SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Taruna Godric, 416-916-5202 ext 414
smcommunincations@therealnews.com
With the US financial bailout in total of more than $8 trillion, experts warn of a looming economic depression. In an internal memo regarding recent "unprecedented" bailout attempts by global financial authorities, Citigroup Chief Technical Strategist, Tom Fitzpatrick says "the world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done".
Peter Schiff, economist and president of Euro Pacific Capital suspects that the US
government's attempt to promote consumer spending by excess printing of paper currency will lead to an "inflationary depression". He goes on to say that the current financial situation is a result of the government's "years of reckless spending" and is a consequence of a service sector economy dependent on global borrowing.
US Federal debt, including unfunded government programs and obligations, has reached over $53 trillion or roughly half a million dollars per US household. The printing of more money, Schiff says, "debases the value of our savings, debases the value of our wages and prices rise". If the US dollar is to be preserved, he suspects that there will be "some radical and painful changes in the way we run monetary policies and the government".
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said last week of the current government financial intervention, "if not handled correctly, today's financial crisis will become tomorrow's human crisis...with potentially devastating consequences for all".
Watch the full story on The Real News Network
The Real News Network is a television news and documentary network focused on providing independent and uncompromising journalism. Our staff, in collaboration with courageous journalists around the globe, will investigate, report and debate stories on the critical issues of our times. We are viewer supported and do not accept advertising, government or corporate funding.
The latest strike brought the total death toll from the Trump administration's illegal boat bombing spree to at least 163.
The US military said Wednesday that it killed four people in its latest attack on a vessel accused—without evidence—of smuggling drugs through routes in the Caribbean, bringing the total death toll from the Trump administration's illegal boat bombing spree to at least 163.
The US Southern Command said in a statement posted to social media that as part of an effort to apply "total systemic friction on the cartels," it "conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations." Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, wrote in response, "That's a lot of words for murder."
Human rights organizations, UN experts, and legal scholars have condemned the US boat bombings, which began last September, as flagrant violations of international law. Earlier this month, following a previous US attack on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, Amnesty International reiterated its position that the strikes "constitute extrajudicial killings, a form of murder."
The boat bombings have continued apace even as they've faded from the headlines amid the Trump administration's illegal war on Iran. The US has carried out nearly 50 separate strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific over the past six months.
As with the war on Iran, which lawmakers did not authorize, Republicans in the US Congress have blocked resolutions aimed at preventing American forces from carrying out additional strikes on vessels in international waters.
Wednesday's bombing came a day after a New York Times investigation found that a strike carried out as part of a joint operation by the US and Ecuadorian militaries "appears to have destroyed a cattle and dairy farm, not a drug trafficking compound," as the Trump administration claimed.
"We are bombing Narco Terrorists on land as well," Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted earlier this month.
US Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in response to the Times reporting that "this is deeply abhorrent, and raises questions about the intelligence used to justify the administration's boat strikes in the Caribbean."
"Many of us have warned it is likely innocent people are being killed based on dubious evidence," Beyer added. "Those concerns now appear to be justified."
"Courthouse arrests must stop immediately," said congressional candidate Brad Lander.
US congressional candidate Brad Lander is demanding a congressional investigation and civil rights actions on behalf of hundreds of people who have been "illegally abducted" at immigration courts across the country after the US Department of Justice admitted it has been relying on a lie put forward by federal immigration officials as it defended agents' arrests at courthouses.
Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote a memo on Wednesday to a judge who last September ruled that courthouse arrests could continue, based on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guidance which indicated that "ICE officers or agents may conduct civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information" that a person eligible for deportation would be present at a court.
That guidance from May 27 of last year "does not and has never applied to civil immigration enforcement actions in or near Executive Office for Immigration Review immigration courts," reads Clayton's letter.
"The undersigned were specifically informed by ICE that the 2025 ICE Guidance applied to immigration courthouse arrests," Clayton wrote. "This regrettable error appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error."
The letter represented a "jaw-dropping admission" by the DOJ, said New York University law professor and Just Security editor Ryan Goodman.
