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We staggered through the darkest ever ostensible celebration of American independence mournfully grappling with what Rev. William Barber calls the "all-out attack on who we even claim we are trying to be." A tireless pillar of righteous rage, he takes a long, moral view and a tough, simple stand on fighting for our rights and moving forward from catastrophe: "All of us have to find our way together now." Hopefully, we'd add, with brass bands accompanying us.
The good Rev. Barber, of course, comes to the fight against fascism armed with far more moral clarity and fortitude than most of the rest of us. His battle, both "a moral rebellion against Trump’s America" and against a deeper, longtime "architecture of inequality" since Frederick Douglas asked, "What to the slave is the 4th of July?" confronts a politics wed to nationalism, capitalism, exploitation and, in an especially "unholy relationship," religion, even as masked goons disappear our neighbors.
For the rest of us, Barber's resolve to bear witness, to build "a memory that resists the lie," takes many other, often mundane forms. We blunder forward as best we can. We seek strength and solace in small joys - friends, dogs, gardens, nature and solidarity - increasingly, at protests around the country, with music, often tubas. Kurt Vonnegut, always wise, was on it: "If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: ‘The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.'"
In St. Louis, the Funky Butt Band sang This Land Is Your Land. In Auburn CA, people sang Les Miserables' soaring Do You Hear the People Sing? In New York, the Street Beat Brass Band play; in Minneapolis, since George Floyd's murder, it's Brass Solidarity with This Little Light of Mine and I Wish I Knew How It Feels To Be Free. In Atlanta on No Kings Day, exuberant tubas drowned out the Proud Boys with Bella Ciao, a 19th-century Italian folk song turned anthem of freedom and resistance.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
In Somerville MA, the Good Trouble Brass Band has joined forces with the Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians (BABAM) for parades and protests in "a tradition of resilience and community" to contribute "something that is loud and joyful." And here in Portland ME we boast and love our Ideal Maine Social Aid & Sanctuary Band - "Easy tunes with friendly people" - a community activist, consensus-governed band in the New Orleans street band tradition spreading joy and advocacy since 2017.
They've played and marched at pride, homelessness, voting rights, abortion rights, Veterans for Peace events; at puppet slams, neighborhood gigs like Porchfest; a fabulous, four-tiered May Day gala; food coop, bike coalition, park conservancy parties; at a small, moving, buoyant Kneeling Photo Art Project - "We Kneel For An Equitable Future" - four years ago during a COVID winter, in their masks and down coats and sailor caps. Searing echoes of make love and music, not war and fascism.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Entirely aptly, these messengers of hope, rage joy offer diverse music, from Civil Rights- era anthems to old folk faves to Brass Band classics. Adding some spice is feverish new entrant from left field, Boston's Celtic punk rock band Dropkick Murphys. Longtime, blue-collar supporters of workers' and veterans' rights, they've been bringing their furious energy to protests; says front man Ken Casey “I think everything we’ve been doing for the past 30 years was a kind of warm-up for the moment we’re in.”
The hardscrabble Casey - from a recent show: "This Magger guy in the audience was waving his fucking Trump hat in people’s faces, and I could just tell he wanted to enter into discourse with me...I’m not going to shut up, just out of spite” - was raised by his grandfather. His foundational lesson: "If I ever see you bullying someone, I’ll kick the shit out of you. And if I ever see you back down from a bully, I’ll kick the shit out of you." On July 4th, they released new album For the People. Its fiery first single, Who’ll Stand With Us? and a quick-cut, seething video are a gut-punch call-out against fascist scumbags and oligarchs, with all the fury the moment demands. Just whew. Onward, evidently.
Through crime and crusade
Our labor, it’s been stolen
We’ve been robbed of our freedom
We’ve been held down and beholden
To the bosses and bankers
Who never gave their share
Of any blood
Of any sweat
Of any tears
Who’ll stand with us?
Don’t tell us everything is fine
Who’ll stand with us?
Because this treatment is a crime
The working people fuel the engine
While you yank the chain
We fight the wars and build buildings
For someone else’s gain.
So tell me
Who will stand with us?
