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The atrocities and the fury mount. Astoundingly, after a murderous thug shot a mother of three in the face in broad daylight - "He didn't kill her because he was scared, he killed her because she wasn't" - state terror has ramped up with more lies, goons, attacks on "gangs of wine moms," brutish agitprop literally echoing the Nazis'. So when mini-Bovino went to take a leak at a store, the people's wrath, a bittersweet splendor, erupted. Their/our edict: "Get the fuck out."
For now, Trump's America keeps getting scarier and uglier. He's threatened to (illegally) withdraw the US from the world’s most vital climate treaty and 65 other agencies doing useful work. He's trashing a once-thriving economy because he doesn't know how it works, scapegoating longtime Fed chair Jerome Powell, who's (startlingly fighting back, flipping off autoworkers, admiring non-existent ballrooms. After (illegally) killing over 100 Venezuelans and abducting their president - Chris Hedges: "Empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war" - he called oil executives to a dementia-ridden meeting where in a reality check one brave skeptic argued Venezuela is historically "uninvestable." He ordered invasion plans for Greenland - wait what - that joint chiefs are resisting as "crazy and illegal": “It’s like dealing with a five-year-old.” And in a supreme irony overload, he's menacing U.S. protesters while warning Iran's killers of protesters they'll "pay a big price" and urging Iran's people to "take over your institutions." We can't even.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, he's sending yet more thugs, persisting in calling Renée Good "a professional agitator" - Professional Agitators 'R Us! - and warning a besieged, traumatized community, "THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!" Up is down and MAGA minions dutifully follow suit. Tom Homan: "We've got to stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s ridiculous. It’s just gonna infuriate people more." Newsmax and GOP Rep. Pete Sessions agree: Dems have to quiet their "rhetoric," cease "honking of horns," and stop "putting an iPhone on your face." "STOP THE MADNESS," shrieks David Marcus on Fox, blasting "organized gangs of wine moms" across the country - Wine Moms 'R Us! - using Antifa tactics to "harass and impede" ICE: "It's not civil disobedience. It isn’t even protest. It’s just crime." Here, Renée Good was "a trained member" of groups "executing missions that put law enforcement and the public in harm’s way," probably all part of "criminal conspiracies."
To support the insane narrative that the brazen murder of a mother of three in her car in public constitutes "an attack on our brave law enforcement," DHS released crude, "pathological," Goebbels-worthy propaganda that repeats the first day's lies and includes footage of when Good "weaponized her vehicle” by “speeding across the road" while failing to mention it was when "she had just been shot in the fucking face and her dead foot hit the pedal." No wonder the mindless carnage goes on. A thug leers to a cuffed protester she should've "learned her lesson," she asks what lesson, he snarls, "Why we killed that fucking bitch." And gangs of goons rampage door-to-door, barging into households of kids with guns and tasers ready. One brave, calm woman records it all, demands a warrant, barks get your hands off me, mocks how big and bad they are flashing a light in her face and sneers that, on the street, "You're all some pussies without that shit on your chest...Your mamas raised a bitch if you can wear that outfit proudly."
Last week both Illinois and Minnesota, and each state's targeted cities, filed federal lawsuits to end their invasions by thousands of armed, masked, violent goons racially harassing, terrorizing and assaulting their communities. The courts may yet halt the deadly mayhem; the regime sure as shit won't. In the wake of the DOJ's predictable, outlandish announcement they won't investigate Good's murder, multiple attorneys in the civil rights division - for decades "America’s last line of accountability when federal agents kill" - have resigned, the latest in a flood of departures totaling over 250, a 70% reduction. In their stead, the FBI seized control of the "investigation" after blocking local law enforcement's access to evidence. Kash's Keystone Cops are now looking into, not Jonathan Ross, but Good and her "possible connections to activist groups" - also, because there truly is no low, her widow's. "This isn’t a cover-up," said one former DOJ attorney. "It’s the end of civil rights enforcement as we've known it."
