By Julie Hollar
As oligarchs Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue their pursuit of power unfettered by the Constitution, many citizens wonder why their elected representatives in Washington are doing so little to stop the administrative coup. They also might well wonder why the media so rarely ask the same question.
By Jarrod Shanahan
A strike wave has spread throughout New York State prisons. Since February 17, 14,000 guards in 40 of the state’s 42 facilities have joined wildcat walkouts, neglecting and endangering incarcerated people throughout the state. Since February 19, National Guard troops have been deployed to replace striking guards. These actions are illegal under New York State’s Taylor Law, which prohibits public sector workers from striking. Nonetheless, state correctional officials have negotiated with the guards — and have agreed to suspend compliance with a recent law limiting the amount of a time a prisoner can spend in solitary confinement, among other concessions.
By Natalia Marques
The New York Times editorial board (2/8/25) this month urged readers not to get “distracted,” “overwhelmed,” “paralyzed” or “pulled into [Donald Trump’s] chaos”—in short, don’t “tune out.” But what good is staying informed unless there are concrete actions Trump’s opponents can take to rein him in?
By Sharon Zhang
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has reportedly ordered a City University of New York (CUNY) college to remove a job posting for a professorship in Palestinian Studies, sparking outrage among advocates who say she is contributing to the censorship and dehumanization of Palestinians amid widespread repression of anti-Zionists across the U.S.
By Eloise Goldsmith
That's the basic premise of a 12-page policy roadmap released Tuesday by Free Press Action, the 501(c)(4) arm of the advocacy group Free Press, and created by members of Media Power Collaborative, an organizing space for media workers and others, which aims to resist journalism's trend towards clickbait, misinformation, and "a shortage of local news that actually meet people's needs."
In just a matter of months, Gov. Jeff Landry plans to reopen a Baton Rouge-area youth prison shuttered a little over a decade ago with support at the time from Democrats and Republicans.
Landry and state legislators have reshuffled at least $42.4 million over the past week and directed it toward reopening the Jetson Center for Youth in Baker. The governor is also pushing for an additional $12.7 million to add staff to Jetson in his latest budget proposal, though lawmakers haven’t signed off on that money yet.
By Piper Hutchinson
Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley is urging Louisiana K-12 schools to comply with guidance from President Donald Trump’s administration as it threatens to revoke federal funding from campuses that use race-conscious practices in admissions, programming, training, hiring, scholarships and other aspects of student life.
By Steven Mangual
At Red Onion State Prison, one of two supermax prisons in Virginia, at least 12 Black menlast year set their own bodies on fire in horrifying and desperate acts of protest against inhumane conditions, including prolonged solitary confinement.
By Shauneen Miranda
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education is threatening to rescind federal funds for schools that use race-conscious practices in admissions, programming, training, hiring, scholarships and other aspects of student life, according to a Dear Colleague letter sent to schools.
By Sam Stockard
Tennessee’s Department of Correction is requesting a $6.8 million contract increase for its private prison operator despite penalizing the company $44.78 million since 2022 for contractual shortfalls, $15 million in the last five months alone.
By Chris Walker
The DOJ had ordered the case against Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped following weeks of his cozying up to Trump.
UPDATE: As of Friday afternoon, the number of federal prosecutors who have resigned over the Department of Justice’s demands to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (amid claims that that action was part of a quid pro quo with the Trump administration) .
IN SUMMARY
Californians rejected the anti-slavery ballot measure Proposition 6, which would have forbid forced prison labor. Reparations advocates want to try again in 2026.
Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Democrat from Suisun City, this month introduced a new constitutional amendment aimed at abolishing the everyday de facto slavery practices that persist inside California prisons.
By Danielle Brown
The state and the city of Baltimore sued gun maker Glock on Wednesday for its failure to stop the rising trend of its handguns being modified into machine-gun-like weapons used in violent crimes.
The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court, asks the court to stop the sale and distribution of Glocks in Maryland until the company changes the design of its handguns to be more resistant to modifications that let them “fire fully automatically — that is, to operate like a machine gun.”
By Jake Johnson
House Democratic lawmakers reportedly used a closed-door meeting earlier this week to vent their frustrations with progressive advocacy groups that have been driving constituent calls and pressuring the party to act like a genuine opposition force in the face of the Trump administration's authoritarian assault on federal agencies and key programs.
By Natalia Marquez
Following a legal response by organized labor, one of Trump’s early attacks against the US federal workforce have been temporarily halted. On Thursday, February 6, Trump’s deadline to furlough millions of federal workers if they did not accept a buyout offer was paused following an injunction by a federal judge in Boston. This pause came less than 11 hours before the deadline for workers to accept the buyout offer, which 65,000 federal workers did—agreeing to leave their jobs in exchange for eight months of pay and benefits through September.
Judge George O’Toole Jr., who halted Trump’s offer of buyouts, said the administration’s plans would pause until a Monday court hearing, in which he would determine the merits of a lawsuit filed by four unions which represent federal workers. On Tuesday, February 4, nonprofit legal services organization Democracy Forward filed a legal challengeon behalf of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), AFGE Local 3707, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, (AFSCME), and the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE).