- YouTube www.youtube.com
As the official death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas ticked above 100 on Monday, concerns over vacancies as well as job and potential funding cuts at the National Weather Service continued to mount—even as the NWS and independent meteorologists insisted that the agency had "issued timely warnings in advance of the deadly floods."
The flooding came just over two months after all living former directors of the NWS published a letter sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 and its cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent agency of the NWS in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The five men—Louis Uccellini, Jack Hayes, Brig. Gen. D.L. Johnson, Brig. Gen. John J. Kelly Jr., and E.W. "Joe" Friday—wrote on May 2 that "even if the National Weather Service remains level funded, given the interconnectedness of all of the parts of NOAA, there will be impacts to weather forecasting as well. We cannot let this happen."
"These proposed cuts come just days after approximately 300 National Weather Service... employees left the public service to which they had devoted their lives and careers," the ex-directors pointed out. "That's on top of the approximately 250 NWS employees who were fired as a result of their probationary status in new—often higher-level positions—or took the initial buyout offered by the Trump administration in early February."
"That leaves the nation's official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit—down more than 10% of its staffing—just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes," they continued. "Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life. We know that's a nightmare shared by those on the forecasting frontlines—and by the people who depend on their efforts."
Discussing recent job reductions with The Associated Press on Monday, Uccellini, whose tenure leading NWS included Trump's first term, warned that "this situation is getting to the point where something could break."
"The people are being tired out, working through the night and then being there during the day because the next shift is short-staffed," he said. "Anything like that could create a situation in which important elements of forecasts and warnings are missed."
For the flooding in Texas, the NWS Austin-San Antonio office had five meteorologists working, rather than two, as part of its "surge staffing" protocol.
However, Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the NWS Employees Organization, a union that represents government workers, also told NBC News that the agency's Austin-San Antonio office does not have a permanent science officer, who conducts training for and implements new technology, or a warning coordination meteorologist, who has contact with media.
That office "is operating with 11 staff meteorologists and is down six employees from its typical full staffing level of 26," NBC reported. The nearby San Angelo office "is short four staff members from its usual staffing level of 23. The meteorologist-in-charge position—the office's top leadership position—is not permanently filled. The office is also without a senior hydrologist."
Despite some open positions at the two offices, the NWS began warning of potential flooding as early as Thursday morning, and as conditions worsened overnight, the agency issued its first warning for "life-threatening flash flooding" for parts of Kerr County at 1:14 am Central Time Friday, according to CNN.
"But questions remain about how many people they reached, whether critical vacancies at the forecast offices could have affected warning dissemination, and if so-called warning fatigue had been growing among residents in a region described as one of the most dangerous in the country for flash flooding," the network noted.
As Fahy put it to Politico: "The crux of this disaster is a failure of the last mile of communication... The forecasts went out, they communicated the forecasts, they disseminated the watches and warnings. And the dilemma we have is there was nobody listening at 4 o'clock in the morning for these watches and warnings."
Wisconsin-based meteorologist Chris Vagasky similarly told NBC that "the forecasting was good. The warnings were good. It's always about getting people to receive the message... It appears that is one of the biggest contributors—that last mile."
As The New York Times reported:
In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending.
"Taxpayers won't pay for it," Mr. Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, "I don't know."
As of Monday evening, 104 people are confirmed dead, most of them in Kerr County, which includes Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls summer camp that lost at least 27 campers and counselors. The AP reported that "search-and-rescue teams carried on with the search for the dead, using heavy equipment to untangle trees and wading into swollen rivers. Volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece, in an increasingly bleak task."
In a statement to multiple news outlets, the NWS provided a detailed timeline of its alerts. The agency also said that it "is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County" and "remains committed to our mission to serve the American public through our forecasts and decision support services."
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday sent a letter to Roderick Anderson, acting inspector general at the Department of Commerce, urging an investigation into "the scope, breadth, and ramifications of whether staffing shortages at key local National Weather Service... stations contributed to the catastrophic loss of life and property during the deadly flooding."
