Tundu Lissu in Court

Tomorrow, Friday, human rights lawyer Tundu Lissu, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, leader of the opposition to a soulless dictator, will be sentenced for treason.

He faces the death penalty.

One year ago, April 3, 2025, Lissu, leader of the opposition Chadema Party, called for a boycott of the phony election that the African potentate Samia Suluhu Hassan had set. For that — a tweet on social media —Lissu was arrested, charged with treason and has remained in prison since.

Particularly since the Citizens United ruling, US politics has been awash in corporate and billionaire money, with both parties taking gobs of cash from corporations that have direct interests in government policies. But President Donald Trump has taken corruption to new and breathtakingly bold levels.

All Arab-led parties endorsed opposition bloc leader Eisenkot to form the next government during consultations with President Herzog on Thursday.

Friends,

By now I’ve read or seen every major victory speech from Tuesday’s remarkable election. There were many powerful and moving speeches, but in my judgment, the best was from James Talarico, the new senator-elect from Texas. I’ve reproduced it below. I urge you to read it. I think it’s a harbinger of the future.

We just took back Texas. We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love.

Mike Rogers, a Republican who is running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, speaks to reporters on November 1. Photo by Dominic Gwinn/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.

Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, earned over $420,000 during his tenure as a board member for a consultancy that is now helping Pete Hegseth plan the next phase of the disastrous Iran war, according to tax filings.

People wait before casting their ballot to vote at a polling station in Umm al-Fahm on Oct. 27, 2026. Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images.

Not much from me tonight, but I do want to call out the political signs reading “Stop Fraud: Vote Republican” I saw today as I left Maine. They seemed especially audacious in light of today’s news from Ernesto Londoño of the New York Times that last summer the Department of Homeland Security paid more than $495 million for a 1,600-bed prison the state of Minnesota declined to purchase a year ago for the asking price of $75 million—or even “a fraction of that price.”

Elon Musk has contributed just shy of half-a-billion dollars to Republican-aligned political campaigns and Super PACs for the 2026 midterms.

There’s a drama playing out across American screens in 2026. But not the sort you might expect. There are villains and heroes, yes, high finance and political intrigue, too. There may even be a surprise ending — but we’ll have to wait until the Nov. 3 season finale to find out.

We are in the final week of GOTV, Get Out the Vote. There’s no need to say more; we all know what to do. So today we’ll focus on what comes next, which is less well known: PTV, or Protect the Vote. It covers the period between November 3, 2026, and January 3, 2027.

Over the nearly two years of President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has taken more than 500 actions that harm public health or the environment.1 When faced with this onslaught of harm, it can be difficult to see the strategic agenda at play. However, NRDC’s new analysis reveals that the Trump administration is executing a sweeping and long-planned—but quiet—government-wide campaign to dismember major programs intended to prevent exposure to cancer-causing toxics and radiation.

Since the January 3, 2026, military strikes and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has imposed semi-colonial rule over Venezuela, forcing dramatic shifts in the country’s domestic and

According to Ukrainian presidential advisor Serhiy Beskrestnov, last night, without warning, Elon Musk’s SpaceX restricted the speed limits for the Starlink terminals Ukraine’s military uses, known as Starshield, debilitating Ukraine’s drones even as Russian forces launched strikes against Ukraine’s energy and critical infrastructure—the very infrastructure Trump said must be left alone.

Exhibit A

Friends,

He’s Exhibit A on why billionaire wealth should be taxed, why we have to get big money out of politics, why billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to buy up major media, and why our government shouldn’t give them huge military contracts.

I’m talking about Elon Musk, of course.

‘It was meant to make the president seem strong and appease the racist impulses of his base.’ Photograph: Tim Evans/Reuters

On Monday, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided the Washington DC area home of Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota congresswoman and a progressive Democrat, in the latest instance of Donald Trump’s effort to weaponize the national security state to harass, punish and embarrass his political opponents.

Federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on Aug. 14, 2025, in New York City. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The case of a 7-year-old detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sparked indignation across New York City. The child, however, is not the first New York youth caught up in President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant dragnet. 

Indiana Hoosiers offensive lineman Abedamola Ajani cools off during a game on September 5 at Memorial Stadium in Bloomington. Brian Spurlock / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Matthew Mayich stepped onto the field of Sun Angel Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, at about 7 a.m. on August 20. It was the standout hockey player’s first official practice with his new team, and temperatures were already in the mid-80s.

October 7 marked three years since the Hamas attacks on Israel that left some 1,200 people dead and 251 taken hostage. It also marks three years since Israel launched its genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with material and moral support from the United States, with an official death toll surpassing 74,000—including more than 20,000 children.

On Monday, speaking at a rally in Nebraska, Trump

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.