United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7430168

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22237

Despite months of warnings from party members up and down the caucus that President Donald Trump has been "lawless," "destructive, and "authoritarian" in his wielding of power both domestically and abroad, 149 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives on Thursday night joined with 192 Republicans to pass a sweeping military spending bill—a vote that progressive critics say exposes the fecklessness and hypocrisy of what claims to be an opposition party.

The 341-88 passage of the $828.7 billion fiscal 2026 military spending bill came over the objections of progressives who warned that the bill—now headed to the US Senate for final passage as soon as next week—is a tacit endorsement of the president's policies, even as he has ordered federal agents to terrorize US cities, deployed US soldiers on domestic soil in the face of lawful protests, threatened to annex Greenland and other nations by force, and conducted overseas military operations—including overt acts of war over the last year against both Iran and Venezuela—without congressional notification, authorization, or oversight.

"If an opposition party votes like this, it's not in opposition. It may not even be a party," said Stephen Semler, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC.

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Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House Rules Committee who voted naye on the appropriations bill, said ahead of the vote that he looked "at the defense appropriations bill as maybe the last opportunity to prevent this administration from doing something crazy in Greenland or attacking NATO or doing something that we all know is a bad thing to do."

Earlier on Thursday, the Republican-controlled committee blocked an attempt by Democrats to secure a vote on an amendment to the military spending bill that would have explicitly prohibited the invasion of a NATO ally.

Passage of the military spending bill followed an early House vote on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, in which seven Democrats joined Republicans to get it over the line.

While 149 Democrats voted for the $840 military spending bill, 64 Democrats voted against it.

"Republicans want money for unchecked, unaccountable, unconstitutional military action around the world," said Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Il), explaining her vote against the bill. "And over half of the Pentagon budget goes to corporations that profit from pain, war, and genocide."

"You know how they get this done?" Ramirez continued. "By using working families' needs as a bargaining chip, tying the minimum funding working families need to survive to the maximum funding they can give their billionaire friends."

"As long as we are funding imperialism and authoritarianism while working people can't afford the high cost of living," she said, "I will stand opposed."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7424318

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22048

The Trump administration, quietly and with no public input, voted Thursday to scrap federal guidance aimed at clarifying and bolstering anti-harassment protections on the job, a move that rights advocates condemned as yet another destructive attack on workers.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which President Donald Trump targeted last year by firing two of its Democratic commissioners before their terms were up, voted 2-1 to rescind the anti-harassment guidance approved under the Biden administration.

Unlike the approval process, which garnered tens of thousands of public comments, the decision by Republicans on the EEOC to completely scrap the guidance was made without any feedback from the American public.

Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates (ERA), said in a statement that the Trump administration is "abandoning millions of workers who face harassment on the job and sending a clear message that this administration will not lift a finger to protect them."

"Trump-installed Chair Andrea Lucas orchestrated this rescission through the back door, refusing to issue the opportunity for public comment," said Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates (ERA). "Requests for meetings to discuss the rescission, including ERA’s request, were canceled. This administration does not want to hear from the workers it is abandoning."

"The Trump administration’s rescission of the EEOC workplace harassment guidance is about weaponizing a civil rights agency against the very people it was created to protect," Farrell added.

Ahead of Thursday's vote, Lucas was vocal in her opposition to the portions of the 2024 guidance that clarified the illegality of workplace harassment based on gender identity. Under Lucas' leadership, the EEOC last year moved to drop virtually every lawsuit the agency had filed in the previous year over discrimination against transgender workers.

Late last year, Lucas reportedly received a green light from the Trump White House to pursue the complete rescission of the 2024 guidance—not just the sections related to sexual orientation and gender identity, which had already been vacated by a federal court.

Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the EEOC's only Democrat and the lone vote against rescinding the guidance, lamented that "instead of adopting a thoughtful and surgical approach to excise the sections the majority disagrees with or suggest an alternative, the commission is throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

"Worse, it is doing so without public input," Kotagal added.

