And the defense of democracy

The Iran War has just begun — but already, Iran’s military prowess, and America’s and Israel’s impulsive imperial hubris, is on full display.

Today's Iran crisis didn't start with just the mullahs. It started with a secret deal that Republican operatives made with them— a deal that changed history and has now lead to war.

“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government.”

ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.

The national debt isn’t the cause of our problems: it’s the receipt. It’s the paper trail of the largest upward transfer of wealth in 250 years of American history…

Anthropic in the cross-hairs.

The iconic civil rights leader, who has died at 84, made anti-war and pro-diplomacy politics central to his presidential bids and his lifelong activism.

Trump’s corruption makes capitulation a media business plan.

Take this as your first warning that not only the temperature but the politics of the planet are likely to change dramatically, and soon.

Right now, a host of brilliant, dedicated souls do fantastic work reporting and interpreting the news in independent newsletters, podcasts, magazines and even mainstream media. In other ways, journalism is in an age of slop and slime and decline.

The extraordinary level of grassroots solidarity and creative resistance in anti-ICE protests in Minnesota has given people a new appreciation for the power that mass non-cooperation can have in resisting the Trump administration’s drive toward authoritarianism.

“Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem..."

“This is a critical moment for humanity, with international law and human rights institutions under attack like never before. The use of misinformation to further delegitimize them poses a profound threat to human rights and the rule of law itself."

Questioning war and why we fight is imperative. It will require a courageous confrontation with a powerful taboo, a palpable force field that snarls and growls. But this is the end of the line. War at this scale is ecocide, a death wish.