Articles & Videos

The host of the 2034 World Cup has blocked access to the Qatar-controlled network that holds regional media rights for this year’s tournament.

In March, I reported on a tour conducted by the General Services Administration, the executive branch’s real estate arm, of the remarkable New Deal murals and sculptures in Washington’s Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which the Trump administration had designated for “accelerated disposition.” These artworks include, among other things, frescoes by Ben Shahn that the artist once called “the best work I’ve done,” as well as gorgeous murals by Philip Guston and Seymour Fogel—all paid for by your grandparents and mine. The architectural historian Gray Brechin, founder of the nonprofit Living New Deal, describes the Cohen as “a kind of Sistine Chapel of the New Deal.”As recently as last fall, the Trump administration was collecting bids to demolish the Cohen building and the art inside it, according to Mydelle Wright, a well-regarded former senior official who worked on preservation at the GSA. (The GSA responded with what Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, during the Watergate scandal, famously called a “non-denial denial.”) Since then, reason has emerged for cautious optimism that the Cohen can be saved, most recently new legislation introduced Monday by Democratic Representatives Dina Titus of Nevada and Lloyd Doggett of Texas.I attended the March Cohen tour with several members of Congress, including Doggett, who, like Titus, is a member of the bipartisan Congressional Arts Caucus. (The Democratic co-chair of the Congressional Arts Caucus, Representative Chellie Pingree, later offered an appropriations amendment to compel GSA to release publicly a study about refurbishing the Cohen that the Trump administration suppressed. The amendment failed in committee, but, in a hopeful sign, it picked up two Republican votes.) The Cohen tour was actually Doggett’s second, I was pleased to learn; he’s known about the Shahn murals inside the Cohen building for years. (The building is two blocks from the Capitol.) Doggett showed me some legislative language he had drafted requiring protection of all artworks in the Cohen building, and when I asked whether he supported flat-out barring the Cohen sale, Doggett said yes.The Protecting Resources and Ensuring Stewardship of Enduring Records of Visual Expression, or PRESERVE, bill doesn’t do that, alas. But it would require the GSA, “not later than 30 days” after it designates a federal property for disposal, to determine whether the property contains protected art; to notify the appropriate congressional committees within 30 days after that; and “not later than 90 days” before a scheduled demolition or sale, to create a preservation committee of experts, including at least one member of the GSA’s own Fine Arts Program (drastically reduced by DOGE but, thankfully, not eliminated). The preservation committee must then submit a plan, to be posted online, to preserve the artwork “to the maximum extent possible, including through a preservation covenant in an outlease agreement and sale terms, or moving covered artwork to another facility or museum.” No sale or demolition may take place until the GSA administrator “certifies to the appropriate congressional committees” that the GSA is implementing a preservation plan and that “the covered artwork … will remain publicly accessible under any future owners or tenants of the property.”In the bill, art that must be protected is defined as any that within the past five years was managed by the GSA, including any New Deal art. Representative Titus told me by email that the bill would protect “all of the 26,000 pieces of art in GSA’s Fine Arts Collection.” The press release announcing the bill name-checks the Cohen building as being under “immediate threat.” It also points out that in the case of the Cohen building, “the frescoes are embedded in the walls,” so “they cannot simply be taken out of the building or transported to another location.” Legal protections for New Deal art in federal buildings exist already, in case law and in regulations. But President Donald Trump has little regard for the former and he’s waging war on the latter. The Cohen building has since 2007 been listed in the National Register of Historic Places, which requires extensive preservation-minded review prior to disposal. This is called the “Section 106 process” (named for that section of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act). The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, or ACHP, administers Section 106, and soon after entering office Trump removed three members after two others resigned, depriving ACHP of a quorum for about a year. When it reopened for business this past February, ACHP immediately launched a comprehensive review of Section 106 with the avowed purpose of “streamlining” its preservation requirements. So putting preservation requirements in statutory language would seem an excellent idea.In addition, Representative Titus told me, her bill would introduce an enforcement mechanism currently lacking in Section 106 review:My bill would create a process whereby the General Services Administration would have to certify that it is following a preservation plan established by experts before moving forward with a building disposal. This will ensure that publicly commissioned art is taken care of during the disposal process under this administration, and all future administrations for that matter. It also requires GSA to certify that the artwork will continue to be publicly available after the disposal in question.The Cohen building’s sale was mandated by Congress in an amendment that Representative Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, inserted into a water resources bill in January 2025. It’s pretty unusual for Congress to tell GSA which buildings to sell, and in this case neither Ernst nor her staff had any clue that the building contained important art. Titus’s bill disappointed me by not repealing the Ernst amendment. I asked Titus why not. “That provision was in an appropriations bill,” she replied, “which is a separate fight.” But since Ernst’s amendment wasn’t an appropriation, I’m not sure why that should matter. Also, Titus said, “I do not oppose the sale of the building outright.” I do oppose the sale, so I guess we differ in that regard. I take some comfort that certain infrastructure realities are on my side. As I reported last month, Rich Butterworth, senior analyst and adviser with the GSA’s Office of Real Property Utilization and Disposal, and a career civil servant, pointed out on June 25 that because the Cohen shares heating and electrical equipment with a sister building across C St. (the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Federal Building)—a property that GSA does not intend to sell—it follows that unloading the Cohen would cost the federal government a lot of money to reroute a bunch of underground cables and ducts and whatnot. “While a lot of people would like to see this building disposed of,” said Butterworth, “and given its underutilization rate, we understand why, our thought is, unless we can solve that problem, that might be a building that’s better reinvested in and get back to a utilization rate that would make sense and justify the level of investment.” Amen.At any rate, repealing the Ernst amendment wouldn’t bar the GSA from selling the Cohen building. It would merely leave the question up to the GSA, which is how it usually works. So the Ernst amendment really needs to be repealed.But that’s a battle for another day.  Titus’s bill represents a significant step toward saving the Cohen, and it’s endorsed by the nonprofit Living New Deal and Social Security Works, the two major groups fighting to preserve the building and its art. So onward and upward.Cohen Building Archive:June 26, 2026: “The ‘Sistine Chapel of the New Deal’ May Be Saved!”June 15, 2026: “Is Trump Selling Himself Back His D.C. Hotel?”March 27, 2026: “The Fight to Save D.C.’s Sistine Chapel From Trump”December 10, 2025: “Can the ‘Sistine Chapel of the New Deal’ Be Saved From Trump?”October 3, 2025: “There Was a Plan to Save These New Deal Masterpieces. Then Trump Won”September 30, 2025: “The New Deal Masterpieces Threatened by Trump’s Downsizing”

In early 2021, during the depths of the pandemic, a slim, provocatively titled book became a surprising hit. How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Swedish scholar Andreas Malm made the case for a more radical form of environmental activism that, he argued, matched the severity of the crisis we face. If rising temperatures and biodiversity loss pose an existential threat to the planet, why aren’t more people putting their bodies on the line?Though the book was not a how-to manual—there is in fact nothing in it about blowing up pipelines—the message was clear. The contemporary environmental movement, despite some notable successes, such as stopping the Keystone XL pipeline and building a formidable divestment campaign (modeled on the anti-apartheid struggles of the 1980s), had not come anywhere near to achieving its goal of curbing climate change or holding those most responsible, i.e., fossil fuel companies and the banks that fund them, accountable. Malm’s logic was relatively straightforward; if these tactics have failed and the window to make a difference really is closing, it’s time to try something new. The book was widely reviewed (the Financial Times named it one of the best books of the year, and Malm was interviewed on the New Yorker radio hour), and, if nothing else, Malm punctured the polite discourse surrounding the acceptable limits of political action. A film that took the book’s title literally—it follows the story of a