"The roles left unfilled are not marginal, they're critical," he emphasized. "These are the experts responsible for modeling storm impacts, monitoring rising water levels, issuing flood warnings, and coordinating directly with local emergency managers about when to warn the public and issue evacuation orders. To put it plainly: They help save lives."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out at him and reporters for such scrutiny on Monday, saying that "unfortunately, in the wake of this once-in-a-generation natural disaster, we have seen many falsehoods pushed by Democrats such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and some members of the media. Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning."
In addition to the president's so-called Department of Government Efficiency—previously led by billionaire Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth—pushing layoffs and retirements, Trump's administration is working to boost fossil fuels that drive the global climate emergency.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Monday, a study published by ClimaMeter found that the floods in Texas were caused by "very exceptional meteorological conditions" that cannot be explained merely by natural variability.
Former Common Dreams staff writer Kenny Stancil is a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, which has documented "Trump's attacks on disaster preparedness and response."
"The deadly Texas floods will not be the last manifestation of extreme weather turbocharged by fossil fuel pollution," Stancil wrote in a Monday blog post. "In an era of escalating climate threats, we need a stronger public sector with more resources to mitigate risks, help people weather storms, and adapt to the future."
Seven Nobel laureates on Monday published an op-ed advocating for "a minimum tax for the ultrarich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth," in the French newspaper Le Monde.
"They have never been so wealthy and yet contribute very little to the public coffers: From Bernard Arnault to Elon Musk, billionaires have significantly lower tax rates than the average taxpayer," wrote Daron Acemoglu, George Akerlof, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz.
Citing pioneering research from the E.U. Tax Observatory, the renowned economists noted that "ultrawealthy individuals pay around 0% to 0.6% of their wealth in income tax. In a country like the United States, their effective tax rate is around 0.6%, while in a country like France, it is closer to 0.1%."
Although the "ultrawealthy can easily structure their wealth to avoid income tax, which is supposed to be the cornerstone of tax justice," the strategies for doing so differ by region, the experts detailed. Europeans often use family holding companies that are banned in the United States, "which explains why the wealthy are more heavily taxed there than in Europe—though some have still managed to find workarounds."
The good news is that "there is no inevitability here. Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible," argued the economists, who say that taxing the overall wealth of the ultrarich, not just income, is the key.
The wealth tax approach, they wrote, "is effective because it targets all forms of tax optimization, whatever their nature. It is targeted, as it applies only to the wealthiest taxpayers, and only to those among them who engage in tax avoidance."
💡 "One of the most promising avenues is to introduce a minimum tax for the ultra-rich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth."Seven Nobel laureates in economics advocate for the Zucman tax in their latest op-ed.Read the full @lemonde.fr article 👇www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...
[image or embed]
— EU Tax Observatory (@taxobservatory.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 8:05 AM
The anticipated impact would be significant. As the op-ed highlights: "Globally, a 2% minimum tax on billionaire wealth would generate about $250 billion in tax revenue—from just 3,000 individuals. In Europe, around $50 billion could be raised. And by extending this minimum rate to individuals with wealth over $100 million, these sums would increase significantly."
That's according to a June 2024 report that French economist and E.U. Tax Observatory director Gabriel Zucman prepared for the Group of 20's Brazilian presidency—which was followed by G20 leaders' November commitment to taxing the rich and last month's related proposal from the governments of Brazil, South Africa, and Spain.
"The international movement is underway," the economists declared Monday, also pointing to recent developments on the "Zucman tax" in France. The French National Assembly voted in favor of a 2% minimum tax on wealth exceeding €100 million, or $117 million, in February—but the Senate rejected the measure last month.
The economists urged the European country to keep working at it, writing that "at a time of ballooning public deficits and exploding extreme wealth, the French government must seize the initiative approved by the National Assembly. There is no reason to wait for an international agreement to be finalized—on the contrary, France should lead by example, as it has done in the past," when it was the first country to introduce a value-added tax (VAT).
"As for the risk of tax exile, the bill passed by the National Assembly provides that taxpayers would remain subject to the minimum tax for five years after leaving the country," they wrote. "The government could go further and propose extending this period to 10 years, which would likely reduce the risk of expatriation even more."
