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MAGA precursors: Indiana KKK in the 1920s
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Garbage: Racist Shits 'R Us

Improbably, the White-Nationalist-In-Chief still plunges to lower, ranker, more nakedly racist depths as he tries to deflect from his failings, lies, naps and crimes. The fake Peace President’s ugly apogee, topping murders at sea, banning migrants “non-compatible with Western Civilization,” siccing ICE dogs on innocents et al: His vicious invective against Somalis as “garbage” while his Stepford bigots stand silent before it all, complicity unbound. Ferris Bueller's hapless teacher: "Anyone? Anyone?"

Obviously the mild cluelessness of blank students facing Ben Stein's teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off pales before the toxic spectacle of a blithering, execrable fascist stirring up gutter-level hatred as he spews "possibly the most openly racist shit any US president has ever been caught saying." The dissonance of the furious bigotry erupting from an alleged national leader - its vitriol, animus, beyond-the-pale crudeness, the eerie silence into which it falls - also prompts a jarring, queasy sense of, "what the fuck is wrong with this picture?" even as it comes from a ghastly human whose most longstanding, foundational tenet is brutish racism (plus greed), going back to his KKK father, his deadly hatred for the Central Park Five, his snarling claim all Mexicans are criminals and rapists.

In his ongoing "shitification of American politics," there's always, obviously much more. There's blithering, gaslighting, verbal incontinence: "Affordability is a con job, a hoax started by Democrats." Self-serving grandiosity: "The Ukraine war never would have happened if I'd been president." Outlandish fantasy: "They're finding money in our country now they never knew existed. The other day - $30 billion. Where did it come from? I said, 'Why don't you check the tariffs shelf?' They call back: Sir, you're right.'" (America: "Of all the things that didn’t happen, this didn’t happen the most.") Cult worship: The National Park Service has removed MLK Jr. Day and Juneteenth from their free admission days, replacing them with Dear Leader's birthday; he'll be 12 next year.

In further Stalinesque self-glorification - and in the first time a living (sort of) president (ditto) named a building for himself while in office - months after DOGE tried to illegally seize control of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a non-profit think tank for international conflict resolution, the building has re-emerged with massive silver letters as the Donald J. Trump U.S Institute of Peace. A White House spokesbot, lauding straight-faced the what is it now 38? wars he's ended, declared, "Congratulations, world!" The world, noting the Orwellian renaming of an institute created in 1984, helpfully if hopelessly pointed out that Orwell's dark masterwork "was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual," but here we are.

Other atrocities proliferate. The report Trump’s military occupation of U.S. cities has cost over $473 million - from $270 million in D.C and $172 million in L.A. to $13 million in Chicago - even as he cut more than $1 trillion from vital domestic services. The fact that both of the DOJ's wildly unqualified, illegally appointed partisan hacks/pretend acting U.S. attorneys Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan still claim to hold their non-existent positions. The fact that, after boasting about rolling back food stamps and her "gratitude and joy for this work," USDA Sec. Brooke Rollins is still "hellbent on people going hungry" in blue states. Passage of Texas' racist redistricting coup - "Let's talk about cowardice" - and the White House's icky Daddy's Home holidays meme.

And everything "no stupid rules of engagement" dunk-tank clown Pete Hegseth does: The Signalgate report that his massive security leak "risked endangering U.S. military personnel," which he somehow turned into, “Total exoneration." His slimy, shifting narratives - the Pentagon has no idea who's on board vs. they're all on a secret list of military targets - for 48 minutes of murderous video showing "what it looks like when the full force of the United States military is turned on two guys clinging to a tiny piece of wood and about to go under," aka, "a shooting gallery with helpless targets" which is clearly either a war crime or murder - plain and simple,” both impeachable, though Megyn Kelly would've preferred "they lose a limb and bleed out a little."

Still, with sinking polls, rising prices, Epstein lurking, a tragic D.C shooting to open the floodgates and billions for ICE's jackbooted thugs, the splenetic racism from a presidential bully pulpit is paramount, a timeless scapegoating ploy now at "absolutely unique" levels of depravity. "It all started with Barack Hussein Obama," he raved, before attacking Somalis who have "nothing" to do with the shooting or anything else. America will "go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage," "They have destroyed our country," "Ilhan Omar is "garbage," "her friends are garbage," Somalia "is just people walking around killing each other," "they come from hell and do nothing but bitch," "their country stinks," "we don’t want them," "Minnesota is a hellhole right now," ”Let them go back to where they came from." And, evil one, may you too. Oh please.

