United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/41927269

Jan 16, 2026

The ICE agents subsequently stopped their vehicle, surrounded the car, discharged pepper spray into it, then smashed the car’s windows and dragged out both O’Keefe and her friend.

O’Keefe said that after being detained by agents, they started taunting her, with one agent telling her, “You guys got to stop obstructing us, that’s why this lesbian removed is dead,” an apparent reference to Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent last week.

Mon 19 Jan 2026 13.00 EST

On Tuesday, she plans to introduce a bill in the House of Representatives urging the US to end the political and economic dominance of billionaire oligarchs, halt the corporate subsidies and tax advantages that fortify their power and reinvest in the American people to defend democracy from authoritarianism.

The legislation is supported by Our Revolution, a political organisation that spun out of the senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential run, which is launching a “Defund the Oligarchy” campaign with research showing that individuals and corporations who funded Trump’s election received a staggering return on their investment.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-technology-the-trump-administration-could-use-to-hack-your-phone

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said her office would seek the death penalty for Elias Rodriguez, who is accused of ~~murdering~~ neutralizing Israeli ~~embassy staffers~~ operatives Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim in Washington in May, the Miami Herald, reported Friday.

United States Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will not be investigating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good, while also confirming reports that it is looking into charges against top Minnesota officials for encouraging protests.

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday night, Blanche said the civil rights unit of the Justice Department would not bow to pressure to investigate the shooting death of Minneapolis resident and mother Good, 37, earlier this month.

January 18, 2026

[contains 3 parts: an editorial by World-Outlook; an article from In These Times and Workday Magazine; and a press release from the Minneapolis Regional Federation of #Labor, AFL-CIO.]

MINNEAPOLIS — #Unions and community groups gathered in front of the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, this morning to announce a day of ​“no work, no school, no shopping” on January 23 to oppose the ferocious assault on the state by federal #immigration authorities.

“We are facing a tsunami of hate from our own federal government,” Abdikarim Khasim, a Minnesota rideshare driver, told the crowd. ​“We’re going to shut it down on the 23rd. We’re going to overcome this.”

As protests in Minnesota continue amid ongoing tension between demonstrators and federal agents in the area, Gov. Tim Walz and local safety officials announced Jan. 17 that the Minnesota National Guard has been "mobilized" and is on standby if needed.

In a Facebook post Jan. 17, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said that at "Gov. Walz's direction," the Minnesota National Guard was mobilized and was "staging to support local law enforcement and emergency management agencies."

The department further clarified in the post that troops had not been deployed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7371954

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20757

On January 14, a few hours before the historic meeting in Washington between representatives from Greenland and Denmark and their US counterparts, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, Denmark and several of its NATO allies reinforced their military presence in Greenland and announced that more reinforcements would follow.

Some interpreted this move as pressure on the Trump Administration before the meeting. But anyone familiar with NATO-Denmark politics would recognize that appeasement with the empire is the more likely explanation.

At the Washington meeting, the US reiterated its firm demand for “having Greenland”: “It is clear that the president wants to conquer Greenland,” declared the Danish foreign minister after the meeting. The parties agreed to establish a “high level working group” in an effort to contain the crisis.

But the crisis continues, and its magnitude is huge.

The reality is that for over a year, the nearly 57,000 Greenlanders and their vast island have been turned into a bargaining chip, a pawn to be moved at will on the great chessboard of US imperialism.

Trump has repeatedly stated that the US seeks to control and own Greenland, by military means if necessary. The brutally effective aggression against Venezuela on January 3 and the kidnapping of the country’s head of state and his wife have erased any doubt that the White House administration is capable of putting Trump’s words into action.

The threat is imminent, and it is felt acutely among the Greenlandic people. The population is stuck in a vice, and the country’s politicians must fight hour-by-hour simply to get a seat at the table and be heard, not only by the US, but also by Denmark.

Greenland, or Kalaallit Nunaat, has been inhabited for 4500 years, and its people are linked to the Inuit communities across the Arctic. It is the world’s largest island, with an area larger than France, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Belgium combined. It became a Danish colony with the establishment of the state-owned Royal Greenland Trading Company in 1774. The Royal Greenland Trading Company functioned as the de facto colonial administration until the early 1900s, when trade and administration were separated. During this period, Danish companies extracted various minerals, including cryolite, iron, zinc, lead, and silver.