Experts say the escalating malfeasance and accompanying thuggery are the logical culmination of a longtime "culture of violence" within border control agencies. Ryan Goodman of Just Security describes a scathing 2013 report, commissioned but then buried, that specifically cites agents' proclivity for standing in front of blocked vehicles as a pretext to open fire on drivers attempting to flee a tense encounter. Thank God we don't see that anymore. Nor do we have to see Stephen Miller's nightmare vision of Dems in power making "every city into Mogadishu or Kabul or Port-au-Prince," complete with roaming convoys of masked, armed, hefty hoodlums snatching people off the streets, dragging them out of their cars, beating them up, kneeling on their necks (illegal under post-George-Floyd Minnesota law), and brutalizing them for unknown offenses until they go limp, fate unknown, like in this video by Ford Fischer last week. For MAGA, ICE proudly represents "the fearsome power of the American state." But don't call them fascists.
It was sick Greg Bovino's knee on that neck. Then he went on Sean Hannity's show to praise Jonathan Ross for shooting Renée Good three times in the face - "Hats off to that ICE agent" - because "a 4,000-pound missile is not something anyone wants to face." Hannity readily agreed it was "not even a close call...There is no ambiguity for anyone with eyes to see that (Good) had been taunting officers," which is not true, also definitely a death penalty offense. Later, Bovino claimed that 90% of the public "are happy to see us." Last week, a YouGov poll disagreed, finding a majority of Americans disapproved of the murderous job ICE is doing, and almost half support abolishing it entirely. That may be why, when Bovino went to take a piss last week at a Target in St. Paul, accompanied by a phalanx of surly stormtroopers with itchy trigger fingers and nervous cameras held aloft, they were met by pure, gut-level fury, and a crowd of we the people with no fucks left to give. More video from Ford Fischer of News2Share.
A handy transcript: "You’re a fucking bum. you’re a bitch. and if your wife’s got a problem, fuck her, too. you guys are all bitches. you can’t do shit to me. you can’t do a thing. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here. right. get the fuck out. walk the fuck, you stupid bitches. get the fuck out of here. coward. you’re a fucking coward, bitch. you’re a fucking bitch. fuck you. hold on, babe, I’m on the phone with these bitch-ass niggas. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here, you stupid bitches. you’re a fucking coward piece of shit. fuck you. and if you didn’t have a gun or a vest, I would beat the shit out of you. take that fucking badge off, and that fucking gun, and see what happens to you. you shut the fuck up, you’re not fucking tough. you’re a bitch and get the fuck out, you fucking pussy. you fucking bitch-ass white boys. I’ll fucking spit on you. fucking get out of here. get the fuck out. shut the fuck up. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here."
Among Minnesota's ICE victims was a Marine veteran who said she was following agents "at a safe distance" when they rammed the car, broke the window, dragged her out by the neck, slammed her face into the ground, tightly cuffed her and snarled, per their memo, "This is why we killed that lesbian bitch." Shaken, she told a reporter, "I took an oath, and they're spitting on it. They're Nazis. They're Gestapo. This isn't Germany." Not yet. But close, says James Fell's Sweary History: "Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says 'fuck' a lot." When ICE Barbie, "this puppy-killing, plasticized bag of fascism" called Good a domestic terrorist, he notes, her podium read, "One of Ours, All of Yours" - the phrase Nazis used when the Resistance killed "murderous motherfucker" Reinhard Heydrich, and Nazis retaliated by killing thousands of Czechs and most of the village of Lidice, where they (wrongly) thought the assassins came from. Kill one of ours, we murder all of yours: "This is what DHS is threatening should people dare to resist the American Gestapo."
Dark echoes keep coming. In more Goebbels-worthy agit-prop, the Dept. of Labor just posted a bizarre musical photo montage captioned, "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage," which even X's AI chatbot Grok noted is just like the Nazi slogan, "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" - One People, One Realm, One Leader. Huh, said many: "Sounds familiar," "Sounds better in the original German," "I didn't have DOL dropping race-baiting propaganda with moody techno music on my 2026 Bingo card," "I remember this one from history books," "Can't wait for the sequel! Labor Creates Liberty!" and, "That 1930s retro energy really matches the new vibe." The video added, "Remember who you are, American." Rob Kelner responded, "I remember who I am. I am the grandchild of immigrants, in a nation that welcomed all four of my grandparents, dirt poor...fleeing tyranny." We have fallen so far, and lost so much. But some truths remain: "There is no world in which these are the good guys. None."
