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Oh man. Same old clown show, awash with boondoggles, each more cringey than the last. As the mad man-child deconstructs DC and slaps his hideous face and name everywhere - historic buildings, fascist arches, garish statues, possibly imaginary gold phones - others have taken his lead with their own patriotic spinoffs. Cue "Fuck You" upgrades, a Strait to Hell arcade for a video-game war, and a Trump/Epstein "Memorial Reading Room" packed with 3.5 million pages of files, where "the truth is hard to deny."
Trump's narcissistic vandalizing of D.C. - couldn't his KKK dad have just hugged him now and then? - is "something dictators have done throughout history," noted Bernie Sanders of his proposed SERVE Act, or Stop Executive Renaming for Vanity and Ego. Co-sponsored by six Senate Dems, the bill would bar any sitting president from naming federal properties after themselves, an act both "arrogant" and illegal. At this rate many weary Americans would likely argue, "Let the chiseling off begin," but for now the bill sits in legislative limbo and we're stuck with the resulting atrocities; they continue to multiply like locusts, even as he's proposed a $10-billion fund for more "beautification" projects around "the capital of the greatest Nation in the history of the world."
Though he increasingly nods off in public - or per the White House, blinks - he still clutches at a farcical show of dominance he's leaned on in the endless self-glorification campaign that is his execrable life. There are posts quoting fictional "fans": "Remarkable leadership,” "Master of the Deal,” "THE GREATEST PRESIDENT WE HAVE EVER KNOWN." From the guy who's "confused the country for his living room," there's D.C's re-branding: the plaques, name changes, razed East Wing for a billion-dollar "albatross" nobody wants. There are new massive Stalin-esque banners at construction sites proclaiming, “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP”- "like Michael Scott buying himself a World’s Best Boss coffee mug" we paid for - to which unenthused residents added, "Fuck You Cunt."
Snug in a delusional bubble where his approval is def not in the toilet, he feels free to rant, lie, melt down online without consequence. In one manic night, he posts 55 times in three hours: “Arrest Obama the traitor” and “DEMONIC FORCE,” also Hillary, Brennan, Comey, Kelly. Asked how much he thinks about the cost to Americans of his calamitous war, he blurts, “Not even a little bit.” His lackeys follow suit: Ka$h Patel yells, lies, hustles bourbon, pads his stats and takes a "VIP snorkel" in Pearl Harbor around the tomb of 900 U.S. soldiers as Sean Duffy takes his nine offspring on a "patriotic," seven-month Great American Road Trip filmed for YouTube and complete with "head-spinning" corporate sponsorship, both on the taxpayers' now-rapidly-shrinking dime.
Meanwhile, another project nobody asked for - draining and repainting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, aka "reflective pond," from traditional grey to garish blue - has shockingly veered off course. After boasting his bestest golf course pool painters could easy-peasy do a no-bid, $1.8 million, "smart and beautiful construction" that Dems stupidly opposed - "Dumacrats love sewage" - the cost has soared to $13.1 million, it's now by a contractor he "did not know and have never used before,” staff are worried the job is behind schedule, with "uneven application" leaving bubbles, holes and "mottled shades of blue" in the pool, and a judge has set a May 21 hearing for a lawsuit charging the project wasn't properly vetted, ditto a color "more appropriate to a resort or theme park."
More winning in Miami, where another lawsuit charges three acres of multi-million-dollar waterfront land were illegally grifted by DeSantis to Trump for $10 for his presidential “library,” actually a gaudy hotel with no books but more vitally two gold statues of, you know. They will presumably join in grotesque kinship with the $300,000, crypto-bro-funded, bronze and gold leaf Don Colossus just unveiled at Doral Miami, "where the Republic is currently moldering." Before "a robotic chorus of evangelical functionaries who (have) transformed themselves into the most theologically humiliated cohort in modern memory," the statue was honored as, not an idolatrous golden calf, insisted Pastor Mark Burns, but "a celebration of life" and symbol of "the hand of God over (Trump’s) life." Definitely not a cult.

Despite being heralded as God's second favorite son - one who "understands the Scriptures better than the Pope" - Trump is also widely deemed "an economic serial killer" presiding over an "America First Corporate Graveyard," skyrocketing inflation, national debt, farm bankruptcies, and energy costs, and possibly "the largest single act of grand larceny in American history" with a $10 billion payout by his own DOJ against his own IRS to settle his bullshit lawsuit for their leak of his tax returns, which every other president has released. Still, because grifting chutzpah thy name is, and because there's never enough money to fill the ugly gaping hole where a soul should be, he's still running penny-ante scams. Up next: Trump Mobile, "for the forgotten MAGA man."
