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Hoo boy. The stupid and evil, somehow accelerating, burn. America's so-called leader, the "Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath," manifests ever more cognitive dissonance on steroids. Absurd, addled, vindictive, looming above "a circus of death and chaos," he commits war crimes, guts voting rights, plots devastation, abases decency, murders mercy, yet whines about mean jokes. But as America reels, Banksy, Bruce, Platner and others increasingly declare, "We are not fucking doing this anymore."
Amidst what the head of Amnesty International calls "the year of the predators," humanity itself is under attack, most notably by our ludicrous narcissist and his "casual, bewildering cruelty." Despite his foolishness, Nesrine Malik writes, "This is what evil looks like": See history's portrayals of Hitler - "the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog" - and Mussolini, "that funny man, that consummate buffoon." Trump's "farcical puniness," Malik notes, is "a projection onto the world, not of large intent, but of smallness and fear...The consequences of his violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it (to) erase his terror of humiliation (and) feed his sociopathic appetite for escalation." Thus can deeply silly still equal dangerous.
Daily, the large and small atrocities are both, albeit without the resonance of the label "fascist" only because he lacks the wit, intent and coherence it requires. The war in Iran is won, it's won but not by enough, it's not a war, we made a deal, we don't want a deal. The (imaginary) talks are going very well, we don't wanna talk. Iran struck a school full of young girls, killing hundreds, or if we did it's Obama's fault. Give me ballroom or give me death: The solution to gun violence that kills 12 children a day, wounds 32 more and has affected over 390,000 kids since Columbine - is to build one rich white guy who's never expressed any grief over any of them a gilded bunker of his own. The way to keep more people safe is to kill as many as possible, including by firing squad.
Also, Bill Maher, Hakeem Jeffries, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are low IQ losers, James Comey tried to kill and "inflict bodily harm on" him with "aggravated beachy seashell pictures," he's so "young, vital, vibrant" he could've joined the Artemis II astronauts easy like he aced his three screening tests for dementia - "A lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. Which one is the bear?" - which the Villages audience def couldn't do, ditto sketchy Harvard Law graduate Hussein Obama. America's response to his musing what we'd do if a con man moron turned up - "How do you get to be president and you're stupid?": "That would suck - we'd probably have unprovoked wars, high gas prices and all our allies would hate us," "He's so close to getting it," "The Irony Meter is dead after spontaneously combusting," and "You're a fucking moron." Also, so grotesquely weird.

Meanwhile, the Orwellian rules for what you can/can’t see/say keep spooling out, lies sold as half-truths to justify a brazen, racist, whitewashing of both present and past under the shameless moniker of content “inappropriately disparaging Americans past or living,” but always white. Among dozens of changes at our National Parks, gone are signs about the contributions of Native Americans and women, warnings about climate change "not grounded in real science," evidence of Founding Fathers owning slaves and explorers' atrocities against Native tribes. But you do get Trump's loathsome mug plastered on park passes, like on our money, buildings, passports ad nauseum. Happily, fighting back for years have been patriots like the Resistance Rangers, the Alt National Park Service and whatever genius slapped these "Sex Offender" flyers across D.C.'s parks.
Hence incrementally, far too slowly but feeding vital hope and our frayed spirits, the flip side of our grim absurdist timeline begins to emerge as Trump and his monstrous clowns flail, fail, dig their own dank holes. So many horrors should have sparked it -Gaza, ICE, USAID, the boundless greed, cruelty, stupidity. Instead, prices did it, a non-stop, staggering incompetence that saw people being screwed once too often and lied to about one too many senseless wars. Last week, Banksy registered his own anti-imperialist protest in a middle-of-the-night dropping into the heart of ceremonial London a large statue mocking such Blind Patriotism. Mirroring the classical style of surrounding monuments celebrating the British Empire's inglorious colonial past, he presents a suited man, his flag flying into his face, one foot poised to step off into his own demise. Much like, you know.

Kicking off his Land of Hope and Dreams American tour several weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen offered his own fiery rebuttal to "a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration," which drew roars from a huge first night crowd in Minneapolis. Equal parts celebration and call to action, The Boss insisted, "This is still America, and - shades of the Big Lebowski, "this will not stand." Summoning "the righteous power of art, music and rock and roll in dangerous times," he asked the crowd to "join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over....(lights come up to segue into) "WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!" complete with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello shredding a solo. A righteous, dynamic pair.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
In contrast, standing grotesque and slumped-shouldered in a dingy, empty corner, is the small, mad man-child who spent Monday bellowing to a weary world that Iran will be "blown off the face of the Earth" if it targets U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which his inane recklessness closed in the first place. Online, in "the most desperate shit" to ever make its demonic way from the White House, a juvenile lackey posted him saying, "Winning it" on a loop for over 60 minutes, which still didn't make it so. The text read, "Can't stop, won't stop." Please fucking do. A horrified America: "This is a real tweet from a real account about a real man who leads a real country." Kyle Kulinski, on "the war criminal of all war criminals" who makes genocidal threats and bleats about insults: “We are not fucking doing this anymore. You don't get to say shit."
