Deadly Floods Due to Levee Failures Reflect Need for Infrastructure Investment

In recent weeks, powerful atmospheric river storms have swept across Washington, Oregon and California, unloading enormous amounts of rain. As rivers surged, they overtopped or breached multiple levees – those long, often unnoticed barriers holding floodwaters back from homes and towns. Most of the time, levees don’t demand attention. They quietly do their job, year after year.
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Incarcerated Californians Express Cautious Optimism About New Clemency Proposal

Tien Mo is still awaiting a response to her 2017 clemency application. As previously reported in Truthout, at age 20, she was sentenced to life without parole in her classmate’s death. As the years pass, the 44-year-old’s hopes dwindle. Now, a proposed statute gives her renewed optimism. Clemency typically takes two forms — a pardon, which removes the consequences of a criminal conviction…
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ICE Wants to Reopen Notorious California Prison. Locals Are Fighting Back.

On December 16, 2025, the Dublin City Council in California unanimously passed a resolution formally opposing reopening or reusing the notorious FCI Dublin prison for detention of any kind, including as an immigration jail. The resolution also urged the relevant federal agencies to “engage in open and transparent communication with the City regarding any decisions affecting the site.
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Official Says 11 States Open to Stopping Residents From Voting at DOJ’s Request

The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a confidential draft agreement to more than a dozen states that would require election officials to remove any alleged ineligible voters identified during a federal review of their voter rolls. The agreement — called a memorandum of understanding, or MOU — would hand the federal government a major role in election administration…
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Trump Order Threatens States That Enact AI Laws the Admin Deems “Excessive”

US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at preventing state-level regulation of the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, a gift to tech corporations that bankrolled his inauguration and are currently funding his White House ballroom project. Trump’s order instructs the US Justice Department to establish an AI Litigation Task Force with a single mandate…
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68 Cities, Counties, and States Will Increase Their Minimum Wage on January 1

The Trump administration is one of the most anti-labor administrations in modern U.S. history — it has attempted to decertify the union representation of more than 1 million federal employees. Trump has also fired key members of the National Labor Relations Board, thus rendering it largely non-functional. Moreover his administration has come out against rules requiring disabled workers all be paid…
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