Last June, his huckster spawn announced the launch of "a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance.” The T1 Phone, "proudly designed and built in the United States,” would be available in August at $499. For almost a year, they urged followers to make $100 "deposits" to "pre-order" the beauties; over half a million did, ponying up about $59 million. Then, the bait and switch. The terms of service quietly changed: The "deposit" provided "a conditional opportunity" to buy if Trump Mobile chose to sell. Pricing, production schedules, shipping costs were "non-binding." "Made in the USA" became "Proudly American Designed." "Delivery" dates got pushed back. Unexplained charges appeared. A reporter who called "Customer Service" got “Omega Auto Care." To date, no fantasy Trump phones have shipped. Cheap Crooks 'R Us.

Also, liars. With even neo-cons now deeming the Iran War potentially more of a debacle than Vietnam, the good folks at Secret Handshake, creators of the Trump/Epstein bestie statues, decided that with the regime hyping war like a video game, they might as well turn it into one. Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell , which is also online, features three working, arcade video games set up inside DC's War Memorial; they promise "high-octane, flag-waving, boots-on-the-ground...pure pixelated patriotism," or, per Hegseth, "laser-focused maximum reps annihilation mission crushing (with) sustained unrelenting pressure." Battles - by tweet, not gun - pit US forces against ”Iranian schoolgirl,“ "DEIyatollah,“ low-flow shower heads, the Pope and other "threats to American freedom."
Games open with Trump declaring, “Another big, beautiful day as the best President ever.” Options for the prompt, “Ready to ROCK Iran back to the Stone Ages?” are “Not Yet...” “Yes” and “Hell Yes.” Yells Pete, “Let’s liberate some oil!” Trump can order a Diet Coke or bomb Iran; search for barrels of oil, ideas for Truth Social posts, or endless threats that lead nowhere; he vows to “fight this war and win it by hamburger o’clock.” Melania: “I WAS NEVER ON THE EPSTEIN JET...Did you burn the files yet?” JD, fat-faced: “I love couch.” The only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania’s hand, which abruptly ends the game; otherwise, it’s impossible to end or win it. Irony never dies: Images have surfaced of bored National Guardsmen - a $1 million a day deployment - playing.
Another piece of protest art brings the truth of "one of the most horrific crimes in American history” to Trump's hometown. "The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” in New York's Tribeca, is a first-of-its-kind, 5,000-square-foot installation containing all the unsealed Epstein files - 3.5 million pages printed and bound into 3,437 volumes weighing 17,000 pounds, "a physical, undeniable record of corruption, cover-ups, and crime." The pop-up project in the Mriya Gallery was created by the non-profit Primary Facts; it took them about a month to print the files. The exhibit is on view through May 21; admission to groups for a one-hour session is free; organizers are raising funds to cover the New York premiere and bring it to other cities.
The Trumpsonian installation is built around a candlelit tribute to Epstein's more than 1,200 victims and survivors, whose names are all redacted here in closed binders - unlike at the DOJ, where they were badly, only partly redacted, a failure adding insult to injury along with an ongoing, multi-pronged cover-up. The Trump and Epstein Reading Room also includes a timeline documenting the decades-long crimes, legal proceedings and intersections between the two men's lives, all underlining the criminal absurdity of federal claims "there's nothing left to investigate." The vast trove of information, organizers say, is "what 3.5 million pages of evidence looks like." Trump, as deeply complicit as he is narcissistic, "wanted his name on stuff." Now, here it is.

"We know that if this project goes through, our land and our water are in danger. Our future is in danger," warned Krystal Two Bulls, one of many community, conservation, and Indigenous group leaders speaking out after President Donald Trump granted a cross-border permit to what critics called "nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the unpopular Keystone XL pipeline."
Trump's permit for the Bridger Pipeline Expansion Project authorizes various "petroleum products, including gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas," The Associated Press reported Thursday, but Bridger spokesperson Bill Salvin said the company is currently focused on crude oil—550,000 barrels of which could flow daily from Canada, through Montana, to Guernsey, Wyoming, if the pipeline is completed.
"Water protectors are standing up again, like we have always done against all those who threaten Mother Earth," Two Bulls, an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne organizer from Lame Deer, Montana, and executive director of Honor the Earth, said Friday. "We fought against the Keystone XL pipeline proposed for these very same lands and won back in 2021. We will fight and win again against the Bridger pipeline."
Shortly after entering office in 2021, then-President Joe Biden revoked the presidential permit for Keystone XL—which Trump had signed during his first term—as part of the Democrat's efforts to combat the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
While Biden faced criticism from climate advocates for the oil and gas projects he did allow, Trump took a swipe at him on Thursday, telling reporters: "Slightly different from the last administration. They wouldn't sign a pipeline deal, and we have pipelines going up."
Trump—who campaigned on a pledge to "drill, baby, drill" and returned to the White House last year with financial help from Big Oil—also dismissed safety concerns about pipelines, saying: "By the way, they're way underground. They're not a problem. Nobody even knows they're there. It's so crazy. But they wouldn't approve anything having to do with a pipeline."