Still, one Tom Wellborn says it best in, “A Eulogy for the Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath,” subtitled “Being a Complete and Unflinching Account of the Most Loathsome Specimen Ever to Consume Resources, Occupy Space, and Insult the Patience of a Universe That Deserved So Much Better." "There are villains, and then there are monsters, and then there are creatures so cosmically, transcendently... terrible that language itself recoils," he begins. "Grammar buckles. Syntax weeps...He is this thing. He is the thing past the thing past the thing. He is the sub-basement of the human condition, the moldy crawlspace beneath that sub-basement, and the writhing centipede beneath that."
"He has no morals. Not a single one. Not even the bad morals that at least imply a moral framework: the corrupt cop who loves his dog, the mob boss who goes to church. No. He exists in a morality vacuum so total that ethicists have proposed naming it after him...A being entirely without moral content. Not evil, because evil requires intention. Simply absent of the entire apparatus...A moral negative space shaped vaguely like a man...He has no empathy....like a raisin...He is incapable of the most basic social theater that even sociopaths manage....He takes without asking. He takes everything without asking. He takes things that aren’t takeable...The principle being: I can....He is stupid in a way that is almost majestic...His stupidity (is) total. Unified....He has been wrong about everything, always, without exception..."
"He is callous the way concrete is callous: not through malice, not through choice, but through an utter material inability to register (another) person’s pain...You could show him the face of grief, and he would wonder aloud if there was parking nearby...He is vicious the way a blunt instrument is vicious: through sheer, undirected force, through the momentum of his own awfulness...He is smelted fury with no purpose, unforged, unbent, uselessly molten....(He is) a statistical outlier so extreme that evolution seems to be embarrassed by him, a glitch in the long project of civilization...And the most horrifying part...He will never know any of this. He will never know what he is." Name it, damn it, take it down. Maine's Graham Platner hopes to help do that. We wish him well.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Representatives of more than 50 countries on Friday kicked off the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Colombia, a hopeful summit that comes amid a worsening global climate crisis and fossil fuel-producing nations' efforts to block a clean energy transition.
Organizers of the conference—which is taking place in the Caribbean city of Santa Marta and is co-hosted by the Netherlands—said participants aim to "initiate a concrete process through which a coalition of committed countries, subnational governments, and relevant stakeholders can identify and advance enabling pathways to implement a progressive transition away from fossil fuels, creating sustainable societies and economies."
"This process will be informed by the experience and perspectives of national and subnational governments, academia, Indigenous peoples, peoples of African descent, peasants, civil society, workers, the private sector, and other key actors at different stages of the transition," the organizers added.
The conference comes amid widespread disappointment and frustration over what climate defenders called a "shamefully weak" draft text—called the Multirão Decision—produced at last November's United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, in Brazil. The final document removed all mentions of fossil fuels amid pressure from oil and gas-producing nations like the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and the presence of a record number of industry lobbyists.
“When multilateral processes move slowly, concrete alliances of the willing can take us a long way," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week at the 17th Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Hesse state, where high-level representatives from around 40 countries discussed "concrete steps towards overcoming the climate crisis."
I've worked on #climate and fossil fuels for almost 30 years and the Santa Marta Conference is definitely one of the most hopeful things I've seen. Finally some governments are exploring solutions that meet the scale of the crisis. Good explainer 🧵👇
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— Patrick Reinsborough ❌👑 (@giantwhispers.bsky.social) April 24, 2026 at 7:57 AM
The Santa Marta conference, which will run through April 29, will focus on three main areas:
Major fossil fuel producers including Angola, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, and the United Kingdom are among the 54 nations represented in Santa Marta.
Notably absent from the conference are some of the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters, including the United States, China, Russia, India, and Japan. Their absence is fine with Colombian Environmental Minister Irene Vélez Torres, who told The Guardian that “this is not the space for them."
"We are not going to have boycotters or climate denialists at the table,” Vélez said.
Also missing by design are the legions of lobbyists who increasingly swarm COP conferences.
Word on the street is NO fossil fuel lobbyists at the Santa Marta, Colombia 'Transition Away' conference. But it does have some of the best climate scientists in the world for an advisory panel.
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— Bob Berwyn (@bberwyn.bsky.social) April 24, 2026 at 11:15 AM
Former Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who heads the World Wildlife Fund's global climate division, said in a statement that "changing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels isn’t a slow problem with a slow solution: We need a rapid, global shift to renewable power, smarter grids, and efficiency, so emissions fall fast and stay down."
"And we need a ‘coalition of the willing’ to show us the way," he added. "Santa Marta is an inflection point and an opportunity that we should not miss.”
The absence of the United States surprised no one, given the Trump administration and Republicans' promotion of oil, gas, and coal. Big Oil invested $445 million during the 2024 election cycle in efforts to elect Trump and other Republicans and promote fossil fuel-friendly policies.
