by Jessica Corbett | May 14, 2026 | Article, elections, midterms, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Voting Rights
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 13, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Republican state leaders are forging ahead with President Donald Trump’s campaign to rig congressional districts for the GOP, with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday signing a proclamation for a special legislative session and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster expected to make a similar announcement soon.
While GOP policymakers facing pressure from Trump have pursued mid-decade redistricting in several states ahead of the November midterm elections—in which Democrats aim to reclaim majorities in both chambers of Congress—Kemp’s proclamation explicitly states that any changes in Georgia would be for 2028, which is the next presidential cycle.
Kemp’s proclamation cites the US Supreme Court’s decision last month that a Louisiana map predating Trump’s redistricting push was “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” which gutted the remnants of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965.
In a statement condemning the proclamation, Common Cause Georgia director Rosario Palacios pointed to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a key figure in the movement that led to the VRA as well as the Civil Rights Act the previous year.
“We will not sit back and watch while Gov. Kemp takes orders from a felon-in-chief to turn Dr. King’s dream into a nightmare. Too many civil rights leaders have done work in our state for us [to] take this sitting down,” Palacios declared. “Common Cause is mobilizing thousands of people to stop state lawmakers from passing any new maps before 2030 that destroy Black voters’ power for political gain. Voters should not have to rely on lawsuits to protect their right to fair representation. Congress must end this abuse once and
by Maximillian Alvarez | May 13, 2026 | Article, Economy, Economy and Inequality, Media, Opinion, Politics and Movements: US
An earlier version of this speech was delivered at the 2026 Izzy Awards ceremony at the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, NY, on April 21, 2026.
Friends, colleagues, fellow human beings,
You don’t need to read Project Censored’s latest State of the Free Press report to know that the state of the free press in America is not good (but, obviously, you should still read the report).
And it’s not just President Trump, his administration, and the MAGA faithful repeatedly, publicly expressing their hatred and verbalizing threats towards journalists and media organizations that don’t tow the Supreme Leader’s line. It’s not just Trump and his cabinet bullying and berating journalists at press briefings, restricting their access, and trying to make them sign loyalty pledges.
It’s also Trump’s absurd and gangsterish lawsuits targeted at ABC News, which is owned by Disney, and CBS News, which is owned by Paramount, and the morally spineless, financially self-serving capitulation of these corporate cowards to Trump by settling, rather than fighting, those lawsuits—setting the precedent for more shakedowns.
It’s the multi-pronged attempt by the Trump administration and the ruling-class-serving authors and executors of Project 2025 to destroy the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which they succeeded in doing, and to defund and destroy PBS and NPR, which they are still trying to do now.
It’s the federal harassment, capture, imprisonment, and even deportation of journalists like Estefany Rodríguez, Mario Guevara, Sami Hamdi, and Georgia Fort. Even Don Lemon. Even Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was snatched off the street last year by plainclothes federal thugs for co-authoring an op-ed in her campus newspaper.
It’s the professional journalists, student journalists,
by Stephen Janis and Taya Graham | May 13, 2026 | Article, ICE, immigration, Inequality Watch, Politics and Movements: US
Accusations that ICE is a giant ATM machine for private prison contractors have been a common critique of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. But a key congresswoman in the fight against the agency has taken the criticism a step further.
Rep. LaMonica McIver (NJ-10) says the push for profits within the mass deportation-industrial complex has put it at odds with the Trump administration’s goal of deporting millions of immigrants as quickly as possible.
For McIver, efforts to hold ICE accountable have become personal. She is facing up to 17 years in prison for making contact with an ICE agent outside the Delany Hall ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey. Federal prosecutors have charged her with three counts of forcibly interfering with a federal officer.
During an interview on Capitol Hill, the first-year lawmaker said she had spoken to multiple detainees at the Delany Hall facility who told her they had voluntarily agreed to leave the country, but were still being held in the US months afterward.
“When I go to Delaney Hall I speak to numerous detainees there. They tell me how they have signed a voluntary deportation agreement months ago and are literally still being held at the detention center,” she added.
“So this is all about money.”
ICE did not respond to our request to comment on the length of detention time for people who voluntarily agree to leave the country. However, their own statistics suggest that the average duration of a detainee’s stay has increased markedly.
Between September 2023 and September 2025, the average in-custody length of stay has risen by roughly a third. The average period of time a person is held has
by Glenn Diesen and Richard D. Wolff | May 13, 2026 | Article, Economy and Inequality, Iran, Oil, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Trump, Venezuela
This story originally appeared in In These Times on May 4, 2026.
