by Sasha Abramsky | Feb 9, 2026 | Article, elections, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story was originally published on Truthout on Feb. 05, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
On February 3, as Donald Trump was doubling down on his push to “nationalize” elections, Steve Bannon, MAGA’s version of Rasputin, promised his War Room podcast audience that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will be deployed to swarm polling places during the upcoming midterm elections.
“You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November,” Bannon warned ominously. “We’re not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again.”
To be absolutely clear, neither Donald Trump’s nor Bannon’s proposals are remotely legal (or predicated on fact). The law prohibits intimidating voters where they are casting ballots — and it’s hard to see how the presence of armed, masked agents from a paramilitary outfit that has shown no compunction at kidnapping and killing people would have any other purpose. And the Constitution gives states control over their own elections’ processes, thus directly contradicting Trump’s desire, articulated in an interview with conservative media personality Dan Bongino, for the GOP to “take over” the elections systems of at least 15 states.
Yet Bannon and Trump are deadly serious. For them, any election that doesn’t go their way is illegitimate, and both are willing to use their vast media platforms to agitate for armed interventions at polling places. Both are, apparently, also indifferent to democratic norms, and are willing to push the constitutional system to the breaking point to get their way in the midterms.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responded to Bannon’s fiery rhetoric by denying that ICE would be swarming polling stations in November, but it said that
by Adam Johnson | Feb 6, 2026 | Article, ICE, Minneapolis, police accountability, Policing, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing
Elite consensus over the past year is that “defund” and “abolish” language from immigrant and Black Lives Matter activists of the late 2010s and early 2020s was a primary contributor to Harris’ 2024 loss to Trump. Despite this conventional wisdom lacking things like evidence, good-faith analysis, or empirical basis, it has quickly been cemented into the conventional wisdom of the Beltway and the media. The narrative, somewhat awkwardly, requires acting as if we jumped directly from 2017 to 2023, and requires ignoring that at the height of “abolish ICE,” Democrats over-performed in the 2018 primaries. And, at the height of “defund the police” rhetoric, Biden used the wave of George Floyd activism to help him capture the White House in 2020. But the story—and make no mistake, it’s simply a story—fit neatly into a left-punching, elite-serving narrative: Harris was bogged down not by a clearly sunsetting Biden clinging to power, not by veering to the center and thus depressing progressive energy, not by her continued support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, but some vague brand association that swing voters had with Harris and anti-police and anti-ICE language in the preceding years.
This elite consensus has been, in large part, pushed out by billionaire-backed groups like Searchlight Institute, Third Way, Blue Rose’s David Shor and other influential liberal pundits. It is in this context one must examine this latest PR effort by center-left media and their allies in law enforcement to contain the populist anger over DHS abuses and their attempt to frame said abuse as an anomaly, a one-off deviation from a narrative of progress and reform after the mass
by Maximillian Alvarez | Feb 6, 2026 | east palestine, Economy and Inequality, Podcast, Politics and Movements: US, sacrifice zones, Working People
Feb. 3, 2026 marked the three-year anniversary of the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, OH—one of the worst industrial disasters in US history. Over the last three years, residents have been exploited and abandoned by Norfolk Southern, the government, opportunistic politicians, sensationalist media outlets, and self-serving attorneys, but we haven’t forgotten them. On the three-year anniversary of the day that changed their small-town lives forever, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez was on the ground in East Palestine speaking with residents about their lives and needs today. Here is what they said…
Additional links/info:
Ohio Valley Derailment Mutual Aid Facebook page and fundraiser
Chemically Impacted Communities Coalition (CICC) website
Golomb Research Group (UCSD) website and East Palestine Health Effects Study website
Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “America’s toxic future looks like East Palestine, Ohio, today” (click for a full list of all of Max’s East Palestine reporting for TRNN over the last three years)
Featured Music:
Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song
Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Jim Stewart (CNN Town Hall):
I’m angry. I’m angry about this. I lived in East Palestine for 65 years now that’s my home. My grandmother came from Germany. She lived in Palestine. My dad grew up there. My family’s grown up there. Now I live in a house that’s probably the closest of any of these, and it’s a shame I don’t feel safe in this town. Now you took it away from me. You took this away from this. You seem like a sincere man. I’m not calling you
by Stephen Prager | Feb 6, 2026 | Article, ICE, immigration, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint, Trump
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Feb. 02, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
In the wake of immigration agents’ killings of three US citizens within a matter of weeks, the Department of Homeland Security is quietly moving forward with a plan to expand its capacity for mass detention by using a military contract to create what Pablo Manríquez, the author of the immigration news site Migrant Insider calls “a nationwide ‘ghost network’ of concentration camps.”
