United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37972636

Nathan Bernard
Oct 23, 2025

“It’s been a helluva week,” said Platner as he took the stage. “I went from being a communist on Thursday to a Nazi by Monday.”

Platner opened his address by discussing the skull tattoo. Just a day earlier, Platner sent the internet into a frenzy over a skull tattoo revealed to be inked on his chest resembling Nazi iconography. He claimed ignorance of the tattoo’s links but apologized and fully covered the tattoo with Celtic knots and dogs. “I got it covered because I do not want something on my body that represents in any way the antithesis of my politics,” Platner said. “I grew up as a little punk rock kid listening to Dead Kennedys and Dropkick Murphys. So, I would say hating and fighting Nazis has been a big part of how I see myself. My continued disgust of racism, anti-semitism and Nazism has been a constant throughout my life. And still today anchors much of my politics.”

He concluded, “Fascism is a cancer, and it has no place here.” The statement was met with a raucous applause.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6506683

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/88701

Elon Musk’s deployment of DOGE to gut federal agencies was so obviously self-serving it stunned much of the nation and even inspired the catchy “Hostile Government Takeover” song. Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting on November 6 will be another flashpoint in the world’s richest billionaire’s attempt to consolidate power over the economy and the rest of us.

Trillion-dollar payday

The most outrageous, headline-grabbing item on the Tesla ballot for shareholders is the proposed $1 trillion pay package for Musk. Trillion … or one thousand billions. That’s many, many times larger than the pay packages of the highest-paid CEOs.

Money at that scale is simply about raw power, and the pay package in no way restricts his political activities or requires him to stick to his knitting at Tesla (one of the purported justifications for making Musk a trillionaire). He would remain free to become distracted by chainsaws, implanting computer chips in monkeys, or whatever suits his trillionaire fancy that particular week.

Entrenching corporate power

But there are other important issues on the shareholder ballot related both to Musk’s pay and to a broader effort to consolidate power over corporate decision-making, our economy, and our lives in the hands of just a few corporate insiders like Musk.

Musk played a big role in triggering a race to the bottom in state corporate law that is increasing the power of corporate insiders while decreasing the ability of shareholders like pensions to hold them accountable for self dealing, outrageous CEO pay, and other corporate chicanery. Last year, a Delaware judge invalidated Musk’s previous $56 billion Tesla pay package, calling it “an unfathomable sum.” Musk went on the attack, derided her and Delaware corporate law, and reincorporated Tesla in Texas. Delaware, Texas, and Nevada have all weakened their corporate laws to tilt them in favor of a small group of insiders at the expense of regular shareholders.

Shareholders trying to overturn near immunity from corporate wrongdoing

Two Tesla proposals are trying to restore shareholder rights over corporate oversight after Texas changed its laws since Tesla’s relocation. One Texas law allows companies to change their rules to require shareholders to own at least 3 percent of the company’s stock before they can bring lawsuits against corporate insiders for wrongdoing that harms the company.

Tesla amended its corporate bylaws under the new Texas law to effectively immunize itself from shareholder lawsuits. Owning 3 percent may not seem like a high threshold, but an investor or group of investors would need to own over $40 billion worth of Tesla shares to challenge corporate misdeeds. This might explain why shareholders haven’t brought suits against Musk for negatively impacting Tesla’s reputation and brand through his political activities.

And the investor who successfully challenged Musk’s $56 billion pay package only had 9 Tesla shares. If that 3 percent ownership threshold continues to stand, it would be essentially impossible to challenge his $1 trillion pay package — even though it is nearly 18 times bigger. One Tesla shareholder proposal would repeal this bylaw change so shareholders can regain this avenue for corporate accountability.

Restoring shareholder oversight and ousting Musk pals at Tesla

The other Texas law allows corporations to require a 3 percent or $1 million ownership threshold to submit shareholder proposals. Shareholder proposals let regular shareholders push companies to address important issues like union busting, political spending, climate risks, and more. Tesla has yet to amend its bylaws to take advantage of this law, and there is a shareholder proposal seeking to prevent that from happening.

