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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Like all fascist authoritarians criminal Trump makes no effort to hide the fact that he wants to control the media, and what it reports about him, and his administration. As you may have heard the Associated Press has been banned from the White House because they won’t call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. But that is just the beginning. Watch as Trump attempts to censor and control any media that says negative things — that is tells the truth — about him personally. Hitler did the same, Mussolini did it, Stalin did it, and Putin has done it. I think it is important that Americans get clear in their minds that what is going on is a coup to make the United States a christofascist authoritarian pseudo-democracy designed to make Trump a “king” and serve the interests of oligarchs.
The White House is stripping the White House Correspondents’ Association of its role in managing the White House Press Pool, taking control of deciding who will be a part of the small rotating group of journalists and photographers who accompany the president.
The press pool includes rotating representatives from television, print, radio, wire services and still photography outlets that travel with the president on Air Force One and in other small settings like the Oval Office or Roosevelt Room. They communicate information back to their counterparts at other outlets through what’s known as pool reports disseminated by email.
Since the 1950s, the independent WHCA, made up of representatives from hundreds of different outelts, has managed who is part of the rotation (in coordination with the White House). That now will change, Leavitt said.
“For decades, a group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States in these most intimate spaces. Not anymore,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced at Tuesday’s press briefing.
Leavitt added, “Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the […]
As Trump’s fascist oligarch coup moves into its second month I confess I am surprised that Trump voters don’t yet seem to fully realize how severely Trump is going to damage the quality of their personal life, and the lives of their family. I keep seeing interviews with Trump voters, particularly White men, who just don’t seem capable of comprehending what is happening and continue to support Trump.
Protesters gather at a rally organized by the American Federation of Government Employees against the “Department of Government Efficiency” purges and resignation offers made to the federal civilian workforce, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on February 11, 2025. Credit: Allison Robbert / AFP / Getty
The Trump administration has wasted no time attacking worker rights and bestowing even more power to employers through a barrage of anti-worker executive orders since Trump’s second term began.
Within his first two weeks in office, Trump rapidly targeted LGBTQIA+ workers and undid civil rights protections. He fired two Democratic commissioners on the five-person Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). He terminated Chair Charlotte Burrows, whose term was supposed to last until July 2028, and Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels, whose term was supposed to last until July 2026. He also fired EEOC General Counsel Karla Gilbride, whose four-year term wasn’t supposed to end until 2027.
These moves leave only the commission without a quorum, which means that the organization taxed with enforcing federal laws against job discrimination is effectively powerless.
Dasha Burns and Myah Ward, Staff Writer - Politico
Stephan:
This is straight out of Hitler’s takeover of Germany’s democracy, an evil scheme cooked up by fascist Erik Prince and his cohort of fascist military contractors. I hope you realize that under Trump we are less than two months into the Trump coup at best a pseudo-democracy.
A group of prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, has pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of “processing camps” on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a “small army” of private citizens empowered to make arrests.
The blueprint — laid out in a 26-page document President Donald Trump’s advisers received before the inauguration — carries an estimated price tag of $25 billion and recommends a range of aggressive tactics to rapidly deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms, including some that would likely face legal and operational challenges, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO.
The group, which includes some former immigration officials, is led by Prince, who has close ties to Trump, and Bill Mathews, the former chief operating officer of Blackwater, the military contractor known for its role in providing security, training and logistical support to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan during the war on terror.
The emergence of the proposal, marked “unsolicited,” is indicative of the major hurdles the administration faces as it struggles to find the resources to fulfill Trump’s ambitious deportation agenda. The administration’s desire to make good on that
Trump voters seem psychologically unable to reconsider their adoration and loyalty to criminal Trump, even as he announces scheme after scheme to destroy the quality of their lives. I did not understand how it was possible for Hitler to destroy democracy and impose authoritarian control over Germany in 1933, but watching the docile Republican sheep continue to support someone who is actively working to hurt their wellbeing I do now.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Donald Trump’s approval rating held steady over the past week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday that found 44% of respondents approved of his performance over his first month in office.
The survey found that Americans’ attitudes toward Trump were essentially unchanged as he fired tens of thousands of federal workers and upended the U.S. approach to the Ukraine-Russia war.
The poll found 50% disapproved of the job he was doing, down from 51% last week, a change well within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Public approval of Trump’s job performance so far has remained higher than it was for most of his 2017-2021 first term in office and higher than his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, enjoyed during his four-year term.
The poll of 1,029 U.S. adults, conducted online Friday through Sunday, also found that 50% of respondents supported Trump’s approach on immigration, up from 47% last week. Another 42% said they did not support his immigration policy.