"This move will leave the commission enforcing guidance from a time when gay marriage was illegal and most people didn’t have internet at home."

US Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said in a statement that the guidance rescission "is a senseless betrayal from an administration doing everything it can to make working people’s lives harder at every turn."

"While this move doesn’t change the underlying law, this administration is turning back the clock decades by abandoning robust enforcement of sexual harassment in the workplace—this hurts everyone and helps no one," said Murray. "Andrea Lucas is openly waging war on the independence and basic mission of the EEOC—and this move will leave the commission enforcing guidance from a time when gay marriage was illegal and most people didn’t have internet at home."

“Whether it’s protecting sexual predators in the Epstein files, promoting alleged abusers to the highest offices in government, or getting rid of basic standards to protect workers against harassment, this administration has proven time and again that they couldn’t care less about workers, women, or victims of abuse," the senator added. "Under Trump, the EEOC is taking the side of abusers over working people just trying to do their jobs. We can’t let this get swept under the rug."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7430176

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22192

Resistance to state terror, particularly ICE terror, is growing deeper and wider across the country. On January 23rd Minneapolis will be at the forefront of this fightback, launching the first city-wide mass strike in response to an ICE occupation of the city.

Black Rose/Rosa Negra’s (BRRN) External Education Committee (EEC) offers this editorial statement on what appears to be the opening of a new phase in the struggle against ICE.

by BRRN External Education Committee

On January 23rd, Minnesotans will make history with a mass strike demanding ICE out of their city. Teachers, healthcare staff, transit drivers, communication technicians, and other workers will stay off the job; faith leaders will rally congregants into the streets; and rapid response networks will redouble their efforts to thwart ICE from terrorizing Latino and Somali neighbors. Shutting down the city demonstrates the need for large-scale, disruptive direct action to beat back the violent advance of authoritarianism in our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.

In Minneapolis and around the country, the George Floyd Rebellion looms large in memory. The burning of the Third Precinct exposed how vulnerable the state’s repressive infrastructure is when confronted by overwhelming numbers. Strategically, however, the Rebellion showed the limits of large scale mobilization, even as it took on an insurrectionary character at times. Mass organizations such as tenant unions and popular assemblies in neighborhoods; student unions in schools; and militant labor unions in workplaces act to embed, sustain, and sharpen diffuse popular fury into popular power.

Without independent mass organizations that allow us to develop our own strategy to determine where social movements go next, even the most antagonistic street movements have shown themselves susceptible to pacification by NGOs, union bureaucracies, and the Democratic Party.

Millions of people disgusted with the Trump administration’s fascist maneuvers have learned vital lessons about sustaining struggle. As we highlighted in our recent conjunctural analysis, spectacular, symbolic demonstrations that released social discontent have been displaced by everyday people developing and expanding infrastructure for defense. Angelinos rapidly spread pioneering responses to National Guard and ICE deployments in Southern California during summer 2025. Chicagoans, Memphians, and now Minnesotans have adapted those tactics, techniques, and strategies to protect their neighbors against ICE surges in their cities.

Rather than standing as fodder for symbolic arrest in front of police lines, people have learned how to throw sand into the gears of state machinery. Direct action blocks ICE from kidnapping their friends and family, and it exemplifies to others how they can shape history. These actions, and others like them, have increasingly gained at least tepid support from local and state officials. Nods to backing mass civil disobedience have only come after everyday people have acted and won. The political class cannot and will not lead us; its members fearfully trail movements they anticipate “getting out of hand.”

By not just declaring, but actually building toward a general strike, workers, neighbors, and students in Minneapolis demonstrate popular power in action. This approach doesn’t rely on political brokers to act on their behalf, nor does it resort to anonymous flyers or social media posts expecting spontaneous social explosions.

