United States | News & Politics

US DHS defends fatal shooting in Minneapolis as "domestic terrorism" act. Video footage contradicts claims. Mayor calls it "reckless use of power."

A recording from Ken Klippenstein and THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali's live video

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7266454

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17735

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” Mark Twain allegedly quipped. On January 3, 1990, Panamanian Commander Manuel Noriega surrendered to US forces, who carried him off to face drug charges. Thirty-six years to the day later, US forces swooped into Venezuela, abducting President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, following decades of hostility between the oil-rich socialist country and the United States. The pretext offered: Maduro had to be taken to the US to face drug charges.

The coincidence is a reminder that the US has a long history of both covert and military intervention in Latin America: President Donald Trump, as extreme as he might be, isn’t an outlier among American presidents in this regard. And despite the right’s attempt to paint Trump as some sort of peacenik (Compact, 4/7/23; X, 10/14/25), he is no less an imperialist than his predecessors.

And that’s precisely why many of the nation’s leading editorial pages are hailing Maduro’s capture.

‘Hemispheric hygiene’

To the Wall Street Journal (1/3/26), the devastation of Venezuela’s economy was not the intentional effect of US sanctions, but part of President Nicolás Maduro’s sinister scheme to “flood…the US with migrants in an effort to sow political discord.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board (1/3/26) called the abductions “an act of hemispheric hygiene,” a dehumanizing comparison of Venezuela’s leaders to germs needing to be cleansed.

For the Journal, the abductions were justified because they weren’t just a blow to Venezuela, but to the rest of America’s official enemies. “The dictator was also part of the axis of US adversaries that includes Russia, China, Cuba and Iran,” it said. It called Maduro’s “capture…a demonstration of Mr. Trump’s declaration to keep America’s enemies from spreading chaos in the Western Hemisphere.” It amplified Trump’s own rhetoric of adding on to the Roosevelt Corollary, saying “It’s the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine”—a nod to the long-standing imperial notion that the US more or less owns the Western Hemisphere.

The next day, the Journal editorial board (1/4/26) even seemed upset that the Trump administration didn’t go far enough in Venezuela, worrying that it left the socialist regime in place, whose “new leaders rely so much on aid from Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.” “Despite Mr. Trump’s vow that the US will ‘run the country,’ there is no one on the ground to do so,” the paper complained, thus reducing “the US ability to persuade the regime.”

The Washington Post board (1/3/26) took a similar view to the Journal. “This is a major victory for American interests,” it wrote. “Just hours before, supportive Chinese officials held a chummy meeting with Maduro, who had also been propped up by Russia, Cuba and Iran.”

Washington Post (1/3/26): “Trump had telegraphed for months that Maduro could not remain in power, yet Venezuela’s illegitimate leader clung on.” The effrontery!

The Post, which has moved steadily to the right since Trump’s inauguration a year ago, seemed to endorse extreme “might makes right” militarism. “Maduro’s removal sends an important message to tin-pot dictators in Latin America and the world: Trump follows through,” the board wrote. (Really? Did we miss when Trump “followed through” on his promise to end the Ukraine War within 24 hours? Or to take back the Panama Canal? Or make Canada the 51st state?) It belittled Democratic President Joe Biden, who “offered sanctions relief to Venezuela, and Maduro responded to that show of weakness by stealing an election.”

Like the Journal, the Post board (1/4/26) followed up a day later to push Trump to take a more active role in Venezuela’s future. It worried about his decision to leave in place “dyed-in-the-wool Chavista” Delcy Rodriguez and other “hard-liners” in Maduro’s administration.

The Post chided Trump for dismissing the idea of installing opposition leader María Corina Machado, who it deemed a worthy partner in imperial prospects: “She has a strong record of standing for democracy and free markets, and she’s committed to doing lucrative business with the US.” As with the Journal, the assumption that it’s up to the US to choose Venezuela’s leadership went unquestioned.

‘Fueled economic and political disruption’

The New York Times editorialists (1/3/26) were an exception in not prioritizing their hatred of Maduro over international law—though they made it clear that they do hate Maduro.

The New York Times editorial board (1/3/26), on the other hand, condemned the abductions, saying Trump’s attack “represents a dangerous and illegal approach to America’s place in the world.”

