Most people seem to have accepted the truth about the so-called war on drugs. By that, I mean it was never about drugs. Its true target was non-white people, especially Black people. Its goal was social control. Slavery gave way to Jim Crow, which gave way to the mass incarceration of "undesirables." Illegal drugs were merely a pretext. These days, states are legalizing drugs. Some are even releasing people convicted of drug crimes. In all, we seem to be experiencing a new age of drug enlightenment.

I hope it does not take most people as long with "border security." Like the "war on drugs," it's not about security. It's about social control. It's about having a legal reason to put non-white people in jail, kicking them out or just acting barbarously toward them. Drugs did not threaten the national interest until the government said they did. Same with the southern border. People used to pass freely, wherever the seasonal work took them. It did not threaten the national interest until the government said it did.

A West Virginia Proud Boys leader who has been criminally charged with breaching the US Capitol and engaging in disorderly conduct has requested an additional 30 days to continue discussions with the government, potentially opening the door for a plea deal.

Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey granted the joint motion sought by Proud Boys member Jeffery Finley and the US government on Monday, writing that a continuance through May 14 would "provide the parties with additional time to engage in the discovery process and case discussions."

Did Mitch McConnell cancel the market? Answer: No. He was never a real fan.

For the past few decades, the GOP's interests aligned harmoniously with those of corporations. Businesses amassed wealth while staying out of social issues. The GOP, in turn, rewarded businesses with tax cuts. The status quo was fine.

Out of sight from most Americans, powerful, organized, and determined moneyed interests have waged a more than three-decade-long, billionaire-funded campaign to dismantle Social Security. That campaign has enjoyed some success. And it is with us still.

It is not hard to see the successes of that campaign. Many Americans have been persuaded that Social Security is unaffordable, in crisis and must, at the very least, be scaled back. But while the campaign has succeeded in undermining confidence in the future of Social Security, it has failed to scale back Social Security's modest, but vital benefits, or, worse, radically transform Social Security, ending it as we know it. The good news is that over the last few years, the movement to expand, not cut, Social Security has been growing.

Republicans are having limited success turning the public against the Biden administration's $2 trillion infrastructure plan by claiming the proposal is too wide-ranging.

A new NPR poll shows solid support not only for the provisions relating to roads and bridges but also for spending on modernizing the electric grid, achieving universal broadband coverage and even expanding long-term health care.

The organizer of the aborted White Lives Matter rally in Raleigh, NC claims to be a National Guard member who wants to launch an "aboveground fascist movement," according to recordings from an April 9 voice chat leaked to Raw Story.

Upon learning that anticipated support from Proud Boys would not materialize and the event was likely to draw significant opposition from anti-fascists, the host of the North Carolina White Lives Matter channel on Telegram — known as "Bolts " — abruptly canceled the event and changed the name of the channel to "American Union Fascist."

The Biden administration has asked Congress for more than $110 million to hire scientists and other staff at the Environmental Protection Agency, which was decimated during the Trump era.

The EPA lost almost 1,000 scientists and other employees under Team Trump administrators Andrew Wheeler and Scott Pruitt. The EPA budget, which has declined or been stagnant for decades. In inflation-adjusted dollars, EPA's budget was more than 50% higher under President Ronald Reagan than it is today.

Two men who were involved in a 2005 hate crime were among the dozen people arrested at a "White Lives Matter" rally held at the Huntington Beach Pier in southern California on Sunday.

A much larger group of counter-protesters gathered in Huntington Beach in response to the rally, which was organized on the social media app Telegram. Far-right activists showed up alone or in small groups over the course of the afternoon, and were almost immediately surrounded by counter-protesters.

Democrats in Georgia's congressional delegation are asking the Biden administration to undo a Team Trump move to make it more difficult for Georgians to buy health insurance during the Covid pandemic.

Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and six of the state's 14 House members asked health Secretary Xavier Becerra to cancel the federal approval of a plan pushed by Radical Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to cut off access in 2023 to HealthCare.gov. The Georgia plan also imposes work or other requirements to get Medicaid coverage.

Baseless Republican attacks on Dominion Voting Systems may come back to bite major Donald Trump supporters in the wallet. That's because the company appears to be losing significant business in jurisdictions where Republicans control decisions about which vendors will supply voting equipment.

To collect damages the company must show that it suffered financial harm. In that regard, various elected Republicans around the country are helping Dominion make its case as the defendants' lies about Dominion machines are causing it to lose millions of dollars of business.

The implosion that is today's Republican Party, choosing Trumpism – whatever it means beyond blind personal loyalty to a would-be king – and principled conservatism that veers from the idolatry is growing in intensity.

It is something to heed as another signal for the triumph of emotion over serious information.

Anonymous neo-Nazis on Telegram attempting to organize simultaneous "White Lives Matter" rallies scheduled for Sunday in cities across the United States are pledging to bring weapons in an anticipated clash with antifascist counter-protesters.

"Always be prepared to defend yourself," the primary organizing channel for the nationwide project account advised in an "OpSec" guide posted on the social media app Telegram on Tuesday. "Preferably a sidearm but sometimes you'll have to settle for a knife, mace, taser."

Chet Hanks' Instagram communique promising a "white boy summer" is ill-advised, self-absorbed and head-scratching. But the social-media salvo has also, predictably, received a warm reception from white supremacists who gleefully embrace it as a rallying cry for racial exclusion, right-wing violence and the return of the Third Reich.