A general strike takes sincere, courageous, and widespread solidarity. It takes mass and political organizations – many with which we may share sharp disagreements – working in tandem to turn out their membership and allies to buy nothing, suspend work, and disrupt business as usual. It takes dominated peoples collaborating, stumbling, and striving together.

Nothing should take away from this momentous political occasion. But we would be remiss if we didn’t forewarn that one day of widespread disruption will not throw the brakes on accelerating authoritarianism. Instead, we must sustain widespread disruption and take total control of our cities: our workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, and social institutions, of, by, and for ourselves. How might that look, and what are the steps to expand Minnesotans’ burgeoning power?

Drawing on experiences from the last two decades, including recent work to fight back ICE, we offer the following suggestions and insights we think can carry the budding popular power brewing in Minneapolis one step closer to the social revolution that will rid us of this rot.

1. Consolidate organizations for the long term: Like elsewhere, Minneapolis has grown neighborhood-based communications and networks to warn one another about ICE’s presence. Sustaining their efforts will require durable, rooted structures, like neighborhood councils, defense committees, and popular assemblies, that can take up other fights.

   Read more about how to build a popular assemblymanual and steps for kicking ICE out of your workplace.

2. Raise interim demands: Workplace policies that keep out ICE can become longer-term horizons to kick out all police forces. Demanding hotels in our neighborhoods refuse contracts with ICE impedes their ability to operate. Setting clear goals focuses energies to fight like hell and keep on the pressure.

   The example of healthcare workers in Californiademonstrate how to raise, build towards, and win intermediate gains.

3. Build a culture of mass resistance: Slogans, propaganda, study groups, and more must reiterate it is us – not bosses, politicians, administrators, or any other member of the dominating class – who can save or take care of us.

   Print flyers and pamphlets to share with your friends and in your workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools.

4. Grow principled networks of antifascist, anticapitalist, and anti-state resistance: All who stand shoulder-to-shoulder on 1/23 reject the state paramilitaries terrorizing and attacking their communities. The Trump administration’s policies are not an aberration but an outgrowth of the US empire in decay. To stop these forces once and for all, we will need to tear out its roots: capitalist exploitation and state oppression.

   Learn how organizing across political divides in the California Bay Area kept out ICE.

Workers, neighbors, and students in Minnesota are navigating uncharted waters in our modern political landscape. Their resolve shows that everyday people can stand down the federal government. As ICE terror surges, we will do all that we can to make one, two, a thousand coordinated stands in Minneapolis and wherever the state reaches its hands, and we can beat it back, once and for all.

The post The Minneapolis Mass Strike Shows the Way – Let’s Go Further appeared first on Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.

From Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation via This RSS Feed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military said Friday that it has carried out a deadly strike on a vessel accused of trafficking drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the first known attack since the raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.

U.S. Southern Command said on social media that the boat was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” and that the strike killed two people and left one survivor. It said it notified the Coast Guard to launch search and rescue operations for that person.

The women say they guided agents through the emergency, later raising concerns about medical protocols, weapons safety and accountability.

Access options:

• gift link — uses url shortener so that lemmy doesnt remove gift link marker
• archive.today

The resignation of the agent, Tracee Mergen, was only the latest shock wave to have emerged from the Justice Department’s handling of the shooting of Renee Good.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42063098

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33200515

ICE stopped paying for medical care in their facilities months ago

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/159138

From In These Times via this RSS feed

But the Daily Beast has discovered that information about many hundreds of ICE staff is accessible to anyone who signs up to the recruitment website.

The site—which the Beast is not naming to avoid identifying any ICE officials—is targeted at recruiters and HR specialists. It uses AI to pull data from across the internet—including LinkedIn and other websites, and social media—about employees from various large organizations.

ICE workers listed on the site include senior managers in the technical, operations, and legal departments, as well as details of on-the-ground agents and office-based deportation officers. Analysis by the Beast suggests that many still appear to be employed by ICE.

The website lists their names, job titles, locations, experience, as well as sensitive work and personal emails and telephone numbers, plus links to their LinkedIn and other social media accounts.

