United States | News & Politics

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos met with Donald Trump to try and win him over ahead of the bidding war for Warner Bros.

Many incarcerated women and trans people are forced to choose between maintaining their dignity and health — or facing penalties.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/39870058

Immigrants were moments away from pledging allegiance to the United States in Boston — the final step of the long process to becoming a U.S. citizen — when government officials pulled them out of line, according to a new report.

The scene unfolded at Boston’s Faneuil Hall on Thursday, Dec. 4, according to the report from WGBH, a National Public Radio member station.

As people who were already approved to be naturalized — having completed the lengthy U.S. citizenship process — lined up to pledge allegiance, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials told them they could not continue due to their countries of origin, the outlet reported.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6969909

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12189

Venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of data platform company Palantir, is calling for the return of public hangings as part of a broader push to restore what he describes as "masculine leadership" to the US.

In a statement posted on X Friday, Lonsdale said that he supported changing the so-called "three strikes" anti-crime law to ensure that anyone who is convicted of three violent crimes gets publicly executed, rather than simply sent to prison for life.

"If I’m in charge later, we won’t just have a three strikes law," he wrote. "We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others."

Lonsdale then added that "our society needs balance," and said that "it's time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable."

Lonsdale's views on public hangings being necessary to restore "masculine leadership" drew swift criticism.

Gil Durán, a journalist who documents the increasingly authoritarian politics of Silicon Valley in his newsletter "The Nerd Reich," argued in a Saturday post that Lonsdale's call for public hangings showed that US tech elites are "entering a more dangerous and desperate phase of radicalization."

"For months, Peter Thiel guru Curtis Yarvin has been squawking about the need for more severe measures to cement Trump's authoritarian rule," Durán explained. "Peter Thiel is ranting about the Antichrist in a global tour. And now Lonsdale—a Thiel protégé—is fantasizing about a future in which he will have the power to unleash state violence at mass scale."

Taulby Edmondson, an adjunct professor of history, religion, and culture at Virginia Tech, wrote in a post on Bluesky that the rhetoric Lonsdale uses to justify the return of public hangings has even darker intonations than calls for state-backed violence.

"A point of nuance here: 'masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable' is how lynch mobs are described, not state-sanctioned executions," he observed.

Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll argued that Lonsdale's remarks were symbolic of a kind of performative masculinity that has infected US culture.

"Immaturity masquerading as strength is the defining personal characteristic of our age," he wrote.

Tech entrepreneur Anil Dash warned Lonsdale that his call for public hangings could have unintended consequences for members of the Silicon Valley elite.

"Well, Joe, Mark Zuckerberg has sole control over Facebook, which directly enabled the Rohingya genocide," he wrote. "So let’s have the conversation."

And Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin noted that Lonsdale has been a major backer of the University of Austin, an unaccredited liberal arts college that has been pitched as an alternative to left-wing university education with the goal of preparing "thoughtful and ethical innovators, builders, leaders, public servants and citizens through open inquiry and civil discourse."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6960545

On July 4, President Trump signed House Resolution 1,119th Congress (HR 1), also known as the deceptively titled "One Big Beautiful Bill. Included in its provisions are significant tax law changes, increased funding for immigration control and national defense, and spending reductions affecting Medicaid and a large number of other federal programs. In fact, HR 1 would give $75 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and $45 billion to expand its detention centers, with a total of $170 billion dedicated to immigration enforcement and "border security." The increase would allow the government to detain up to 100,000 individuals at a time. At the same time, HR 1 would cut federal Medicaid spending over a decade by an estimated $911 billion and increase the number of uninsured people by 10 million. This would mean the 31% of Latinx people and 21% of Black people who utilize Medicaid would be at risk.

The administration disguised the bill as a way to give the middle-class tax relief, secure the border, and protect Medicaid from undocumented immigrants. The bill is a thin veil for the government's war on immigrants and trans people, even when undocumented immigrants are largely ineligible for Medicaid benefits and state laws vary on Medicaid coverage for transgender healthcare. It is a clear example of under-resourcing our communities' access to preventive care and treatment, which opens the door to further criminalization of particular health conditions and other negative effects on well-being.

