“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right to petition their government. Petitioning government is part of our DNA. We benefited from British institutions of direct democracy that can be traced back to the Magna Carta. In the New England colonies direct democracy was the foundation for government, citizens could petition their government in town meetings and annual election ballots. At the national level, petitioning Congress peaked in the 19th century but has declined since then. In the 19th century disenfranchised citizens, including women before suffrage, free blacks, and indigenous peoples were able to petition the federal government to address issues and enact reforms that Congress was unwilling to initiate. The decline in direct democracy over the past century is due to several factors.” (05/11/26)
“When U.S. President Donald Trump reentered office last year, European leaders felt that familiar sense of dread. And indeed, Trump launched back into his first-term habit of harping on Europe for everything from defense spending to trade imbalances. Vice President J.D. Vance turned the knife even deeper with a speech at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, blaming Europe for its own demise for things such as government impingement upon free speech and uncontrolled immigration. European leaders, for their part, initially responded to these provocations with a familiar mix of panic, unease, and warnings that the trans-Atlantic relationship was doomed. But Trump’s latest threats against European countries — in response to their refusal to go all in on Washington’s war with Iran — don’t seem to be eliciting the same response from the continent as before.” (05/11/26)
“For the second time in less than five years, a politically driven energy crunch is buffeting Europe, leading to soul-searching about how to avoid these damaging episodes in the future. In 2022, Russia, while invading Ukraine, slashed natural gas supplies to some European countries …. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key conduit for oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf region, means that Europeans face the threat of disruption of energy supplies, including aviation fuel, and a rise in prices that were already high. … For some European politicians and clean energy executives, the lessons from these shocks are clear. Europe, they say, must accelerate already robust efforts to shift to clean energy technologies like wind and solar power not only to mitigate climate change but, increasingly, to avoid blackmail and preserve independence.” (05/11/26)
“The UK government’s imposition of VAT on schools will raise less money than they calculated, and might well cost them money. Private schools now charge VAT at 20% on fees, and the government collects that revenue. On paper, this looks like a straightforward tax windfall. But several offsetting effects erode or potentially reverse the gain. Families who can no longer afford fees pushed up by 20% are withdrawing their children and placing them in state schools, which the government must fund. Estimates run as high as one in ten leaving private education. Each additional state school pupil costs roughly £7,000-£8,000 per year. If enough pupils switch, this spending can outweigh VAT receipts. Private schools, now VAT-registered, can reclaim VAT on their own purchases such as building work, supplies, etc., something they couldn’t do before. This reduces the net VAT take.” (05/11/26)
“It’s been a tough couple of months for women officials in Washington — or, more accurately, in Trumpland. In early March (Women’s History Month, by the way), in a Truth Social post, the president fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the second woman ever to hold that title. Weeks later, also in a social media post, he fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, the third woman ever to serve as head of the Department of Justice. While in the first year of his first presidency, Trump 1.0 had fired numerous officials, this time around, Bondi and Noem, who ran the two largest law enforcement agencies in the country, were the first cabinet officials to be dismissed. Both — no surprise — were replaced by men. And just as I was writing this piece, Trump removed another female cabinet official, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer.” (05/10/26)
“President Donald Trump’s most recent pick for the office of U.S. Surgeon General, Nicole Saphier, is a source of tension between the MAGA and MAHA factions of his supporters. Given that she’s the president’s third pick for the slot, the administration would undoubtedly just like to put disputes over this one office behind them. But there’s an easy path to a conflict-free resolution: The Trump administration could leave the Office of the Surgeon General unfilled and push for its abolition. … the Surgeon General doesn’t really have a clearly defined role or a good reason to parade around in a quasi-naval uniform. That is, unless you like the office’s transformation into a national nag that lectures Americans on whatever alleged lifestyle sins most annoy the current Surgeon General.” (05/11/26)
“As a progressive economist, I wrote a paper in 2021 with a generally conservative colleague, Kevin Hassett, who now directs the National Economic Council in the Trump White House. We agreed then on the basic arithmetic of the American retirement crisis. We still do. That’s why people like him and people like me can all say: Trump’s executive order establishing TrumpIRAs, signed last month, is simply the right move for American workers.” (05/11/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“In a fawning softball 60 Minutes interview released Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu stressed the importance of winning ‘the propaganda war’ on social media. This comes as Israel moves to quadruple its propaganda budget to $730 million a year. Major Garrett (which apparently is a real name belonging to a real guy who works for 60 Minutes) told the CBS audience that ‘Netanyahu attributes the reputational harm to Israel almost entirely to social media, which he calls the eighth front of the war.’ ‘This is yours, right?’ asked Netanyahu, picking up Garrett’s phone. ‘You’re not immune either. Because you can penetrate this machine, you can penetrate this little instrument, and you can say about Major Garrett anything you want. And I can paint you as a monster. And if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it.'” (05/11/26)
“According to the White House website, Trump warned Iran against having nuclear weapons on 74 occasions prior to the war. Since the war began on February 28, 2026, Trump has discussed Iranian nuclear issues in at least 20 documented public appearances, based on the Senate Democrats’ Trump transcript archive and Roll Call’s Factbase transcript database. … But Trump’s claims are not supported by the record. In fact, official statements from U.S. intelligence, the State Department, the IAEA, and others state that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not currently building one, and does not seek to build one.” (05/11/26)
