by Brad Reed | Aug 11, 2026 | Article, elections, midterms, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Voting Rights
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Aug. 11, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
A right-wing talk show host on Tuesday pushed President Donald Trump to declare a “national security emergency” that would let him meddle in the 2026 midterm elections—and the president did not rule it out.
In an appearance on Real America’s Voice, Trump listened as host Wayne Allyn Root rattled off actions he would like to see the president take ahead of the midterms.
“Let me put an idea in your head,” Root told Trump. “Because it’s so hard to get the Senate to do anything, now they’re on recess, they never get anything done. If they never get the SAVE America Act done, you have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections.”
🚨🚨🚨WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. If you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a limit to mail ballotsTRUMP: Let me just say stranger things have happened. I’ll leave it at… pic.twitter.com/SvXYoYI0lQ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2026
Root then told the president that “if you do this in the next month” it would allow for the implementation of photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements, as well as restrictions on mail-in ballots.
“Let me just say that stranger things have happened,” Trump said in response. “I’ll leave it at that.”
The US Constitution does not give the president power to declare a “national emergency” that would allow him to unilaterally rewrite states’ election laws.
Regardless, ABC News reported in February that a group of pro-Trump attorneys were circulating a 17-page draft order that
by Mike Ludwig | Aug 11, 2026 | AI, Article, police accountability, Policing, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
by Sonali Kolhatkar | Aug 7, 2026 | Article, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Oil, Reprint
This article was originally published by Truthout on Aug. 06, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Can a lawsuit hold fossil fuel companies responsible for climate-change and its impact? That’s the question a Washington State-based woman is hoping to answer. Misti Leon is suing several big oil companies — including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and others — over the 2021 heat-related death of her mother Juliana, who died during a record-breaking heat dome over the Pacific Northwest.
For years, individuals and institutions have attempted to protect human lives from climate change using litigation. In 2015, a public interest law firm called Our Children’s Trust, representing nearly two dozen young people sued the federal government for failing to protect them against the impending impacts of fossil fuel emissions. Courts dragged their feet for more than a decade only for the case to reach a dead end at the United States Supreme Court in 2025.
Leon’s civil suit is significant, not just because a Washington judge unexpectedly cleared the case for discovery and trial, but because Leon can directly link her mother’s death to climate change. Scientists concluded that the 2021 heat dome was, in the words of one research paper, “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.” It’s about a crime that already occurred instead of hypothetical harm.
“Ms. Leon’s case is unique in that it is the first of its kind to seek to hold big oil companies accountable for their role in an individual’s death in a climate-related disaster,” Mike Meno, communications director at the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit advocacy group that supports community efforts to hold Big Oil accountable for climate change, explained in an interview.
Juliana Leon was one
by Eddie Velazquez | Aug 7, 2026 | AI, Article, Economy and Inequality, labor, Reprint
by Richard D. Wolff | Aug 6, 2026 | Article, Economy and Inequality, Europe, Politics and Movements: International, Reprint, Russia, War
This story originally appeared in Professor Richard Wolff’s Substack on July 21, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
Deeply divided by nationalism and deprived of its vast colonies by the last century’s catastrophic two world wars, Western Europe has been in decline ever since. Recently, that decline has become drastic and desperate as Western Europe falls ever further behind — economically, militarily, and politically — today’s two superpowers: the US and China. Mediocre and unpopular leaders reflect Western European decline. They bet and built their careers on accepting junior partner positions vis-à-vis the United States. But Europe’s decline now threatens to split Europe apart. Inside each nation, rich and powerful minorities use their social positions to sustain their wealth and power while the masses bear most of the burdens of decline offloaded onto them by the rich and powerful. The problems flowing from these cumulative developments are approaching points of social explosion. Despite the lessons taught by the two world wars, many Western European leaders once again provoke and prepare for a war, this time against Russia, notwithstanding the awful risks of nuclear weapons. One key question to ask: why is this happening?
From 1945 to 1990, Cold War set Western European nations against the USSR and its Eastern European allies in many ways and on many levels. Yet that war remained cold. In 2026, after more than three decades of post-Cold War peace, a military war between a largely unified Europe (East and West) and post-Soviet Russia seems imminent. Such a war has been prepared by NATO’s growth, its moving eastward toward Russian borders since 1990; by Russia’s 2022 invasion
by Brett Wilkins | Aug 5, 2026 | Article, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Economy, Economy and Inequality, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on AUg. 04, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As wildfires ravaged large swaths of the Western US, a group of Democratic senators on Monday called on federal regulators to rein in prediction markets offering contracts tied to such disasters, warning that turning climate-fueled extreme weather into financial wagers creates “perverse incentives” that could motivate arson and other crimes.
In a letter to Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig, Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Alex Padilla (Calif.), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Adam Schiff (Calif.), Jacky Rosen (Nevada), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), Martin Heinrich (NM), Ron Wyden (Ore.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) wrote that “prediction markets have been enabled to expand rapidly, increasingly inviting speculation on war, political violence, disasters, and public emergencies that raise ethical and public policy concerns.”
These markets risk creating perverse incentives, undermining public trust, and commodifying human suffering in ways that warrant careful scrutiny,” the lawmakers continued. “Recent public reports have highlighted how Polymarket—the largest prediction market platform in the world—accepted more than $1.2 million in bets surrounding the Palisades and Eaton fires in January 2025. These fires devastated the Los Angeles area, claiming the lives of 31 people and destroying more than 16,000 structures.”
“Offering bets on destructive wildfires threatens to minimize communities’ suffering all so the rich and powerful can profit,” the letter argues. “There’s also the heightened risk—according to state and local fire officials—that individuals could be tempted to commit arson in order to make sure their bets are successful.”
Allowing prediction markets on wildfires is outrageously dangerous and will incentivize bad actors to spread or even start fires themselves. Frankly, this is betting on the suffering of our neighbors