Trump, who ran on a “drill, baby, drill” energy policy, has signed a series of executive orders aimed at boosting fossil fuel production, including by declaring a fake “energy emergency” in a push to fast-track permit approvals. He also tapped former fossil fuel executives to head the Department of Energy and Interior Department, which have pursued a policy of opening up more public lands and waters for fossil fuel development.
At the same time, the Trump administration dropped out of the Paris climate agreement for the second time and moved to roll back the modest climate progress achieved under former President Joe Biden.
Melinda Lewis—who directs the Global Trade Watch program at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen—is attending the Santa Marta conference, where she is working to dismantle the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system. The enforced mechanism empowers multinational corporations to sue governments before panels of corporate attorneys and has been denounced by opponents—especially those in the Global South—as a novel form of colonialism.
"While it is tragic that the United States government is failing to meet this critical moment for climate action, we are encouraged that the rest of the world has recognized that it’s high time to take bold action to remove the arcane ISDS extra-legal instrument buried in trade and investment treaties that has been used as a cudgel by fossil fuel and extractive industries to stymie government actions that might reduce their profits," Lewis said on Friday.
As Canadian researcher Joseph Bouchard recently wrote in a Common Dreams opinion piece, "Colombia is especially exposed" to ISDS harm, as "the country has 129 oil and gas projects covered by ISDS provisions, leaving it vulnerable to a wave of potential claims as it pursues its energy transition."
Lewis noted that Colombia's government, led by leftist President Gustavo Petro, "recently announced its intention to renounce its treaties that include ISDS as part of the full package of needed action to usher in a clean energy transition."
Indigenous leaders said more must be done to ensure a just transition.
“We are very concerned. We talk about a just transition, but in practice it is not true,” Oswaldo Muca, General Coordinator of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, told Inter Press Service. “Mining continues. Extraction continues. Deforestation continues. The territories and Indigenous peoples continue suffering this problem, and it is becoming more serious every day."
Muca added that benefits from resource extraction "do not reach Indigenous territories, but they destroy the territory and leave the damage."
On Friday, more than 250 legal experts from around the world asserted that "phasing out fossil fuels is not a political choice—it is a legal obligation."
The jurists noted in an open letter that "the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unanimously confirmed that every state must use all means at its disposal to prevent significant harm to the climate system, including by avoiding the principal activities driving it: fossil fuel production and use."
The letter's signers include former Irish President Mary Robinson and Julian Aguon, an Indigenous human rights lawyer from Guam who played a key role in winning the ICJ climate case.
"The phaseout of fossil fuels is not just scientifically necessary to prevent catastrophic and irreversible harm to the climate system, all peoples, and ecosystems; it is legally required," they wrote. "It is also socially, economically, and environmentally beneficial for present and future generations."
Ultimately, countries participating in the Santa Marta conference will draw their own individual roadmaps with the help of scientists and other experts.
“If we think about it," said Vélez, "the conference is that turning point where, collectively, we decide to be on the right side of history."
The Trump administration is pushing forward with a new rule that could strip as many as 400,000 low-income adults with disabilities of hundreds of dollars per month.
ProPublica reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration was planning a major rule change to the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides basic income to adults with severe disabilities like Down syndrome and autism and some indigent elderly people who may struggle to support themselves.
The program, which serves around 7.5 million Americans, typically provides payments of around $600-700 per month—enough to help pay for basic needs like food and shelter, but not enough to live on independently, especially for those already struggling due to disabilities. As a result, many SSI recipients still reside with family members.
Under the rule change, ProPublica reported that the administration would "penalize" these individuals "simply for living in the same home as their families, according to four federal officials, internal emails, and a federal regulatory listing."
According to the report:
The administration is working on a rule change that would deduct the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom from their SSI allotment, even if the family members they live with are poor enough to qualify for food stamps. This would mean slashing the benefits of some of the most low-income SSI recipients by up to a third... or ending their support altogether.
Kathleen Romig and Devin O’Connor of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained the proposed rule change in a policy briefing in August:
Currently, very low-income disabled or older people who receive SSI can have their benefits reduced by up to one-third (about $300 a month) if they receive “in-kind support and maintenance,” including a place to stay. Similarly, SSI recipients can have their benefits reduced based on the income of their parents (if they are under 18) or spouse, under the assumption that they will contribute to an SSI beneficiary’s living expenses. However, these reductions don’t apply to beneficiaries who live in a household that receives “public assistance,” including food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). That’s because households financially precarious enough to qualify for those benefits can’t afford to financially support SSI recipients...
SSI’s public assistance household rule has been updated to reflect the ways struggling families make ends meet—but the Trump administration proposal would return the program to the outdated criteria first established in 1980... This change would ignore the reality that families who receive SNAP have very low incomes—the typical multi-person SNAP household with at least one member who receives SSI has an annual income of around $17,000, well below the poverty line.
According to ProPublica, one woman with Down syndrome in Philadelphia, 22-year-old Shy’tyra Burton, who has struggled to find a job due to her intellectual disability, is expected to see her $994 monthly benefit cut by about $330 a month because she has continued to live with her father, Rondell, a sanitation worker.
