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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Al Green

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features soul singer Al Green. Enjoy!

^{Al Green - I Can't Get Next To You}

“From all those sharing memes on social media about surrender, from the Democrats and CNN talking heads decrying the deal, to Jimmy Kimmel dragging Trump for giving Iran back the money the U.S. stole, there is no articulation of an alternative to endlessly bombing Iran. There’s no anger from liberals over dead Iranians, or at the imperial state, at Zionism or the embedded death machinery that made this violence possible. No, they’re just embarrassed for empire. And they don’t want to recognise the limits of that empire.”

-- Nate Bear

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News and Opinion

Democrats are such obnoxious liars

Instead of attacking Trump for failing to do enough to make peace, Democrats are calling him a weak little bitch for not continuing the war, and for agreeing to ensure $300 billion in reconstruction financing instead.

“Iran took Trump to the cleaners with this so-called understanding,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday, adding, “Are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle prepared to send Iran $300 billion when economic needs are so severe here at home? That’s what Trump wants them to do.”

“With $300 billion, we could end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years. Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran,” tweeted Senator Amy Klobuchar.

“Here’s what this deal basically is: Iran makes zero concessions, and the United States lets Iran trade oil for free and commits to give them $300 billion in reparations,” said Senator Chris Murphy.

“Trump is touting a ‘deal’ that promises to lift all sanctions, allow Iran to export oil and potentially charge tolls, and hand over more than 300 billion dollars to that country,” said Senator Adam Schiff, adding that the deal “looks more like a surrender.”

These prominent Democrats make it sound like Trump is just taking $300 billion from the American taxpayer, when according to Reuters the financing for the deal “will be comprised entirely of private-sector funds.” Democrats are essentially running the same bogus “Obama gave Iran pallets of cash” attack that Republicans used to use when slamming the 2015 JCPOA.

More importantly, how revealing is it that these warmongering freaks are suddenly pretending care about how much $300 billion could do to help ordinary Americans? Whenever anyone tries to nudge the party an inch to the left on universal healthcare or whatever you see Democratic Party officials wagging their fingers at them telling them there’s no money for such pie-in-the-sky fantasies, but as soon as they get an opportunity to push for more war they’re out there saying they could use all that peace money to end homelessness. All of which will of course be right out the window when it comes time to vote for the next $1.5 trillion military budget.

Democrats are such obnoxious liars. Their sleaziness is exceeded only by Trump supporters claiming their president deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for losing a war he started.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Netanyahu and Israeli Decline

Chris Hedges: The Joke Is On Us

The buffoons who orchestrate fascism, with its quack science, idiocy, penchant for violence and grotesque hypermasculinity, are ripe for satire. It is easy, as late-night comics do — and as the cabarets did for the Nazis in Berlin — to pillory the goons, misfits and mediocrities who hold power and spew fascist bile. But this form of satire blinds opponents to its destructive power and murderous core. It ignores the real centers of power. It does not engender resistance. It engenders disdain and cynicism. It furthers the social and political divide between us, the “enlightened” and “educated” elite, and them, the despised and ridiculed “basket of deplorables.”

There are two forms of satire. That of the educated elites, which dominates the commercial media, ridicules the foibles and pretensions of President Donald Trump and his hapless followers. This satire does not attack corporations or the war industry. It ignores the decay and rot within our political institutions, including the Democratic Party, which created Trump. It pretends we live in a democracy. It breeds cynicism, not resistance. It is characterized by a repugnant moral and intellectual superiority and heartless demeaning of the underclass. It fosters the social divisions and alienation that feeds fascism.

Antonio Gramsci warned that elitist satire is counterproductive. He called for a “passionate sarcasm,” which targets the machinery of power. Satire, he wrote, must excoriate the dominant myths and ideologies which buttress capitalism and fascism. It must expose not only the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of fascism, but acknowledge the legitimate grievances of those under its spell. It must focus on the institutions that perpetuate injustice and social inequality.