As the AP detailed:
Bridger Pipeline and other subsidiaries of True Company have been responsible for several major pipeline accidents including more than 50,000 gallons (240,000 liters) of crude that spilled into the Yellowstone River and fouled a Montana city's drinking water supply in 2015, a 45,000-gallon diesel spill in Wyoming in 2022 and a 2016 spill that released more than 600,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) of crude in North Dakota, contaminating the Little Missouri River and a tributary.
Subsidiaries of True agreed to pay a $12.5 million civil penalty to settle a federal lawsuit over the North Dakota and Montana spills.
Salvin said Bridger Pipeline in the years since the Yellowstone spill developed an AI-based leak detection system that allows it to be notified more quickly when there are problems. It also plans to bore 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) beneath major rivers including the Yellowstone and Missouri to reduce the chances of an accident. The 2015 accident occurred on a line that was constructed in a shallow trench at the bottom of the river.
A public comment submitted to the Trump administration by the legal group Earthjustice on behalf of Honor the Earth, Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, and a dozen other organizations acknowledges concerns about this pipeline's potential impacts to water, land, the climate, air quality, cultural resources, recreation, and more—and called for an intense federal review of the project.
"We know how this system works: More pipelines mean more drilling, more waste, and more spills. And when spills happen, it's communities, landowners, and tribes who are left dealing with the contamination, not the companies profiting from it," Rebecca Sobel, climate and health director at WildEarth Guardians, said Friday. "Oil and gas infrastructure fails every day in this country, and expanding that system only increases the likelihood of spills and long-term contamination."
Sierra Club Montana chapter director Caryn Miske stressed that "while the Trump administration kills affordable energy projects and jobs across the country, it is continuing to side with wealthy corporations and oil executives looking to increase profit regardless of the risks to Montana's treasured waterways and to families and businesses struggling with high energy costs. These policies aren't about fair or free markets, it's welfare for corporations and pollution for everyone else."
Earthjustice is also representing 350 Montana, Center for Biological Diversity, Families for a Livable Climate, Montana Environmental Information Center, Montana Health and Climate, Mountain Mamas, Red Medicine LLC, Western Environmental Law Center, Western Organization of Resource Councils, Western Watersheds Project, Wild Montana, and Wyoming Outdoor Council.
"The proposed Bridger tar sands pipeline is an environmental disaster waiting to happen," declared Jenny Harbine, managing attorney with Earthjustice's Northern Rockies office. "The Trump administration appears more than willing to limit public engagement to force this project through."
"Communities and tribes in the Northern Rockies have a right to know how this could impact their water sources, historic resources, and ways of life," Harbine added. "If the administration attempts to sidestep that legal obligation, we’ll see them in court."
Separately on Friday, Anthony Swift, a longtime leader in the fight against the pipeline and current senior strategist for global nature at Natural Resources Defense Council, said that "no matter what you call the project, the environmental concerns that animated the fight over Keystone XL are no less acute today. Keystone Light will threaten water supplies and exacerbate climate change. This is the moment to get off the oil roller coaster, not double down on the dirtiest oil on the planet."
"The Trump administration has been lobbing gifts to Big Oil since its first day in office. This is the latest in a long, long, long list of favors that show the oil industry is getting a great return on its billion-dollar investment in the president's campaign," Swift added. "President Trump has repeatedly said that America does not need Canada's oil, so we certainly don't need Keystone Light."
Data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday showed continued upward pressure on prices, caused in large part by President Donald Trump's war with Iran.
The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures wholesale prices paid by businesses, posted a year-over-year gain of 6% in April, the largest yearly increase since December 2022.
Energy prices, which have surged since Trump launched an unprovoked war with Iran in late February, played a large role in raising wholesale costs, as the report finds "more than three-quarters of the broad-based increase in April can be traced to a 7.8% jump in prices for final demand energy."
However, energy prices aren't solely responsible for rising wholesale prices, as the so-called "core" PPI, which excludes the costs of food and energy, posted a yearly increase of 4.4% in April, the largest since February 2023.
PPI is seen as an important gauge of future inflation for consumers, as companies typically pass the costs they pay for inputs onto consumers in the form of price increases.
As explained by Groundwork Collaborative in a social media post, the wholesale costs measured by PPI "are what companies pay before they jack up prices on the rest of us."
"What's in the pipeline now is headed straight for your grocery bill and gas tank," Groundwork Collaborative added. "The pain isn't over. It's just beginning."
CNN economics reporter Elisabeth Buchwald similarly predicted more hurt for US consumers in the coming months, arguing in a Wednesday article that a 6% increase in PPI shows "the pain will not be short-lived."
"Even if the United States were to reach a deal with Iran today, it would still take months for shipments of oil held up by the blockade of the crucial Strait of Hormuz to reach American soil," Buchwald explained. "And even then, it would likely be months—or potentially years—before Americans see gas prices return to levels before the war."
Wednesday's PPI report came one day after the Consumer Price Index showed that consumer prices in April rose by 3.8%, the largest yearly increase since May 2023.
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) reacted to the latest inflation data by ripping into the president's policy decisions, including the Iran war and the global trade war he started shortly after returning to office last year.
