Politics

Parents who owe a significant amount of child support soon could lose their ability to travel internationally as the Trump administration expands and steps up enforcement of a 30-year-old law that allows the federal government to revoke American passports until payments are made, three U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

In 1869, a group of Massachusetts reformers persuaded the state to try a simple idea: counting.

Today, Equifax extracts over $800 million worth of contracts from the federal government and state governments each year. Much of that total is for access to its Workforce Solutions product, the Work Number, which provides data on workers’ income and employment. The Work Number’s basic business model is to purchase exclusive rights to worker data from employers and payroll providers (often without a worker’s knowledge) and then sell that data to banks, creditors, and governments for a profit.

Finding Balance Between Rights, Responsibility, and Well-Being

I have seriously considered writing one of these to have in the can, ready to publish. This is a gut punch. (Still, I finally got sick of three errors in the hed and circled back to fix them. And dear god, cadence. You wanted contractions in the first two opportunities, but not in the fourth where one was used.)

For years, we’ve been subjected to an endless parade of hyperventilating claims about the Biden administration’s supposed “censorship industrial complex.” We were told, over and over again, that the government was weaponizing its power to silence conservative speech. The evidence for this? Some angry emails from White House staffers that Facebook ignored. That was basically it. The Supreme Court looked at it and said there was no standing because there was no evidence of coercion (and even suggested that the plaintiffs had fabricated some of the facts, unsupported by reality).

Days before Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, an investment firm controlled by a senior member of the United Arab Emirates royal family secretly signed a deal to pay $500m to buy almost half of a cryptocurrency startup founded by the Trump family. Under any other president, such an arrangement, which was revealed this past weekend by the Wall Street Journal, would cause a political earthquake in Washington. There would be demands for an investigation by Congress, televised hearings and months of damage control.

At this difficult moment in American history, it’s imperative that we have the courage to be honest with ourselves.

They had come to say a prayer for the father, the son and the holy ghost.

For the past week, I’ve been unable to retrieve the copies of The Washington Post that usually get delivered to my home, since the brutal weather in the DC area has turned my front yard into an unfordable moat of frozen snow. This now seems a richly prophetic turn of events, since my hometown newspaper is being eviscerated under the disastrous ownership of centibillionaire monopolist and MAGA flunky Jeff Bezos.

The Department of Justice’s seizure of Fulton County, Georgia, 2020 voting records remains a chilling, bewildering exercise in using federal agencies to try to validate Donald Trump’s false claim that he won reelection that year, carrying Georgia though even state GOP officials certified that he lost the state by more than 11,000 votes. Trump followed up the FBI raid by insisting, during a podcast interview with former deputy FBI director Dan Bongino, that “Republicans” should “take over” voting procedures in 15 states. “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many—15 states. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” Any attempt to “nationalize” voting processes would be unconstitutional; it’s clearly the purview of the states. But note that Trump specifically said one party, his own, should take over. That’s just about as fascist as he’s ever sounded.

Voting rights and pro-democracy advocates are in a precarious position. If they speak loudly and frankly about Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s plans to suppress, manipulate, or outright “steal” the upcoming midterm election, they risk depressing the very people who must be counted on to show up and vote. They risk making people feel like their votes will not matter because “the fix is already in.” They get called a “doomer” by Pollyanna Democrats on social media, and “hysterical” by Republicans. And since the single best solution to the threat of voter suppression is overwhelming turnout, depression and doom, even in the name of truth, ends up helping Trump’s forces.

During the last period of his time as president, while the Watergate scandal was raging, Richard Nixon allegedly told several U.S. representatives that he could get on the telephone, issue an order, and soon after millions of people would be killed. It wasn’t hyperbole. There are very few people in human history that have ever had that kind of power, and most have been American presidents. But how does one individual with this sort of authority exist in a system of government designed with a triad of co-equal branches set up specifically to thwart concentrated executive power, a system where starting a war wasn’t even an executive-branch power in the constitutional design?

A searchable gmail clone graphical interface looks like you are logged in as Jeffrey Epstein and you can search all of the archived emails that have been released so far.

Even a broken clock, usw. It would have been terrible optics to uphold this bullshit in Texas and then turn around to say California can’t do the same thing.

We are now one year into Donald Trump’s second term, and something strange is happening in political media. A lot of people who spent years insisting that the so-called “alarmists” were being hysterical have started, tentatively, to admit that maybe they got it wrong.