He makes about $2,000 a month, or $24,000 annually—well below the federal poverty line for a single parent with multiple children. Even with the SSI payment, which allows Shy’tyra to pay for her own internet and meals, Rondell said that he's "still barely managing."
Using actuarial figures from the Social Security Administration (SSA), which administers the program, ProPublica determined that as many as 400,000 disabled people and indigent elderly people could lose some or all of their benefits.
"These are not people gaming the system," argued Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), whose state could see more than 57,000 people lose benefits as a result of the cuts.
"Fewer than one in three applicants is approved," he said. "The process takes years and requires medical and vocational evaluations.
"The administration calls this rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. It is not," he continued. "This policy costs more, helps no one, and punishes families for taking care of their own."
The rule change is being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where it will be subject to editing before being sent back to the Social Security Administration, where it will face a period of public comment.
The OMB is administered by Director Russell Vought, one of the architects of the Heritage Foundation's far-right Project 2025 agenda. In addition to using last year's government shutdown to withhold SNAP benefits from around 42 million Americans and starve blue states of funding for federal programs, he has used the office to push for a full-fledged assault on benefits for the poor, disabled, and elderly, including those administered by the SSA.
Vought reportedly led the charge for the SSA to raise the age threshold for disabled adults receiving Social Security disability insurance from 50 to 60, or to remove age as a factor altogether when determining whether a disabled individual has the capability to work. According to the Urban Institute, the plan could have kicked 750,000 people off their disability payments and reduced payouts by $82 million over the next decade.
The administration ultimately backed off the proposal once it became clear that many of those hurt would be older coal miners and factory workers in red states, some of Trump's core demographics of support. But it is still reportedly soldiering ahead with its plan to cut SSI payments for those with disabilities.
Vought has justified these and other dramatic cuts as part of efforts to make the government more efficient. But ProPublica found that while cutting Burton’s benefit could save taxpayers about $11 per day, it could mean her father is unable to care for her, forcing her into a state facility that costs hundreds of dollars a day in public money.
"The Trump rule would have harmful consequences beyond the loss of benefits and eligibility, creating heartbreaking dilemmas for SSI recipients and their families," explained Romig and O'Connor. "It could discourage families from offering help to their loved ones, for fear of jeopardizing their meager benefits. It could force more people to turn to institutional care because they could no longer afford to live in the community."
Fred Wellman, a military veteran and Democratic candidate for the second congressional district in Missouri—a state where around 6,000 disabled and elderly people could potentially be affected by the proposed cuts—called the policy a “truly monstrous decision” especially in light of a recent Republican proposal for Congress to allocate $400 million for Trump’s White House ballroom project after a court ruled it could not be funded using donations.
"As they push to build a $400 million ballroom, they are stripping disabled Americans of their meager benefits," Wellman said. "Over and over, this administration and the GOP choose cruelty over caring. It’s just sick."
Louisiana's Republican governor issued an order on Thursday suspending his state's US House primaries to allow lawmakers to draw up a new congressional map, citing the Supreme Court's decision earlier this week that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Gov. Jeff Landry published his executive order just as early voting was set to begin in Louisiana's congressional primaries—and after some absentee ballots had already been cast. The order states that the US House primaries are "suspended for the duration of the May 16, 2026 and June 27, 2026 election cycles and until July 15, 2026 or until such time as determined by the Legislature," which is instructed to "pass legislation to enact new congressional maps."
The order was met with immediate alarm and outrage. Joel Payne, spokesperson for MoveOn Civic Action, said that "Republicans are colluding in broad daylight to try to rig the election and silence Black voters."
"The MAGA court made their decision to gut voting rights just in the nick of time for Louisiana Republicans to postpone the scheduled primaries to slice and dice voting maps to pick and choose voters of their liking," said Payne. "MoveOn members will fight like hell against MAGA’s extreme power play in Louisiana and push for stronger voting rights to ensure we the people have the final say in our elections.”
Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), said the conservative-dominated Supreme Court has "opened the floodgates for racial gerrymandering in states across the South" with its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which severely narrowed the 1965 Voting Rights Act's protections against racial discrimination.
"Even in ruby red states, Republicans see the writing on the wall that voters will hold them accountable for soaring costs this November, which is why they’re rigging the system to dodge accountability," said Williams. "The DLCC stands with Louisiana Democrats in their fight against Republicans’ egregious actions to suppress votes, and the mission to transform the landscape of state legislative power has never mattered more."
The Washington Post reported that Landry, an ally of President Donald Trump who took office in 2024, privately notified Republican US House candidates on Wednesday that he planned to suspend the Louisiana primaries.
"A new Louisiana map would position Republicans to gain one or two seats in the midterms," the Post noted.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump praised Landry for "moving so quickly" to suspend elections and order the redrawing of Louisiana's maps in the wake of the Supreme Court's latest assault on the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court's ruling struck down Louisiana's current map, which included two majority-Black districts.
"What is happening in Louisiana right now," warned Democracy Docket's Marc Elias, "is both a redistricting power grab and a dry run for authoritarian election subversion this fall."