It’s been more than two months since President Donald Trump dropped the first bombs in his illegal war with Iran, and U.S. consumers are increasingly footing the bill.
With traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remaining a tiny fraction of what it was before Trump began this latest regime-change campaign, oil prices reached a four-year high of more than $125 per barrel last week. Over the course of the same week, average gas prices surged more than 30 cents to reach $4.45 per gallon, roughly $1.50 higher than the pre-war average. With no sign of reversing course, economists continue to warn of recession.
In late April, Norwegian professor Glenn Dieson sat down with Richard Wolff, one of the world’s most prominent Marxist economists, to discuss how these impacts to the global economy will shape Trump’s war plans (or lack thereof), and why the last two months have signaled the “decline of the American empire.”
Glenn DiesenWelcome back. We are joined today by Professor Richard Wolff to discuss “Economic Fury,” the new arm of the U.S. war against Iran.
Richard WolffGlad to be here, Glenn.
Diesen[Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent has now complemented [“Operation Epic Fury”] with “Economic Fury,” the sanctions policies against Iran. It’s been a bit confusing, because first there’s a sanction on all Iranian oil, then they open up the Iranian oil to help stabilize the markets. Then there’s a blockade on Iranian ports. How do you assess this new effort to strangle Iran?WolffWell, we have stopped following the kind of herky-jerky, on-again off-again statements, because they are so often inconsistent one with the other. Either you are going to take the steps that make oil supply more plentiful and drive down the price, or
by Jake Johnson | May 11, 2026 | Article, cuba, Iran, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Venezuela, War
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 11, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
US surveillance and reconnaissance flights off the coast of Cuba have surged in recent months as President Donald Trump has issued increasingly belligerent threats to seize the island nation by force.
CNN reported Sunday that the US Navy and Air Force have conducted more than two dozen surveillance flights—mostly of them near Havana and Santiago de Cuba, the country’s largest cities—since early February, after the Trump administration invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president. The outlet noted that “similar patterns, in which ramped-up rhetoric by the Trump administration coincided with an uptick in publicly visible surveillance flights, occurred in the lead-up to US military operations in both Venezuela and Iran.”
“The flights are notable not only for their proximity to the coast, which puts them well within range of gathering intelligence, but for the suddenness of their appearance—prior to February, such publicly visible flights were exceedingly rare in this area—and for their timing,” CNN reported.
CNN published its story days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions targeting a conglomerate operated by Cuba’s military and a natural resources firm, intensifying the United States’ decades-long economic war against the island nation.
“Our people already know the cruelty behind the actions of the US government and the viciousness with which it is capable of attacking us,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in response to the sanctions. “They understand, just as the rest of the world does, that this is a unilateral aggression against a nation and a population whose sole ambition is to live in peace, masters of their own destiny and free from the pernicious interference of US imperialism.”
In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, US Reps. Pramila
by Brad Reed | May 11, 2026 | AI, Article, Economy, Economy and Inequality, Inequality, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 08, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
A top state utilities regulator is calling foul on an effort to shift the power cost of out-of-state artificial intelligence data centers onto Maryland residents.
Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel on Thursday filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) against electric grid operator PJM Interconnection objecting to plans that it said would force residents in the state to pay $1.6 billion in data center-driven transmission costs over the next decade.
The complaint states that the transmission cost allocation methodology PJM is using “broadly socializes” the cost of increased power demands that is being driven by AI data centers.
“That result is unjust and unreasonable and violates the cost causation principles that have long governed transmission cost allocation and that this commission has repeatedly affirmed,” the complaint says. “PJM’s tariff imposes these costs on Maryland electric customers even though Maryland customers do not meaningfully cause nor benefit from those investments.”
The Office of People’s Counsel pointed to the massive number of data centers built in neighboring Virginia as a primary culprit for added strain on the electric grid.
“Amidst national data center growth, Virginia stands as the epicenter,” the complaint says. “Virginia is the largest data center market in the world… As of December 2024, data centers represented 3.6 GW of demand… reflecting, since 2013, a 660% increase in megawatt-hour consumption.”
This explosive growth in energy demand is only expected to intensify over the next several years, the complaint continues, noting that “PJM projects 32 GW of peak load growth across its territory by 2030, of which approximately 30 GW
