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Rights & Justice
Judge Tosses Trump's $10 Billion Wall Street Journal-Murdoch Suit Over Epstein Reporting
The fight seemingly isn't over, with a spokesperson for the president pledging that he will "refile this powerhouse lawsuit," which critics have called part of his war on free speech.
Apr 13, 2026
A Florida-based federal judge on Monday dismissed President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over its reporting on a "bawdy" birthday letter the Republican allegedly gave to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump denies writing the letter or drawing the outline of a naked woman around the text. He sued the journalists behind the July report—Joseph Palazzolo and Khadeeja Safdar—and the newspaper, plus its parent company News Corp, chief executive Robert Thomson, and founder Rupert Murdoch.
The US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform subsequently subpoenaed the Epstein estate for all materials that now-imprisoned co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly compiled for the dead financier's birthday book, including the letter attributed to Trump—and in September, the panel published those documents online.
US District Judge Darrin P. Gayles, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, found on Monday that Trump's "complaint fails to adequately allege actual malice." However, Gayles also gave Trump the opportunity to amend his filing within the next two weeks.
While The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment, a spokesperson for Trump's legal team said in a statement that the president intends to continue the case.
"President Trump will follow Judge Gayles' ruling and guidance to refile this powerhouse lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and all of the other defendants," the spokesperson said. "The president will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in Fake News to mislead the American People."
CNN noted that despite the legal battle, "the 95-year-old Murdoch has maintained a cozy if complicated relationship with the president, including multiple meetings at the White House in recent months."
The suit over the birthday letter to Epstein—whom Trump was publicly friends with in the 1980s and '90s until a reported falling out in the early 2000s—is just part of a sweeping effort by the president and his political enablers "to undermine and chill the most basic freedoms protected under the First Amendment," as the advocacy group Free Press put it in a December analysis.
In addition to the Journal case, examples included Trump's legal battles with the BBC and The New York Times, the White House taking control of the presidential press pool, the administration blocking The Associated Press from the Oval Office over its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, ABC temporarily suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel following comments from Trump's Federal Communications Commission chair, and the Pentagon's legally contested media policy.
Such attacks continue. Last month, as the costs of his unconstitutional war on Iran mounted, Trump floated "treason" charges against media outlets that he accused of reporting false information about the conflict.
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Sanders Leads Launch of 'Worker Power' Movement to Fight 'Status Quo Economics'
“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” Sen. Bernie Sanders warned.
Apr 13, 2026
As Republican policies, union-busting corporations, and the imminent threat of artificial intelligence put unprecedented pressure on the US workforce, Sen. Bernie Sanders headlined Sunday's launch of a movement "to strengthen the labor movement and expand worker power across the country."
Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke at the “Union Now: Building the Labor Movement” rally at Terminal 5 in Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA international president Sara Nelson, and other labor and social movement leaders.
“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” Sanders warned. “If the middle class of this country is going to survive, we must understand that status quo politics and status quo economics is no longer good enough."
LIVE Bernie Sanders Zohran Mamdani UNION NOW Rally in NYC https://t.co/uC6atxCK7N
— Status Coup News (@StatusCoup) April 12, 2026
“It’s absolutely important that all of us here and every American understand that in the ruling class of this country today, there is an extraordinary level of arrogance and cruelty,” the senator said.
"The truth is that the 1% the people on top, people running this country have never, ever had it so good,” Sanders told the crowd. “But the sad reality is that for these people, all that they have is not good enough. They want more and more and more, and they don’t care who they step on to get what they want."
“These guys are extremely, extremely greedy people, and they could care less in terms of what happens to our children, what happens to our parents and our grandparents, and what happens to our environment today," the senator argued.
“One of the goals of the oligarchs and the media that they own is to make ordinary people feel that there is nothing that they can do to shape the future,” he added. “And what we are here today to say to [Elon] Musk and his friends: Go to hell.”
Mamdani, who marked 100 days in office, said: "When we talk about the importance of taking on the crisis of income inequality, we know that the most effective tool to do so is increasing union density. Organizing drives and strikes can, frankly, be lonely work. So Union Now is going to support workers and provide them with more resources, and my administration will stand right alongside them. This moment demands nothing less."
“AI and robots are coming for human jobs," the mayor warned. "Worker protections are being eroded. There are companies that think that exploitation is a viable business model. They are wrong.”
Nelson asserted that “growing union membership and bargaining power is crucial for workers' rights and economic justice.”
“Too often, the boss has all the power to starve workers during a fight," she said. "Union Now will work with unions directly to ensure workers have the means to win."
Brittany Norris, a Delta AFA Organizing Committee member and flight attendant, told the crowd that "when it comes to striking, when it comes to public actions, a lot of those things cost money and it’s a lot of time, dedication, and efforts coming from the workers."
“We continuously hear about the profits... that our industry is making, but then we’re begging for a raise that comes up close to what the cost of living increase is every year,” she added.
Sunday's Union Now launch comes amid Sanders' ongoing "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, which has drawn large crowds across the country, including in so-called "red" states. The rally also follows last year's "Workers Over Billionaires" Labor Day rallies and marches in over 1,000 locations.
The Union Now launch also coincides with growing wealth inequality not only in the United States but around a world in which the richest 10% of the global population own three-quarters of planetary wealth and account for nearly half of all consumer spending.