On Sunday, Manríquez reported that “a massive Navy contract vehicle, once valued at $10 billion, has ballooned to a staggering $55 billion ceiling to expedite President Donald Trump’s ‘mass deportation’ agenda.”
It is the expansion of a contract first reported on in October by CNN, which found that DHS was “funneling $10 billion through the Navy to help facilitate the construction of a sprawling network of migrant detention centers across the US in an arrangement aimed at getting the centers built faster, according to sources and federal contracting documents.”
SCOOP: A repurposed Navy contract to funnel tens of billions to ICE for a nationwide “ghost network” of concentration camps—just got a lot bigger. https://t.co/yvzszpD8t2— Pablo Manríquez (@PabloReports) February 2, 2026
The report describes the money as being allocated for “new detention centers,” which “are likely to be primarily soft-sided tents and may or may not be built on existing Navy installations, according to the sources familiar with the initiative. DHS has often leaned on soft-sided facilities to manage influxes of migrants.”
According to a source familiar with the project, “the goal is for the facilities to house as many as 10,000 people each, and are expected to be built in Louisiana, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Utah, and Kansas.”
Now
by Brett Wilkins | Feb 5, 2026 | Article, China, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Russia
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Feb. 04, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday implicitly confirmed that New START—a key arms control treaty between the United States and Russia—will expire Thursday, prompting renewed demands for what one group called “a more coherent approach from the Trump administration” toward nuclear nonproliferation.
Asked about the impending expiration of New START during a Wednesday press conference, Rubio said he didn’t “have any announcement” on the matter, and that President Donald Trump “will opine on it later.”
“Obviously, the president’s been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile,” Rubio said.
🇺🇸🇷🇺🇨🇳 Secretary of State Marco Rubio:I don’t have any announcement on New START right now. I think the President will opine on it later. The President has been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that… pic.twitter.com/8pxi3bfdsy— Visioner (@visionergeo) February 4, 2026
New START, signed in 2010, committed the United States and Russia to halving the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers in their arsenals. While the treaty did not limit the size of the countries’ actual nuclear arsenals, proponents pointed to its robust verification regime and other transparency features as mutually beneficial highlights of the agreement.
“We have known that New START would end for 15 years, but no one has shown the necessary leadership to be prepared for its expiration,” said John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and former longtime
by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis | Feb 4, 2026 | Economy, Economy and Inequality, Inequality Watch, labor, Oil, Politics and Movements: US, Venezuela, video
In this episode of Inequality Watch, investigative journalists Taya Graham and Stephen Janis are joined by renowned economist Dr. Richard Wolff to break down how extreme wealth inequality is reshaping politics, economics, and democracy itself. First, Dr. Wolff explains how extractive economies concentrate wealth, fuel authoritarianism, and lock societies into destructive systems that benefit the ultra-rich while leaving working people behind. He then examines questions about the future of AI—can an economy still survive when millions are displaced from work? Who benefits and who pays the price?
Credits:
Written by: Stephen Janis
Produced by: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
Post-Production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Inequality Watch, our show that reveals how extreme wealth inequality defines how we live while holding the people who hoard that wealth accountable. And today, we will be unpacking two topics that are critical to understanding how inequality defines and affects our lives and politics. Specifically, we’ll be breaking down how a highly politicized resource and the political economy it creates facilitates an authoritarian grip on our society in unseen ways. And then we will be breaking down how all of this leads to a frightening consolidation of power that threatens the very existence of our democracy. And to do so, we’re going to be joined by one of the most brilliant thinkers and popular analysts on the intersections of politics and economics on YouTube, Dr. Richard Wolff. But before we get to him, I want to break down an outline of our
