“One week after the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, an intelligence report compiled by a regional intelligence center made an admission that’s shocking in its simplicity: Rising health care costs are correlated to threats against executives and civil unrest. The two-page document obtained by the Prospect and compiled by the Connecticut regional intelligence center (one of dozens of fusion centers across the country that communicate intelligence between federal agencies and state law enforcement) is uncharacteristically forthright in its language and assessment that health care costs lead to instability, and that the reaction to suspect Luigi Mangione’s alleged action was largely positive. According to the dossier, ‘Healthcare expenditure in the United States increased from $2.75Trillion (T) in 2004, to $4.09T in 2018, in inflation adjusted dollars. 2019 and 2020, saw expenditures of $4.2T and $4.6T respectfully, which represents a 10.6% increase year over year and was largely influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic.'” (03/27/25)
“Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin said Thursday that he has axed a $2 billion grant to a group linked to Stacey Abrams, the two-time Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia. ‘I have terminated the $2 BILLION Biden EPA grant to this Stacey Abrams-linked NGO,’ the former Long Island congressman tweeted. ‘The DOJ/FBI are investigating and the money has been frozen. It is insane that the Biden Admin would give $2B to an organization that previously only received $100!’ Zeldin was responding to a Thursday morning Truth Social post by President Trump, who has made Abrams the face of efforts to claw back Biden-era environmental and social-justice funds as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative.” (03/27/25)
“The weaponization of government was probably the hallmark of the administration of Joe Biden. OK, the weaponization of government and senile, incoherent ramblings were the hallmarks. While the senile ramblings are gone, the infrastructure of that weaponization remains fully entrenched in agencies across the federal government. President Donald Trump needs to remove any and everyone involved in the effort to not only use the power of government against him for political purposes, but against any American. Weaponization of government is more than just filing bogus charges or creating new laws under which prosecutions can happen, it involves government creating flaming hoops through which Americans have to jump to open or expand a business, or simply do business with the government itself.” (03/27/25)
“One San Francisco politician’s attempt to save the struggling California cannabis industry has caught the eye of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who seem eager to teach the San Francisco progressive a lesson in conservative economics. A Tuesday editorial in the East Coast newspaper took aim at a new bill from San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney that would stop California’s tax rate for legal cannabis from increasing. Currently, the state excise tax rate on legal pot is set to jump from 15% to 19% on July 1, an increase that Haney and others say will decimate the legal pot industry. ‘If we continue to pile on more taxes and fees onto our struggling small cannabis businesses, California’s cannabis culture is under serious threat of extinction,’ Haney said in a Monday news release.” (03/27/25)
“When Israel was established in the Nakba of 1948, it was built on top of 78% of historic Palestine, destroying more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages and forcefully displacing more than 750,000 people. But one small strip of land remained beyond the Israeli conquest. It was just a fraction of what had been taken by Zionist militias, but this small territory of 140 square miles — the Gaza Strip — would emerge not only as a site of resistance to Zionism, but as a force that would challenge colonialism, imperialism and apartheid both globally and locally. It is, as Palestinian storyteller Mahmoud Darwish would write in the poem ‘Silence for Gaza,’ translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon, equal to ‘the history of an entire homeland, because it is more ugly, impoverished, miserable and vicious in the eyes of enemies.'” (03/26/25)
“Russia has said some Western sanctions must be lifted before it begins a maritime ceasefire with Ukraine. Within hours of the US announcing the two sides had agreed to halt strikes in the Black Sea in separate deals, the Kremlin said it would only take place once sanctions on a number of Russian banks were lifted. The demands include revoking sanctions on the state agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank and restoring the firms’ access to the Swift international payment system. Overnight, Moscow launched a drone attack on the port city of Mykolaiv, Ukrainian officials said, with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying the strikes were ‘a clear signal’ Russia did not want peace.” (03/26/25)
“In countries struggling against a drift toward autocracy, the tone of pro-democracy protests is usually hostile, even rude. Not so in Turkey these days. After a week of street demonstrations since the March 19 detention of the main opposition politician, Turks are offering a new playbook to the world – largely based on loving one’s enemies. From his jail cell Monday, for example, presidential hopeful Ekrem İmamoğlu – who was arrested on dubious charges of corruption – sent this message to the young people protesting in Turkish cities against the two-plus-decade rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: ‘Stay away from conflicts. Be good to our security forces, police officers, and people whom I love very much. Let me see you all with smiling faces.'” (03/25/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The Trump administration is targeting another Columbia University student for deportation due to speech crimes against the state of Israel. This time they’re going after a 21 year-old woman who was born in South Korea but has been in the US since age seven and is a legal permanent US resident. … The legal argument here is that because these activists are obstructing the foreign policy goals of the US government, it’s okay to remove them because they are not citizens. What people are missing about Trump’s new policy of deporting pro-Palestine protesters on the grounds that their activism is contrary to US ‘foreign policy interests’ is that it’s not just an attack on the activists’ political speech, it’s also an attack on US citizens’ right to hear criticism of their government’s foreign policy.” (03/26/25)
“The U.S. Constitution is very specific about the powers of Congress and very vague about the powers of the president and the judiciary. While the authors of the nation’s founding documents were explicit that power had to be divided between three coequal branches, the legislative, executive, and judicial, they did not anticipate the authoritarianism of President Donald Trump, the cowardice of congressional representatives beholden to a populist demagogue for endorsements and campaign funds, nor the reactionary ideology of a right-wing Supreme Court. It is not fair to blame the founders for events 250 into the future, with the United States in the midst of a major constitutional crisis. In 1787, Benjamin Franklin placed the responsibility for upholding the Constitution on future generations when he warned that the new government is ‘A republic, if you can keep it.'” (03/26/25)
“Social Security is in danger. As my colleague Bob Kuttner has written, the system has endured a series of body blows, including alleged security measures that force beneficiaries to go into Social Security field offices rather than problem solving over the phone, even as those offices are seeing cuts to an already threadbare workforce and prolonged waits for recipients. The Washington Post has documented the repeated website crashes, floods of unanswered calls, and long waits for service that represent ‘a destruction of the agency from the inside out,’ according to Sen. Angus King (I-ME). Such barriers to access deny benefits, plain and simple. Other recipients are seeing their benefits terminated improperly, as part of a fruitless hunt for largely nonexistent benefits fraud.” (03/26/25)