"Get it all on record now. Get the films. Get the witnesses. Because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander of the Allied Forces, on atrocities committed by the German Nazis.

The Trump administration this week made abrupt cuts to the top federal disaster response agency, even as US communities face increased threats from natural disasters caused by the global climate crisis.
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) "has begun issuing termination notices" to staff at the agency's Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) that are effective as of January 2.
A FEMA staffer who spoke with Kabas described the terminations as "The New Year's Eve Massacre," and explained that "the driving force behind all CORE employees is supporting and enacting the mission of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters."
A Thursday report from CNN added some additional details to Kabas' reporting, including that the decision to issue the layoffs was made by Acting Administrator Karen Evans, who was appointed to the role after former Acting Administrator David Richardson resigned in November.
One former FEMA official bluntly told CNN that the agency "can't do disaster response and recovery without CORE employees" that are being laid off by the administration.
The former FEMA official added that regional agency offices throughout the US "are almost entirely CORE staff, so the first FEMA people who are usually onsite won’t be there," which will mean that "states are on their own" when it comes to disaster response.
CNN also reported that there is anxiety among remaining FEMA staffers that these cuts could just be the start "of a larger effort" by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "to shrink FEMA, potentially axing thousands of workers in the coming months who deploy during hurricanes, wildfires and other national emergencies."
President Donald Trump has been targeting FEMA for potential termination for nearly a year now, and he said shortly after being inaugurated last January that a goal in his second term would be "fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA," while emphasizing that individual states should bear the cost of responding to natural disasters.
“I think, frankly, FEMA’s not good,” the president said. “I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go, and whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA.”
The Trump administration's deep cuts to FEMA come as the intensity of natural disasters is only projected to increase thanks to climate change.
According to a report published on Tuesday by the Yale School of the Environment, 2025 was the second hottest on record and was only surpassed by the previous year.
"The last three years have been, by a wide margin, the hottest ever recorded," stressed the report. "Each of the last three years has measured more than 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial times, putting the world at least temporarily in breach of an international goal to limit warming below that level."
Jensen Huang, CEO of the tech behemoth Nvidia and the eighth-richest man in the world, said Tuesday that he is "perfectly fine" with a grassroots push in California to impose a one-time wealth tax on the state's billionaire residents.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Huang said that "we chose to live in Silicon Valley, and whatever taxes, I guess, they would like to apply, so be it"—a nonchalant response that diverges from the hysteria expressed by other members of his class in response to the proposed ballot initiative.
"It never crossed my mind once," Huang said of the tax proposal.
If the proposed 5% levy on billionaire wealth makes it onto the November ballot and California voters approve it, Huang would face an estimated $8 billion tax bill—a tiny slice of his $165 billion net worth. Those subject to the tax would have the option of paying the full amount owed all at once or over a period of five years.
"'Who cares' is absolutely the appropriate reaction," said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think tank. "It means nothing to him. David Sacks types look like the biggest babies in the world."
Bruenig was referring to the White House cryptocurrency czar who left California for Texas at the end of 2025 in an apparent effort to avoid the possible billionaire tax, which would apply to anyone living in California as of January 1, 2026.
“As a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin will replace SF as the tech capital,” Sacks declared in a social media post last week.
"Frontline caregivers are glad to hear that, much like the overwhelming majority of billionaires, Mr. Huang will not be uprooting his life or business to make an ideological point over a 1% per year fix to a problem that Congress created."
The proposed one-time tax on California's roughly 200 billionaires would raise an estimated $100 billion in revenue, funds that would be set aside for the state's healthcare system, food assistance, and education.
Organizers are pursuing the tax in direct response to unprecedented Medicaid cuts enacted by US President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress over the summer.
Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and the lead sponsor of the ballot initiative, welcomed Huang's response to the proposed tax in a statement late Tuesday.
"We agree with Jensen Huang that California has a tremendous talent pool of workers uniquely qualified to continue moving many industries forward, including within the tech sector and beyond," said Jimenez. "This initiative will ensure the $100 billion healthcare funding crisis created by [the Trump-GOP legislation] in July is fixed, so that all of those workers can access emergency rooms and vital healthcare in California."
"Frontline caregivers are glad to hear that, much like the overwhelming majority of billionaires, Mr. Huang will not be uprooting his life or business to make an ideological point over a 1% per year fix to a problem that Congress created last July—and that California will unite to solve this November," Jimenez added.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed Monday to stop a proposed tax on the state's richest people, drawing condemnation from progressives who argue that the expected 2028 presidential hopeful's literal and figurative friendship with billionaires has no place in a Democratic Party that must center working class people and issues to win.
Last month, the Service Employees International Union—United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) led the introduction of the California Billionaire Tax Act (CBTA), a state ballot initiative that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of roughly 200 billionaires "to protect healthcare, keep hospitals and emergency rooms open, and prevent millions of Californians from losing coverage" amid historic cuts to social safety programs by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration.
Supporters are currently collecting the 900,000 signatures needed for the CBTA to qualify for California's 2026 ballot. Meanwhile, billionaires including venture capitalist Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin are among those fighting the proposal.
Public opinion polling in recent years has shown that around three-quarters of all California voters, and over 9 in 10 Democrats, back a billionaire wealth tax. So do unions, social and economic justice groups, progressive economists, and congressional lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—another possible presidential aspirant whose support for the CBTA incensed Thiel and other Silicon Valley billionaires like Larry Page and Elon Musk.
However, Newsom finds himself aligned with Thiel—a seven-figure supporter of President Donald Trump's presidential campaigns—in opposing the proposed tax.
“This will be defeated—there’s no question in my mind,” Newsom said of the CBTA in a Tuesday interview with the New York Times. “I’ll do what I have to do to protect the state."
Two headlines preview the 2028 Democratic presidential primary -- and perfectly reflect the big divide inside the Democratic Party. On one side are those fighting billionaires, on the other side are those who are owned by billionaires.
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— David Sirota (@davidsirota.com) January 13, 2026 at 6:45 AM
Newsom—who has close personal, business, or political ties with billionaires including the Getty family, GAP co-founder Doris Fisher, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Siebel Systems co-founder and cousin-by-marriage Tom Siebel—said he is against the CBTA because it could stifle California's world-leading technological innovation and drive away businesses and wealthy individuals.
"The impacts are very real—not just substantive economic impacts in terms of the revenue, but start-ups, the indirect impacts of … people questioning long term-commitments," Newsom told Politico Monday. “That’s not what we need right now, at a time of so much uncertainty."
Not all plutocrats oppose a billionaire wealth tax. Benioff, Warren Buffet, Abigail Disney, Bill Gates, Jensen Huang, Chris Hughes, and George Soros have all advocated higher taxes on the ultrarich.
Huang, CEO of tech titan Nvidia and one of the 10 richest people on the planet, said last week that he is "perfectly fine" with the CBTA.
Gavin Newsom has terrible political instincts. Cozying up to racists like Charlie Kirk. Attacking trans kids. Defending billionaires. When left to his own devices he always picks the wrong path.
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— Oliver Willis (@owillis.bsky.social) January 13, 2026 at 4:53 AM
Responding to Newsom's opposition to the CBTA, Progressive Mass political director Jonathan Cohn said on Bluesky: "Gavin Newsom wants a future for the Democratic Party that consists of sucking up to conservative billionaires. That's a path destined for losses."
Civil rights attorney and professor Alejandra Caraballo also took to Bluesky, writing, "Another reason I'm never Newsom. He's a billionaires' errand boy beholden to them."
Progressive organizer Jonathan Rosenblum asked on X, "Which side are you on?"