His on-camera racistmania was dutifully lapped up, first by the obsequious (seated) members of his creepy circle jerk, then by the obsequious (standing) minions - blinding white, stiffly smiling, hands clutched, tongues tied - performatively gathered for his "supine authoritarian MAGA messaging...a barely coded cry of 'Everybody into the pool!' for a supporting cast of racist demagogues." One by one, they obeyed. J.D. banged on the table to lay the blame where it belonged: "Why did homes get so unaffordable? Because we had 20 million illegal aliens taking homes that ought by right to go to American citizens." Marco Rubio, in some insane optics - try watching without sound - feverishly genuflected to the peace president, sitting next to him, dozing off.

ICE Barbie thanked him for having "kept the hurricanes away" and "saved hundreds of millions of lives with the cocaine you’ve blown up in the Caribbean"; she urged a travel ban on "every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies" - but not those getting free jets - who "slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch benefits (from) AMERICANS. We don't want them." Whew. She flamboyantly echoes both Stephen Goebbel's Nazi rhetoric and Trump's calls for stripping citizenship, blocking all refugees - except sad white Afrikaners - from a vague list of “third world countries,” aka brown and black, "non-compatible with Western Civilization" - an illegal move that def turns the racism up to 11. Manifesting "cultishness off the charts," Press Barbie celebrated all this as "amazing" and "epic."

For Minnesota's Somali community of up to 80,000, the largest in the country, it is "extraordinarily harmful." Already tense in the wake of an alleged $250 million fraud scandal involving federal nutrition aid and two non-profits - both run by white people but involving dozens of Somalis - pressure from the new racist surge feels "inescapable...The volcano has erupted." Though many are U.S. citizens, and Minneapolis' police chief has told officers they'll be fired if they don't stop illegal force by ICE goons, people are afraid to go to work, to school, to Friday prayers, especially in Somali-dense areas like "Little Mogadishu" and the Karmel Mall. "We know authoritarianism," said a Somali city council member, and with it the potency of racism and nativism. After Haitians eating pets, he said, "It's just the next iteration."

Meanwhile, ugly ripples ooze from Trump's rhetoric. ICE thugs keep thugging, though most of their victims have no criminal record and some are U.S. citizens. They've sicced dogs on people, resulting in horrific injuries and reviving MAGA's sick "good old days." They have a cruel new plan dubbed "Operation Irish Goodbye" to arrest those already self-deporting, and they're canceling citizenship ceremonies for people from the "wrong" countries. A 2025 blood-and-soil US National Security Strategy touts great replacement theory, warns Europe it faces "civilizational erasure" by migrants of color, supports their fascist groups, rejects our allies for Russia, imagines a "Crusader-style reconquest (of) Europe by the white right." He just trashed a "decaying" Europe with "weak" leaders, 'cause brown people. A Wisconsin worker was fired and went viral for calling a Somali couple "niggers"; fellow racists raised $100,000 for her, echoing "garbage" slurs.

Despite outrage about his murders at sea, Dunk-tank Pete killed four more brown people, bragged about it, insisted Trump can kill "as he sees fit" and gave a speech with ominous shock-and-awe echoes declariring "narco-terrorists are the al-Qaida of our hemisphere (and) we will keep killing them." Then the most petty, hateful person on the planet - spite-revoking a pardon?! - giddily accepted a hideous, made-up, Happy Meal, savagely mocked FIFA Peace Prize and medal - the “Trump dance! the Village People! - to appease his no-Nobel ego because "if you show up with a tchotchke (and) give it to the three-year-old in the Oval Office, he will (be) happy." Gavin Newsom got the Kennedy Center Peace Prize: “AUDIENCE WAS AMAZING (CHAIRS NOT GREAT)...CROWD WENT WILD."The View gave out medals too: "You get a medal! And you get a medal!" Okay, all medaled up. Now can he go home?

The good ole days revisited: High school student at 1963 Birmingham protest Make America Great Again: Birmingham high school student being assaulted at 1963 civil rights protestPhoto by Bill Hudson

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Save The African Penguin From Extinction Protest In South Africa
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62,000 African Penguins Starving to Death Highlights Humanity-Driven Extinction Crisis

A study published this week about tens of thousands of starving African penguins is highlighting what scientists warn is the planet's sixth mass extinction event, driven by human activity, and efforts to save as many species as possible.

