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authoritarianism
Rights Groups Demand Türkiye End Attack on LGBTQ+ Community, Free Detained Activists
"When authorities abuse the criminal justice system to silence lawful expression, they undermine the rule of law for everyone," said Human Rights Watch.
Sep 15, 2026
Amnesty International on Tuesday joined Turkish and other global human rights advocates urging the Justice and Development Party government of longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to end its persecution campaign against Türkiye's LGBTQ+ community and immediately free the scores of activists arrested during the ongoing crackdown.
Police in Istanbul detained at least dozens more demonstrators outside the Çağlayan Courthouse on Tuesday as the protesters demanded the release of the more than 60 people arrested across 15 provinces during and after recent raids on LGBTQ+ rights groups.
Turkish Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said the operation, dubbed "My Family Is Safe," targeted 162 people, nine organizations, and 13 businesses.
“We will show no tolerance for any criminal organization targeting the institution of the family, the future of our youth, and social order,” Gürlek declared at the start of the operation.
More than 180 websites and social media accounts belonging to LGBTQ+ organizations and activists, journalists, media outlets, and others have been blocked or restricted, including Amnesty International Türkiye’s X account.
“This appalling escalation in Türkiye’s crackdown amounts to a full-scale assault on LGBTI rights and those who defend them," Amnesty International deputy regional director for Europe Esther Major said Tuesday in a statement. "The relentless raids, arrests, and demonization of LGBTI people under the spurious guise of ‘protecting the families’ demonstrates why defending LGBTI rights in Türkiye is more important than ever."
“This sweeping crackdown, in which scores of people have been arrested, has nothing to do with protecting families and everything to do with further harming and stigmatizing a community that has battled decades of discrimination and intimidation," Major added.
“This appalling escalation in Türkiye’s crackdown amounts to a full-scale assault on LGBTI rights and those who defend them."
Amnesty is one of dozens of groups that signed a declaration calling on the Turkish government to "stop criminalizing LGBTI+ organizations and human rights defenders."
Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted Monday on social media that "the arrests are allegedly for offenses such as 'obscenity,' prostitution, and drug use, effectively conflating defense of LGBT rights with criminal conduct—all under the pretext of a government campaign to 'protect families.'"
"In fact the arrests have nothing to do with making families safer," HRW said. "Instead, they weaponize the rhetoric of 'family values' to pursue discrimination, stigma, and state repression. Everyone in Türkiye should be concerned: When authorities abuse the criminal justice system to silence lawful expression, they undermine the rule of law for everyone."
"The government should end its crackdown on LGBT rights groups, immediately release detained activists, and end discriminatory targeting of LGBT people and their advocates," the group added.
At the United Nations, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Andrea Bolaos Vargas said on Sunday that she was "deeply concerned by reports of mass raids and detention of LGBTIQ+ human rights defenders across Türkiye, alongside searches of LGBTIQ+ associations and seizure of digital equipment."
"I urge the authorities to ensure the immediate release of all those detained solely for their legitimate human rights work and to guarantee that LGBTIQ+ defenders and associations can exercise their rights without criminalization, intimidation, or reprisals," she added.
Turkish rights groups and activists were the first to condemn the crackdown. A coalition of more than 110 women's groups issued a joint statement against the arrests, noting they came on the anniversary of the September 12, 1980 military coup and subsequent evisceration of human rights.
"Today, on the anniversary of September 12th, we woke up with reports of the arrest of activists and independent rights defenders from LGBTI+ associations for the LGBTI+ movement," the groups wrote. "These operations are nothing more than the actual implementation of efforts to criminalize LGBTI+ organizing."
"It is not a crime to make and organize policies on gender identity and sexual orientation," they continued. "As women, we are against these operations, which are carried out under the name of 'keeping the family safe.'"
“We know that pressures on our bodies, our lives, our identities, and the right to organize are part of the same authoritarian politics," the groups added. "Let our detainees be released immediately, and the raids on LGBTI+ organizations, access barriers, and criminalization policies be put down. We, as women's organizations, are in solidarity with the LGBTI+ movement; we will not give up our joint struggle against male-dominated and authoritarian policies!"
Numerous officials in Western nations also condemned the crackdown, including Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Michael O'Flaherty, who on Tuesday asserted that “mere references to ‘family values’ or ‘protection of children’ cannot serve as legal justification for human rights restrictions."
Leftist Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni said Monday: “I condemn the unacceptable wave of pressure targeting LGBTI+ people and organizations in Türkiye. We demand that these operations be terminated immediately and that everyone who has been detained will be released."