"The only thing Trump has made great again is inflation," Boyle, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, wrote in a social media post. "His disastrous policies—from his tariff taxes to his war in Iran—are making life even more expensive. We shouldn't be surprised the guy who managed to bankrupt a casino isn't an economic mastermind."
Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) linked the increased prices to Trump's desire to have Congress spend $1 billion of taxpayer money on his proposed White House ballroom.
"Oregonians need real relief from these high costs at the store and the pump," wrote Dexter. "We must stop the war in Iran and refuse to pay for presidential vanity projects. Oregon families want peace. They need a break, not a ballroom."
As the winner of the Democratic US Senate primary in Nebraska mulls dropping out to boost Independent Dan Osborn, another congressional candidate not tied to either major political party launched a campaign for the state's 1st Congressional District on Thursday.
Joining incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Flood and Democratic primary winner Chris Backemeyer is Austin Ahlman, a 28-year-old investigative journalist, anti-monopolist, and self-described "insurgent Independent running in NE-01 to fight for the little guy."
Ahlman's launch video shares some struggles his family has faced—his parents working at the Tyson Foods meatpacking plant in Norfolk that closed in 2006, his dad's cancer battle, and his mom's suicide—and his work in journalism, "uncovering corruption among Democrats and Republicans, and taking on the corporations that are destroying our way of life."
It also features his fights for loved ones: against a bank for his family home, to assist his grandmother, "who was getting cheated by utility and insurance companies," and to help his brother "get his small business off the ground."
"My family's story isn't unique," he says in the three-minute ad. "Families all across our state are fighting, but the only ones who seem to be getting ahead are the elites on the coasts and the politicians who are selling us out to them."
The emotional ad makes Ahlman's policy priorities clear: taking on rising costs, Wall Street buying family homes, corporate monopolies, taxpayer-funded foreign wars, and health insurance companies that deny coverage.
"It's time we show the billionaires in Wall Street and Silicon Valley who are pitting us against one another that we won't let them steal our way of life out from under us," he concludes. "If you agree, then join us, and let's take Nebraska back."
As Nebraska Public Media reported Thursday:
Since Ahlman isn't running with a party affiliation, he will need to petition onto the general election ballot. According to the Nebraska Secretary of State's Office, Ahlman will need to collect at least 2,000 valid signatures from voters in the 1st Congressional District to get onto the ballot.
"I think most people these days are Independents," Ahlman said in a Thursday interview with Nebraska Public Media News. "They do feel pretty fed up with things."
He said he'd like the country's spending to refocus on the US and not in conflicts abroad.
"There is so much money from Americans' pockets being poured into other countries, armies to fight wars in places that we couldn't even find on a map. And I think this is one area where current voters in... this district don't have a choice," he said. "The blue-haired baristas are not the ones stealing people's way of life. Your uncle, who's perhaps a little gung-ho at Thanksgiving, is not the one stealing your way of life. It's Tyson; it's Google; it's Facebook; it's every other corporation that is putting the squeeze and pressure on communities like mine and ripping us apart."
On social media Thursday, Ahlman called out the GOP incumbent for taking campaign cash from corporate political action committees and special interests.
"I'm in this to beat Mike Flood—and yes, this is personal. We grew up in the same town, but Millionaire Mike's life was not like mine. I lived in trailer parks. Our whole family spent periods living in my grandmother's basement. I went to bed hungry," he explained. "Last year, Millionaire Mike... voted to hand tax cuts to big business and billionaires while gutting healthcare, education, and food programs. Those callous votes show he takes voters for granted."
Meanwhile, the Lincoln Journal Star reported Thursday that the Independent Norfolk native is already drawing vote-splitting criticism "from Republicans and Democrats alike."
In response, Ahlman said: "It seems I’ve pissed some people off! Look, taking on the establishment of both major parties was never going to be easy. They're fighting back, and that isn’t very surprising. But here's the deal—the overwhelming majority of real people in Nebraska—whether they're registered Republicans or Independents or Democrats, they all want change."
"They're sick of being looked down on, and sold out on, and lied to," he stressed. "Congressman Flood is selling us out to big money donors as he climbs the ladder in Washington. Americans are ready to elect Independents who work for them, not party bosses or corporate donors. That's why we're going to win."
The state's Democratic Party is standing by its candidate. The party chair, Jane Fleming Kleeb, told Drop Site News' Ryan Grim that "Chris Backemeyer is the clear choice for Nebraska's 1st District. He brings real federal experience from the State Department and is laser-focused on what Nebraskans actually care about—lowering costs and expanding access to affordable healthcare. Mike Flood has failed this district, and a fringe Independent won't fix that. Nebraska doesn't need noise from either extreme—we need a steady, experienced leader who will fight for fairness and protect our democracy. That's Chris Backemeyer."
Backemeyer was at the State Department under former Democratic President Joe Biden. While there, Zeteo News' Prem Thakker noted Thursday, he "helped coordinate aid to Israel amid its genocide in Gaza."