group of activists who blow up a pipeline in West Texas—was released two years later. But though it often went unmentioned, Malm was drawing on a much longer tradition, one that has periodically attempted to redefine the trajectory of environmental politics. In 1998, an essay similar in spirit to Malm’s appeared in the Earth First! Journal. Titled “Beyond Civil Disobedience,” it opened with a thought experiment, in which the author—writing under the pseudonym “Snap Dragon”—asked readers how they’d respond to an intruder breaking into their home to kill their family. The options were: Make a banner and call the media, call a lawyer and file for a restraining order, or chain yourself to the front door. (And the answer was that none was sufficient.)    The piece was written by Chelsea Gerlach, the youngest member of the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, a highly secretive group of eco-saboteurs who engaged in a series of spectacular acts of property destruction between 1996 and 2001. Relying mostly on primitive incendiary devices, the activists set fire to government buildings on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land, released wild horses from captivity, toppled transmission towers, and, in their most audacious and consequential act, incinerated the Two Elk ski lodge at Vail resort, which was planning to expand into the White River National Forest—including 700 acres of old-growth forest. The Vail arson—which was carried out in October 1998 by two of the group’s members, including Gerlach, and caused $12 million in damage—put the ELF on the map. But, as Matthew Wolfe points out in Fires in the Night: The Earth Liberation Front, the FBI, and a Secret History of Eco-Sabotage, not always in the way they had hoped. The Vail attack was widely condemned on nightly newscasts and across the nation’s op-ed pages (The Wall Street Journal called it a hate crime). But the group also drew the ire of much of the environmental community, with the Environmental Defense Fund castigating the action as “an outrage” and Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman describing the activists as “nitwits”; Foreman even implied that they may have been working on behalf of industry.  Among law enforcement officials, however, the Two Elk fire had the effect of raising the ELF’s profile. As Wolfe notes, the group, “once unheard of, was suddenly on the lips of every special agent in the Bureau.”  Although the ELF celebrated property destruction, the group made a point of never targeting people—they were going after the corporations, government agencies, and research institutions they believed were responsible for wreaking havoc on the planet. But it was a distinction that made little difference to authorities in the United States, particularly after the attacks of September 11, when “ecoterrorism” was declared one of the top threats to national security, second only to Al Qaeda. (Alaska Congressman Don Young even speculated, in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News on September 12, that the attacks had been carried out by ecoterrorists.)Eventually, after a nearly decade-long FBI investigation and, crucially, the participation of one of the cell’s founding members who turned on his fellow comrades, all but one of the ELF activists were hunted down and charged with a variety of crimes, which were compounded by domestic terrorism enhancements. Most eventually agreed to cooperate with the federal government in exchange for the possibility of a more lenient sentence. (Julia Overaker, who took part in the very first act of arson at a ranger station in Oregon, has never been captured.) It is a harrowing story, particularly the fateful denouement, long after the ELF members had moved on from their radical pasts to embrace more conventional forms of political engagement. At the time of their arrests, one of the former Elves, as they referred to themselves, was working as a caregiver for disabled adults. Another was doing legal aid work for victims of domestic violence. A third was applying to medical school. Part of the deal they had made with one another was that they’d never talk about what they’d done. By the time Jacob Ferguson—a recovering heroin addict with a young son to support—showed up unannounced to reminisce with his friends, wearing a wire concealed beneath his baseball cap, nearly all his fellow activists had renounced the tactics they used in their younger days. This may explain why some ultimately broke their own rule not to discuss the past; but they also trusted Ferguson, who many felt was least likely to become a snitch. As Wolfe writes, “Having spent years living a double life as a member of the ELF, Ferguson was now living another, one in which he systematically betrayed many of those closest to him.”  