Lemdro.id

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8356680

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/45407

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 27, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

An exchange of gunfire between an armed suspect and law enforcement outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday came days ahead of a deadline for extending far-reaching government surveillance powers, and President Donald Trump wasted no time in claiming that the attempted attack on the event proved that the FBI must be permitted to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump repeated his previous remarks that he is “willing to give up [his] security” in favor of extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire on Thursday—and suggested other Americans should do the same for “the safety of our nation.”

Section 702 allows US intelligence agencies to surveil the electronic communications of foreign nationals overseas without a warrant. Since some of the nearly 350,000 foreign nationals whose communications have been collected under the law are in touch with Americans, Section 702 allows for the collection of emails, text messages, and phone calls of US citizens.

Fox anchor Jacqui Heinrich emphasized that “we don’t know right now” whether the suspect in Saturday’s shooting, Cole Tomas Allen, “was radicalized” by a foreign individual or group, but asked whether the attack drove home “the importance of having these tools to protect our country from these kinds of threats.”

The president responded by complaining that former FBI Director James Comey used FISA to obtain warrants to surveil a former Trump aide as part of the agency’s investigation into the 2016 Trump presidential campaign’s communications with Russia, before saying FISA has been used in the US-Israeli war on Iran and in the US military’s invasion of Venezuela earlier this year.

“It’s really needed for national security,” said Trump. “Iran is decimated, and we got a lot of information by using FISA… I’m willing to give up my security for the military because ultimately that’s to me the highest cause is, you know, the safety of our nation.”

Pres. Trump, under prodding from Fox News, exploits White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting to push for Congress to approve FISA domestic spying program: "It's really needed for national security…"

He reiterates that he's willing to give up his liberties for safety. pic.twitter.com/tmcepp0Wgn

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) April 26, 2026

Jordan Liz, an associate professor of philosophy at San José State University, wrote last week in a column at Common Dreams that while Trump, Republican lawmakers, and US intelligence agencies “make sweeping claims about the terror attacks that Section 702 has prevented, there is little publicly available evidence to support this.”

“According to the Cato Institute, there is only one well-documented, independently corroborated case of Section 702 preventing a terrorist attack on American soil: the 2009 New York subway bombing plot,” wrote Liz. “In that case, Section 702 was used by the [National Security Agency] to track an exchange between an al-Qaeda courier and Najibullah Zazi, who was living in the US. The NSA passed this information to the FBI, which identified Zazi and disrupted the attack before it took place. Importantly, however, the NSA allegedly received the courier’s foreign email address from the government’s British intelligence partners. At best then, this success was a byproduct of productive intelligence sharing between allies. Rather than proving the necessity of Section 702, this incident underscores how Trump’s inane attacks against key US allies undermine our national security.”

The suspect in Saturday’s shooting is believed to have acted alone, and no evidence has been released that he was in communication with any foreign entities. A document he wrote alluded to his Christian beliefs and to reports of the administration’s abuse of immigrants in detention centers, its boat-bombing operations in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, and the bombing of an elementary school in Iran.

The president has been pushing in recent weeks for an extension of Section 702. The program was last reauthorized in 2024, and earlier this month two efforts to extend the program—one for 18 months and the other for five years—failed, with opponents objecting to a lack of privacy reforms and to a loophole allowing data brokers to sell private information about Americans to government agencies that have not obtained judicial approval to seize the data.

After those proposals failed, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last week unveiled a new bill to extend Section 702 for three years and require the FBI to submit monthly reports on its reviews of Americans’ private data to an oversight official, as well as imposing penalties for abuse—provisions that were dismissed by privacy advocates.

The House Rules Committee was set to convene on Monday, a step toward advancing the new bill toward a vote in the House, and according to NPR, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) circulated a memo late last week urging his colleagues to reject the Republicans’ latest proposal.

The bill, he wrote, “continues the disastrous policy of trusting the FBI to self-police and self-report its abuses of Section 702 and backdoor searches of Americans’ data… FBI agents can still collect, search, and review Americans’ communications without any review from a judge.”

Four Democrats in the House—Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Tom Suozzi (D-NJ), Marie Gluesencamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Jared Golden (D-Maine)—broke with the party and joined the GOP earlier this month in supporting a procedural vote to advance the reauthorization of Section 702, and privacy advocates are ramping up pressure on them to oppose the latest proposal for an extension.

