by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis | Jun 15, 2026 | Economy, health care, Inequality Watch, midterms, Politics and Movements: US, video, Voting Rights
Rep. Summer Lee argues in this interview with TRNN that the best path to good policies like Medicare for All is to take billionaires’ money out of politics and to fight for electoral reforms, and explains her concerns about the Trump administration’s push to interfere in the upcoming 2026 midterms.
Credits:
Production: Taya Graham/Stephen Janis
Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Can our democracy survive the influence of billions of dollars being poured into our politics? Well, that’s why I’m here at the Netroots Nation in Philadelphia in order to speak with Representative Summer Lee about the push to abolish Super PACS, the push to overturn Citizens United and whether or not we can look forward to some serious interference in our midterm elections. Congressman Lee, last time I saw you, you were talking about the Abolish Super PACS Act, which you co-sponsored with Senator Sanders. First, can you just give me just a quick rundown on how that works?
Rep. Summer Lee:
Yeah, so think about it this way. If you are a regular person, me, you, the people we know, you have a contribution limit on what you can give to somebody who’s running for federal office. If you are a millionaire or a corporation, yeah, you have that if you give directly to the candidate, but you can just get around it by giving to what we call these super PACs. So these super PACs are PACs that are not necessarily directly connected to a candidate. They legally can’t confer, but there are workarounds and with those PACs,
by Brad Reed | Jun 15, 2026 | Article, Fascism, ICE, Minneapolis, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on June 15, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
A Monday report in The New York Times revealed what it described as the “alarm” felt by some White House lawyers at proposals made earlier this year by Vice President JD Vance and Trump adviser Stephen Miller as the administration was forced to contend with widespread anger over its anti-immigration agenda.
Among other things, the Times reported that Vance pushed for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow for the US military to be deployed on American streets, in an effort to shut down mass protests in Minnesota against federal immigration enforcement operations in the state.
A few days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers fatally shot demonstrator Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, the Times reported that Vance—who had also elevated a baseless claim by Miller that Pretti had been a “would-be assassin”—said invoking the Insurrection Act was necessary “to crush the unrest in Minnesota.”
Vance also believed invoking the law would send a “message” that “paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations”—even though, as the Times noted, there is no evidence that Pretti; demonstrator Renee Good, who was also killed by federal agents; or any other organizers in Minnesota or elsewhere received any money in exchange for protesting.
However, right-wing attorney Will Scharf quickly shot down Vance’s suggestion, noting that the Insurrection Act is an instrument aimed at putting down armed rebellions rather than groups of citizens blowing whistles at ICE officers.
Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair then made the political case against invoking the Insurrection Act.
“The scenes of federal agents in Minnesota already looked chaotic, he said, and the public was recoiling,” reported the
by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis | Jun 12, 2026 | Epstein, ICE, Inequality Watch, Politics and Movements: US, Trump, video
As part of our continuing coverage of Trump’s multi-pronged push to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections, we have been talking to a variety of voices on what they fear most from the administration. In this discussion with Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, he accuses the Trump administration of constructing a private police force within the federal government and seeking to fund an extrajudicial efforts to also interfere with free and fair elections.
Credits:
Production: Taya Graham/Stephen Janis
Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.
Stephen Janis:
At the Real News Network, we have been covering the threat to midterm elections. Now, we came to the Networks Conference here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to speak to Congressman Jamie Raskin. When he told us about what he thinks might happen in November should scare all of us. You know, you introduced a Blanche Act, is that what it’s called? Yes. Yeah. So the Senate just passed the reconciliation bill and did nothing to it. So what are your thoughts at this moment that can be done to prevent it and what are your concerns about this slush fund that has been proposed by the Trump administration?