"Gavin Newsom is on the side of the billionaires, not the millions of working people who stand to lose healthcare because of the Trump cuts," Rosenblum added. "Shamefully typical of the Democratic establishment."
A broad coalition of Minneapolis labor unions and community organizations is calling for a general strike to take place next week with the goal of forcing federal immigration agents to leave their city.
According to a report by Workday Magazine, the groups announced their plans on Tuesday to create a day of "no work, no school, no shopping" on Friday, January 23.
JaNaé Bates Imari, representative of the church Camphor Memorial UMC, said that next Friday would be "a day when every single Minnesotan who loves this state—who loves the idea of truth and freedom—will refuse to work, shop, and go to school."
"We are asking every single person, every family member, every teacher, every bus driver, every childcare worker, to come together, to be in community, to stand with one another," Bates Imari added.
This is what it takes. It is time for the people to stand and take back our power. We need a general strike!
Love and solidarity to our family in Minneapolis who are refusing to go along with a status quo that blocks regular people out while ICE kidnaps and guns them down. More… pic.twitter.com/2dAjVopyjK
— Charles Booker (@Booker4KY) January 14, 2026
Abdikarim Khasim, a Minnesota rideshare driver, said the strike was necessary because "we are facing a tsunami of hate from our own federal government," while also vowing that "we are going to overcome this."
As reported by Payday Report on Tuesday, several local Minneapolis unions—including Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1005, SEIU Local 26, UNITE HERE Local 17, CWA Local 7250, and St. Paul Federation of Educators Local 28—have lent their support to the strike.
Workday Magazine editor Sarah Lazare subsequently reported in a post on X that the Minneapolis Federation of Educators had also signed onto the effort.
In addition to the labor organizations, faith-based social justice group Faith in Minnesota has declared its support for the strike.
Charles Booker, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Kentucky, praised the organizations for showing solidarity in the face of a crackdown by federal agents.
"This is what it takes," he wrote in a social media post. "It is time for the people to stand and take back our power. We need a general strike! Love and solidarity to our family in Minneapolis who are refusing to go along with a status quo... More of this!"
Thousands of demonstrators hit the streets to protest last weekend after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good.
In the days since Good's killing, federal agents have been repeatedly captured on video brutally detaining anti-ICE demonstrators and assorted bystanders, including some who have been confirmed as US citizens.
President Donald Trump has threatened to launch military strikes against Iran, purportedly to help anti-government protesters who are demanding change amid an economic crisis.
However, Middle East Eye spoke with some of the Iranian demonstrators and found they had little appetite for interference from either the US or Israel.
A 39-year-old protester from Tehran, who identified only as Sara, said that Israel's record of bombing countries in the region made her suspicious of any offer that its government would make to help the Iranian protest movement.
"Over the past one or two years, Israel has attacked almost every country in the region," she said. "They want the entire region to be in chaos while they remain safe."
Sara also emphasized that "we want regime change, but we do not want our country to be destroyed."
A 28-year-old demonstrator named Reza also expressed skepticism of Israel and US offers to help even while stating his fierce opposition to the Iranian government.
"On one side, this government has shown that it is not capable of reform and knows nothing but repression," he said. "On the other side, there are Trump and Netanyahu, both of whom are war criminals."
The Middle East Eye report noted that Trump, unlike past presidents, has not even offered a pretense of wanting to bring democracy to Iran to justify military action and has instead stated his desire to seize foreign nations' resources, such as when he declared that the US would take control of petroleum production in Venezuela after the US military abducted President Nicolás Maduro.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, earlier this month expressed solidarity with the Iranian protesters while also warning Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to butt out.
"The outbreak of protests in Iran over the past week has been led by Iranians suffering under tremendous economic pressure and repression," said Abdi. "It is the Iranian people’s movement and they deserve to be heard, not President Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who cannot and should not try to speak for them. President Trump’s decision to insert himself and threaten military intervention at this moment is profoundly reckless. It distracts from the legitimate grievances of Iranians and risks being exploited to justify a more violent government crackdown."