But the board only did so after the requisite vilifying, asserting that “few people will feel any sympathy for Mr. Maduro. He is undemocratic and repressive, and has destabilized the Western Hemisphere in recent years.”

You’re writing from the country that has spent the past four months blowing up small craft in the Caribbean, and you think it’s Maduro who has “destabilized the Western Hemisphere”?

Even as CBS News content czar Bari Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes piece about the plight of Venezuelan migrants under the administration’s brutal round-ups, the Times editorial blamed Maduro alone for the humanitarian crisis at hand. “He has fueled economic and political disruption throughout the region by instigating an exodus of nearly 8 million migrants,” the editorial said. As is typical in US commentary on Venezuela (FAIR.org, 2/6/19), the word “sanctions” does not appear in the editorial, though US strictures have fueled an economic collapse three times worse than the Great Depression.

And it comes after the Times opinion page gave space calling for regime change in Venezuela. “Washington should approach dismantling the Maduro regime as we would any criminal enterprise,” wrote Jimmy Story (New York Times, 12/26/25), a former US ambassador to Venezuela. Right-wing Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote a piece simply headlined “The Case for Overthrowing Maduro” (11/17/25).

The Times didn’t mention the recent seizures of ships carrying Venezuelan oil (BBC, 12/21/25; Houston Public Media, 12/22/25)—or the issue of Venezuela’s oil at all, though even the paper’s own news section (1/3/25)  admitted that oil was “central” to the kidnapping. ​“They stole our oil,” Trump dubiously claimed in his public address, bragging that the door to the country was now open to have “very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars…and start making money for the country.”

These are glaring oversights by the Times board, even if it ultimately waved its finger at the administration for its military action. Contrast this to the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle (1/3/26), which serves a huge portion of the energy sector:

Even now we’re still asking: Why? Why is the US taking such drastic military action? Is it to “take back” our oil? To deport Venezuelans en masse? To fight drug trafficking? To send a message to Cuba?

Perhaps this cloud of justifications just conceals the truth—there is no real reason. Trump seems to be doing this because he can.

‘Not a guarantee’

“Maduro Had to Be Removed,” the Dallas Morning News (1/3/26) editorialized—”for the cause of human freedom around the world.”

Elsewhere in the press, the operation against Maduro won support from editorial boards that also reserved the right to say “I told you so.” “Maduro Had to Be Removed,” said the Dallas Morning News editorial board (1/3/26) in its headline, adding in the subhead, “But the US Cannot ‘Run’ Venezuela.”

And the Miami Herald editorial board (1/3/26), which serves a large anti-socialist Latin American population, said that while Maduro out of power was “obviously cause for enormous joy,” this was “not a guarantee for democracy.” “Is Trump’s true interest to see democracy in Venezuela,” it asked, “or to install a new leader who’s more friendly to the US and its interests in the nation’s oil reserves?”

The Chicago Tribune editorial board (1/5/25) heaped paragraphs of praise on the Maduro mission—”we don’t lament Maduro’s exit for a moment”—and scoffed at “left-wing mayors” who “howled in protest at the weekend actions.” But it saw a moral dilemma:

What moral authority does the US now have if, say, China, removes the Taiwanese leadership, deeming it incompatible with Chinese interests? Not much. And this action surely weakens the moral argument against Vladimir Putin, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now hoping Russia’s leader is the next authoritarian Trump takes out.

The New York Times editorial board (12/21/89) said something similar 36 years ago, when the US invaded Panama. While justifying the invasion, it asked, “What kind of precedent does the invasion set for potential Soviet action in Eastern Europe?”

Perhaps rather than worrying that US behavior will encourage some other country to behave lawlessly, US papers could be more concerned about their own country’s lawlessness. By kidnapping a foreign head of state, the Trump administration is saying that international law doesn’t apply to the United States. That’s a sentiment most American editorialists are all too ready to applaud—despite the danger it poses for Americans, and for the world.

From FAIR via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7266463

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17671

A 22-year-old woman who was detained for several hours by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday after speaking out against President Donald Trump's invasion of Venezuela had allegedly "obstructed a roadway" and failed to obey officers—but she described an arrest in which the authorities appeared to be suspicious of her for protesting at all.