During recent deliberations of Medicaid cuts and potential HIV/AIDS funding cuts in Louisiana, a Democratic lawmaker sought to criminalize additional sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HPV and HSV, using the state's HIV exposure law. As introduced, HB 76 would have made "intentionally" exposing another person to an "incurable sexually transmitted disease" a felony. However, neither "intentionally" nor "incurable sexually transmitted disease" was defined in the bill, which left an incredibly broad scope of criminalization possible without proof that a person specifically intended to transmit any disease or did in fact transmit an STI. Though the bill failed, it was presented as justice for survivors of sexual assault and interpersonal violence, as well as a solution to the prevalence of STIs in Louisiana.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6959948

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11979

Heavily armed tactical teams fired crowd suppression munitions at the Arizona lawmaker and protesters, claiming she was leading “a mob.”

The post ICE Denies Pepper-Spraying Rep. Adelita Grijalva in Incident Caught on Video appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6960439

As a longtime Indigenous rights attorney, Gabe Galanda has seen it again and again. Native American kids find themselves accused of minor crimes, yet they’re given no off-ramp to avoid jail, and they become trapped in the juvenile justice system until they end up as adults in a Washington prison.

“It’s rinse-repeat,” Galanda says.

That’s why Galanda, a citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribe, and other advocates for Native Americans, say it’s important for the state to provide alternatives to jail for those arrested at a young age.

Those alternatives, called diversion programs, can be agreed upon by prosecutors in each county, and they may involve sending youth to programs like anger management or therapy.

But in Washington, white children are much more likely to be offered these additional chances than Native American or Black children. A report released this year by the Washington Center for Court Research, a state-funded court research group, finds Native American and Black youths statewide are the least likely of their peers to be offered a path out of the justice system, while white children are most likely to be offered a break. And while chances of being offered diversion drops precipitously after the first offense for all races, that’s particularly true for Native American youths, who are the least likely to be offered diversion when they have two or more offenses, the report found.

full article

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

In North Carolina, Michigan, and Minnesota, local campaigns have notched divestment wins totaling more than $27 million.

Across the country, JVP chapters and our partners are organizing to demand their state and municipal fund managers divest from Israel Bonds — essentially investments in Israeli genocide and apartheid — and invest instead in the well-being of our communities.

This organizing targets the engine enabling Israel's violence against Palestinians: material support from our own institutions in the U.S. And the momentum is growing...

Also:

• Defend anti-Zionist students.
• Plug in locally.
• Join Power Half-Hour.

Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, and Gloria Gaynor are among the luminaries being celebrated at the annual Kennedy Center Honors.

The EU fined Elon Musk over issues which had nothing to do with free speech, and yet he's crying victim again

A New York subway rider has accused a woman of breaking his Meta smart glasses. She was later hailed as a hero.

Childhood infections have fallen by 99 percent since the vaccine was recommended, with hardly any major side effects.

The “emergency billionaires tax” would offset the billions of dollars being stripped from CA Medicaid recipients.

Even recent feeble reforms have been rolled back when Trump appointees took the reins.

Are you on Trump's naughty list?

Yet again not even bothering to try to hide the narcissism & bigotry.

Since beginning operation “Midway Blitz” – an aggressive push to arrest immigrants with criminal records in Chicago – Trump’s modern brownshirts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), have unleashed a wave of reactionary violence most recently culminating in an attack on a teacher at a pre-kindergarten school, Rayito del Sol. But the people of Chicago are organizing together to fight back, and you can too.

The entirety of I.C.E’s operation in Chicago has been marked with extrajudicial murders, lies to community officials, illegal detainments, unprovoked street brawls against citizens exercising their right to observe, and the tear-gassing of children in residential areas (a war crime).