"We will not take a step back from defending civil rights in the face of attacks on LGBTI [people] in Türkiye and around the world," he added. "Barcelona will always be with [them]."
“Mere references to ‘family values’ or ‘protection of children’ cannot serve as legal justification for human rights restrictions."
Under Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has undergone a major shift from relative tolerance of LGBTQ+ public life toward increasingly systematic state repression.
While homosexuality—which was decriminalized by the Ottoman Empire in 1858—remains legal, the government has increasingly used restrictions on assembly, speech, civil society, and public expression to marginalize LGBTQ+ people. The AKP is currently weighing proposals that could criminalize LGBTQ+ identity and activism outright.
Erdoğan has repeatedly demonized LGBTQ+ people, especially during elections, during which he has used homophobia in his appeals to an overwhelmingly Muslim electorate.
As one protester outside Çağlayan Courthouse told The Associated Press on Tuesday, “We are going through a period where there is an attempt by the ruling power to portray LGBT+ people as the cause of every problem in this society."
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Demagogue Trump Makes Supporters 'Pledge' to 'Cheat Like Hell' in 2026 Midterms
"Having people pledge allegiance to himself is the most on-brand Trump thing to do," said one progressive critic. "And it shows how cult-like the base is that they did it."
Sep 11, 2026
Far-right President Donald Trump on Thursday night asked his Republican supporters at a party convention event to raise their right hands and vow fealty directly to him in a mocking version of the "pledge of allegiance" in which he also called on them to "cheat like hell" at the ballot box in November in order to secure a midterm win against Democrats.
"Please right your right hand," Trump told attendees at the first-ever GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Texas.
"I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States—that loves us so much he can't even breathe—that I will go out with my family, my friends, I'll do it any way—I don't care if I'm registered or not, I'm going to try to cheat like hell like [the Democrats] do... there's never been bigger cheaters, they don't care."
President Trump led his Republican Party in a mock pledge during their political convention in Dallas, telling them to ‘cheat like hell’ and vote whether they're ‘registered or not’ in November's midterm elections https://t.co/JgD3J8BdV9 pic.twitter.com/tCDKAi3FBo
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 11, 2026
"Having people pledge allegiance to himself is the most on-brand Trump thing to do," said Jonathan Cohn, political director of the grassroots advocacy group Progressive Mass. "And it shows how cult-like the base is that they did it."
Trump has built the second half of his political career around lies related to false claims of voter fraud and stolen elections. With the midterms less than two months away, and early voting starting soon in some states, the GOP fears losing both the House and Senate because of a crippled economy and historically low approval numbers for the president.
While the president is not on the ballot, Trump has asked his base to pretend that he is in order to help Republican prospects in races nationwide. However, not all political observers are convinced that Trump will be the turnout booster for his party that he claims to be.
In his speech on Thursday—a night after he said that he would issue $5,000 checks to every US adult if the Republicans win in the midterms—Trump told the crowd that those who don't vote this year would "go to hell" as punishment.
"Night One: Trump offers $5k bribes to get people to vote for Republicans," said Amanda Carpenter, a writer for the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy United. "Night Two: Trump tells his supporters they'll go to hell if they don't vote. Sounds like it's going well!"
" Donald Trump just replaced the Pledge of Allegiance with a pledge of allegiance to himself," noted Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. "This November, the choice is yours on the ballot: America or Trump."
"Bro had his supporters raise their right hands and pledge to vote for him. Then told them they'd go to hell if they don't," said one online commentator.
"This shit is literally beyond parody!" exclaimed another.
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'America Belongs to the People': No Kings Coalition Plans Oct. 17 Early Voting Action
"The cost of our groceries, our utility bills, our healthcare—all of it is shaped by the people we elect and the decisions they make, which is why our participation matters," said two coalition members.
Sep 08, 2026
"On October 17th, No Kings: Vote Early will show the billionaire elites attempting to destroy our country that We the People have the power by mobilizing turnout to make our elections too big for the evils of fascism and oligarchy to rig," according to Sarah Parker, a spokesperson for the 50501 movement.
The movement is part of the No Kings Coalition that has held a trio of protests across the United States since President Donald Trump returned to power last year.
Now, with the midterm elections less than two months away, the coalition is planning a fourth day of action. Parker, who's also executive director of Voices of Florida Fund, declared Tuesday that "the people, united, will never be defeated."