Jessica Plichta, a preschool teacher and organizer, told Zeteo on Monday that police officers repeatedly asked her why she was at a protest in Grand Rapids' Rosa Parks Circle, where hundreds of demonstrators spoke out against the US military's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—a violation of international law that has garnered worldwide condemnation.

Plichta had just finished speaking to a reporter with local ABC News affiliate WZZM about her opposition to the US invasion of Venezuela when two city police officers came up behind her and placed her under arrest.

It is "the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime, the Trump administration, that are committing crimes both here in the US and against people in Venezuela," said Plichta just before the officers appeared on camera behind her.

Grand Rapids police arrest an antiwar activist live on air while taking an interview denouncing US military aggression in Venezuela pic.twitter.com/Zm16aFRDxq
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) January 5, 2026

Plichta told Zeteo, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as soon as I finished an interview speaking on Venezuela, I was arrested—the only person arrested out of 200 people."

She told the officers she was "not resisting arrest" as they led her toward a police car. A bystander approached and asked the police what Plichta was being detained for.

The officers replied that she had been "obstructing a roadway" and was accused of "failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer."

BREAKING: IN GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN, at approximately 5:30pm today, GRPD arrested local organizer Jessica Plichta on camera during a post-march press interview.
Plichta was sought out and targeted specifically by
GRPD for helping lead a U.S. Out Of Venezuela rally at Rosa Parks… pic.twitter.com/Uj6fLVba80
— Private IcedC81 Politics (@PvtIcedC81Pol) January 3, 2026

Plichta told Zeteo that the police drove her away from WZZM's cameras and then took her out of the car, patted her down, and confiscated her belongings. The officers told her she had been "making a scene" and asked her about her involvement in the protest: whether she was Venezuelan, "what she had to do with Venezuela," and what she was doing at the protest.

She also told Zeteo that the police asked her for the names of other demonstrators.

She was asked again what her connection to Venezuela was after she was taken to Kent County Correctional Facility, where she was held for about three hours and released after outcry from her fellow organizers.

"We are so accustomed to, and used to, repression when we speak out on anti-war topics,” Plichta told the outlet. “When we speak out for Venezuela, when we speak out for Palestine, we expect the police to want to shut that down.”

A spokesperson for the Grand Rapids Police Department told Zeteo that protesters had "refused lawful orders to move this free speech event to the sidewalk and instead began blocking intersections until the march ended," and said Plichta "was positively identified by officers," allowing for her arrest.

Though Plichta remained calm when she was arrested and suggested that she had taken her detention relatively in stride, supporters expressed shock that she had been targeted for speaking out against Trump's attack on Venezuela—which is broadly unpopular across the United States.

"What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?" asked Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official.

Friedman pointed out that among elected Democrats, there appeared to be little if any outcry over Plichta's arrest for participating in a peaceful protest.

If this happened to a conservative organizer, Republicans would make her a hero, a household name and a congressional candidate.Elected Democrats just pretend it isn't happening.
— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 11:29 AM

“Protesting in this country is sacred," Plichta told Zeteo, "and so it is important that our rights are protected and that we are not criminalized for peacefully protesting in a world full of escalating violence."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7266467

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17696

Since Donald Trump marched back into the White House in January 2025, his administration has waged an all-out war on disabled people. Trump has issued executive orders rolling back civil rights protections, slashed funding for vital services and support, and advocated for legislation that would ramp up institutionalization.

The administration’s actions reflect the cruel and dehumanizing language it uses to speak about disabled people, who comprise more than a quarter of the nation’s population: One February 2025 executive order characterized children being diagnosed with autism or ADD/ADHD as “a dire threat to the American people and our way of life,” while, according to a memoir by Trump’s nephew, the president thinks some disabled people “should just die.”

Trump’s second-term assault on the disability community comes as many continue to shoulder the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately killed disabled and aging Americans, worsened the nation’s care worker shortage, and left at least 20 million people ill or disabled with long COVID. Rather than commit to plugging gaps in the nation’s public health system and preparing for future crises, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is implementing an extremist anti-science agenda that public health experts have warned “endanger[s] every American’s health.”