“It all comes down to those four and where they are going to land,” Hajar Hammado, a senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, told The Intercept Monday, “and if they are going to continue to try to hand Trump and [White House homeland security adviser] Stephen Miller warrantless surveillance authorities without any sort of checks or reforms that make sure they’re not violating civil liberties.”

From The Real News Network via This RSS Feed.

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 27, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

An exchange of gunfire between an armed suspect and law enforcement outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday came days ahead of a deadline for extending far-reaching government surveillance powers, and President Donald Trump wasted no time in claiming that the attempted attack on the event proved that the FBI must be permitted to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump repeated his previous remarks that he is “willing to give up [his] security” in favor of extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire on Thursday—and suggested other Americans should do the same for “the safety of our nation.”

Section 702 allows US intelligence agencies to surveil the electronic communications of foreign nationals overseas without a warrant. Since some of the nearly 350,000 foreign nationals whose communications have been collected under the law are in touch with Americans, Section 702 allows for the collection of emails, text messages, and phone calls of US citizens.

Fox anchor Jacqui Heinrich emphasized that “we don’t know right now” whether the suspect in Saturday’s shooting, Cole Tomas Allen, “was radicalized” by a foreign individual or group, but asked whether the attack drove home “the importance of having these tools to protect our country from these kinds of threats.”

The president responded by complaining that former FBI Director James Comey used FISA to obtain warrants to surveil a former Trump aide as part of the agency’s investigation into the 2016 Trump presidential campaign’s communications with Russia, before saying FISA has been used in the US-Israeli war on Iran and in the US military’s invasion of Venezuela earlier this year.

“It’s really needed for national security,” said Trump. “Iran is decimated, and we got a lot of information by using FISA… I’m willing to give up my security for the military because ultimately that’s to me the highest cause is, you know, the safety of our nation.”

Pres. Trump, under prodding from Fox News, exploits White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting to push for Congress to approve FISA domestic spying program: "It's really needed for national security…"

He reiterates that he's willing to give up his liberties for safety. pic.twitter.com/tmcepp0Wgn

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) April 26, 2026

Jordan Liz, an associate professor of philosophy at San José State University, wrote last week in a column at Common Dreams that while Trump, Republican lawmakers, and US intelligence agencies “make sweeping claims about the terror attacks that Section 702 has prevented, there is little publicly available evidence to support this.”

“According to the Cato Institute, there is only one well-documented, independently corroborated case of Section 702 preventing a terrorist attack on American soil: the 2009 New York subway bombing plot,” wrote Liz. “In that case, Section 702 was used by the [National Security Agency] to track an exchange between an al-Qaeda courier and Najibullah Zazi, who was living in the US. The NSA passed this information to the FBI, which identified Zazi and disrupted the attack before it took place. Importantly, however, the NSA allegedly received the courier’s foreign email address from the government’s British intelligence partners. At best then, this success was a byproduct of productive intelligence sharing between allies. Rather than proving the necessity of Section 702, this incident underscores how Trump’s inane attacks against key US allies undermine our national security.”

The suspect in Saturday’s shooting is believed to have acted alone, and no evidence has been released that he was in communication with any foreign entities. A document he wrote alluded to his Christian beliefs and to reports of the administration’s abuse of immigrants in detention centers, its boat-bombing operations in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, and the bombing of an elementary school in Iran.

The president has been pushing in recent weeks for an extension of Section 702. The program was last reauthorized in 2024, and earlier this month two efforts to extend the program—one for 18 months and the other for five years—failed, with opponents objecting to a lack of privacy reforms and to a loophole allowing data brokers to sell private information about Americans to government agencies that have not obtained judicial approval to seize the data.

After those proposals failed, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last week unveiled a new bill to extend Section 702 for three years and require the FBI to submit monthly reports on its reviews of Americans’ private data to an oversight official, as well as imposing penalties for abuse—provisions that were dismissed by privacy advocates.

The House Rules Committee was set to convene on Monday, a step toward advancing the new bill toward a vote in the House, and according to NPR, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) circulated a memo late last week urging his colleagues to reject the Republicans’ latest proposal.

The bill, he wrote, “continues the disastrous policy of trusting the FBI to self-police and self-report its abuses of Section 702 and backdoor searches of Americans’ data… FBI agents can still collect, search, and review Americans’ communications without any review from a judge.”