The colonial era formally ended in 1953, but political equality with Denmark did not follow. Following a referendum, so-called home rule was introduced in 1979, which was replaced in June 2009 by the current status of self-government. Under self-government, Greenlanders hold the rights to the island’s subsoil and the minerals found there. However, foreign and security policies remain decided in Denmark, which is why Greenland is considered NATO territory.

Greenland is not a member of the European Union. In a 1982 referendum, 53% of the Greenlandic people voted to leave the European Economic Community, now the EU. Today, Greenland is classified as one of the EU’s Overseas Countries and Territories.

In 1951, a secret agreement between the US government and Denmark’s envoy to the United States granted US military involvement in Greenland. The agreement was highly controversial and in detriment to official Danish policies at the time. Nevertheless, it remains in force today and has been repeatedly confirmed. In practice, it grants unlimited US military rights over Greenland.

Thus, for decades, the US has maintained several military facilities in Greenland. The history of these facilities includes forced evictions of Inuit families in 1953, the crash of an American B-52 plane carrying four atomic bombs in 1968, and other harms inflicted on the local population.

The Danish government repeatedly states that Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders and is not for sale. But in reality, Denmark has been selling off Greenland to the US for decades. “We already have a defense agreement between the Kingdom and the United States today, which gives the United States wide access to Greenland,” the Danish Prime Minister stated in an official statement earlier this week.

This raises the question: Why does the Trump Administration seek an annexation of Greenland, when the US empire already holds extensive rights over Greenland? The answer lies in a new security strategy and the demand for unquestioned and unlimited control over oil, control over minerals, and military dominance.

Greenland possesses at least 25 of the 34 minerals designated as “critical raw materials” by the European Commission. Greenland has significant deposits of rare earths, copper, nickel, zinc, gold, diamonds, iron ore, titanium, tungsten and uranium. Trump wants US companies, many of which have invested heavily in his re-election, to have unfettered access to Greenland’s mineral deposit resources.

Moreover, Greenland’s geographic position near the Arctic is important. Control over northern sea routes, such as the Northeast Passage, is becoming increasingly important as climate change advances. A fully controlled, militarized and rearmed Greenland is also intended to serve as an advanced base against both Russia and China. Beyond the prospect of super-profits, keeping socialist China far away from Greenland is a strategic goal for both the US and Denmark.

Until a few years ago, Greenland was undergoing a process of independent decision-making and freeing itself from neo-colonialism. But the current era of intensified imperialism emanating from the White House has caused a serious setback in Greenland’s ability to determine its own destiny. The threats and pressures are enormous.

It is so important to hold on to the principle of the right of nations to self-determination. How Greenland organizes its society, with whom it collaborates, and what alliances it enters to realise its self-determination in practice should be determined solely in Nuuk.

Lotte Rørtoft-Madsen is the chair of the Danish Communist Party. She was the editor-in-chief of Arbejderen.

peoplesThis article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War Perspectives.

The post Greenland on the chessboard of US imperialism appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7373507

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/20476

Pauly Denetclaw
ICT

On Tuesday night, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cut $2 billion in mental health and addiction services.

“Let me make myself clear when I say that politics should never impact the work that we’re doing with our kids, and that’s what it did,” said Mitchelle Mitchell, director of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ education department.

Mental and behavioral health programs that primarily serve Indigenous people, from across the country, received emails stating that their grant funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration had been rescinded.

A handful of tribal nations received federal grant funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for the 2025 fiscal year.

Nearly half a million was awarded to Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Government in Wisconsin, Two Feathers Native American Family Services in California was awarded $3.6 million, Chinle Unified School District on the Navajo Nation in Arizona was awarded just over $3.5 million, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe in Michigan was awarded a little over a $1 million, and the Pueblo of San Felipe in New Mexico was awarded $1.5 million.

This sent a shockwave through the Confederation Salish and Kootenai Tribes in western Montana and St. Francis Indian School in South Dakota who rely on these grants to provide mental health services to their nations’ children and teens.

On Thursday morning, they received an email that their grant funding had been restored, but staff remain worried about the future.

Mitchell described the whole experience as “traumatic.” Her department was informed by email that two grants, amounting to $2.75 million, had been rescinded.

“It was one of the hardest days of my career,” Mitchell, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said. “To get the termination notice late at night without any warning. It was so unexpected. And then to have to come in (the next day) and tell staff that not only do we not have the funding, they don’t have jobs.”