Wolfe’s riveting account of the ELF’s rise and fall—based on over a hundred interviews, footage from a documentary project that was never finished, Freedom of Information Act records, and the forensic recreation of the events in question—is not a morality tale. He’s not really interested in passing judgment, and he draws sympathetic but not uncritical portraits of the activists and the law enforcement agents who pursued them. At times, the ELF comes off as a band of reckless crusaders destroying historical archives maintained by the Forest Service and severely damaging a research lab at the University of Washington that focused largely on environmental restoration. But with hindsight, and an understanding of our current political and ecological predicament, it is difficult not to conclude, as Wolfe does, that the ELF members were not only “uncomfortably prescient about our collective inability” to deal with one of the world’s most pressing problems but also, in some ways, voices crying in the wilderness (or as Wolfe puts it, “little people doing things in the dark”).Wolfe entertains the argument that all forms of property destruction are unacceptable because they undermine the rule of law central to a functioning democracy (or as David Marchese put it in his New York Times interview with Malm, “How do you rationalize advocacy for violence within what are supposed to be the ideals of our system?”). But then Wolfe turns the question around and asks, “What happens to faith in the law when the law permits cataclysm, when a system begets its own, slow destruction?”The ELF emerged out of the ferment of radical eco-politics and animal rights activism of the 1980s and 1990s, much of which was aired, and argued over, in the pages of Earth First! Journal. Earth First! was formed in 1980 and adopted the irreverent, monkey-wrenching ethos of its patron saint, Edward Abbey (Abbey’s bestselling novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, was published in 1975). In some ways, it laid the groundwork for the ELF’s more combative approach to environmental politics. Earth First! was not unwilling to engage in sabotage: tree spiking, pouring sand in the gears of machines tearing up forests, and occupying land that it felt should be protected were its preferred methods (and it is worth noting it also became a target of the FBI). But for Gerlach and other members of the ELF—many of whom got their start working for more mainstream organizations—even Earth First! came to be seen as too timid and too concerned with lobbying for change through the formal political process. As knowledge and understanding of the ecological crisis deepened, so did the sense that the activist community—particularly big green groups like the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund—was not prepared to lead the way. The stakes were now too high.So, in October 1996, Ferguson and Overaker, who were on-and-off romantic partners, burned a Forest Service ranger station in Oregon. And spray-painted a message on a nearby utility shed claiming ELF credit for the action. This was the cell’s opening salvo, and even they were surprised that they’d pulled it off. They slowly recruited other like-minded members who were not only down with the cause but willing to essentially lead double lives.   To the extent that ELF was a political project, it did not give much thought to long-term goals or building power. Its focus was action. But going underground and committing crimes that are likely to turn most people off—arson, it should be noted, is a felony—is not an easy way to launch a movement. To the extent that the ELF was a political project, it did not give much thought to long-term goals or building power. Its focus was action. William Rodgers, known as Avalon, was in many ways the group’s intellectual leader and liked to say, paraphrasing a Chinese proverb, “Talk doesn’t cook rice.” So what did it all add up to? Wolfe doesn’t devote much time to pondering the ELF’s legacy, but its members’ eventual disillusionment with their own tactics—and failure to achieve lasting change—seems to speak for itself. This sense of defeat, and worsening ecological crisis, was only compounded by the bitter recriminations, paranoia, and distrust that gripped Eugene’s anarchist community after it was revealed that Ferguson had embedded with the FBI. Rodgers—who several years before had been accused of groping a 14-year-old girl at an Earth First! gathering, creating further divisions within the activist scene—would take his own life in prison. Ferguson, shunned by his peers—one anarchist zine essentially put a bounty on his head—tried to return to some semblance of a normal life. He got a job as a mechanic. But, deeply depressed and alienated from the community that had once kept him afloat, he soon fell off the wagon and started using heroin again (he eventually served a four-year sentence for selling drugs). It is hard not to conclude that by the time the last ELF member was apprehended in 2018, the group had left little more than destruction in its wake.  