Impeach. Convict. Remove.
Recap of this week in the revolution: Mamdani the king-maker. Supreme Court allows Trump regime to end TPS for immigrants. Fighting continues between U.S. and Iran despite peace agreement and six arrested over unsubstantiated claims of vandalism at Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Americans are not in the mood to celebrate the country's 250th birthday.
The good...
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Image by Metropolitan Transporation Authority from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Within the Democratic Party, Zohran Mamdani's endorsement helped three "better Democrats" to defeat the establishment-backed candidates in each of their respective primary races for U.S. House representatives.
Mamdani, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a Democratic Socialist, and unlike the status-quo Democrats in politics today, Democratic Socialists want to "put working people back at the heart of politics."
While Mamdani seems to becoming a bit of a king-maker in politics, Trump's king-making days are behind him. The president's endorsements of his preferred candidates are starting to result in loses as his own cruelty and insanity grow unchecked and even boot-licking Republicans start to realize they can't fully support him anymore.
The bad...
Supreme Court Building at Dusk. Image by Joe Ravi from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The Supreme Court has once again ruled in favor of the Trump regime's unprecedented cruelty, voting to allow the regime to end temporary legal protections for Haitian and Syrian immigrants. While this decision directly affects hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants in the U.S., it could also be a preview of the fate that awaits over a million more immigrants currently on Temporary Protected Status.
TPS is typically granted to people fleeing natural disasters or civil unrest in their home countries, and while it is intended to be a temporary status, the granting of this status applies to anyone who has been continuously present in the U.S. since the designation was granted, and it can be extended indefinitely in 18-month increments.
The Supreme Court's decision was to allow the Department of Homeland Security decide when the protections end, taking the decision out of the hand of the judges who previously made that determination. In addition, the Trump regime's decision to remove TPS status for Haiti and Syria failed to assess the conditions in those countries as required by law before making their determination.
The ugly...
Days after signing a peace treaty with Iran in which Iran agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. promised an end to military operations, Israeli forces have ignored the agreement and continued their assaults in Lebanon. Iran sees that as a violation of the peace deal with the U.S., and closed the Strait of Hormuz in response.
Donny 2-Dolls responded with the typical profanity-filled ranting that we've come to expect, threatening to take over Iran if the Strait was not opened. This is despite the fact that the peace agreement between the two countries included an agreement that both nations would avoid making threats or using force against each other.
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz despite the threats, and launched drone attacks on ships that continued to try to traverse the strait. In response, the U.S. launched attacks on Iranian storage and radar facilities. Iran responded by attacking American assets in the Gulf region, and the U.S. military launched additional assaults against Iran.
Clearly, the Trump regime has no intention of honoring any agreement it makes with Iran. The only reason the U.S. agreed to the peace deal to begin with is that we don't have the ability—militarily, financially, or politically—to continue fighting this war, and our Bully in Chief is trying desperately to get out of the war he started without provocation.
Trump's motorcade drives over the freshly-installed lining of the Reflecting Pool. Are these the "real" vandals of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool?
Just days after Trump paid his business partner $14-$16 million of taxpayers' money through a no-bid contract to convert the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool into a Florida-style swimming pool, the pool is filled with algae and the new lining is peeling off in large chunks.
In his usual style, Donny 2-Dolls has declared, without providing evidence, that the disgusting appearance of the pool is the result of vandalism, and six people have been arrested, including one who was arrested for just touching the already-peeled pool liner. Trump is claiming that someone cut a 350-foot long gash in the new lining with a knife or razor, "probably in the dark of night," despite having no evidence to offer for his allegations.
Now, Trump will spend even more taxpayers' money to fix his botched attempt at white-trash-ifying Washington D.C. Oh, and somehow, all of this has created conditions that are apparently killing the ducks that frequent the waters of the reflecting pool.
Wasting taxpayer money turning the reflecting pool into a giant duck death trap just in time for America's 250th birthday party is as Trump as it gets. Cruel, stupid and selfish.
Tara Zuardo, senior campaigner at The Center for Biological Diversity
What did I/we do last week?
On vacation. Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay.
I took a few weeks off this month to take the family on vacation to try to disconnect a bit from the chaos that is our country these days. For two glorious weeks, we had a chance to pretend that our country was not falling apart around us and see parts of the country we've never seen before.
Keeping you informed...
It's not surprising that feelings about the 250th year of our nation are roughly divided along party lines. Roughly 70% of Republicans are proud of the United States, while only 30% of Independents and 20% of Democrats feel the same.
What's more disturbing is that, regardless of political affiliation, about 80% of those polled say the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed with how the country has turned out. You might be tempted to think that both parties are likely to think that the country is on the wrong path because of the "other" party, but for perspective, in 1999, only 55% of those polled said the signers would be disappointed.
The final disappointing number indicates that only about 20% of adults plan to participate in a neighborhood or community event and only 10% will attend an "official" America 250 event.
I think this song sums up the true feelings of Americans 250 years into this grand experiment:
We were the dream calling across the sea
Now we're a warning in historySo don't hand me a sparkler, don't pour me that wine
This don't feel like freedom on the Fourth of July...
We're not in the mood to celebrate
But we're also not ready to abdicateWe'll take it back, piece by piece
'Till the noise gives way to peace
Sounds of the revolution...
The Resistance [Link]
The Resistance [Link]