Friday, February 14, 2025

Prosecutors Resign Over Trump Ordering DOJ to Drop Case Against NYC Mayor

By Chris Walker

The DOJ had ordered the case against Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped following weeks of his cozying up to Trump. 

UPDATE: As of Friday afternoon, the number of federal prosecutors who have resigned over the Department of Justice’s demands to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (amid claims that that action was part of a quid pro quo with the Trump administration) has increased to seven.

Californians rejected an anti-slavery ballot measure. Lawmakers want to try again


IN SUMMARY

Californians rejected the anti-slavery ballot measure Proposition 6, which would have forbid forced prison labor. Reparations advocates want to try again in 2026.

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California’s Legislative Black Caucus and the Reparations Task Force continue their fight to scrape away at the last vestiges of legalized slavery remaining within the state constitution.  

Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Democrat from Suisun City, this month introduced a new constitutional amendment aimed at abolishing the everyday de facto slavery practices that persist inside California prisons.

State, Baltimore sue Glock for rise in modified guns that function like ‘illegal machine guns’

 By Danielle Brown

The state and the city of Baltimore sued gun maker Glock on Wednesday for its failure to stop the rising trend of its handguns being modified into machine-gun-like weapons used in violent crimes.

The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court, asks the court to stop the sale and distribution of Glocks in Maryland until the company changes the design of its handguns to be more resistant to modifications that let them “fire fully automatically — that is, to operate like a machine gun.”

Altadena Communities Unite to Rebuild as Developers Eye the Ashes


Bernardo Osprio, a 60-year-old day laborer from Pasadena, couldn’t believe his eyes as he surveyed the devastation caused by the recent wildfires in Altadena, California. Having lived in southern California for more than 36 years, Osprio was no stranger to the region’s fire season. But the scale of destruction wrought by the Eaton Fire left him in shock.

Dems Reportedly Angry That Progressives Are Pushing Them to Act Like an Opposition Party

 By Jake Johnson 

“Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are architects of the crisis that allowed Trump's fascism to arise and succeed," argued one progressive organizer. "They have zero credibility to be leading the fights we face today."


House Democratic lawmakers reportedly used a closed-door meeting earlier this week to vent their frustrations with progressive advocacy groups that have been driving constituent calls and pressuring the party to act like a genuine opposition force in the face of the Trump administration's authoritarian assault on federal agencies and key programs.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Labor fights back against attacks on federal workers

 By Natalia Marquez

Following a legal response by organized labor, one of Trump’s early attacks against the US federal workforce have been temporarily halted. On Thursday, February 6, Trump’s deadline to furlough millions of federal workers if they did not accept a buyout offer was paused following an injunction by a federal judge in Boston. This pause came less than 11 hours before the deadline for workers to accept the buyout offer, which 65,000 federal workers did—agreeing to leave their jobs in exchange for eight months of pay and benefits through September.

Judge George O’Toole Jr., who halted Trump’s offer of buyouts, said the administration’s plans would pause until a Monday court hearing, in which he would determine the merits of a lawsuit filed by four unions which represent federal workers. On Tuesday, February 4, nonprofit legal services organization Democracy Forward filed a legal challengeon behalf of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), AFGE Local 3707, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, (AFSCME), and the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE).

According to the legal nonprofit, the unions are “seeking to halt the Trump-Vance administration’s ‘Fork Directive’ Feb. 6 deadline and require the government to articulate a policy that is lawful, rather than an arbitrary, unlawful, short-fused ultimatum which workers may not be able to enforce.” Democracy Forward claims that Trump’s “Fork Directive” buyout offers are part of a larger plan to “remove career public service workers and replace them with partisan loyalists.”

Democracy Forward is also representing a coalition of unions and the think tank Economic Policy Institute in filing a lawsuit which successfully halted the Elon Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency’s access to sensitive Treasury Department payment system information—a power grab that had prompted mass protests outside of the Treasury Department in Washington, DC. 

Represented by the legal nonprofit, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFL-CIO), the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and nonpartisan think tank Economic Policy Institute filed a a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order in the US District Court of the District of Columbia. This motion successfully halted DOGE’s access to sensitive federal information. These labor unions together represent over four million workers.

“The lawsuits filed by federal workers are an important initial step in a showdown over the future of the federal government,” Walter Smolarek, editor of Liberation News, told Peoples Dispatch. “Elon Musk and his DOGE team are attempting to obliterate any program that is of any benefit to working people, and leave intact only the activities that help enrich the billionaire class, like massive government spending on weapons. No one elected Elon Musk, and as the lawsuit correctly argues he has no business accessing the sensitive personal information stored in government databases. What will be decisive is whether or not the protest movement in the streets intensifies and puts pressure on the courts.”

Meanwhile, mostly Black federal health workers have been targeted through a watchlist published by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) on January 28. AAF, which published the so-called “DEI Watchlist” as well as an earlier “DHS Watchlist” in July of 2024 targeting “America’s Most Subversive Immigration Bureaucrats,” is a member of the advisor board of the infamous Project 2025, a collection of ultra-right policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation. The “DEI Watchlist” included the names, photos and work history of 57 mostly Black federal employees.

This article originally appeared in the People’s Dispatch on February 7th, 2025

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Pentagon moves to restore Fort Bragg name to North Carolina’s Fort Liberty

 By Christine Zhu 

Defense Secretary Pete Hedgseth has approved reverting the name of military base Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg.

Hedgseth approved a memorandum on Monday to change the name, but with a different namesake.

Located just west of Fayetteville, the base was initially named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. It’s one of the largest military installations in the world by population, with more than 52,000 military personnel.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

With Louisiana leaders intent on first execution since 2010, DA obtains death warrant

 By Greg LaRose

A Rapides Parish man could be the first person Louisiana puts to death in 15 years after the district attorney there obtained a warrant Monday for his execution.

Larry Roy has been on death row since his 1994 conviction for double murder in Cheneyville. Police said Roy attacked his ex-girlfriend, Sally Richard, and her ex-husband, Freddie Richard Jr., with a knife in front of her two children. The woman and her children survived, but Roy killed her aunt, Rosetta Salas, and Freddie Richard Jr.  

Order to Drop Charges Against NYC Mayor Among 'Most Openly Corrupt Writings I've Seen on DOJ Letterhead'

 By Jake Johnson 

New York officials, lawmakers, and activists expressed fury on Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump's Justice Department instructed prosecutors to drop federal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a move seen as an overtly corrupt deal aimed at giving the White House free rein to attack the city's immigrant communities.

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Trump’s January 6 Pardons Were a Green Light to Far Right Paramilitaries

By Sasha Abramsky 

The GOP’s silence after the pardons made it complicit in Trump’s decision to normalize paramilitary violence in the US.


With President Donald Trump’s pardoning of more than 1,500 people charged with offenses relating to the January 6 insurrection, and his description of them as “hostages” rather than as insurrectionists, paramilitarism is now firmly back on the national agenda.