If there is one thing the Republican Party should learn from President @realDonaldTrump— it’s to FIGHT!
That’s exactly what we are doing in Louisiana. Thank you for your support Mr. President! pic.twitter.com/W4rbcTuPp9
— Governor Jeff Landry (@LAGovJeffLandry) April 30, 2026
Trump, who has repeatedly floated the idea of canceling elections, also said Thursday that he spoke to Tennessee's Republican governor and secured a commitment to "work hard to correct" the state's maps following the Supreme Court's ruling.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voiced support for the large-scale redrawing of congressional maps in light of the Supreme Court's decision.
"I think they should do it before the midterms," Johnson said Thursday.
Landry's order in Louisiana is already facing legal action from state residents, who argued the governor's move would disenfranchise voters.
"These harms are not speculative," warns a lawsuit filed Thursday. "They are imminent: early in-person voting commences on Saturday, May 2, 2026. They are irreparable: once an election day passes, no monetary remedy can restore the franchise."
Voters and civil rights groups on Friday launched a pair of legal challenges against Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry's suspension of his state's US House primary election following a federal Supreme Court ruling ordering a redraw of a congressional map that was meant to help redress centuries of Black disenfranchisement.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Louisiana v. Callais that the state's congressional map is “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” an ironic finding given that the map was the result of a federal judge's order to create a second majority-Black US House district in an effort to correct underrepresentation of African Americans, who make up nearly a third of Louisiana's population.
The decision effectively erased the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.
The following day, Landry cited the decision in an order suspending the state's US House primaries until a new map is drawn. While President Donald Trump praised Landry, one voting rights campaigner accused Republicans—who fear losing their razor-thin congressional majority in November's midterm elections—of "colluding in broad daylight to try to rig the election and silence Black voters.”
On Friday, the League of Women Voters of Louisiana, Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP, Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, and three individual voters—who are all represented by the Legal Defense Fund, ACLU, and ACLU of Louisiana—filed an emergency motion to block Landry and Secretary of State Nancy Landry’s suspension of the primary after voting has already begun.
The petitioners argued that Landry's move "exceeds the governor’s authority under Louisiana’s laws and Constitution to invoke emergency power to stop the congressional primary elections based on a US Supreme Court ruling and not a natural disaster, public health, or similar emergency threatening the physical safety of Louisianians."
BREAKING: We're suing Louisiana officials for suspending the state's primary election after voting has already begun.On the heels of a Supreme Court decision that eviscerated protections for voters of color, elected officials jumped at the chance to disenfranchise people — we won't allow it.
— ACLU (@aclu.org) May 1, 2026 at 1:52 PM
“Emergency powers are not a blank check to rewrite election rules after voting has begun, nor do they authorize the governor to cancel votes that have already been cast to suit his political purposes," the petitioners and their attorneys said in a statement.
"The governor’s order is sparking chaos and is an illegal effort to erase the legally cast votes and disenfranchise thousands of people across the state," the statement continues. "This is a shameful attempt to weaponize the court’s recent decision at the expense of Black voters and manipulate an ongoing election."
"Gov. Landry and Secretary Landry must serve the people and obey the law," the petitioners and their lawyers added. "Any last-minute effort to alter election procedures or enact discriminatory maps must be stopped.”
Separately on Friday, Louisiana voters who already cast ballots in the primary filed a petition in state court seeking a restraining order to block Landry's move on the same grounds the other groups are arguing.
"Ballots were sent to military voters and overseas voters as required by federal law a month ago," the motion states. "Mail ballots were sent to other voters entitled to vote by mail under Louisiana law almost a week ago. As a result, many voters—including among the petitioners here—have already voted."
The petitioners—the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)-Greater New Orleans Section and three individual voters—contended that "the governor’s extraordinary and unlawful assertion of the power to cancel an election midstream is both unprecedented and unjustified."
"Quite to the contrary, the Supreme Court has historically found that when voting in an election is within months of beginning—and, here, it has already begun—the state must proceed under the invalidated map, and any infirmities must be corrected for future elections," they added.
🚨BREAKING: On behalf of the National Council of Jewish Women and Louisiana voters, my law firm has sued Governor Jeff Landry (R) and Secretary of State Nancy Landry (R), challenging the state’s decision to suspend the 2026 congressional primary elections. www.democracydocket.com/cases/louisi...
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— Marc Elias (@marcelias.bsky.social) May 1, 2026 at 1:21 PM
Friday's petitions follow the filing of a federal lawsuit arguing Landry's primary postponement poses "imminent" and "irreparable" harms to voters.
In addition to backing the NCJW motion, the National Redistricting Foundation on Friday also petitioned the Supreme Court to "deny Alabama’s desperate and hypocritical attempt to expedite a challenge to its congressional map" as the state's May 19 primary election approaches.
Republican officials in Alabama responded to the Louisiana v. Callais decision by asking the nation's highest court to fast-track its own racially rigged congressional map.
