TruthOut

Two former governors of Alabama — Robert Bentley, a Republican who served from 2011 to 2017, and Don Siegelman, a Democrat who was in office from 1999 to 2003 — penned an op-ed for The Washington Post this week calling for the state to curtail its use of the death penalty and commute the sentences of dozens of people on death row. Bentley and Siegelman noted that Alabama currently has 167 people...

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Venezuela’s former so-called “interim president” Juan Guaidó had barely gotten a word out during an event at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. before a group of activists leapt from their seats in order to confront and denounce the far right opposition figure. Among them was Leonardo Flores, a Venezuelan political analyst and activist living in the United States. “Juan Guaidó, you’re a liar...

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Members of the GOP conference in the House of Representatives met on Tuesday to discuss issues relating to the debt ceiling crisis — though much of their time was focused on auctioning off a used tube of lip balm for campaign fundraising. Politico reporter Olivia Beavers revealed on her Twitter feed that, during the Republican conference on Tuesday afternoon, $100,000 was raised by auctioning lip...

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By mid-February, it was already clear that 2023 was going to be a brutal and unrelenting year in legislative assaults on trans lives — particularly on the lives of trans youth. Even with that foresight, every day has been newly upsetting as these attacks have only escalated. Each day we have seen new lows from politicians willing to demean, dehumanize and destabilize trans people: from Governors...

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Farmers of color plan to appeal a recent federal court judge’s ruling, which they say is a continuation of Jim Crow and erases their commitment to right the historical wrongs against them. Six months ago, John Boyd Jr., Kara Boyd, Lester Bonner, and Princess Williams filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. government, including the United States Department of Agriculture.

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A sweeping anti-immigrant crackdown is underway in Florida by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to enter the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination this week. SB 1718 is set to take effect July 1, but has already led to walkouts by immigrant workers. It bans people who are undocumented from using driver’s licenses issued in other states, and prohibits state ID cards...

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About 100 climate campaigners on Tuesday demanded the attention of executives and shareholders at Shell’s annual general meeting, refusing to be silenced as they spent several hours disrupting the profits-focused gathering to condemn the oil company for its continued planet-heating fossil fuel extraction. Dozens of advocates gathered outside the Exhibition Center London (ExCeL) with banners...

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On May 18, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza joined the “Palestine Flag March” to protest Israel’s “Flag March” happening the same day. On “Flag Day,” tens of thousands of ultraright-wing Israeli settlers, who illegally live on stolen land, attacked Palestinians and journalists, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Your village will be burned.” “The Israeli Flag March means nothing, they walk in our...

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A Florida restaurant is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the state of Florida over a newly enacted ban on drag show performances. Senate Bill 1438, which DeSantis signed into law last week in front of a crowd outside an evangelical school, allows the state to punish establishments that showcase performances purportedly simulating “nudity, sexual conduct or specific sexual activities...

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WEST WENDOVER, Nev. — In April, Mark Lee Dickson arrived in this 4,500-person city that hugs the Utah-Nevada border to pitch an ordinance banning abortion. Dickson is the director of the anti-abortion group Right to Life of East Texas and founder of another organization that has spent the past few years traveling the United States trying to persuade local governments to pass abortion bans.

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Records kept by a member of Trump’s legal team indicate that the former president understood as far back as June 2022 that documents with classified markings needed to be returned to the federal government. Donald Trump was served with a subpoena at that time by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which told the former president that he had to return all classified documents to the National Archives...

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Monday that he views discussions of a federal spending freeze — a real-term cut when adjusted for inflation — as “inherently reasonable,” a position likely to rankle progressive lawmakers who have warned against giving an inch to Republican hostage-takers. “We’re willing to discuss freezing spending at current levels,” Jeffries (D-New York) told reporters...

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As the annual U.S. defense budget creeps closer to $1 trillion, an explosive interview with a former top Pentagon official has exposed private defense contractors’ brazen plot to price gouge the government on weapons and equipment — and reap billions upon billions of dollars of profits from taxpayers’ pockets in the process. On Sunday, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Shay Assad...

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A Republican-led House panel has advanced a 2024 budget bill that includes riders to revoke key Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals regarding where patients are allowed to access abortion drug mifepristone, in a quiet move aimed at limiting abortion access nationwide. The legislation passed the House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration Appropriations Subcommittee...

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Ecuador’s conservative President Guillermo Lasso has dissolved the opposition-led National Assembly in a move widely seen as an effort to block efforts to impeach him, and came as the body held its first hearing into corruption and embezzlement allegations against Lasso. Lasso used a constitutional power that has never been used in Ecuador before, allowing him to rule by decree until new elections...

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The Department of Education’s (DOE) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) said in a letter sent on Friday that book bans implemented last year by a school district in Georgia may have violated students’ rights. OCR recognized that Forsyth County School District, which banned a number of books containing LGBTQ themes and characters of color, was already implementing corrective actions to address the...

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More than 90% of the people killed in extreme weather events during the last half-century lived in the Global South, a new World Meteorological Organization report has found. The figure came from an update Monday to the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate, and Water-related Hazards to cover the years 1970 to 2021. The U.N.

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On Friday afternoon, with negotiations on legislation to raise the debt ceiling reportedly stalled, 66 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) sent a letter to the president urging him to invoke the 14th Amendment, one clause of which mandates the federal government to pay its bills, as an end-run around GOP obstructionism. Meanwhile, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth...

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As the number of states legalizing cannabis and the public support for legalization continues to grow, it may seem safe to assume that the governing class has ended its war on weed. But Peter Grinspoon, M.D., author of Seeing Through the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth about Marijuana, says that would be premature. The war on weed isn’t over, and the casualties are still...

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Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) has been hit with a complaint alleging that she illegally used a huge cache of campaign funds over the course of three years to fund lavish trips across the U.S. and to Europe. The complaint, filed by PAC Change for Arizona 2024 on Thursday, says that Sinema “committed serious violations” of federal campaign finance laws by spending over $180,000...

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