This piece is from 2023, but I just ran into the link on a Reddit thread.

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The violence, racial profiling and disregard for the Constitution that have burst into public view in Minneapolis are not new or unusual for the Border Patrol. This is how the agency has operated since it was created, though for decades those activities have been hidden in the remote borderlands. If you are uncomfortable with what the Border Patrol is doing in Minneapolis, you are uncomfortable with the Border Patrol, full stop.

Donald Trump suggested on a conservative podcast released on Monday that Republican state officials “take over” and “nationalize” elections in 15 states to protect the party from being voted out of office.

119th CONGRESS 2d Session H. R. 7012 To authorize the annexation and subsequent admission to statehood of Greenland, and for other purposes. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES January 12, 2026 Mr. Fine (for himself and Mr. Rulli) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs A BILL To authorize the annexation and subsequent admission to statehood of Greenland, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the “Greenland Annexation and Statehood Act”. SEC. 2. Authorization for the annexation of Greenland. The President is authorized to take such steps as may be necessary, including by seeking to enter into negotiations with the Kingdom of Denmark, to annex or otherwise acquire Greenland as a territory of the United States. Upon completion of such annexation or acquisition, the President shall submit to Congress a report consisting of such changes to Federal law as the President may determine necessary to admit the newly acquired territory as a State, in order to expedite congressional approval of such statehood for Greenland after the adoption of a constitution that Congress determines to be republican in form and in conformity with the Constitution of the United States.

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A US disaster response firm submitted a plan to White House officials that would guarantee 300% profits and a seven-year monopoly over a new trucking and logistics plan for Donald Trump’s Board of Peace in Gaza, according to a November proposal obtained by the Guardian.

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If you’ve been napping, Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison and his nepobaby son David hired an unqualified troll named Bari Weiss to “run” CBS News. And by “run” CBS news, I mean destroy what little journalism was left at the media giant and create an alternate-reality safe space for radical right wing billionaire extremists. While pretending to be “restoring trust in journalism.”

Renee Good died on January 7. Twenty-four days later, her killer walks free. Jonathan Ross calmly murdered a woman, then he and his crew blocked anyone from giving her medical aid as she died. Minneapolis police were on scene the entire time. They watched Ross leave. They didn’t stop him. They didn’t arrest him. They didn’t intervene while a woman bled out two blocks from her home.

Last Tuesday, during the morning rush hour, 15 individuals from a group called Eject Elbit staked positions in the four-lane access road to the headquarters of banking giant Capital One Financial Corporation in McLean, Virginia. They mounted ladders in the road and climbed atop them, unfurling a banner from their perches that read “CAPITAL ONE FUNDS GENOCIDE.” They stretched across the road a second banner, fifty feet wide, that said “DIVEST FROM DEATH.” Another protestor, a disabled woman, blockaded the road while locked to her wheelchair.

A feature-length documentary centered on First Lady Melania Trump is facing early box-office trouble, with multiple theaters across major U.S. cities reporting little to no ticket sales on opening night, despite an aggressive promotional push from President Donald Trump and a wide theatrical rollout. Social media posts and industry tracking data suggest the film, Melania, is struggling to attract audiences even before its nationwide expansion.

With economic stagnation and extremes of inequality comes corrosion of trust in democratic institutions. So Trump may be a symptom, not a cause, of what Carney called a “rupture” with the post-WW2 order.

Minneapolis is still under siege by federal agents, and there is no sign that the Trump administration is repudiating its cruel and barbaric immigration policies. But the Trumpers are on the defensive now. They’ve defenestrated Border Patrol brute Greg Bovino. They’re backing away from (and blaming each other for) the outrageous lies they initially spread about Border Patrol shooting victim Alex Pretti.

If you want to understand how little the current administration cares about the First Amendment, look no further than a pre-dawn FBI raid on a journalist’s home—conducted in apparent violation of a federal law specifically designed to prevent exactly this kind of thing.

We in the rest of the world have had to hear a lot – such a lot – about what this US government and its hardcore fanbase thinks about us. So you know they’ll be super-relaxed and free-speechy about hearing some thoughts about how they look from the outside.

To cover the Republican Party in the age of President Donald Trump requires a grasp of cryptology.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the most left-wing figures in American public life. Her recently retired GOP colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene is just as far on the right-wing side of the political spectrum. Yet the two are united in seeing the killing of Alex Pretti on Saturday by ICE agents as a constitutional crisis.

It’s true, but they won’t.