Four Democrats in the House—Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Tom Suozzi (D-NJ), Marie Gluesencamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Jared Golden (D-Maine)—broke with the party and joined the GOP earlier this month in supporting a procedural vote to advance the reauthorization of Section 702, and privacy advocates are ramping up pressure on them to oppose the latest proposal for an extension.

“It all comes down to those four and where they are going to land,” Hajar Hammado, a senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, told The Intercept Monday, “and if they are going to continue to try to hand Trump and [White House homeland security adviser] Stephen Miller warrantless surveillance authorities without any sort of checks or reforms that make sure they’re not violating civil liberties.”

also OOP is https://fops.cloud/users/N33R
I enjoy her posts quite a lot, they're pretty funny

edit: oh I forgot to mention I'm @QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works, I was just on this account because federation issues which seem to be worked out now 🤷‍♀️

Found even more nice art from Sean: https://seanbodley.com/

https://x.com/sloshua_/status/2047897523248144557

A United Airlines flight reported a midair collision between the plane and what appeared to be a drone near San Diego, according to a Wednesday statement. “United flight 1980 reported a possible drone strike just prior to arriving in San Diego. The flight landed safely, and customers deplaned normally at the gate. Our maintenance team found no damage after thoroughly inspecting the aircraft,” United said in a statement to The Hill’s sister network NewsNation. According to United, the Boeing 737 flight was headed from San Francisco International Airport to San Diego International Airport, carrying 48 passengers and six crew members. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in its own statement to NewsNation that it “is aware of the report and is investigating.” The agency said drones cannot be flown at elevations higher than 400 feet without authorization. The New York Post reported the flight struck at an altitude of roughly 3,000 feet during its approach. The outlet cited an air traffic control recording, with the pilot reportedly saying the object appeared “red” and “shiny.”

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8356663

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/45410

Since returning to the White House last year, President Donald Trump has revived his war on workers and their labor unions, including by making US workplaces less safe, according to an annual report released Monday by the AFL-CIO.

The AFL-CIO published its 35th annual "Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect" report on the eve of Workers Memorial Day on Tuesday, and in the lead-up to International Workers' Day, or May Day, on Friday—for which organizers have already planned more than 3,000 events demanding an economy that serves "workers over billionaires" across the United States.

"Over the last 35 years of this report, job safety agencies' resources have diminished dramatically, even as their responsibilities have grown immensely," the publication notes. "For instance, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is now in charge of 85% more establishments, 44% more workers, and new hazards and technologies, yet Congress has reduced its budget by 10% and staffing by 26%, including a 16% reduction in inspectors."

"These percentages have massive impacts on such a tiny agency and very real personal effects on workers and their families," the report continues. "Agencies now have a paltry number of staff to write standards, analyze data, conduct inspections, perform oversight on states, orchestrate needed research on important hazards, and respond to emerging threats. The number of OSHA inspectors has now hit a new low, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) does not have enough inspectors to meet its statutory requirement to inspect each mine multiple times a year."

While "more than 735,000 workers now can say their lives have been saved since the passage" of the Occupational Safety
and Health (OSH) Act, "too many workers remain at serious risk of injury, illness, or death as chemical plant explosions, major fires, construction collapses, infectious disease outbreaks, workplace assaults, toxic chemical exposures, and other preventable tragedies continue to permeate the workplace," the document stresses.

"Workplace hazards still kill approximately 140,000 workers each year in the United States—including 5,070 from traumatic injuries in 2024 and an estimated 135,000 from occupational diseases each year," the report states. "That is more than 380 workers each day. Job injury and illness numbers continue to be severe undercounts of the real problem."

The publication points out that "Black and Latino workers are more likely to die on the job," while older workers and minors are also "at serious risk." According to the data, the deadliest industries in the United States are: agriculture, forestry, and fishing and hunting; mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; transportation and warehousing; construction; and wholesale trade.

"It is a disgrace that in 2026, being Black, Latino, or an immigrant can still be a death sentence on the jobsite," declared AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Fred Redmond, in a statement. He specifically called out the president's attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), as well as those on immigrant communities.

"Our new report makes it terrifyingly clear that the Trump administration's anti-DEI, mass deportation agenda will only make this crisis worse," Redmond said. "When workers are afraid that reporting threats to their safety could result in their work permits being revoked and their families being ripped apart, and when employers fear that reporting workplace data will hurt their bottom line, we are all less safe: workers of color and white workers, immigrant workers and US-born workers. We must fight the Trump administration's attacks on communities of color like our fellow workers' lives are on the line—because they are."