Trump—who has repeatedly floated canceling the midterms—said Thursday that he secured a commitment from Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to “work hard to correct” the his state's congressional map in the wake of the Louisiana v. Callais ruling.
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis on Friday slammed European leaders—and the West at large—for what he said is their complicity in Israel's abduction of two leaders of the Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla seized off the coast of Greece.
In what numerous critics called an act of piracy, Israeli authorities intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla on Thursday in international waters 45 nautical miles west of the Greek island Kythira and 600 nautical miles from Gaza, according to Greenpeace, whose MY Arctic Sunrise was the aid convoy's most prominent vessel.
Around 175 activists aboard 22 vessels were seized by Israeli forces. The BBC reported Friday that most of them have been released in Greece.
Some of the flotilla members said they were beaten and dragged while handcuffed. The Washington Post reported 34 people—including citizens of Australia, Colombia, Italy, Ukraine, and the United States—required medical attention for broken ribs, noses, and other injuries. Detained activists also said they were denied food and water and were forced to sleep on deliberately flooded floors.
Flotilla organizers said 31 of the remaining vessels will continue heading toward Palestine in a bid to "break the illegal siege of Gaza."
Two members of the flotilla steering committee—Saif Abu Keshek and Thiago Ávila—were taken to Israel for interrogation.
Abu Keshek is a Spanish-Swedish citizen of Palestinian origin. Ávila is Brazilian. Israel's Foreign Ministry claimed that Abu Keshek is "suspected of affiliation with a terrorist organization" and Ávila is "suspected of illegal activity."
As is very often the case with Palestinians it has killed, Israel provided no evidence to support its claims against the accused.
Spain and Brazil have been outspoken critics of Israeli human rights crimes, and both countries have formally joined the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Varoufakis noted on X that Ávila "has distinguished himself with repeated attempts to break the illegal, genocidal, Israeli blockage of Gaza."
"Unlike the remaining abducted members of the Sumud Flotilla crew, which the Israeli navy disembarked in Crete, Saif and Thiago are detained and bound for an Israeli prison," the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 co-founder continued. "This is a double violation of international law: First, Israel abducted them illegally at sea. Second, Israel is now transporting them, violently, illegally, to one of its notorious prisons."
It is not known where Israel will send the two men. Ávila was previously held at Ayalon Prison in Ramla, along with other activists seized from the Madleen last summer. Ávila reportedly refused deportation papers and launched a hunger strike, prompting prison authorities to place him in solitary confinement.
While it is not as notorious as the Sde Teiman military prison—where former inmates and Israeli staff have described torture, rape, murder, and other abuse of Palestinians—Ayalon Prison's alleged human rights violations include torture, medical neglect, and deliberately degrading conditions.
"Meanwhile," Varoufakis said Friday, "the Greek government is cooperating fully in Israel’s criminal behavior, effectively surrendering its search and rescue obligations and conniving with Israel to victimize the brave crews of the Sumud Flotilla who are steadfastly, through their activism, defending international law as well as the verdict of the International Court of Justice, which has clearly and unequivocally declared Israel’s continued naval blockade of Gaza and its occupation of the Palestinian territories illegal."
"Through their complicity and their silence, the Greek government, the European Union, the mainstream media, the West more generally, are flouting, indeed they are trashing, their supposed, much publicized, ‘Western values,'" he added.
Varoufakis is calling on the world to demand:
Varoufakis' call was echoed by the Global Sumud Flotilla, which demanded that "all governments do all they can to pressure the Israeli regime to release all the illegal abductees."
Spanish officials including Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also decried Thursday's raid and demanded the release of the flotilla activists while calling for an end to EU-Israel Association Agreement, a bilateral trade and economic policy framework.
"Israel is once again violating international law by assaulting a civilian flotilla in waters that do not belong to it," Sánchez said on X. "Our government is doing everything necessary to protect and assist the detained Spaniards. But that is not enough. The EU must suspend the association agreement NOW and demand that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu comply with the law of our seas."
On the other hand, US State Department spokesperson Tommy Piggott condemned the flotilla as a "pro-Hamas initiative" and called on allied countries "to take decisive action against this meaningless political stunt."
The United States provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid and diplomatic support including repeated vetoes of United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions for Gaza.
Israel maintains that its actions were legal. Its officials have repeatedly invoked the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea—often shortened to the San Remo Manual—to justify the interception and seizure of flotilla vessels attempting to reach Gaza on the high seas.
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of cities including Athens, Barcelona, Gaza City, Istanbul, Madrid, Milan, Naples, Paris, and Rome on Thursday as protesters showed solidarity with the flotilla members and condemned Israel's actions.
"We will block everything". Mass protest in Rome after the seizure of the Global Sumud Flotilla
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— stefano portelli (@stafe.bsky.social) April 30, 2026 at 4:07 PM
Meanwhile, Gazans continue to suffer from Israel's bombing and blockade, which have killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians and forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened around 2 million others.
Earlier this week, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari said that despite "some improvements in access and aid delivery... food security remains a challenge, while essential services, particularly water, sanitation, and health, are again on the brink of collapse."
Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
Last year was the deadliest in ICE detention in about two decades, with more than 30 deaths reported in custody. So far this year, at least 18 more detainees had reportedly died in ICE custody.
The US Department of Homeland Security is officially closing its watchdog for immigrant detention abuse, even as reports of excessive force, deadly neglect, and other maltreatment by agency personnel soar under the Trump administration.
Citing an internal email, Huffpost's Dave Jamieson reported Monday that DHS is shutting down its Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO), which was established by an act of Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2020 as part the massive federal spending package known as the Consolidated Appropriations Act.
Jamieson added that the communication said that OIDO "is in the process of removing all its public signage and ending its inspection," and that the agency's website was down.
The email attributed OIDO's closure to a lack of federal funding in the Homeland Security appropriations package that ended the recent 76-day shutdown affecting the agency.
Largely pushed through by congressional Democrats, OIDO was designed to be independent from both US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Customs and Border Protection. The office was given the power to receive detainee complaints, investigate alleged abuse or misconduct, inspect detention facilities, and report systemic problems to DHS leaders and Congress.
OIDO emerged amid widespread abuse of detained migrants during the first Trump administration, including deaths in custody, family separation, overcrowding, and other mistreatment.
Since returning to office for a second term, Trump has overseen the dismantling of the agency, arguing that it hinders immigration enforcement. The administration's effort to dilute OIDO's power have triggered legal action arguing that, since it was created by Congress, the agency cannot be abolished without congressional consent.
DHS detainees—especially those ICE lockups—report abuses including inadequate or delayed medical care; physical attacks and excessive force; sexual abuse and harassment; solitary confinement misuse; overcrowded and unsanitary conditions; intimidation and retaliation following complaints; abuse of pregnant women and children; denial of access to lawyers; denial of family contact; and denial of food, water, hygiene, or medication.
Last year was the deadliest in ICE detention in about two decades, with more than 30 deaths reported in custody. So far this year, at least 18 more detainees had reportedly died in ICE custody.
18 people have died in ICE detention this year—and the administration is illegally "closing" OIDO, the office that is supposed to monitor detention conditions and help detained people needing medical care or suffering abuse.Its portal, myoido.dhs.gov, is offline.
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— Adam Isacson (@adamisacson.com) May 4, 2026 at 3:19 PM
OIDO isn't the only DHS watchdog under attack by the Trump administration. The Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman have also been targeted.
One former CRCL employee who was placed on administrative leave due to funding cuts said in a recent court filing that the agency is unable to conduct “meaningful investigations” into alleged civil rights and civil liberties violations committed by its personnel. As an example, they noted the accusations of excessive force by the ICE agent who fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good last year.
“In my experience, investigations into systemic issues like these required significant staff resources, which CRCL no longer has to devote to these important issues of civil rights and civil liberties,” the official told Federal News Network earlier this year. “Nor does CRCL have the resources to conduct multidisciplinary onsite investigations at detention facilities, the need for which is greater than it has ever been as both the number of detention facilities and number of people detained has skyrocketed."
"It's a thin line between celebrating glamor and artwashing extreme wealth," said the Tax Justice Network.
As celebrities prepared to attend the 2026 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday, a coalition of nearly three dozen civil society groups warned that with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—currently the fourth-richest person on Earth—chairing the annual fundraiser, the gala risks "artwashing the harms of extreme wealth."
Groups including Greenpeace International, Patriotic Millionaires, and War on Want signed a letter organized by the Tax the Superrich Alliance, calling on the museum and Vogue magazine, which hosts the event, not to honor Bezos and warning that the billionaire is using the two cultural institutions as tools "to launder his public image."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a celebrated collection of art spanning centuries, many of it made "in defiance of power—work that exposed injustice, gave voice to the silenced, and held the powerful to account," reads the letter.
But the tech mogul chosen to chair the gala "has made his loyalties clear" since President Donald Trump first took office in 2017 and during the Republican's second term, said the groups, pointing to Bezos' purchase of The Washington Post, the mass firing of hundreds of the newspaper's reporters this year, and his remaking of the publication's opinion section into one focusing on "free markets."
He "gutted" the Post "while reportedly pouring $75 million into a film promoting Melania Trump," reads the letter, referring to the Amazon-produced documentary film Melania.
"A 2% wealth tax on just three necklaces previously worn by celebrities to the Met Gala’s red carpet could fully fund New York City’s home energy assistance program, helping 1 million households heat and cool their homes."
"He is not just a bystander to Trump’s administration," wrote the organizations. "He is one of its enablers. This is not philanthropy. This effectively is influence bought and paid for by Bezos’ pocket change—and the Met Gala is his latest purchase."
The groups added that in addition to aligning himself with the White House through his ownership of the Post, Bezos and Amazon—a government contractor where he is still the largest individual shareholder—is working with Trump to "make possible a concentration of power that not only threatens lives in the US but across the world as well."
