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

Climate change driven by human burning of fossil fuels helped make 2025 one of the hottest years ever recorded, a scientific report published Monday affirmed, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to combat the worsening planetary emergency.
Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that "although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record," with only two other recent years recording a higher average worldwide temperature.
For the first time, the three-year running average will end the year above the 1.5°C warming goal, relative to preindustrial levels, established a decade ago under the landmark Paris climate agreement.
"Global temperatures remained very high and significant harm from human-induced climate change is very real," the report continues. "It is not a future threat, but a present-day reality."
"Across the 22 extreme events we analyzed in depth, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires claimed lives, destroyed communities, and wiped out crops," the researchers wrote. "Together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world."
The WWA researchers' findings tracked with the findings of United Nations experts and others that 2025 would be the third-hottest year on record.
According to the WWA study:
This year highlighted again, in stark terms, how unfairly the consequences of human-induced climate change are distributed, consistently hitting those who are already marginalized within their societies the hardest. But the inequity goes deeper: The scientific evidence base itself is uneven. Many of our studies in 2025 focused on heavy rainfall events in the Global South, and time and again we found that gaps in observational data and the reliance on climate models developed primarily for the Global North prevented us from drawing confident conclusions. This unequal foundation in climate science mirrors the broader injustices of the climate crisis.
The events of 2025 make it clear that while we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels, we also must invest in adaptation measures. Many deaths and other impacts could be prevented with timely action. But events like Hurricane Melissa highlight the limits of preparedness and adaptation: When an intense storm strikes small islands such as Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, even relatively high levels of preparedness cannot prevent extreme losses and damage. This underscores that adaptation alone is not enough; rapid emission reductions remain essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of 1.5°C, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto—who is also an Imperial College London climate scientist—told the Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”
The WWA study's publication comes a month after this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference—or COP30—ended in Brazil with little meaningful progress toward a transition from fossil fuels.
Responding to the new study, Climate Action Campaign director Margie Alt said in a statement that "2025 was full of stark reminders of the urgent need to cut climate pollution, invest in clean energy, and tackle the climate crisis now."
"Today’s report is a wake-up call," Alt continued. "Unfortunately, [US President Donald] Trump and Republicans controlling Congress spent the past year making climate denial official US policy and undermining progress to stave off the worst of the climate crisis. Their reckless polluters-first agenda rolled back critical climate protections and attacked and undermined the very agencies responsible for helping Americans prepare for and recover from increasingly dangerous disasters."
"Across the country, people are standing up and demanding their leaders do better to protect our families from climate change and extreme weather," Alt added. "It's time those in power started listening.”
Jensen Huang, CEO of the tech behemoth Nvidia and the eighth-richest man in the world, said Tuesday that he is "perfectly fine" with a grassroots push in California to impose a one-time wealth tax on the state's billionaire residents.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Huang said that "we chose to live in Silicon Valley, and whatever taxes, I guess, they would like to apply, so be it"—a nonchalant response that diverges from the hysteria expressed by other members of his class in response to the proposed ballot initiative.
"It never crossed my mind once," Huang said of the tax proposal.
If the proposed 5% levy on billionaire wealth makes it onto the November ballot and California voters approve it, Huang would face an estimated $8 billion tax bill—a tiny slice of his $165 billion net worth. Those subject to the tax would have the option of paying the full amount owed all at once or over a period of five years.
"'Who cares' is absolutely the appropriate reaction," said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think tank. "It means nothing to him. David Sacks types look like the biggest babies in the world."
Bruenig was referring to the White House cryptocurrency czar who left California for Texas at the end of 2025 in an apparent effort to avoid the possible billionaire tax, which would apply to anyone living in California as of January 1, 2026.
“As a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin will replace SF as the tech capital,” Sacks declared in a social media post last week.
"Frontline caregivers are glad to hear that, much like the overwhelming majority of billionaires, Mr. Huang will not be uprooting his life or business to make an ideological point over a 1% per year fix to a problem that Congress created."
The proposed one-time tax on California's roughly 200 billionaires would raise an estimated $100 billion in revenue, funds that would be set aside for the state's healthcare system, food assistance, and education.