Wolfe’s intimate portrait of the ELF focuses on the roughly five-year period in which the group was most active, as well as the FBI investigation that followed. But in the book’s final pages, he touches on the battle at Standing Rock in 2016 and 2017, in which thousands of “water protectors” descended on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to protest construction of an oil pipeline, and the prosecution of two activists who tried to sabotage it using welding torches and rags soaked in gasoline. Scanning the political horizon since Trump’s ascendance—which has dovetailed with a brutal crackdown on legal protest and an attempt to equate anti-fascism with domestic terrorism—Wolfe rightly notes that environmentalism has suffered “the worst losses in its history.”There’s a curious omission, though, in his gloss of more recent environmental campaigns. Just a few years after the ELF members were sentenced in 2007, a group of climate activists gathered in Washington, D.C., to bring attention to the Keystone XL pipeline, an infrastructure project that would have significantly increased the amount of oil transported from the tar sands of western Canada to the Gulf Coast. A revolving cast of volunteers from across the country spent two weeks getting arrested in front of the White House in what was later described as the largest act of civil disobedience in the movement’s history, contradicting, in some ways, Wolfe’s assertion that in the wake of 9/11 and the ELF convictions, “The public … had turned hard against illegal forms of protest.” Opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline was in many ways the sort of mass movement that ELF members dreamed of sparking—one that inspired thousands of ordinary people to risk arrest to defend the planet.It was also just the beginning. Along the proposed pipeline route, activists and landowners came together to protest the pipeline. In rural East Texas, an elaborate tree sit was erected on private land that TransCanada, the company behind the project, was attempting to seize through eminent domain. An unlikely coalition of ranchers, Tea Party Republicans, radical environmentalists including former Earth First! members, and somewhat reluctant green groups was forged. In 2015, Obama canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, handing the movement a major win. (He also fast-tracked the southern portion of the pipeline, from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, a decision that tends to get scrubbed from the narrative.) This was in many ways the sort of mass movement that ELF members dreamed of sparking—one that inspired thousands of ordinary people to risk arrest to defend the planet. (And it did not end there. Many Keystone XL organizers went on to play a part at Standing Rock, and some would go on to work for Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign.) Looking back at the history of the ELF today, it can be easy to forget that only a decade ago, the political landscape seemed far more expansive. Sometimes it’s worth remembering—even in the face of seemingly insurmountable ecological and political crises—that victories, even if only temporary, are still possible. 

The post This Private School Had Students Scrub Floors and Attack a Fellow Classmate. The State Still Funds It. appeared first on ProPublica.

The post This Private School Had Students Scrub Floors and Attack a Fellow Classmate. The State Still Funds It. appeared first on ProPublica.

In their second fatal shooting of the wrong person in just days - and as his three-year-old daughter watched - ICE thugs murdered a young Colombian husband and father legally working in Biddeford, ME for simply trying to driving away. After state Dems blasted the killing and advocates insisted "this has gone too far," ICE waited 12 hours to say they fired "fearing for public safety" while "every law enforcement officer in America was scratching their head trying to figure out what that means."Talk about following the money. Having somehow railroaded through last year's big obscene bill gifting over $170 billion to immigration and border enforcement - and last month inexplicably adding another $75 billion, seven times ICE’s annual budget (thanks Susan), with virtually no public accounting of how they spend it - the regime is now scurrying to spend their blood money by setting random, armed-to-the-teeth, 2,000-arrests-a-day benchmarks of what have become mere numbers of bodies in an ethnic cleansing of immigrants, brown and black people, or anyone standing near them. What could possibly go wrong? For starters, a record-breaking mortality rate of 11 people fatally shot, over 20 other deaths in custody, over 70,000 mostly harmless people in concentration-camp-like detention, and a "systemic failure" of accountability. A new report by Physicians for Human Rights