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This is an excerpt from “For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness,” originally published at Convergence. The truth is, most of the groups and organizations that make up our movements do not have a strategy for winning. They might think they have a strategy. They might tell themselves they have one. They certainly [...]

Protests are erupting across the United States in response to the deaths of three immigrant workers in just seven days at the hands of federal agents. Rania Khalek , July 16, 2026

The cost of the Iran war could well exceed $100 billion now that the conflict has reignited.The Trump administration has not officially released any figures related to the total cost of the war, but U.S. intelligence officials have predicted that the overall cost thus far could be greater than $100 billion, Wired reported Wednesday.The hesitation on the final count boils down to whether or not the Pentagon decides to replace part of its airfleet that was damaged or destroyed in the war, according to insiders that spoke with Wired. If it does, the cost will go up. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service tallied 42 lost or damaged U.S. aircraft in a May 13 report, including an Boeing E-3 Sentry that costs upward of $270 million, an MQ-4C Triton drone that costs around $618 million, and four F-15E Strike Eagle fighter aircraft that cost roughly $65 million a pop.The exact cost of the war has been difficult to pin down. Late last month, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, told the House Appropriations Committee that the U.S. had spent $30 billion on the Iran war. But even he must have known that figure was wildly inaccurate, considering that he had written and signed a formal request “on behalf of the president” for $88 billion in supplemental defense funding from Congress days earlier, including a $72 billion increase for the war effort.An independent review of U.S. expenses through the four-month war was published last week by Popular Information’s Stephen Semler, who found that Trump officials had dramatically lowballed Congress on the real cost of the conflict (Semler also co-founded the U.S. foreign policy think tank Security Policy Reform Institute).In order to build an independent analysis of the Pentagon’s expenditures, Semler analyzed procurement information, operating and support data, open-source intelligence, statements from U.S. officials, and media reports.Over the first 120 days of the conflict, Semler tallied $28.5 billion in mobilization, administrative, and immediate combat costs; $46.7 billion spent on missiles, interceptors, and bombs; $20.3 billion on damaged or destroyed military assets; $2.9 billion on Israel’s bombs and interceptors; and an additional $4.8 billion on war costs to nonmilitary U.S. agencies. All in all, Semler estimated that the true cost of the U.S.-Iran war is closer to $103 billion.Yet no one in charge of the government—from the White House to top congressional Republicans—has posited exactly how the U.S. will pay for the war. Whereas taxes were raised in previous wars (such as World War I, World War II, and the Korean War) in order to fund conflict, the current administration has so far offered no such solution.

In the latest example of his juvenile leadership style, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took to social media Thursday to endorse a military flyover that dipped below the normal flight path, affected spectators below, and triggered an investigation.During a U.S. Navy Blue Angels military flyover over a beach in Pensacola, Florida, Wednesday morning, a jet “flew too close to the crowd,” reports WSVN, sending sand, tents, chairs, and umbrellas airborne as some beachgoers screamed, covered their ears, and scrambled for cover. In a statement responding to viral footage of the commotion, the Navy acknowledged that the aircraft “flew lower than standard profiles, resulting in a disturbance on the beach,” and announced a “safety review” of the maneuver.The incident drew some public concern. Former Representative Adam Kinzinger, who served in the Air Force, reacted to a video of the maneuver on social media, writing, “This is not safe. I’m all for low passes, seriously but this is too much.” Another observer, a Chicago-based ABC news reporter, called the footage “jarring,” “dangerous,” and “uncharacteristic of the Blue Angels.” Meanwhile, the president’s son Eric Trump condemned “the low-T mainstream media” for reporting on the Navy’s safety review.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chimed in Thursday with a characteristically puerile response: “The flyovers will continue until morale improves,” he posted on X. He also retweeted two posts in which screenshots of the viral video of the incident were overlayed with the words “CARRY ON PATRIOTS” and “American Empire,” respectively.As part of his carefully crafted tough-guy image, Hegseth has made a point to express his approval of even questionable military demonstrations. When several South Carolina Army National Guard helicopter pilots were suspended during a safety review of low-level flyovers in July, Hegseth intervened, posting on X, “We’ll fix this. Carry on, Patriots.” He similarly lifted an investigation and suspension of two Army pilots who performed maneuvers for Kid Rock above the musician’s mansion in the Nashville suburbs.

Drop Site Daily: July 16, 2026

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism” on Thursday, as he and diplomats from dozens of countries discussed how to further quash what they see as left-wing terrorism. FBI Director Kash Patel, White House adviser Stephen Miller, and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar were among those in attendance.“This is what radical leftism is. They may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can call themselves anti-capitalists, or anti-imperialists, Communists, or anarchists, or Marxists,” Rubio said, tapping into the modern McCarthyism that has helped define the second Trump administration. “But the fundamental character is always the same.... It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality, justice, liberation—an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built.... Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us.”Marco Rubio is currently delivering a very boring speech railing against "communism." These guys really think they're cooking by trying to revive the Red Scare. Ain't gonna work with people under 60 years old. pic.twitter.com/lMWR3WrALJ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2026Miller highlighted President Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum, or NSPM-7, which targets supposed anti-American activity on the left.“It directs … all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country,” Miller bragged. “Left-wing political terrorism seeks, as its ultimate end, the overthrow of our system and form of government—and we’ve seen this has taken place as many times, in many places, throughout the years.”“Left-wing terrorism always ends in bloodshed, misery, and suffering,” he continued. “It only can travel in one direction. There’s no point at which the left-wing terrorist is satisfied with his gains, and ceases progressing.... It always becomes a gulag, it always becomes the mass imprisonment of political enemies, the stripping of their rights and freedoms … in order to establish complete and total control.”Santa Monica Goebbels is doing his weird and creepy gyrations while delivering a speech smearing Democrats as violent radicals pic.twitter.com/PaeDcD55jw— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2026Then Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined in on the fun, bringing up that he himself was the target of an assassination attempt by an “addled left-wing activist.” It’s so interesting to watch these people wield what they see as this infallible moral compass, never once considering that they—and their predecessors—have created many of the conditions which have forced people to resist, whether it be abroad or domestically. Furthermore, this blanket definition of left-wing terrorism is not rooted in reality, it’s to serve their NSPM-7 agenda to crack down on dissidents. Meanwhile, they continue to fully ignore the right-wing terrorism that this administration has not only ignored, but fostered.

The Sunday shows fawned over Graham and allowed Trump to bully them. Plus, you must see our insane supercut of Fox’s latest obsession.