Organizers are pursuing the tax in direct response to unprecedented Medicaid cuts enacted by US President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress over the summer.
Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and the lead sponsor of the ballot initiative, welcomed Huang's response to the proposed tax in a statement late Tuesday.
"We agree with Jensen Huang that California has a tremendous talent pool of workers uniquely qualified to continue moving many industries forward, including within the tech sector and beyond," said Jimenez. "This initiative will ensure the $100 billion healthcare funding crisis created by [the Trump-GOP legislation] in July is fixed, so that all of those workers can access emergency rooms and vital healthcare in California."
"Frontline caregivers are glad to hear that, much like the overwhelming majority of billionaires, Mr. Huang will not be uprooting his life or business to make an ideological point over a 1% per year fix to a problem that Congress created last July—and that California will unite to solve this November," Jimenez added.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday warned the Democratic Party against reshaping its economic agenda in the hopes of winning over billionaire donors.
In a speech delivered before the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Warren (D-Mass.) argued that watering down a progressive economic agenda to appeal to big-money donors made little sense at a time when the richest in America are taking ever greater shares of wealth and US families are struggling to keep their heads above water.
Warren pointed to many US elites maintaining friendly relationships with the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, even after he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor, as evidence of a broken system.
"Over the past generation, the wealthy have avoided accountability time and again," she argued. "Regular Americans must play by every rule or face real consequences. You don’t need to read every news article about Jeffrey Epstein and his good buddies like [former Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers and [President] Donald Trump to understand how consistently rich and powerful insiders protect each other, regardless of politics and regardless of how obscene the situation has become."
Warren acknowledged that Democrats needed to broaden their appeal to more voters given that they lost the popular vote to Trump for the first time in 2024, but she argued that targeting wealthy donors would not accomplish that goal.
"There are two visions for what a big tent means," she said. "One vision says that we should shape our agenda and temper our rhetoric to flatter any fabulously rich person looking for a political party that will entrench their own economic interests. The other vision says we must acknowledge the economic failures of the current rigged system, aggressively challenge the status quo, and chart a clear path for big, structural change."
Warren also criticized the "abundance" agenda that has been promoted by New York Times columnist Ezra Klein over the last several months as a way to fix Democrats' electoral woes.
The senator began her critique by touting what she said were good points that Klein and Abundance co-author Derek Thompson make about government needing to work more simply and efficiently to deliver benefits.
However, Warren said that what their analysis of government failures has often missed is that there are powerful interests that are working to keep these inefficiencies from being addressed.
"For years, I've fought for a simple, free government tax filing system so no one has to pay a couple of hundred bucks just to file their taxes," she explained. "Every step of the way, the giant tax prep companies have thrown up roadblocks to stop it. And when the [Internal Revenue Service] finally built a free—and wildly popular—filing option for American taxpayers, the tax prep companies swooped in to kill it the minute Donald Trump took office."
Warren also said that many major Democratic donors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, have been latching onto "abundance" in order to drive the conversation in the party away from US wealth inequality.
"We are now in a new election cycle, and according to Axios, Reid Hoffman is sending everyone he knows a copy of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book on Abundance and backing pro-abundance candidates," Warren explained. "On his podcast, Hoffman has used the framework to argue against regulations that slow down data center construction. That’s right—when families are already getting crushed by rising costs and a data center boom means even higher utility costs... Hoffman wants Democratic candidates to stand with the billionaires for higher costs."
The senator then said that "if Democrats want to win elections, they need to read the room—or I should say, they need to read literally any room anywhere in America that isn’t filled with big donors."
A coalition of press freedom and civil liberties groups on Tuesday implored US lawmakers to immediately rescind their subpoena of investigative journalist Seth Harp, who named the commander of the elite Army Delta Force unit that carried out the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife earlier this month.
In a letter to House leaders, Defending Rights & Dissent, the ACLU, Freedom of the Press Foundation, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders, and more than a dozen other organizations warned that "by issuing this subpoena, Congress is undermining one of the most cherished American freedoms."
