People Power United
27 June 2026/SF Politics/Zack Ruskin (SFist.com)
SFPD officers kicked off San Francisco’s Pride festivities by arresting five protesters for alleged acts of paint-related vandalism following Friday’s Trans March. Eyewitnesses say one detainee was dragged along the ground by an officer and that another was forcibly pinned to the ground.
On-the-ground reporting from Mission Local details how the march quickly transformed into a protest once it kicked off from its usual starting point at Dolores Park:
This was not spontaneous. Young organizers from several groups darted through the crowd, pointing out logistics and discussing next steps. A member of PSL Bay Area held a sign high, while an Antifascist Action organizer waved a flag overhead.
A young person dressed in black bloc, a balaclava covering their face, dragged a red wagon filled with cans of spray paint. A speaker inside the wagon boomed chants over the crowd.
Mission Local notes that masked protesters also utilized paint-filled water guns to cover the lenses of security cameras they encountered “in splatters of pink and blue.” Chants taken up by the crowd during this time reportedly included “Free Palestine” and “Blue Lives Murder” as well as criticism directed at local and statewide elected officials.
SF Mayor Daniel Lurie and Gov. Gavin Newsom were both called out by name in chants, while State Sen. Scott Weiner — who is currently vying with SF District 1 Sup. Connie Chan to fill Nancy Pelosi’s coveted CA-11 seat in this fall’s election — was filmed by bystanders being forcibly booed from Dolores Park after attempting to join the event.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/C55AFmhHYfA?feature=oembedVideo footage of State Sen. Scott Weiner being booed at Dolores Park (@sadfranciscopodcast/X)
Mission Local reports that Chan was also present on Friday, marching seemingly without incident alongside the San Francisco Labor Council.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Weiner decried his treatment at both Dolores Park and at a nearby restaurant, where, in a separate viral video, he was recently seen being confronted by a pro-Palestine constituent.
Per KRON4, Weiner’s statement reads, in part:
“…when opposition and disagreement transition to harassment, including cornering me, touching me, or trying to physically bully me out of a public event, that crosses a line. We’re living in a time when violence is all too often threatened or used against people in public life. In San Francisco, we’re better than that.”
The arrest of five protesters came around 7:40pm as the march hit the end of Market Street. According to eyewitnesses, one person was pinned to the ground as part of their arrest while another was reportedly “dragged along the ground” towards an officer’s vehicle.
In a statement issued Saturday morning and published by KRON4, the SFPD confirmed the five arrests: three for assault and vandalism, two for obstructing an investigation. SFPD alleges that a protester “assaulted and sprayed paint on a person” before officers were subsequently “obstructed” by marchers while attempting to detain the suspect.
Mission Local has published bystander footage documenting the arrests.
San Francisco’s Pride festivities continue today. As NBC Bay Area reports, organizers anticipate more than a million people to turn out over the weekend.
This story has been updated to include a statement issued by State Sen. Scott Weiner.
Image: @war24182236/X
Updated Jun 26, 2026 (edition.cnn.com)
California Governor Gavin Newsom holds press conference in San Francisco, California, May 8, 2026. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo Manuel Orbegozo/Reuters
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday proposed a national tax on billionaires that he says is the first part of an “economic reset for America” agenda, which aides explicitly say is part of his considering to launch a presidential campaign.
“The system America’s founders built was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands, but we have allowed that concentration to happen anyway, slowly, in plain sight, over decades,” Newsom writes. “We can reverse it together, as a country.”
It is extremely early in the presidential campaign cycle for a policy proposal — but comes as Democrats continue to embrace economic populism and moves against the wealthy. It also comes as California voters in November will decide on a billionaires’ tax after the governor and opponents of the tax late Thursday failed to reach a deal to keep it off the ballot.
Newsom, who is term-limited in California and will leave office in January 2027, lays out his proposal in a Substack post that went live on Friday morning, calling for a minimum tax on anyone worth more than $100 million so that they pay at least the same rate, rather than less, than the average American worker who doesn’t have loopholes and other maneuvers to benefit from.
