This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 09, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Palestinian civilians and aid groups in Gaza expressed “jubilation” along with underlying caution and “skepticism,” as one local reporter said, on Thursday following the news that Hamas and Israel had come to an agreement to end Israel’s two-year assault on the exclave.
Israel is expected to withdraw troops to an agreed-upon line and to allow an influx of aid into Gaza along with releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that a ceasefire would take effect later in the day, “once the government convenes and approves the deal,” but Nour Odeh reported at Al Jazeera that “that is not stopping the celebrations” of the news that Israel’s relentless destruction of Gaza was expected to soon come to a halt.
“People were screaming in the streets, because after two years of bombings and destruction and loss, finally they will sign the ceasefire [deal],” Laila Al Shana, a project manager for Palestinian grassroots aid group Humans To Be in Gaza, told Al Jazeera. “I hope they can maintain this deal.”
Tareq Abu Azzoum, a reporter for the outlet in az-Zawayda, central Gaza, said there was “an undeniable collective sense of relief seen here in Gaza” on Thursday following President Donald Trump’s announcement that Hamas and Israel had reached a deal on the first phase of the 20-point peace plan Trump proposed last week.
Scenes of celebration at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza as news of the ceasefire spread earlier this morning. pic.twitter.com/pjI1FyGImL— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 9, 2025
“People were celebrating, and there were very obvious scenes of jubilation across
I, in large part, criticize liberal media for a living. Not the “liberal media” of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News paranoid imagination, but liberal with a small “l,” liberal media that largely leans Democratic in its preferences but first and foremost sees its role as policing populist and radical elements. A liberal media that is, in the aggregate, racist and reactionary but still reserves 10% of its resources for the occasional genuine piece of journalism covering workers, or the poor, or the plight of Palestinians, or corporate and government abuses. A media that still feigns interest in liberal credibility, with institutional validation, scientific accuracy, and a baseline––to use a popular buzzword from eight years ago––shared reality. This liberal order is a deeply flawed framework, pernicious precisely because it uses the veneer of objectivity and universalism. As I’ve spent the better part of 10 years documenting, this framework uses selective empathy, excludes dissenting or marginalized voices, and employs loaded rhetorical frameworks like fake concern for “human rights” and a host of other sophisticated modes of propaganda to protect the status quo and promote US imperial and capital dictates. But it did, at least, pretend to care about shared reality and institutional credibility. It at least sought approval from academia, international rights groups, and other liberal validators. It at least pretended to care about universal ideals.
This pretense, this last 10%, seems to be on its way out. Without commenting on whether shedding this pretense will be good or bad in the long run for the world’s poor and dispossessed, it’s essential to document its demise, and the grim media landscape it portends.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 07, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Defying objections from state and local leaders, Texas Army National Guard troops sent on orders from President Donald Trump began arriving in Chicagoland Tuesday, sparking widespread outrage and vows to resist.
Hundreds of federalized troops arrived at a military facility in suburban Joliet, Block Club Chicago reported. The Trump administration also announced plans over the weekend to federalize the Illinois National Guard and call up hundreds more troops for a mission to ostensibly support the president’s anti-immigrant crackdown.
Officials including US Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson—all Democrats—have condemned the deployment.
“No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate,” Pritzker said in a statement ahead of the deployment. “We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
President Trump and Governor Abbott have illegally sent the Texas National Guard into the sovereign state of Illinois over the objections of Governor Pritzker.This is a frightening and unconstitutional escalation.— Senator Dick Durbin (@durbin.senate.gov) 2025-10-07T21:16:14.826Z
Johnson—who on Monday signed an executive order establishing “ICE-free zones,” barring US Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel from using city-owned facilities—addressed the deployment during a Tuesday press conference.
”As far as what we are hearing, the National Guard—first of all, it’s illegal, unconstitutional, it’s dangerous, it’s wrong,“ the progressive leader of the nation’s third-largest city told reporters. ”This is not about deportation. This is not about safety for this
This story was originally published on Truthout on Oct. 06, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Today, federal lawmakers sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demanding information on any plans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has to use Graphite, a spyware program that can access — without the owner’s knowledge or consent — a phone’s location data, photos, and encrypted applications, including WhatsApp and Signal.
Last year, the Biden administration paused the contract with Paragon Solutions, which operates Graphite, while it conducted a review to ensure it complied with an executive order issued in 2023 which limits the government’s use of spyware. In August, the Trump administration lifted the stop work order, news that was first reported by All-Source Intelligence.
The letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was signed by Democratic Reps. Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), Shontel Brown (Ohio), and Yassamin Ansari (Arizona).
The lawmakers asked Noem to provide information on the government’s use of surveillance technology by October 14, including “a comprehensive list of data surveillance targets and ICE’s strategy for deploying spyware or mass data surveillance within the United States.”
The lawmakers warned that allowing ICE to use to spyware “threatens Americans’ freedom of movement and freedom of speech.”