"The subpoena has few parallels or precedents in recent history and poses a grave danger to the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedom," the letter reads. "There is zero question that Harp’s actions were fully and squarely within the protections of the First Amendment, as well as outside the scope of any federal criminal statutes."
The effort to subpoena Harp was led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who accused the journalist of the "doxxing a US Delta Force operator" by posting to X a then-publicly available bio of Col. Chris Countouriotis. Harp identified Countouriotis as "the current commander of Delta Force, whose men just invaded a sovereign country, killed a bunch of innocent people, and kidnapped the rightful president."
The House Oversight Committee approved the subpoena—with the support of Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the panel's top Democrat—in a voice vote last week.
X, a platform owned by self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, locked Harp's account and required him to delete the post on Countouriotis before he could regain access. Luna also referred Harp to the US Justice Department, urging it to "pursue criminal charges" against him.
Harp, an Iraq War veteran who authored a book exposing crimes committed by US Special Forces units, dismissed Luna's "doxxing" accusations and said the identities of military officers who "participated in this illegal and provocative act of war" against Venezuela are "the legitimate subject of journalistic scrutiny."
"I'm not the only one they're going after with these bogus 'doxxing' allegations," Harp wrote on X, "but they would have to radically restructure the fundamental architecture of US law to criminalize reporting the names of government officials involved in breaking news stories."
In their letter to House leaders on Tuesday, the press freedom coalition stressed that while "journalists have a right under the First Amendment to publish even classified information... none of the information published by Harp was classified."
Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, said in a statement that Luna attack on Harp "is clearly designed to chill and intimidate a journalist doing some of the most significant investigative reporting on US Special Forces."
"Her own statement makes clear that far from having a valid legislative purpose, she seeks to hold a journalist ‘accountable’ for what is essentially reporting she dislikes," said Gibbons. "This is a dangerous assault on press freedom, as well as the US people’s right to know. It is shameful it passed the committee."
As President Donald Trump geared up for a meeting with fossil fuel executives about plans for them to tap into the "tremendous wealth" of Venezuela's vast oil supply, the US military seized another oil tanker in the Caribbean off the coast of Trinidad on Friday morning.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted unclassified footage from US Southern Command of explosives being deployed and soldiers boarding the vessel Olina on social media.
"As another 'ghost fleet' tanker ship suspected of carrying embargoed oil, this vessel had departed Venezuela attempting to evade US forces," she said. "This is owning the sea."
Olina, which was reportedly carrying around 700,000 barrels of crude, is at least the fifth tanker seized by the military in recent weeks and the third in the last three days after the Trump administration imposed a blockade on sanctioned oil tankers leaving Venezuela in December, a move that has been credited with hastening the country's economic collapse.
Earlier this week, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US plans to manage Venezuela's oil sales and revenues indefinitely following its illegal operation last weekend to topple and abduct President Nicolás Maduro.
According to the ship-tracking database TankerTrackers.com, the US has “seized five tankers and 6.15 million barrels in the span of a month, with the oil valued at over $300 million."
The US has described Olina and other ships it has seized as part of a "shadow fleet" that uses deceptive tactics—including flying false flags—to secretively transport oil for sanctioned countries, including Venezuela, Russia, and Iran.
The US has justified its blockade of Venezuela's oil, as well as the overthrow of Maduro generally, based on the claim that its government is part of an alleged foreign terrorist organization known as the "Cartel de los Soles."
In late December, a group of United Nations experts condemned the blockade and denounced this justification, stating that the alleged cartel does not exist. The US Department of Justice later acknowledged that the cartel was not an actual organization in its indictment of Maduro this week. Maduro has pleaded not guilty to US narco-terrorism charges.
The group of international experts, which included Ben Saul, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, and Gina Romero, the special rapporteur on freedom of association and assembly, described the blockade as "violating fundamental rules of international law."
“There is no right to enforce unilateral sanctions through an armed blockade,” the experts said, citing the United Nations Charter, which describes blockades without UN Security Council approval as illegal acts of aggression.
They added that “there are serious concerns that the sanctions are unlawful, disproportionate, and punitive under international law, and that they have seriously undermined the human rights of the Venezuelan people."