Various wealth tax ideas have been proposed by Democrats before, including by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as part of her 2020 Democratic presidential campaign. Newsom says his idea comes out of wanting to create a bulwark against how artificial intelligence will reshape the economy, also proposing what he calls a “national public equity fund” to give every American, rather than just tech companies and investors, a share in the wealth likely to be produced. That fund, an aide said, would cover worker transition benefits, universal childcare, free higher education and career training, healthcare and a national industrial strategy for AI.
Newsom also called for rewriting the rules around inheritance, arguing that with what he says will be the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history coming over the next 20 years, “if we do not act, that transfer of wealth among the ultra-wealthy will lock in a permanent American aristocracy of inherited wealth, with all the political consequences the founders warned us about.”
Newsom explains why that he will personally vote no on the California proposal, which would levy a one-time 5% tax on residents with a net worth over $1 billion.
Backers of the measure gathered more than 870,000 signatures and include progressives like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and California Rep. Ro Khanna – himself a 2028 contender. Newsom and others fear it would drive businesses out of California, and that the revenue collected would not be spread around widely enough.
“We’re competing with 50 states,” Newsom told the World Economic Forum earlier this year. “Capital flows and move(s). That’s real. It’s not imagined. It’s very, very real.”
In his Substack post, Newsom writes that while he understands “the anxiety” driving interest in the California proposed tax, it “turns a blind eye to safety-net clinics and reproductive healthcare providers that Planned Parenthood has fought for decades to protect. There is nothing for housing, nothing for childcare, nothing for public safety workers who must answer 911 calls, and nothing for our public universities that have powered California’s economy for a decade.”
Khanna, however, called Newsom’s proposal a distraction, arguing in a call with reporters on Friday that it didn’t actually constitute a wealth tax.
“Taxing the loans on assets is something that the tech oligarchs themselves have proposed,” he said. “That will raise a fraction of the revenue of an actual wealth tax, the kind that Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or I have proposed.”
Long a presumed candidate for president in 2028, Newsom has begun to show his political hand more explicitly with a video last week about what he said was a Justice Department investigation into his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom: “Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets, he’s coming after me because I am considering running for president.”
CNN confirmed earlier this month that Jennifer Siebel Newsom is under investigation. However, a person familiar with the probe denied that it was launched by the department’s Trump-appointed leadership in DC.
This story has been updated with additional details.
Europe
Europe’s record heatwave in the month of June would have been “virtually impossible” 50 years ago, scientists said Friday, proof that human-caused climate change is “unequivocally” responsible for the intensity of the latest scorcher. Half-a-century ago, a similar heatwave would have been 3.5°C cooler, the study found.
Issued on: 26/06/2026 – Modified: 26/06/2026
By: FRANCE 24
Human-caused climate change is “unequivocally” responsible for the intensity of a record-breaking heatwave scorching Europe, scientists said Friday.
It would have been “virtually impossible” for such exceptional temperatures to occur in June fifty years ago, the World Weather Attribution group of scientists said.
A similar heatwave would have been 3.5°C cooler during the day in June 1976, concluded the study by scientists from Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom.
But the world is hotter today and “the chance of a heatwave like this has changed immensely”, said the study’s lead author Theodore Keeping from Imperial College London.
“This event would not have been possible in June without climate change,” Keeping told reporters.
The planet has warmed about 1.4°C above pre-industrial times, driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas.
Scientists agree this is making extreme weather events like heatwaves more frequent and intense, and that limiting warming is vital to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent and tens of millions of people have sweltered this week in temperatures that broke records in some countries.
Read more‘Like working in a kettle’: France’s overcrowded prisons swelter under historic heatwave
“The weather pattern itself is not particularly unusual, but the temperatures are – or at least they used to be, without human-induced climate change,” Friederike Otto, the co-founder of World Weather Attribution from Imperial College London, told reporters.
As the heatwave is still unfolding, scientists used observed and forecast temperatures to compare this heatwave against how it might have behaved in the cooler climates of 2003 and 1976.
