefing room for acorns, shoots, and leaves.
ICE’s urgent need for new members is said to have led the agency to send recruiters to beaver dams, buzzard nests, and dank, bone-strewn caves across the country, where in a desperate effort to secure the personnel necessary to carry out their waves of deportations, they offer signing bonuses that range from logs full of termites to live salmon to carrion. Despite concerns from critics that most animals were unfit to wield life-or-death authority over a vulnerable populace, ICE officials claimed that an inability to experience human empathy was exactly the kind of quality they were looking for in their candidates.
“Morale is extremely low right now, and we’re frankly in no position to be picky about who we recruit,” said ICE chief of staff Jon Feere, adding that preferences for bipedal candidates with object permanence and opposable thumbs had become “a thing of the past” in the current political climate. “At the end of the day, what we need is more boots and talons and flippers on the ground. If a blue whale has a mouth big enough to detain a hundred illegals at a time, we’ll gladly hire it to help us take our country back.”
“Maybe if we’d been draping ostriches in body armor and sending them into sanctuary cities back in 2017, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now,” Feere continued.
According to eyewitness accounts, packs of ICE animals participating in training exercises have become a common sight in immigrant communities, with these maneuvers often derailing when a rabid raccoon leaps onto an agent’s face or a grizzly bear mauls law enforcement officials. This has reportedly prompted undocumented civilians to stay off the streets for fear of being carried off in the jaws of vicious wolves or stuffed in a kangaroo’s pouch and spirited away to a shadowy detention facility.
Despite sharing similar backgrounds, many of the most gung-ho among ICE’s new recruits seem unbothered that they themselves come from species not native to North America.
“Immigrants Moka tax dollars take, dirty country—cry Moka,” said Moka, a 5-year-old eastern lowland gorilla recently hired by ICE, who communicated with reporters via rudimentary sign language while hidden behind mirrored aviators and a Punisher skull neck gaiter. “Immigrants trouble devils. Smart Trump Moka helpful. Far immigrants. Far woke. Patriot gorilla true.”
“No country charity,” Moka went on, snorting and slapping the ground as she grew increasingly agitated. “ICE good. Stink crime. Moka America great make.”
From New York Times bestselling author Sarah Kendzior comes the bitingly honest examination of the erosion of American liberty and the calculated rise to power of Donald Trump.
The rise of Donald Trump may have shocked Americans, but it should not have surprised them. His anti-democratic movement is the culmination of a decades-long breakdown of U.S. institutions. The same blindness to U.S. decline – particularly the loss of economic stability for the majority of the population and opportunity-hoarding by the few – is reflected in an unwillingness to accept that authoritarianism can indeed thrive in the so-called “home of the free”.
As Americans struggle to reconcile the gulf between a flagrant aspiring autocrat and the democratic precepts they had been told were sacred and immutable, the inherent fragility of American democracy has been revealed. Hiding in Plain Sight exposes this continual loss of freedom, the rise of consolidated corruption, and the secrets behind a burgeoning autocratic United States that have been hiding in plain sight for decades. In Kendzior’s signature and celebrated style, she expertly outlines Trump’s meteoric rise from the 1980s until today, interlinking key moments of his life with the degradation of the American political system and the continual erosion of our civil liberties by foreign powers.
Kendzior also offers a never-before-seen look at her personal life and her lifelong tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – living in New York through 9/11 and in St. Louis during the Ferguson uprising, and researching media and authoritarianism when Trump emerged using the same tactics as the post-Soviet dictatorships she had long studied.
Hiding in Plain Sight is about confronting injustice – an often agonizing process, but an honest and necessary one – as the only way that offers the possibility of ending it.
Sarah Kendzior is the New York Times bestselling author of They Knew, Hiding in Plain Sight, The View from Flyover Country, and The Last American Road Trip.
She has a PhD in anthropology from Washington University in St Louis, where she researched politics and digital media in authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union. From 2012 to 2014, she wrote op-eds for Al Jazeera English, and from 2016 to 2020, she wrote op-eds for The Globe and Mail. She has a newsletter (https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/) and lives in St. Louis with her husband and children.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on during a bilateral meeting between President Donald Trump Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Two Republican-controlled committees also said they were opening investigations into the defense secretary’s alleged order to “kill everybody” aboard a boat in the Caribbean in September—the first of nearly two dozen strikes.
