“A Michigan judge dismissed criminal charges Tuesday against a group of people who were accused of attempting to falsely certifying [sic] President Donald Trump as the winner of the 2020 election in the battleground state, a major blow to prosecutors as similar cases in four other states have been muddied with setbacks. District Court Judge Kristen D. Simmons said in a court hearing that the 15 Republicans accused will not face trial. The case has dragged through the courts since Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, announced the charges over two years ago. Simmons said she saw no intent to commit fraud in the defendants’ actions. Whether they were ‘right, wrong or indifferent,’ they ‘seriously believed’ there were problems with the election, the judge said.” (09/09/25)
Source: In These Times
by Thomas Birmingham & Rebecca Burns
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a New York City businessperson in possession of an obscene fortune will decamp to Florida if faced with incremental tax and regulatory increases. Or so claimed a chorus of plutocrats scorned by the upset victory of Zohran Mamdani in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary in June. The next night, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman took to social media to warn of a mass defection of his fellow financiers. A day later, real estate executive Danny Fishman declared himself already out. A Mamdani mayoralty ’would be the death penalty for the city’, as well as ’the best thing to happen to Miami and Palm Beach since Covid’, Fishman told the Wall Street Journal. Grocery store magnate John Catsimatidis, meanwhile, threatened to close his Manhattan-based supermarket chain, citing an inability to compete with city-owned stores — though Mamdani has proposed piloting just five.” (09/08/25)
“I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To is both a line from my speech that brought the house down at the Republican National Convention on the day I walked out of prison, and a cautionary tale about the new age of Democrat lawfare and weaponized justice that the Age of Trump has ushered in. If they can come for me, Steve, and President Trump (along with Jeff Clark, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Dan Scavino, Mark Meadows, Jenna Ellis, Peter Clark, Boris Epshteyn, and other Trump associates), they can come for you. As a matter of simple math, virtually everyone involved in putting me behind bars was a Democrat …. More than a million dollars in legal fees and deprived of four months of my freedom — all because I honored the president’s invocation of executive privilege and oath of office.” (09/08/25)
“Since taking office nearly nine months ago, President Donald Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders that have kept the legal profession working overtime. By early September, 202 of the orders had spawned at least 395 court challenges. Twenty-three of the cases were fast-tracked to the Supreme Court in hopes of emergency action. One of the latest to be bumped up is an Aug. 29 U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that rejected the president’s claim of an emergency to impose trade tariffs. This ‘litany of litigation’, as one analyst characterizes the cascade of charges and countercharges, frustrates many Americans. Elected leaders from both parties are criticizing judges and rulings. Meanwhile, some judges, normally reticent, are weighing in. Much of the frustration comes by historic design. The nearly 240-year-old constitutional principles of separation of powers and checks and balances remain highly relevant today – that is, if consistently applied.” (09/08/25)
“Military tensions in the southern Caribbean have rapidly grown following President Trump’s decision to launch an airstrike on a boat allegedly smuggling drugs near Venezuela. As the U.S. announced the deployment of 10 F-35 fighter jets to bolster its forces in the region, a pair of Venezuelan planes flew over an American warship in a move that the Pentagon described as ‘highly provocative.’ … The rapid escalation seems to have put Congress on the back foot. While many lawmakers moved quickly to condemn Trump’s attacks on Iran earlier this year, strikingly few members of Congress have shown the same level of enthusiasm when it comes to Venezuela.” (09/08/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“In a sense all I’m ever really pointing at here is the importance of taking responsibility. Taking responsibility as westerners for the suffering and destruction inflicted upon the world by the western power structure that we live under. To be a westerner is to live in a civilization that is powered by the abuse and exploitation of the people of the global south. Every one of us benefits directly from the way resources and labor are exploitatively extracted from nations that are held in subjugation to the western empire at the barrel of a gun. The very electronic device you are reading these words on is a testament to this reality. We each have a moral obligation to end this abusive dynamic.” (09/08/25)
“Of all Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who attracts the most vitriol, which is saying something. You could see just how much the Health and Human Services secretary is despised last week at a Senate committee hearing when Democrat after Democrat abused him with slurs like ‘charlatan’ and demanded he resign. There is an orchestrated campaign to force him out that includes the overplayed political ploy of ‘an open letter from nine former CDC leaders’ and another letter from 1,000 current and former HHS employees calling on him to step down. But why would he resign? He’s only just getting started on Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, which is popular with Americans of all stripes, especially Republicans, 73% of whom rated it favorably in the latest Insider Advantage poll.” (09/07/25)
“Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday announced a series of nine new measures — including a total arms embargo — aimed at pressuring the government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘to stop the genocide in Gaza.’ Sánchez, who leads the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), announced the steps during a speech in which he first acknowledged the historical suffering of the Jewish people, which includes the 1492 ethnic cleansing of Jews from Spain. ‘The Jewish people have suffered countless persecutions, deserve to have their own state, and to feel secure,’ Sánchez said. ‘That is why the Spanish government has condemned Hamas’ attacks from day one.’ However, ‘there is a difference between defending your country and bombing hospitals or starving innocent children,’ the prime minister continued. ‘This is an unjustifiable attack on the civilian population, which the [United Nations] rapporteur has described as genocide.'” (09/08/25)
“GoFundMe said that it removed multiple fundraising campaigns created on behalf of Decarlos Brown Jr., the ex-convict accused of stabbing and killing Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska aboard a Charlotte, North Carolina, light-rail train. ‘GoFundMe’s Terms of Service explicitly prohibit fundraisers for the legal defense of anyone formally charged with a violent crime. Consistent with this long-standing policy, all fundraisers for Decarlos Brown Jr.’s legal defense have been removed from the platform, and any donors have been fully refunded,’ a company spokesperson told Fox News Digital. According to information reviewed by Fox News Digital, the campaigns were taken down within hours of being flagged.” (09/08/25)
“In August 1981, US Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick traveled to Santiago to meet with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, eight years after he seized power in a military coup. Kirkpatrick cheeringly described their talk as ‘most pleasant’ and announced that the Reagan administration would fully normalize relations and resume arms sales — support that Pinochet quickly used to claim renewed legitimacy and crack down on opponents. The episode crystallized what became known as the Kirkpatrick Doctrine: the notion that the US government should embrace any autocrat who aligned with Washington’s anti-communist agenda while working to undermine, sanction, or topple any left-wing leader who refused to ‘play ball,’ even if they were democratically elected (and popular). Protecting American economic interests was the lodestar, and just about anything was permissible in service of that goal.” (09/08/25)