Even compared to 2003 – when tens of thousands of people died in a major European heatwave – the current episode was notably extreme, the authors said.
A similar heatwave in June 2003 would have been about 2°C cooler, the study said.
“In 2003… daytime heat like this would still have been very rare”, while overnight temperatures would have been more than a hundred times less likely.
“Our analysis here shows that intense heat is increasing rapidly even in living memory, with such events tens to hundreds of times more likely since only 2003 and virtually impossible just 50 years ago,” said the study.
“Climate change is unequivocally to blame.”
Watch morePower outages and melting roads: Heatwave strains French infrastructure
The El Nino weather pattern – a natural warming climate phase – had “no role in driving the heat”, the authors said.
Otto also singled out the threat of “heat stress” posed by the combination of high temperatures and humidity.
Heat stress occurs when the body’s natural cooling systems are overwhelmed, causing symptoms ranging from dizziness and headaches to organ failure and death.
Of the nearly 850 cities in Europe analysed in the study, some 45 percent had broken – or were expected to break – their all-time heat stress records in June, the study said.
This made the heatwave “particularly unpleasant and dangerous”, Otto said.
This episode is the second of the year for Europe after an early-season heatwave in May brought temperatures more typical of high summer to central and western parts of the continent.
World Weather Attribution said the rapid phase out of fossil fuels was “critical if we are to avoid even higher temperatures and their consequences in the future”.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
People show support for protesters facing trial for allegedly being part of a nonexistent “North Texas Antifa Cell,” outside the Eldon B. Mahon United States Courthouse in Fort Worth on March 13, 2026.
(Photo: Kevin Krause/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images
Jun 26, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)
Alarm and outrage mounted this week following a federal judge’s lengthy prison sentences for a group of activists falsely accused by the Trump administration of being members of a nonexistent “North Texas Antifa Cell,” with some observers calling the extreme punishments—including 30 years for moving a box of constitutionally protected pamphlets—a test case for criminalizing dissent.
Eight members of the “Prairieview Nine”—part of a larger group of activists who staged a July 4, 2025 protest outside a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Alvarado, Texas—were sentenced Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Fort Worth to between 30-100 years imprisonment.
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Benjamin Song, who was convicted of shooting Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross, was sentenced to 100 years for attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and lesser offenses, including discharging a firearm during a violent crime, conspiracy to use and using an explosive, and rioting. Song, a former US Marine, contends that he shot Gross in self-defense after the officer drew his gun first.
The “explosives” in question were fireworks brought to the July 4 protest to show solidarity with people detained by ICE.
Savanna Batten, Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Bradford Morris, and Elizabeth Soto got 50 years each for rioting, providing material support to terrorists, and conspiracy to use and using an explosive.
Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years for rioting, providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to use and using an explosive, and conspiracy to conceal documents. Those documents were leftist pamphlets protected by the First Amendment.
Rueda’s husband, Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada, was hit with a 30-year prison sentence for conspiracy to conceal documents for moving a box full of the pamphlets after speaking with his wife. He did not attend the protest.
Judge Reed O’Connor, an appointee of former President George W. Bush and a favorite of right-wing judge shoppers, told the court that the lengthy sentences are meant to “send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology” with the defendants, according to one observer of Tuesday’s proceedings.
The Prairieland sentences were more severe than the longest prison term for the average US murderer or rapist, as well as for the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrectionists—all of whom were later pardoned by President Donald Trump—as well as for convicted child sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
“What happened on Tuesday, it’s shocking to all of us, devastating to the families, 50- to 100-year sentences,” Sufia Khalid, deputy director of the National Security Criminal Defense Center at the Muslim Legal Fund of America and lawyer to one of the Prairieland defendants, told Democracy Now! on Thursday. “Those are essentially life sentences for all of the young people in this case, largely of whom were engaged in nonviolent protest at an ICE detention facility.”
Khalid noted that the Department of Justice (DOJ) invoked a rarely used “material support for terrorism” statute that “does not require any connection to a domestic terrorist organization or any kind.”