Former top military lawyers on Saturday said that new reporting on orders personally given by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in early September, when the military struck the first of nearly two dozen boats in the Caribbean, suggests Hegseth has committed “war crimes, murder, or both.”
The Former Judge Advocates General (JAGs) Working Group, which includes former officials who served as legal advisers for the military, issued a statement in response to the Washington Post‘s reporting on the September 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean—the first strike on a vessel in an ongoing operation that the Trump administration has claimed is aimed at stopping drug trafficking.
The Post reported for the first time on the directive Hegseth gave to Special Operations commanders as intelligence analysts reported that their surveillance had confirmed the 11 people aboard the boat were carrying drugs to the US—an alleged crime that, in the past and in accordance with international law, would have prompted US agencies to intercept the vessel, confiscate any illegal substances that were found, and arrest those on board.
But as the Trump administration began its boat bombing campaign, the order Hegseth gave “was to kill everybody,” one of the intelligence analysts told the Post.
After the first missile strike, the officials realized that two of the passengers had survived the blast—prompting a Special Operations commander to initiate a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s order.
The Former JAGs Working Group, which was established in February in response to Hegseth’s firing of Army and Air Force JAGs, said that the dismissal of the military’s top legal advisers set the stage for the defense secretary’s order and the continued bombing of boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, which have now killed more than 80 people.
Hegseth’s “systematic dismantling of the military’s legal guardrails” led to the formation of the working group, pointed out the former JAGs. “Had those guardrails been in place, we are confident they would have prevented these crimes.”
The working group said Hegseth’s order to “kill everybody” could be understood in one of two ways—a demand for the US military to carry out a clear war crime, or for those involved in the operation to commit murder:
If the US military operation to interdict and destroy suspected narcotrafficking vessels is a “non-international armed conflict,” as the Trump administration suggests, orders to “kill everybody,” which can reasonably be regarded as an order to give “no quarter,” and to “double-tap” a target in order to kill survivors, are clearly illegal under international law. In short, they are war crimes.
If the US military operation is not an armed conflict of any kind, these orders to kill helpless civilians clinging to the wreckage of a vessel our military destroyed would subject everyone from [the defense secretary] down to the individual who pulled the trigger to prosecution under US law for murder.
The Post‘s reporting comes less than two weeks after NBC News revealed that Senior Judge Advocate General (JAG) Paul Meagher, a Marine colonel at US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami, had spoken out against the plans to begin bombing boats in the Caribbean, specifically warning in August that the operations would make service members liable for extrajudicial killing.
Following the Post‘s report, Republican-controlled House and Senate committees said they were investigating the allegations regarding Hegseth’s order, which the defense secretary dismissed on Friday as “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), joined by Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), said they had “directed inquiries to the Department [of Defense],” and would “be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chair and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, released a similar statement.
The administration has never publicly released evidence that the dozens of people it’s killed in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific were drug traffickers. The Associated Press reported on the identities of some of the victims, finding among them an out-of-work bus driver and a fisherman who had agreed to help ferry narcotics—which led one policy expert to liken the boat-bombing operations to “straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”
President Donald Trump has told Congress—where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have unsuccessfully sought to block further military action in the Caribbean and Venezuela—that the US is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels in the South American country. The Former JAGs Working Group suggested that Trump’s claims about the operation are immaterial considering Hegeth’s reported order for US officers to “kill everybody” on September 2.
“Regardless of whether the US is involved in an armed conflict, law enforcement operations, or any other application of military force, international and domestic US law prohibit the intentional targeting of defenseless persons,” said the former military lawyers. “If the Washington Post and CNN reports are true, the two survivors of the September, 2 2025 US attack against a vessel carrying 11 persons were rendered unable to continue their mission when US military forces significantly damaged the vessel carrying them. Under such circumstances, not only does international law prohibit targeting these survivors, but it also requires the attacking force to protect, rescue, and, if applicable, treat them as prisoners of war. Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options.”
The Joint Special Operations Command previously told the White House that the “double-tap” strike was necessary to sink the boat to avoid a “navigation hazard” to other vessels—a claim that Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a Marine Corps veteran, called “patently absurd.”
“Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder,” Moulton told the Post.