Elitist satire is a pressure-release valve. But because it refuses to confront the roots of America’s political, social and cultural degeneration — which preceded the Trump presidency — it solidifies the fascist project it seeks to destroy. It reduces the catastrophe to the clown show around Trump: the sycophantic cabinet secretaries, ICE Barbie or Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s bizarre war on medical science.

It does not address our failed democratic institutions — the academy, elections, courts, Congress, or the media. It deflects attention from the billionaires and corporations that have slashed regulation, imposed austerity and deindustrialization and distorted the economic and political system to facilitate the largest upward transfer of wealth in U.S. history. It does not address the murderous war industry or the domestic security apparatus that makes us the most watched, monitored, spied upon, tracked and photographed population in human history. When satire is the end point, it is deleterious. It masks what is coming. It must cease to play into the hands of a polarized nation, one where opposing factions write each other off as irredeemable. It must acknowledge that given the gravity before us, laughter is not enough.

Col Douglas Macgregor: Pressure to REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE Growing

Israel’s Surveillance of Christian Americans

If you are a Christian living in the Western United States, you have almost certainly been targeted with pro-Israel, anti-Palestine propaganda, paid for directly by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Your searches, location, and internet activity is being monitored by Israel, and your algorithms and search results across multiple platforms are being manipulated by the Israeli government in what its American partner calls the “largest geofencing and targeted Christian digital campaign ever.”

Amid a massive drop in support from the Christian community, Israel is spending millions of dollars to target individuals entering churches or Christian colleges with ads, and paying pastors across the country to promote propaganda and false “anti-Palestinian” narratives every Sunday, documents filed with the United States’ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) show. The 86-page disclosure reveals that Israel is recruiting Hollywood celebrities and sports stars to promote the country, while also manipulating Christians’ social media feeds. And they are doing it by spying on you through your phone.

In September, Show Faith by Works L.L.C., a San Diego-based company led by conservative activist Chad Schnitger, filed a sworn document with the U.S. Department of Justice. The declaration revealed that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was paying Show Faith by Works $4.1 million to carry out a massive, covert, digital surveillance operation targeting Christian communities across multiple states, including California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. The document noted that all students at every Christian college and every congregant at “every major church” in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado has been spied on through their phone’s location data, and targeted with propaganda extolling Israel’s “moral superiority” and “linking the Palestinian population with extremist factions.” The campaign estimates that it has reached well over eight million Americans.

Show Faith by Works itself divides its messaging into two themes: “pro-Israel” and “anti-Palestinian.” Its primary goals, in its own words, are to “combat low American Evangelical Christian approval of the Nation of Israel,” by “using biblical arguments to highlight the importance of Israel and the Jewish People to Christians.” It also wishes to “educate Christians on the historical importance of Israel and its significance in the region,” and to “counter new and evolving pro-Palestinian messaging as the global narrative shifts.” Many of their anti-Palestinian talking points are highly controversial, dubious, or even blatant falsehoods. Their principal messaging on Palestine is that there never was (or should be) a Palestinian state in history, that “Palestinians shelter terrorists” and “hide weapons in their schools and hospitals,” and that they are not a trustworthy actor, as the Palestinians’ goals are “genocidal.”

They also share ads and messages with American Christians claiming that Gazans kill U.S. Christian aid workers distributing food to them, and that “Israel is the birthplace of Jesus.” (In fact, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, in the Palestinian West Bank). The overall message, then, is one extolling Israel’s supposed virtues, encouraging Americans to visit, while dehumanizing Palestinians (including the 12.5 percent of historic Palestine who were Christians themselves) as genocidal terrorists intent on destroying the world.

NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL: Israel's Diabolical Plan to Coerce the US

Iran agrees to UN nuclear inspectors’ return as part of agreement with US

Iran has agreed to allow UN nuclear inspectors back into the country as part of an agreement under which Washington will lift sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports and the strait of Hormuz will reopen, the US vice-president, JD Vance, has said. Long-term independent monitoring of Iran’s nuclear programme, which it says is for energy purposes only, was in effect halted last summer after Israel and the US attacked the country. Tehran suspended cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in response to strikes on its nuclear facilities.