“Big Oil is openly asking Congress for a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card because fossil fuel companies are desperate to avoid facing the evidence of their climate lies in court," said one critic.
As Big Oil and its Republican defenders vow to fight a flurry of state and local lawsuits seeking to hold the industry accountable for its role causing catastrophic global heating and lying to the public about it, one climate defender on Monday urged congressional lawmakers to reject a so-called "liability shield" aimed at protecting fossil fuel companies from litigation.
With more than two dozen state and local climate lawsuits against Big Oil ongoing from Maine to Hawaii—and a successful outcome for youth litigants in Montana in 2023—Republicans from President Donald Trump down to state lawmakers are scrambling to find ways to stem the tide of legal action against one of their biggest sources of financial support.
In June, Republican attorneys general in 16 states asked the Trump administration for protections from climate lawsuits. The AGs suggested modeling such policy on a 2005 law protecting gun manufacturers from litigation when their products are used in crimes. As a result, no gun company accused of negligence has ever been brought to trial. Gun control advocates have been trying to repeal the law for years.
“Big Oil is openly asking Congress for a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card because fossil fuel companies are desperate to avoid facing the evidence of their climate lies in court," Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), said Tuesday in a statement. "Congress must make clear that any proposal to strip Americans of their right to hold corporations accountable for the damage they cause when they lie to the public about the harms of their products will be dead on arrival."
The CCI statement came in response to an announcement by the American Petroleum Institute—the nation's biggest oil lobby—that fighting state climate lawsuits is one of its top priorities for 2026. API has been named as a defendant in several state climate accountability and deception lawsuits.
🚨 Big Oil wants to take away your right to sue fossil fuel companies for the harm they cause.No matter your politics, we should all agree that no industry should be above the law. Say it with us: 📣 NO IMMUNITY FOR BIG OIL 📣
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— Center for Climate Integrity (@climateintegrity.org) January 13, 2026 at 11:03 AM
As CCI explained earlier:
Communities across the country are paying nearly $1 trillion per year for damages from extreme heat, floods, wildfires, and rising seas and other extreme weather events that fossil fuel-driven climate change is making more intense, deadly, and destructive. Major oil and gas companies knew decades ago that their products would fuel these climate damages, but they orchestrated a Big Tobacco-style campaign of deception to mislead the public and protect their profits. More than 1 in 4 Americans now live in a state or community taking Big Oil companies to court to hold them accountable for this deception and make polluters pay for the harm they have caused.
"A legal shield for Big Oil could forever shut the courthouse doors for all Americans, forcing the rising bill for climate change onto taxpayers, and setting a harmful legal precedent that protects corporations instead of communities," CCI added. "No industry should be above the law—especially one with a documented history of deceiving the public. Congress must oppose the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying efforts and keep the courthouse doors open for communities seeking accountability."
CCI's advocacy against a liability shield for Big Oil follows last year's plea by nearly 200 nonprofit organizations to Democratic leaders in Congress asking them to oppose such legislation.
"Our communities across the country are suffering grave threats to our public health, safety, and economic security as a result of Big Oil’s climate deception and pollution," the groups said. "Governments, residents, businesses, and others must have access to legal and legislative remedies in order to hold fossil fuel companies accountable, seek justice, and make polluters pay."
The victim—whose skull was fractured and nearly died—said federal agents mocked him, saying, "You're going to lose your eye."
A young protester in Santa Ana is permanently blind in one eye after being hit in the face at close range by a "nonlethal" round fired by a Department of Homeland Security agent last week amid nationwide protests against an immigration agent's killing of US citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis.
According to a report from the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, the 21-year-old "underwent six hours of surgery and... doctors found shards of plastic, glass, and metal embedded in his eyes and around his face, including a metal piece lodged 7 mm from a carotid artery."
His aunt, Jeri Rees, told the Times that doctors feared removing the shrapnel from her nephew's face, concerned it could kill him, and that he had also suffered a skull fracture around his eyes and nose and had permanently lost vision in his left eye.