In an interview with CNN, former Congressman Dean Phillips was asked whether "there is room" for him and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic Party—but progressive Rep. Summer Lee was among those saying on Thursday that Phillips' rejection of Mamdani wwas really about millions of Americans who have voted for candidates like him.
"These guys aren't just rejecting him, but the millions moved to electoral action by candidates like him," said Lee (D-Pa.) in response to Phillips' interview.
CNN's Omar Jimenez asked Phillips about the "big tent" philosophy often promoted by Democratic leaders who believe the party should welcome lawmakers and candidates who don't agree with every aspect of its platform—politicians like anti-choice Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and former Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who made millions of dollars from his coal business.
Jimenez asked whether Mamdani, a democratic socialist who stunned former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the party's leadership in the Democratic mayoral primary last month, should also be welcomed into the party's "big tent."
"The answer ultimately is no," said Phillips, who was one of the wealthiest members of Congress before he left office to run for president in a long-shot bid against former President Joe Biden in the 2024 race—losing his home state of Minnesota and garnering just 1.7% of the vote in South Carolina, falling behind author Marianne Williamson.
Phillips admitted that "most Americans share the same values" as Mamdani, who has advocated for fare-free public transit, universal free childcare, and city-run grocery stores to operate alongside private stores and provide low-cost essentials to working families.
But he claimed that while "differences of opinion, perspective, life story, politics, and experience" are beneficial to the Democratic Party, the presence of so-called "socialists" like Mamdani is not.
"The overwhelming majority of Americans want neither far-left or far-right politics," he said without citing any supporting evidence.
Phillips appeared confident that Democratic voters across the country would recoil from candidates like Mamdani—despite recent rallies in red districts where progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who both endorsed Mamdani, have drawn crowds of thousands of people in recent months during Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy Tour.
In addition to Mamdani's historic success in the Democratic primary—with more New Yorkers voting for him than in any other primary election in the history of the nation's largest city—numerous polls have shown that Americans back policies like those that powered his campaign.
A poll by Child Care for Every Family in 2023 found that 92% of parents with children under age 5 supported guaranteed, government-funded childcare, including 79% of Republican parents and 83% of independent parents.
Raising taxes for corporations and wealthy households is also broadly popular, with about 6 in 10 Americans supporting the proposal in a recent Pew Research poll.
And despite efforts by centrist Democrats and Republicans to portray Mamdani's platform as radical, programs like his fare-free bus proposal have already been implemented in cities like Kansas City, Raleigh, and Boston on three of the city's busiest bus routes.
"Maybe our big tent should have less millionaire nepo heirs and more fighters for the millions of working-class people," suggested Lee on Thursday.
Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project also condemned Phillips for suggesting Mamdani—and ostensibly the 565,639 New Yorkers who voted for him—have no place in the party.
"The stated position here is that socialists cannot be part of the Democratic Party," said Bruenig. "Does this hold for the socialist voters too? Should they also not vote for the party? Phillips is trying to radically shrink the party. Scary stuff."
"Centrists and other moderates are spending a nontrivial amount of national political energy being mad at Zohran," he added, "which could instead be spent on [President Donald] Trump and Republicans."
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, the progressive advocacy group Our Revolution is circulating a petition that's garnered more than 30,000 signatures from people urging Democratic leaders like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand—all New York Democrats who have yet to endorse their own party's mayoral candidate—not to "sabotage" Mamdani.
Despite Phillips' insistence that Mamdani doesn't belong in the party, the resistance in New York appeared to weaken a bit Thursday as Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) endorsed the candidate.
"New Yorkers have spoken loud and clear," said Espaillat, who had previously backed Cuomo. "And as a lifelong Democrat, I'm endorsing the Democratic Party nominee."
Americans' support for immigration in the United States is at a record high despite the fact that American voters mere months ago elected a president who ran on enacting the largest deportation operation in the country's history.
A new poll from Gallup shows that 79% of Americans think that immigration is a good thing for the country, which is the highest number ever recorded in Gallup's 24-year history of measuring U.S. voters' attitudes on the immigration.
Furthermore, the Gallup poll shows that 85% of Americans now support "allowing immigrants, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time" and 78% support "allowing immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time."