The tribes’ Project Aware and Partnership for Success programs rely on federal grant funding. Project Aware contracts with tribal knowledge keepers, and has partnerships with three local public school districts. The Partnership for Success collaborates with the Boys and Girls Club of the Flathead Reservation.

Mitchell spent Jan. 14, personally calling all the program partners and contractors to tell them they would no longer be able to work with them or provide services to students.

“It broke a little piece of me doing that,” she said.

Five years ago, Mitchell wrote the grant proposal for Project Aware. It was a way to bring her three-tiered system of support rooted in Salish, Kootenai and Kalispel language and culture to the children in her community. Prior to Project Aware, she had applied for two other federal grants but wasn’t selected.

“This idea is putting culture into the school system,” Mitchell said. “It’s not to add beads and feathers to something. It’s to make sure that our tribal kids are thinking of other content areas (like math and science) through a tribal lens.”

The project is in its fifth year and has met every annual goal since it started, a point of pride for Mitchell.

“Our goal is to help our kids strengthen their sense of who they are, so that they’re healthy, well and resilient,” she said. “Then we just pull the rug out from underneath them, when we take that away. If I sound a little angry, it’s because I am. But, I’m so cognizant of the impact that we’re making, and this work is so important. We can’t let it stop.”

She has spent a lot of time creating strong partnerships with the local school districts and traditional knowledge keepers. The project is in a unique position to bring hands-on cultural learning to three different school districts in rural, western Montana.

Students who were at-risk of not graduating high school participate daily in cultural activities through their immersion school. Some of the students said it was one of the only reasons they came to school. They looked forward to tanning hide, learning how to sew ribbon skirts, beading, going outside to learn about traditional plants, and speaking their language.

Every year, they have Culture Camp on Flathead Lake. Last year over 600 students and their family members participated. Every day, there are up to 30 different cultural activities participants can choose to do. There’s no time limit and the curriculum is self-directed.

“We were right, when we help our kids strengthen that sense of who they are as tribal people, then they’re more likely to choose things that cause less harm for themselves or help encourage their friends to,” Mitchell said. “When they learn how to do something that’s culturally or tribally-related, then they can lean into that in times of trouble.”

The St. Francis Indian School in rural, southern South Dakota also received funding to create a Project Aware. The school’s population is 98 percent American Indian or Alaska Native. The project serves more than 600 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. They receive a little over $1 million a year to provide culturally relevant programming and mental health services.

Nearly six years ago, a student at St. Francis Indian School died by suicide, and since the school has been working diligently on suicide prevention. One of the main aspects of the school’s Project Aware is suicide prevention.

Over the last three years, the project has been able to create a strong mental health response team.

“They are able to connect with students and make sure that each student is able to explain and express the needs that they have, whether it’s in the classroom or at home,” Beckey Eddie-Moosman, director of the school’s mental health department, said.

On Jan. 14, Eddie-Moosman and Maria Valandra, one of the school’s counselors, were trying to figure out what grants could pay for at least the rest of the school year. These services are vital for the health of students.

“Still having kids that need to come to you while you’re trying not to literally panic,” Valandra said. “(On Wednesday) we had school and we had kids who still, we’re like, ‘Hey, I come to school because this is my safe place. This is where I get my routine and structure. These are the people who usually are right here for me,'”

After a stressful day, Valandra was doomscrolling on social media when she came across an article that said mental health grant funding would be restored. This led to another restless night worrying about whether it was true.

On Thursday morning, Eddie-Moosman and Valandra waited for an email stating their grant money had been restored. At 10 a.m., they got the “good news.” It was a relief.

The school administration had affirmed they were committed to keeping the mental health services available to students.

This is not the case for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. If their federal grant funding gets rescinded, those programs will no longer be available. This has caused a lot of stress for staff who are worried about having stable employment.

“We’re on guard now. Could this happen again? Could they figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t have to be rescinded?” Mitchell said. “That is a scary way to do your work every day, because of it I actually have one of my employees who works on Project Aware that has an interview for a different job on Friday. They can’t live like this and I don’t blame them.”

The post Millions in mental health funding for Indigenous communities restored appeared first on ICT.