According to Thakker, the Democrat has received "much of his campaign donations from the DMV," a term for the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, which includes Maryland, and Virginia. Donors include key Biden officials, such as former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and ex-National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
The journalist also highlighted some early polling from Adam Carlson's Zenith Research that shows Ahlman doing well, particularly after respondents are introduced to candidates' biographies:
"In head-to-head matchups in these post-bios ballot tests, Ahlman (I) doesn't just outperform Backemeyer (D) overall by 16 points, but outperforms him among nearly every single subgroup," Carlson wrote. "Ahlman's largest overperformances relative to Backemeyer are among groups that Democrats have struggled with of late (especially in this part of the country)—Independents (+46), age 18-44 (+34), moderates (+26), white noncollege (+25), suburban voters (+24), white men (+21), and gun-owning households (+20)."
"In the post-bios three-way vote, Backemeyer (D) is in third place, 6 points behind Ahlman (I)," the pollster added. "But Flood still leads by 14 points despite only being at 42%. As we've seen, if Backemeyer drops out, Ahlman takes the lead if it's a 1:1 race against Flood."
In yet another display of how Illinois' pioneering biometric privacy law can be used to protect Americans, state residents who work as audio storytellers, broadcast journalists, podcasters, voice actors, and more filed class-action lawsuits against Big Tech this week for "stealing their voices" to develop artificial intelligence products.
Since Illinois legislators passed the groundbreaking Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) in 2008—regulating the collection, use, safeguarding, handling, storage, retention, and destruction of biometric identifiers, including fingerprints, voiceprints, and scans of a retina, iris, hand, or face geometry—there have been thousands of lawsuits filed and major settlements with Clearview AI, Facebook, and Six Flags.
Represented by the award-winning civil rights firm Loevy + Loevy, the Illinoisans are suing Adobe, Alphabet and its subsidiary Google, Apple, Amazon, ElevenLabs, Facebook parent company Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Samsung under BIPA.
The plaintiffs are audiobook narrators Lindsay Dorcus and Victoria Nassif as well as journalists Robin Amer, Yohance Lacour, Carol Marin, and Phil Rogers. Journalist Alison Flowers is part of all lawsuits except those against Amazon and Apple. Their lawyers noted that "between them, they have multiple Emmy and Peabody awards, several Pulitzer Prizes, several Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University awards, an Edward R. Murrow award, a James Beard award, a SOVAS award, and many, many other honors."
Their cases focus on the voiceprint of each plaintiff, which is "a digital fingerprint of the human voice," as the complaints explain. "It is a mathematical capture of the acoustic features—pitch, timbre, resonance—that emerge from a person's distinctive physiology, combined with the speech patterns that person develops over a lifetime: accent, cadence, articulation. Like a fingerprint, a voiceprint identifies the individual. Like a fingerprint, it cannot be changed."
The Adobe case targets Firefly, the company's family of generative AI models. The complaint states that the company "treated the human voices that built Firefly as ownerless—ignoring the speakers' rights, taking their voiceprints without asking, paying them nothing, and giving them no notice that their voices were being used at all, and "built a mirage of commercial safety around products whose construction violated the one thing Illinois law requires before collecting a voiceprint: consent from the person."
The Google filing points out that the company "has been a repeat defendant in BIPA cases" and even "paid approximately $100
million to settle BIPA claims arising from Google Photos' face grouping feature," among other high-profile settlements.
The Meta suit highlights that "no defendant in any biometric-privacy matter pending in the United States has had more direct, more sustained, or more financially consequential notice of BIPA than Meta," given that the company "has paid the three largest biometric-privacy settlements in American history," including $650 million to resolve claims under the Illinois law regarding Facebook's photo tag suggestions.
"By the time Meta released Voicebox in June 2023, MMS in May 2023, and SeamlessM4T in August 2023, Meta had been a BIPA defendant for nearly a decade and had paid more than $2 billion in biometric-privacy settlements," the complaint continues. "The technology Meta built using plaintiffs' voices now competes with plaintiffs in the markets where they earn their living."
The Amazon filing details similar harm to plaintiffs:
Amazon extracted plaintiffs' voiceprints without notice or consent, depriving them of the right BIPA guarantees to make an informed decision about the collection and use of their biometric data. Amazon retains those voiceprints in its commercial models and continues to profit from them. Amazon has further disseminated those voiceprints, encoded in model parameters, through its cross-affiliate, subprocessor, and integration-partner networks. The technology built on those voiceprints now displaces plaintiffs in the markets where they earn their living—the broadcast journalism, investigative podcast, audiobook narration, voiceover, and voice performance markets that the voice products are designed and sold to serve.
"What we are seeing is an illegal and unethical exploitation of talent on a massive scale, and one of the largest violations of biometric privacy ever committed," said Loevy + Loevy attorney Ross Kimbarovsky in a Thursday statement.