Researchers from the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE), the United Kingdom's University of Exeter, and other institutions examined a pair of breeding colonies north of Cape Town, South Africa, and published their findings Thursday in Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology.

"These two sites are two of the most important breeding colonies historically—holding around 25,000 (Dassen) and around 9,000 (Robben) breeding pairs in the early 2000s. As such, they are also the locations of long-term monitoring programs," said study co-author Azwianewi Makhado from the DFFE in a statement.

As the study explains: "African Penguins moult annually, coming ashore and fasting for 21 days, when they shed and replace all their feathers. Failure to fatten sufficiently to moult, or to regain condition afterwards, results in death."

The team found that "between 2004 and 2011, the sardine stock off west South Africa was consistently below 25% of its peak abundance, and this appears to have caused severe food shortage for African penguins, leading to an estimated loss of about 62,000 breeding individuals," said co-author and Exeter associate professor Richard Sherley.

The paper notes that "although some adults moulted at a colony to the southeast, where food may have been more plentiful, much of the mortality likely resulted from failure of birds to fatten sufficiently to moult. The fishery exploitation rate of sardines west of Cape Agulhas was consistently above 20% between 2005 and 2010."

Sherley said that "high sardine exploitation rates—that briefly reached 80% in 2006—in a period when sardine was declining because of environmental changes likely worsened penguin mortality."

Humanity's reliance on fossil fuels is warming ocean water and impacting how salty it is. For the penguins' prey, said Sherley, "changes in the temperature and salinity of the spawning areas off the west and south coasts of South Africa made spawning in the historically important west coast spawning areas less successful, and spawning off the south coast more successful."

The researcher also stressed that "these declines are mirrored elsewhere," pointing out that the species' global population has dropped nearly 80% in the last three decades. With fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs left, the African penguin was uplisted to "critically endangered" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species last year.

Sherley told Mongabay at the time that the IUCN update "highlights a much bigger problem with the health of our environment."

"Despite being well-known and studied, these penguins are still facing extinction, showing just how severe the damage to our ecosystems has become," he said. "If a species as iconic as the African penguin is struggling to survive, it raises the question of how many other species are disappearing without us even noticing. We need to act now—not just for penguins, but to protect the broader biodiversity that is crucial for the planet's future."

Looks like the combined effects of climate change and over fishing are key factors in decimating the populations of these penguins.www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

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— Margot Hodson (@margothodson.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 4:46 AM

Fearful that the iconic penguin species could be extinct within a decade, the conservation organizations BirdLife South Africa and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) last year pursued a first-of-its-kind legal battle in the country, resulting in a settlement with the commercial fishing sector and DFFE.

The settlement, reached just days before a planned court hearing this past March, led to no-go zones for the commercial anchovy and sardine fishing vessels around six penguin breeding colonies: Stony Point, as well as Bird, Dassen, Dyer, Robben, and St. Croix islands.

"The threats facing the African penguin are complex and ongoing—and the order itself requires monitoring, enforcement, and continued cooperation from industry and the government processes which monitor and allocate sardine and anchovy populations for commercial purposes," Nicky Stander, head of conservation at SANCCOB, said in March.

The study also acknowledges hopes that "the revised closures—which will operate year-round until at least 2033—will decrease mortality of African penguins and improve their breeding success at the six colonies around which they have been implemented."

"However," it adds, "in the face of the ongoing impact of climate change on the abundance and distribution of their key prey, other interventions are likely to be needed."

Lorien Pichegru, a marine biology professor at South Africa's Nelson Mandela University who was not involved in the study, called the findings "extremely concerning" and warned the Guardian that the low fish numbers require urgent action "not only for African penguins but also for other endemic species depending on these stocks."

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The New York Times DealBook Summit 2025
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Gavin Newsom Wants a 'Big Tent Party,' But Opposes Wealth Tax Supported by Large Majority of Americans

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, considered by some to be the frontrunner to be the next Democratic presidential nominee, said during a panel on Wednesday that he wants his party to be a “big tent” that welcomes large numbers of people into the fold. But he’s “adamantly against” one of the most popular proposals Democrats have to offer: a wealth tax.

In October, progressive economists Emmanuel Saez and Robert Reich joined forces with one of California's most powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) United Healthcare Workers West, to propose that California put the nation’s first-ever wealth tax on the ballot in November 2026.

They described the measure as an "emergency billionaires tax" aimed at recouping the tens of billions of dollars that will be stripped from California's 15 million Medicaid recipients over the next five years, after Republicans enacted historic cuts to the program in July with President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which dramatically reduced taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

Among those beneficiaries were the approximately 200 billionaires living in California, whose average annual income, Saez pointed out, has risen by 7.5% per year, compared with 1.5% for median-income residents.