According to the legal nonprofit, the unions are “seeking to halt the Trump-Vance administration’s ‘Fork Directive’ Feb. 6 deadline and require the government to articulate a policy that is lawful, rather than an arbitrary, unlawful, short-fused ultimatum which workers may not be able to enforce.” Democracy Forward claims that Trump’s “Fork Directive” buyout offers are part of a larger plan to “remove career public service workers and replace them with partisan loyalists.”
Democracy Forward is also representing a coalition of unions and the think tank Economic Policy Institute in filing a lawsuit which successfully halted the Elon Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency’s access to sensitive Treasury Department payment system information—a power grab that had prompted mass protests outside of the Treasury Department in Washington, DC.
Represented by the legal nonprofit, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFL-CIO), the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and nonpartisan think tank Economic Policy Institute filed a a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order in the US District Court of the District of Columbia. This motion successfully halted DOGE’s access to sensitive federal information. These labor unions together represent over four million workers.
“The lawsuits filed by federal workers are an important initial step in a showdown over the future of the federal government,” Walter Smolarek, editor of Liberation News, told Peoples Dispatch. “Elon Musk and his DOGE team are attempting to obliterate any program that is of any benefit to working people, and leave intact only the activities that help enrich the billionaire class, like massive government spending on weapons. No one elected Elon Musk, and as the lawsuit correctly argues he has no business accessing the sensitive personal information stored in government databases. What will be decisive is whether or not the protest movement in the streets intensifies and puts pressure on the courts.”
Meanwhile, mostly Black federal health workers have been targeted through a watchlist published by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) on January 28. AAF, which published the so-called “DEI Watchlist” as well as an earlier “DHS Watchlist” in July of 2024 targeting “America’s Most Subversive Immigration Bureaucrats,” is a member of the advisor board of the infamous Project 2025, a collection of ultra-right policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation. The “DEI Watchlist” included the names, photos and work history of 57 mostly Black federal employees.
This article originally appeared in the People’s Dispatch on February 7th, 2025
By Christine Zhu
Defense Secretary Pete Hedgseth has approved reverting the name of military base Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg.
Hedgseth approved a memorandum on Monday to change the name, but with a different namesake.
Located just west of Fayetteville, the base was initially named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. It’s one of the largest military installations in the world by population, with more than 52,000 military personnel.
By Greg LaRose
A Rapides Parish man could be the first person Louisiana puts to death in 15 years after the district attorney there obtained a warrant Monday for his execution.
Larry Roy has been on death row since his 1994 conviction for double murder in Cheneyville. Police said Roy attacked his ex-girlfriend, Sally Richard, and her ex-husband, Freddie Richard Jr., with a knife in front of her two children. The woman and her children survived, but Roy killed her aunt, Rosetta Salas, and Freddie Richard Jr.
By Jake Johnson
New York officials, lawmakers, and activists expressed fury on Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump's Justice Department instructed prosecutors to drop federal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a move seen as an overtly corrupt deal aimed at giving the White House free rein to attack the city's immigrant communities.
By Sasha Abramsky
With President Donald Trump’s pardoning of more than 1,500 people charged with offenses relating to the January 6 insurrection, and his description of them as “hostages” rather than as insurrectionists, paramilitarism is now firmly back on the national agenda.
By Julie Hollar
When President Donald Trump announced an unprecedented freeze on federal grants and loans last week, some of the most prominent US news outlets proved themselves largely uninterested in whether it was legal. Meanwhile, a few braver journalists called out the move as the constitutional crisis that it was (FAIR.org, 1/29/25)
By Nathaniel Cline
With millions flowing from speed camera fines, Virginia lawmakers are pushing to curb potential profiteering and increase public oversight of the devices. A bill to bring more transparency and accountability to speed camera operations cleared the House this week and is now headed to the Senate.
According to Virginia State Police data, the state collected nearly $24 million from speed cameras in school zones and almost $10 million from highway work zones last year. The cameras, approved by the General Assembly in 2020, were intended to reduce traffic fatalities and encourage safer driving near children and construction workers. But growing concerns over the financial windfall for local governments and law enforcement have put the program under scrutiny.
By William J. Ford
Criminal justice advocates welcomed a Senate bill that would sharply reduce the number of crimes for which a juvenile could be charged as an adult.
Senate Bill 422 by Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery) would raise the age at which a juvenile would be tried as an adult from 14 in the current law, to 16. It would also eliminate a number of crimes for which 16-year-olds are currently made eligible to be charge as adults.
By Paige Gross
The city’s police department had sent images from the security footage at the Detroit watch store to Michigan State Police to run through its facial recognition technology. An expired driver’s license photo of Williams in the state police database was a possible match, the technology said.
COLUMBIA — Marion Bowman died Friday night by lethal injection in the country’s first execution this year.
His recorded time of death was 6:27 p.m.
The roughly 30 protesters outside the prison gates sang “Amazing Grace,” Bowman’s favorite hymn, after receiving confirmation of his fate.