"The legislators who wrote and passed BIPA had the foresight to realize that biometric privacy was going to be a major civil rights issue in the 21st century," the attorney continued. "Social security numbers can be changed, passwords can be reset, and credit cards can be canceled, but once your biometric data is compromised, there's nothing you can do about it."
"These companies know the law, know their liability, and know exactly how to build consent systems that comply with BIPA," Kimbarovsky added. "They've built a billion-dollar industry on stolen voices because they thought no one would make them pay for it."
In addition to Illinois, Texas and Washington state have enacted biometric privacy laws, while California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Virginia have comprehensive consumer protection policies that apply to such information, according to Bloomberg Law. However, efforts in Congress to enact federal legislation—such as the National Biometric Information Privacy Act and the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act—have been unsuccessful.
A group of more than 30 Democratic lawmakers in the US House is imploring the Trump administration to abandon any plans for a military assault on Cuba and end the decades-old blockade that has deprived the island nation of fuel and sparked a grave humanitarian crisis.
In a letter dated May 12 and addressed to top Trump administration officials, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and other House Democrats wrote that the US "must not respond to a crisis it is creating with policies that deepen suffering, undermine the rule of law, and repeat the gravest failures of its past."
The members of Congress demanded that the Trump administration immediately end its use of the notorious Guantanamo Bay military prison for migrant detention, lift all "coercive economic measures" currently strangling Cuba, and "abandon reported plans for US military action against Cuba."
"Such action," the lawmakers warned, "would be unlawful, deeply destabilizing, and catastrophic for the Cuban population, while further increasing displacement, exacerbating mass suffering, and undermining US interests in the region."
"It must be unequivocally rejected," they added.
Through sanctions and unlawful threats of military action, the Trump administration is deepening the humanitarian crisis in Cuba. At the same time, they are once again threatening to use the Guantanamo Base, a prison with a history of dehumanizing and abusing people, to detain… pic.twitter.com/cXbCFfds4W
— Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez (@repdeliaramirez) May 13, 2026
The House Democrats' letter was released shortly before Cuba's energy minister said the country has "absolutely no fuel" and "absolutely no diesel," blaming the oil blockade that the Trump administration imposed earlier this year after kidnapping the president of Venezuela—previously Cuba's primary supplier of oil.
"This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel," Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote Wednesday on social media. "What the spokespeople of the U.S. regime try to portray to the world as the direct consequence of poor management by the Cuban government is, in reality, the result of a perverse plan aimed at driving the people’s shortages and hardships to extreme levels."
US President Donald Trump has said publicly that his next military target is Cuba, which he has threatened to "take" by force.
Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Cuba's foreign affairs minister, posted the House Democrats' letter to social media on Thursday, writing that "the government that claims to defend democracy should listen to the majority voices that oppose the current escalation of threats, aggressions, tightening of the blockade, and energy siege against our country."
Last month, nearly every Republican senator and one Democrat—Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania—voted down a legislative effort to prevent Trump from launching an attack on Cuba without congressional authorization.
"Reducing her sentence sends the wrong message to those seeking to undermine trust in our elections, and it will do nothing to deter Donald Trump's illegal attacks on Colorado," said US Sen. John Hickenlooper.
Top Colorado Democrats and democracy advocates were among those expressing concern on Friday after Democratic Gov. Jared Polis commuted the sentence of Tina Peters, a former county clerk and 2020 election denier backed by President Donald Trump.
"Today, Gov. Polis delivered a victory to every person urging President Trump to seize control of elections in 2026," said Aly Belknap, executive director of the advocacy group Common Cause Colorado, in a statement. "By commuting Tina Peters' sentence, Gov. Polis dealt a massive blow to Colorado's ability to run its own elections and uphold its own judicial system."
"This decision sends a dangerous message that Colorado will tolerate criminal meddling in election systems and equipment when it is done to make a political statement," Belknap warned. "Authoritarians create martyrs out of people like Tina Peters to fuel outrage, mobilize supporters, and excuse lawbreaking in service of their agenda."
"But authoritarians cannot dismantle democracy on their own. They need powerful people to give them consent. Today, Gov. Polis gave President Trump that consent. This is a shameful day for Colorado," she added. "Gov. Polis' decision undermines election security, weakens accountability, and permanently stains his legacy."
Since returning to office last year, Trump has pardoned his supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, fought for access to state voter rolls, said that Republicans "ought to nationalize the voting" in direct defiance of the Constitution, generated fear that he'll have federal agents surround polling sites in November, and even repeatedly suggested that the 2026 elections shouldn't be held at all.
Trump also gave Peters a symbolic federal pardon and pressured Polis—who is term-limited and set to leave office next January—to act on her case. The president was not able to free Peters from her nine-year sentence himself because a jury convicted her of state felonies and misdemeanors for her role in breaching election equipment in 2021.
After the governor's decision, which was announced alongside dozens of other pardons and commutations, and sets up Peters to be released from prison on June 1, the president wrote on his Truth Social platform, "FREE TINA!"