Under the proposal, they would pay a one-time 5% tax on their total net worth, which is estimated to raise $100 billion. The vast majority of the funds, about 90%, would be used to restore Medicaid funding, while the rest would go towards funding K-12 education, which the GOP has also slashed.

The proposal in California has strong support from unions and healthcare groups. But Newsom has called it “bad policy” and “another attempt to grab money for special purposes.”

Meanwhile, several of his longtime consultants, including Dan Newman and Brian Brokaw, have launched a campaign alongside “business and tech leaders” to kill the measure, which they’ve dubbed “Stop the Squeeze." They've issued familiar warnings that pinching the wealthy too hard will drive them from the state, along with the critical tax base they provide.

At Wednesday's New York Times DealBook Summit, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Newsom about his opposition to the wealth tax idea, comparing it to a proposal by recent New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who pledged to increase the income taxes of New Yorkers who earn more than $1 million per year by 2% in order to fund his city-wide free buses, universal childcare, and city-owned grocery store programs.

Mamdani's proposal was met with a litany of similar warnings from Big Apple bigwigs who threatened to flee the city and others around the country who said they'd never move in.

But as Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein explained in October for the American Prospect: "The evidence for this is thin: mostly memes shared by tech and finance people... Research shows that the truth of the matter is closer to the opposite. Wealthy individuals and their income move at lower rates than other income brackets, even in response to an increase of personal income tax." Many of those who sulked about Mamdani's victory have notably begun making amends with the incoming mayor.

Moreover, the comparison between Mamdani's plan and the one proposed in California is faulty to begin with. As Harold Meyerson explained, also for the Prospect: "It is a one-time-only tax, to be levied exclusively on billionaires’ current (i.e., 2025) net worth. Even if they move to Tasmania, they will still be liable for 5% of this year’s net worth."

"Crucially, the tax won’t crimp the fortunes of any billionaire who moves into the state next year or any later year, as it only applies to the billionaires living in the state this year," he added. "Therefore... the horrific specter of billionaire flight can’t be levied against the California proposal."

Nevertheless, Sorkin framed Newsom as being in an existential battle of ideas with Mamdani, asking how the two could both represent the Democratic Party when they are so "diametrically opposed."

"Well, I want to be a big-tent party," Newsom replied. "It's about addition, not subtraction."

Pushed on the question of whether there should be a "unifying theory of the case," Newsom responded that “we all want to be protected, we all want to be respected, we all want to be connected to something bigger than ourselves. We have fundamental values that I think define our party, about social justice, economic justice.”

"We have pre-distribution Democrats, and we have re-distribution Democrats," he continued. "Therein lies the dialectic and therein lies the debate."

Polling is scarce so far on the likelihood of such a measure passing in California. But nationally, polls suggest that the vast majority of Democrats fall on the "re-distribution" side of Newsom's "dialectic." In fact, the majority of all Americans do, regardless of party affiliation.

Last year, Inequality.org examined 55 national and state polls about a number of different taxation policies and found:

A billionaire income tax garnered the most support across party identification. On average, two out of three (67%) of Americans supported the tax including 84% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans.

In national polls, a wealth tax had similarly high levels of support. More than three out of five Americans supported the tax including 78% of Democrats, 62% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans.

That sentiment only seems to have grown since the return of President Donald Trump. An Economist/YouGov poll released in early November found that 72% of Americans said that taxes on billionaires should be raised—including 95% of Democrats, 75% of independents, and 48% of Republicans. Across the board, just 15% said they should not be raised.

Support remains high when the proposal is more specific as well. On the eve of Mamdani's election, despitre months of fearmongering, 64% of New Yorkers said they backed his proposal, including a slight plurality of self-identified conservatives, according to a Siena College poll.

Many observers were perplexed by how Newsom proposes to maintain a “big tent” while opposing policies supported by most of the people inside it.

"A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires," wrote Jonathan Cohn, the political director for Progressive Mass, a grassroots organization in Massachusetts, on social media.

"Gavin Newsom—estimated net worth between $20 and $30 million—says he's opposed to a billionaire wealth tax. Color me shocked," wrote the Columbia University lecturer Anthony Zenkus. "Democrats holding him up as a potential savior for 2028 is a clear example of not reading the room."

