On Friday night, just before 11:00, Trump announced that his administration “will, immediately, begin sending ‘Checks’ of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts. This money will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, a pointless ‘Slush Fund’ that has only been used by Dumocrats in Congress to pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs.”

A Washington Post headline today read: “U.S. withdraws forces in Iraq as balance of power shifts to Iran.”

Journalists Mustafa Salim and Alex Horton explained: After more than two decades, the deaths of more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,500 U.S. troops, the wounding of more than 30,000 U.S. military personnel, and the cost of more than $2.8 trillion, the last of the U.S. military forces in Iraq today pulled out of Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now arguing that Cuba represents a national security threat because it’s a "failed state," effectively using the humanitarian crisis brought about by the policies he masterminded in order to justify continuing those very policies.

This circular reasoning is just the latest absurdity — largely unquestioned by major media outlets — the Trump administration has presented as an argument for regime change in Cuba.

A view of the smoke stack of a coal-fired power plant in Springdale, Pennsylvania, in 2017. Experts warn that efforts to dismantle limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas will take a disproportionately heavy toll on Black communities. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Black neighborhoods will feel the brunt of the Trump administration’s recent move to end federal limits on carbon pollution from America’s power plants, residents and environmental advocates said. 

Another AI has gone rogue and hacked someone. This time, the Australian government was the target. To our knowledge, this is the first incident where a government has been hacked by a rogue AI.

In a press conference in New York on Wednesday, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that an internal OpenAI model went rogue and “infiltrated” Australia’s Medicare statistics portal.

ProPublica kicked off our day with reporting on Susan Collins and on corruption in Trump’s DOJ. This is the headline: “The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way.”

Last Friday, for the first time in American history, a brand new court in America deported to Afghanistan Nazira Haji Zada, a 47-year-old lawful permanent resident living in Fort Worth. She was never charged with a crime, and wasn’t allowed to see the evidence against her (and neither were her lawyers). Attorney General Todd Blanche called the whole thing “a win for national security and the rule of law.”

The Trump regime has waged a campaign of terror against immigrants — and people it perceives as immigrants from certain countries — that is unjustified, inhumane, and immoral.

It is with grave concern that the Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team (BAP) and U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) view the latest maneuvers by the U.S. against Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, countries that form the anti-imperialist Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

The Trump administration has approved a $2.8 billion sale of heavy bombs to Israel, according to a U.S. official, in what would be among the largest deliveries of U.S. munitions there even as American public support for the country declines.

The proposed sale would include 40,000 one-ton bombs whose use by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon has drawn international anger because of the civilian harm caused by their wide blast radius.

On Thursday, in The New Republic, conservative judge J. Michael Luttig published a dire warning to the Republican Party…and to all Americans. In the piece, Luttig outlined how Republicans could refuse to seat elected Democrats in January after a Democratic victory in the 2026 midterm elections of November. “The coming crisis,” the piece says, would be “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a press conference in Jerusalem on March 19, 2026. | Photo by Ronen Zvulun/POOL/Agence France-Presse (AFP) // Common Dreams

Since yesterday, President Donald J. Trump has been posting on social media at a frantic pace, showing AI images of himself with President George Washington on his own account and, on the official White House account, a video of himself as the DC Comics Green Lantern superhero. The White House social media account ripped off Green Lantern’s oath, captioning the video: “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!”

Have you registered to vote or checked your voter registration status? There are only 30 days left to get registered, or verify your voter registration, in Indiana. 

FIRE challenged the two statutes the administration weaponized to try and deport Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk

Last Saturday, in the West Bank town of Jalud, a group of Israeli settlers armed with clubs beat, unprovoked, three members of an NBC news team and the Palestinian woman they were interviewing.

Donald Trump’s administration has made a game of the president’s deadly crackdown on immigrants.

The White House launched a new arcade website Thursday that hosts a series of retro-style video games touting the administration’s policy priorities—including one where players can detain undocumented immigrants crossing the border.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last month. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Janine Jackson interviewed Brown University School of Public Health’s Abdullah Shihipar about Medicare for All for the August 28, 2026, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a rights group, says that more than a hundred Palestinian detainees had died in Israeli custody since October 2023. The group said this was the first case it was aware of since then in which charges were brought in the death of a Palestinian detainee.

In a statement, the group said that dozens of Palestinian prisoners who had died “were healthy when arrested but were carried out as corpses” due to starvation, medical neglect or, as in the case of Mr. Abu Asab, “torture and beatings.”

Approximately 17,000 New York City homeowners were notified on July 22 that their properties may be subject to a new pied-à-terre tax, a surcharge on secondary residences  valued at $5 million or more, should owners be unable to prove exemption by late August. (This deadline has since been extended to October 6.)

— AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

President Donald Trump appears determined to take out two birds with one stone: to help ICE assemble lists of non-citizens for mass deportations, and to weaponize the U.S. Postal Service in a campaign to suppress voting by mail.

The result is not merely administrative chaos. It is a coordinated attempt to sow confusion at the polls in November and to bend federal institutions toward partisan ends.