“As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence nears, President Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on immigrants of color has made his administration the most globally racist, hostile administration for non-white immigrants in US history, on top of its aggressively implemented racist policies in the US and around the world. In the past two weeks alone, we’ve witnessed Trump’s racist rants against the Somali community in Minnesota, the freezing of all non-white asylum bids, and denial of citizenship rights for long-time legal immigrants from non-white majority nations. These come on top of the increasingly violent assaults and deportations of mostly brown and Black people, including citizens, solely based on skin color, language, and where they work. The November 26 shooting, one fatally, of two National Guard members in Washington was the pretext for the latest intensification of Trump’s anti-non-white immigrant crusade.” (12/11/25)
“Senators from both parties pushed Thursday for changes to a massive defense bill after crash investigators and victims’ families warned the legislation would undo key safety reforms stemming from a collision between an airliner and Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people. The head of the National Transportation Safety Board investigating the crash, a group of the victims’ family members and senators on the Commerce Committee all said the bill the House advanced Wednesday would make America’s skies less safe. It would allow the military to operate essentially the same way as it did before the January crash, which was the deadliest in more than two decades, they said.” (12/11/25)
“As antisemitism on college campuses remains rampant, too many administrators refuse to stamp it out — and parents of prospective students are increasingly alarmed. This week the civil-rights group StopAntisemitism released its 2025 ‘report card’ on 90 major American colleges and universities, and the results were frightening. Two years after on-campus Jew hatred exploded in the wake of Oct. 7, the review found that leadership at many American colleges still tolerate vandalism, bullying and outright violence. An appalling 16% of rated schools, including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, got F grades. For Jewish families, the concern centers on the physical safety of their children. Fully 39% of Jewish college students say they’ve had to hide their faith on campus, StopAntisemitism found. But parents of all faiths, and of no faith, must take these findings into account. … But not all schools are flailing — and those that are fighting this tide deserve applause.” (12/10/25)
“The Department of Education thwarted more than $1 billion in student aid fraud under President Donald Trump’s first year in office, including stopping suspected bots and ‘ghost students’ from obtaining taxpayer-funded loans, Fox News Digital learned. Officials say the savings come from new ‘enhanced fraud controls’ the department implemented in June to combat fraudsters from working to obtain financial assistance loans from colleges. College officials and cybersecurity experts in recent years have pointed to a new scam trend of ‘ghost students’, which are fabricated or stolen identities created solely to enroll, trigger financial aid disbursements and then disappear. Ghost students are believed to be powered by AI bots or run by criminal networks using real Americans’ personal information. Other scams have included the use of deceased individuals’ identities in order to fraudulently obtain loans.” (12/11/25)
“The Senate on Thursday rejected legislation to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits, essentially guaranteeing that millions of Americans will see a steep rise in costs at the beginning of the year. Senators rejected a Democratic bill to extend the subsidies for three years and a Republican alternative that would have created new health savings accounts — an unceremonious end to a monthslong effort by Democrats to prevent the COVID-19-era subsidies from expiring on Jan. 1. Ahead of the votes, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York warned Republicans that if they did not vote to extend the tax credits, ‘there won’t be another chance to act’, before premiums rise for many people who buy insurance off the ACA marketplaces. ‘Let’s avert a disaster,’ Schumer said. ‘The American people are watching.’ Republicans have argued that Affordable Care Act plans are too expensive and need to be overhauled.” (12/11/25)
“United States Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was a firm believer in ‘the good sense of the people’ when it came to exercising citizenship in a democracy. To promote constructive public engagement, he urged, ‘give them full information … thro’ the channel of the public papers’. ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,’ Mr. Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1787. The third U.S. president could likely not have imagined the huge volume and varied forms of today’s ‘newspapers’ – accessed 24/7, in print, over the airwaves, and online. However, even as media access has increased exponentially, press freedoms in 2025 are shrinking globally. News outlets are facing unprecedented political and financial pressures, and journalists are increasingly being silenced or targeted.” (12/10/25)
“Mike Johnson has lost control of the House of Representatives. Since reopening the chamber in November after a 53-day sojourn, he has seen continued Republican retirements and resignations in advance of an expected loss of power in next year’s midterms. Voting days have often devolved into recriminations involving individual members. Consensus to avoid a major legislative embarrassment by allowing Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums to skyrocket has been lacking. And Johnson has on several occasions lost control of the agenda-setting power to schedule floor votes, the most basic authority of a House Speaker. Discharge petitions, which if signed by a majority of House members can go around the Speaker and obtain an automatic floor vote, have succeeded on two occasions in recent weeks.” (12/11/25)
“Civilians around the world daily and easily engage with artificial intelligence, communicating with chatbot ‘therapists’ and ‘friends’ or creating realistic videos with entirely machine-generated content. Governments, meanwhile, are racing to keep up with the implications of AI – positive and otherwise – for national security and economic competitiveness as well as for citizen freedoms, privacy, and safety. The challenge centers on whether and how much to regulate this rapidly advancing and lucrative sector. And how to do so without eroding the democratic, free-market values of individual and entrepreneurial autonomy. Australia is now the first country to ban social media use for children under age 16. In July, the United Kingdom enacted age verification for accessing pornographic sites. And last year, the European Union passed an AI Act to ‘foster responsible’ development, while addressing ‘potential risks to citizens’ health, safety, and fundamental rights.'” (12/09/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that the US is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China. The article is titled ‘Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself,’ and to be clear it is an editorial, not an op-ed, meaning it represents the position of the newspaper itself rather than solely that of the authors. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that The New York Times has supported every American war throughout its entire history, because The New York Times is a war propaganda firm disguised as a news outlet. But it is surprising how brazen they are about it in this particular case.” (12/10/25)
“The first US missiles that struck the boats in the Caribbean in early September 2025 were described by Washington as a ‘counter-narcotics operation,’ a sterile phrase meant to dull the violence of incinerating human beings in an instant. Then came the second strike, this time on survivors already struggling to stay afloat. Once the details emerged, however, the official story began to fall apart. Local fishermen contradicted US claims. Relatives of those killed have said the men were not cartel operatives at all, but fishermen, divers, and small-scale couriers. … Maritime workers noted what everyone in the region already knows: the route near Venezuela’s waters is not a fentanyl corridor into the United States.” (12/10/25)