"While so many of these policies aren’t new, they have been exacerbated under Trump and with the help of people like Bezos—from families torn apart by ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids reportedly enabled by Amazon's own technology, to a White House emboldened to threaten and carry out military action against sovereign nations without consequence—including to ‘destroy a whole civilization’ in Iran—with no accountability," reads the letter.
The Tax Justice Network, one of the signatories, emphasized that just a fraction of the money that goes to the $100,000-per ticket Met Gala could alleviate the economic inequality that's grown worse under the Trump administration.
"A 2% wealth tax on just three necklaces previously worn by celebrities to the Met Gala’s red carpet could fully fund New York City’s home energy assistance program, helping 1 million households heat and cool their homes," said the Tax Justice Network, citing its analysis released Monday.
Bezos is among the billionaires who have contributed donations to Trump's pet projects—a luxury ballroom and a 250-foot-tall arch in Washington, DC—while the president has tried to cut the home energy assistance program, said the group.
“There’s a thin line between celebrating glamorous fashion and artwashing extreme wealth, and that line gets bulldozed when your poster boy is an ICE-profiteering billionaire bankrolling Trump’s vanity projects and a top spender on anti-worker lobbying,” said Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network.
In the first two hours of the Met Gala, Cobham added, "Bezos’s wealth will grow by the equivalent of 130,000 hours of a teacher’s labor... This extreme distortion throws economies out of whack. Our economies are supposed to let people earn the wealth they need to lead secure and comfortable lives, but most countries’ tax rules make it easier for the superrich to collect wealth than for the rest of us to earn it."
It's a thin line between celebrating glamor & artwashing extreme wealth. That line gets bulldozed when your patron is an ICE-profiteering billionaire bankrolling Trump’s vanity projects & a top spender on antiworker lobbying. Don't let Bezos artwash his at the Met Gala taxjustice.net/press/2-tax-...
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— Tax Justice Network (@taxjustice.net) May 4, 2026 at 3:25 AM
"In Bezos’ case, it’s easy to see how that undertaxed collected wealth goes towards lobbying further against workers’ rights and pay, while his company Amazon remains one of the biggest recipients of US subsidies," said Cobham.
According to the Tax Justice Network's analysis, Bezos accumulated $3.8 million every house from 2023-25, when his total wealth grew by more than $100 billion.
"If Bezos were to continue to accumulate wealth at this rate," said the group, "he would accumulate $7.6 million in the first two hours of the Met Gala event, which is the equivalent of 110 NYC Public Schools teachers’ starting salaries"—$68,902.
Those organizing the gala can and must "stop celebrating those destroying our countries and humanity itself," reads the letter sent by the Tax the Superrich Alliance, by not honoring Bezos and backing the fair taxation of the wealthiest households and corporations.
"End the oligarchy," reads the letter. "Tax the super rich. Now."
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a proponent of taxing the rich to pay for crucial public programs and services, planned to skip the Met Gala in a break with tradition. Last month Mamdani announced plans for a tax on second homes valued at $5 million or more in New York City.
Celebrities who are reportedly planning to skip the event include Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid, who has spoken out against ICE and in favor of Palestinian rights, and actress Zendaya.
"What voters are saying now is that democracy is sacred."
Organizers in Missouri on Sunday said they reached an important milestone in a campaign to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot this year that would stop Republican officials in the state from trying to sabotage ballot initiatives.
Respect Missouri Voters, a coalition aimed at protecting and strengthening the state's ballot initiative process, announced that it has delivered more than 367,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State's office in favor of a constitutional amendment that enact two key policies to protect voter-passed laws.
First, as the Fairness Project summarized on Monday, it would "require that all future ballot measures in the state be summarized for voters in fair, clear, and easily understandable terms"; and second, it would demand "that any attempt by the Legislature to refer a voter-approved measure back to the ballot clear an 80% threshold in each chamber, a high bar designed to prevent politicians from undoing what voters have already decided."
The first part of the amendment is aimed at addressing problems created by Republican Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who has repeatedly been taken to court for writing ballot initiative summaries that advocates say are misleading or provide incomplete information about what the initiatives would do.
As the Missouri Independent reported in February, a total of five summaries written by Hoskins have been thrown out by courts since October, as "judges at every level of Missouri’s court system have stepped in to block or rewrite ballot language" drafted by the secretary of state.
The second part of the amendment, meanwhile, was written in response to Republican legislators' efforts to overturn ballot initiatives passed in 2024 that legalized abortion in Missouri and established mandatory paid sick leave.
Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a key backer of Respect Missouri Voters, said the gathering of more than 367,000 signatures is "a promising milestone for Missouri voters and for direct democracy."
"Perhaps more than in any other state, voters in Missouri understand what is at stake,” Hall added. "It’s in Missouri that extremist politicians have worked overtime to undermine the will of their voters, whether it’s been fighting to reinstate a wildly unpopular ban on access to abortion care, gerrymandering congressional districts, or undermining the ballot measure process. What voters are saying now is that democracy is sacred."
However, it's not just Missouri where direct democracy is under attack. The Fairness Project reported last September that “extremist” legislators across the United States “escalated their efforts to dismantle the ballot measure process in 2025 by 95%.”