Truthout asked several disability justice advocates and organizers from across the U.S. to explain what’s at stake for disabled people in Trump’s attacks on voting rights, education, the climate and Indigenous land stewardship, health care, and trans rights. They also shared where they’re finding hope and how you can join the struggle for disability rights and justice as it continues into the second year of Trump 2.0.

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From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

83% of voters say they want the Trump admin to publicly release info about its extrajudicial bombings in the Caribbean, according to an ACLU/YouGov poll. Nearly 7 in 10 say the admin has not provided evidence to justify its killing of at least 114 people.

In the days after George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the war was a hit with the American public. A Gallup poll conducted in March 2003 found 72 percent support for the shock-and-awe attack.

Bush and his war were the beneficiaries of what political scientists call the “rally ’round the flag” effect — the historical tendency of Americans to back their leaders in times of conflict.

Donald Trump’s presidency might mark the end of that dynamic.

In the aftermath of his attack on Venezuela, three flash polls conducted by separate outlets found that more Americans oppose the war than support it. Support for the war is sharply split along party lines. Only about a third of Americans support it.

The underwater polling for Trump’s war is a result of a polarized electorate, the president’s hyper-partisan governing style, the lack of an attempt to push Congress and the public to back the war, and the absence of any 9/11-style tragedy that could have been used to justify the attack, observers said.

His reversal on NYPD responds to my reporting

ICE appears to have murdererd a legal observer in cold blood.

Gift link — uses link shortener because lemmy eats the utm_source that the Star Tribune uses to indicate that something is a gift link

MPR has more

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in — like, his midriff was on her bumper — and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” Heller said.

There is video

Darren Michael, associate professor at Austin Peay State University, has reportedly been reinstated and given $500,000 after being fired over posts about assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Tennessee’s WKRN News 2 obtained a copy of a settlement agreement between Michael and the university, showing the school will dish out $500,000 and reimburse “therapeutic counseling services.”

When I look at Mamdani, I don’t see some radical departure. I see him as an heir to the Yiddish socialism that helped build New York

Opinion - Molly Crabapple
1 Jan 2026

[very heart-warming and informative article]

For all the hysteria, when I look at Mamdani, I didn’t see some radical departure from the past. I see him as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition – that of Yiddish socialism – which helped build New York.

In some cases, the link is direct. Bruce Vladeck, a member of one of Mamdani’s transition committees, is a well-respected expert on Medicare, but for the sake of this article, his credentials matter less than his surname.

Vladeck is the grandson of Baruch Charney Vladeck, a Marxist troublemaker from the Pale of Settlement, a tract of land in the Russian empire where Jews were permitted to live at a time of rampant antisemitic oppression. Baruch showed up in New York after the failed Russian revolution of 1905 with a Cossack’s saber scars all over his face. He later became a socialist alderman and member of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s housing administration. Vladeck was not actually his birth name. It was rather a nom de guerre, adopted when he joined the Jewish Labor Bund, the socialist, secular and defiantly anti-Zionist movement whose slogan, “here where we live is our country,” would make an apt tagline for Mamdani’s New York.

President Donald Trump’s administration said Tuesday that it is withholding funding for programs that support needy families with children in five Democratic-led states over concerns about fraud.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the program, will require the states to provide extra documentation to access the funds.

“Families who rely on child care and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a statement.

The administration has not laid out details about the fraud allegations.

Most major conservative news apps have seen little to no growth in monthly traffic or app downloads over the past one to two years, according to data from Apptopia and Similarweb.

Why it matters: The splintering of the MAGA media movement — combined with broader media market challenges — has impacted the ability of many outlets within the once-unified coalition to grow.

Zoom in: Over the past two years, monthly app downloads to several of the most popular conservative media apps, including Truth Social and Newsmax, have declined, per Apptopia.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7255500

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/17430

Last Updated on January 5, 2026 The last remaining uranium mill in the United States is located in White Mesa, Utah. The White Mesa Uranium Mill, owned and operated by Energy Fuels, processes uranium-bearing materials into yellowcake, a key component of nuclear reactor fuel. Mill tailings are the liquid radioactive byproduct of this process, and […]

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