Donald Trump wrote on social media: “Everybody is fully aware that Iran will agree to have Major Weapons Inspections in order to ensure “Nuclear Honesty” long into the future.” Later, he told reporters: “If Iran doesn’t live up to ‌their agreement, or if ​they’re not behaving, I will do ⁠what I have ​to ​do.” Tehran, sensitive to domestic criticism, said it had made no new concessions on its nuclear programme, and that the outcome of any negotiation would be subject to the supreme national security council, the body which brings together Iranian political and military decision makers.

A “deconfliction” mechanism has also been set up involving Washington, Tehran and Beirut to try to bring about a working ceasefire in Lebanon, which Israel has continued to bomb and where the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah is based. A Lebanon ceasefire is one of Iran’s key demands.

Early signs on Monday suggested commercial oil tankers were starting to move through the strait of Hormuz. Four liquefied natural gas tankers controlled by Qatar headed into the Gulf and through the strait on Monday, while two supertankers, which can carry up to 4m barrels of crude oil, crossed into the Gulf heading for the Iraqi port of Basra. The talks nearly broke down on Sunday when a stream of violent threats from Donald Trump infuriated the Iranian delegation.

In a development vital to unlocking progress, the US treasury is preparing to issue a 60-day waiver that will lift sanctions on Iran’s oil, petrochemicals and derivatives. Tehran said this meant its central bank would be able to sell oil to customers, principally China, and receive payments without the threat of repercussions. Qatar and Iran also signed a memorandum about the release of Iranian assets frozen in Qatari bank accounts as a result of secondary US sanctions. Vance said the deal required Iran to spend its unfrozen assets on food such as soya produced by US farmers.

Seyed M. Marandi: New Hormuz mechanism - IAEA access put on hold

US Treasury Department Issues Waiver for Iranian Oil Sales Amid Switzerland Talks

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Monday that the US was issuing a temporary license to allow the sale of Iranian oil amid ongoing talks between the US and Iran in Switzerland in line with the Memorandum of Understanding aimed at ending the conflict between the two nations.

Vice President JD Vance also announced in Switzerland that Iran was willing to allow IAEA inspectors back into the country, though Iranian media denied the issue was discussed. The IAEA was working in Iran before the US and Israel started bombing the country on February 28, then halted its work due to the war. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that some work was done earlier this month during an IAEA inspection of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in southern Iran, suggesting that some inspectors remained in the country.

Iran did suspend the IAEA’s access to the nuclear facilities that the US bombed in June 2025 over what it saw as the agency’s complicity in providing a pretext. The day before Israel launched the 12-Day War, the IAEA’s Board of Governors passed a resolution claiming Iran was no longer living up to its commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a claim made mainly based on nuclear activity that allegedly took place decades ago.

Israel Kills Lebanese Turtle Conservationist

For more than 25 years, she protected the endangered sea turtles that laid their eggs near her beachside home in southern Lebanon. But Mona Khalil could not protect herself from Israeli invaders who spared neither her sanctuary nor its steward.

Khalil, 76, was mortally wounded when Israeli forces bombed her brightly painted conservation hub and ecotourism site, called the Orange House, in al-Mansouri, Tyre province, on June 4. She suffered injuries including severe burns during the attack, which also wounded her Ethiopian assistant, and was transported to a hospital in Beirut for treatment.

“They knew exactly who Mona Khalil was,” Lebanese journalist and professor Marwa Osman said on social media following Khalil’s death. “They knew the bright orange house... They knew it was not a military site, not a command center, not a battlefield position. It was one of the most recognizable symbols of environmental conservation on Lebanon’s southern coast; a sanctuary dedicated to protecting endangered sea turtles and preserving life.”

They knew exactly who Mona Khalil was.

