by Max Burns | Jul 10, 2026 | Civil Rights, Congress, Opinion
Just four months ago, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar loudly vowed to hold U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accountable for its lawlessness. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin condemned ICE’s “ruthless” enforcement raids in Chicago last year.
For many Democrats in Congress, calling out the cruelty and impunity of ICE has become a common refrain. Why, then, are some of these same representatives now co-sponsoring a bill that would give ICE new power to harvest Americans’ personal information?
Congressional Republicans are racing against the legislative clock to pass a mountain of major legislation before an extended August recess, but razor-thin voting margins and unpopular bills have rendered Capitol Hill even more dysfunctional than usual.
For a GOP already struggling with sky-high unpopularity, the less voters see of its policies, the better.
Faced with the prospect of dozens of controversial votes on President Donald Trump’s agenda, GOP leaders are instead cramming their most controversial bills into this year’s must-pass National Defense Authorization Act.
For a GOP already struggling with sky-high unpopularity, the less voters see of its policies, the better.
Among the worst offenders is the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA, which hides a historic power grab by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and ICE in a bill so bland that 144 House Democrats actually supported it in a roll-call vote back in May.
More than a dozen Senate Democrats are co-sponsoring the bill, including Klobuchar and Durbin. Senate Democrats’ support for CORCA has shocked immigration and civil liberties advocates, especially after Democratic lawmakers shut down DHS for 76 days by repeatedly voting against a funding bill that gave $70 billion in additional funding to ICE. The bill’s Democratic co-sponsors
by Nicholas Grossman | Jul 10, 2026 | Opinion, White House, World
The U.S. and Iran are shooting again, the second (and larger) flare up since they signed a Memorandum of Understanding in June.
The main point of contention is the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for international trade that Iran blocked in response to the initial U.S.-Israel attack in February. The MOU reflects U.S. desperation to get ships flowing again, giving Iran economic benefits in exchange for Iran merely promising to “make arrangements … for the safe passage of commercial vessels,” without specifying what those arrangements are. Iran has consistently asserted it will control Hormuz and charge fees for passage, while the U.S., especially President Donald Trump, has been acting as if the strait is totally open and on a fast track back to prewar normal.
Except it clearly isn’t. More ships went through after the MOU, but even at peak it was fewer than half the daily prewar average. They avoided the middle of the strait, fearing mines, and Iran told them to travel by Iranian coastal waters and register with a new “Persian Gulf Strait Authority.” The U.S., for its part, encouraged ships to bypass Iran by hugging Oman’s coast on the opposite side. Iran shot at some ships near Oman to assert control, the U.S. shot at Iran to contest it, then back-and-forth retaliation followed.
Reaching a real peace agreement is even harder when the president keeps lying about the reality of the situation, and demanding that others do as well.
The fight could escalate or settle down again, but the underlying problem remains: a large gap between (1) the facts on the ground and the text of the MOU, and
by Noor Noman | Jul 10, 2026 | Opinion
On Wednesday evening disgraced Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner announced the end of his embattled campaign via a near 11-minute video posted to X. His campaign had already come under fire for a number of things, from an infamous tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol (he denied that he was aware of the symbolism and had the tattoo covered up once reports emerged) to questions about the authenticity of his oyster farmer origin story. A bombshell New York Times article on June 4 reported accounts from former romantic partners who described behavior that ranged from toxic to abusive (Platner denies allegations of abuse). The final nail in the coffin came on Monday, when a former girlfriend accused him of raping her. This prompted his remaining defenders to withdraw their support, compelling Platner to pull out of the race.
Within the first few seconds, I felt my stomach seize up. My body was alerting me to something before I could fully articulate why.
As a survivor of both sexual abuse and sexual assault, Platner’s exit video was a viscerally uncomfortable thing to watch. I can’t imagine I was alone. Within the first few seconds, I felt my stomach seize up. My body was alerting me to something before I could fully articulate why.
“I just want to make it clear, this is also false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It’s not real. It has placed an immense amount of weight on me,” Platner says in the video, fighting back tears. “Amy [Platner’s wife] and I are regular people. We were not looking for this experience, we were not looking
by Ja'han Jones | Jul 9, 2026 | Civil Rights, Congress, Opinion
It’s election season and, like clockwork, some conservatives are resorting to anti-Asian racism and anti-Chinese xenophobia as the Republican Party faces a potential shellacking in this year’s midterms.