The first round of protests was held in June 2025, on Trump's birthday. The ACLU's chief political and advocacy officer, Deirdre Schifeling, said at the time that "No Kings is really about standing up for democracy, standing up for people's rights and liberties in this country, and against the gross abuse of power that we've seen consistently from the Trump administration."
As with those first demonstrations, millions of people took to US streets again last October. Then, Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, told Common Dreams that "what we're seeing from this administration is authoritarian slip. We are seeing them attack judges, attack nonprofits, trying to attack the media, stifle First Amendment protected speech, and arrest sitting members of Congress for doing their oversight" of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The third action, in March, followed ICE's deadly invasion of Minnesota's Twin Cities, and Trump launching his illegal war on Iran. The three themes of those demonstrations, said Indivisible co-executive director Leah Greenberg, were "no kings, no ICE, no war."
Her co-executive director, Ezra Levin, said Tuesday that "since the first No Kings in June of last year, millions of people have demonstrated they are not afraid and they will not bow to any would-be American king. We've sent that message loud and clear—but we're not just sending a message with this next No Kings."
"We're taking back power for the people using our constitutional right to organize and our constitutional right to vote," Levin stressed. "While corrupt politicians and elected officials line their pockets, families across America are struggling to put food on the table and gas in the car. No Kings: Vote Early is about making sure every eligible voter has a plan to vote, knows their options, and is ready to make their voice heard."
Schifeling, from the ACLU, noted that "this year, voters are facing coordinated efforts from their own government to make it harder for eligible voters to vote and have their vote counted. That's why this next chapter of No Kings is focused on encouraging all voters to make a plan to vote as early as possible."
"In a democracy, elected officials are supposed to be accountable to their constituents; voting is one of the best ways to ensure they are," she continued. "No Kings will be on the ground in communities across the country making sure that all eligible voters can and do vote."
Public Citizen's Gilbert said that "the importance of as many people as possible voting early cannot be overstated."
"Early voting can make the difference between voting and not voting for people who are traveling, who are working on Election Day, who need options for childcare while voting, and more," she highlighted. "Voting is democracy in action at a time when authoritarianism and oligarchy are looming large, and standing together to cast our vote is one of the most patriotic things we can do right now."
In addition to Trump's authoritarian policies, US voters are contending with high prices tied to the president's policies, from the Iran War to his legally dubious tariffs. Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown, co-founders of Black Voters Matter Fund, noted that "the cost of our groceries, our utility bills, our healthcare—all of it is shaped by the people we elect and the decisions they make, which is why our participation matters."
"America belongs to the people—not to kings, billionaires, or politicians," Albright and Brown emphasized.
Other coalition members include the American Federation of Teachers, MoveOn, State Voices, and Voto Latino, whose executive director, Beatriz Lopez, vowed that "on October 17th, we will show up, vote early, and vote like our future depends on it because American democracy has no kings."
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Staying Grounded When the Earth Cracks: On Political Focus in an Age of Overstimulation
Surviving these times requires more than just consuming information or reacting to every crisis. It requires building the discipline to focus.
Sep 06, 2026
There’s a question that has become almost unavoidable in movement spaces over the last several years: “What is giving you hope right now?
Usually, the question is asked with good intentions—a way to remind people of their why in the middle of authoritarianism rising, civil rights rolling back, endless surveillance, and the noise of it all.
I often asked myself, “What is giving me hope?” because people I deeply respect pushed many of us to think seriously about hope, radical imagination, and our responsibility to believe that another world is possible. And I still deeply believe in the importance of those things.
My father once told me that the thing that kept him focused while incarcerated for 24 years was the hope and vision that one day he would be reconnected to me. I’ve watched my mother make miracles happen and find ways to provide because of the hope and vision she had for me to have a better life than she did.
I’ve realized that long-term discipline requires a certain level of alignment through rest, quiet, and reassessing our personal intersections of passion, curiosity, capacity, skill, and impact.
But I’ve also found myself becoming a little irritated by the question, even wondering whether the way many of us talk about hope in the first world can become disconnected from the actual conditions so much of humanity has endured throughout history. The more I learn, the more I realize that so many people continue struggling under conditions far worse than what many of us can imagine, and yet they still endure and fight.
Just this week, I was reading I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, which focuses on the organizing traditions of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. In one section, a young organizer from the 1960s explains that every single time he got up to organize Black people in the South, he had to seriously consider the possibility that he could be stabbed, beaten by white mobs, or lynched.
And yet, they organized anyway.
I think about Palestinians enduring genocide and starvation and still fighting. I think about political prisoners who have effectively been abandoned by much of the public and are still fighting.