They knew the bright orange house in Mansouri, south Lebanon. They knew it was not a military site, not a command center, not a battlefield position. It was one of the most recognizable symbols of environmental conservation on Lebanon's… pic.twitter.com/bwP4w1a0Fo

— Marwa Osman (@Marwa__Osman) June 20, 2026

The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday that Khalil “was not a target.”

“There is no known IDF strike in which she was injured,” the military said. “However, strikes were conducted in the area after the IDF issued evacuation warnings.”

Khalil—who was born in Nigeria in 1949 and held Dutch and Lebanese citizenship—co-founded the Orange House Project in 1999 in what had once been her grandmother’s home. Khalil and volunteers gathered there each nesting season to protect sea turtles, their eggs, and hatchlings from both predators and people. She also fought against the privatization of beaches, habitat destruction, dynamite fishing, and other threats.

“For decades, Mona dedicated her life to protecting endangered sea turtles and their nesting habitats,” the Lebanese environmental group Green Southerners said on Instagram. “Through the Orange House, she inspired generations of Lebanese to value and protect their natural heritage and coastal ecosystems. Her work made her one of Lebanon’s most respected voices for marine conservation and biodiversity protection.”

Green Southerners co-founder Hisham Younes told the BBC on Saturday that Khalil “used to talk about the beach like it was a person.”

“Her bond to the sunset, her bond to the water and the turtles... she was really into conservation, and into the soul, the spirit of conservation,” Younes added.

According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, Israeli attacks have killed at least 4,106 people—including 383 women, 251 children, and 135 medical workers—and wounded 12,153 others since March 2. Over 1 million Lebanese have also been forcibly displaced.

Over the weekend, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said his country’s forces “need to go berserk” and “obliterate” Lebanon, all of which, he said, “must burn.”

Ben-Gvir’s comments were widely viewed as part of Israel’s efforts to sabotage an elusive peace agreement between the United States and Iran, which has endured 114 days of an illegal US-Israeli war of choice.

Israel’s Lebanon onslaught, occurring amid a backdrop of its ongoing genocide in Gaza, did not deter Khalil.

“When the war broke out, she said, ‘No one should tell me to leave. I don’t want to leave,’” Lebanese journalist and environmentalist Fadia Joumaa told Al Jazeera on Monday. “She made the decision to stay. What she said was, ‘I’m a civilian. I don’t have a weapon. I’ll lock myself inside my home. This is my life.’ She made that choice and remained in her house.”

The Lebanese environmental group Green Southerners decried the Israeli strike, which “targeted a site that had long been known for environmental conservation, biodiversity protection, and public awareness.”

“[Khalil’s] death stands as a stark reminder of the devastating toll that Israeli attacks continue to exact on civilians, environmental defenders, and the natural heritage they sought to protect,” the group said on Instagram. “We condemn the killing of Mona Khalil and reaffirm that those responsible for attacks on civilians and environmental defenders must be held accountable.”

Recalling Khalil’s successful campaign to ban dynamite fishing and the violent backlash it sparked from opponents, Joumaa told NPR: “Mona was a fighter. She did not like diplomacy. There were times when they shot at her house.”

“She always told me: Defend the beach, defend the turtles, defend your country,” she added.

Osman called the Israeli strike that killed Khalil “an assault on a woman whose life’s work was devoted to safeguarding life itself, a woman known internationally for her environmental activism, whose name had become synonymous with the protection of Lebanon’s coastline and its endangered sea turtles.”

“The murder of Mona Khalil sends a chilling message: Even those whose only weapon is compassion, whose only mission is preservation, are not spared,” Osman added.

Israel-Firsters TURN on JD Vance

We need to take away Israel's "toys."

Ben-Gvir: Lebanon Should Remain ‘Israel’s Playground’

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir fueled international condemnation with his calls over that weekend for all of Lebanon to “burn,” with the European Union declaring such rhetoric to be “unacceptable.”

Unsurprisingly, Ben-Gvir continued to make statements likely to garner such attention, as on Monday he not only demanded that the government reject any call for a ceasefire out of hand, but insisted that Lebanon must remains “Israel’s playground.”