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Elon Musk Grok
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‘Who Will Be in Charge?’ Sanders Warns of AI Future Dominated by Handful of Billionaires

US Sen. Bernie Sanders said Monday that policymakers in the United States and around the world are at a critical juncture where they must decide whether artificial intelligence will be controlled and exploited by the ultra-wealthy—or utilized for the benefit of all humanity.

In a speech on the floor of the US Senate, Sanders (I-Vt.) said the key question is, "Who will be in charge of the transformation into an AI world?"

"Currently, a handful of the wealthiest people on Earth—people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and others—and others are investing many, many hundreds of billions of dollars in developing and implementing AI and robotics," the senator said. "Are we comfortable with seeing these enormously wealthy and powerful men shape the future of humanity without any democratic input or oversight?"

Watch the full speech:

Sanders noted that US President Donald Trump "is strongly supporting" billionaire dominance of burgeoning AI technology, including with his plan to sign an executive order aimed at blocking state-level regulations of the artificial intelligence industry.

"Does this elite group of some of the most powerful people on Earth believe that they have the divine right to rule?" the senator asked.

Sanders also emphasized the potentially catastrophic impact of AI technology on workers, as Amazon and other corporate giants seek to replace as many jobs as possible with robots. In October, Sanders released a report estimating that advances in AI technology could supplant nearly 100 million US jobs over the next decade, including 89% of fast food workers and 40% of registered nurses.

"If AI and robotics eliminate millions of jobs and create massive unemployment, how will people survive if they have no income? How do they feed their families, pay for housing, pay for healthcare?" Sanders asked. "That might be an issue that we should be talking about, like, yesterday."

In recent weeks, Sanders has made burgeoning AI technology and its concentration in the hands of a few powerful individuals and corporations a major focus, holding an event with computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton—who is known as the "godfather of AI"—and warning about the promise and peril of artificial intelligence in the pages of major newspapers.

"AI and robotics are revolutionary technologies that will bring about an unprecedented transformation of society," Sanders wrote in a Guardian column last week. "Will these changes be positive and improve life for ordinary Americans? Or will they be disastrous? Congress must act now."

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President Trump Returns To D.C. After Spending Thanksgiving Weekend In Florida
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Report Tracks Trump 'War on Free Speech' and Urges Systemic Resistance

The US advocacy group Free Press on Monday released a report examining how President Donald Trump and "his political enablers have worked to undermine and chill the most basic freedoms protected under the First Amendment" since the Republican returned to the Oval Office in January, and called on all Americans to fight back.

For Chokehold: Donald Trump's War on Free Speech & the Need for Systemic Resistance, Free Press analysed "more than 500 reports of verbal threats, executive orders, presidential memoranda, statements from the White House, actions by regulators and agencies, military and law enforcement deployment and activities, litigation, removal of website language on .gov websites, removal of official history and information at national parks and museums, and discontinued data collection by the federal government."

"While the US government has made efforts throughout this nation's history to censor people's expression and association—be it the exercise of freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress—the Trump administration's incessant attacks on even the most tentatively oppositional speech are uniquely aggressive, pervasive, and escalating," the report states.

The five recurring attack methods that Free Press identified are: making threats of retribution against would-be opponents; emboldening regulators to exact penalties; supercharging the militarized police state; leveraging heavyweight corporate capitulation; and ignoring facts, removing information, rewriting history, and lying on the record.

"Trump's censorship playbook is responsible for the administration's central retaliatory ethos and inspires a set of strategies that loyal actors in government use to silence dissent and chill free expression," said the report's author, Free Press senior counsel Nora Benavidez, in a statement. "This playbook is to lie, distort reality for the public, and deploy a cadre of henchmen to carry out Trump’s threats of reprisal."

Big new report out today @freepress.bsky.social chronicling the Trump regime's war on free speech and free expression. Heroic and harrowing work by @attorneynora.bsky.social and the team. Seeing all of the attacks together is astounding.

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— Craig Aaron (@notaaroncraig.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 11:12 AM

Free Press compiled a timeline of "nearly 200 of the most potent examples," including Trump's blanket pardon for the January 6, 2021, insurrectionists shortly after beginning his second term, the White House taking control of the presidential press pool in February, the president's alarming speech to the US Department of Justice in March, and the administration blocking the Associated Press from the Oval Office in April over its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

In May, Trump, among other things, signed an executive order to defund National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service. In June, he deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles. In July, he sued Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion over reporting on the president's ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In August, he deployed the National Guard in Washington, DC.