Writer Ramez Naam said Saturday that Hegseth “telegraphed his intent to issue illegal orders the day he fired the JAGs,” when he told the press that the legal advisers had been dismissed to avoid “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.”
The former JAGs called on Congress to investigate the new reporting on Hegseth’s order “and the American people to oppose any use of the US military that involves the intentional targeting of anyone—enemy combatants, non-combatants, or civilians—rendered hors de combat (”out of the fight“) as a result of their wounds or the destruction of the ship or aircraft carrying them.”
“We also advise our fellow citizens that orders like those described above are the kinds of ‘patently illegal orders’ all military members have a duty to disobey,” they said.
The reporting on Hegseth’s order came ahead of Trump’s latest escalation with Venezuela, with the president claiming he had ordered the airspace above and around the South American country closed—an action Venezuela’s government denounced as an “extravagant, illegal, and unjustified aggression” and a “colonialist threat.”
While the administration has repeatedly claimed its actions in Venezuela—including the boat strikes, an authorized CIA operation, and discussions about potential strikes inside the country—are aimed at dismantling drug trafficking operations there, US and international intelligence assessments have not pointed to Venezuela as a major source of drugs that enter the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump on Friday announced his plan to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted by a US jury of conspiring to traffic more than 400 tons of cocaine and who once said he wanted to “stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”
The president publicly stated in 2023 that had he won the 2020 election, he would have taken control of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said the new reporting on Hegseth’s order made even clearer that the boat bombings have been “extrajudicial killings.”
“Hegseth needs to be held accountable,” said the senator. “What’s more, Trump promised the American people no new wars but is now manufacturing this conflict and lying about his motives. This warmongering has got to stop.”
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How could the Nazis have committed the crimes they did? Why did commandants of concentration and death camps willingly – often enthusiastically – oversee mass murder? How could ordinary Germans have tolerated the removal of the Jews? In THE NAZI MIND, bestselling author Laurence Rees combines history and the latest research in psychology to help answer some of the most perplexing questions surrounding the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Ultimately, he delves into the darkness to explain how and why these people were capable of committing the worst crime in the history of the world. Rees traces the rise and eventual fall of the Nazis through the lens of ‘twelve warnings’ – from talk about ‘them’ and ‘us’ to the escalation of racism – whilst also highlighting signs to look out for in present day leaders.
Rees uses previously unpublished testimony from former Nazis and those who grew up in the Nazi system, and in-depth psychological insights including cutting edge work on obedience, authority and the brain. THE NAZI MIND is a revelatory new way of understanding how so many people committed the most appalling crime of the 20th century.
In addition to writing, Rees has also produced films about World War II for the BBC.
In New York in January 2009, Laurence was presented with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ by ‘History Makers’, the worldwide congress of History and Current Affairs programme makers
In 2011 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (DUniv) by The Open University(UK).
It’s the little things we need to savor in these stressful times. And one of those is watching everything connected to Donald Trump turn to poop. And the best part is: We did that!
What triggered this Trump collapse was all of us who helped Democrats win the November 4th elections in blowout fashion. Since that thumping, Trump has spiraled out of control as the GOP members of Congress—and even an increasing percentage of his base per recent polls—are breaking from the convicted felon in the White House.
And it’s not just Trump’s political standing that looks like something a dog drops on the sidewalk. It’s everything he touches! This first line of a Wall Street Journal article published Saturday sums it up well: “Stocks and cryptocurrencies linked to President Trump are in a deep slump, leaving some of the president’s biggest fans with steep losses.”
As the WSJ detailed, Trump’s media company that operates his social media platform Truth Social—which I refer to as “Whites only”—has tumbled 75% since January. A digital meme coin named for Trump ($TRUMP) has dropped by 86% since January. Worse for Melania is that her digital meme coin ($MELANIA) has dropped 99% in value since Inauguration Day. In other words, it’s worth 1% of what it was just 10 months ago.
We know Trump cashed in before the bottom fell out of these investments but it still says a lot that people don’t want to buy the Trump products. Why? Simple, who wants to invest in anything tied to a guy whose approval ratings are lower than certain STDs?! At this point Trump is just slightly more popular than syphilis.