Support for deporting all undocumented immigrants back to their home countries, meanwhile, garners just 38% support from Americans, which is a drop of nine percentage points from the 47% of Americans who said they supported deporting all undocumented immigrants one year ago.
Voters surveyed in the poll also had decidedly negative views of U.S. President Donald Trump's handling of immigration, as just 35% approved of how he was handling the issue while 62% disapproved. The numbers get even worse for Trump when it comes to Latino voters, who were a key constituency that Trump made major gains with in the 2024 presidential election.
"At 21%, Hispanic Americans' approval of Trump’s handling of immigration is 14 points below the national average," writes Gallup. "With respect to immigration levels, Hispanic adults are slightly more likely than U.S. adults overall to say immigration should be decreased (39% vs. 30%, respectively) as well as to consider immigration a bad thing (25% vs. 17%), but the majority in both cases still express pro-immigration views."
The low support for Trump's immigration policies in the Gallup poll is notable because polls in the past have consistently shown that it's his strongest issue among American voters.
Aggregated polling data compiled by data analyst G. Elliott Morris have consistently shown that Trump has higher approval on immigration than on other major issues, although that support has also fallen over the last several months. Back in February, Trump's net approval on handling immigration was +10.8 percentage points, whereas today his net approval on the issue stands at -3.2 percentage points.
The new data on immigration comes as the Trump administration has been launching high-profile raids of workplaces suspected of employing undocumented immigrants, including a Thursday afternoon raid of a farm in Camarillo, California that drew significant local protest.
The Israeli government's new plan to push all residents in Gaza to live in a camp built atop the ruins of the city of Rafah is drawing heavy criticism from experts who see it as a precursor for ethnic cleansing.
In an interview with The Guardian, Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard accused Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz of laying out "an operational plan for a crime against humanity" with his announcement this week of an initiative to build a massive refugee camp at Rafah from which Palestinians would not be allowed to leave. Katz characterized the proposed camp as a "humanitarian city."
Sfard said that the entire camp was being built as a pretext for the mass deportation of Palestinians from Gaza.
"It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip," he told The Guardian. "While the government still calls the deportation 'voluntary,' people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual. When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it's done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity."
Dr. Amos Goldberg, a historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, picked apart the Israeli government's claims that the camp in Rafah would be a "humanitarian city" where Palestinian civilians could live safely away from Israeli military operations being conducted against Hamas fighters.
"It is neither humanitarian nor a city," Goldberg explained. "A city is a place where you have possibilities of work, of earning money, of making connections and freedom of movement. There are hospitals, schools, universities and offices. This is not what they have in mind. It will not be a livable place, just as the 'safe areas' are unlivable now."
Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian human rights activist and director of the Agora Initiative, expressed a similar sentiment in an interview with The National.
"Israel's Defense Minister Katz isn't even hiding it any more—he's openly calling for a concentration camp for Palestinians in Gaza," he said.
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of the Refugees International advocacy group, told Reuters that he wasn't at all buying the Israeli government's stated humanitarian intentions regarding the construction of the camp.
"There is no such thing as voluntary displacement amongst a population that has been under constant bombardment for nearly two years and has been cut off from essential aid," he said.
Reuters reported Monday that a $2 billion plan for so-called "humanitarian transit areas" inside Gaza was recently discussed in the Trump White House.
President Donald Trump earlier this year called for the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza so that the area could be rebuilt as an international beach resort that he described as the "Riviera of the Middle East."
"Trump’s thugs will racially profile you, then go on national television to brag about getting away with it," commented Rep. Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.).
White House border czar Tom Homan on Friday stirred up outrage during a Fox News interview in which he declared that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could detain people without probable cause based on a number of factors including their physical appearance.
After being asked about the possibility of a judge in California limiting the scope of ICE's law-enforcement activities, Homan declared that "people need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol don't need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them."
He then outlined factors ICE agents could use that would justify detaining someone.
"They just need the totality of the circumstances," he claimed. "They just got through our observation, you know, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions."