Tesla is also asking shareholders to support the reelection of three directors with close ties to Musk. These close Musk allies have effectively given him free rein to dabble in Trump’s efforts to weaken federal government agencies and sideline his responsibilities at Tesla.

Ira Ehrenpreis was an early investor in Musk’s companies and has sent him text messages like “love you man.” Joe Gebbia even withdrew from a board compensation committee because of his close ties to Musk. Kathleen Wilson-Thompson has received Tesla compensation far above directors on other corporate boards and owes a significant portion of her net worth to Tesla. Tesla shareholders deserve truly independent directors who watch out for their interests.

Stop using Tesla as a piggy-bank to shore up other Musk ventures

There is also a proposal to get Tesla to invest in xAI, a privately held company controlled by Musk. This is another example of Musk siphoning Tesla resources to his other companies, like when he diverted AI processors from Tesla to X. He may need Tesla to prop up xAI since it has been burning through $1 billion a month.

Tesla shareholders can either check Musk’s corporate power grab or vote to cede him more and more control. These votes will likely set the stage for similar attempts by other oligarchs to consolidate their own power. You don’t need to be a direct Tesla investor to fight back against this corporate takeover attempt.

You can get your voice heard on these issues by sending letters to your state financial officer because many public pensions invest in Tesla and they have a vote. Your retirement savings may include Tesla, and you can write to your mutual fund manager as well. Musk and the other corporate titans are trying to reorient the economy, government, and the country to massively enrich themselves at our expense. It is time to stand up to this power grab.

Originally published by Americans for Financial Reform.

Natalia Renta is Associate Director, Corporate Governance and Power, at Americans for Financial Reform and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.

The post Musk’s Trillion-Dollar Pay Package Isn’t the Only Bad Thing on the Tesla Shareholder Ballot appeared first on Inequality.org.

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It's no longer a question of what if fascism comes to the USA. The question now is, what do we do to defeat fascism?

“Your name was brought up.”

cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/news@lemmy.world/t/2068527

Tensions flared early Thursday morning as protesters attempted to block U.S. Border Patrol agents from entering a U.S. Coast Guard base near Oakland that the Trump administration was staging as an operations hub for an anticipated immigration crackdown on the Bay Area.

It's a little bit unclear what the tracker will look like, but it'll apparently become available in the next few weeks.

Rogan is not a bright man.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37953524

Israel must allow UN agencies, including UNRWA, into Gaza to deliver aid, the International Court of Justice rules, and denies Israeli claims that Hamas had “infiltrated” UNRWA; Israel responds that UNRWA will “not set foot” in Gaza again. Premature births in Gaza have risen from 20% to 70% since October 2023, a new UN report says. Palestinian factions open formal talks in Cairo to coordinate a unified position ahead of the second phase of ceasefire negotiations. Israel’s Knesset passes preliminary legislation to extend Israeli civil law to all West Bank settlements, codifying its annexation of the region; U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responds that Washington “can’t be supportive of that right now.” President Donald Trump threatens San Francisco with ICE raids akin to the operations in Portland and Chicago, sending a deployment to the Alameda Coast Guard base. Many of the agency’s new recruits are being trained without background checks, according to NBC. The U.S. military carries out yet another strike on a Latin American boat—this time off the Pacific coast, killing two to three people, while Venezuela deploys Russian anti-aircraft missiles to strategic positions. The U.S. lifts restrictions on Ukraine’s use of British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles, enabling Kyiv to strike targets within Russia, and adds sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies. Twenty civilians are killed in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. ISIS reasserts itself in the new Syria.

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday said the state would launch a portal for residents to provide pictures and videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents operating in New York City and the rest of the state.

The US military has for the first time attacked and destroyed two boats on the Pacific side of South America, as part of its controversial fight against what it says are drug-trafficking activities.

The strikes – on Tuesday night and then early on Wednesday – killed five people, according to the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth. They came on top of at least seven other strikes in the Caribbean that have killed at least 32 people and raised tensions with Colombia and Venezuela.

White House officials have tried to justify the increasing number of strikes with a dubious legal theory that claims the boats are affiliated with “designated terrorist organisations” with which the US was now in a “non-international armed conflict”, the Guardian has reported.