I’m not exaggerating—okay slightly. A brand new Gallup poll released Friday finds Trump a 36% approval rating. The only time in Trump’s approval numbers were ever lower in the monthly Gallup poll was shortly after Trump’s Jan 6 terrorist attack when he only clocked a 34% approval rating. That number was so low because even a chunk rank and file Republicans had peeled away from Trump.
That same scenario is playing out now. In a Fox News poll released last week, 76% of voters view the economy negatively. That is why only 70% of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling inflation. It’s been a long time since we last saw 30% of Republicans disapprove of Trump on any issue!
This also explains why Republicans bucked Trump on the release of the Epstein files. Trump had been slamming Republicans non-stop over the proposed release of the files concerning his former BFF. But the GOP members of Congress no longer felt they needed to please Trump so they made it clear in huge numbers they would support transparency. That is the only reason Trump flip-flopped on the issue to pretend he supported its release.
Trump has become the living manifestation of the famous quote, “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” But in Trump’s case, this low energy loser doesn’t have the physical stamina needed to follow them. As the NY Times (finally) reported, Trump is sliding both physically and cognitively. We all knew this but the NY Times did add some data to back this up such as noting that most of Trump’s public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m. Even more damning for Trump is the NY Times found when compared to his first term, Trump’s official appearances have decreased by 39 percent.
Then there is Trump’s falling asleep just about every time he leans on something—or close to that! And thankfully the NY Times finally noted what Dr. John Gartner from Duty To Warn has told me in past interviews, namely that Trump’s lies are not like in the past that were designed to help him politically. They are instead increasingly fabricated tales that bear no resemblance to reality—in other words, more akin to what Dr. Gartner sees with people with dementia.
But with all that said, don’t dismiss Trump as not being dangerous. In fact, you can see the increased number of his desperate freak outs. (Not to be confused with Puff Daddy’s “Freak-offs.”) We just saw an example after the shooting of the two National Guard soldiers by a CIA trained killer who Trump had granted asylum to in April. Trump declared that he would “permanently pause migration from all third world countries,” threatened to denaturalize people and then went on a tangent about Minnesota and Somalia. This is all designed to give red meat to his MAGA base before they peel off further.
By Saturday, he declared the airspace of Venezuela was closed in “its entirety.” Forget that he has no legal basis to do this, Trump is desperately throwing poop at the wall to see what might stick to help him before he sinks further. Don’t be surprised if Trump declares war on Venezuela or some other country for that matter to rally people behind him.
However, despite Trump’s efforts to regain control of the media narrative, it’s about to get worse for Trump. We are about to see a ton of Epstein related files given the Epstein Files Transparency Act requires their release by December 19. As this law provides, the Trump regime must “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices, that relate to Epstein.”
Of course, Attorney General Pam Bondi will never release information that is bad for Trump given her top priority is protecting the “President.” But when the documents are released, it will cause a media feeding frenzy. And we can expect a great deal of the press will be about all the redactions and the missing files—such as the hard drives taken by the FBI from Epstein’s houses that contain the secretly recorded surveillance footage of all the people entering his homes. We need to see this to ensure those who were involved in this child sex ring are fully prosecuted.
That means the Epstein story will once again dominate the media in late December and January. Again, that is bad for Trump.
But none of this would be weighing Trump down if we didn’t deliver the big wins on November 4th. That is what set the chain reaction off. So be proud. As Trump circles the toilet bowl, remember it was us who flushed it!
“Oligarchy is a system in which a small number of extremely wealthy individuals control the economic, political, and media life of a nation. It is a system in which ordinary people have very little power to determine the future of their country. If you’re an American, it is the system in which you’re living. That must change. In the wealthiest nation on earth we must build a political movement that creates a government that represents all Americans, not just a handful of billionaires.” —Bernie Sanders
Senator Bernie Sanders breaks down the unprecedented crises we face today in Trump’s America, as Trump undermines democracy at every turn—and how we can effectively fight back.
From the moment that Sanders began his Fighting Oligarchy tour in the early days of the Trump administration, it was clear that his message resonated with Americans across the political spectrum. Record-breaking crowds numbering in the tens of thousands showed up across the country. Large numbers of Americans, in red states and blue states, were prepared to stand up and fight back. In this book, he shows how we can continue that fight.