At some point, I started realizing that hope alone isn’t what’s carrying people through history. Or at least not entirely. Sometimes people continue struggling because they believe they can win. Sometimes they continue because they feel a responsibility to the people around them. Sometimes they fight simply because their independence and ability to live self-determined lives are worth dying for. I still struggle with these things, and my thinking is constantly adapting. Still, I now spend a lot of my time thinking about discipline, focus, and endurance, especially in this political moment.
I have dealt with actual motion sickness since childhood. But I think many of us are dealing with social and political motion sickness right now. We are trying to simultaneously process global crises, local crises, personal crises, historical crises—you name it. Eventually, your nervous system starts collapsing under the weight of it all
What keeps me grounded is not trying to respond to everything, but instead trying my best to stay focused. Paying attention to what is actually within my control. Committing deeply to a set of responsibilities instead of scattering my energy across a thousand directions and not doing anything well.
And for me, that focus has required that I ask difficult questions about where I actually have the capacity to contribute in meaningful ways, and also if my contribution is actually building toward something constructive. I’ve realized that long-term discipline requires a certain level of alignment through rest, quiet, and reassessing our personal intersections of passion, curiosity, capacity, skill, and impact. Otherwise, over time, it becomes much harder to remain grounded, focused, and useful to the people around you.
Without moments of stillness, it becomes difficult to hear yourself clearly enough to know what you actually think, feel, or believe beneath all the noise. Enough space to actually feel what is happening in your body. And creating a little space to process those questions you have been avoiding.
I’m finding that those moments of quiet are helping me see the world, and myself, more clearly.
Part of what prompted me to write this is that I often get asked some version of the same question: “How do you hold all of this?” The work. The reading. The organizing. Being an executive director, being present for family and my daughter, and trying to stay informed about everything happening in the world. And honestly, I’ve been trying to struggle through that question myself. The truth is, there is no perfect answer, and I get it wrong all the damn time.
Building the capacity to endure is a process, like anything else. Part of the reason I’m able to hold the level of responsibility that I currently do is because of conditioning. That foundation was built years ago as a collegiate athlete, structured around 5:00 am workouts, study sessions, classes, two-a-day practices, late nights, and early mornings. It was an environment that forced me to learn how to push through discomfort, organize my time, and function while exhausted.
Today, that same discipline and structure have simply been redirected toward movement work, political education, writing, relationships, and community. But the capacity itself wasn’t built in a year; it required nearly two decades of routine, failure, and adjustment.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do think I’m slowly learning that surviving these times requires more than just consuming information or reacting to every crisis. It requires building the discipline to focus, the patience to grow over time, and the willingness to create enough silence in your life so you can hear yourself think again.
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ICE Hired Unqualified Goons After 'Unprecedented Lowering of Standards': Whistleblower
Immigration and Customs Enforcement "chose... to be more convenient rather than thorough," even though "there was a potential to put lives at risk," said the whistleblower.
Sep 03, 2026
A whistleblower is claiming that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dangerously lowered its hiring standards for new recruits, who were given final job offers without undergoing even preliminary vetting.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the whistleblower, who has worked at ICE for 17 years, filed a complaint in August 2025 with the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security that sounded alarms about what he described as an "unprecedented lowering of standards" for hiring.
According to the complaint, applicants were offered jobs before they they even passed fingerprint and identity checks, which the whistleblower said created "grave national security risks" for the agency.
In an interview with the Times, the whistleblower said that ICE "chose... to be more convenient rather than thorough," even though "there was a potential to put lives at risk and jeopardize national security."
This is at least the second whistleblower complaint to raise concerns about the deterioration of standards at ICE.
In February, former ICE lawyer Ryan Schwank alleged in a complaint that he "received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank also alleged that "the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken," which he warned "can and will get people killed."
ICE's hiring standards came under scrutiny this summer after it was revealed that ICE agent David Brouillette, who fatally shot a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, had a lengthy history of allegedly abusive behavior.
As noted by the Times, Brouillette was even rejected for a job at the police department in Hallowell, Maine because he had "too many red flags."
The ICE hiring surge came shortly after passage of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated more than $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement operations. ICE last year said it would use some of the money to hire 10,000 additional agents, more than double the number of agents who had previously worked at the department.
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100+ Civil Society Groups Condemn Trump Attack on Democratic Establishment Think Tank
"We stand with the Center for American Progress, not in agreement with every view they hold, but in steadfast support for their rights to voice those views freely and without political retribution."