Rep. Jamie Raskin:
Well, the vast majority of Americans reject the idea that the Trump regime should be able to take 1.776 billion of taxpayer money and give it to convicted criminals, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and other extremists who tried to storm or who stormed the Capitol and tried to overthrow a presidential election. It’s outrageous and it violates about a dozen different federal laws and constitutional provisions. So
by Maximillian Alvarez | Jun 12, 2026 | Gaza, Israel, Media Criticism, Palestine, Podcast, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US
As a writer, podcaster, and columnist for TRNN, Adam Johnson has been one of the fiercest, sharpest, and most consistent critics of legacy and Western media’s roles in laundering, obscuring, justifying, and manufacturing consent for crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza genocide by Israel and with the full support of the United States. But critique is not enough anymore; to ensure that these horrific crimes don’t continue, we need accountability for the political actors and media organizations that made it happen, or helped. At a live event hosted by Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Baltimore, Maryland, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Johnson about his new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, and about how to hold media organizations accountable for their roles in manufacturing the conditions for genocide.
Guests:
Adam Johnson is a writer, media critic, co-host of the podcast Citations Needed, and a columnist for TRNN. He is the author of the book How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.
Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. As a writer, podcaster and a columnist for us here at The Real News, Adam Johnson has been one of the fiercest, sharpest and most consistent critics of legacy in Western media’s roles in laundering, obscuring, justifying and manufacturing consent for crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza genocide by Israel with the full support of the United States. Crimes committed in our
by Robert Ellsberg | Jun 11, 2026 | Article, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This article was originally published by Progressive Hub on June 11, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
This film presents a synthesis of my father’s book The Doomsday Machine. His book depicts the evil murderousness of nuclear war plans, and the particular dangers posed by ICBMS, with their first strike capability, intended to be launched on warning.
He believed that with these weapons both the U.S. and the USSR/now Russia had constructed Doomsday Machines, capable of destroying most life on earth — machines that are particularly dangerous because neither side acknowledges this reality but continue to proceed as if there were some circumstances in which it was possible to win a nuclear war.
The epigraph from Dad’s book is from Nietzsche: “Madness in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
And I am very glad that this film expands on that particular theme with the title: “Ordinary Insanity” — ordinary, as he says, because it is so widely shared.
And that points to a theme that underlies his most recent, posthumous book, Truth and Consequence: Reflections on Catastrophe, Civil Resistance, and Hope. These reflections, drawn from notes he wrote for himself over fifty years, reflect his deep meditation on what kind of flaw in the human species makes us vulnerable to this kind of insanity.
In other words, we have to face, on the one hand, the particular danger posed by the weapons we have created and the strategies that dictate their function and use. But we also have to contend with the kind of danger posed by human beings — all of us capable of participating in projects that are evil,
by Negin Owliaei, Maya Schenwar, Truthout, and Ziggy West Jeffery | Jun 11, 2026 | AI, Article, Opinion, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This article was originally published by Truthout on June 09, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Google made an announcement last month that could turn the journalism world upside down, accelerating the internet’s shift toward an overwhelmingly AI-driven landscape and serving the Trump agenda of media suppression.
At its developer conference in May, the company announced the most disruptive changes to Google Search in over 25 years. Google Search will further demote its index of the web — a list of links that information-seekers can explore as they choose. Instead of prominently displaying links, it will increasingly become a destination that answers questions directly through AI, linking only to the sources it decides to reference in its overview. On the majority of our tests, the AI overview was followed by a heavy block of sponsored results and a combination of videos, short clips, trending posts, and discussions. Index links — for example, to articles on news sites and research studies — were given only a small fraction of real estate. Additionally, Google is aggressively pushing readers to use AI Mode, which completely removes the index links.
In practical terms, this means users of the world’s largest search engine will see, in response to their queries, a summary generated by an AI bot developed by a corporate behemoth with close ties to the Trump White House.
This seismic move builds upon the launches of AI Overview in 2024 and AI Mode in 2025, shifting toward nearly eliminating the user’s ability to search autonomously, and toward an overwhelmingly AI-driven experience of the internet (and therefore, for many people, of life).
We must take into account the