and Berkeley's Human Rights Center just added more: At least 412 incidents of "misuse" of brutal crowd-control tactics - teargas, pepper spray, "less-lethal kinetic impact projectiles" from rubber bullets to stun grenades - resulting in over 200 "lasting and traumatic injuries" including blindings, brain trauma, fractures often to journalists, elderly people, children. As Maine goes, so goes the nation. Monday's murder of 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero came after ICE's relatively brief, grotesquely named Operation Catch of the Day last year that saw the arrest of over 500 people, most with no criminal records. Originally from Bucaramanga, Colombia, Guerrero was legally authorized to be here, worked two jobs, had a Social Security card and was going to a delivery job. After some initial confusion/lies, the regime said he was not the intended target of the endlessly inept, homicidal ICE goons; nor were any wearing body cameras that Congress had appropriated $20 million for.The same lethal incompetence marked last week's murder in Houston TX of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father of three who'd spent 35 years building homes and raising his U.S. citizen kids, all of whom he helped get through college. He was shot and killed by ICE agents who said he "weaponized" his vehicle; it took about 5 minutes for Araujo's three passengers, who'd witnessed it all and were quickly detained for it, to refute the claim. So did video footage of the deadly encounter. Again, the goons had the wrong guy - and outdated address info - and none were wearing body cameras Congress generously allocated for them.On Pool Street in Biddeford, a small southern mill city of about 22,000 with a long immigrant history, marauding ICE agents in an SUV rammed the small white Kia Guerrero was driving to work shortly after 7 a.m. Video shows Guerrero, evidently fearful after armed men rammed him, turning his car around and trying to drive away. ICE agents fired what witnesses said were up to seven shots, and at least four smashed through his windshield - though law enforcement guidelines clearly prohibit firing at a moving vehicle unless there is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, and call for police to (duh) just move away.A neighbor said he heard a “pop, pop, pop,” looked out his window and saw the car still slowly moving until the SUV hit it again. After the Kia came to a stop, witnesses said Guerrero, bleeding from his head, was pulled from his car; several heard him say, "I tried to stop." Gruesome video shows ICE thugs handcuffing him on the ground, where his soon-lifeless body lay for five hours. Horrified witnesses said goons "yelled" at his young daughter, still in Bluey pajamas, trying to smell some nearby flowers. "I watched a wife fall to her knees looking at her husband’s dead body," said one. "I watched a little girl with a pink backpack crying because she’s never going to see her father again.”One upset neighbor said an ICE agent claimed, "He tried to run me over." But here, as elsewhere, ICE has "lost the benefit of the doubt," and the city erupted in grief and rage. By mid-day, hundreds of pissed Mainers had marched, chanting "Whose Streets, Our Streets," to rally in Mechanics Park with signs: "Crush ICE," "Due Process For All," "Immigrants Make Biddeford Great," "Extrajudicial Killings Are A War Crime, and "Is This the America We Want?" Sadie Dilboy said Guerrero often came to her laundromat, giving his daughter quarters to buy vending-machine candy: "He was such a good person. He was always cleaning up.” A worker at Applebee’s, where Guerrero often picked up orders, would always ask if we needed anything: "He was always a good smile to see,” thus clearly "one of those dangerous criminal aliens who have turned America into a living hell."Later, a crowd of protesters swarmed the local office of Susan Collins with fierce chants of "Vote her out!." One prominent sign, speaking for us all, proclaimed, "Get the Fuck Out." Collins, forever on the wrong and bloody side of history and drunken rapists, was the deciding vote last month to approve the extra, mind-boggling $75 billion in ICE funding, though most Mainers want to see it abolished. Last year, after the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, she voted against both language seeking to curtail further violence and funding for mandatory body cameras, which most thugs are clearly not wearing anyway.In the wake of yet another senseless murder on America's streets in broad daylight, a presumably very concerned Collins urged "a full and impartial investigation." She did not condemn ICE’s actions, nor did she voice sympathy for the man whose life was just snuffed out. Her staff later cited her vote for a few measures - optional body cameras, more oversight of concentration camps, a paltry $2 million for "de-escalation training" - for better ICE "accountability." As local police blocked her office door, they also noted ICE's "work goes far beyond immigration enforcement to help protect our country" - from brown-skinned delivery drivers, taco makers, contractors, landscapers, nurses, abuelas and kids with cancer. So fuck Susan Collins.GOP gubernatorial nominee Bobby Charles cravenly echoed her: "Maine deserves the truth about what happened." He also urged there be ”no getting ahead of the facts - let facts, not politics, drive our conclusions," adding, "Federal agents put their lives on the line every day...If an agent's life was threatened, he had every right under the law to protect himself" - presumably from brown delivery drivers, contractors, sick kids et al. So fuck him too. He wants facts? Being here legally and driving to work should not cause death by rogue morons looking for someone else. Guerrero lay in the street for five hours. His government didn't bother to name him for almost a day, but his neighbors did. We hope his daughter gets the therapy she'll need.The largest, darkest question: "How many more people 'not the target' will die before someone in Washington decides the answer to a wrong-vehicle stop cannot be seven rounds through a windshield?" Tuesday, ICE told their goons to suspend most vehicle stops around the country; they declined to disclose "law enforcement tactics" but said they're "always evaluating our procedures to (keep) criminals off our streets," in which case they should probably remove all their own sociopaths. But they likely won't. The outrage was nationwide - "ICE murdered a 26-year-old in front of his wife & daughter. It’s just pure evil" - and global. Colombian President Gustavo Petro: "He was killed because he was believed to be an inferior being with no rights."Hopefully, his death will impact the electoral chances of Susan Collins, who funded it. Happily, Maine Dems were unshy about voicing their rage at her abetting ICE violence that’s gone on too long. Gov. Janet Mills: “This has to end.” Senate candidate Dr. Nirav Shah, who urged support for immigrants through the Maine Solidarity Fund, blasted Collins for approving billions more for ICE to "terrorize our communities...She gave them a blank check to kill. Maybe sit this one out.” In an angry video, Rep. Chellie Pingree asked ICE, "Why are you in Maine?" given "every report we hear is somebody picked up who's legally here. It's time to get ICE off our streets."Troy Jackson, a top Senate contender to replace Graham Platner and the only one polls show beating Collins (though several come close) attended a Portland protest Monday, charging "our immigrant communities are under attack" by a rogue ICE that must be abolished. Advocates also argued, "Our communities are hurting." Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition head Mufalo Chita: "We are furious, and we will not allow this death to be treated as routine or inevitable." Crystal Cron of Presente!, on another family "shattered by state violence": “To say we are heartbroken does not convey the depth of the exhaustion, terror, or grief we are feeling."Maine authorities have struggled to get information from the feds, unsurprising given they just, finally turned over to Minnesota investigators evidence from the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January. It took over 12 hours, till Monday night, for ICE to name their victim and say, in fascist gobbledygook, "an illegal alien" tried to "flee" during "a targeted surveillance" and a goon, "fearing for public safety," "discharged his weapon.” Notably, there was no claim of a driver "weaponizing" his vehicle, leaving national law enforcement "stunned" as to why anyone fired: “If you want to arrest someone, this is a good example of how to do everything wrong."Murdering brown people in cold blood for no reason is likewise a good example of how to topple democratic governance and the rule of law. “Does the senseless murder of this man make any of our lives better in any way?" asked Kelli Brennan of the Maine State Nurses Association. Critics argue every member of Congress who voted for more money for ICE or DHS has blood on their hands; so do their supporters. During last spring's shutdown, Susan Collins, that act's deciding vote, whined it wasn't "fair" to those thugs to have a "cloud of uncertainty" over whether they'd be paid. “They are keeping us safe,” she mewled. Fuck Susan Collins and the incomparable real-world damage she's done. Vote like your life and many others depend on it, because they do. Fundraiser here. Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero and his daughterPhoto from Facebook

During the World Cup the industry behind the tournament transforms the game of soccer into a driver of global capitalism, exploitation, and gender oppression. Hallah Abdullah , July 14, 2026

Data centers, Big Ag, and the New World screwworm take center stage for rural voters