The rhetoric continued, with him defending the ongoing invasion on the grounds “you wouldn’t tolerate having Nazis on your border,” and saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should make clear to the US that Israel won’t fulfill any peace deal involving not attacking Lebanon.

That’s largely a distinction without a difference, as Israeli official made clear, heading into this week’s round of talks, that they consider any terms requiring them to withdraw from Lebanon, or to stop attacking Lebanon, to be a “red line.”

Did the U.S. Lose its War With Iran?

‘There Will Come a Day When He Faces Prosecution’: Trump Condemned After US Murders Two More at Sea

Two people were killed, and six others survived, a strike on Sunday that the US military claimed—without providing evidence—targeted a boat full of “narco-terrorists,” but that human rights defenders called another summary execution worthy of prosecution.

“On June 21, at the direction of the commander of US Southern Command, Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” USSOUTHCOM said in a statement. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

“Two male narco-terrorists were killed during this action, and there were six male survivors,” the statement added. “Following the engagement, USSOUTHCOM immediately notified US Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivors.”

According to The Intercept’s Nick Turse, who has tracked all of the reported US boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, there have now been 66 such strikes, which have killed 215 people and left 12 survivors, based on USSOUTHCOM data.

The fate of previous boat strike survivors is not completely clear. After one April bombing, the US Coast Guard told UPI that search-and-rescue operations were called off after no signs of survivors were found. Last October, President Donald Trump said two strike survivors were repatriated to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia, where they faced prosecution.

Survivors of some of the strikes have accused US forces of torturing them.

Relatives of people killed in previous US boat bombings, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, have said that numerous victims were fishers who were not involved in the illicit drug trade.

In January, relatives of two Trinidadian fishers killed in the strikes filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in Massachusetts.

“The summary execution of two more in an alleged drug boat brings the number of murders ordered by Trump to more than 210,” former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said on social media. “There will come a day when he faces prosecution for these crimes.”

Scott Ritter : Russia and US/Iran MoU; Ukraine Attacks Moscow

Yanis Varoufakis with the best comment I've found on Keir Starmer's reign of error and demise:

Keir Starmer was not merely a disappointment. He is a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning - a Labour leader who dared banish from the Labour Party not only his…

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) June 22, 2026

The rest of the text:

predecessor but also remarkable human beings like director Ken Loach - the gentleman who has taken the historic Labour Party and transformed it into a vessel for the very oligarchy it was elected to restrain.

Consider the litany of Starmer’s moral and logical failures. He promised a 'different Britain', yet his actions were a masterclass in Tory-lite politics—using the same maxed-out credit card analogies that once served the austerity brigades to justify his own failure of vision. He promised a human rights lawyer’s approach but he embraced a racist-lite version of Farage.

On Europe, Starmer promised Brexiteers that Brexit is Brexit yet stood before those who yearn to rejoin the European Union, winked at them to make them feel that Britain would gradually reconnect, even rejoin, with the EU while offering nothing of substance. This is not leadership; it is a fraud.

And then there's the manner in which Starmer and his government rushed to offer Israel unequivocal support in pursuing its genocide in Gaza, sacrificing precious political and civil liberties in the UK by imprisoning grandmothers, priests and peaceful activists who dared support Palestine Action, an organisation that Starmer and his minions proscribed as terrorists for practising the usual activist tactics of trespassing to spray paint military planes that had demonstrably aided in the genocide. To add insult to injury, Starmer performed the diplomatic pantomime of recognising a Palestinian state, in a manner that ensured it would never happen.

But above all else, this is a government that has learned nothing from the post-2008 era. Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetrated by the City of London, throwing in forgood measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a "Strategic Defence Review" . It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.

History will remember Mr Starmer as a man without conviction, a Prime Minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say.

Trillionaire Elon Musk Threatens Ro Khanna for Warning of 4.5 Million Child Deaths From DOGE Cuts

The recently crowned world’s first trillionaire Elon Musk threatened Rep. Ro Khanna with legal action on Monday after the California Democrat pointed out the life-ending potential of foreign aid cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency.