From ICT via This RSS Feed.

for more information on the march: https://www.iceoutnowmn.com/

cross-posted from: https://expressional.social/users/Peter_Link/statuses/115916234517070135

March on Jan. 23 - ICE Out of Minnesota
[Posted on FB]

www.iceoutnowmn.com

#ImmigrantRightsAreHumanRights
#DueProcessForAll
#StopTheDeportations
#ReneeGoodICEBad #MeltICE
#GeneralStrike #Minneapolis
#immigration #immigrants #deportations #ICE
#USA #US #USpol #politics #Trump #news #protest
@progressivepolitics

An intense cat-and-mouse game is putting enraged residents face to face with heavily armed federal agents.

Jan. 17, 2026

Fear and fury can explode on any street corner during this charged time in Minneapolis, any time, any place the muscle of the federal government meets the rage of the citizens who reject its tactics.

Thousands of people attended a march last Saturday to mourn Renee Good, the woman an ICE agent had shot and killed days earlier. There have been school walkouts, daily protests outside the federal building where agents take detainees, four-person protests on frigid street corners and an hourslong demonstration after an ICE agent shot a man in the leg while attempting to detain him on Wednesday night.

New York City’s pension funds could resume investing in Israeli government bonds, a move that would funnel public money directly into Israel’s treasury despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza and its apartheid system in the occupied West Bank.

“The Israel bonds have performed very well and they continue to be investment grade rated,” Mark Levine, New York City’s chief financial officer, told the FT. “My fiduciary responsibility is to make investment decisions based on that record of performance.”

Israeli government bonds function as direct loans to the state, providing steady interest payments to investors while channelling cash straight into government coffers.

The Israel lobby is exposed these days as it has never been before. Or AIPAC is. AIPAC is a dirty word among Democrats because it refuses to criticize the Netanyahu government.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner are both refusing AIPAC donations. In New York City, progressive Democratic candidates are primarying two sitting congressmen, Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman, and making the incumbent’s donations from AIPAC an issue.

The liberal Zionist organization J Street looks to be the beneficiary of this shift. J Street used to represent a left/liberal fringe of the Democratic establishment. Now it represents the center/right.

And J Street is lobbying hard for Israel. It doesn’t want the U.S. to cut military aid to Israel. It says it wants young Jews to “fall in love with Israel” all over again.

Fatima Khan, Meghnad Bose January 17 2026, 6:00 a.m.

Creating new ICE watch patrols and rapid response networks, fearing going to work or leaving home, watching their shared community spaces grow desolate and their shops sit empty — these are the experiences of Somali residents of the Twin Cities who spoke with The Intercept about being under siege in their own hometowns.

While many of the state’s residents are being impacted by President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, Somalis in particular know they are targets of the administration and the thousands of federal immigration agents deployed to Minnesota.

Akela Lacy
January 14 2026, 6:00 a.m.

Justice Democrats is wading into a high-profile congressional race in New York City, where a competition between the progressive Brooklyn borough president and a socialist first-term State Assembly member is testing competing visions for the future of the electoral left under Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The group is endorsing Claire Valdez, a State Assembly member from Queens and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez in New York’s 7th Congressional District. Valdez launched her campaign last week alongside Mamdani and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, two of her highest-profile backers, in a signal that the race could prove divisive among the most influential figures in the Democratic Party’s left flank.

US officials said Ratcliffe conveyed the Trump administration’s support for the interim government as a path to short-term stability in Venezuela.

At Trump’s direction, Ratcliffe delivered a message that Washington seeks an improved working relationship, they said. Talks included intelligence cooperation, economic stability, and efforts to keep Venezuela from serving as a haven for “US adversaries, particularly narcotics traffickers,” one official said on condition of anonymity.

According to the report, American officials view Rodriguez, who assumed the interim presidency after Maduro’s removal, as a stabilizing figure capable of maintaining control of security forces and key infrastructure during the transition. US intelligence assessments have described her as pragmatic and open to engagement.

The media is telling a certain story about ICE, giving the blow by blow on the most public horrors but never quite seeing the bigger picture that it's part of a larger war. As a military intelligence source told me, the ICE crackdown isn't just about immigration; it's about gathering intelligence in support of Trump's war on cartels

as well as on Antifa, on the radical left, and those who are "anti-American," and anyone else they consider terrorists. And since the administration has been so quick to label everyone, including Renee Good, terrorists, it's no wonder they think they're at war.