Articles & Videos

Researchers are just beginning to understand the human cost of America’s retreat from international aid. For decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, worked across many of the world’s most food-insecure and climate-besieged regions, funding thousands of humanitarian, healthcare, food, and disaster relief programs. That all changed last year when, days after President [...] The post Trump Gutted USAID. Hunger and Violence Followed. appeared first on DCReport.org.

Alan MacLeod reports on a network of anti-government Cuban media outlets funded by USAID, NED and Open Society to sow discontent and soften up the Caribbean nation for a potential U.S. invasion. Alan MacLeod for MintPress News Amid escalating U.S. aggression towards the Cuban island through a maximum pressure campaign and the threat of military intervention, the United […]

The charges against the remaining “Broadview Six” protesters were dropped Thursday, in a win for anyone who has protested ICE activity under the Trump administration.The six protesters were hit with felony conspiracy charges carrying a maximum sentence of six years in prison after they surrounded an ICE agent’s car in the Chicago suburb of Broadview in September, in an attempt to slow it down. It was alleged the protesters “pushed and scratched and otherwise damaged,” the vehicle, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. But like many charges brought by the feds against anti-ICE protesters, they failed to hold up in court.The government first dropped charges against two of the protesters, Catherine Sharp and Joselyn Walsh. Then it threw out the conspiracy charges against the other four—Brian Straw, Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin, and former congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh—and instead tried to convict them of one misdemeanor count each for impeding a federal agent.In the end, the administration couldn’t even do that. Chicago’s top federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros, dropped the charges with prejudice in front of U.S. District Judge April Perry, meaning the case cannot be refiled in the future.Boutros remained petty to the end. He called the protesters’ actions “unacceptable in a civilized society,” adding: “It is for the grace of God that that agent moved at two miles per hour.”Perry was unimpressed. “You are significantly undercutting your mea culpa here by standing behind the charges and continuing to vilify these particular defendants,” she told Boutros.Boutros had already annoyed the judge once before, when his assistants took transcripts of themselves explaining the conspiracy laws to the grand jury pool, then apparently redacted some of the transcripts when Perry asked for them. She discussed this with them in a private hearing. Boutros later insisted to Perry that “no one acted with the intent to mislead your honor.”ICE came to Chicago in Operation Midway Blitz, a deportation campaign beginning in September 2025, a few months before Operation Metro Surge took over Minneapolis. The campaign resulted in protests, arrests, and the fatal shooting of one resident, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez.

When Republicans allowed the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act to expire last year, most people predicted that many Americans would drop their insurance coverage because they couldn’t afford premiums without those subsidies, and that the cost of coverage would go up for everyone. A new report from KFF, the nonprofit health care news and research organization, shows that at least some of that has already come to pass, and we’re not even halfway through the year. The worst may be yet to come.Enrollment in the Obamacare marketplaces for 2026 fell by 1.5 million people, to 23 million—the first decrease since 2020. But that only counted people who chose to drop their insurance during the open enrollment period. An analysis by the Wakely Consulting Group found that only 86 percent of enrollees had paid their January premiums by their due dates; those who hadn’t paid were at risk of losing their insurance. Monthly premiums are on average 58 percent higher this year, which means more families will continue to struggle to pay and even more people may lose their coverage as the year goes on. Wakely estimates that marketplace coverage overall could drop by almost six million people this year compared to last year.But that’s only part of the problem. Facing the full cost of higher premiums, many people shifted to high-deductible “bronze” plans this year: KFF found that the average deductible across all plans—bronze, silver, and gold—rose 37 percent to a record high of nearly $3,800. “This is the steepest increase in deductibles ever seen in this market and largely reflects the shift from silver plans with reduced deductibles for lower-income enrollees to bronze plans with very high deductibles,” the report states.Those who did so took a gamble. The average cost of bronze plans varies by state, but the premiums still cost an average of $456 a month nationwide. Those plans provide preventative care for free, like all ACA plans do, but if the people relying on them get sick, have an accident, or need treatment from a specialist for any other reason—like physical therapy, body scans, or surgery—they will have to meet their deductibles before their coverage kicks in. The KFF report shows that the average deductible for bronze plans is $7,476. For people who are unlikely to get sick, or who have enough disposable income to use the tax-advantaged health savings accounts that are available this year, the bronze plans can save money. But it’s likely that many people who opted for bronze plans this year were just trying to find the lowest premiums possible because they couldn’t afford anything else. That means they have health insurance that they can’t really use because they can’t afford to.Those who can’t afford their deductibles are more likely to wait longer to seek the health care they need, or go without it entirely, and often have worse outcomes. High-deductible plans are also likely to leave more Americans in debt if something does happen and they are swamped with bills they can’t pay. Many Americans who have chosen bronze plans are simply crossing their fingers that nothing bad happens, which isn’t providing the peace of mind that insurance is supposed to bring.The bad news for all of us is that these are the kinds of plans Republicans want to force us all into, based on the false idea that the tight-budgeted “consumers” will be compelled to shop for the lowest-priced care and that this will drive down health care costs overall. But receiving worse care and facing unpaid medical debt will just move us closer to where we were before the ACA was enacted, when more Americans were uninsured or underinsured and facing mountains of medical debt. The U.S. is already teetering on the edge of a debt crisis, and piling more medical debt onto struggling Americans could be one of the things that pushes us over the cliff.

The governor's vetoes of legislation on marijuana, higher ed, and other reforms have also upset Democratic lawmakers.

The US president's claims that Afrikaners face racial persecution and genocide have been repeatedly disproven.

Axles are to vehicles what joints are to human bodies: the mechanism that facilitates movement. For parts worker Rosie Dodge, who has worked on a paint line for American Axle & Manufacturing for 10 years, the metaphor is embodied in the work environment. “They just do not treat us like people,” Dodge said. “We are often referred to as bodies, like they don’t even want to give us credit for having a pulse. They do what they call ‘manpower moves,’ and they say, ‘We just need bodies over here.’”

The technology is used on both immigrants and “legal observers, peaceful protestors, and US citizens,” an analyst noted.