During an appearance on the “I’ve Had It” podcast on Saturday, Khanna (D-Calif.) said that there must be consequences for Musk, who in February 2025 used DOGE to curtail programs and cut funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk,” Khanna emphasized. “You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires, but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”

A peer-reviewed study published by The Lancet in July 2025 estimated that proposed cuts to USAID could lead to as many as 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 worldwide, including the deaths of 4.5 million children under the ages of five years old.

Musk, who earlier this month became the world’s first trillionaire, wrote in response to Khanna’s interview that it was “time to sue this liar.”

It’s not clear how Khanna’s statement could be defamatory given that it was based on research published by a prestigious medical journal.

Musk, in a separate reaction to Khanna’s remarks about USAID, later added that the US lawmaker “should be in prison.”

On Monday afternoon, Khanna posted a video in which he challenged Musk to debate him on the impact the DOGE cuts have had on people throughout the Global South who had previously benefited from USAID.

“The world’s richest person has spent all day... going after me,” Khanna said. “Why? Because I cited an academic study that his DOGE cuts may lead to the deaths of millions of children overseas. You know, Elon, I thought you were a free speech guy. Why not debate me on these issues instead of threatening lawfare?”

“You’re not going to be able to intimidate me,” Khanna added.

Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief of Zeteo News, said that Khanna’s willingness to directly take on Musk exhibited qualities that Democrats could use more of in leadership positions.

“He is picking/making the right enemies on the right, and really pissing them off,” Hasan wrote of Khanna. “The Dems should have a leader who Elon Musk is threatening to sue and wants imprisoned. That’s the right guy.”

California drivers sue gas stations for allegedly using AI to inflate prices

Gas ⁠station ​operators including BP, Circle K, Marathon, 7-Eleven, Walmart and Albertsons were sued on Monday by California drivers ⁠who accused them of using artificial intelligence to boost prices at the pump. According to a proposed class action, the defendants ⁠violated California’s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, by using an AI-based tool that ​uses data from competing gas ‌stations to “coordinate high prices ‌and wring more money from the pockets of consumers”.

Drivers said gas prices have risen as much as 30 cents a gallon in areas where high percentages of stations ‌use the AI tool, which comes from a company called Kalibrate. Each penny costs California drivers an extra $134m per year, boosting ​gasoline prices to “astronomical” levels sometimes reaching $7 a gallon, the complaint said.

The ​defendants operate more ​than 1,700 gas stations in California, ​according to the complaint. Kalibrate is also a defendant.

Judge blocks subpoenas for Walz and others over Minnesota immigration crackdown

A federal judge agreed to quash the US federal government’s subpoenas of leaders in Minnesota issued during the Trump administration’s controversial immigration crackdown on the state earlier this year. The US Department of Justice issued subpoenas to the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz; the attorney general, Keith Ellison; the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey; and other local officials in the Twin Cities in January.

The department said it was investigating the officials for obstructing federal immigration enforcement. Local and state officials largely did not support the federal enforcement surge, during which federal agents killed two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in the streets.

The US district court for Minnesota unsealed an order from Chief Judge Patrick J Schiltz on Monday that showed the subpoenas were rejected as politically motivated. Ellison posted the unsealed order on Monday, saying the decision to quash the subpoenas was an “extremely rare step” by the court.

In the order, Schiltz, who was appointed to the Minnesota federal court by Republican president George W Bush, wrote that the Trump administration had been “threatening and attempting to punish states and localities that have adopted ‘sanctuary’ policies”. He noted that initiating an investigation “in order to ‘harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action – particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take – is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process”. The court also wrote that the subpoenas violate the 10th amendment, which establishes state’s rights to self-govern on issues not specifically delineated to the federal government.

“On the one hand, the evidence that the challenged subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons is overwhelming,” he wrote. “On the other hand, the Department has struggled – without success – to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas.” He concluded that the court found the “dominant purpose” of the subpoenas was to “coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration law and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so” and thus the court granted the motion to quash the subpoenas.

