by Michael Fox | Jul 20, 2026 | Article, big tech, free speech, Palestine, Politics and Movements: International, The Battle for Free Speech
When activists in Ireland heard that Peter Thiel’s secret club, Dialog, was planning to meet in the Irish countryside, they launched a campaign to stop it. They succeeded.
Peter Thiel is a Silicon Valley tech financier and the founder of the companies PayPal and Palantir who donated lavishly to Trump’s 2016 presidential run. In 2022, he financially backed 16 far-right congressional candidates. Thiel’s company Palantir has come under fire for supporting both the genocide in Gaza and the immigration crackdown in the United States.
Leaks about Dialog dropped in June, revealing information about Thiel’s 20-year-old elitist invitation-only organization and its planned Irish conference in August. Meeting topics included World War III, battlefield technologies, building a cult, and improving your sex life.
The meeting was to be held in the five-star Powerscourt Hotel in County Wicklow, Ireland. Several grassroots Irish groups — including Your Tech, Their Deaths and North Wicklow Against Genocide — created #DropDialog, a campaign to get the conference cancelled. They planned several protests at the Powerscourt Estate. They didn’t have to. News broke on July 3 that the event had been cancelled.
“Media reports say the genociders’ event, the Dialog conference, will not be hosted at Powerscourt Hotel,” they wrote, in a statement on the #DropDialog website. This is a victory for all people of conscience who mobilised against it and shows that direct action works! We issue a warning to any other hotel or venue on the island of Ireland who may consider hosting these individuals. Genociders, warmongers and technofascists are not welcome in Ireland. Power to the people!”
Jude Farrell is a founder of the group Your Tech, Their Deaths. She is a former
by Olivia Rosane | Jul 17, 2026 | Article, Canada, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Oil, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 16, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As wildfires raged across Canada on Thursday, sending dangerous smoke across the border into major US cities, climate advocates called for accountability for the fossil fuel industry, which knew for decades that its products were largely responsible for the climate crisis, yet chose to push climate denial instead.
While fire is a natural part of the lifecycle of Canada’s boreal forests, the heating of the atmosphere due to the burning of oil, gas, and coal has made fires more frequent and extreme.
“We need Nuremberg trials for Big Oil,” the youth-led Sunrise Movement wrote on social media in response to the fires.
We need Nuremberg trials for Big Oil. https://t.co/nHhbDXB06X— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) July 16, 2026
Climate Defiance agreed, posting, “Nuremberg-style trials are in order for the fossil fuel executives who knew what they were doing to our children’s futures and did anyway.”
There were 884 fires burning in Canada on Thursday, with 124 out of control, according to the country’s national wildland fire summary. Over 100 fires were raging in Ontario alone, where they have forced the evacuation of at least 15 rural communities; destroyed homes in the Indigenous community of Collins First Nation, or Namaygoosisagagun; and polluted the skies over parts of the upper Midwest and Northeastern US.
As of Thursday evening Eastern time, the four cities with the worst air quality in the world were Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Toronto, according to IQAir.
People have shared dramatic footage of the fires on social media. One video shows a train moving through a blaze near Armstrong, Ontario. Thankfully, all crew members were evacuated safely, The Guardian reported.
This is near Armstrong, Ontario. When will the Canadian National Railway Company make a statement about this incident?
by Stephen Prager | Jul 15, 2026 | Article, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Socialism
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 14, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As he pushed for Congress to approve $350 billion in new spending requested by the Pentagon, House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Tuesday that some of the funds were needed for “fighting communism on our own shores,” an ominous notion in light of President Donald Trump’s threats to deploy the US military against his domestic enemies.
In addition to the already record-breaking $1.1 trillion military spending bill that was approved last month by the House Appropriations Committee, the Pentagon has requested a separate $350 billion package to be passed through a separate GOP-led spending bill known as “Reconciliation 3.0,” which can pass without Democratic support.
Johnson (La.) has faced pushback from some GOP senators, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and the hospitalized Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), as he’s sought additional spending. During a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson made his case for Republicans to back the reconciliation proposal.
The speaker argued that the package included “transformational funding that will help us change the dynamic of the Department of War and make it more efficient and effective,” including Trump’s request to “effectively double the funding for national defense.”
“Look, we live in dangerous times,” Johnson said. “We’re fighting communism on our own shores, and we’re fighting evil terrorists and tyrants around the world, and we have to be able to protect our national security.”
Mike Johnson says that the Pentagon is requesting an additional $350,000,000,000 for things like “fighting Communism on our own shores” pic.twitter.com/3s3HH8E4eH— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) July 14, 2026
In the weeks following a series of Democratic primary victories by progressive and democratic socialist candidates in New York, Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere, Trump and his
by Meagan Day | Jul 14, 2026 | Article, Economy and Inequality, Inequality, Politics and Movements: US, Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
by Brad Reed | Jul 14, 2026 | Article, Oil, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Trump, Venezuela
by Jake Johnson | Jul 10, 2026 | Article, elections, midterms, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Voting Rights
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 10, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
US President Donald Trump late Thursday forced out the remaining three members of an independent, bipartisan commission that assists state election officials across the country, a move that critics condemned as a “pathetic power grab” ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The two Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks, were fired, and Republican Commissioner Christy McCormick resigned at the White House’s request, according to ProPublica. The agency, established by Congress more than two decades ago, now lacks leadership and any ability to make decisions, just months before the 2026 elections.
The EAC, as its website states, is “an independent, bipartisan commission whose mission is to help election officials improve the administration of elections and help Americans participate in the voting process.” In an executive order last year, Trump ordered the EAC to implement proof-of-citizenship requirements in the federal voter registration process, along with other changes. The president’s effort to impose his policy demands on the EAC was mostly blocked in federal court.
Trump, who has said he wants his administration to “take over” voting nationwide ahead of the 2026 midterms, has since taken other steps that watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers say amount to an attempt to preemptively subvert the coming elections, including a sweeping assault on mail-in voting—which is also facing legal challenges. Legislatively, Trump is pushing Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that experts say would prevent millions of Americans from voting.
Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, said Thursday’s EAC firings “are deeply concerning in light of President Trump’s