“Given the Trump Administration’s disregard for constitutional rights and civil liberties in pursuit of rapid mass deportation, we are seriously concerned that ICE will abuse Graphite software to target immigrants, people of color, and individuals who express opposition to ICE’s repeated attacks on the rule of law,” they wrote.
Paragon was founded in 2019 by former Israeli military intelligence officers who worked in the Israeli military’s Unit 8200. Last year, the Florida-based private equity firm,
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 02, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Just hours after President Donald Trump said US soldiers should use Americans cities as “training grounds,” federal law enforcement officials on Tuesday night descended upon an apartment complex in Chicago where witnesses say they broke down residents’ doors, smashed furniture and belongings, and dragged dozens of them, including children, placed in U-Haul vans.
Local resident Rodrick Johnson, who lives in the building raided by Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) agents, told the Chicago Sun-Times that federal officials broke down his door, put him in zip ties, and kept him detained outside the building for three hours before letting him go.
“I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” he explained to the paper. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”
Pertissue Fisher, who also lives in the building, backed up Johnson’s account and said that agents forcibly removed all residents from their homes regardless of their legal status.
“They just treated us like we were nothing,” she told local news station ABC 7 Chicago. “They, like, piling us all up in the back on the other side, and it wasn’t no room to move nowhere.”
Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street from the raided building, told the Chicago Sun-Times that she saw children, some of whom weren’t even wearing clothes, dragged out of the building by ICE agents and then placed into U-Haul vans.
“It was heartbreaking to watch,” she said. “Even if you’re not a mother, seeing
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Sept. 30, 2025
.It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday sparked instant ridicule among critics for delivering a speech
in front of American generals in which he railed against “dudes in dresses,” “climate change worship,” and “fat” soldiers.
During the address, which US military leaders around the world were summoned to attend in Quantico, Virginia, Hegseth rattled off a long list of culture war grievances that he claimed had weakened the American military, which he asserted is forced to follow “stupid rules of engagement” that limit members of the armed forces. Hegseth has spent much of his tenure taking steps to remake the military into what he has said will be a more aggressive force, including by firing top lawyers.
Among many topics, Hegseth, a former Fox Newshost
, took aim at some American soldiers’ physical appearances.
“Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations and see fat troops,” Hegseth fumed at one point. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals.”
Hegseth also said that the Trump administration had moved to systematically “to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department.”
What this means in practice, Hegseth elaborated, was “no more identity months, [diversity, equity, and inclusion] offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship.”
“We are done with that shit!” he emphasized.
Elsewhere in his address, Hegseth announced he was “overhauling” the inspector general process that has been used to investigate allegations of misconduct against military officers. According to Hegseth, the current process has put “complainers, ideologues, and poor performers in the driver’s seat.”
“No more frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations, no more endless waiting, no more legal limbo, no more sidetracking careers, no more walking on eggshells!” Hegseth exclaimed.
US President Donald Trump
, who spoke at Quantico after Hegseth’s address, called the defense secretary’s speech “great,” even as it was being pilloried as “embarrassing” and “ridiculous” far and wide online.
Watch the complete speeches by both Hegseth and Trump.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie described
the speech as “some of the most loser shit I have ever seen in my life” and he marveled that Hegseth had hauled in military leaders away from their jobs to watch it.
“Can you imagine sitting in that audience as a three-star flag officer—decades in the service, multiple post-grad degrees, and a virtually unequaled level of command expertise—and being forced to watch this dunderheaded dry drunk give an off-brand Jordan Belfort seminar?” Bouie asked
.
Pamela Herd, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, also asserted that senior military personnel likely felt insulted watching Hegseth’s speech.
“I just can’t get over the lack of shame—the unabashed confidence,” she said
. “Can you imagine what those generals are thinking being lectured to by someone so inexperienced and incompetent?”
Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver, expressed
astonishment that Hegseth “summoned all the US generals from around the globe at great expense to fat shame them.”
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick argued
that Hegseth would open up US defense policy to significant vulnerabilities if he were to move forward with banning the American military from discussing the impacts of climate change.
“Climate change may be the single greatest geopolitical wild card of the next century—a reshaping of countries’ agricultures, economies, and even literal geography,” he wrote. “And here a guy who never rose above the rank of Major says the U.S. military shouldn’t even consider it. We are screwed.”
Attorney Max Kennerly took aim at Hegseth’s comments on military service members’ physical fitness, which he said
showed a deep ignorance of how the modern military fights wars.
“I can’t get over how the right-wing doesn’t understand modern militaries, with the majority serving non-combat roles,” he explained. “You think the best IT security and logistics personnel spends two hours in the gym every day to look like the cast of 300? They’re at furry conventions and model train shows.”
Following Hegseth’s speech, the president’s lengthy address included defenses of his policies, including his decision to deploy federal troops to US cities to fight what he called “the enemy within.” Trump has ordered federal troops to cities including Washington, DC; Chicago; and Portland to remove unhoused people from the streets, arrest immigrants, and fight anti-fascist protesters.
“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” said Trump.
