Stop Elon Musk’s greedy plan to give himself an endless taxpayer handout!

Sunday Dose of Democracy:

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump humiliated at his OWN military parade
After months of hype, Trump's big beautiful birthday military parade turned out to be a colossal flop, with a little something for everyone to make fun of. The crowd size? Tiny. The troops? Bored and uncoordinated. The crypto sponsors? Humiliating. Trump himself? Appeared to nod off. Far from being a crowning moment for America's would be dictator, it only served to telegraph his desperation and weakness to a nation that was out in force protesting his regime.

Take Action: Denounce ALL political violence!

The manhandling of Alex Padilla was a red-line moment for America
The New Republic, Michael Tomasky: "In May 1856, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner took to the floor of the Senate to deliver a speech denouncing slavery. Sumner was a fiery abolitionist; in his maiden speech on the floor of the Senate four years earlier, he had called for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, which an Alabama senator disparaged thus: 'The ravings of a maniac may sometimes be dangerous, but the barking of a puppy never did any harm.' Two days later, in one of the most infamous incidents in American political history, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, waited until no women were present in the gallery (Southern chivalry!), and attacked Sumner on the Senate floor with a metal-topped cane, beating him within an inch of his life. Alex Padilla, the Democratic California senator, did not bleed Thursday. He wasn’t even hurt. But the sight of a U.S. senator being manhandled by FBI agents was shocking enough. The incident didn’t last that long. But the real damage came after, when the lie machine reliably revved itself into action. It started with Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary whose press conference Padilla had interrupted. She went on Fox News within the hour to say he 'burst in' and was 'lunging' toward her and 'did not identify himself.' All lies. As anyone can see from the video, he was a good 10 feet away from Noem. But even if he had lunged—and even if he were not a senator but a mere citizen, or really any human being who is not threatening violence—this is how Donald Trump’s FBI treats such people? Escort them away—OK. But push them to the ground and cuff them, when they’ve left the room and are no longer in any way a plausible 'threat'? And it was in that moment—the decision by the agents to take the matter to a totally unnecessary, completely gratuitous extreme—that we find lurking the essence of Trumpism. The essence of Trumpism is just this: Dig in the heel of the boot; step on the enemy’s neck; determine in any situation the action that would be appropriately small-d democratic, and then do the opposite—go intentionally overboard, do something that shocks and offends the democratic sensibility. And then lie about it and try to reverse reality—to convince America that it didn’t see what it just saw. That truth is not what it seems. People are beginning to understand that they indulged themselves last year in some fantasy projection of 'Donald Trump.' They’re seeing the real article now, and they’re remembering his viciousness, his ignorance, his incompetence, and his lawlessness. And it’s going to get worse. Trumpism proceeds by the successive breaking of taboos. Each time a new one is broken, the previous one is normalized, made to look not so bad by comparison. The cuffing of Padilla was a red-line moment. And yet: There’s plenty of reason to worry that in four months, we’ll look back on it as a moment of comparative innocence."

Take Action: Tell Congress: No strikes on Iran!

Top scientist takes on the GOP's crusade of ignorance
Jasmine Clark for Georgia: Trump, RFK Jr., and the rest of their cronies in Congress have taken a chainsaw to our scientific research, public health, and climate initatives and are waging an all out-war on science and the truth. PhD scientist Dr. Jasmine Clark has had enough, and she's running for Congress in order to restore sanity to the government and make America a global leader in scientific development once again. Will you chip in to help jump-start her campaign and flip the House blue?

Trump, Netanyahu and Khamenei — three angry old men who could get us all killed
The Guardian, Simon Tisdall: "This was not inevitable. This is a war Israel chose. It could have been prevented. Diplomatic talks were ongoing when the bombers took off for Iran. Israel’s continuing, illegal, unjustified airstrikes are unlikely to achieve their stated aim – permanently ending Tehran’s presumed efforts to build nuclear weapons – and may accelerate it. They must stop now. Likewise, Iran must halt its retaliation immediately and drop its escalatory threats to attack US and UK bases. This conflict is not limited, as was the case last year, to tit-for-tat exchanges and “precision strikes” on a narrow range of military targets. It’s reached a wholly different level. Potentially nothing is off the table. Civilians are being killed on both sides. Leaders are targets. The rhetoric is out of control. With Israel fighting on several fronts, and Iran’s battered regime backed against a wall, the Middle East is closer than ever to a disastrous conflagration. Reasons can always be found to go to war. The roots of major conflicts often reach back decades – and this is true of the Israel-Iran vendetta, which dates to the 1979 Islamic revolution. The so-called 'shadow war' between the two intensified in recent years. Yet all-out conflict had been avoided, until now. So who is principally to blame for this sudden, unprecedented explosion? Answer: three angry old men whose behaviour raises serious doubts about their judgment, common sense, motives and even their sanity. Netanyahu, 75, is unfit to lead Israel, let alone make life-or-death decisions on its behalf. He failed to protect Israelis from the 2023 terror attacks, then dodged responsibility. He has failed to fulfil his vow to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages, yet his soldiers have killed more than 55,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the process. He invaded Lebanon and Syria. Now it’s Iran. Where will he stop? Will he fight Turkey next? It’s not out of the question. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s bellicose supreme leader, is the second leading culprit. He should have been put out to grass in Qom years ago. The 86-year-old squats atop a repressive, corrupt theocratic regime that has lost touch with the society and people it ostensibly serves. Trump, 79, is the third man in this avoidable tragedy. He previously said he preferred to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran, having idiotically trashed the previous one. But he couldn’t decide on terms, and his amateurish negotiators kept changing their position. That was partly because Trump, as with Palestine and Ukraine, is too idle to study the details. He wings it instead, trusting to instincts that are invariably bad. That makes him easy prey for wily operators such as Netanyahu. Trump’s feeble ineptitude meant that when Israel’s leader insisted last week that the time was right for an all-out attack on Iran, he folded. Typically, once the attack began, he switched, trying to claim credit and issuing flatulent threats of his own. Each time he opens his mouth, Trump inadvertently confirms Iran’s suspicions that the US and Israel are acting in close concert. Whether he is selling out to Vladimir Putin, weaponising tariffs, botching a Gaza ceasefire or bullying neighbours, Trump is a total menace. These angry old men could get us all killed."