Sep 01, 2026
A diverse coalition of around 150 organizations on Tuesday collectively spoke out against US President Donald Trump's recent attack on the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with ties to the Democratic Party establishment.
The Republican president, through one of his lawyers, threatened to sue the center last month over its July report concluding that there was no evidence his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC did anything to reduce violent crime.
"Since our nation's founding, the rights to free speech, association, and the press have been the bedrock on which American democracy has thrived," begins the coalition's statement, spearheaded by Nonprofits Together. "We reaffirm, as has each generation before us, our unqualified commitment to the First Amendment and its foundational protections."
"In so doing, we stand in strong solidarity with the Center for American Progress (CAP), a nonpartisan think tank, and its right to publish expert analysis on the impact of the Trump administration's—or any administration's—policies," it continues. "The free exchange of ideas—including ideas that are inconvenient to those in power—is critical for Americans to understand the nature and impact of the actions of their government."
Trump's legal attack on CAP is just "the latest salvo in the administration's ongoing efforts to suppress the speech of organizations that challenge their policies, defend the rule of law, and protect civil rights and vulnerable communities," the coalition noted.
Other authoritarian attacks—as detailed last December in the Free Press report "Chokehold: Donald Trump's War on Free Speech & the Need for Systemic Resistance"—include the White House taking control of the presidential press pool, legal action such as Trump's lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and the The Wall Street Journal over reporting on the president's ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the administration working to deport foreign scholars and journalists who criticize US policy.
First it was law firms, then universities, and now Trump has threatened a research organization in an attempt to silence them.We're proud to join 150+ organizations standing up for @americanprogress.bsky.social and the First Amendment. Read the full statement: nptogether.org/press/cap-st...
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— American Oversight (@weareoversight.bsky.social) September 1, 2026 at 12:14 PM
Stressing that there are often disagreements "even within think tanks," the coalition warned Tuesday that attempting to silence sources of information "degrades our free exchange of ideas, and risks leaving only distortions in the public square."
"This is infinitely more damaging to our democratic ideals when done for purely political purposes," the groups argued. "There are few issues more fundamental to the First Amendment than the right of an independent organization to publish evidence-based analysis of a government policy and how it is or is not working."
"This is not about ideology or partisanship," the organizations continued. "This is true regardless of who is in power, and who is issuing public critiques of that power. We stand with the Center for American Progress, not in agreement with every view they hold, but in steadfast support for their rights to voice those views freely and without political retribution."
The signatories range from environmental, labor, and legal groups to those focused on faith, housing, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedom, and more. They include the ACLU, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Drug Policy Alliance, Economic Policy Institute, Giffords, Greenpeace USA, Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible, National Education Association, Oxfam America, Public Citizen, and Union of Concerned Scientists.
“The free exchange of ideas—including ideas that are inconvenient to those in power—is critical for Americans to understand the nature and impact of the actions of their government.” CAC stands with @americanprogress.bsky.social: nptogether.org/press/cap-st...
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— CAC (@myconstitution.bsky.social) September 1, 2026 at 11:30 AM
CAP was founded in 2003 by John Podesta, who has served in various roles under former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. The center's current president, Neera Tanden, has also worked for key party leaders. In response to Trump's threat last month, she emphasized that the think tank "is an independent, nonpartisan research organization, and our work is grounded in rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis."
Blasting the threatened lawsuit as "baseless" and "a transparent attempt to silence us," Tanden pledged that "we will neither cower nor bend in the face of it."
"In America, profound disagreements over public policy are resolved through robust public debate, not through threats or intimidation," she added. "Independent data, evidence, and analysis are essential to that debate. Efforts to silence independent research because its findings are unwelcome by an administration or president should alarm every American."
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'Artificially Fabricated Insanity': Trump Is Nuts—and Makes Us Nutty Too
Is Trump insane? Are those who believe Trump’s artificially fabricated world insane? Are they making the rest of us insane?
Aug 31, 2026
I still come across people who believe Trump won the 2020 election, that the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an act of patriotism, that Trump’s subsequent indictments and felonies were Biden’s work, that most immigrants are criminals, that Democrats are evil, that Jews are trying to replace white Christians born in America, that Muslims can’t be trusted, that a significant amount of voting is fraudulent, that we’re winning the war against Iran, that the economy has never been as good, that climate change is a hoax, that Canada poses a threat to the United States and it’s only fair for Lake Ontario to be renamed Lake America.
