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
by Stephen Prager | Jul 9, 2026 | Article, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
by Michael Fox | Jul 9, 2026 | brazil, free speech, Podcast, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, The Battle for Free Speech
This is really a tale of two countries: the United States and Brazil. In both countries, far-right presidents come to power — Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. In both those countries, the presidents spent several years unraveling democratic institutions and public policy. Both presidents then ran for reelection. Both presidents lied about their country’s voting systems in order to undermine the elections and whip up their base.
Both those presidents lost their reelections — Trump in 2020. Bolsonaro in 2022. They both claimed fraud and tried to carry out a coup to stay in power.
But that is where these two paths diverged. In the United States, President Donald Trump continued to peddle his lies about the elections. He created his own social media platform and he used it to push his agenda. He was reelected in 2024 and returned to power. In Brazil, however, the country’s Supreme Electoral Court blocked former President Jair Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years, because of the lies he told about the country’s electoral system.
It wasn’t censorship. it was a different interpretation of free speech. One that said the right to free expression must be balanced with the other rights in the country and the country’s democratic system. The United States doesn’t agree. And the Trump administration has been pushing to bend Brazil toward its definition of “free speech.”
In this episode, Michael Fox journeys to Brazil to understand the lengths that the country has gone to fight disinformation.
Michael is joined in the episode by Maximillian Alvarez, editor-in-chief and co-executive director of The Real News Network and the host of the Working People Podcast.
The Battle for Free Speech
by James North | Jul 9, 2026 | Article, Israel, Palestine, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on July 08, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
By now, editors at the New York Times and producers at CNN are surely squirming over what to do about Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the Gazan doctor and hospital director who Israel has locked up for a year and a half without trial, and who says his jailers are trying to kill him.
Worldwide campaigns, by Amnesty International and other human rights groups, have called for Dr. Abu Safiya’s release and global media coverage has been significant. Britain’s flagship newspaper, the Guardian, has naturally already reported about Dr. Abu Safiya. Here is its July 6 headline: “Detained Gaza doctor almost unrecognisable after injuries in Israel jail, lawyer says.” Even the Israeli press have reported about him, including covering a demonstration in Tel Aviv on July 6 drawing attention to his case.
But in the American media, there has been a complete blackout about his case and his dire condition.
As of July 7, the New York Times has not mentioned his name a single time since January 2025. The Washington Post did run an Associated Press report, but there was no fanfare on the Post home page and you had to search hard for the article. In the Wall Street Journal so far: nothing. CNN’s website did have a short video report, but it apparently never appeared on the network’s U.S. outlet. Dr. Abu Safiya is also missing on MS Now, supposedly the most progressive cable network.
As this site and other alternative media have regularly reported, Dr. Abu Safiya, a pediatrician who was the administrator of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza, turned himself in to the Israeli army on December 27, 2024. There
by Ray levy uyeda | Jul 8, 2026 | AI, Article, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Economy and Inequality, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Prism on June 29, 2026.
Across the country, politicians are starting to heed the public’s concerns about data centers.
Almost 75% of Americans across the political spectrum oppose constructing data centers near their homes, according to a recent Gallup poll. A majority—63%—are concerned by federal regulatory agencies’ practice of approving projects without first evaluating environmental and public health concerns.
These numbers not only paint a stark picture of the massive backlash to the rapid and rapacious buildout of data processing facilities (some of which consume enough energy to power a midsize city), but they’re also an indicator that the public feels very differently than the corporations pushing for their construction. The country has never been more divided, but on data centers, residents agree: It’s time to pump the brakes.
Communities that are already forced to contend with the consequences of data centers warn of their near-constant noise pollution, voracious consumption of water, and discharge of pollutants into local ecosystems. However, it’s not just environmental concerns that undergird the community-led protests against data center development. Many are also concerned about how data centers come to fruition—often through violations of democratic processes in the form of shadowy backroom deals and nondisclosure agreements. There’s also the continued rise in utility rates at a time when nearly half (49%) of American households don’t make enough money to cover expenses. Americans contend with issues of drought, fossil fuel dependence, and habitat loss. Generational farmland is being gobbled up to prop up acres of data warehouses. The list goes on.
Three years after OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool Chat GPT forever changed the world’s orientation to computing, governments are responding
by Adam Johnson | Jul 8, 2026 | Article, Israel, Media Criticism, Opinion, Palestine, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US
While he was being grilled by CNN over his positions on Israel this past Thursday, candidate for the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s Senate seat, Abdul El-Sayed, was asked the bog-standard cable news question for anyone not on program with the pro-Israel Washington consensus—Do you think Israel has a right to exist?—three different times. It’s a ritual so routine one could hardly notice the exchange, but there was something in El-Sayed’s reply that exposed how facile this line of questioning is and that is worth examining in its own right. He responded, in part, by noting that “nobody has ever asked [him] if [he] thinks Palestine has a right to exist.” Watch the full exchange below.
Hunt: Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?El-Sayed: Now the question about a right to exist is interesting because nobody’s ever asked me whether or not I believe Palestine has a right to exist. Israel exists. The question is whether or not we want a politics where our… pic.twitter.com/Utr3kRQKJd— Acyn (@Acyn) July 2, 2026
It was a throw-away line before he moved on to his long, fairly pointed, reply, but it’s an essential point, and worth making. And it is an empirical question one can survey and analyze. So, does US media ever ask politicians if they think Palestine has a right to exist? The answer: never.
A survey of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Politico, USA Today, Fox News, MSNBC/MSNOW, and CNN over the past 10 years shows that not a single candidate for office has ever been asked by a cable news anchor or reporter if “Palestine has a right
