Source: Common Dreams
by Bita Iuliano & Olivia Dinucci
“As the country and this administration launched its America 250 and Freedom 250 ‘Celebrations’ over the holiday weekend, what we experienced in the nation’s capitol and a city of 700,000 residents replicated what the United States does to other parts of the world. The streets were invaded by the military, public spaces barricaded with multiple levels of security checkpoints, and the sky full of military flyovers, including a seven-hour schedule of flyovers on July 4th. Military flyovers come at a devastating cost—economically, psychologically, and environmentally. The most recent ones came in the middle of a heatwave where even Trump’s American State Fair closed after people were baptizing themselves in the religious tent to prevent heat stroke. But flyovers are not new and have been used as a propaganda tool for military recruitment during NFL games and summer festivals. The militarization has been so normalized for so long.” (07/06/26)
“The Supreme Court’s rush of decisions last week belies several myths concocted by its leftist [sic] critics. Listen to Democratic politicians or read liberal [sic] legal commentators, and you would believe that a conservative Supreme Court is marching in lockstep with Donald Trump to impose an extremist agenda on an unwilling American people. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer [D-NY] for example, often criticizes what he dubs ‘the MAGA Supreme Court’ for transforming government agencies into ‘members-only clubs for his golf buddies and cronies’. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] decries ‘the corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court appointed by Donald Trump’ for ‘taking a blowtorch’ to civil rights laws. Almost every Democratic leader, especially those jockeying for position in the 2028 presidential race, demands that Congress pack the court in order to correct this alleged bias of the conservative justices.” (07/07/26)
“Across the United States, a significant number of communities are experiencing a resurgence in the availability of local news from an evolving range of nonprofit outlets that are carving out a unique hometown niche. In recent decades, competition and changing readership patterns have led to the closure or downsizing of multiple city or state-wide newspapers. At the same time, however, hundreds of local news outlets are springing up to fill the gaps. An October 2025 report counted ‘more than 300 local news startups in the past five years across virtually every state, demonstrating a surge of entrepreneurship that has come along with a wave of philanthropic support’. According to the Institute for Nonprofit News, local outlets now make up 54% of its membership. ‘New growth … continues to skew local’, the institute’s 2026 index reported. ‘All nine outlets that became members and began publishing in 2025 covered local beats,’ as did the vast majority of new members in 2024 and 2023.” (07/06/26)
“The first of the two times I wrote about Graham Platner at these pages was last year. Among other things, it made the point that candidates are vessels for ideas and policies, and that none of them are indispensable. The second time, a week ago, was about how financial corruption exists on a different plane than other scandals. That is not diminished by the latest news; Platner’s actions and Susan Collins’s corruption can both be inexcusable and described as such. Regardless of any public defiance from unnamed sources, Platner is not going to survive the latest allegations, and he should not. What comes next is the only thing that matters now, in a world where a Democratic Senate is vital to preventing continued unchecked lawlessness, the confirmation of dozens more right-wing judges, and to preserve the vestiges of democracy.” [editor’s note: In recent years I have watched from afar the madness in my homeland states, with a mixture of amusement and horror. I am SO happy to be back to amusement – SAT] (07/07/26)
“As calls mounted on Monday evening for US Senate candidate Graham Platner to drop out of the race in Maine following sexual assault allegations, progressive organizers emphasized that primary voters in the state have made clear their demand for a candidate who prioritizes the needs of working people. Should Platner be replaced as the Democratic nominee, said the political action organization Our Revolution, the new candidate must be ‘one who has actually lived the fight Graham Platner ran on: a record with working people, with unions, against corporate money’. ‘To the Democratic establishment: This is not your opening,’ said Joseph Geevarghese, the group’s executive director. ‘Mainers did not vote by an overwhelming margin against Janet Mills and the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee]’s handpicked pick just to be handed another status-quo candidate anyway.'” [editor’s note: Newsflash for these idiots, “what they voted for” was no more Gov Mills in a position of power! Platner was just what they considered “the lesser evil” – SAT] (07/07/26)
“What a difference political affiliation makes. Democrat Graham Platner is now on the outs with the party, not because of assaulting women, but because he is accused of assaulting a fellow Democrat. That party has lost its soul, as has the media. When Platner was accused of assaulting and abusing a conservative woman he dated, none of these people cared. ‘She can’t be trusted, she’s a conservative activist’, they said. The devotion to victims, the currency of victimhood, disappeared when it wasn’t one of ‘their team’. Ro Khana, a ‘progressive’ leftist hypocrite from California who rails against wealth while amassing a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars through marriage and stock trades, was unbothered when a conservative woman told of how Platner was physically abusive with her, just as long as ‘there were no more shoes to drop’.” (07/07/26)
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an attempt by a conservative activist to obtain guardianship records in an effort to find ineligible voters in the presidential battleground state. The case has been winding its way through the courts for years and stems from attempts by conservatives to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin over President Donald Trump in 2020. The case tested the line between protecting personal privacy rights and ensuring that ineligible people can’t vote. Former travel executive Ron Heuer and a group he leads, the Wisconsin Voter Alliance, brought the lawsuit in 2022 alleging that the number of ineligible voters doesn’t match the count on Wisconsin’s voter registration list. The lawsuit doesn’t specify how many people could be affected.” (07/07/26)
“I’m serious, and this is not just my disgust with everything Trump. There is no good reason for the overwhelming majority of people in the country to ever put a dollar in a Trump account for their kids. To be clear, I’m not in favor of tax-sheltered accounts in general. They strike me mostly as a very inefficient way to accomplish public goals, in this case making education more affordable. The more efficient route would be to have more public funds go to support public colleges and community colleges. The tax-sheltered account route also favors higher-income people. Over a quarter of households owe no income tax, meaning they would get no benefit whatsoever from putting money in a tax-sheltered account. Another 20 percent are in the 10 percent bracket, meaning the account would just save them just 10 cents on every dollar invested. By contrast, the highest income households save 37 cents on every dollar invested in a tax-sheltered account.” (07/07/26)
“A secret inquiry by MI5’s watchdog concluded the security service knew an abusive agent it defended in court was a misogynist who was ‘obsessed’ with violence, the BBC can reveal. The inquiry took place after BBC News originally exposed how MI5 had covered up for the man – a neo-Nazi informant known publicly as agent X. The government took the BBC to court in 2022 in a failed attempt to block our investigation, but it won agent X legal anonymity. That year, the BBC first reported how the MI5 spy had used his status to coercively control his girlfriend, including attacking her with a machete, before moving abroad to continue intelligence work while he was still under investigation. Following the BBC story, the office of the investigatory powers commissioner (IPCO) Sir Brian Leveson launched an inquiry, which – like much of IPCO’s work – was secret.” (07/07/26)
Source: In These Times
by Adam Johnson and Steven Thrasher
“In late May, Adam Johnson, author of How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza spoke with Steven Thrasher, author of The Overseer Class: A Manifesto, about their respective books’ efforts to catalogue the ways that many of the same elite voices now opposed to Trump resorted to similarly Orwellian and even violent tactics in their effort to quell the movement for Palestinian liberation after Oct. 7. Their talk dissects the way these powerful liberals, as Thrasher puts it, exist to ’police the boundaries of what we’re allowed to think about and what we’re allowed to do.'” (07/06/26)