“Any American can be targeted that way now. It does not require ties to antifa or to any domestic terrorist organization,” she said. “That’s a dangerous precedent, and what allowed them to stack these charges so high on Tuesday.”
The DOJ hailed “the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with antifa following… Trump’s executive order designating the group as a domestic terrorist organization in September 2025” in the wake of the assassination of white supremacist influencer Charlie Kirk—which had nothing to do with antifa, a decentralized and leaderless international ideology opposing fascism that’s more of a mindset than a movement.
Later that month, Trump also signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), a directive titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” that focuses exclusively on left-wing activities and mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
Khalid pointed to the pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, who “were involved in rioting, carrying massive arsenals of weapons, lots of discussions ahead of time—that didn’t exist in this case—about targeting law enforcement, wanting to kill members of Congress, [and] actually storming the Capitol.”
“So, we have a massive, unwarranted sentencing disparity here,” she said. “What happened in the court in Fort Worth was unconstitutional and should concern everybody in this country in the direction that it is taking us.”
Mark Osler, a law professor and sentencing expert at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, told The Guardian on Friday that “the 30-year sentence for Estrada is probably the one that for most people will come closest to shocking the conscience, simply because this is an activity that took place after the harm occurred.”
“What happened in the court in Fort Worth was unconstitutional and should concern everybody in this country in the direction that it is taking us.”
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, underscored during a Friday interview in an episode of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Counterspin podcast titled “Criminalizing Dissent” that Estrada “wasn’t even at the protest.”
“He’s somebody who allegedly transported a box of pamphlets because his wife was at the protest,” Stern said. “And he believed, according to prosecutors, that the box of pamphlets might implicate his wife… so he was concealing evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” he continued. “This wasn’t a how-to manual… They were zines. They said nothing about this protest, about the Prairieland detention facility, about shooting this police officer… So when they say that he concealed evidence by moving these zines, evidence of what? It’s evidence of an ideology. It’s evidence of somebody’s reading habits.”
“And now they’re on the same plane as terrorists, as [Islamic State], according to this administration,” Stern added. “It’s all pretty absurd. But at the end of the day, we have a Constitution that prohibits people from being locked up for what they think, write, or read, as long as they are not inciting imminent violence. So hopefully the appellate courts will reverse these convictions. But the law is only as good as the people who enforce it.”
Jeremy Busby, an incarcerated journalist, wrote on the eve of Estrada’s trial that the “homespun zines at issue contain no plans for any shooting, and under normal circumstances, they would clearly be deemed constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment.”
“But the government’s concealment theory only makes sense if it views merely having the literature as criminal,” he argued. “Criminalizing possession of literature is a miscarriage of justice, whether in prison or at a protester’s husband’s parents’ house. If the Trump administration is allowed to send Estrada to prison for the crime of possessing literature, members of society at large can be subjected to the same pernicious rules as the incarcerated.”
Amber Lowrey, the sister of Prairieland defendant Savanna Batten—who was sentenced to 50 years behind bars for material support for terrorism and conspiracy to use and using “explosives” (fireworks)—told The Guardian before Batten’s trial that the Trump administration just wants “to make an example of people and silence anyone who… opposes the government.”
“They want to silence dissent, criminalize dissent,” she added.
Trump administration prosecutors have also invoked NSPM-7 in the case of 15 organizers with the groups Direct Action Minnesota and Black Cat Workers, who are accused of impeding the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-immigrant crackdown in Minneapolis, where US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti were separately killed earlier this year by ICE and Border Patrol officers.
“We live under a fascist state where ICE agents can murder us with impunity, yet we can go to prison for 50 years for protesting,” socialist commentator and journalist Ryan Knight said Thursday on X. “The unjust sentences of the Prairieland protesters violate the First Amendment and infringe on our rights to fight back against a tyrannical government.”
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
By Mike Zonta, OccupySF.net co-editor
(Image from Wikipedia.org)
The Apostle Paul said:
–I Corinthians 13:2
–Mike Zonta, OccupySF.net co-editor
Washington, D.C.
