“It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young Indians are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, set up its website and social media accounts on Saturday. By Thursday, its Instagram page had amassed more than 15 million followers, far surpassing the 8.8 million followers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party on the platform.” (05/21/26)
“Sen. John Kennedy [R-LA] railed against California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, which is facing scrutiny from the Trump administration over fraud allegations, as Kennedy highlighted reports during a Tuesday hearing that the state covers exorcisms and other faith-based healing practices. Medi-Cal’s spending practices have faced growing scrutiny as California’s Medicaid spending has more than doubled since 2019, rising from roughly $100.7 billion to a projected $222 billion in 2026. Just last week, the Trump administration suspended $1.4 billion in federal funding for California home health and hospice programs after Vice President J.D. Vance’s anti-fraud task force identified an estimated $600 million in suspected fraud within the state’s Medicaid system. Kennedy alleged during his line of questioning to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that taxpayer dollars were being used to cover the cost of exorcisms, a religious practice most commonly associated with the Catholic Church, and other indigenous spiritual practices.” (05/21/26)
“After the Supreme Court gutted voting rights in Louisiana v. Callais, it was all over but the shouting. This week in South Carolina, state lawmakers are proceeding with the Great Erasure of African American voters without the legal hindrances of the Voting Rights Act, that now timeworn relic of the late Great Society. Their goal? To create a congressional dream team of seven GOP House members by zeroing out Rep. James Clyburn, a longtimer with 33 years in Congress, and the only Black Democrat to represent South Carolina in the House in state history. Indeed, Clyburn is the ninth Black person to represent the state in Congress; the first eight were all Republicans elected during Reconstruction in the late 19th century, before Jim Crow ended Black voting in the South, and when the parties had opposite views on civil rights compared to today.” (05/21/26)
“I know, a lot of people are very excited about the primary defeat of U.S. Republican Thomas Massie (KY-4). I’m just not one of them. Not because I liked him, I honestly couldn’t care less about any politician and found him particularly annoying on quite a few issues, but because his defeat won’t make a single bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. No individual politician, especially in Congress, will. They are all temporary and don’t deserve your loyalty, ideas and ideals do. Massie was a reliable vote on most things for Republicans, but he started to get high on his own supply – seduced by the media coverage of his obsession with Jeffrey Epstein and the idea that there is a network of pervert monsters out there somewhere that he could help put away.” [editor’s note: He’s right that one congresscritter is unlikely to make a difference. And it’s so unusual for Derek Hunter to be right about ANYTHING that I considered it worth noting – TLK] (05/21/26)
“Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including gonorrhoea and syphilis have hit record levels in Europe, according to new data. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said both diseases had reached their highest levels in over 10 years in 2024. Gonorrhoea hit 106,331 cases – a 303% increase since 2015 – while syphilis more than doubled in the same period to 45,557. The health agency said ‘widening gaps in testing and prevention’ were partly behind the surge in transmission, and called for urgent action. ‘These infections can cause severe complications, such as chronic pain and infertility and, in the case of syphilis, problems with the heart or nervous system,’ said Bruno Ciancio, the head of the agency’s Directly Transmitted and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases unit. He said congenital syphilis cases – ‘where infections pass directly to newborns, leading to potentially lifelong complications’ – had nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024.” (05/21/26)
“The Philippine justice chief ordered authorities Thursday to enforce an International Criminal Court warrant for the arrest of a senator wanted on an alleged crime against humanity. He warned that anyone helping the senator evade a nationwide hunt would face criminal charges. Sen. Ronald Dela Rosa ‘is a fugitive from justice,’ Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida said in a news conference. ‘He should be brought to the ICC to face the charges.’ Dela Rosa is a former national police chief who enforced then President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody crackdown against illegal drugs that killed thousands of mostly petty suspects. The killings alarmed Western governments and human rights groups. Duterte, who was president from 2016 to 2022, was arrested last year and flown to the The Hague, where is he is on trial at the ICC on charges of crimes against humanity.” (05/21/26)
“The distinguished political scientist Graham Allison, author of the 2015 Atlantic article ‘The Thucydides Trap,’ argued that often in history an established power will stage a preventive war against an ascendant adversary — for fear that otherwise it will soon lose its primacy. His title derives from two passages in the first book of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides …. [The US] is the supposed jittery established power — and a rising Communist China is the upstart contender. His theory implies that the US might, like Sparta, take provocative steps to abort an inevitable Chinese-dominated world. There are, however, a number of problems, ancient and modern, with Allison’s intriguing thesis.” (05/21/26)
“Illinoisans know the terror the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can inflict with its unlimited resources and unchecked power. We have been surveilled, threatened, tear-gassed, shot, subjected to warrantless arrest, rammed with vehicles, kidnapped and disappeared. In the time since Donald Trump regained the White House, our communities documented, witnessed and testified to DHS’s abuses. In April, the Illinois Accountability Commission published its final report, which included recommendations that local law enforcement pursue criminal and civil prosecutions against federal agents who used excessive force. One incident highlighted in their report is the violence that occurred on Oct. 3, 2025, in Logan Square at Funston Elementary, when federal agents deployed tear gas close to the recreational area where children were present. The Commission determined what we already knew: Federal agents should be formally investigated for possible violations of agency policy, state and federal criminal laws and individuals’ constitutional rights.” (05/20/26)
“By every reasonable standard of governance, California’s elected politicians have made a mess of the Golden State. Reciting the litany of failures has become so common that it’s hardly worth the trouble. Chaotic, unsafe downtowns. Retail businesses giving up and relocating. Chronic government budget deficits, despite the nation’s highest taxes, set to go higher still. ‘Needle exchanges’ and ‘safe injection sites,’ funded by taxpayers. Kids encounter drug zombies on the way to school. Parents dodge psychopaths in grocery store parking lots. We’ve heard it all. We’ve seen it all. We’re desensitized. We just avoid certain parts of town the best we can and tell ourselves it can’t be helped. When we choose which candidates to support, we know nothing is going to change.” (05/20/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Thomas Massie has lost his congressional seat against a primary opponent whose Israel lobby funding made the race the most expensive House of Representatives primary in history. Massie has been a rare Republican opponent of Israeli abuses on Capitol Hill. The spending on Massie’s ouster topped out at a staggering $32 million when all was said and done. The second- and third-most expensive House primary races were also heavily slanted by Israel lobby funding, with AIPAC pouring millions into toppling progressive Democrats Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. Americans just watched the Israel lobby openly manipulate yet another election, and then in like two weeks they’re going to hear their government tell them they need to regime change another foreign country to bring ‘democracy’ to its people. Americans themselves do not have democracy.” (05/20/26)