I.C.E has been particularly brutal in its attacks around schools, as they have targeted both school officials and parents attempting to drop off or pick up their children in recent weeks, a tactic which resulted in the murder of Silverio Villegas Gonzalez in October. Until recently this tactic of targeting individuals on their way to and from schools was limited to off campus grounds, however, on November 6th I.C.E escalated their assaults on education yet again by detaining a Pre-k teacher who was already inside the Rayito del Sol daycare building and was attempting to go to work. I.C.E did this without a judicial warrant to enter the building, and according to parents interviewed at the school, made the arrest at a time of peak traffic of children and parents, traumatizing many already afraid to go to school due to fears of detention. The educator was then reportedly taken to the Broadview detention facility, which, based on the statements of judge Robert Gettleman in a recent trial, currently is forcing detainees to sleep on the floor or in plastic chairs next to overflowing toilets, and is where I.C.E agents have reportedly been Illegally attempting to force individuals to sign “voluntary” deportation orders without legal counsel present.

New Orleans, LA – On Thursday December 4, a crowd of 30 people packed the city council chamber to demand that the city stand up against ICE and Border Patrol operations in the city.

Operation “Swamp Sweep” began in New Orleans and surrounding areas this past Monday, December 1. A host of federal agents have descended on the city, including Gregory Bovino, chief of Border Patrol operations, who also made stops in Chicago and Charlotte earlier this year.

During a rally before the meeting, speakers united on the need to challenge city leadership, including Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, not to collaborate with ICE.

“Children are skipping school because they are afraid of ICE, parents are unable to go to the grocery store, workers are losing their jobs and losing their businesses. And our city councilors have not even put immigration on the agenda!” stated Rory Macdonald of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

After the rally, attendees filed into the meeting. They held paper signs reading “No collaboration with ICE/DHS” and sat together in a large clump in the center of the chambers. The much talked about immigration sweeps were not on the agenda, but residents organized public comment on other items to force council members to face the issue.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6952363

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11967

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, considered by some to be the frontrunner to be the next Democratic presidential nominee, said during a panel on Wednesday that he wants his party to be a “big tent” that welcomes large numbers of people into the fold. But he’s “adamantly against” one of the most popular proposals Democrats have to offer: a wealth tax.

In October, progressive economists Emmanuel Saez and Robert Reich joined forces with one of California's most powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) United Healthcare Workers West, to propose that California put the nation’s first-ever wealth tax on the ballot in November 2026.

They described the measure as an "emergency billionaires tax" aimed at recouping the tens of billions of dollars that will be stripped from California's 15 million Medicaid recipients over the next five years, after Republicans enacted historic cuts to the program in July with President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which dramatically reduced taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

Among those beneficiaries were the approximately 200 billionaires living in California, whose average annual income, Saez pointed out, has risen by 7.5% per year, compared with 1.5% for median-income residents.

Under the proposal, they would pay a one-time 5% tax on their total net worth, which is estimated to raise $100 billion. The vast majority of the funds, about 90%, would be used to restore Medicaid funding, while the rest would go towards funding K-12 education, which the GOP has also slashed.

— (@)

The proposal in California has strong support from unions and healthcare groups. But Newsom has called it “bad policy” and “another attempt to grab money for special purposes.”

Meanwhile, several of his longtime consultants, including Dan Newman and Brian Brokaw, have launched a campaign alongside “business and tech leaders” to kill the measure, which they’ve dubbed “Stop the Squeeze." They've issued familiar warnings that pinching the wealthy too hard will drive them from the state, along with the critical tax base they provide.

At Wednesday's New York Times DealBook Summit, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Newsom about his opposition to the wealth tax idea, comparing it to a proposal by recent New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who pledged to increase the income taxes of New Yorkers who earn more than $1 million per year by 2% in order to fund his city-wide free buses, universal childcare, and city-owned grocery store programs.

Mamdani's proposal was met with a litany of similar warnings from Big Apple bigwigs who threatened to flee the city and others around the country who said they'd never move in.

