Karen J. Greenberg Here we are, once again learning that the restraints Americans could rely upon in the past are fast disappearing The post Trump’s California Stunt Is One More Step Toward Authoritarianism appeared first on The Nation.
Elie Mystal In his weekly newsletter, Elie Mystal lambastes the Republicans’ shameful priorities—and their deadly consequences. The post Superman the Immigrant Would Have Saved Texas appeared first on The Nation.
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Business groups lobbied heavily to overturn the measure passed by 58% of voters, arguing it would cost jobs. The bill also repeals annual inflation adjustments for the minimum wage, in effect since 2006. by Rudi Keller, Missouri Independent Missouri workers who started accruing paid sick leave on May 1 will lose it Aug. 28 under legislation signed Thursday by Gov. Mike Kehoe. The new benefit, linked to an increase in the minimum wage passed with 58% of the vote in November, became a target for business lobbying interests. Republican allies in the General Assembly pushed it to Kehoe’s desk by invoking a rarely used state Senate rule to shut down debate over Democratic objections. The action followed a pattern established over the past 15 years where conservative Republicans have used their majorities in the legislature to roll back or repeal measures that became law through initiatives pushed to the ballot by progressive groups. The minimum wage initiative was a statutory change, meaning lawmakers could make any changes that would command a majority. In a news release issued after he signed the bills, Kehoe said he was approving the bill to defend small businesses. “Today, we are protecting the people who make Missouri work—families, job creators, and small business owners—by cutting taxes, rolling back overreach, and eliminating costly mandates,” Kehoe said in the release. Missouri House Democratic leader Ashley Aune of Kansas City denounced Kehoe’s decision to sign the bill as an attack on workers and voters. “The governor’s action today demonstrates the absolute disdain Republicans have for working Missourians,” Aune said in a news release. “But in stripping workers of their legal right to earned sick leave, the governor and his allies have probably guaranteed this issue will be back on the ballot next year as a constitutional amendment that will place worker protections beyond their reach.” Richard Von Glahn, policy director for Missouri Jobs with Justice, the organization that helped lead the campaign for the paid sick leave law, has filed a proposed constitutional amendment targeting the 2026 ballot. The Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri. The law “should not have been messed with at all by politicians in Jefferson City or their corporate lobby buddies — all of whom testified that they have this benefit,” Von Glahn said in a news release. “This makes our workplaces and communities less safe. It was passed overwhelmingly, upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court and it went into effect over two months ago as the voters intended.” The repeal doesn’t take effect immediately because Republicans were unable to muster the two-thirds majorities needed to pass an emergency clause even though the GOP holds more than two-thirds of the seats in each chamber. It goes into effect at the same time as other bills approved this year and signed by Kehoe. The increased minimum wage, $13.75 an hour, took effect on Jan. 1. A second increase is set for Jan. 1, 2026, when it will increase to $15 an hour. The bill signed Thursday also repeals a provision, in effect since 2006, to adjust the minimum wage annually for inflation. Organizers of the initiative that put the measure on the ballot set May 1 as the starting date for paid leave, available for personal illness or to stay home with a sick family member. The intent was to allow more time for businesses to adjust to the new rule than the short period between the election and the new year. Workers at businesses with receipts greater than $500,000 a year are accruing at least one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked. Employers with fewer than 15 workers must allow workers to earn at least 40 hours per year, with larger employers mandated to allow at least 56 hours. The measure made sick leave guaranteed for 728,000 workers who lacked it statewide, or over 1 in 3 Missouri workers, according to an analysis from the progressive nonprofit the Missouri Budget Project. The leave can be used currently, but the repeal makes it uncertain if accrued leave can be used after the law is repealed. The battle over the leave provisions revolved around its economic effect, pitting business interests and their backers in the legislature against supporters of the law. During a House committee hearing in February, the sponsor, Republican state Rep. Sherri Gallick of Belton, suggested that employees can’t be trusted to use paid sick leave only for the reasons allowed by the law. “Under the mandated sick leave, potential abuse is nearly impossible to address,” Gallick told the House Commerce Committee. “Employers cannot ask an employee why they were absent, leaving them vulnerable to lawsuits for merely inquiring.” In a news release Thursday, Kara Corches, president and CEO of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called the mandated paid sick leave a “job killer.” “Missouri employers value their employees and recognize the importance of offering competitive wages and benefits, but one-size-fits-all mandates threaten growth,” Corches said in the release. At a May news conference, state Rep. Betsy Fogle, a Springfield Democrat, said that when Missouri workers are successful, businesses will succeed. “The idea that providing workers with more protections is a business killer is wild,” she said. “…To try to make this seem like this is something that will kill business, that will keep businesses from opening, I think it’s absurd, and I think it’s quite disappointing, and I think it sends absolutely the wrong message.” The action on sick leave is similar to a bill in 2011 weakening provisions of a ballot measure from 2010 called the “Puppy Mill Cruelty and Prevention Act,” that specified appropriate living conditions for breeding operations and including action this year to overturn the abortion rights amendment approved in November. The GOP’s willingness to overturn voter actions has led many initiative organizers to push their proposals as constitutional amendments, which require a statewide vote to repeal or revise. Amendments to legalize marijuana, expand Medicaid coverage, revise the legislative redistricting process and protect