Home Prices NEVER Coming Down!

US Senate passes bipartisan bill to lower housing costs

The Senate on Monday passed a bipartisan measure aimed at lowering housing costs by streamlining construction and permitting, ending months of fraught negotiations on a priority for both parties ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The 21st Century Road to Housing Act would limit investors’ ability to buy homes, waive some federal permitting rules in a bid to ease new construction, and authorize pilot programs to facilitate grants for home improvements and planning affordable housing. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly, with a vote of 85-5, and now heads to the House of Representatives.

The legislation comes as Democrats and Republicans prepare for November’s midterm elections, in which concerns about affordability are expected to loom large in the minds of the voters who will decide control of Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump’s term.

A shortfall in construction of new homes is seen as a key driver of housing costs, which have crept higher in recent years. Last year, House and Senate lawmakers began working on legislation that could draw the bipartisan support needed to pass, but wound up producing competing bills, creating an unusual standoff between the chambers.

The version the Senate approved on Monday combines aspects of both chambers’ bills, and includes language banning investors from buying single family homes if they already own 350 or more properties, which Trump has sought to crack down on. There are also provisions to expand access to manufactured homes, and increase mortgage availability.

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New York City House primary emerges as key battleground in ‘AI civil war’

The artificial intelligence industry is spending heavily in the 2026 midterms, hoping to secure influence over the technology’s first generation of legislation – and New York City’s primary has emerged as the key battleground. AI-focused Super Pacs have raised over $100m this cycle, of which $49m has been spent so far, in dozens of congressional races across the country. Half of all spending has converged on a single Manhattan race: Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the district of NY-12.

And much of that spending has targeted a single candidate: the Democratic assemblymember Alex Bores, who is running to represent New York’s 12th House district. Bores, who worked in tech before his pivot to politics, has found himself at the unlikely center of a proxy battle for the industry’s tussle for regulatory influence.

The frenzy began a year ago, when Bores sponsored the Raise Act, the second-ever US state law requiring major AI developers to publish public safety plans. By August, his congressional campaign was under siege – attack ads on TV, by text, in the mail. The effort has been funded by Think Big, an affiliate of Leading the Future, a new bipartisan network of Super Pacs created to back “pro-AI” candidates, which has poured $8.2m into the primary.

Just four donors fund its $75m war chest: venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman with his wife, Anna, according to data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Like most of Silicon Valley, the group advocates for regulating AI with a federal framework, instead of a patchwork of state laws – a compliance minefield that would hand the AI race to China, tech firms warn.

However, Leading the Future’s anti-Bores ad blitz triggered a counter-assault by a different set of Super Pacs advocating for stronger AI safeguards. They include You Can Push Back, funded by the crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, and Jobs and Democracy, the Democrat-focused subsidiary of the Public First – a network of Super Pacs, founded by Brad Carson, a former Democratic congressman from Oklahoma. The message Leading the Future was sending, in Carson’s read: regulate AI, and we will find you, wherever you are. A former Andreessen Horowitz general partner made much the same case in a New York Times op-ed last week, accusing the industry of trying to intimidate anyone who engages “too aggressively” with AI governance. Leading the Future did not respond to a request for comment.

Progressive New Yorker backed by Zohran Mamdani for US Congress targets ‘establishment’

A progressive Democrat challenging a veteran congressman to represent the party in a closely watched New York race for US Congress has claimed the city has deteriorated on his watch. Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of three allies that New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has endorsed in competitive congressional Democratic primaries in the city on Tuesday, is seeking to unseat incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the state’s 13th congressional district.

During a recent candidate forum held by WNYC, Espaillat – the five-term Democrat who chairs the influential Congressional Hispanic caucus – claimed Avila Chevalier was not experienced enough. “Getting results in Congress is not a PhD program,” he declared, referencing her studies at the City University of New York. But in an interview with the Guardian, Avila Chevalier argued Espaillat had failed to produce such results since taking office.