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/159208

From Common Dreams via this RSS feed

Herrera said 10-year-old Karla is stressed thinking of the school she’s missing.

“She would at least want to finish elementary school,” Herrera said.

Spokane Public Schools board member Nikki Otero Lockwood held a moment of silence at Wednesday’s board meeting after she learned of the young student’s detention.

“The child’s absence is deeply felt by classmates, educators and a school community that is grieving and trying to make sense of this loss,” Lockwood said.

Karla is an “amazing” girl and left everyone with that impression, Herrera said. She came to Spokane at 4 years old and eventually enrolled in school and learned English. She loves books, Herrera said, and was teaching herself to write Japanese characters.

Herrera said Karla “was saying goodbye to everything she knew with that kind of innocent certainty only a child has.”

Karla is now one of the 1,700 children in custody since family detention centers reopened in April.

Tiul Caal will likely remain in detention until his next court hearing slated for March 9 under immigration Judge Veronica Marie Segovia.

Segovia, who was appointed as an immigration judge in November 2023, is known for denying immigrants asylum in the U.S., and more often than other immigration judges across the board.

Segovia denied a Turkish immigrant’s asylum case in 2025, despite the Department of Homeland Security stating the immigrant had met the legal requirements for asylum, according to a report by the Guardian. Segovia suggested the immigrant’s rape, torture and beatings he experienced in Turkey were “not as bad” as the report states.

Segovia saw 193 cases in the first 11 months of 2025. She granted other forms of relief for eight of those cases, but only granted full asylum for one of them, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center.

Her asylum denial rates are also significantly higher than her counterparts, data shows. Segovia denied 36% more asylum claims than other immigration judges across the U.S. in that same time period.

The Texas processing center is crowded, Tiul Caal told Mesa, with many detainees falling ill because of poor conditions.

Gift link — uses shortener because the Star Tribune uses an analytics url parameter to mark gift links, so lemmy removes it

After protesters called for a pause on economic activity and work to strike against the federal immigration crackdown, many business owners won’t open their doors on Friday.

Jan. 23, 2026, 5:04 a.m. ET

https://archive.ph/iyszv

No work, no shopping, no dining out. Hundreds of businesses across Minnesota are expected to close and many people are vowing to pause everyday activities on Friday as part of a general strike against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

As tensions mount and a sense of fear of detention by immigration agents permeates the state, vendors, labor unions and residents are set to participate in an economic blackout and gather at prayers and protests on what organizers called a “Day of Truth and Freedom.”

“It’s tense and emotional, and folks are hurting,” said Bishop Dwayne Royster, the executive director of Faith in Action, which is helping with the organizing effort. Minnesotans, he said, are demonstrating “deep resilience and willingness to stand together in ways I haven’t seen folks do in a very long time.”

The NYT has a weaker headline:

‘Enough Is Enough’: Hundreds of Minnesota Businesses Take Stand Against ICE

After protesters called for a pause on economic activity and work to strike against the federal immigration crackdown, many business owners won’t open their doors on Friday.

Its a general strike. The first in the US in living memory

A list of businesses is here

Archive

Vice President Kamala Harris visited Wisconsin on Monday to begin a national tour in support of reproductive rights and highlight steps the Biden administration has taken to navigate around restrictive abortion laws in the United States.

She assigned blame for those laws to one person in particular: Donald J. Trump.

“These extremists are trying to take us backward, but we’re not having that,” she told a crowd of cheering supporters in a painter’s union building outside of Milwaukee.

The vice president’s appearance, in front of a large banner that read “TRUST WOMEN,” was meant to add fire to an issue that Democrats believe could galvanize a broad swath of base voters and draw in independent ones.

Wisconsin is crucial to Mr. Biden’s re-election prospects — he won there by about 20,600 votes in 2020 — and recent polling suggests a close race in 2024. It was also a target of former Mr. Trump’s efforts to spread falsehoods about illegal voting in 2020.