But as Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein explained in October for the American Prospect: "The evidence for this is thin: mostly memes shared by tech and finance people... Research shows that the truth of the matter is closer to the opposite. Wealthy individuals and their income move at lower rates than other income brackets, even in response to an increase of personal income tax." Many of those who sulked about Mamdani's victory have notably begun making amends with the incoming mayor.

Moreover, the comparison between Mamdani's plan and the one proposed in California is faulty to begin with. As Harold Meyerson explained, also for the Prospect: "It is a one-time-only tax, to be levied exclusively on billionaires’ current (i.e., 2025) net worth. Even if they move to Tasmania, they will still be liable for 5% of this year’s net worth."

"Crucially, the tax won’t crimp the fortunes of any billionaire who moves into the state next year or any later year, as it only applies to the billionaires living in the state this year," he added. "Therefore... the horrific specter of billionaire flight can’t be levied against the California proposal."

Nevertheless, Sorkin framed Newsom as being in an existential battle of ideas with Mamdani, asking how the two could both represent the Democratic Party when they are so "diametrically opposed."

"Well, I want to be a big-tent party," Newsom replied. "It's about addition, not subtraction."

Pushed on the question of whether there should be a "unifying theory of the case," Newsom responded that “we all want to be protected, we all want to be respected, we all want to be connected to something bigger than ourselves. We have fundamental values that I think define our party, about social justice, economic justice.”

"We have pre-distribution Democrats, and we have re-distribution Democrats," he continued. "Therein lies the dialectic and therein lies the debate."

Polling is scarce so far on the likelihood of such a measure passing in California. But nationally, polls suggest that the vast majority of Democrats fall on the "re-distribution" side of Newsom's "dialectic." In fact, the majority of all Americans do, regardless of party affiliation.

Last year, Inequality.org examined 55 national and state polls about a number of different taxation policies and found:

A billionaire income tax garnered the most support across party identification. On average, two out of three (67%) of Americans supported the tax including 84% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans.

In national polls, a wealth tax had similarly high levels of support. More than three out of five Americans supported the tax including 78% of Democrats, 62% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans.

That sentiment only seems to have grown since the return of President Donald Trump. An *Economist/*YouGov poll released in early November found that 72% of Americans said that taxes on billionaires should be raised—including 95% of Democrats, 75% of independents, and 48% of Republicans. Across the board, just 15% said they should not be raised.

Support remains high when the proposal is more specific as well. On the eve of Mamdani's election, despitre months of fearmongering, 64% of New Yorkers said they backed his proposal, including a slight plurality of self-identified conservatives, according to a Siena College poll.

Many observers were perplexed by how Newsom proposes to maintain a “big tent” while opposing policies supported by most of the people inside it.

"A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires," wrote Jonathan Cohn, the political director for Progressive Mass, a grassroots organization in Massachusetts, on social media.

"Gavin Newsom—estimated net worth between $20 and $30 million—says he's opposed to a billionaire wealth tax. Color me shocked," wrote the Columbia University lecturer Anthony Zenkus. "Democrats holding him up as a potential savior for 2028 is a clear example of not reading the room."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6952394

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11939

A detailed investigation released Thursday reveals that the e-commerce behemoth Amazon is using its market dominance and political influence to gain a foothold in local governments' purchasing systems, locking school districts into contracts that let the corporation drive up prices for pens, sticky notes, and other basic supplies.

The new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), titled Turning Public Money Into Amazon’s Profits: The Hidden Cost of Ceding Government Procurement to a Monopoly Gatekeeper, is based on purchasing records from nearly 130 cities representing more than 50 million Americans.

ILSR found that "cities, counties, and school districts spent $2.2 billion with Amazon in 2023—a nearly fourfold increase since 2016."

"Through its Amazon Business platform, the company has maneuvered to become the default source for office products, classroom materials, cleaning supplies, and other routine goods," the report states. "Today, it is embedded in most local governments, making inroads into state agencies, and dominating a new program designed to reshape how federal agencies buy commercial products."

