Progressive Politics

"I usually like farm workers to have their own voice and be the ones to speak but.. we would be putting them at risk" - Teresa Romero President of the United Farm Workers Union

The Trump administration is considering using the National Guard for immigration enforcement, setting up a possible states' rights showdown.

A federal judge in the United States has ordered the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who has been detained since March by immigration authorities over his involvement in Palestinian rights protests at Columbia University.

The decision on Friday came from a federal court in New Jersey, where Khalil’s lawyers are challenging his detention. It is separate from the legal push against his deportation that will continue to take place in immigration courts.

"This is the behavior of a crazy person.

Trump is a massive failure as president. He has allowed a genocidal monster to take over the foreign policy of the United States.

Trump has permitted Netanyahu to drag America to the threshold of war with Iran."

Source by Paul Craig Roberts, Institute for Political Economy

Shows a strong link between data center proximity and quality of power for consumers

Who’s afraid of Zohran Mamdani? The answer, it would seem, is the entire establishment. The 33-year-old democratic socialist and New York City mayoral candidate has surged in the polls in recent weeks, netting endorsements not just from progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders but also his fellow candidates for the mayoralty, with Brad Lander and Michael Blake taking advantage of the ranked-choice voting system in the primary and cross-endorsing Mamdani’s campaign.

With the primary just around the corner, polls have Mamdani closing the gap on Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. This has spooked the establishment, which is now doing everything it can to stop Mamdani’s rise.

Take Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo earlier this month and followed this up with a $5m donation to a pro-Cuomo Pac. The largesse appears motivated not by admiration for Cuomo – during his mayoralty, sources told the New York Times that Bloomberg saw Cuomo as “the epitome of the self-interested, horse-trading political culture he has long stood against” – but animosity towards Mamdani and his policies.

Mamdani wants to increase taxes on residents earning more than $1m a year, increase corporate taxes and freeze rents: policies that aren’t exactly popular with the billionaire set.

He told the New York Times that he thinks the U.S. will “very likely” find itself in a three-front war with China, Russia, and Iran. As a result, he said, the Pentagon should continue developing autonomous weapons at full speed, pointing to big mismatches in how far the U.S. would be willing to go while fighting a war compared with other countries.

Source

Just in case there was any confusion about this administration's disdain for its citizens.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been furiously urging House Democrats to release messages of steadfast support for Israel in its war with Iran, the Prospect and Drop Site News have learned, even as bipartisan lawmakers come together on a War Powers Act resolution to prevent U.S. troops or funds being used in yet another Middle East conflagration.

One member relayed that a colleague had received literally 100 phone calls from members of AIPAC and its allied pressure groups. AIPAC wants House Democratic members to state explicitly that they “stand with Israel” in its actions against Iran aimed at destroying the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capability, and add that Iran “must never have a nuclear weapon.”

Submission Statement

Between 2001 and 2021, under four U.S. presidents, the United States spent approximately $2.3 trillion, with 2,459 American military fatalities and up to 360,000 estimated Afghan civilian deaths.

After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, approximately $7.12 billion worth of military equipment was left behind, according to a 2022 Department of Defense report. This equipment, transferred to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) from 2005 to 2021, included:

Weapons: Over 300,000 of 427,300 weapons, including rifles like M4s and M16s.  
Vehicles: More than 40,000 of 96,000 military vehicles, including 12,000 Humvees and 1,000 armored vehicles.  
Aircraft: 78 aircraft, valued at $923.3 million, left at Hamid Karzai International Airport, all demilitarized and rendered inoperable.  
Munitions: 9,524 air-to-ground munitions worth $6.54 million, mostly non-precision.  
Communications and Specialized Equipment: Nearly all communications gear (e.g., radios, encryption devices) and 42,000 pieces of night vision, surveillance, biometric, and positioning equipment.  

The total equipment provided to the ANDSF was valued at $18.6 billion, with the $7.12 billion figure representing what remained after the withdrawal. Much of this equipment is now under Taliban control, though its operational capability is limited due to the need for specialized maintenance and technical expertise.

The United States has provided at least $93.41 billion in total aid to Afghanistan since 2001. This includes:

Military Aid (2001–2020): Approximately $72.7 billion (in current dollars), primarily through the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund ($71.7 billion) and other programs like International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, and Peacekeeping Operations ($1 billion combined).  