Until this month, the administration has referred to Tren de Aragua and other cartels as foreign terrorist organisations, or FTOs. Legal experts suggested that simply characterising drugs cartels as FTOs did not give the administration any additional authority to use lethal force.

An unverified rumor that Venezuelan gang members were preparing to kill police officers spread like wildfire through US law enforcement agencies last year, internal records reveal, only for federal officials to later quietly acknowledge the claim was mistaken.

The intelligence report, which appears to have first been disseminated by a local New Mexico police department in July 2024, suggested that the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang had directed its members to “fire on or attack” law enforcement. The vague assertion quickly traveled among law enforcement agencies. It even made its way into a formal proclamation by Texas governor Greg Abbott, and was repeated by Republican Congress members as evidence of the dangers of Venezuelan immigrants and Democrats’ border policies.

There is a long history of US officials falsely painting immigrant groups as criminal and violent to justify crackdowns on migration, said Deep Gulasekaram, professor of constitutional and immigration law at the University of Colorado, noting how propaganda about the dangers of Chinese immigrants, including claims that they threatened white women, was used to justify the Chinese exclusion act in the late 1800s.

“It is so easy in this country to sell a story about immigrant danger, and the claims have such staying power,” he said, noting no study has ever credibly found a link between immigration and crime. “It’s amazing how fast falsehoods about noncitizens and their danger will make its way through every media channel.”

Archived

A California man has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government in Southern California while working as a campaign advisor for a local politician.

Yaoning “Mike” Sun is expected to appear in court in Los Angeles on Monday to enter his plea under a deal with federal prosecutors, according to a copy of the agreement available in online court records. It was signed by Sun, his attorney and a prosecutor earlier this month. If the plea is accepted by a judge, Sun could face a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, the agreement says.

[...]

Sun acknowledges acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the People’s Republic of China from 2022 to 2024 without notifying the U.S. attorney general as required by law. Sun is a Chinese citizen living in the U.S. legally, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

[...]

The case against Sun was filed during President Joe Biden’s administration amid a time of rising concern that the Chinese government had cultivated a network of operatives to influence local elections in the U.S. to install politicians who were friendly to Beijing and could help promote Chinese interests. Sun was accused of conspiring with Chen Jun, who was sentenced in New York to 20 months in prison for acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government.

According to the plea deal, Sun received instructions from Chinese government officials to post pro-Beijing content on a website he ran with another individual who became a candidate for local office and won election in 2022. Sun worked as a campaign advisor for the individual and the following year drafted a report for Chinese officials seeking funding and assignments for more pro-Beijing activities, the agreement says.

[...]

“Defendant and Individual 1 received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website, and sometimes sought approval from PRC government officials to post other pro-PRC content on the website,” the agreement says.

The individual is not named in court papers.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37930268

Cy Neff
Wed 22 Oct 2025 21.11 EDT

The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, rolled out a “Federal Action Reporting Portal” form urging New York residents to share photos and videos of federal immigration enforcement action across the state, just a day after a high-profile ICE raid rattled Manhattan’s Chinatown and prompted hundreds to come out in protest.

A US congressman revealed in a Wednesday press conference that four US citizens were arrested and held for “nearly 24 hours” after Tuesday’s raid. Protests broke out in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

“Every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation,” James wrote in a statement announcing the portal.

“If you witnessed and documented ICE activity yesterday, I urge you to share that footage with my office. We are committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37930020

October 21, 2025

A wave of anti-science bills has been introduced in statehouses across America this year, pushed by people with special interests who have close ties to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

An Associated Press investigation found more than 420 bills attacking longstanding public health protections such as vaccines, milk safety and fluoride in most states. More than two dozen have already been enacted or adopted.

They are part of an organized, politically savvy effort that normalizes ideas fueled by the anti-vaccine movement that Kennedy has helped lead for years. His Make America Healthy Again agenda masks anti-science ideas while promoting goals such as making food more natural or reducing chemicals. Meanwhile, vaccination rates continue to fall, allowing the infectious diseases measles and whooping cough to make comebacks as Kennedy has sought to broadly remake federal policies on public health matters including fluoride and vaccines.