by Jake Johnson | Nov 19, 2025 | Article, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Nov. 19, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said Tuesday that lawmakers should pull out all the stops to prevent US President Donald Trump from selling F-35s to Saudi Arabia following Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s White House visit.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called the White House reception for bin Salman, who is commonly known as MBS, a “disgusting display” and a “new low in longstanding US support for the repressive monarchy,” pointing to Trump’s whitewashing of the crown prince’s role in the horrific murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Omar also condemned Trump’s attack on ABC News reporter Mary Bruce, who asked about Khashoggi’s murder during the crown prince’s White House visit.
“It is truly disturbing that the president of the United States dismissed Khashoggi’s entrapment, murder, and dismemberment at the hands of MBS’ assassins simply as, ‘things happen,’” said the Minnesota Democrat.
Omar called on fellow lawmakers to join her in working to block Trump’s “reckless and corrupt deals” with the Saudis, including his proposed sale of F-35 fighter jets.
“With announced sales of F-35 warplanes and billions in financial investments, Trump is prioritizing weapons-contractor profits and his own family’s business interests, including Jared Kushner’s private equity firm that took $2 billion from MBS,” said Omar, who noted that the Saudis have used US arms to devastating effect in Yemen.
The details of Trump’s proposed F-35 sale are not yet fully clear, but the US president indicated on Tuesday that the agreement would not include any conditions. The Saudi regime is one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, wielding the death penalty and other repressive tactics to violently crush dissent.
“We’re going to
by Brad Reed | Nov 18, 2025 | Article, Fascism, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Nov. 18, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Residents in Charlotte, North Carolina are expressing outrage after two local women were arrested for honking their car horn to alert others that US Border Patrol was in the area.
Local news station WCNC reported on Monday that the two women, who are US citizens, were taken into custody in the city’s Plaza Midwood neighborhood after Border Patrol agents pulled them over and accused them of interfering in operations by honking their horn.
Video of the incident shows masked federal agents yelling at the women and demanding that they roll down their car windows. When the women do not comply, one officer smashes through the window and then he and other officers pull them out of the vehicle.
The two women, who have not been identified, then spent several hours in an FBI facility before being released with citations.
Local resident Shea Watts, who took video of the encounter, told WCNC that he was feeling “somewhere between disbelief and just being really upset that this is our reality now” as he watched the incident unfold.
Watts also discussed his own interactions with the federal officers whom he was filming.
“I was already close to despair and feeling helpless and hopeless,” he said. “But I think just the reminder that if we see something, to document it. I tried to be respectful and ask questions and knowing my own rights, and I was told to back up a couple times, which, that’s fine, but at the end of the day, this all feels a little heavy handed.”
Charlotte has become the latest target of the
by Belal Awad, Leo Erhadt and Mahmoud Al Mashharawi | Nov 18, 2025 | Gaza, Israel, October 7: One Year Later, Palestine, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, video
Since October 2023, at least 34 hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed by Israel. In that same time, as the humanitarian need for urgent medical care in the Gaza Strip dramatically increased, Israeli forces detained at least 405 Palestinian healthcare workers, according to NGO Healthcare Workers Watch. In this on-the-ground report, TRNN takes you inside one of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals.
Editor’s note: This report was filmed at Al Shifa Hospital in June 2025, before it was destroyed.
Credits:
Producers: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographers: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Transcript
Dr. Moataz Harara – HEAD OF EMERGENCY ROOM AT AL-SHIFA HOSPITAL:
Hospitals have become targets for the Israeli occupation and the Israeli army. Many hospitals have been destroyed. They have been taken out of service and burned. Doctors, nurses, and medical teams have been kidnapped from hospital premises. It’s become difficult at times to convince some medical staff to remain in the hospital. They tell you: “Maybe the Israelis will come at night and kidnap me like they did my colleague?”
Narrator:
The abduction – or worse – of Gaza’s medical workers is a documented reality. According to NGO Healthcare Workers Watch: Since October 2023, Israeli forces have detained at least 405 Palestinian healthcare workers, including 28 specialist doctors – among them surgeons, pediatricians, and ICU specialists. Twenty staff were kidnapped from hospitals during military raids; while others were detained while evacuating. Two senior physicians reportedly died in detention from torture, their bodies are still being held by Israeli authorities.
Dr. Moataz Harara – HEAD OF EMERGENCY ROOM AT AL-SHIFA HOSPITAL:
All resources, capabilities, and supplies have been exhausted. Before, to treat one patient, the
by Brad Reed | Nov 17, 2025 | Article, doj, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint, Trump
by Mansa Musa | Nov 17, 2025 | Politics and Movements: US, Prison Industrial Complex, prison reform, Prisons and Policing, Rattling the Bars, video
The Alabama prison system functions like a modern-day plantation: overcrowded, understaffed prisons like Bullock Correctional Facility run on forced labor, violence, and deliberate neglect. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with journalist Matthew Vernon Whalan about his book Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison, and about the systematic corruption and inhumane horrors endured daily by incarcerated people in Alabama.
Guest:
Matthew Vernon Whalan is a writer and oral historian living in New England. He is the author of the book Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison, and his work has appeared in Counterpunch Magazine, Alabama Political Reporter, Scheer Post, Jacobin, Eunoia Review, New York Journal of Books, The Brattleboro Reformer, and elsewhere. He runs the publication Hard Times Reviewer.
Credits:
Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. In this country, we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness according to the Constitution. But in this country also, we have legalized slavery under the 13th Amendment. To understand what legalized slavery is, institutionalized slavery is, all you have to do is look to Alabama and the Alabama prison system. The prison industrial complex in Alabama is one of the most notorious systems in this country, I would even venture to say in the world. Join me today is Matthew Whalan. Matthew wrote a book called Bullock: Chronicles of Deprivation and Despair in an American Prison. Thank you for joining us today, Matthew.
Matthew Whalan:
Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa:
Alright,
by Maximillian Alvarez | Nov 14, 2025 | Economy, Economy and Inequality, labor, Politics and Movements: US, Unions, video, Working People
Over 1,000 unionized Starbucks workers in over 40 cities across the US walked off the job on an indefinite Unfair Labor Practice strike on Thursday, Nov. 13. The union, Starbucks Workers United, says more workers at more unionized stores will be joining the picket line during the busy holiday season to pressure Starbucks to return to the bargaining table with proposals that seriously address workers’ ongoing demands regarding better pay and work hours, safe staffing, and resolving the hundreds of Unfair Labor Practice charges that have been filed against the coffee giant. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez reports on the ground from the picket line in Philadelphia, PA.
Credits:
Videography: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: David Hebden, Maximillian Alvarez
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Crowd chants:
What do we want? Contract! When do we want it? Now! If we don’t get it? Shut it down! If we don’t get it? Shut it down!
Maximillian Alvarez:
I’m here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, just outside City Hall. It’s Thursday, November 13th, around 5:00 PM Eastern time. And earlier today, over a thousand Starbucks workers in over 45 cities around the country walked off the job and went out on an unfair labor practice strike. After last week, a super majority of unionized baristas voted to authorize the strike, demanding that Starbucks come back to the bargaining table with serious proposals to address workers’ ongoing years long concerns about safe staffing, better pay, better work hours, and all manner of unfair labor practices that have been filed against the company since the first store unionized in Buffalo, New