In a series of short, pointed chapters, Sanders explains how the United States today is an oligarchic society in which a small handful of multibillionaires exercise enormous economic and political power. He describes what it means when the very rich get much richer, while the majority of Americans struggle to pay the rent and put food on the table. And he observes how a corrupt campaign finance system allows billionaires in both parties to increasingly control our political system.
Sanders also discusses how, under Trump, we are rapidly moving toward authoritarianism–with a president who is undermining our democracy as he attacks Congress, the courts, the media, and law firms and universities in search of more and more power for himself. With relentless optimism and focused energy, Sanders reminds readers that true power rests with the people—and he presents a path forward to a reinvigorated democracy.
Bernard “Bernie” Sanders is the senior United States Senator from Vermont, elected on November 7, 2006. Before becoming Senator, Sanders represented Vermont’s at-large district in the United States House of Representatives for 16 years. Sanders also served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont from 1981 through 1989.
Citation: Franklin D. Roosevelt Annual Message to Congress, January 6, 1941; Records of the United States Senate; SEN 77A-H1; Record Group 46; National Archives.
This speech, delivered by President Franklin Roosevelt on January 6, 1941, became known as his “Four Freedoms Speech” due to a short closing portion in which he described his vision for extending American ideals throughout the world.
Very early in his political career, as state senator and later as Governor of New York, President Roosevelt was concerned with human rights in the broadest sense. During 1940, stimulated by a press conference in which he discussed long-range peace objectives, he started collecting ideas for a speech about various rights and freedoms.
In his 1941 State of the Union Address to Congress, with World War II underway in Europe and the Pacific, FDR asked the American people to work hard to produce armaments for the democracies of Europe, to pay higher taxes, and to make other wartime sacrifices. Roosevelt presented his reasons for American involvement, making the case for continued aid to Great Britain and greater production of war industries at home. In helping Britain, President Roosevelt stated, the United States was fighting for the universal freedoms that all people deserved.
At a time when Western Europe lay under Nazi domination, Roosevelt presented a vision in which the American ideals of individual liberties should be extended throughout the world. Alerting Congress and the nation to the necessity of war, Roosevelt articulated the ideological aims of the war, and appealed to Americans’ most profound beliefs about freedom.
In his Four Freedoms Speech, Roosevelt proposed four fundamental freedoms that all people should have. His “four essential human freedoms” included some phrases already familiar to Americans from the Bill of Rights, as well as some new phrases: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These symbolized America’s war aims and gave the American people a mantra to hold onto during the war.
As America became more engaged in World War II, painter Norman Rockwell created a series of paintings illustrating the four freedoms as international war goals that went beyond just defeating the Axis powers. In the series, he translated abstract concepts of freedom into four scenes of everyday American life. Although the federal government initially rejected Rockwell’s offer to create paintings on the four freedoms theme, the images were publicly circulated when The Saturday Evening Post, one of the nation’s most popular magazines, commissioned and reproduced the paintings. After winning public approval, the paintings served as the centerpiece of a massive U.S. war bond drive and went on a national tour to raise money for the war effort.
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Seventy-seventh Congress:
I address you, the Members of the Seventy-seventh Congress, at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union. I use the word “unprecedented,” because at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today.
Since the permanent formation of our Government under the Constitution, in 1789, most of the periods of crisis in our history have related to our domestic affairs. Fortunately, only one of these–the four-year War Between the States–ever threatened our national unity. Today, thank God, one hundred and thirty million Americans, in forty-eight States, have forgotten points of the compass in our national unity.
It is true that prior to 1914 the United States often had been disturbed by events in other Continents. We had even engaged in two wars with European nations and in a number of undeclared wars in the West Indies, in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific for the maintenance of American rights and for the principles of peaceful commerce. But in no case had a serious threat been raised against our national safety or our continued independence.
What I seek to convey is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained clear, definite opposition, to any attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the procession of civilization went past. Today, thinking of our children and of their children, we oppose enforced isolation for ourselves or for any other part of the Americas.
That determination of ours, extending over all these years, was proved, for example, during the quarter century of wars following the French Revolution.
While the Napoleonic struggles did threaten interests of the United States because of the French foothold in the West Indies and in Louisiana, and while we engaged in the War of 1812 to vindicate our right to peaceful trade, it is nevertheless clear that neither France nor Great Britain, nor any other nation, was aiming at domination of the whole world.