Take Action: Demand Trump stop ICE raids and military escalation against protesters!

“This fight is ours, but it belongs to everyone”
Jacobin, Levi Vonk: "Though one can never know for certain what tips the scales toward protest — what single mundane horror, in a country oversaturated with mundane horrors, finally impels someone to shake loose their humdrum half-comforts and lob a rock through the window of an ICE vehicle — it seems that this time it was an arrest. On June 6, union leader David Huerta — president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California — was thrown to the ground and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in downtown Los Angeles. ICE officials claim that Huerta interfered with their raid and slapped him with the felony charge of conspiracy to impede an officer. SEIU disputes this claim and maintains that Huerta was assaulted by ICE while acting in his lawful capacity as a community observer. Since Huerta’s arrest, protests have exploded across Los Angeles and greater California. But no single event births mass protest alone. As the late Joshua Clover writes in his book Riot.Strike.Riot, protests like those in Los Angeles may seem to suddenly erupt 'in moments of shattered glass and fire,' but in reality they emerge out of larger structures of inequality 'inextricable from ongoing and systemic capitalist crisis.' The wildfire is lit by a single spark, yes, but it also requires accumulations of dead timber that have gathered unnoticed for seasons. With this in mind, it begins to make much more sense why Huerta’s arrest spurred everyday Angelenos to finally take to the streets. It is not just that ICE’s assault of Huerta was an unequivocal image of the agency’s unchecked brutality (though it was), nor simply because Huerta is a galvanizing and clear-eyed public speaker (though he is), nor even because Huerta’s personal identity feels particularly poignant in our age of mass deportation (seeing Huerta, a US citizen descended from Mexican immigrants, manhandled by masked agents leaves no doubt that Stephen Miller’s white supremacist fantasies include disappearing migrants and citizens alike).It was, of course, principally because Huerta is the president of a powerful union, which possesses the infrastructure to immediately organize 750,000 members in California — not to mention at least tens of thousands of community members in solidarity with them. Crucially, SEIU did not simply demand the release of its president but the wholesale termination of ICE raids, full stop. Rarely do we witness such concrete affirmations of the fact that the well-being of US workers and immigrants are deeply and materially intertwined. What is happening in Los Angeles seems to indicate we are learning from our past mistakes and in fact building productively upon them. Huerta and the SEIU have effectively placed emphasis on solidarity between workers and immigrants as a means of acting decisively to kick ICE out of town. This decisiveness has already had an impact — the city of Glendale, California, recently announced that it is terminating a detainee holding contract with ICE. Still, unions are not a panacea, and, like all institutions, they contain various contradictions that need to be addressed. As Eric Blanc has written, most US unions — despite their record-high assets — flunked the test of the COVID-19 pandemic, choosing to prioritize and preserve their coffers over investing in organizing and expanding their ranks. If there was ever a time for labor to open its war chest, it’s now. On June 9, three days after his arrest, Huerta was released from jail. He gave his first address in Spanish. 'Esta lucha es nuestra,' he said, 'es de nuestra comunidad, pero es de todos.' This fight is ours, it’s our community’s, but it belongs to everyone."

Take Action: Demand NYU stop withholding pro-Palestine student Logan Rozos's diploma!

Trump's disastrous budget bill sends our electric bills into the stratosphere
Evergreen Action: Big Oil's cronies in the House have passed a catastrophic budget bill that guts clean energy and gives huge handouts to greedy fossil fuel companies and the ultrawealthy, all at the expense of the the rest of us— on top of killing jobs, raising prices, kicking millions of people off their healthcare and putting countless Americans at risk of food insecurity. We need to let the Senate know that we will not stand for this flagrant attack on our climate, our economy, and the well-being of our families. Click here to contact your senator now and make your voice heard!