The Iranian government has responded to the protests with violence and mass arrests of demonstrators, and the government has blacked out internet access for its citizens.
The exact death toll resulting from the Iranian government's crackdown is not known, although the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency estimated as of Monday night that more than 500 people had been killed, while an unnamed Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday that 2,000 people had been killed so far, including Iranian security forces.
"The continuing effort led by Washington Republicans to unfairly rig the midterm elections with an unprecedented series of mid-decade gerrymanders must be met head-on," said a former US attorney general.
Democratic officials and voters battling President Donald Trump's attempt to bully Republican state lawmakers to rig congressional maps for the GOP ahead of the November midterm elections recorded two key wins on Wednesday.
In California, two members of a three-judge panel upheld Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's new map, which was approved by the state's voters late last year and then challenged by the California Republican Party and the US Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, in Virginia, the Democratic majority in the state's House of Delegates advanced a proposed constitutional amendment that would let lawmakers to redraw the congressional map in the middle of the decade—an authority that would expire in 2030.
As the Virginia Mercury detailed:
Democrats argue the amendment is necessary to counter aggressive Republican gerrymanders elsewhere that could tilt control of Congress, while Republicans call it a blatant power grab that undermines Virginia voters' 2020 decision to create an independent redistricting commission.
"This amendment creates essentially a narrow, temporary exception," said Del. Rodney Willett (D-58), the measure's sponsor. He emphasized repeatedly that the proposal does not automatically redraw any lines and does not eliminate the Virginia Redistricting Commission.
"We are not expanding the authority to change the state district lines," Willett said. "We're just talking about congressional lines. And more importantly, it does not change any of the lines as they exist today—this just creates the process to consider doing that."
The proposal now heads to the Virginia Senate, where Democrats also have a majority. If it advances, as expected, then the measure would be voted on by state residents in April.
According to the Hill, "Democratic leaders in Old Dominion are eying either a 10-1 or 9-2 map in a state where Democrats currently have a 6-5 edge in the congressional delegation."
Former US Attorney General Eric Holder, now chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a Wednesday statement that "the continuing effort led by Washington Republicans to unfairly rig the midterm elections with an unprecedented series of mid-decade gerrymanders must be met head-on."
"The threat created by the Trump administration to our democracy is grave. Protecting our system requires taking extraordinary and responsive action, like the proposed referendum in Virginia," he continued. "The decision by Virginia lawmakers to pursue a process that allows voters to weigh in stands in stark contrast to the illegitimate power grab engineered by Republicans in Texas and anti-democracy efforts now underway by politicians in Florida."
In addition to Texas and Florida, Missouri and North Carolina's GOP legislators have pursued new maps for their states ahead of the midterms—under pressure from the president—while some Indiana Republicans joined with Democrats to block an effort there.
Newsom, one of several Democrats expected to run for president in 2028, led the fight for Proposition 50, which voters approved in November. So far, California is the only Democrat-led state to fight back by trying to draw Republican districts out of existence.
In the court battle over the California map, Judges Josephine Staton and Wesley Hsu—appointees of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, respectively—allowed the new districts to stand, while a Trump appointee, Judge Kenneth Lee, dissented.
Welcoming Wednesday's court ruling, Newsom said that "Republicans' weak attempt to silence voters failed. California voters overwhelmingly supported Prop 50—to respond to Trump's rigging in Texas—and that is exactly what this court concluded."
Although the case could move to the US Supreme Court—which has a right-wing supermajority that includes three Trump appointees—the justices in December gave Texas Republicans a green light to use their recently redrawn map.
As the New York Times reported: "The Supreme Court previously determined that courts could not rule on claims of partisan gerrymandering. So Republicans who oppose the California maps face the same challenge as Democrats who opposed the maps in Texas: to prove that race, not partisanship, was the predominant factor in crafting the new district lines."
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee intervened in the lawsuit, represented by Elias Law Group. Firm partner Abha Khanna called Wednesday's decision "a vindication of California voters and a decisive rebuke of the Republican Party's attempt to use the courts to overturn an election."
