The USA Potato

Fascism depends on our compliance. Authoritarians know they cannot sustain rule by individually repressing each person in the country. They use threats and violence to inflict fear — a primary weapon to force compliance. If fear is their strategy for compliance, then we need a strategy for sustaining dissent. Amid Trump’s unjustified and illegal war on Iran, many of us need space to…

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A battle over a data center complex in rural Western New York may seem like a purely local affair. But an analysis of the project’s owner reveals ties that include the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, the government’s crackdown on U.S. campuses, and the imposition of neocolonial rule over Gaza. Over the past year, residents of Genesee County, New York — located between Buffalo and Rochester — have…

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Florida just handed Ron DeSantis a weapon to fire elected officials for supporting their own constituents.

War over already? 🙄 Trump doing his victory lap spin while the conflict is still actively raging.

State leaders and environmental advocates responded with outrage after the Trump administration on Friday ordered the restarting of a California pipeline that caused one of the largest oil spills in the state’s history, a move that comes as oil prices have skyrocketed following President Donald Trump’s launching of an illegal war against Iran and Iran’s subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

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The Trump administration stepped in to override California’s objections, ordering Sable Offshore to resume operations at its Santa Ynez Unit and pipeline system off the state’s coast but how did we get here?

In his top post at the Department of Homeland Security, David Harvilicz sets policy on protecting the nation’s elections infrastructure, including voting machines. He’s also the co-founder of a company with James Penrose, who helped hatch debunked conspiracy theories blaming hacked voting machines for Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. Penrose assisted in a push to seize…

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Reminder the Senate is expected to vote on the Save America Act this week. Please contact your senator and urge them to vote no. You may be seeing a lot of apparent “support” for the bill on social media, but it is not organic. Bot accounts have been flooding senators pages urging them to vote yes.

Yes! 💯

It was a sweltering January afternoon in the Amazonian town of Puyo when Andrés Tapia realized his daughter’s public school fees were due. Like many Ecuadorians, he reached for his phone to make a mobile transfer. Carrying cash is too risky these days. Ecuador is in the grip of an ongoing security crisis, with transnational criminal organizations spilling in from neighboring Colombia and…

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Since the end of World War II, almost every U.S. president has initiated a major military conflict without congressional approval. Donald Trump attempted to portray himself as a “peace president,” promising to end the U.S.’s endless wars and bring troops home from the Middle East and other parts of the globe. But he has proven to be even more trigger-happy than most of his predecessors.

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Some Republican lawmakers have routinely proposed criminally prosecuting women for getting abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, despite bipartisan condemnation and criticism from national anti-abortion organizations. These bills never made it to the finish line, but they keep circulating in legislatures across the country. So-called “abortion abolitionists” who…

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President Donald Trump is boasting about the economy one year into his term. He claims that inflation has been defeated, growth is unprecedented, incomes are rising, and his tariffs are generating hundreds of billions for the U.S. economy. This is all hogwash, according to progressive economist Gerald Epstein, a leading global authority on macroeconomic policy and finance.

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The level of incompetence in this administration is staggering.

Friends,

The Epstein files continue to wreak havoc among America’s (and the United Kingdom’s) wealthy elites — this week resulting in even more resignations (and, in the U.K., arrests).

The havoc seems to be getting closer to Trump. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the files fail to include key materials about a woman who in 2019 accused both Epstein and Trump of sexual assault when she was a minor. The FBI conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries of each, but the Justice Department released only the one describing her accusations against Epstein. The other three are missing, as are interview notes, although the department released notes of FBI interviews with other potential witnesses and victims.

This is eerily similar to Watergate. As a friend put it, the dam is leaking more every day, the shingles are dropping off the roof one by one, and there are even (gasp!) members of the president’s own party who want more disclosure. Somebody — like the fall guy who wrote the letter to Judge Sirica, or Alexander Butterfield, who told about the tapes, after saying, “Oh, I wish you hadn’t asked that question!” — is going to blow the deadly whistle. Maybe it’s the woman who accused Trump in 2019. When Trump says, “It’s time to move on from the Epstein files,” you gotta feel the ghost of Richard Nixon in the room.

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: Is the Epstein scandal finally about to destroy Trump?

Here are the most thoughtful responses I get to this question right now:

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Dear readers,

We are happy you stayed with us for the year. Now, when trumpism got the coverage it deserves, we are closing this website as redundant.

You are invited to subscribe to our source feeds directly (they all have RSS feeds, which is the second best thing after fediverse).

Keep calm and carry on!

Yours truly

The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against Kentucky, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia seeking access to their complete voter registration lists.

A big thank you to Anthropic!

After a weeks-long standoff between the Defense Department and AI firm Anthropic over how the military can deploy its technology, CEO Dario Amodei said tonight that the company will not loosen its usage policies.
https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

Allies of the Trump administration are reportedly circulating a document that they say would grant the president sweeping powers over elections, including the ability to ban mail-in ballots, by declaring a national emergency over disproven allegations of interference by China in the 2020 election, a new Washington Post report finds. Right-wing activists who claim to be in contact with the…

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A Columbia University student was reportedly taken by federal immigration agents who lied in order to gain entry into her residence, the university’s president said in a statement on the Thursday morning arrest, which critics have described as an abduction. The detained student has been identified as Ellie Aghayeva, an undergrad majoring in neuroscience and political science.