To label these people “deluded” is to overlook an entire world created by Trump and his assistants, Cabinet secretaries, “spokespeople,” other political appointees, Republican enablers in Congress and state legislatures, and billionaire accomplices in the media (Musk, Murdoch, Pichai, Bezos, Zuckerberg, the Ellisons) — all of whom have reinforced Trump’s “artificially fabricated insanity,” as the philosopher Hannah Arendt once termed the technique of totalitarian tyrants.
Google, for example, just updated its Maps application to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” ** (It’s already relabeled the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”)
Totalitarian movements, Arendt wrote, succeed not by convincing people of a specific lie but by creating a consistent, logical fictional world that defies ordinary common sense and human experience.
Which raises the questions that a growing number of Americans are asking: Is Trump insane? Are those who believe Trump’s artificially fabricated world insane? Are they making the rest of us insane?
I remember during the Biden administration when a panel of medical experts — the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — recommended that doctors screen all adult patients under 65 for depression and “anxiety disorders.” The advisory group said the guidance was intended to deal with a rise in mental health disorders that were going undetected and untreated.
The advice highlighted the extraordinary stress levels that have plagued Americans in recent years, especially since Trump and his enablers and accomplices have come to power. Lori Pbert, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, who served on the task force, called mental health disorders “a crisis in this country.”
But maybe we need to stop thinking about anxiety and depression as “disorders” and start regarding them as rational responses to a society that’s become ever more disordered under Trump, and to an economy that’s been leaving so many behind.
Sane Americans are outraged by Trump’s continuous lies, terrified by his attacks on our democracy, upset by his arbitrary renaming and rearranging of our reality, angry about his brutality toward immigrants in our communities, and furious at his encouragement of homophobia, transphobia, and racism. They’re also concerned about the soaring costs of living and growing insecurity of jobs.
Let me be clear: Trump is out of his gourd. He’s losing all connection to reality. His lies are becoming more brazen. His statements about Canada, his war in Iran, the economy, and immigrants, all increasingly bizarre.
But his MAGA movement is just about over. His polls are in the cellar. Many of his followers now see through his lies. “It is in the moment of defeat that the inherent weakness of totalitarian propaganda becomes visible,” Arendt wrote. At such point, the followers of tyrants “quietly give up the movement as a bad bet.”
Yes, of course, we need better access to mental-heath care. We also need better wages, more job security, and stronger safety nets.
Perhaps even more important to the mental well-being of most Americans, we need an administration and media that don’t promote artificially fabricated insanity but that consistently and reliably tell Americans the whole truth.
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'Embarrassing': Google Maps Renames 'Lake Ontario' as 'Lake America' in US
The name change followed President Donald Trump's executive order and "served as a reminder that billionaires will always side with authoritarians, because authoritarians will always protect billionaires at the expense of democracy and the working class."
Aug 30, 2026
Tech giant Google faced widespread criticism over the weekend for becoming the first major online map provider to change the name of "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" for its US users, after President Donald Trump ordered the name change in an executive order on Thursday.
Google presented the decision as a procedural one in its statement on Saturday:
The US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) has formally changed the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" in the United States. Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the US, people using Maps in the US will see "Lake America," those in Canada will continue to see "Lake Ontario," and those outside of the US and Canada will see both names. These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.
However, advocates, lawmakers, and commenters saw the shift as another example of Big Tech in general, and Google in particular, caving to Trump's whims. Notably, the CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, attended Trump's inauguration with a host of other Silicon Valley moguls.
"This is so embarrassing for @Google and served as a reminder that billionaires will always side with authoritarians, because authoritarians will always protect billionaires at the expense of democracy and the working class," Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, wrote on social media.
Zero integrity over at @Google.
Resign, @sundarpichai.
Fuck you, @googlemaps. pic.twitter.com/ERxPc5sZ88
— Killed by Google (@killedbygoogle) August 30, 2026
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) threatened the company with congressional questioning for its capitulation, writing on social media: "Hey @Google, how about an option for thinking people vs. cultish sheep? I don’t wanna have to see your brown lips from Trump. How about calling it what it is? Don’t forget, when the Majority changes in the House and Senate, you might have some answering to do. Correction. WILL."
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), in response to another social media post about the change, wrote sarcastically, "That's definitely going to make food more affordable."
Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, asked, "Is Google really so terrified of Trump that it has to play along with his childishness?"
Is Google really so terrified of Trump that it has to play along with his childishness? pic.twitter.com/tHOrwJoiCy
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) August 30, 2026
Trump biographer Seth Abramson chastised the company, writing, "Thing #1 that you *do not do* for a psychopath: appease them."
