Social Security Under Attack: From Plutocrats, of Course

Insults, slurs, nasty comments and contempt for Social Security sprout up everywhere these days in Washington. Although Trump himself insists he will protect the program, his underlings sure hate it, and by extension, the nearly 70 million elders who rely on it; and “rely” is an understatement – for many it’s their sole lifeline. These people voted for Trump in their multitudes. But now they hear from his advisor Elon Musk that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” or from billionaire financial services ceo turned commerce secretary Howard Lutnick that only “fraudsters” cash their social security checks. It’s hard not to conclude that these haughty plutocrats want to snatch grandma’s money and leave her destitute. More

First, They Came for the Venezuelans

Trump is making clear that this is no longer about deporting undocumented immigrants and that anyone can be disappeared at any time. His government is going after U.S. citizens of color. It is targeting academicsof color who are working or studying in the country with valid papers, particularly those who are Muslim or seeking justice for Palestine, such as Mahmoud Khalil and Bader Khan Suri. He is also targeting white Europeans and Canadian tourists, artists, and others. The situation is so dire that Germany and the UK have issued travel advisories against the United States. More

The Latest JFK Documents Release: A Quick Guide to the Perplexed

Last week, President Trump authorized the rapid release of almost 80,000 pages of previously classified or heavily redacted CIA and FBI documents relating to investigations into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But these documents are not likely to reveal much new information about the assassination. Most of these documents do not even directly relate to JFK’s assassination; those that do are often FBI or CIA efforts to trace down rumors, or only secondarily relate to the assassination. Many records in this collection were originally collected by the US House Select Committee on Assassinations (1976-1979), which included investigations into the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of these released documents appear to have grown out of the committee’s efforts to do background research on individuals, organizations, or intelligence operations mentioned in documents collected by the committee. More