August 27, 2026

02b U.S. Politics – Progressive

News Source
EXCERPT:

After the Southern Poverty Law Center gets the DOJ’s sham fraud indictment tossed out of court, they should sue every one of these liars for defamation. As we’ve already discussed here, Republicans hate them because they expose the white supremacists and neo-Nazis that make up so much of their base, so now they’re trying to destroy them by pretending they’re sponsoring hatred rather than going undercover to expose it.

Rep. Nancy Mace made an appearance on Fox’s Saturday in America with Kayleigh McEnany this weekend and was asked by guest host Jonathan Hunt what she thought of the accusations against the SPLC, and Mace spewed lots of lies and venom and demanded that the people running the organization be tossed in prison.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Earlier in 2026 a sub-Reddit called “r/liberalgunowners,” saw one user provide an update after describing a harrowing incident at home – but a New York Times columnist elected to leave out a large part of the story to deliver an anti-gun ownership spiel.

In the screenshot of the initial post on Reddit posted on X on March 2, according to BizPacReview, the user explained how his partner had purchased a Glock pistol “for self-defense as the federal government does fascist things in our community.” The Reddit user apparently provided additional updates later in the thread, based on another screenshot posted on X.

News Source
EXCERPT:

The Department of Justice is acknowledging it’s removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice is acknowledging it has removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, calling the information about the prosecutions “partisan propaganda.”

The purge of news releases documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings is the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically rewrite the history of the assault on the Capitol, when hundreds of supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to halt the congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

News Source
EXCERPT:

President Trump’s retribution crusade reached a crescendo Tuesday when the president’s endorsee, Ed Gallrein, prevailed in the GOP primary to unseat Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), extending his winning streak against Republicans who have defied him. Massie, a libertarian-leaning lawmaker whose opposition to key Trump priorities has long drawn the president’s ire, is the latest victim of Trump’s revenge campaign after…

News Source
EXCERPT:

Can you name one good thing the BLM movement has done for the Black community? No? I didn’t think so. You certainly can, however, name many bad things this movement and people involved in it have done that have been disastrous towards the Black community. This is why it is disingenuous for Sunny Hostin to imply this “uprising” has done anything beneficial for Black people.

According to Sunny Hostin, “there is no compassion between the Black Lives Matter movement and Jan. 6.” And in that regard, she is correct. There is no comparison. However, she justified this stance by claiming there was “very limited destruction of property and violence” during the “uprising of this movement.” This is incorrect because these riots caused the largest insurance claim in American history, while the amount of damage caused by Jan. 6 rioters was less than $3 million. While both numbers should be closer to $0, as Hostin said, it is comparing apples to oranges.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) on Monday was pepper-sprayed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers while demonstrators gathered outside an immigration detention facility in Newark, N.J. Videos circulated online of mutual aid volunteers pouring water into Kim’s eyes while he held an ice pack in his hand. One video showed Kim speaking directly to ICE…

News Source
EXCERPT:

The focus of Friday’s Washington Week in Review journalist roundtable (which aired on the eve of Memorial Day weekend) was the Department of Defense, especially on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s war against wokeism, which the panel disapproved of, especially New York Times national security correspondent Helene Cooper, who all but accused Hegseth and the Trump Administration of racism and sexism.

Helene Cooper, National Security Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, that’s a great question, Jeff. I think I would start first with just he’s instilled an atmosphere of fear, which is pervasive now throughout the Pentagon, just because he has fired or threatened to fire or forced to retire just so many of the top brass….

News Source
EXCERPT:

It’s extremely suboptimal that the only way the constitutional order is being preserved these days is by masses of plaintiffs filing lawsuit after lawsuit against the administration’s flagrantly illegal conduct. While the administration has fought nearly everything tooth and nail, a few settlements have slipped through.

President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked diversity and wokeness, words that mean whatever Trump wants them to mean on any given day. But sometimes, woke wins, and the administration has no choice but to knuckle under, settle, and cut its losses.

These sorts of victories are few and far between these days, given that conservatives on the Supreme Court make a habit of giving Trump whatever he wants, giving him very little incentive to settle cases. But hey, we’ll take it.

News Source
EXCERPT:

A proposed data center expected to cost more than $5 billion ran into intense resistance Thursday night in rural Pennsylvania, where residents packed a town hall meeting and delivered a clear message: They do not want their farmland and community identity sacrificed for a largely undefined mega-project.

During a three-hour informational session at Bangor Area Middle School, residents of Lower Mount Bethel Township voiced overwhelming opposition to the proposed Lower Mount Bethel Tech Center, according to WFMZ-TV. The event was organized by the project’s major stakeholders, including Peron Development and J.G. Petrucci Co., rather than township leaders.