Homan: "People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol don't need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them ... based on their physical appearance." pic.twitter.com/aQzwepaHpk
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 11, 2025
Homan's statement about not requiring probable cause to detain people contradicts a statement made in court this week by Thomas Giles, the assistant director of ICE who testified that the standard for making arrests "is we need to determine probable cause and determine alienage."
Many elected Democrats rushed to slam Homan for his statement about using "physical appearance" as a factor for determining whether someone warrants being detained.
"This is patently false," wrote Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) on X. "DHS has authority to question and search people coming into the country at points of entry. But ICE may not detain and question anyone without reasonable suspicion—and certainly not based on their physical appearance alone. This lawlessness must stop."
"Trump's thugs will racially profile you, then go on national television to brag about getting away with it," commented Rep. Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.).
"And there you have it," wrote Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who weeks ago was forcibly removed by security forces while trying to ask Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem questions at a press event. "Under the Trump Administration, ICE and Border Patrol are being empowered to stop and question you based solely on how you look. No probable cause. No real reason. Just your 'physical appearance.' That's not justice—it's profiling."
"They're saying the quiet part out loud now," wrote Democratic New York State Sen. Gustavo Rivera. "Don't get it twisted: if we let them keep doing this, they'll find a reason to come for ANY ONE OF US soon enough."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, argued on X that there was some truth to Homan's statement as the Supreme Court ruled in 1975 that racial profiling can be used in immigration stops. He noted, however, "that decision was based on demographics at the time, and in the 50 years since, courts have invalidated it as used in Latino-heavy communities."
David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, accused Homan and the Trump administration of "admitting to participating in a criminal conspiracy against the Constitution of the United States" with his remarks.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) earlier this month filed a lawsuit in which it alleged that ICE agents in Los Angeles were racially profiling Latinos in the city and flouting federal laws when making arrests.
"Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from," the ACLU wrote. "If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind. If agents make an arrest, contrary to federal law, they do not make any determination of whether a person poses a risk of flight before a warrant can be obtained. Also contrary to federal law, the agents do not identify themselves or explain why the individual is being arrested."
"They are worried that his campaign is an example of what can happen all over the country."
Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday reaffirmed his support for Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, a fellow democratic socialist facing fierce opposition from deep-pocketed establishment figures who fear the broad nationwide appeal of his people-over-profit agenda.
Faced with the growing possibility that Mamdani would win the June 24 primary, Wall Street bankers, corporate executives, real estate developers, mega-landlords, and others rushed to dump money into disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign coffers. Now that Mamdani is the Democratic nominee, they're pouring tens of millions of dollars into an anti-Mamdani war chest, despite not even agreeing on which candidate to back in November's mayoral election.
In a Thursday interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour—who noted that Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy tour "has been drawing record crowds"—the Vermont senator said that policies like "giving massive tax breaks to billionaires and cutting healthcare and education and nutrition from working-class families [are] not popular."
While acknowledging that "mainstream Democrats" have been unable to galvanize opposition to Republicans' pro-billionaire, anti-working class agenda, Amanpour pressed Sanders about what he would tell New Yorkers who say that Mamdani "has never run anything, and he says, free buses, and... is he antisemitic or not?'"
Watch Sanders' response:
"First of all, understand, he's going to have the entire establishment, the oligarchy, the billionaires coming down on his head, not only because he's demanding that the wealthy and large corporations in New York City start paying their fair share of taxes, they are worried that his campaign is an example of what can happen all over the country when you bring people together to demand the government that works for all of us and not just a few," the senator said. "So, they really want to crush this guy."
"You have billionaires saying quite openly, 'We are going to spend as much as it takes to defeat this guy.' You have Democratic leadership not refusing to jump on board a campaign where this guy is the Democratic nominee," Sanders added. "So, most importantly, I'm going to do everything I can to see that Zohran becomes the next mayor of New York."
Some Democrats have done more than refuse to support their own party's nominee. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) falsely claimed last month that Mamdani had made references to "global jihad" and speciously argued that "globalize the intifada"—a call for Palestinian liberation and battling injustice—is a call to "kill all the Jews."
Freshman Congresswoman Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) also falsely accused Mamdani of "a deeply disturbing pattern of unacceptable antisemitic comments."