"The court correctly recognized that Proposition 50 was an unambiguously partisan response to Texas' unprecedented mid-decade redistricting," Khanna added. "The accusations of racial gerrymandering, especially coming from Republicans and Trump's Department of Justice, were nothing more than a cynical attempt to prevent California voters from having their voice heard in response to Texas."
"Trump is once again using lies, racism, and xenophobia to block entire groups of people from coming and contributing to this country," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
The US State Department announced one of the Trump administration's most far-reaching efforts to restrict immigration to the country on Wednesday, saying on social media that it will pause processing of all immigrant visas from 75 countries and claiming people from those nations often receive public benefits after arriving in the US.
"The freeze will remain active until the US can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people," reads the statement.
The countries represent more than one-third of the 193 countries on the planet and include Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Laos, Somalia, and Sudan.
The announcement comes as the administration is seeking to expand the definition of what constitutes a "public charge"—people who are likely to utilize public benefits.
President Donald Trump and his top advisers have long been fixated on the claim that immigrants and refugees overuse social services, and the White House has particularly been focused on the use of public programs by Somali immigrants following a fraud scandal in Minnesota.
Last year, the libertarian Cato Institute published a study showing that despite Trump's claims, native-born Americans consume more public benefits than immigrants on average per capita.
Immigrants used 21% fewer welfare and public benefits than Americans born in the US, the study found.
"Trump is once again using lies, racism, and xenophobia to block entire groups of people from coming and contributing to this country," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Late last year, the administration proposed a rule that would direct immigration officers to consider whether an immigrant would use programs such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and free and reduced-cost school lunches when deciding whether to grant them entry to the US.
A number of observers noted Wednesday that the State Department announced the visa processing freeze months before the US is set to host the World Cup—and 15 of the 42 teams that have already qualified for the soccer tournament are reportedly from countries impacted by the new policy.
A State Department official told Politico that the pause is not expected to directly affect tourist visa processing, but the outlet reported that "individuals could still face difficulties if their countries are subject to other Trump travel bans and restrictions."
The US embassies in Haiti and Iran both posted warnings about visa restrictions on their websites.
"The US should lose hosting rights," said Etan Nechin of Haaretz. "This is a travesty."
Just 8% of Americans want Trump to go further in using the military abroad. But they seem to be who he's listening to.
Just hours before a report on Wednesday that an attack on Iran by US President Donald Trump may be "imminent," a poll showed that a majority of Americans already believe the president has overstepped in using the US military to intervene in other countries.
Over the past two weeks, Trump has carried out an operation to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in order to "run" the country and hand its oil reserves to American companies, has said he may use the military to conquer Greenland and annex it for the US, and has made repeated threats to strike Iran as it cracks down ruthlessly on anti-government protests.
The survey of American adults by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 56% believe Trump has "gone too far" in using the military to intervene in other countries, while just 35% felt his approach has "been about right."
In Venezuela specifically, 57% said they disapproved of Trump's handling of the situation, while 61% said they disapproved of his foreign policy in general.
Just 8% of those surveyed said they wanted to see Trump go further with military interventions. But they appear to be who Trump is listening to.
An anonymous US official told Reuters on Wednesday that the United States has begun to pull personnel from military bases in the Middle East as a precaution after the Islamic Republic said it would retaliate in the event of a US strike. Britain has reportedly begun to do the same with military bases in Qatar in anticipation of a US strike.
"All the signals are that a US attack is imminent, but that is also how this administration behaves to keep everyone on their toes," another Western military official told the outlet. "Unpredictability is part of the strategy."
Trump's threats to strike Iran come as the nation clamps down on the largest wave of unrest it has seen since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, following the collapse of the nation's currency and skyrocketing cost of living in part due to US sanctions.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, security forces had killed at least 2,586 demonstrators as of Wednesday, while more than 18,000 have been detained.
However, many Iranians taking part in the protests, as well as their supporters abroad, have warned that the US, which has long undermined democracy in the country, will seek to exploit their struggle against the theocratic regime.