June 28 – July 4, 2026
View the ScheduleTicketsDonateVolunteer
From June 28 through July 4, organizers from across the country will gather in the nation’s capital for Seven Days in D.C. — a weeklong series of civic engagement activities, public demonstrations, and cultural events designed to encourage direct participation in the democratic process during the lead-up to Independence Day.
The event will bring together activists, organizers, artists, comedians, musicians, and citizens for a coordinated week of lobbying, voter outreach, protest education, conversations with congressional candidates, and nightly performances across Washington D.C.Full Program
SundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturday
Sunday, June 28
Welcome to D.C. All Ages
Doors open at 7:30PM for the official launch of Seven Days in DC at the legendary Black Cat on 14th Street. The week starts here.
7:30PM – Close
Black Cat
Welcome to D.C. GoGo Night TICKETS
Come as you are. Meet your fellow travelers: organizers, activists, journalists, veterans, voters, and troublemakers from across all 50 states who came here to make noise and make history. Live music sets the tone for the week ahead. This is the gathering before the storm — come early, stay late, and introduce yourself to the person next to you.
Featuring music from Yaddiya, The Honest Politix and TOB.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/L_S0_5PSS3A?si=X2loD6DhLHIc2NQd
https://youtube.com/embed/0vo-bVxId1k
What We’re Doing
Congressional Lobbying
Direct meetings with congressional offices, coordinated through FLARE — For Liberation And Resistance Everywhere.
Voter Outreach
On-the-ground voter outreach and registration drives across Washington throughout the week.
Protest Education
Workshops on organizing strategy, Know Your Rights, and civic action — skills that outlast the week.
Cultural Programming
Nightly performances — comedy, live music, guest speakers. Free and ticketed events all week.
Public Demonstrations
Sustained visibility actions throughout the city during one of Washington’s most watched weeks.
Community Building
Conversations with candidates and fellow organizers — strengthening the networks that make change possible.
“This is about showing up. Not just watching politics from a distance, but participating in it — meeting representatives, getting involved in voter outreach efforts, learning how organizing works, and being part of a larger civic community.”
— Seven Days in D.C. OrganizersFundraiser
You can help support SEVEN DAYS IN D.C. by grabbing some merchandise, participating in the auction, or perhaps even purchasing an ANTIFA Gold Card or ANTIFA Silver Card.
Donate
Get full-access to all of our paid events for the entire week with the All Week Antifa Gold Card All Access Pass.
ANTIFA Gold Card Benefits Include:
1. Daily access to the Antifa Gold Card lounge at the Black Cat
2. ANTIFA Gold Card early access and/or special seating when available for all night time events at the Black Cat
3. Two complimentary drink tickets for each day from the Black Cat
4. Limited edition Antifa Gold Card
5. Knowing that you helped to support this event with money and fun
ANTIFA GOLD CARD
ANTIFA SILVER CARD
WRESTLEMAGNIA TIX
CLIFF CASH VIP TIX
FREEDOM FUTURES COLLECTIVE TIX
BROCK BUTLER VIP TIX
Home Base
The Black Cat
1811 14th St NW · Washington, D.C.
One of Washington’s most storied independent venues — thirty years of music, culture, and nights that don’t get forgotten.
We Act Radio
1918 Martin Luther King Jr Ave SE · Washington, D.C.
We Act Radio is an independent, progressive radio station and media production studio based in the historic Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 2011 by local activist and playwright Kymone Freeman, it serves as a grassroots platform to amplify voices, stories, and political perspectives that are frequently ignored or marginalized by corporate media.Organizers
Seven Days in D.C. aims to increase voter engagement, strengthen organizing networks, and bring national attention to civic participation during a historic moment. If you are an organizer, artist, or group who would like to participate, reach out.
About Seven Days in D.C.
Seven Days in D.C. is a grassroots civic engagement initiative bringing together organizers, artists, and citizens for a week of democratic participation, cultural programming, and public action in Washington, D.C. Organized in partnership with FLARE — For Liberation And Resistance Everywhere.
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June 28 – July 4, 2026 · Black Cat, Washington D.C. · E Pluribus Unum