Peters also turned to social media on Friday, thanking Polis, apologizing for her "mistakes," and writing that "upon release, I plan to do my best through legal means to support election integrity and, based on my own personal experiences, to elevate the cause of prison reform."
In an interview with The New York Times, Polis denied trying to placate the president by freeing the former clerk. He said that "she committed a crime; she deserves to be a convicted felon," but "she was given an unusually harsh sentence."
As the newspaper detailed:
The governor's decision came after Mr. Trump cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money for Colorado, moved to dismantle a leading climate and weather research center in Boulder, rejected disaster relief for rural counties in the state that had been hammered by floods and fire, and vetoed an urgently needed water pipeline for rural Colorado.
In the interview, Mr. Polis pointed out that Mr. Trump had other grievances against Colorado, such as its mail-in voting system, and said he was not making his commutation decision with the expectation that Mr. Trump would undo his actions against Colorado.
"That's not something I ever considered," he said.
Meanwhile, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold declared that "this clemency grant to Tina Peters is an affront to our democracy, the people of Colorado, and election officials across the country. The governor's actions today will validate and embolden the election denial movement, and leave a dark, dangerous imprint on American democracy for years to come."
US Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) said that "Tina Peters is guilty as sin and a disgrace to Colorado. She tried to undermine Colorado's free and fair election system. When she was caught red-handed, she was prosecuted by a Republican district attorney and rightfully convicted by a jury of her peers. Reducing her sentence sends the wrong message to those seeking to undermine trust in our elections, and it will do nothing to deter Donald Trump's illegal attacks on Colorado. I strongly disagree with this decision."
Fellow US Senate Democrat Michael Bennet, who is running for governor, was similarly critical, saying: "I vehemently disagree with Gov. Polis' decision to commute Tina Peters' sentence. She broke the law, undermined our elections, and was convicted by a jury of her peers. With Trump continuing to attack Colorado, we must stand strong for our institutions and the rule of law."
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told Democracy Docket that "it's unfortunate to see the governor of Colorado succumbing to the bullying tactics of election conspiracy theorists. He has thrown state and county election officials, Republicans and Democrats, under the bus after they resisted the corruption Ms. Peters engaged in and withstood attacks for many years as a result."
Even another former Republican clerk—Matt Crane, who's now executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association—sounded the alarm, arguing that "Tina Peters' actions have made life harder, not only for election officials here in Colorado, but make no mistake, for election officials all across the country. Her conduct became a rallying point for election conspiracy movements that fueled hostility and distrust towards the very people responsible for administering free and fair elections."
"Rather than standing with public service servants and defending one of our nation’s most cherished rights, the right to vote, Gov. Polis is bending the knee to the same political forces and conspiracy movements that are actively undermining confidence in our democratic institutions," Crane said. "That choice carries consequences far beyond this single case."
“If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish."
An all-day prayer event scheduled for Sunday on the National Mall is set to feature evangelical Protestant leaders as well as top White House and Republican Party officials as speakers, and is being promoted as a celebration of "thanksgiving" as well as an opportunity for participants to learn about the founding of the nation as the 250th anniversary of its independence approaches.
In reality, said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the "National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving" appears to be a "Jubilee of Christian Nationalism"—with evangelical Christians making up three-quarters of the scheduled speakers, despite the fact that they account for just a quarter of Americans overall.
“If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish in our country," said Laser. "Instead, they continue to threaten this foundational principle by advancing a Christian nationalist crusade to impose one narrow version of Christianity on all Americans."
The event, which is partly funded by taxpayer dollars earmarked for the nation's 250th anniversary, will feature Christian musical performers organized around three "pillars" that are labeled as "miracles" a Christian God bestowed on America, “personal testimonies of God’s healing,” and a "unified moment of rededication."
At a webinar last month, Rev. Paula White-Cain, who serves as a faith adviser to the White House, said the event is "really truly rededicating the country to God.”
The idea that the founders of the United States intended the country to be a Christian one has long been a fixation of evangelical Christian leaders, despite the lack of evidence for such a claim.
“Look at the document," Princeton University history professor Kevin Kruse told The Washington Post, referring to the Constitution. "The only rules they wrote about religion were ones that keep religion at arm’s length. No establishment, no limits on free exercise, no religious test for office... There’s a difference between saying America is a nation with many Christians in it and that America is a nation dedicated to Christianity and defined by it."
Robert Jones, president of the Public Religion Research Institute, told the Post that about a third of Americans currently report that they have no religious affiliation, making the US more religiously diverse than it's ever been.
“We proudly celebrate 250 years of American independence from kings who ruled over both church and state," said Laser. "For 250 years, America has been marching toward the promise of a country where all people can be free to live as themselves and believe as they choose, as long as they don’t harm others. Christian nationalists threaten that promise by undermining church-state separation, a pillar of our democracy."
The jubilee, which will also feature an 18-wheeler "Freedom Truck" featuring educational content made by the right-wing group PragerU and the Christian school Hillsdale College, comes after numerous displays of religiosity from the Trump administration.