Ted Cruz warned Donald Trump, his fellow Republican, that he would face a “bloodbath” in the November midterm elections if prices continued to rise, prompting the president to respond, “fuck you, Ted,” the US senator told donors, according to a secret recording of the private conversation obtained by Axios.

Two weeks ago, ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Nicole Good in cold blood. I said then that we had to abolish ICE and impeach Trump & Noem before they incited another murder.

To many observers, Donald Trump’s open bellicosity – his threats to attack Greenland and Iran, and his recent kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro – looks like an ideological reversal. “Donald Trump betrayed his MAGA base today [by] launching a war of choice to bring regime change in Venezuela,” tweeted Democratic congressman Ro Khanna on 3 January. The day before, former Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote: “President Trump threatening war and sending in troops to Iran is everything we voted against in ‘24.” On 20 January, National Public Radio reported that “Trump supporters share confusion and anger over the president’s focus on Greenland”.

Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition. Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s.

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I’ll skip to the salient quote:

Nobody would ever call Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney a charismatic speaker. A former central banker and hedge fund manager, Carney can be as dry as an insurance salesman explaining an actuarial life table. Inexplicably, he has difficulty with both of Canada’s official languages. When speaking French, he drones in an affectless monotone that can charitably be described as a brave effort by a remedial student. But even in his native English, he stammers when reading from a teleprompter. By contrast, Justin Trudeau, Carney’s immediate predecessor as prime minister and former Liberal Party leader, was a natural politician. Trudeau has star power comparable to John F. Kennedy’s or Barack Obama’s: He is handsome, bilingual, photogenic, and unfailingly charming in his interactions with voters. Trudeau speaks with an effortless fluidity and grace, perhaps acquired during his previous career as a drama teacher. It’s entirely fitting that he is currently dating the singer Katy Perry.

Well, the moral degradation of this once-great country shows no signs of slowing down. One day, people suddenly start insisting on “warrants” before letting federal agents into their homes, and the next an entire state may allow dancing without a license. Appalling.

As punishment for the crimes of having a diverse population, not voting for him in three elections straight, and having Tim Walz as governor, Trump has also stripped or withheld billions of dollars, attempting to starve the state of resources. Meanwhile, the state, like all others, continues to pay into the federal government’s coffers.

I know people are going to hate where I first found this but at least its this guys blog. I actually know the guy and saw it on linkendin and he does exist. Heck you can look at his stuff on the evl website. Its rather verbose and academic in language but I appreciate his callouts.

Donald Trump may, of course, be the Republican candidate for president in 2028, the US Constitution notwithstanding. Although it is clearly written in the 22nd Amendment that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” it may well be a majority vote of the Supreme Court that determines whether that applies to Trump.

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Which way, western man?

Friday could be a seminal moment in this new civil rights movement.

In the broadest sense, this is news, but there’s too much opinion in this to throw it there.

Donald Trump has stepped up his demand to annex Greenland but said the US would not use force to seize it during a rambling, invective-laden speech at Davos where he once again lashed out at Europe’s political leaders.

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In the first year of Donald Trump’s first term as president in 2017, the share of Americans calling themselves Republicans (or independents who leaned toward the Republican Party) dropped just 2 percentage points — from 42% in 2016 to 40% by Q4 of 2017. I predict it will surprise many people to hear that the Democrats didn’t actually change their advantage in party ID much at all in Trump’s first term, expanding their advantage to +7 in 2018 from +6 in 2016.

With Heather Lofthouse and yours truly, Robert Reich

This is seriously so tone deaf, I don’t know where to start. Don’t name your initiative after the title of a chilling warning from TNG.

The US agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, is facing ridicule from congressional Democrats – among others – after claiming Americans can save money and have their meals align with new Department of Health and Human Services dietary guidelines by simply eating “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli”, “a corn tortilla” and “one other thing”.

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With the current mess that the US is in, there has been plenty of talk of “what comes after” and how to think about the big structural changes needed to prevent another authoritarian from taking over and abusing all the levers of power for corruption and self-enrichment.

The DOJ can’t indict a ham sandwich these days. That old saying doesn’t ring as true as it used to now that most of the DOJ’s work is just vindictive prosecutions.

Wherever the invaders appear, so do citizens with whistles and phone cameras, jeering them and telling them to go away. Thousands of residents have attended protests and vigils, joined support groups, delivered food to those afraid to leave their homes, gathered outside schools to protect their children.