News Source
EXCERPT:

With Kristi Noem out of there, it seems like Homeland Security finally has the freedom to tackle the issues that really matter: namely, all those pesky comedians and their pesky comedy. Professional troll Ben Palmer has been on a tear recently with his fake ICE hotline, which real “patriots” will mistakenly call into to have their neighbors deported for crimes such as speaking Spanish in public or having people over to their house.

I figured it was only a matter of time before the real DHS took notice, and that day has finally arrived. A “Be On The Lookout” alert concerning Palmer has been issued, alerting law enforcement of his “online impersonation.” He’s accused of such crimes as wanting to increase his “comedic profession audience” (sic) and “indirectly act[ing] as an immigration official, although the notice concedes there is “no direct threat to life or infrastructure.”

President Trump’s man, Kevin Warsh, is in as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell is out. The transition happened officially on Friday, May 15, 2026. Warsh was easily confirmed by the Senate first as a Fed Governor and then as the new Federal Reserve chair.

Go Deeper

News Source
EXCERPT:

It’s no surprise Republicans feel desperate to burnish Donald Trump’s reputation. His approval ratings are in the toilet, his unwanted and unnecessary war and tariffs are causing inflation and gas prices to soar, and while using his p***y-grabbing hands to pocket billions of taxpayer dollars and documents for himself, he has taken away health insurance and food benefits from Americans.

That’s not counting Dozy Don’s obvious mental decline.

Republicans in Congress could do a lot to rein in Trump’s wrongdoings and actually serve struggling Americans. Instead, Rep. Darrell Issa has introduced a resolution, cosponsored by more than 20 other Republicans, to rewrite history and expunge Trump’s two impeachments. Not only that, as Alternet reported, “it appears he wants to allege ‘misconduct’ on the part of those who were part of the process of impeaching him.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

The Senate parliamentarian ruled Thursday that major pieces of the GOP’s party-line immigration enforcement package do not comply with the chamber’s rules — a setback to Republicans racing to clear the bill this month.

The parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, found that four parts of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s portion of the legislation will need to be reworked — or risk Democrats forcing a floor vote on each provision that would be subject to a 60-vote threshold, according to a statement from Budget Committee Democrats Thursday night.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Erick and Don Jr promised their cell phones were to be made in the US, and you believed it.

Hahahahaha.

CNN:The Android-powered phone was first touted as being “Made in USA.” But that claim was quickly scrapped, and changed to “designed with American values in mind,” according to screenshots previously taken by CNN.”

“The revised language came after industry analysts expressed skepticism about the phone’s American origins, noting that its specifications resembled a phone made by a Chinese manufacturer.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping came face to face outside China’s Great Hall of the People, the pair exchanged a historic handshake, with this opening moment laying bare the nature of their relationship — a body language expert asserting that Xi holds the upper hand.

The two leaders sat down for two hours of talks on Thursday, May 14, with the entire world looking on as Xi hailed US-China relations as the world’s “most important” and Trump declared the discussions “extremely positive”.

From the very beginning of the visit, the power dynamic between the two men has been unmistakable, according to body language expert Louise Mahler, who argued “if life is a competition, for me, Xi won.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

The Trump/Xi meetings in China were private. It appears that there were no big breakthroughs and “wins” for Trump to bring back to the United States.

Trump tried to flatter the Chinese leader, who responded with threats about Taiwan.

The Trump trip, where he took a bunch of the world’s richest CEOs with him, appears to have been a total bust on all fronts. Republicans were hoping that Trump would have another one of his fake deals with China to announce that would help to get farmers who are being devastated by the president’s toxic combo of war and tariffs off their backs, but there was no big announcement.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Germany’s federal system of government makes the country’s politics seem so complicated that most people outside Germany give up trying to understand it. At the federal level, there is the parliament (the Bundestag), a ceremonial president and a chancellor. At the moment, all of those branches of power seem normal enough, and are run by the same few democratic parties that have been there since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But if you look the next level down, at the individual states (or länder), the picture that emerges is terrifying.

Germany is still culturally and economically split in two by the old Iron Curtain. Nearly 40 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the promised reunification has still not been completed. People living in the former East look at the Berlin government and see policies that seem to ignore them. There are five states in the eastern part of the country, and opinion polls show majority support for the radical right party Alternative for Germany in all of them. This September, two of these states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, will be holding elections in which AfD candidates are expected to win, putting them in charge of state governments for the first time. They are hoping for absolute majorities. That would give them sole control of the education system, the prisons and the police force.

News Source
EXCERPT:

A protest sign outside Alabama’s statehouse on May 7.Kim Chandler/AP

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

In a stunning act of political partisanship, the Roberts Court on Monday night discarded its own precedents to green-light a last-ditch effort by Alabama to use a gerrymandered congressional map for the 2026 midterms. The move, which comes less than two weeks after the court destroyed the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, will reduce Black representation.