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Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, admitted Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is racially profiling the immigrants being rounded up in raids across the country. “People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol, they don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” Homan said on Fox News, adding that he says ICE agents can detain people “based on … their physical appearance.” YouTube Video Indeed, the Trump administration’s racial profiling has led multiple U.S. citizens to be wrongfully detained by ICE agents, who, under orders from bigoted White House aide Stephen Miller, have been told to arrest 3,000 immigrants per day to meet an arbitrary deportation goal. That evil order is actually making Americans less safe since ICE officers say they are unable to focus on prioritizing criminals and instead must round up immigrants who are contributing to the U.S. economy, all to meet Miller’s goal. Racial profiling—as Homan admits ICE is doing—is patently illegal. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states that the United States cannot “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” And courts have ruled that targeting someone based on what they look like is a violation of that amendment. Federal agents take someone into custody after an immigration court hearing on May 21 in Phoenix. “This is patently false,” Democratic Rep. Daniel Goldman of New York wrote in a post on X, referring to Homan’s comments. “DHS has authority to question and search people coming into the country at points of entry. But ICE may not detain and question anyone without reasonable suspicion—and certainly not based on their physical appearance alone. This lawlessness must stop now.” Of course, the fact that the law prohibits something is not a deterrent for Trump, who not only is too stupid to understand the document but also simply doesn’t care about following the law when it gets in his way. Still, Homan’s admission on Fox News that ICE is targeting people based on their appearance could be used against the Trump administration in lawsuits seeking to stop ICE raids across the country. Ultimately, not only are the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policies breaking the law, they are also backfiring. New polling shows that support for immigration in the United States is up this year. A Gallup survey released Friday found that 79% of Americans believe immigration is good for the country—a record high. And just 30% want immigration to be reduced, down from 55% in 2024. Datawrapper Content “These shifts reverse a four-year trend of rising concern about immigration that began in 2021 and reflect changes among all major party groups,” Gallup said of its polling. Gallup also found that just 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, with a whopping 62% disapproving. That includes 69% of independents who disapprove of Trump’s immigration policy, with 45% of those independents strongly disapproving. Turns out, racially profiling immigrants, erecting concentration camps on U.S. soil, and deporting people to torture prisons is not good politics. Go figure.
The Trump administration is gutting the State Department, firing more than 1,300 employees on Friday, as part of a large downsizing effort that critics say will kneecap America’s global influence and diplomatic readiness. According to the Associated Press, a senior State Department official confirmed that pink slips are going out to 1,107 civil service employees and 246 foreign service officers with U.S.-based assignments. Overall, about 3,000 positions will be cut through layoffs, buyouts, and office closures, CBS News reports. The move follows a Supreme Court decision lifting a lower court’s order that had blocked mass federal layoffs, paving the way for widespread cuts across agencies. “We took a very deliberate step to reorganize the State Department to be more efficient and more focused,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Thursday during a trip to Malaysia. Rubio has long called the department “bloated.” In May, the agency informed Congress it planned to eliminate over 3,400 U.S.-based jobs—around 18% of its workforce—and consolidate or close nearly half of its domestic offices. At the time, it said the reorganization would phase out programs focused on democracy and human rights—offices the department called “prone to ideological capture”—and create new units centered on “civil liberties” and “free market principles.” Employees were notified of the layoffs on Thursday afternoon. Some were instructed to return all department-issued equipment—including laptops, phones, and diplomatic passports—and collect personal belongings before their badges were revoked. An internal email also canceled telework privileges for Friday, according to CBS News. President Donald Trump, shown in 2019. For now, overseas staffing and embassies are spared, but a senior official told The New York Times that all global programs remain under review. “No one’s saying that the people … weren’t doing a good job,” one senior official told CBS News. “But at the end of the day, we have to do what’s right for the mission.” The cuts have sparked swift criticism from Democrats. In a letter last month to Rubio, dozens of House members warned the plan would “leave the U.S. with limited tools to engage as a leader on the world stage during this critical juncture.” Even some inside the agency are confused. “It makes absolutely no sense,” one employee told CBS News. There’s good reason for skepticism. Earlier in Trump’s presidency, rushed firings led to improper terminations and entire offices being gutted. Some workers were later quietly reinstated. Once notices go out, the department will begin a “transition period of several weeks” to implement the new organizational chart, a State Department employee told reporters. But behind all the bureaucratic language, critics see something more dangerous: a deliberate weakening of America’s diplomatic strength. And with tensions mounting abroad, it’s a moment many say the U.S. can least afford to be short-staffed.