Congressional progressives including Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), André Carson (D-Ind.), and Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.)—the four practicing Muslims in the House of Representatives—last month condemned what they called the "vile, anti-Muslim, and racist smears from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle."
Despite the attacks against him, Mamdani is leading Cuomo—who is now running as an Independent—by 10 points in a Slingshot Strategies poll of more than 1,000 registered voters published earlier this week. Mamdani also leads Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa by 21 points and scandal-ridden incumbent Mayor Eric Adams by 24 points.
Observers note that establishment Democrats' reservations about backing Mamdani seem to be fading amid the strength of his campaign. As Democrats including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) hold out on endorsing their own party's nominee, critics argue it's time to follow other lawmakers like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jerrold Nadler, Adriano Espaillat, and Nydia Velázquez—all New York Democrats—and endorse Mamdani.
"Mamdani won a record-setting primary victory, and unions, grassroots Democratic groups, and savvy elected officials are rushing to back him," The Nation's national affairs correspondent, John Nichols, wrote Friday. "Now it's the establishment's turn."
"He pressed ahead with the war in April and July 2024, even as top generals told him that there was no further military advantage to continuing," reports The New York Times.
An explosive new report from The New York Times flatly contends that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has "prolonged the war in Gaza" to stay in power and avoid potential criminal prosecution.
The Times' reporting reveals that Netanyahu in April 2024 was close to signing off on a six-week cease-fire proposal that would have led to the release of more than 30 hostages captured by Hamas six months earlier and "would have created a window for negotiations with Hamas over a permanent truce."
However, Netanyahu abruptly changed course when Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a hardliner who has long demanded the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza, warned Netanyahu he and his allies would quit their coalition government if any cease-fire deal were reached. Such a move would collapse the coalition and force new elections, which polls at the time suggested Netanyahu would lose.
According to the Times, the Israeli prime minister tossed the cease-fire proposal away and kept the war grinding on until this very day, even expanding military operations into nations such as Lebanon and Iran.
"Under political pressure from those coalition allies, Netanyahu slowed down cease-fire negotiations at crucial moments, missing windows in which Hamas was less opposed to a deal," the Times writes. "He avoided planning for a postwar power transition, making it harder to direct the war toward an endgame. He pressed ahead with the war in April and July 2024, even as top generals told him that there was no further military advantage to continuing. When momentum toward a cease-fire seemed to grow, Netanyahu ascribed sudden significance to military objectives that he previously seemed less interested in pursuing, such as the capture of the southern city Rafah and later the occupation of the Gaza-Egypt border. And when an extended cease-fire was finally forged in January, he broke the truce in March in part to keep his coalition intact."
The report also details American efforts to persuade Netanyahu that he would politically benefit by reaching a cease-fire deal that would release hostages by referencing opinion polls showing that more than 50% of Israeli voters would back such a move.
"Not 50% of my voters," Netanyahu responded, according to the Times' sources.
The toll taken on Palestinians in Gaza has been horrific. At least 57,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed as a result of Israel's war, and researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said earlier this year that it's possible the actual number of civilians killed is significantly higher than that. Additionally, civilians in Gaza are facing widespread food insecurity and even run the risk of getting shot by the Israeli military while standing in line to receive food.
The report on Netanyahu's maneuvers to prolong the Gaza war drew a disgusted reaction from Ron Ben-Tovim, a senior lecturer at the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel.
"I no longer know if there's anything that will bring down this government, but an investigation showing how and when exactly Netanyahu prolonged a baseless war of destruction to stay in power should end his political career," he wrote on X.
Joel Swanson, a scholar of modern Jewish intellectual history at Sarah Lawrence College, similarly expressed his disgust with Netanyahu.
"Everything in this report is just so profoundly damning of Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the worst and cruelest world leaders of our age," he wrote on Bluesky.
Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, argued that the Times report also delivered a damning portrayal of former U.S. President Joe Biden.
"Portraying Biden as feckless and cranky at constantly being conned by Netanyahu really undersells his culpability," he wrote on X. "Netanyahu couldn't have massacred Gaza and revived his political career without Biden’s total support, which Biden chose to give."