In September, under pressure from Brendan Carr, Trump's Federal Communications Commission chair, ABC temporarily suspended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. In October, the Pentagon's new press policy—which journalists across the political spectrum refused to sign—took effect (the New York Times, which faces a defamation lawsuit from Trump, sued over it last week). In November, Trump threatened to sue to BBC over its documentary about January 6, 2021.

The administration has also targeted foreign scholars and journalists for criticizing US policy, from federal support for Israel's genocidal assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to the president's pursuit of mass deportations. The report stresses that "no one is safe from attack in Trump’s quest to control the message, though the administration targets the press most of all."

Today Free Press released a report examining the Trump's efforts to weaken the First Amendment.Analyzing nearly 200 attacks on free speech, it's sobering. But the report also charts a path to resist the censorship campaign w/ collective action. Our statement: www.freepress.net/news/report-...

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— Free Press (@freepress.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 2:45 PM

The publication also pushes back against "Trump's claims that he's protecting people and defending free speech," and acknowledges that "the administration's censorial tactics are amassing tremendous resistance across political and geographic lines, with a majority of people worried about the government's attacks on free speech."

Benavidez emphasized that "if only one person speaks out against injustice, their speech is notable, but it is also more vulnerable to attack and subversion under this administration."

"If more people speak out against injustice, the collective drumbeat can more easily withstand government reprisals," she continued. "Democracies erode little by little; would-be dictators need to scare only some of us, and the rest will follow. The very reason we must speak out together is so we can leverage our collective power."

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Pro-Palestinian demonstrations held in more than 40 cities across Spain
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Military Budget Bill Would Ramp Up Israel Aid to Fill In 'Gaps' When Other Countries Impose Embargoes Over Genocide

A little-reported provision of the latest military spending bill would direct the US to create a plan to fill the "gaps" for Israel whenever other nations cut off arms shipments in response to its acts of genocide in Gaza.

As Prem Thakker reported Monday for Zeteo, the measure is "buried" more than 1,000 pages into the more than 3,000-page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is considered by lawmakers to be “must-pass" legislation and contains a record $901 billion in total spending.

Republicans are shepherding the bill through the US House of Representatives, where—as is the case with most NDAAs—it is expected to pass on Wednesday with Democratic support, even as some conservative budget hardliners refuse to back it, primarily over its $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine.

Since the genocide began following Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023, the US has provided more than $21.7 billion to Israel, including hundreds of millions that have been supplied through NDAAs.

The new NDAA includes at least another $650 million to Israel, an increase of $45 million from the previous one, even though this is the first such bill to be introduced since the "ceasefire" that went into effect in October. This aid from the Pentagon comes on top of the $3.3 billion already provided through the State Department budget.

But this NDAA also contains an unprecedented measure. It calls for the “continual assessment of [the] impact of international state arms embargoes on Israel and actions to address defense capability gaps."

The NDAA directs Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to assess “the scope, nature, and impact on Israel’s defense capabilities of current and emerging arms embargoes, sanctions, restrictions, or limitations imposed by foreign countries or by international organizations,” and “the resulting gaps or vulnerabilities in Israel’s security posture.”

As Drop Site News explains, "this means the US would explicitly use federal law to step in and supply weapons to Israel whenever other countries cut off arms to halt Israel’s ongoing violations across the region."

"The point of this assistance, to be clear, is to make up for any identified insufficiencies Israel may have due to other countries' embargoing it as a result of its ongoing genocide in Palestine," Thakker wrote.

A similar provision appeared in a September version of the NDAA, which the House Armed Services Committee praised because it supposedly “combats antisemitism"—explicitly conflating a bias against Jewish people with weapons embargoes that countries have imposed to stop Israel from continuing its routine, documented human rights violations in Gaza.

Among the nations that have cut off weapons sales to Israel are Japan, Canada, France, Italy, and Spain. Meanwhile, other major backers, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, have imposed partial freezes on certain weaponry.

While official estimates from the Gaza Ministry of Health place the number of dead from Israel's military campaign at over 70,000, with more than 170,000 wounded, an independent assessment last month from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany and the Center for Demographic Studies in Spain found that the death toll “likely exceeds 100,000." This finding mirrored several other studies that have projected the true death toll to be much higher than what official estimates show.

Embargoes against Israel have been called for by a group of experts mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Council, including Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, numerous human rights organizations, including the leading Israeli group B’Tselem, have said Israel’s campaign in Gaza has amounted to genocide.

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