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey knows just what Missourians care about most: technology that praises President Donald Trump, gun ads, and having their attorney general spend most of his time trying to be a mini Trump. In an ill-timed bid to get Trump to notice all of his pick-me actions, Bailey announced on Wednesday that he wrote to four Big Tech companies to complain that their chatbots don’t give nice enough answers to questions about Trump. Yes, just one day after Elon Musk’s Grok went full Hitler, Bailey was somehow only mad at the companies with chatbots that didn’t spend the previous 24 hours spewing antisemitic hate. Ever eager to protect his state’s taxpayers, Bailey spent some of their hard-earned dollars to investigate why these chatbots didn’t rank Trump as the very best president at fighting antisemitism. Then, finding the fealty insufficient, he spent more taxpayer dollars to write stern letters to Microsoft, OpenAI, Meta, and Google. Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok has been on an antisemitic rampage—but that’s not what’s got Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey mad at chatbots. According to Bailey, when these chatbots were asked to “rank the last five presidents from best to worst, specifically in regards to antisemitism,” Trump was ranked dead last in all but one, which refused to answer. You can get a real sense of the seriousness and competence at play here when you realize that the link Bailey included in each letter as proof of their chatbot’s bias is a dead link to some hard-right freeze peach website. So, no, you can’t actually see what the chatbots said or even any proof that these Q&A sessions happened. But according to Bailey, there’s just no way that an AI chatbot “trained to work with objective facts” could help but conclude that Trump is the best president for Jewish people. “President Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, signed the Abraham Accords, has Jewish family members, and has consistently demonstrated strong support for Israel both militarily and economically,” Bailey cited as “evidence.” Yes, one of Bailey’s pieces of evidence is that Trump has Jewish family members. And the rest are just about what Trump has done in and for Israel, not to actually combat antisemitism in the United States. Perhaps Bailey didn’t list Trump’s great domestic accomplishments in this arena because there aren’t any. Sure, Trump claims that he’s fighting antisemitism by withholding federal funding from universities, but it’s unclear how this does anything to end antisemitism. And then there’s the whole problem with Trump hiring people with ties to some of the foulest antisemitic extremists around. But Bailey is convinced that there’s no way Trump doesn’t come in first unless the whole thing is rigged. Think of it as “Stop the Steal” but for chatbots. Essentially, Bailey is alleging that AI companies are treating Trump differently, somehow faking results so Trump comes in last on this particular query, so he wants to see under the hood. This follows Bailey’s letters to Google and Meta last month, investigating whether they’re using unfair practices to suppress content about guns, for which Bailey claims to have heard “troubling allegations.” But can you know what those allegations are? Nope. Can you view any evidence that this is happening? Not a chance. Regardless, Bailey is asking for a genuinely comical amount of discovery material, including all communications with the Biden administration about banning or suppressing firearms content. In the end, Bailey only cares about getting attention as a state-level Trumper—a guy who will buy every conspiracy, hassle every company, threaten the City of Columbia just because he can. No, really, Bailey is investigating Columbia for having diversity. Maybe that’s what will endear him to Trump the most. Or maybe Bailey will just have to keep throwing fits on the internet.
A divided federal appeals court on Friday threw out an agreement that would have allowed accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in a deal sparing him the risk of execution for al-Qaida’s 2001 attacks. The decision by a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., undoes an attempt to wrap up more than two decades of military prosecution beset by legal and logistical troubles. It signals there will be no quick end to the long struggle by the U.S. military and successive administrations to bring to justice the man charged with planning one of the deadliest attacks ever on the United States. The deal, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a year ago, stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two co-defendants. The Camp VI detention facility in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the hijacked planes flew into a field in Pennsylvania. The men also would have been obligated to answer any lingering questions that families of the victims have about the attacks. But then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin repudiated the deal, saying a decision on the death penalty in an attack as grave as Sept. 11 should only be made by the defense secretary. Attorneys for the defendants had argued that the agreement was already legally in effect and that Austin, who served under President Joe Biden, acted too late to try to throw it out. A military judge at Guantanamo and a military appeals panel agreed with the defense lawyers. But, by a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found Austin acted within his authority and faulted the military judge’s ruling. The panel had previously put the agreement on hold while it considered the appeal, first filed by the Biden administration and then continued under President Donald Trump. Related | Meet the 22-year-old leading Trump’s terrorism prevention hub “Having properly assumed the convening authority, the Secretary determined that the ‘families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out.’ The Secretary acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment,” Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao wrote. Millett was an appointee of President Barack Obama while Rao was appointed by Trump. In a dissent, Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote, “The government has not come within a country mile of proving clearly and indisputably that the Military Judge erred.”
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