Friends,
Demonstrations against Trump are getting larger and louder. Fabulous. This is absolutely essential.
But at some point we’ll need to demonstrate not just against Trump but also for the America we want.
Trump’s regressive populism — cruel, tyrannical, bigoted, authoritarian — must be met by a bold progressive populism that strengthens democracy and shares the wealth.
Earlier this year, doctors at Veterans Affairs hospitals in Pennsylvania sounded an alarm. Sweeping cuts imposed by the Trump administration, they told higher-ups in an email, were causing “severe and immediate impacts,” including two “life-saving cancer trials.”
The email said more than 1,000 veterans would lose access to treatment for diseases ranging from metastatic head and neck cancers, to kidney disease, to traumatic brain injuries.
“Enrollment in clinical trials is stopping,” the email warned, “meaning veterans lose access to therapies.”
The Trump administration is planning to use a military plane to deport immigrants to Libya in a cruel, arbitrary escalation of its mass deportation campaign. The deportations could happen as soon as Wednesday, and the nationality of the immigrants remains unclear.
On April 22, Attorney General Pam Bondi hosted the first meeting of the “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias in the Federal Government.” Attendees included the secretaries of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Health & Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Education, and Labor, as well as over a dozen high-ranking officials in the administration.
Robbing the poor to pay the rich. In order to pay for their personal tax cuts, House Republicans are proposing raising Medicaid premiums and co-pays for the country’s poorest earners, including individuals making as little as $15,650 a year, according to new reporting in The American Prospect.
Mr. Mahdawi is a Palestinian human rights advocate and Columbia University student.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing, photo: screen grab
Palestinians carrying the bodies of their family members killed in Israeli airstrikes for burial. April 28, 2025. (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
GAZA CITY—Three generations of the al-Khour family were wiped out when Israel bombed their family home in the al-Sabra neighborhood in central Gaza at dawn on April 26. The elderly patriarch of the family, Talal al-Khour, his wives, daughters, sons, and grandchildren were all killed in the attack. A total of twenty-two people—including twelve children—perished, their bodies blown apart and buried under the rubble.
Janine Jackson interviewed Pregnancy Justice’s Karen Thompson about criminalizing pregnancy for the April 25, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Over the course of 36 hours at the tail end of the three-month legislative session, Indiana lawmakers made significant policy changes that fundamentally alter how state universities conduct themselves.
The Trump administration on Friday abruptly moved to restore thousands of international students’ ability to study in the United States legally, but immigration officials insisted they could still try to terminate that legal status despite a wave of legal challenges.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 2 that “Israel has decided to stop letting goods and supplies into Gaza,” where the ongoing Israeli genocide, with the loyal backing of the United States, has officially killed more than 51,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
From a recent peaceful student rally at Columbia University came a chant that summed up their protest – “FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DEAD AND YOU’RE ARRESTING US INSTEAD.”
A sign is seen above a branch of Oxfam, in central London, UK [File: Simon Dawson/Reuters]
Billionaires’ wealth globally grew three times faster in 2024 than the year before, global advocacy group Oxfam International says, as some of the world’s political and financial elite prepare to attend an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland.
In its latest assessment of global inequality timed to the opening of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting, Oxfam on Monday said the combined wealth of billionaires rose by $2 trillion to $15 trillion last year.
Afghan men load up food packets that were distributed as aid by the World Food Programme. Last weekend, all USAID contracts supporting humanitarian aid from WFP and other agencies in Afghanistan were canceled.
Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images/AFP
Well, I see that Trump’s effort to remake America into a gulag has claimed another victim: Americorps.
If you are unfamiliar with Americorps, a recent description from the Brennan Center might be helpful.
In its coverage of Jewish Voice for Peace’s Trump Tower protest, Fox News obscured the Jewish identity of protesters—while echoing antisemitic conspiracy theories and racist tropes.
WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 20: U.S. President Donald Trump stands with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon after signing an executive order to reduce the size and scope of the Education Department during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The NAACP is challenging the Trump administration in a new federal lawsuit that accuses the U.S. Department of Education of violating the civil rights of Black American students with its broad anti-DEI policies..
People attend a protest against the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia.Robyn Stevens Brody/Sipa USA/AP
The title of this post is taken from T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding, the final poem of a series of four poems written over a six year period (1936-1942). The collection was eventually published as the Four Quartets. The poems are about a nation and a culture under threat, this final one written during the London air raids of WWII.
More than 500 people this year have already left the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service. Nearly 200 of those departures were people who work in weather forecasting offices, which had already faced serious understaffing.
President Trump says his administration is actively exploring a proposal to detain U.S. citizens and send them to prisons in El Salvador.
In fact, it’s happening.