The shooting outside the Civic Center Plaza that took his sight on Friday evening was caught on film and has circulated widely on social media, and came hours after an earlier protest, organized by the organization Dare to Struggle, saw hundreds of demonstrators gather in downtown Santa Ana to oppose President Donald Trump's flooding of US cities with immigration agents.
The video shows a group of protesters standing on the steps of the center, with several chanting and holding signs and one holding a megaphone. An officer then grabbed one of the young demonstrators—who appeared to be standing peacefully—by the arm, and dragged him up the steps.
As he attempted to wrest himself free from the agent's grip, one of the protesters in the crowd threw an orange traffic cone in the direction of the struggle. This prompted at least one other officer to begin firing their weapons toward the crowd, striking one woman before striking Rees' nephew in the face, causing him to drop to the ground.
The agent then grabbed him by the hood of his sweatshirt, dragging him across the ground. His face is visibly bloody and he appears to be struggling to breathe as he is dragged away by the neck.
According to the Times, another video shows Rees' nephew lying bloodied on the ground inside the building while another agent fires pepper balls at another person who approached the building, attempting to film the incident.
Under Trump's watch, a DHS agent shot a protestor in the face with a non-lethal round at close range, fractured his skull, and then dragged him around as he choked and bled. He is now permanently blind in his left eye.
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— Rep. Judy Chu (@chu.house.gov) January 13, 2026 at 12:32 PM
While such projectiles are often described as "nonlethal," Ed Obayashi, the Modoc County sheriff’s deputy and legal adviser to police agencies, told the paper that firing one just feet away from a person's face "constitutes as deadly force as far as the law is concerned" because "these projectiles can cause serious injury [or] death.”
He added that officers are only supposed to deploy deadly force in situations where they believe their lives are in imminent danger or that they are at risk of grave bodily harm.
Rees said that her nephew told her agents pressed his face into the pool of blood and did not immediately call paramedics. She said her nephew also told her that "the other officers were mocking him, saying, ‘You’re going to lose your eye.'"
"This is an egregious abuse of power," said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). "Americans have the right to protest without fear of retaliation or worse. Trump's violence must stop now."
"Americans will pay a steep price if Republicans move forward with this disastrous agenda," said Sen. Ron Wyden.
The House Republican Study Committee on Tuesday released a blueprint for a new budget reconciliation package with the purported goal of making "life more affordable for working families."
However, according to an analysis by Washington Post economic policy reporter Jacob Bogage, two of the three most expensive items in the GOP budget blueprint would be the elimination of the federal estate tax, which would provide a massive windfall to the richest US households, and indexing capital gains to inflation, which even the conservative American Enterprise Institute contends "would further distort taxpayer decisions and increase the ability to shelter income from taxation."
Other items in the GOP blueprint include refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with oil seized from Venezuela, blocking federal funds for abortion providers, and a new "excise tax on colleges that allow trans women in sports."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, wasted no time ripping the proposal from the largest right-wing House caucus to pieces.
"After passing the largest health care cut in American history, Republicans are doubling down on a failed agenda that benefits billionaires and giant corporations while ripping away food, healthcare and other basic necessities,” Wyden said. “This legislation will eliminate protections for Americans with preexisting conditions, place more red tape between families and their healthcare, and seize ideological trophies instead of focusing on making life more affordable. Americans will pay a steep price if Republicans move forward with this disastrous agenda.”
Richard Phillips, pensions and tax policy director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), marveled at the GOP loading up a bill supposedly focused on working families with massive giveaways to the wealthiest Americans.
"As part of it's new affordability agenda for the American people the Republican Study Committee reveals its plan to give the wealthiest 0.2% of estates a $281 billion tax break?" he wrote in a post on X.
Chuck Marr, vice president of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, similarly called the GOP blueprint "tone deaf."
"Nothing says attack the affordability crisis working-class people face than Rs calling for eliminating the estate tax for the wealthiest heirs in the country—just months after giving them a $30 million tax free exemption," he wrote.
The GOP's second attempt at a budget reconciliation package comes months after it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a reconciliation package that gave more tax breaks to the rich, but cut Medicaid spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, while also slashing spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by nearly $200 billion over the same period.