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As Democratic leaders coalesce behind reforms for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents without demands for funding cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced legislation on Friday to slash the entirety of the GOP’s massive ICE budget increase and funnel the money toward undoing Medicaid cuts. The entire Democratic caucus, as well as two Republicans, voted “yes” for the amendment.

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And here we go again. Some federal employees are starting to receive furlough notices as lawmakers in Washington weigh how to end the partial government shutdown that began over the weekend.

A sweeping proposal by the Trump administration to expand offshore oil and gas drilling could result in more than 4,000 oil spills in U.S. waters, according to a new analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity. Trump’s draft proposal, announced last November, would authorize up to 34 offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next five years. That would open as much as 1.27…

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What does it mean for humanity if cutting-edge AI weapons development for the Pentagon is being significantly funded by venture capitalists who are also profiting from the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people? Consider, for example, the X-BAT. On October 21, 2025, in a theatrical unveiling involving a darkened auditorium, a smoke machine, and a black silken shroud that was…

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Two detainees at the nation’s only current immigrant family detention center, 70 miles south of San Antonio, have “active measles infections,” federal and state officials said. Federal officials halted “all movement” and quarantined some migrants, said Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, in a statement. The measles cases were first confirmed Saturday…

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Since the beginning of the Israeli genocide and the imposition of a total blockade on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, water desalination plants have almost completely shut down due to severe fuel shortages. According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, more than 90 percent of water and desalination facilities have gone out of service. As infrastructure systems collapse…

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Days after the FBI seized 700 boxes of ballots and voting records from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, President Trump called on Republicans “to take over the voting in at least 15 places” in advance of the next election, raising new fears that his administration plans to interfere in the midterms and beyond.

“Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump told former deputy FBI director and conservative commentator Dan Bongino on his radio show on Monday. “We have states that I won that show I didn’t win. Now you’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get, with a court order, the ballots. You’re going to see some interesting things come out.”

Trump is once again saying the quiet part out loud, suggesting that the FBI raid in Georgia was a prelude to how his administration intends to interfere in state and local election processes in advance of the midterms.

There are still many unanswered questions about the Georgia raid, such as why a criminal investigation has been opened into an election that took place six years ago and was audited three times and why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present for the operation when she is barred by law from participating in domestic law enforcement operations. The New York Times reported on Monday that Gabbard called Trump and put him on speakerphone with FBI agents who took part in the raid, which represents yet another erosion of democratic norms.

I wrote last week that “the raid was as much about the next election as the one six years ago.” Trump confirmed that on Monday, making clear that his administration’s end goal is to seize control of election administration at the state and local level to prevent his party from losing power.

As Trump and the GOP became more unpopular, the tactics they’ll use to attempt to remain in control are sure to become more radical and extreme.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said on Sunday that one of his most important jobs as Senate minority leader is to “fight for aid to Israel,” as the Trump administration’s masked federal agents continue their deadly raids of the U.S. with little to no pushback from Democrats. In remarks at a breakfast gathering of Jewish leaders in New York City, Schumer said, “I have many jobs as leader …

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Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency made a surprise announcement: President Donald Trump would consider giving some polluters exemptions from a handful of Clean Air Act rules. To get the ball rolling, all it would take was an email from a company making its case. The EPA set up a special inbox to receive these applications, and it gave companies about three weeks at the end of March…

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The Justice Department on Friday released an additional 3 million pages of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump administration says it was the final release of Epstein files, even though some 2 million more documents remain unreleased. The latest batch reveals new details about Epstein’s connections to the rich and powerful, including Hollywood figures…

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Senator Markwayne Mullin bought stock in leading defense and oil companies just five days before Trump ordered the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Mullin follows in the footsteps of his predecessor, James Inhofe, who bought Raytheon stock and profited from illegal wars of aggression that he championed Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) has cultivated […]

The post Senate Armed Service Committee Member Profited From Venezuela Invasion first appeared on CovertAction Magazine.

The Trump administration is purchasing warehouses across the U.S. with the intention of converting them into immigration jails as the White House expands its brutal immigration crackdown. At least seven sites being looked at by the administration could be used to imprison 7,500 people or more, with some sites coming close to a 10,000-person figure. All told, the 23 warehouse sites being…

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Just want to say thank you to everyone who showed up for ICEOUT this weekend. All across the country (from small towns to big cities) people came out, even in the freezing cold. A lot of this was organized by everyday people in their own communities, and that matters.

The Grammy Awards were fantastic. Trump tuned in but didn’t have a good time and got very upset.

The Voice of Hind Rajab has been nominated for an Academy Award for best international feature, a recognition for the Tunisian film that features the voice of a 5-year-old girl whose phone call begging for help was heard across the world before she was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. The film is a mix of a documentary and drama that weaves in the recordings of Hind’s phone call along with…

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For the third consecutive year, Christmas will pass in Gaza without lights and without fanfare. Bells will not ring, and decorations that once briefly softened the Strip’s pain will be absent from streets long familiar with loss. In 2023, Christmas arrived in Gaza under the weight of fear and terror, at a time when the war had been ongoing for only two months. Back then…

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