by Olivia Rosane | Mar 16, 2026 | Article, First Amendment, free speech, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Mar. 15, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to “antifa,” which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups.
A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent.
“A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protests and also helps them kind of intimidate, increase the fear, hoping that folks in other cities then will think twice over protesting,” Suzanne Adely, interim president of the National Lawyers Guild, told The Associated Press.
The administration promised it would be the first such case of many.
“The US lost today with this verdict.”
“Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization that has been allowed to flourish in Democrat-led cities—not under President Trump,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Friday. “Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”
The trial revolved around a nighttime protest at which participants planned to set off fireworks in solidarity with the around 1,000 migrants detained inside the Prarieland ICE facility. Some participants brought guns,
by Alexandra Martinez | Mar 13, 2026 | Article, ICE, immigration, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
by Eleanor J. Bader | Mar 12, 2026 | Article, education, Florida, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This article was originally published by Truthout on Mar. 10, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
First, there was democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. Then, in 2018, socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Rashida Tlaib won seats in the House of Representatives. Seven years later, in the fall of 2025, voters chose socialists Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson to lead New York City and Seattle, upping socialist representation in government to 250 people in 40 states.
These victories reflect the growing influence of socialist ideas and organizations across the U.S., driven in large part by youth. Unsurprisingly, the right wing has taken notice of this growing public appeal and has made it clear that it intends to stop the ascent of socialism — and communism — in their tracks. Their launching pad? Public education in Florida.
Beginning in the fall of 2026, all Florida middle and high school students will be required to take a yearly social studies class on the history of communism. The curriculum has already received the stamp of approval from the conservative Heritage Foundation (the group behind Project 2025), a right-wing nonprofit organization called the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and a NAS spinoff called the Civics Alliance, and it follows on the heels of the state’s 2022 imposition of Victims of Communism Day, which is now held every November 7 to mark the start of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The annual commemoration requires schools to provide a minimum of 45 minutes of instruction on “the horrors of communism” and the “destructiveness of Marxism-Leninism.” Programming is also expected to inculcate “an appreciation for the founding principles of the American republic.”
by Adam Johnson | Mar 11, 2026 | Article, Iran, Media Criticism, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, terrorism, War
It’s not a war of aggression in the Middle East without the American media pushing out nonstop “sleeper cell” stories built on vague paranoia, supposed “chatter,” deliberate conflation of Sunni with Shia “terrorism,” and an even more deliberate conflation of mentally unwell “lone wolves” with state agents of Iran, sourced entirely from ex-spooks, zionist advocacy groups, and/or anonymous leaks from the US government. A trope as old as the War on Terror, “sleeper cell” stories are a media favorite because they require no actual reporting beyond copy-and-pasting anonymous government officials and quoting conflicted pro-war lobbyists, while providing an urgent sense of stakes to an increasingly cynical and war-weary public. Whenever polls show increased skepticism or opposition to bombing people 6,500 miles away, the U.S. security state and its media conduits can build support for these far-off wars by insisting that “sleeper agents” from the populations being bombed are hiding among you at your local PTA meeting or grocery store or strip mall and are ready to kill you and your loved ones at any time. This brings the war home without the messy burden of “evidence,” “proof,” or Things That Have Actually Happened.
Since the US launched its unprovoked war on Iran on Feb. 28, and in the weeks leading up to the attack, US media has uncritically promoted the broad narrative that Iranian sleeper agents are living among Westerners waiting on word to strike at any moment:
New York Times: Iran Could Direct Proxies to Attack U.S. Targets Abroad, Officials Warn (2/22/26)
Fox Business: Hezbollah, Hamas sleeper cell fears raised amid Iran strikes (3/2/26)
ABC News: Iran may be activating sleeper cells outside
by Branko Marcetic | Mar 11, 2026 | Article, Iran, Israel, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Trump, War
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on Mar. 10, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
Over the weekend, the Washington Post was the latest to publish a claim that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the threat of launching a war with Iran solo as a way to pressure Donald Trump into the disastrous war he has now embroiled the United States in. It’s at least the fifth piece of evidence now suggesting that the United States was pushed into this war by Israel, and that the very military support that Washington provides Israel has served as the mechanism to do it.
It’s tempting to see this as a deliberate way to dump responsibility for this horror show onto Israel and divert it away from the US president, who ordered it, and the US foreign policy establishment as a whole, which has salivated over a war with Iran for decades. But we have mounting evidence that Israel bears a huge amount of responsibility. Which raises the question: If Israel was indeed able to successfully trigger a US-Iran war, is any ceasefire or lasting peace possible here without Israel’s approval? This is particularly relevant to an American public that foots the bill for Israel’s war-making.
According to the Post, Netanyahu, “increasingly alarmed” that Trump might actually solve the Iran issue peacefully, repeatedly rushed to Washington over the past few months to make sure he went to war instead. A “key component of his drive to war,” reports the Post, was telling Trump that Israel would go ahead and attack Iran with or without his help, which “led Trump to believe an Israeli attack was inevitable” and that his best
by Jake Johnson | Mar 10, 2026 | Article, Economy, Economy and Inequality, Iran, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Trump, War
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Mar. 10, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The Trump administration is quietly pursuing a regulatory change that would strip federal nutrition assistance from an estimated 6 million low-income Americans—including nearly two million children—as it spends billions on an illegal, open-ended war on Iran that has killed more than a thousand people and plunged the global economy into chaos.
The change sought by the US Department of Agriculture would curb broad-based categorical eligibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Broad-based categorical eligibility allows states to automatically qualify residents for SNAP if they are already enrolled in other aid programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, thus reducing administrative hurdles and costs.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimated in a blog post published late last month—the day before President Donald Trump announced the joint US-Israeli assault on Iran—that gutting broad-based categorical eligibility would likely strip modest federal food aid from around 6 million people, including nearly 2 million children.
“The people losing access to food assistance from SNAP, school meals, and [the Women, Infants, and Children Program] would mainly be working families, older adults, and people with disabilities,” the think tank noted. “In other words, the change would primarily harm groups that federal and state policymakers from across the political spectrum have long sought to help: people who work but are living near poverty; older adults and people with disabilities with low, fixed incomes; and people trying to build modest savings in order to become more economically independent.”
The Congressional Budget Office has projected that restricting broad-based categorical eligibility would result in roughly $11 billion in savings over a 10-year period—or just over $1 billion a year.
The Trump administration is currently spending