“If [President Donald] Trump and his fellow oligarchs get their way, we will be living in a society where fewer and fewer people have more and more wealth and more and more power, where democracy will be undermined, where workers will be thrown out on the street with no recourse," Sanders said Sunday. “That is not the America we want for ourselves or for our kids."
“The good news is," he added, "if we stand together and we not let Trump and his friends divide us up, when we stand together and fight for a government that works for all of us, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish."
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'All You Had to Do Was Pay Us Enough to Live,' Said Alleged California Warehouse Arsonist
"Expect to see more of this as people struggle to survive under our decaying capitalist system," warned one observer.
Apr 11, 2026
The 29-year-old employee accused of burning down a paper products warehouse in southern California was allegedly furious over pay and working conditions at the facility and compared himself Luigi Mangione, the anti-capitalist folk hero to many Americans who allegedly assassinated a health insurance CEO.
Chamel Abdulkarim is facing federal and state felony charges in connection with a blaze that tore through the 1.2 million square-foot Kimberly-Clark warehouse in Ontario, San Bernardino County, shortly after 12:30 am on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Times reported that 20 other people were working in the facility, which is roughly the size of 11 city blocks, at the time. There are no reports of any injuries.
According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), Abdulkarim uploaded videos to Facebook showing him setting fires in the warehouse and saying, “If you’re not going to pay us enough to fucking live or afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this shit."
Abdulkarim allegedly said in texts and phone calls that he cost Kimberly-Clark "billions," adding, "All you had to do was pay us enough to live."
"All you had to do was pay us enough to live".On April 7, 2026, a 29-year-old worker named Chamel Abdulkarim was arrested on arson-related charges after a massive, six-alarm fire destroyed a 1.2-million-square-foot Kimberly-Clark warehouse in Ontario, California.
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— Raider (@iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social) April 8, 2026 at 6:33 PM
The DOJ said the blaze caused "approximately $500 million in damage."
Prosecutors said that after starting the fires, Abdulkarim called a friend and said that “a lot of people are going to understand” what he did, just like when “Luigi popped that mutherfucker,” a reference to Mangione's alleged murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York in 2024.
Shareholders of Kimberly-Clark—which makes products including Kleenex tissues, Scott and Cottonelle toilet paper, Huggies diapers, and Kotex feminine care products—enjoyed profits topping $2.0 billion last year. Company chairman and CEO Michael Hsu made about $15.3 in compensation. That's more than 300 times as much as the average Kimberly-Clark employee earned, according to the AFL-CIO.
Critics of capitalism have long argued that the yawning chasm between rich and poor in the United States is a recipe for disaster that could far exceed individual acts of resistance, if the crisis is not soon addressed. However, under President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, wealth inequality continues to increase at what many experts argue is an unsustainable rate.
Many leftists took to social media to praise the blaze, with some, like the Rev. Oliver Dean Snow of Mothman Ministries, comparing the arson attack to historical acts of radical resistance like the 1884 New Straitsville Mine Fire, in which striking union miners in Ohio pushed burning coal cars deep into a mine, causing an underground inferno that not only permanently shut down operations, but is believed to still be burning to this day, 141 years later.
Idk why Chamel Abdulkarim isn’t being hailed the same way Luigi Mangione was. Especially by Appalachians. Bro did something based and literally hurt NO ONE. Only thing that got hurt was same toilet paper. Some of yalls ancestors would be ashamed of you.ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org/archives/216
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— Preacher from the Black Lagoon (@revpoppop.bsky.social) April 10, 2026 at 12:46 PM
"Expect to see more of this as people struggle to survive under our decaying capitalist system," said one popular socialist account on X.
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Suspect Arrested After Molotov Cocktail Thrown at Home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
A 20-year-old suspect was found at the company's headquarters, where he was threatening to burn down the building.
Apr 10, 2026
A suspect was arrested in San Francisco Friday after being accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of Sam Altman, the CEO of the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI.
The 20-year-old man was found at the OpenAI headquarters about three miles away from Altman's home, where he was threatening to burn down the building, San Francisco police said.
The device the suspect threw onto Altman's property in the Russian Hill neighborhood caused a fire on the exterior gate. It was unclear whether Altman and his family were at home.
The suspect was in custody Friday, with charges pending.
Altman's company and other companies have been under fire as AI has expanded rapidly at President Donald Trump's urging, with the president issuing an executive order attacking states' ability to regulate the industry.
Experts have warned the expansion of generative AI threatens jobs and democracy, with political campaigns already using the technology to create fraudulent media in advertisements.
Massive, energy-sucking AI data centers have also been blamed for higher household electricity bills and water consumption.
Protesters have rallied against Altman's company for agreeing to provide its technology to the Department of Defense.
In November, The New York Times reported, a person who had once been associated with the anti-AI group Stop AI "expressed interest in causing physical harm to OpenAI employees," causing the company to lock down its headquarters.
On Friday, Stop AI condemned the attack on Altman's house and emphasized that the group "seeks to protect human life."
"We do not condone any violence whatsoever," said the group. "We pray everyone involved in this situation puts aside violence and finds peace, and we continue to hope the AI industry stops the development of frontier AI systems in the interest of public safety and the preservation of humanity. To the best of our knowledge, this incident did not involve anyone who has ever been associated with our group. And this action is wholly inconsistent with our values."
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