Americans’ views on other top issues were relatively unchanged. Some 41% said they approved of Trump’s management of the economy and 34% […]
This is what really holds long-term consequences for not only Americans but global humanity. Criminal Trump’s, Musk led, defunding of climate science research. Without this research, we will neither understand nor be prepared for what I believe will be a civilization-altering crisis within 15 years. It will largely be based on what climate change, as a result of human greed and stupidity, and Trump’s defunding of science, is going to do to the matrix of life on Earth.
Scientists studying the retreat of glaciers, research Trump has defunded. Credit: Sean Gallup / Getty
Gabriel Filippelli got the form letter from the U.S. State Department on a Monday morning two and a half weeks ago. Since October, Filippelli has been teaching students and faculty in Pakistan how to use air quality devices to monitor air pollution exacerbated by rising temperatures — a consequence of climate change. The letter from the State Department, which had awarded the $300,000 underpinning the collaboration, said the funding was suspended, effective immediately. The project, it said, “no longer effectuates the priorities of the agency.”
Since President Donald Trump took office on January 20, his administration has sought to pause, eliminate, and claw back federal funding for research across the federal government.
Filippelli, the executive director of the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University, is a poster boy for the on-the-ground effects of these new policies. The review of one of his research proposals at the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, the federal agency that funds and executes medical research, is delayed. Another proposal and […]
Gregory Walton/ Amélie Bottollier-Depois , Staff Writers - Agence France-Presses (France) | Raw Story
Stephan:
The Trump coup has now defined itself in a way that has stunned not just me but all the democracies of the world. The United States has aligned itself with dictator-ruled Russia rather than a Russia-invaded democracy, Ukraine. I don’t believe any geopolitically sophisticated American would have believed this would ever be possible. But the United States is increasingly a pseudo-democracy, and this decision by “king” Trump to align with a dictatorship should alarm every American.
Ambassadors vote on a resolution to reaffirm Ukraine’s terroritorial integrity Credit: Charly Triballeau / AP
UN members backed a resolution supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity Monday in the face of staunch opposition from Washington which pushed its own language that declined to blame Russia for the war or mention Kyiv’s borders.
As U.S. President Donald Trump stakes out a new position on the Ukraine war, a European-backed text marking the conflict’s third anniversary won93 votes for and 18 votes against, with 65 abstentions.
Washington sided with Moscow, as well as Russian allies Belarus, North Korea and Sudan, to vote against.
The text — which won far less support compared to previous resolution on the war — strongly criticizes Russia, and emphasizes Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability of its borders.
Washington drafted a rival resolution amid an intensifying feud between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Russian ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia had called the U.S. text “a step in the right direction” amid a sudden thaw between Russia and the US under Trump.
But Washington’s ally France put forward amendments to the U.S. text telling the […]
Every day now In media, particularly media based in non-U.S. democracies, I see increasing references noting the correlation between the Trump coup and the rise of Hitler’s Nazisism. Very scary.
Members of the Base at a gathering. Illustration by Guardian Design
An international neo-Nazi terrorist group with origins in the US appears to be quickly rebuilding its global and stateside ranks, according to information obtained by the Guardian from its digital accounts.
Founded in 2018, the Base has been the intense focus of a years-long FBI counter-terrorism investigation that has resulted in more than a dozen of its members arrested. It has plotted an assassination, mass shootings and other actions in Europe, which made it a proscribed terrorist organization in several countries.
By 2022, it seemed to disappear. Yet its founder and leader, Rinaldo Nazzaro, a former US special forces contractor residing in Russia, used the safety of Russian apps before the November election to recruit and reorganize during a tense political moment. At one point, he even solicited ex-American soldiers with an offer of $1,200 a month to put members through paramilitary training somewhere in the Pacific north-west.
The Base’s regrouping comes at a time when the Trump administration has made it a policy goal to move away from policing far-right extremism and during the appointment […]
An SR reader, who describes herself as a “retired teacher” wrote to tell me she was just notified her rent in an apartment building that was sold by its owner to an investment group will be going up 25%, and she is not sure she can afford it. That prompted me to do some research to see what is going on with rents for rental houses and apartments. This is what I found. Once again it is a tale of greed.
Photo illustration by ProPublica. Source image: Travelwild / Getty
As the U.S. struggles with a housing shortage, investors continue to exploit a gap in an affordable housing law to raise rents on 115,000 apartments. Congress has repeatedly failed to act.
Four and a half years ago, a newly formed corporate entity purchased a low-income housing complex with 264 apartments in Phoenix. The property had received more than $4 million in federal tax credits and, in exchange, was supposed to remain affordable for decades.
The company then used a legal loophole that stripped the affordability protections from the apartments. The maneuver appears to have been lucrative for the company, which bought the property for under $20 million and flipped it two years later for $63 million. Today, advertised rents there have gone up by around 50%.
Similar stories have been playing out across the country for years, as developers and real estate investors take advantage of an obscure section of the tax code known as the “qualified contract” provision. It allows owners of low-income rental properties that have received generous tax credits to […]