Humanitarian and Reconstruction Aid (2001–2025): Around $20.71 billion, including $3 billion in humanitarian and development aid post-2021 and $3.5 billion in frozen Afghan assets transferred to the Afghan Fund in 2022. Pre-2021 reconstruction and humanitarian aid (e.g., $174 million in 2001 and $300 million pledged in 2002) adds to this, though exact figures for the full period are less clear.  

A majority of supporters of Donald Trump are against US military involvement in Israel’s conflict with Iran, a poll published on Wednesday found, reflecting a growing Republican backlash to the president’s threats to utilize American firepower.

A wide-ranging Economist/YouGov poll conducted over the weekend revealed that 53% of voters who backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election do not want the country to join in Israel’s strikes.

It reinforces a long-held public appetite for a peaceful resolution to the objective of forcing Iran to give up its ambitions of acquiring nuclear weapons. A Chicago Council on Global Affairs-Ipsos survey in April found eight in 10 Americans favored diplomatic steps or tightening economic sanctions to limit Iran’s further nuclear enrichment.

As millions of Americans celebrate Juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. and the freedom of Americans of African descent, the politics of the holiday today can probably be best understood by what’s happening or not happening at the White House.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/30028880

See the stickied comment below for an explanation and statement of our purpose, based on simple back-of-the-napkin math

E: if someone could please link this community to r/aspen and r/roaringforkvalley I would greatly appreciate it. I’ve been IP banned by the all powerful AI mod monster, like many folks on Lemmy

Democratic US Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont introduced legislation on Monday to prevent the use of federal funds for any "illegal wars” in or against Iran without approval from Congress.

Sanders introduced the "No War Against Iran Act", which contains an exception for self-defence as enshrined in the War Powers Act and applicable US law.

“It is imperative that we make clear that the President has no authority to embark on another costly war without explicit authorization by Congress,” Sanders said in a statement on Monday.

What's the difference between a German in the 1930s who said "I don't support Hitler's stance on Jewish people but he promised to make the economy great again so I'm voting for the Nazis" and a German who said "I fully support Hitler and I'm voting for the Nazis"?

What's the difference between a German who said "I don't support the regime's actions but this job at the weapons factory pays the bills" and a German who said "I'm fulling my patriotic duty building weapons for the Nazis who I fully support"?

What's the difference between a German solider who said "I don't agree with the regime but I'm just following orders" and a German solider who said "I'm doing this because I support the regime"?

The answer is not very much. Their actions accomplish the same end result and they're judged by history to be almost no different. The Nazis were in part comprised of millions of people who unintentionally or intentionally supported the regime with their small daily actions.

This time around things must be different. Make ensuring your actions don't support the Trump regime your mission. Be bold and speak out whenever you can. Teach others that silence is tacit consent in the regime's actions. Don't worry about imperfection, your actions no matter how small will make a difference. You could be grain of rice that tips the scale.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31892386

from The Wire [online publication of Jewish Voice For Peace JVP in USA]

Other articles

• Tell Congress: NO WAR WITH IRAN.

• Tell Congress: Block the Bombs to Israel now.

• What we’re doing: JVP-Chicago hunger strikes to say Stop Starving Gaza.

Pick a border. Whichever you're closest to. North or South. Look into making a plan. Crossing the border illegally is an option. Probably a better option if a draft is called. A charge and claiming asylum is preferable to being caught on the wrong side of a checkpoint. Fleeing war is a valid asylum claim pretty much anywhere on the planet.

Military recruitment has been all time low year over year for a decade or more. And Iran isn't Iraq. That is a modern professional military armed and trained just as well as our guys. This won't be a professional military vs an insurgency armed with homemade bombs and soviet era relics. If you want a peek at the attrition rates this war will have go look at the numbers coming out of the Ukraine war. On both sides.

Back when Bush's War on Peace kicked off my dad made plans to get me out. He looked up an old war buddy he was in Vietnam with who lived in Canada. They planned to smuggle me across the woodlands. Not through an official crossing. Thankfully that plan never needed to be used. But he was serious. And I remember how serious he was.

Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a mayoral candidate, was arrested by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.

In a statement to the Guardian, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”.

With one week left until voting ends in the city's Democratic mayoral primary, the senator announced his endorsement for progressive Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.

"How does New York effectively address the crises in affordable housing, education, crime, drugs, transportation, childcare, and many more?" said Sanders (I-Vt.) in a statement. "The answers will not be easy, but one thing I do know: They will not be solved by a Democratic establishment dependent on super PACs funded by billionaires who could care less about the needs of working families. We need a new politics and new leadership which is prepared to stand up to powerful corporate interests and fight for the working class."