“The House Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into reports that a key swing state could have noncitizens both in its jury pools and voter rolls. Committee Chairman James Comer [R-KY] is sending a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi alongside Rep. John James [R-MI], asking whether a specific county in the Detroit metropolitan area is giving rights exclusive to U.S. citizens to others residing there — which could potentially violate federal law. ‘Non-citizens have appeared in the state’s jury pool, and in some instances, have been registered to vote. The Committee is requesting a briefing to understand the U.S. Department of Justice’s role in investigating such matters, and the potential for similar issues to be occurring nationwide,’ the letter said.” (02/10/25)
“The Trump administration is expected this week to revoke a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, according to a White House official. The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule rescinding a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding. That Obama-era policy determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly ahead of an official announcement, confirmed the plans, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. ‘This week at the White House, President Trump will be taking the most significant deregulatory actions in history to further unleash American energy dominance and drive down costs,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday.” (02/10/25)
“Last week, the Supreme Court declined to review the California Republican Party’s request to prevent new congressional maps for the midterms, which passed after a public referendum last November: 64 percent of voters approved the measure. California’s congressional redistricting, which could net Democrats five pickups in the House, was a response to Texas, which at President Trump’s demand added up to five new Republican districts last summer. Unlike Texas, California actually made this decision through the expressed will of the public in a ballot measure,’ says Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center’s Washington, D.C., office. ‘You could argue this isn’t just the electeds running amok.’ The Supreme Court didn’t explain the early-December order.” (02/10/25)
“On February 5th, with the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, the only bilateral arms control treaty left between the United States and Russia, we are guaranteed to find ourselves ever closer to the edge of a perilous precipice. The renewed arms race that seems likely to take place could plunge the world, once and for all, into the nuclear abyss. This crisis is neither sudden nor surprising, but the predictable culmination of a truth that has haunted us for nearly 80 years: humanity has long been living on borrowed time. In such a context, you might think that our collective survival instinct has proven remarkably poor, which is, at least to a certain extent, understandable.” (02/09/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They launched a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world. They’re openly targeting civilian populations with siege warfare in Iran and Cuba in full view of the entire world. They openly kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation in full view of the entire world. They deliberately provoked a horrific and dangerous proxy war in Ukraine in full view of the entire world. They spent years actively backing Saudi Arabia’s monstrous genocidal atrocities in Yemen in full view of the entire world. They’re plundering and exploiting the resources and labor of the global south in full view of the entire world. They’re killing the biosphere we all depend on for their own enrichment in full view of the entire world.” (02/09/25)
“The first time I spoke to Jeff Bezos, he had founded Amazon as an online bookstore and made himself available to all kinds of journalists — a ‘political genius,’ said The New York Times Magazine, a ‘brilliant, charming, hyper, and misleadingly goofy mastermind.’ In 1999, having blown past the naysayers who scoffed at the strange notion of online retailing, the 35-year-old businessman was named Time’s Person of the Year. Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, as one of the world’s richest men, Bezos spent $250 million of his personal fortune to buy the Washington Post from Katharine Graham’s family. And now he should fold his cards and sell it. It’s a different era for the industry and a very different Bezos, one who is comfortable slashing a third of the paper’s staff.” (02/09/25)
Source: Common Dreams
by Jeffrey D Sachs & Sybil Fares
“History occasionally presents moments when the truth about a conflict is stated plainly enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s February 7 address in Doha, Qatar (transcript here) should prove to be such a moment. His important and constructive remarks responded to the US call for comprehensive negotiations, and he laid out a sound proposal for peace across the Middle East. Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for comprehensive negotiations: ‘If the Iranians want to meet, we’re ready.’ He proposed for talks to include the nuclear issue, Iran’s military capabilities, and its support for proxy groups around the region. On its surface, this sounds like a serious and constructive proposal. The Middle East’s security crises are interconnected, and diplomacy that isolates nuclear issues from broader regional dynamics is unlikely to endure.” (02/09/25)
“Whoever posted a video on President Trump’s social media containing a racist animation of the Obamas as apes committed an own goal that overshadowed what otherwise would have been a great week for the administration. It shouldn’t have needed the GOP’s only black senator, Tim Scott, to decry the clip as racist for the post to be deleted and an apology issued by the White House. The one-minute video reposted late Thursday on Trump’s Truth Social account was about voter fraud in the 2020 election, one of the president’s favorite subjects. At the end, the video flashed for a split second to a clip of the Obamas from an old ‘Lion King’ meme depicting Democrats as animals, and Trump as a lion. It was obviously a mistake.” [editor’s note: So it’s not the person who posted the video “stirring up racial division,” it’s anyone who noticed and mentioned it? How … Clintonesque – TLK] (02/08/25)
“As details about President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace and its plans for the reconstruction of Gaza trickle out, two things become increasingly clear: Palestinians have barely, if at all, been consulted in these plans; and the people in Trump’s orbit stand to benefit from the project the most. The U.N. Security Council approved the Board of Peace as a mechanism for implementing Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Israel and Gaza back in November, though its mandate now appears much broader. The BoP itself consists of high-level representatives from Gulf nations, Israel, Serbia, Albania, and Argentina, among others, with Trump himself as the chair and ultimate decision-maker. Absent from the Board of Peace are representatives from almost every EU country except Bulgaria and Hungary, and anyone representing Palestine.” (02/09/25)
“There is an unbridgeable gap in the United States right now between two people with polar opposite views of the world, its purpose, man’s place in it, and what the country should be in the future. And nobody can sit on the fence; you are on one side or another. ‘You are either for me or against me,’ Jesus said, and that is the situation every American faces right now, regarding the future and destiny of the nation. The Left isn’t going to change, folks. They are, for the foreseeable and indefinite future, rooted in their beliefs and ideology, and they aren’t going to be converted.” [editor’s note: Nor, I suspect, will Mark Lewis turn his life around, start rejecting the glamour of evil, and refuse to be further mastered by sin – TLK] (02/07/25)