Ms. Harris said Mr. Trump had appointed three Supreme Court justices who had worked to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion 51 years ago on Monday. In her speech, Ms. Harris referenced Mr. Trump’s recent comments that he was proud of his work.

“Proud that women across our nation are suffering?” Ms. Harris said, to applause. “Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? Proud that doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for their patients, that young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers? How dare he.”

Back in Washington, Mr. Biden met with members of the administration’s task force on reproductive rights. He criticized laws that ban abortion and framed the matter in terms of preserving personal freedoms, an argument that he and other Democrats have sharpened since Roe fell. He also reminded his audience that protecting abortion rights has been popular among voters whenever the issue appears on a state ballot.

“This is what it looks like when the right to privacy is under attack,” Mr. Biden said. “These extreme laws have no place, no place, in the United States of America.”

Also Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance for patients experiencing pregnancy-related emergencies to better understand their rights to care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA.

The law requires hospital emergency rooms to provide medically necessary care, including abortions, in urgent circumstances. The department will also provide “training materials for health care providers and establish a dedicated team of experts” to support hospitals around the country, according to a fact sheet distributed by the administration.

Those efforts may add to the legal challenges surrounding the administration’s efforts to bolster access to abortion. The administration is already in the middle of legal battles with Texas and Idaho over whether the law provides for the procedure. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Idaho case.

Kirsten Allen, the vice president’s press secretary, said that Ms. Harris’s office had planned several more stops in “states that have enshrined protections, restricted access and states that continue to threaten access, causing chaos and confusion.” Ms. Allen told reporters on Monday that Ms. Harris had plans to travel to California soon and then to a state in the South in support of abortion rights.

Democrats hope that a series of victories for abortion rights advocates in Wisconsin could signal a wider trend ahead of the general election. In April, Wisconsin voters elected a liberal candidate to the state’s Supreme Court by an 11-point margin. In September, Planned Parenthood began providing abortions again after a judge ruled that an 1849 state restriction against them — which had been invalidated by Roe until it fell — was not enforceable.

On Monday, Ms. Harris met with a medical provider who has felt constrained by state laws when trying to care for her patients, and with a couple who had tried to seek care during a pregnancy complication and had been turned away by doctors who were afraid to intervene.

The couple, who were not named but received a standing ovation from the crowd, left an impression with Kelly Gleeson, a stay-at-home mother of three who brought her 9-year-old daughter, Charlotte, to the event: “I can’t imagine that,” Ms. Gleeson said. “I can’t imagine being in such a dire situation and being told ‘we can’t help.’”

Across the room, Sarah Godlewski, the secretary of state of Wisconsin, said that Ms. Harris’s visit was important because “Wisconsin has seen firsthand how Republican extremists can control and quite frankly take away half the population's rights to reproductive freedoms.”

The president and vice president plan to continue trying to draw a contrast between Republican-led efforts to restrict abortion and contraception and the Biden administration’s efforts to frame the issue as one rooted in protecting personal freedoms.

On Tuesday — the day of the New Hampshire primary — Ms. Harris will join Mr. Biden at a rally for abortion rights in Virginia, where Democrats recently took control of the legislature and have proposed to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution. Jill Biden, the first lady, and Doug Emhoff, Ms. Harris’s husband, are also scheduled to attend.

In Wisconsin, Corinda Rainey-Moore, who has traveled to several events to see Ms. Harris speak, said it was important for the vice president to keep “connecting the dots” for voters about the work the administration is doing to support reproductive rights, and how votes can help preserve reproductive rights.

Both Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden called for the votes to elect lawmakers who would codify Roe’s protections into law, which will be an uphill battle.

“I think it’s the energy that’s needed, but also the message,” said Ms. Rainey-Moore. Voters need to know, she said, that “their voice is their power.”

Participants in the rapid response networks in the Twin Cities describe their experiences and reflect on how these neworks could contribute to revolutionary social change.