Faced with these "preventable" deaths, as AFL-CIO put it, the second Trump administration has taken an ax to job safety oversight and enforcement. Specifically, the report details, the administration has:

• Pushed out so many staff that job safety agency staffing is at new lows, leaving fewer inspectors than ever to cover a growing workforce;
• Instructed its OSHA and MSHA inspectors to focus on employer outreach and assistance, taking time and resources away from inspections with citations;
• Expanded OSHA penalty reductions for employers when they violate the law;
• Proposed twice to eliminate worker safety and health training grants, even though Congress has rejected these cuts so far;
• Proposed to eliminate the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, in charge of independent, nonregulatory investigations after an industrial explosion, leak, or other major incident;
• Stopped conducting MSHA impact inspections, a critical enforcement tool for focusing on mines with a poor history of compliance with MSHA standards, high numbers of injuries, illnesses or fatalities, or other indicators of unsafe mines;
• Issued zero criminal referrals for violations of the OSH Act;
• Indefinitely halted the enforcement of the silica standard in coal and metal/nonmetal mining;
• Extended deadlines for companies to comply with important Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chemical regulations that specifically protect workers, such as methylene chloride; and
• Proposed to remove dozens of OSHA and MSHA standards from the books and supported efforts to dismantle the regulatory process.

"Every worker should be able to go home safe and healthy at the end of their shift—but 55 years after the founding of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that fundamental right is in danger," warned AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler.

"From the dismantling of critical federal agencies and laws to the expansion of unregulated, untested AI technology, the protections that workers fought and died for are under serious threat," Shuler said, as the Trump administration lobbies against legislation that would regulate artificial intelligence in Republican-led states.

"The labor movement refuses to go backward," she added. "More than five decades after a Republican signed the landmark Occupational Safety and Health Act into law, we urge all members of Congress—from both sides of the aisle—to join us in this fight."

Both chambers of Congress are currently controlled by Trump's Republican Party, and recent votes on various war powers resolutions have demonstrated how most GOP lawmakers are unwilling to stand up to the president, even when he defies the US Constitution.

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

ERIE, Pa.— The Lavery brewery here fills up with people in their 20s, 30s, 40’s, 50s and beyond every weekend where they enjoy the home-made brew and some giant burgers, fries, soft pretzels and other fare that complement the famous house beers. The owners and staff make a point of catering to the needs of the working-class crowd that keeps their business going.

The makeup of the crowd at Lavery presents Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senator, John Fetterman, with a dilemma he faces regarding his re-election prospects in 2027. The brewery restaurant has, in the past, hosted Democratic hopefuls for office on both the local and statewide levels. Fetterman came to Erie when he made his original run for the Senate.

The customers here reflect the makeup of Erie as both a manufacturing and agricultural center. Among the brewery-restaurant patrons are workers in the plastics industry which boasts the production of 10 percent of the nation’s plastic products. Among the customers here are skilled workers who turn out important industrial components. Still other workers here produce things ranging from aerospace dampeners and biofuels to metal parts for a variety of other machinery. Grape production for jelly and wines has long been an important part of the agricultural production in Erie.

At one table of six last weekend at the Lavery brewery, workers from several of these industries were seated. After they heard about Sen. Fetterman’s reaction to the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when he said the solution was to quickly build President Trump’s new ballroom, a few of them responded. Two of four workers who said they had voted for both Trump and Fetterman said they were switching to the Democrats now on the presidential level but were looking for someone other than Fetterman to back for Senate.

“They have broken promises to us,” a machinist at one table said about both Trump and Fetterman. “Trump has done nothing about high prices and Fetterman is not winning any points with me by kissing up to Trump,” the customer said as others at his table laughed.

cross-posted from: https://crazypeople.online/post/18496501

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Sunday said Democrats will not focus on impeaching President Trump if they regain a majority in the lower chamber after midterm elections.

“I’ve made clear from the very beginning that our top priority is going to be to drive down the high cost of living,” the House minority leader added.

The House minority leader has lauded Democrats’ push for redistricting nationwide in an effort to pick up additional House seats and signaled that the party will advocate more for working-class Americans, after Democrats saw losses from the key demographic in the 2024 election.

(Obligatory https://readsettlers.org/ )

PS this is low effort memes, I'm not going to defend the meme in the comments - feel free to argue with yourselves

Edit: I'm not american so you're extra wasting your time arguing 🤷‍♀️