The below campaign ad featuring Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican and gubernatorial candidate, in which she crushes fortune cookies while vowing to “hunt down” communists and “crack down on China,” is a prime example.
Some observers, while rebuking the racist video, noted that modern fortune cookies weren’t invented in China, but rather in the United States by Japanese immigrants.
The US really is an idiocracy.This Republican Congress member boasts of how much she hates China by crushing fortune cookies with her hands.By the way, fortune cookies were invented by Japanese immigrants in the US. They don’t eat them in China.And the gong at the end… https://t.co/BhgrL3TJE9— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 9, 2026
Anti-Asian racism has also roiled the Arizona Republican Party. The state’s GOP primary race for schools chief was recently rocked by a racist incident in which a dark-money group put out a bigoted ad with gong noise and stereotypical Asian imagery that labeled candidate Kimberly Yee, who is Asian American, as the “empress of DEI.”
Yee’s primary opponent, incumbent Tom Horne, has requested that the group remove the ad. “I am shocked by the appeal to ethnic prejudice and denounce it,” he told Phoenix television station KPNX.
The ad bears some similarity to a bigoted ad out of Arizona ahead of the 2022 midterms — a commercial I thought might have been the most racist ad of that year’s election cycle.
And more recently, a top official for Arizona-based Turning Point USA, Tyler Bowyer, has faced
by Anthony L. Fisher | Jul 9, 2026 | Opinion, World
Rahm Emanuel’s speech Wednesday at Tel Aviv University is exactly the kind of message Israelis — and U.S. supporters of Israel — need to hear.
Emanuel — a likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender whose father was born in Jerusalem and fought as a member of the Irgun (an underground paramilitary faction) during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence — has been a staunch supporter of Israel through a distinguished political career that includes stints as a senior adviser, chief of staff and ambassador in, respectively, the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. He is about the furthest you can get from the anti-Israel activist left ascendant in the Democratic Party.
He said what should be obvious to everyone: that the era of the U.S. government’s tacit rubber stamp on Israeli aid and policy is over.
But unlike many “pro-Israel” U.S. figures that are really just pro-Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right, land-grabbing, atrocity-committing government, Emanuel is trying to stake out both a moral and strategic position: that a true friend doesn’t have to agree with everything you say and do. Rather, a loyal ally tries to dissuade you from making terrible, irreversible mistakes — like annexing the West Bank to placate racist, religious fanatics dreaming of a “Greater Israel” with no Palestinians on the land at all.
In his speech, Emanuel empathized with Israelis’ cynicism about peace efforts, given the fact that past Israeli governments offered sovereignty for security deals that were rejected three times in the 1990s and 2000s by what Emanuel characterized as “corrupt” Palestinian leadership. He also said he understands why Israelis felt isolated and besieged after Hamas sparked a war with its rapes, murders and
by Hayes Brown | Jul 9, 2026 | Congress, Opinion
Even under the best conditions, the legislative process is a messy, time-consuming affair. But the job gets much harder when not everyone is able to show up for work. Leading the inactive list in Congress right now is Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. The former Senate majority leader’s absence has entered its fourth week, with little explanation and no timeline for his return.
McConnell’s hospitalization has so far mostly overlapped with a Senate recess. Even without having cast a vote since June 11, however, the longtime head of the GOP caucus is impeding Trump’s top legislative priorities. And McConnell is merely the latest lawmaker whose absences have helped make writing laws especially difficult for this session of Congress.
McConnell is merely the latest lawmaker whose absences have helped make writing laws especially difficult for this session of Congress.
Though he no longer runs point for Senate Republicans, McConnell is still chair of the chamber’s Rules and Administration Committee. That position, crucially, has jurisdiction over bills dealing with federal election law. It’s also a role that McConnell held before his lengthy time in leadership. In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election’s chaotic results, he helped draft the Help America Vote Act, the last major overhaul of federal election law.
A quarter century later, Trump is pressing Republican lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill he says will “guarantee the midterms.” While the bill’s supporters claim it is needed to prevent (nonexistent) voting from noncitizens in federal elections, in practice, it makes it harder for Americans to vote.
When Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced the latest version in January, its first stop was the Rules