Even many of the president's supporters on the Christian right were aghast at an artificial intelligence-generated image he posted last month on social media, appearing to depict him as a Christ figure. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is set to speak at the jubilee, has spoken about the US-Israeli war on Iran as Christian crusade and has hosted evangelical worship services at the Pentagon, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wrote, "He is Risen indeed!" in an Easter email to federal employees that recounted the biblical story of the resurrection.
Robert Weissman, co-president of government watchdog Public Citizen, noted that the corporate sponsors of Freedom 250, the public-private partnership that's organizing the 250th anniversary, "may want to curry favor with the Trump administration."
The sponsors, including John Deere, Oracle, and Lockheed Martin, "should be forced to answer whether they support the extreme agenda they are celebrating," he said.
“This outrageous event makes a mockery of a core constitutional tenet of American life, the separation of church and state, essentially promoting a particular flavor of white evangelical protestantism as state-sponsored religion,” said Weissman. “This self-proclaimed day of thanksgiving torpedoes the best of American traditions—inclusivity and diversity—and has no place being connected to the US government."
“We believed that she was being authentic and honest with us," said one Virginia labor leader. "She just flat-out flipped."
Labor unions are feeling betrayed after Virginia's Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger vetoed a bill on Thursday that would have restored collective bargaining rights for half a million public sector workers.
Virginia is one of the most restrictive states in the country for public sector bargaining, a holdover from the Jim Crow era when the General Assembly and other state legislatures across the South sought to crush the power of a public workforce with many Black employees.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Virginia has one of the largest public sector pay gaps in the country, with state and local government employees making about 27% less on average than their private-sector peers, and it is similarly stratified in other states with weak collective bargaining rights.
Spanberger, a former US representative who was elected governor this past November, made pro-union messaging central to her affordability-focused platform. She decried President Donald Trump's executive order stripping federal workers of collective bargaining rights last year and said that as governor, she'd "look forward to working with members of our General Assembly to make sure more Virginians can negotiate for the benefits and fair treatment that they earn.”
But since taking office, Spanberger's support for restoring public sector union rights has been more tepid as she's gotten an earful from fiscally conservative Right-to-Work and taxpayer advocacy groups who claimed higher salaries for public employees would drain state funds and raise the cost of services.
When a bill to immediately mandate collective bargaining rights to 500,000 workers was proposed in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly, she introduced amendments aimed at watering down the bill—making it optional for employers to recognize unions, delaying the full implementation until 2030, and introducing what unions called a "kill-switch" that would have allowed future governors to revoke collective bargaining power.
The legislature shot Spanberger's amendments down and passed the bill in its original form. On Thursday, the governor vetoed it altogether.
In her veto message, Spanberger said she wanted the bill's other collective bargaining provisions for state employees, home care workers, and higher education employees to go into effect first "in order to demonstrate the efficacy of this new system" before it was opened up to all public employees.
But the unions that advocated for the bill say Spanberger led workers on with false promises.
"This veto is a devastating betrayal to the hundreds of thousands of public employees who have spent years, and in many cases decades, fighting for a seat at the table," said Doris Crouse-Mays, the president of the Virginia AFL-CIO. "Spanberger campaigned publicly and privately on promises [of] affordability, to support working families and respect workers' rights... Instead, when presented with the opportunity to make history and deliver on those promises, she chose to side with fear, political calculation, business, and the same anti-worker arguments that have been used for generations to deny workers power in Virginia."
LaNoral Thomas, the president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Virginia 512—a union which helped lead the charge to pass the bill—told the Virginia news site Dogwood that her union had "high hopes" for Spanberger when she was elected.
“We believed that she was being authentic and honest with us," Thomas said. "She just flat-out flipped. It is shocking.”
"Public employees are not a special interest. They are our neighbors. They are the educators, bus drivers, social workers, librarians, custodians, and first responders who hold our communities together," said a joint statement from Carol Bauer, president of the Virginia Education Association, and Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.
They emphasized that the veto also carried "a deep racial and gender impact," noting that "Virginia’s public sector bargaining ban is rooted in a Jim Crow era effort to silence Black workers at the University of Virginia Hospital who organized for fair pay and dignity." They said, "Preserving that legacy today disproportionately harms women and workers of color, who make up so much of the public-service workforce and who have the most to gain from fair wages, safer workplaces, and a real voice on the job."
Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)—the largest national union of public sector workers in the US, with more than 1.4 million members—said that Spanberger had caved to "anti-worker extremists [who] have sidelined working people while starving the public services Virginia families rely on, earning the state a reputation as one of the most anti-worker in the country."
"While the governor has broken her word," Saunders said, "AFSCME members are deeply grateful to the bill’s sponsors and the leadership of both chambers, who kept theirs. Their commitment to working people stands in stark contrast to the governor and will not be forgotten."
"Gov. Spanberger made a choice today," he added. "Working people will remember it."