In like fashion from 1815 to 1914– ninety-nine years– no single war in Europe or in Asia constituted a real threat against our future or against the future of any other American nation.
Except in the Maximilian interlude in Mexico, no foreign power sought to establish itself in this Hemisphere; and the strength of the British fleet in the Atlantic has been a friendly strength. It is still a friendly strength.
Even when the World War broke out in 1914, it seemed to contain only small threat of danger to our own American future. But, as time went on, the American people began to visualize what the downfall of democratic nations might mean to our own democracy.
We need not overemphasize imperfections in the Peace of Versailles. We need not harp on failure of the democracies to deal with problems of world reconstruction. We should remember that the Peace of 1919 was far less unjust than the kind of “pacification” which began even before Munich, and which is being carried on under the new order of tyranny that seeks to spread over every continent today. The American people have unalterably set their faces against that tyranny.
Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being’ directly assailed in every part of the world–assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace.
During sixteen long months this assault has blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. The assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great and small.
Therefore, as your President, performing my constitutional duty to “give to the Congress information of the state of the Union,” I find it, unhappily, necessary to report that the future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders.
Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia will be dominated by the conquerors. Let us remember that the total of those populations and their resources in those four continents greatly exceeds the sum total of the population and the resources of the whole of the Western Hemisphere-many times over.
In times like these it is immature–and incidentally, untrue–for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.
No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion -or even good business.
Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the “ism” of appeasement.
We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.
One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism Virtual Event · Hosted by No Kings Time Wednesdays 8 – 9:30pm EDT Location Virtual event Join from anywhere About this event Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations,... Continue reading →
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2023 AT 2 AM – 4 AM PDT How to create trust in a group? Details Event by Extinction Rebellion Empathy Circles online EMPATHY CAFE Duration: 2 hr Public · Anyone on or off Facebook How to create trust in a group? This is the question that arose in our... Continue reading →
RSVP » The bottom line is this: Our outreach is working. Since ramping up our efforts, the number of candidates signing the pledge has surged. In the month since our last POP Action Call, we’ve secured over 70 new signers, which is a sharp surge in engagement. That’s a direct result of... Continue reading →
CBS + SF Examiner Gubernatorial Debate Registration Register here to attend the CBS KPIX + San Francisco Examiner Gubernatorial Debate. Guests will be selected at random on May 10 and receive a confirmation email on May 12. Date: Thursday, May 14, 2026 Time: 5:30 – 7:30 pm Location: 465 California... Continue reading →
When you volunteer for Saikat, it’s on us to give you a great experience and a genuine chance to make a difference. We don’t want to waste a second of your time. That’s why we’re always optimizing. And I’m excited to report that this Saturday we talked with 300% more... Continue reading →
Trump Regime Takedown: Every Saturday Saturday, March 7, 2026 12:00 PM 2:00 PM Tesla San Francisco999 Van Ness AvenueSan Francisco, CA, 94109United States (map) Google Calendar ICS Keep democracy alive every Saturday by showing up, taking a stand, and sticking together for the long haul. Standing together is better than standing alone. Let’s get together... Continue reading →
This Sunday’s Town Hall: Announcing This Week’s Progressive Town Hall: Every Sunday at 4pm ET/1pm PT RSVP HERE Join PDA activists online from across the country to discuss the importance of progressives reclaiming the American story from the MAGA right, an issue of heightened importance as we’re now within one... Continue reading →
We protest Heritage Foundation EVERY MONDAY (Join us!!!!) By admin | September 2, 2025 | Uncategorized Cliff Cash Comedy Premiered Jul 26, 2025 Every Monday at The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Ave. Washington D.C. 4pm protest 6pm pizza Every Friday at Fox News D.C. 400 N. Capitol St. Washington D.C. 4pm protest 6pm pizza We are... Continue reading →
Join the San Francisco Public Press and KALW for a panel discussion about San Francisco’s propositions C and D, the competing business tax measures described in the articles linked above in this newsletter. Where: KALW, 220 Montgomery St., San Francisco When: Tuesday, May 19, at 6 p.m. RSVP via Eventbrite. What questions... Continue reading →
Milk Club May General Membership Meeting Date: Tuesday, May 19 Time: 7-9 PM Location: SF LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco Zoom Link: Click here