The ICE guidance has been used to underpin numerous arrests at courthouses for more than a year—those of the husband of Monica Moreta-Galarza, who was violently thrown to the ground by an ICE agent when she protested the detention at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City; Dylan Lopez Contreras, a Bronx high school student who was arrested when he showed up for a legal asylum hearing last May and was only released this month; and others across the country whose names and stories haven't made national headlines.
Clayton said his office became aware of the far-reaching error on Tuesday when it received an email issuing a "reminder that the May 27, 2025 Guidance does not apply to Executive Office for Immigration Review (Immigration) courts, regardless of their location.”
The US attorney wrote that Castel's opinion from last September, in which the judge ruled ICE's guidance clearly allowed arrests at immigration courts, "will need to be reconsidered and re-briefed for the court to adjudicate Plaintiffs’ APA [Administrative Procedure Act] claims against ICE on the merits."
Clayton issued the filing as part of an ongoing case in which immigrant rights groups sued over the Trump administration's arrests at routine immigration court hearings.
That case, said Goodman, is now one of more than 90 that Just Security has been tracking in which a court either "determined the Trump administration submitted false information or the administration admitted it."
Amy Belsher, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, told NBC News that the revelation about the ICE guidance is "yet again another example of ICE’s brazen disregard for the lives of immigrants in this country."
"It is now clearer than ever that there is no justification for ambushing and arresting people who are showing up to court," Belsher said.
Lander, the former city comptroller who is running to represent New York's 10th Congressional District, called Clayton's filing "a genuine bombshell, even by Trumpian standards."
"ICE has been lying for a year," said Lander in a video posted on social media. "Not just to you and me and to asylum seekers, but to courts and to prosecutors."
We just caught ICE in a bombshell lie.
They do NOT have the authorization they've claimed to arrest immigrants at 26 Federal Plaza.
Courthouse arrests must end now. There's never been a stronger case for why this rogue, lawless agency should be abolished. pic.twitter.com/MXIoJetffZ
— Brad Lander (@bradlander) March 25, 2026
"Courthouse arrests must stop immediately," he said. "It was time to abolish ICE a year ago. It surely is today."
"The US war in Iran is going so badly that it’s restarted the US war in Iraq."
The Iraqi government on Wednesday issued a scathing statement accusing the US of bombing a medical clinic situated in a military base west of Baghdad, killing seven members of Iraq's armed forces and wounding more than a dozen others.
Sabah Al-Numan, a spokesperson for the Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani, called the attack an act of "heinous aggression" and a "crime." The US said it is "aware of the reports" of the strike on the clinic at Habbaniyah military base, but denied targeting the facility. Asked about the strike during a briefing on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that she would "have to check with the Pentagon on that."
The Iraqi prime minister's office said the nation's government and military "possess the right to respond by all available means in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations," calling the clinic attack a "violation of international law and the established norms governing relations between states" and warning that it "undermines the relationship between the peoples of Iraq and the United States of America."
Iraq's immediate response to the attack was to summon the US Embassy's chargé d’affaires in Baghdad and deliver "a strongly worded official note of protest." The prime minister's office said it also intends to file a formal complaint with the United Nations Security Council.
"The US war in Iran is going so badly that it’s restarted the US war in Iraq," Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the US-based Center for International Policy, wrote in response to the developments.
Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged during a press conference last week that American attack helicopters "have been striking against Iranian-aligned militia groups" in Iraq "to make sure that we suppress any threat in Iraq against US forces or US interests. The US is known to have roughly 2,500 troops stationed in Iraq, which American forces invaded with catastrophic consequences in 2003.
The bombing of the Iraqi clinic came as the US-Israeli war on Iran—and the massive regional conflagration sparked by the illegal assault—headed toward its fifth week with no end in sight.
On the first day of the war, an elementary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab was bombed, killing around 170 people—mostly young children. Trump administration officials have publicly denied targeting civilians—and the US president initially blamed Iran for the school bombing—but preliminary findings by the US military reportedly found that American forces were responsible for the attack.