“New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is suing President Donald Trump’s administration over plans to expand federal authority to deny visa and green card applications based on welfare status. The lawsuit, filed jointly with NY Attorney General Letitia James, targets the Trump administration’s plan to expand the ‘public charge’ rule, which allows the federal government to deny visa applications based on the likelihood that the applicant will receive public benefits. Trump’s administration seeks to expand the list of benefits that apply under the rule, with the change taking effect Sept. 18. ‘If you are a citizen, or an individual seeking humanitarian relief like asylum, these changes will not affect you,’ Mamdani said at a press conference Monday. ‘The new public charge rule not only sweeps aside more than a century of established law, it is intentionally vague as a means of creating uncertainty and fear to isolate immigrant New Yorkers.'” (09/14/26)
“Donald Trump is an instrument of this age, a force propelling capitalism and the global economy into a critical stage of their historical development. Since the beginning of village life some 10,000 years ago, commerce among villages and rural economies intensified as cities emerged and over centuries forged trade networks across regions into a global system of commerce. At the same time, from the beginning of markets, traders, merchants, industries, and governments engaged in the struggle for control of local, regional, and inter-regional markets. Today this struggle continues, but now with devastating consequences: the concentration of wealth on a global scale; the vast productive power and technological innovation; the multiplying flow of market-related information, and the explosive potential of artificial intelligence. Each of these factors is channeling private and public resources to elites, and spurring worldwide trade wars, technological dependency, and military confrontations that threaten humanity’s survival.” (09/14/26)
“Landowners, ranchers and business owners in the Big Bend region of Texas along with a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the region’s landscape and heritage are suing to stop the Trump administration’s plans to build a wall and other border infrastructure through the remote section of the state. The lawsuit, filed by Conserve Big Bend and with the support of dozens of landowners, comes as the administration is ramping up a $46 billion effort to line the roughly 2,000-mile southern border with a collection of 30-foot (9-meter) steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers, and technology intended to keep out smugglers and migrants. In Texas, the effort has run up against numerous lawsuits and bipartisan opposition from sheriffs, elected officials, tour guides, environmental groups and landowners.” (09/14/26)
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) wants you to know that he is evolving. Newsom is facing a rising radical movement among Democrats, including a surging contingent aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America. He is struggling in polls and therefore eager to show the skill identified by Darwin that allows certain species to thrive in their environment: adaptation. Newsom has recently declared capitalism a failure. He is now joining his competitors for president in offering up the Supreme Court and its independence to the far left. His free fall into rage politics is a cautionary tale for those who want to return the Democratic Party to more centrist positions. Often called a ‘political chameleon’, Newsom seems to be morphing into the actual species that evolved to adjust to its environment, including more nimble feet.” (09/14/26)
“A pair of battered, hobnailed boots and a decades-old newspaper cutting are among a trove of everyday objects unearthed during restoration work at Buckingham Palace. The misplaced items are thought to belong to staff who worked at the palace decades ago, and were found by workers carrying out the £369m refurbishment. A ticket for ‘a whist drive’ (a card game event hosted by the Palace on 14 April 1949) was found embedded in a lump of brick. Several betting slips, a bottle of Schweppes Still Malvern English Spring Water, an empty Silk Cut cigarette carton and a newspaper article about the gang jailed for the 1963 Great Train Robbery were also found under floorboards.” (09/14/26)
“A sexual assault trial starts Monday for a New Hampshire man whose arrest more than seven years ago kicked off one of the biggest youth detention scandals in U.S. history. Former youth counselor Jeffrey Buskey, 60, of Litchfield, faces allegations involving four boys held at the Youth Development Center in Manchester in the late 1990s. In the first of his cases to go to trial, he is charged with 21 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault involving David Meehan, who was 14 when he arrived at the facility now called the Sununu Youth Services Center in 1995. Meehan filed the first of more than 1,100 lawsuits alleging physical, sexual or emotional abuse spanning six decades. His allegations led to the arrest of Buskey and another former worker in 2019, an unprecedented criminal investigation, nine additional arrests, and the establishment of a settlement fund to compensate victims.” (09/14/26)
“‘My name is Randy Villegas, and I’m for Medicare for All.’ That was how Villegas, a 31-year-old Democratic candidate for Congress, opened a health care town hall in late August for close to 100 residents, most of them Latino. He was speaking at Salon Juarez, a dance hall that hosts quinceañeras and weddings in a historic section of Bakersfield known as Old Town Kern. Preceding him on stage was Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), the progressive House member who is flirting with filling the left lane in the 2028 presidential race. Sandy Reding, a president of the California Nurses Association (CNA), one of America’s most left-wing unions, spoke before Khanna. The Working Families Party, which supports progressive populists across the country, had a table along one side. You wouldn’t know that this is one of America’s most hotly contested swing seats.” (09/14/26)
“The Trump 2.0 era has intensified a deeply entrenched pathology in the American media system: concentrated corporate ownership. During less perilous times, legitimate concerns about a few corporations capturing so much of our news and information have often been dismissed as conspiracy theories and paranoia. But Donald Trump and his coterie of plutocrats have made our media oligarchy problem acutely evident and impossible to ignore. Constant controversies, from government and corporate censorship of television comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert to the algorithmic and editorial abuses of Elon Musk’s X and Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, remind us why media ownership holds such high stakes for any semblance of democracy. Meanwhile, rightwing nepotistic dynasties like the Murdochs and the Ellisons hold inordinate influence over what millions of people can see, hear, and read in their daily media.” (09/11/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It’s so undignified how Zionists keep trying to resurrect the ‘stop calling it a genocide’ conversation about Gaza when every relevant human rights group on earth says that’s exactly what it is. The latest effort to revive this long-dead debate comes in the form of a letter signed by 5,000 high-profile Israel supporters like Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, Zionist megadonor Haim Saban, and neoconservative war criminal Elliott Abrams. ‘We the undersigned are outraged and sickened by the latest blood libel to be inflicted on the Jewish people: the lie that Israel committed ‘genocide’ in Gaza. We reject this accusation with contempt,’ the letter says, followed by the usual mountains of hasbara verbiage.” (09/12/26)
“New and returning students have been flocking to college campuses across the United States this month. And, at several institutions – such as Brandeis University, just outside Boston – they are encountering a higher education reinvention that’s rapidly picking up pace: the concept of ‘applied’ humanities or interdisciplinary and skills-focused liberal arts learning. For Brandeis and similar institutions, changing demographics (fewer college-age students overall) and budget shortfalls are an immediate impetus for this shift. But underlying such pragmatic considerations is also a growing willingness within higher education to better align with the needs of a changing society and economy. And that signals both humility and introspection – qualities integral to the humanities, which prize curiosity and the willingness to change and expand thinking and reasoning. ‘Higher ed shouldn’t be an ivory tower concept,’ according to Sonya Christian, chancellor of the California Community Colleges system, the nation’s largest.” (09/11/26)