Unlike the fixed pricing that's typical for government contracts, the agreements that Amazon has secured with local governments across the US entail "algorithm-driven pricing" to "covertly raise prices and inflate costs for governments."

"The result is dramatic price variation: One city bought a 12-pack of Sharpie markers for $8.99, while a nearby school district paid $28.63 for the identical pack that same day," ILSR said. "Our data contain thousands of similar examples, with some agencies paying double or even triple what others paid for the same items."

1. Hard to believe, but Amazon has persuaded schools and cities across the country to abandon competitive bidding and fixed price contracts. Instead, they're signing contracts with Amazon that specify dynamic pricing. The result: Paying $37 for 12 pens or $74 for 36 markers. pic.twitter.com/afIIkPucZL
   — Stacy Mitchell (@stacyfmitchell) December 5, 2025

Overall, ILSR found that school districts bound to Amazon contracts spend twice as much per student as school districts without an agreement with the $2.5 trillion company.

“Public officials should be deeply concerned by what we found,” Stacy Mitchell, co-executive director of ILSR, said in a statement. “Amazon is reshaping public procurement in ways that expose taxpayer dollars to waste and risk. It has persuaded cities and schools to abandon safeguards meant to ensure fair prices and accountability—while driving out independent suppliers, eroding competition, and putting Amazon in a position to dictate terms.”

Having gained sweeping access to local government purchasing processes, Amazon is increasingly inserting itself into state and federal systems. ILSR noted that "Amazon dominates the General Services Administration’s Commercial Platforms Program, a new system for agencies to make purchases below $15,000 that do not require competitive bids."

"During the first two years of the program’s pilot phase," the group found, "Amazon captured 96% of sales."

ILSR emphasized that Amazon's dominance is by no means inevitable and can, with concerted action, be rolled back.

"A handful of cities and counties have recognized the risks of relying on Amazon and taken steps to restore transparency and keep public dollars local," the report observes. "Tempe, Arizona rejected an Amazon group-purchasing contract after hearing concerns from a local business owner. Between 2017 and 2023, the city cut its Amazon spending by 84% while increasing purchases from local suppliers. Phoenix likewise prioritizes local bids and has spent almost nothing with Amazon over the last decade."

Kennedy Smith, co-author of the report, said that "when local officials put real safeguards in place and prioritize local suppliers, they save money, strengthen their economies, and restore public control over public dollars."

To keep their procurement system free of the kinds of tactics Amazon uses to line its pockets with taxpayer money, ILSR urged state and local governments to prohibit so-called "dynamic pricing" in purchasing contracts and to prioritize buying from local businesses.

"By reclaiming control of public procurement, governments can safeguard dollars, strengthen local businesses, and ensure that the goods that sustain our schools and public services are supplied through systems that are transparent, competitive, and democratic," the group said.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

New Orleans, LA – On Monday, December 1, 100 people rallied in Lafayette Square and marched to City Hall in the pouring rain to oppose Trump’s latest assault on immigrants in Louisiana, dubbed Operation “Swamp Sweep.”

December 1 marked the first day of Swamp Sweep, an anti-immigrant operation that has sent 250 federal agents to Louisiana – specifically to New Orleans and surrounding areas – attempting to make 5000 arrests. This operation mirrors similar federal deployments in cities such as Washington D.C., Memphis and Charlotte. Like other cities, New Orleans showed up to resist the crackdown.

The protest began with a rally featuring speakers from several organizations that are a part of an ad-hoc No Trump, No Troops coalition leading the way in the fight against federal occupation in the city.

“As a New Orleans resident it is my duty to stand up for my undocumented brothers and sisters to fight this terror that is coming down on them right before the holidays. I’ll be damned to have these families broken up in my own city!” said Anthony Franklin, a member of Students for a Democratic Society. Franklin drew direct comparisons between the federal occupation of ICE, Border Patrol, and the National Guard in New Orleans today and repression by the National Guard in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, stating, “We didn’t need the National Guard then, and we don’t need them now!”