By TeleSur, Orinoco Tribune. The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, called on the international community this Saturday to determine whether it will allow Washington to militarily attack his country after the U.S. President, Donald Trump, said he would take control of the island “almost immediately.” “The president of the U.S. is escalating his threats of military […]
Republicans are now trying to get $1 billion in taxpayer funding for President Trump’s ballroom.Senator Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, included a request for the funds in a reconciliation package released Monday night. The $1 billion would go to the Secret Service for “security adjustments and upgrades” related to the ballroom’s construction. An additional $30.7 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and $3.5 billion for Customs and Border Protection were also included in the budget item.In a statement Monday, Grassley said, “Republicans won’t allow our country to be dragged backwards by Democrats’ radical, anti-law enforcement agenda.“The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking action to help provide certainty for federal law enforcement and safer streets for American families. We will work to ensure this critical funding gets signed into law without unnecessary delay.”The reconciliation process allows for a simple majority in the Senate, meaning that if there is no Republican opposition, Trump will get the ballroom funds. It’s quite an increase from the $400 million in tax dollars that Senate Republicans asked for last month, and from the zero dollars from taxpayers that Trump promised. But he must have his ballroom, whether the American people want it or not.
President Trump is still beefing with Pope Leo XIV, accusing the first American pope of “endangering a lot of Catholics,” on The Hugh Hewitt Show on Monday.Trump attacked the pope unprovoked after Hewitt said perhaps the pope could speak up about China’s detention of Hong Kong billionaire Jimmy Lai. “Well, the pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.… I don’t think that’s very good,” Trump said. “I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people, but I guess, if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”It’s clear that Trump has been extremely bothered by the pope’s very measured criticism last month, and consumed with this one-sided beef ever since. Trump is claiming that Pope Leo is “endangering” Catholics because he wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Pope Leo XIV never said anything close to that. Instead, he simply criticized Trump’s war on Iran and his genocidal threats accompanying it, and the president has been crashing out since, calling him “weak on crime” and putting words in his mouth to cope.
As more people cut the cord and drop their cable TV subscriptions, public access channels are losing a vital source of revenue. For decades, cable television companies have paid franchise fees to local municipalities as compensation for use of the public right of way, through which the companies route cables and utilities. Those fees have funded local stations focused on public, educational, and governmental access programming.
“As there’s migration to digital entertainment and to streaming, there is no local investment — there’s no local jobs, there’s no local programming,” says Michael Max Knobbe, executive director of BronxNet in New York.
We also speak with Joe Barr, executive director of Access Sacramento in California, who says the station is “of the community, by the community, for the community.” He adds that as the corporate media continues to consolidate, “it really could be a dire situation for getting a broad spectrum of viewpoints.”