While Google was the first digital map provider to make the change, it will not be the last, according to Wired, which reported that Apple and Bing are expected to follow suit. All three companies changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America following Trump's redesignation at the start of his second term.
Trump did receive pushback from other quarters at the time, with The Associated Press losing access to presidential events because it refused to change its style guide to prefer "Gulf of America."
This new name change, which Trump issued as part of an ongoing trade war with Canada, has also met with resistance both within and beyond the US.
On the day of Trump's order, MapQuest announced simply, "We're not changing it."
We’re not changing it. pic.twitter.com/NdeE9v2BNO
— MapQuest (@MapQuest) August 27, 2026
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the name change in a social media post on Thursday, pointing to the Indigenous origins of the name Ontario.
"The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means 'the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.' The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America," he wrote. "We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario—then, now, and always."
The upstate New York-based Seneca Nation on Friday asked Trump to rescind the order, saying it violated an over 225-year-old treaty signed by President George Washington and the Haudenosaunee confederacy, of which the Seneca are a member.
Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca said the name change showed "blatant disrespect" to Indigenous groups, adding, "The President cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action."
On Saturday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford unveiled a billboard on the lake's edge that reads, "Lake Ontario, now and always" in English and French.
It’s Lake Ontario, now and always. pic.twitter.com/KNahtPAMeJ
— Doug Ford (@fordnation) August 29, 2026
"President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I can tell you the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario," Ford said.
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You Could Be Next: Trump’s Gestapo Tactics Are Getting Worse
Wake up, America. You're living in a nightmare.
Aug 29, 2026
Imagine living in a country that can arrest and imprison you whenever it wants, without any judge or jury deciding you did anything wrong. It can call you a “domestic terrorist” and put you in prison for life. It can even execute you on the basis of nothing more than its own decision that you’re dangerous.
Well, I have bad news for you. You’re living in that country right now.
As he loses power and popularity — and faces mounting resistance abroad and at home — Trump is enlarging his police state.
His regime is having ever more people arrested, imprisoned, and deported without any judge or jury deciding they did anything wrong. It’s using racial profiling in deciding whom to target. It’s making warrantless searches and seizures of people, their cars, and their homes. All of this violates the US Constitution.
Trump’s police state not only continues, but it is growing larger by the day.
According to a new analysis by The New York Times, the regime’s surge in immigration arrests this summer has swept up thousands of people, most of whom have not been charged with or convicted of a crime (less than 4 percent had a past violent criminal conviction).
Those being arrested, imprisoned, and potentially deported include some married to US citizens, others who entered the US legally and are pursuing asylum claims, and some who came here with temporary legal status that the Trump regime has decided to revoke.
In other words, they were all here legally.
If you have temporary protected status because you escaped from inhumane conditions in another country, ICE might now summon you to an ICE office and put a monitor around your ankle — even if you have no criminal history and are in full compliance with your immigration status. The Trump regime has unilaterally revoked temporary protected status and claims the ankle monitors are necessary to track people whom it may want to deport at some point.
You’re not even safe if you’re a US citizen born in America. ProPublica has found that more than 170 US citizens have been wrongfully detained by ICE agents in raids and protests over a recent nine-month span. It described cases involving alleged force and multiday detention without access to counsel or communication.
Some estimates put the number of US citizens subjected to ICE as much higher, but there’s no way of knowing because there’s no legal process for filtering out and protecting American citizens, just as there’s no legal process for protecting anyone else who’s here legally. Trump’s police state is extrajudicial, and it’s being done in secret.
You might even be murdered, without a trial finding you guilty of anything. In addition to Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota last January, ICE agents have murdered two others just this summer.
One was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, murdered by ICE in Houston on July 7, 2026. Salgado Araujo had lived in the US for decades. ICE agents pursued him in unmarked cars and shot him while he was driving a work crew to a job site. The Department of Homeland Security claims Salgado Araujo tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against an officer, but witnesses dispute this account.
The other was Johan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, murdered by ICE on July 13, 2026, in Biddeford, Maine. Durán Guerrero was a 25-year-old immigrant from Colombia. Agents pursued him while he was driving to work. The Department of Homeland Security claims its agent feared for public safety as Durán Guerrero tried to drive away, but elected officials and family members dispute this account, noting that Durán Guerrero was not an intended target of the immigration operation.
None of these murders has been fully investigated.
You might also be murdered without a trial if you happen to be on a vessel off Latin America’s Caribbean coast or in the eastern Pacific Ocean. A mere accusation of drug trafficking is enough to kill you, without any evidence presented before any court of law or neutral magistrate.