Monday’s 6-3 order, divided along partisan lines, shows how Republican-controlled states can use the high court’s April 29 Callais decision as carte-blanche to shut Black representatives out of Congress. In Alabama’s case, precedent, court doctrine, and a damning lower-court ruling stood in the way of the state throwing out its current map containing two majority-Black congressional districts represented by Democrats. Monday night’s decision of the Republican-appointed justices to toss all that aside shows how the court has not only unleashed a new wave of racial and partisan gerrymandering, but is sweeping away any obstacles so that Republicans nab as many seats as possible this November—enough to potentially prevent Democrats from retaking the House.

“There’s something bizarre going on with the court making choices that seem to very heavily benefit one party.”

News Source
EXCERPT:

A cluster of high-profile political attacks in the U.S. spotlight the nation’s extreme divisions—but they don’t necessarily signal a broader uptick in politically inspired brutality, experts say.

Politicians, pundits and ordinary Americans are increasingly worried about political violence. The latest round of concern was sparked on April 25, when a 31-year-old man stormed the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, D.C., during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where President Donald Trump was in attendance. Secret Service agents arrested the armed man before he could get to the ballroom where the event was being held. He has since been charged with attempted assassination of the president—which would represent the third serious attempt on Trump’s life since 2024. The man has pled not guilty to this and related charges.

News Source
EXCERPT:

Democrats must stop conceding that the only answer for various racist voting laws is that Democrats just have to vote more and harder and better.

We try to keep despair out of these pages, tough as the times are. That’s why I didn’t write about Friday’s Virginia Supreme Court’s decision striking down new voter-approved congressional maps for extremely dubious reasons (read Virginia political expert Carolyn Fiddler’s awesome explanation of the ruling here).

Coming after the Supreme Court (of the United States) decision invalidating Louisiana’s congressional maps for taking race into account, the Bayou State’s immediately postponing upcoming elections as a result, and Tennessee’s swift move to use the SCOTUS ruling to wipe a majority-Black congressional district literally off the political map, last week was the worst for voting rights since the court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder ruling struck down two vital sections of the Voting Rights Act. I admit to not seeing much light down this tunnel that afternoon.

News Source
EXCERPT:

No one agrees on when, where, or how capitalism began, or whether it had a beginning at all, but everyone agrees that capitalism, the word, first appeared in the 19th century. Capital and capitalist slipped into use, unnoticed and unremarked, in the 13th and 17th centuries. Capitalism burst through the barricades of political argument in the 1830s, announcing immediately the hostility of its user. “Long live capital!” cried the French socialist Louis Blanc in 1839. “Long may we go on to attack capitalism, its mortal enemy, with even more intensity.” As much as the word named something, so did it identify its speaker—as a worker, a radical, a hater.

If capital was viewed as a thing and capitalists as people, capitalism was something else. Blanc described it as an act, the taking of collective wealth and turning it into individual or private profit. Proudhon claimed it was a citadel, casting medieval and military shadows across the land. Despite his obvious interest and extensive writing on the subject, Marx steered clear of the term.

News Source
EXCERPT:

News Source
EXCERPT:

US President Donald Trump will arrive in China from May 13 to May 15 for a closely watched state visit that could shape the next phase of relations between Washington and Beijing. The trip marks the first visit by a sitting American president to China in nearly a decade and the first since Trump’s own 2017 visit during his first term.

Despite years of harsh rhetoric on China, Trump has continued to publicly praise Chinese President Xi Jinping. Just last week, he described Xi as a “good man” and a “smart man” with whom he has “a very good relationship”.

But behind the warm language lies mounting pressure. The summit comes at a moment when Washington is struggling to convert its military and economic power into diplomatic outcomes, particularly in the Middle East.

News Source
EXCERPT:

When Donald Trump visits Beijing this week, the focus of think tankers and pundits will largely be on what the policy outcomes will be, and there is a tendency to lean towards the negative. Will China deepen the trade war? Will Trump bristle at Xi’s stance on the war against Iran?

But for the trajectory of the relationship between China and the United States, the summit could play a constructive role, facilitating a peaceful recognition of the shift in power dynamics between the two countries and globally. Perceptions in both countries of one another, and of the role each seeks to play in the world, will be shaped by the art of the summitry and what the meeting between the two leaders conveys.

Historically, high-profile summits have proven to be important turning points in U.S. foreign policy by mediating enduring tensions in bilateral relations. The 1959 US-Soviet summit humanized the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev in the eyes of some Americans. The 1972 Nixon visit to China allowed pro-rapprochement sentiment to emerge and circulate in American public discourse, contributing to ongoing discussions and debates on diplomatic normalization for years following the summit. The 1985-87 US-Soviet summits between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were crucial for transforming bilateral distrust into trust.