VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump gets the news he feared most at No Kings protest
Brian Tyler Cohen comes to you live from Los Angeles’ No Kings protest, where he breaks down the implications of the huge throngs of people marching against Trump worldwide, what inspired them to do so, and how we can harness this energy and turn it into big wins this November!

Take Action: Pass a War Powers resolution and stop Trump’s illegal wars!

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Sending ICE to the airports is Trump’s dumbest idea yet
Jason Linkins, The New Republic: “In recent months, we’ve reached the stage of President Donald Trump’s second term where some of his greatest problems are the result of misguided solutions to his previous screwups. But now, everyone who is flying out of a major U.S. airport can have themselves an up-close look at the clattering irony of Trumpian misrule as they stand in epically long security queues to watch recently redeployed ICE agents lumber around, stewing in their own pointlessness. This decision by Trump, like so many others, really requires one of those ‘Let me get this straight[ paragraphs to truly appreciate the ouroboros of ineptitude on display. So let me bang one out. ICE agents previously deployed to terrorize American cities have engendered such a heavy amount of blowback from the American public that Democrats were able to find the courage to stand firm against further funding of the agency until significant reforms are agreed to in a deal. Trump, who can’t tolerate negotiating with Democrats, has killed off compromises that would permit the funding of the Department of Homeland Security’s other agencies. Because of this department-wide shutdown, the TSA is unfunded, so unpaid workers are dropping like flies and people are having to spend hours in the airport security lines.

The solution to all of this: Send hundreds of ICE agents to these airports to … well, beyond a few reports of agents making cursory and redundant ID checks, it’s not clear what they were meant to do in this situation, and by all accounts they aren’t improving things at all. Because this is ICE we’re talking about, there was mayhem to be had: San Francisco travelers were witness to a particularly horrific arrest this week. But as Defector’s Barry Petchesky reported, the agents are mostly just standing around, diddling on their phones, and begging for a coffee shop manager to hit them with a classic, ‘If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean.’

While no one wants to encounter Trump’s brownshirts on the streets of their town, their presence has proven to be oddly galvanizing to the growing dissident movement against Trump. It takes the stupidity and ineptness of authoritarianism and shifts it from a theoretical concern to something local and tangible. It gives people the opportunity to perceive misrule for themselves, and provides a target for their ire. And it keeps people well brined in the salty swirl of everything being politicized. Republicans might rue the day Trump decided to send a potent reminder to your local airport about how he’s making everything suck.”

Take Action: Tell your Secretary of State: No ICE at the polls!

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Progressive champion Graham Platner SURGES in new polls
Graham Platner for Senate: The battle for Maine’s Senate seat held by the perpetually “concerned” Trump toady Susan Collins could mean the difference between Trump retaining control of the Senate or Democrats being able to put an end to his tyranny. But momentum is on our side! A pair of new polls shows that former Marine, oysterman, and progressive champion Graham Platner ahead by of Susan Collins by two and SEVEN points, respectively. While Collins digs herself deeper and deeper into the hole with her votes for Trump’s Big Bad Bill, Platner is surging on a message of economic populism, no more wars, and rightfully naming the Epstein class as the culprit for the woes of the American worker. Will you chip in to help us flip this critical Senate seat and make Trump a lame-duck president?

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Ground troops in Iran: an idiotic idea for an idiotic war
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin: “Because of a combination of gossip, outright misinformation, and genuine incompetence, it is next to impossible to know at any given time what exactly is happening with Donald Trump’s war on Iran. A slew of indicators now suggests the president is preparing to escalate US involvement any day now and send in ground troops. Then again, maybe he’s not. No matter what ends up happening, the following will still be true: deploying US ground troops to fight the war in Iran is a politically and militarily disastrous decision that will do the opposite of what Trump hopes it will do.

This is such a bad idea that it has united both card-carrying members of Trump’s hated ‘deep state,’ such as former Defense Intelligence Agency official and former NATO supreme allied commander James Stavridis, and some of Trump’s closest political allies, such as Nancy Mace and Matt Gaetz in opposition. His own just-resigned National Counterterrorism Center director, Joe Kent, a veteran and as MAGA as they come, says it would be a ‘disaster.’

The politics of dead US service members are pretty straightforward. There is a reason why every president since George W. Bush has bent over backward to try and avoid putting American boots on the ground and instead try to wage war exclusively from the air, with the use of drones, or by using proxies: because as former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal recently put it, once you deploy ground troops, ‘you’re the same height as your potential opponent.’ That means American soldiers are more likely to die, and their families and local communities are more likely to start demanding answers about what exactly their lives were just spent to achieve.

Make no mistake: sending in ground troops is the first step toward exactly the kind of quagmire every US president since Bush has tried to avoid, and which Trump once made his political name denouncing. The absurd thing is, none of this has to happen. Trump could avoid these scenarios, even end the war entirely and prevent the coming economic crisis from getting worse, if he would just drop his maximalist demands and sue for peace. But in his mind, that would look weak. So refusing to face reality and trying desperately to find some nonexistent alternative exit path, he is inevitably tempted to keep escalating and getting deeper into the war, which will only make it harder and harder to get out. Instead of asking for a ladder to climb out of the hole, he keeps stubbornly digging and digging. And as he does, he drags the rest of us down deeper into the darkness with him.”

Take Action: Tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Markwayne Mullin to lead Trump’s deportation agency!

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More than 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced. These are their stories
Afeef Nessouli, Steven W. Thrasher, The Intercept: ” It is morning outside Mohammed Al-Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut, and beneath the gigantic crescent moon statue, a woman in a white hijab and dirtied floral dress is calling for her children. Fatima, 45, fled the southern suburb of Bourj al-Barajneh with her family on March 2 when Israel bombarded the community as part of the broadening regional war. She is a mother of two young boys and an older daughter who are sitting cross-legged around her on cardboard boxes. Thick comforters, a jug of water, and a half-eaten bag of Lebanese bread lean on the statue behind them.

It’s not the first time they have been displaced. The family is originally from Syria but escaped the civil war for the relative peace of Bourj al-Barajneh. Fatima’s mother, Warde, 70, is there in her wheelchair; she sheltered in the exact same spot under the gigantic crescent moon statue in 2024 when Israel last struck their neighborhood. This time, they abandoned their home when the explosions brought her sons to tears. ‘Children are not like adults; there is fear and there is terror,’ she says. ‘So we left Bourj al-Barajneh. Yesterday we slept near this statue. Our children have been hungry since yesterday. I mean there’s no food, no drink,’ she explains. ‘And yesterday night the children were freezing.’

Authorities in Beirut have done nothing to help them, Fatima says. They are among a wide swath of the Lebanese populace that has been uprooted and one of tens of families who have found shelter near the gigantic crescent moon statue. A few men brought them blankets when they saw that the family was cold. The problem is that they have nowhere to go now. ‘Now we’re afraid to go back. They’re saying there’s bombing. So, we’re forced to be sitting here on the ground. What can we do? There’s no solution. There’s nothing,’ she says. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 1,000 people, 118 of them children, and displaced 1 million others. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah but has consistently struck residential buildings in the south and east of the country, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and, recently, parts of central Beirut as well.”

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Food for thought

Day 30: Moron Trump’s war in Iran

The Sunday Wrap-up

Hope…

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