Historians looking back on this shameful period will wonder how this was allowed.
The US military announced Monday that it had again carried out a strike on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people it accused of trafficking drugs — bringing the overall death toll to 223 people killed in 67 strikes during the nearly yearlong US campaign of bombing boats alleged to be smuggling drugs.
Finally, the Trump regime is imprisoning Americans who demonstrate against its police state.
In June, in two federal courts sentenced nine people who protested outside an immigrant detention facility in Texas to 30 to 100 years in prison, after the regime accused them of being members of Antifa. During the protest, a police officer was shot; he survived.
Those sentences are longer than the harshest sentence handed down to any of the convicted rioters in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol in 2021 (all of whom have since received pardons or commutations from Trump).
These cases are the first to incorporate new guidance from the regime that classifies Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” That’s despite the fact that Antifa is a decentralized movement rather than a single organization and that there is no federal charge of domestic terrorism under existing US law.
I want to make three concluding points about all this.
First, Trump’s police state not only continues, but it is growing larger by the day. Kristi Noem’s replacement as secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, along with his boss in the White House, Stephen Miller, and the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, have more money, manpower, and firepower than ever. They are ramping up all of their extrajudicial arrests, detentions, deportations, and murders.
The only difference between last year and now is they’re no longer announcing what they’re doing with fanfare and braggadocio, because the American public has grown wary of it.
Second, none of us is safe from this because the arrests, installations of ankle bracelets, imprisonments, deportations, and murders are made without any judge, jury, or neutral party deciding that the assumptions on which they’re based are adequate and truthful.
Not even “domestic terrorism” arrests and lengthy prison sentences necessitate judicial inquiry into what exactly is meant by “domestic terrorism” and whether defendants have done anything to justify that appellation.
Finally, this growing menace is cruel, inhumane, and likely unconstitutional. It is causing hundreds of thousands of families in our country extreme mental distress; many people are not leaving their homes for fear of being arrested or worse. It is likely chilling First Amendment rights to speak up and protest against these atrocities.
Historians looking back on this shameful period will wonder how this was allowed. How can one maniacal man in the Oval Office, his fanatical assistant, and two suck-up Cabinet secretaries have been so cruel and oblivious to basic human rights? How can their Republican enablers in Congress have been willing to go along? How can the American public have been so quiet?
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Trump Threatens to Sue Think Tank Over Study That Exposed Folly of His DC National Guard Deployment
"Efforts to silence independent research because its findings are unwelcome by an administration or president should alarm every American."
Aug 21, 2026
President Donald Trump is threatening to sue a liberal think tank after it published a report last month casting doubt on the purported effectiveness of his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Alejandro Brito, one of the president's personal lawyers, sent a letter to the Center for American Progress (CAP) this week demanding that it retract a study it published on July 13, which concluded that there was no evidence the National Guard's presence in the nation's capital did anything to reduce violent crime.
Brito threatened to file a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against CAP if it did not retract the report and offer a personal apology to the president, according to the Times.
CAP president Neera Tanden said the organization was standing by its work and would not back down in the fact of legal threats from the president.
"This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless," said Tanden. "A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is to allow for the publication of facts and analysis that is contrary to the arguments and claims of any administration. A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us."
Tanden added that "efforts to silence independent research because its findings are unwelcome by an administration or president should alarm every American."
CAP's report notes that crime has been declining in major US cities across the country over the last two years, and it finds that declines in Washington, DC over that period were not significantly greater than in cities where there was no National Guard presence.
"Despite multiple tests using multiple data sources, measures, and windows of time," the report concludes, "there is no compelling evidence that these deployments reduced homicides, violent crime, or gun violence."
The report adds that the goal of the deployment was never about fighting crime but rather "a dangerous power grab by the Trump administration."
CAP isn't alone in questioning the effectiveness of Trump's DC National Guard deployment.
Reuters on Wednesday published an investigation finding that National Guard soldiers have been mentioned in just 1.3% of cases brought before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which processes nearly all prosecutions in the city.
What's more, the investigation found that National Guard soldiers were mostly deployed to wealthier neighborhoods in the city, where they responded to minor incidents.
After examining court records, Reuters investigators "could find no reference... to soldiers doing any kind of law enforcement in the neighborhoods where about 82% of the city’s 859 murders occurred over the past five years."
Deploying the National Guard in DC is also an expensive endeavor. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) earlier this month revealed that keeping soldiers deployed in the city is projected to cost taxpayers an extra $1.4 billion through the end of Trump’s term.
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