“You just have to look around our district and ask: have things gotten any better in the nine years that he’s been in office?” she said. “I would argue the answer is no, because we’ve seen an exodus of over 200,000 Black New Yorkers leave the city in the last two decades.”

“He has been in office in some capacity for 30 years, and it’s time for a change,” Avila Chevalier said. “It’s time for a politics that actually puts the working people of our communities first and is responsive to them and includes them in that process.” Avila Chevalier, 32, served as the Mamdani mayoral campaign’s organizing lead for her district’s region, where he won by nearly 60% to 40% against former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Espaillat endorsed Cuomo in the party’s mayoral primary, before he was beaten by Mamdani. Like many prominent New York Democrats, Espaillat pivoted in the general election, endorsing Mamdani over Cuomo.

Avila Chevalier, who has lived in New York for about 14 years, felt “deeply abandoned by the establishment politics that we’ve had to live with for so long”, she said. “In a community that is so often spoken of as though we’re merely statistics, as though the problems we face day in and day out aren’t the direct results of the policy choices that our leadership makes, I think it’s time for a change.”

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Two million bees escape after truck carrying hives overturns in Texas

Two million bees escaped after a truck transporting their hives overturned and released the insects in Texas on Sunday. The accident happened near the town of Mauriceville in the east of the state, perhaps not surprisingly causing local emergency officials to warn residents near the mishap to stay indoors.

Photos posted online of the accident showed beekeepers dressed in white protective clothing working amid huge clouds of bees, including vast numbers that were clinging to nearby trees.

The Texas bee episode was dealt with fairly quickly. Orange county emergency services posted an update later on Sunday saying that the bees were being transferred to local beekeepers. “Crews are continuing to safely transfer the hives on to transport trucks, which will be hauled to a local honey farm,” it said.

How India’s heatwaves are shutting schools – and pushing women out of the workforce

Outside, the temperature has passed 41C (105.8F). Inside Sakshi Katyal’s city apartment, the air conditioner is blasting but it does little to relieve the stress of balancing housework and helping her five-year-old log in on a laptop to online classes. Her daughter’s school closed in May and Katyal is not clear when it will reopen. Probably not till the autumn.

Schools across Delhi and in about half of India’s 28 states have been ordered to close from mid-May until the end of June, when in many places the summer break starts. There is no official record of closures in past years but the Guardian has spoken to school officials who say the number of days schools are shut for because of the heat has risen sharply. The impact on families, especially on working women, has been huge.

Katyal and her husband moved to Noida, part of greater Delhi’s National Capital Region, in December 2025, to be closer to their daughter’s school, and to make balancing childcare and work easier. “Till last year, everything was great,” Katyal says. “I had a great job and last year we even bought our apartment. The apartment meant more than property. It meant stability. Then one notification changed everything: the notification that my daughter’s school was shutting.” In February, exhausted after months of juggling work and childcare, Katyal quit her job.

India is facing increasingly intense spells of extreme heat, with this year’s heatwaves beginning as early as April. Hundreds of thousands of parents in India are struggling with managing jobs and children as lives are disrupted by prolonged school closures linked to the high temperatures. And as childcare disproportionately falls to women, it is women who are bearing the brunt.

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.

What would happen if US actually cut off military aid to Israel?

Iran War: Iran Snubs US, Walks Out of Direct Talks Due to Trump Threats; Israel Still Refusing to Exit Lebanon; Strait of Hormuz Transits Expected to Stay Low Due to Scrapping

The Great Thing About Britain’s Labour Party Is… Nothing

British Powers That Be Change Public Face Of Their Program

Mexico’s president seeks to restart oil shipments to Cuba as island’s crises deepen

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A Little Night Music

Al Green – Get Back Baby

Al Green - All Because

Al Green - Take Me To The River

Al Green – I Stand Accused

Al Green – Here I Am

Al Green — Drivin' Wheel

Al Green - Oh, Pretty Woman

Al Green - A Change Is Gonna Come

Al Green - I'm A Ram

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