Best known as the son of Tom Hanks, Chet Hanks is an actor of a lesser stature, with roles on "Empire" and "NCIS: New Orleans" as well as an erstwhile rapper who performed under the name "Chet Haze." On March 26, he posted a video of himself seated behind the wheel of a parked car and chewing gum, casually announcing: "Hey guys. Look, I just wanted to tap in real quick. I just got this feeling, man, um, that this summer is, uh… it's about to be a white boy summer. You know, take it how you want."

While the government builds a conspiracy case against a dozen Oath Keepers accused of storming the Capitol, court documents indicate investigators also remain interested in whether the far-right militia group was staging "quick reaction forces" with heavy weaponry as a contingency to escalate violence.

An unindicted co-conspirator referenced in government court filings as "Person Three" and "Paul" is at the heart of indicted Oath Keepers' discussions about a heavily armed "QRF," or quick reaction force, that was supposed to stage outside DC as backup during the assault on the Capitol. At least two of the Oath Keepers defendants were in direct communication with the QRF leader, according to government filings. Thomas Edward Caldwell, a Navy veteran and former FBI section chief, is one. Another is Jessica Watkins, the Army veteran from Ohio who breached the Capitol. The QRF leader reserved a room at a hotel where other Oath Keepers were staying in advance of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, so it's likely that federal investigators know his name.

Republicans aren't trying to squash voting rights for people of color, explains Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Apparently, Baseball is, "caving to fears and lies."

And his Republican teammates in the U.S. Senate are backing the play, now finding time once again for an irrelevant threat to withdraw anti-trust protections for Major League Baseball in retaliation for pulling its annual All-Star Game from Atlanta in protest of the new voting changes in Georgia that, well, tend to squash voting rights for people of color.

A North Carolina judge has dismissed a misdemeanor rioting charge against a 35-year-old Black man whose forcible arrest during a protest against COVID conditions at a local jail last September led to additional arrests as activists reacted in anger and astonishment.

The warrant alleged that by trespassing outside the Alamance County Detention Center and refusing the commands of officers, Nicholas Cassette incited "further unruly activity from a crowd of protestors who increasingly became disorderly."

In January 2017, upon her confirmation as secretary of the Department of Transportation, Elaine Chao committed to separating herself from her family's shipping interests. Looking back on the last four years, it's clear she didn't.

In an administration awash with emoluments and ethics concerns, it has mostly flown under the radar just how much Chao, who is married to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, stood to gain financially from her position as secretary of transportation and how government watchdogs failed to challenge her repeated wrongdoings.

White supremacists on Telegram are organizing a series of simultaneous rallies under the banner of "White Lives Matter" in major American cities scheduled for April 11, with active participation and promotion in some locales by members of the Proud Boys.

The rallies mark a rare instance of overt white nationalists openly mobilizing in the streets since the constituent organizations of the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally were severely hobbled the following year by sustained opposition in the streets from antifascist counter-protesters, litigation, infighting and organizational dysfunction. For the Proud Boys, whose members are facing serious federal charges for conspiracy to disrupt the transfer of executive power during the assault on the US Capitol, participation in the "White Lives Matter" rallies reflects a brazen determination to maintain a street presence and an apparent diminishing concern about being branded as racists.

Thousands of people will likely die in the coming weeks because President Joe Biden's administration has failed to act on pleas by nonprofits and others to help keep water service on to help people avoid Covid infections.

Michigan, where Covid cases have increased about 77% since mid-February, is scheduled to end its moratorium on water shutoffs tomorrow (March 31). Other states where bans on water shutoffs enacted because of the pandemic are scheduled to end include Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

In the recent escalation of anti-Asian violence, there are important immediate causes and then more enduring societal ones.

In March 2020, I wrote in Raw Story: "The greatest risk factor of disease and death is not being considered, and that is Donald Trump. If he continues in this presidency, he is on course for having three main effects: First, he will make a deadly pandemic much worse. Second, he will stoke divisions between 'believers' and 'unbelievers' in his alternative reality. And third, he will vastly augment suffering, which he will … direct into widespread violence … by calling the novel coronavirus 'Chinese virus,' simultaneously deflecting blame and creating new targets for attack."

Money laundering, both for terrorist finance and tax evasion, threatens national security. Now a private group that watchdogs the quality of anti-money laundering efforts has put forth a smart plan to modernize and upgrade our government's capacity to track illicit cross-border financial transactions—news you will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

Global Financial Integrity has a plan, and it's a good one, to upgrade America's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. FinCEN, as it's known, is a critical government agency housed at Treasury and staffed heavily with IRS financial sleuths. It doesn't get nearly the respect or budget it deserves.

Keep your eye on Evanston, Ill., which this week became the first U.S. city to make reparations available to its Black residents through home loan repairs or down payments on property.

Reparations – financial amends for discrimination and slavery – is among the most controversial of social programs sought by progressives.

Lawmakers and lawyers for an Ohio electric vehicle company are working to undo the United States Postal Service's award of a 10-year, $6 billion contract to build the new fleet of mail trucks that would be mostly fueled by gasoline to Oshkosh Defense.

After USPS announced it had selected Oshkosh Defense, the Ohio startup electric vehicle maker Workhorse Group met with the USPS to discuss its bid-selection process. Whatever transpired in those talks, Workhorse promptly hired the powerhouse law firms Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Field and Mound Cotton Wollan & Greengrass to challenge the contract award.

Hale-Cusanelli is the host of the "Based Hermes" podcast, which promoted white supremacy by arguing for "minority control," blaming Jews for the 9/11 attacks and expressing sympathy for Adolf Hitler, according to the government. At the same time, the government said, Hale-Cusanelli was enlisted in the US Army Reserves and worked as a security contractor at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Colts Neck, NJ, where he maintained a 'secret' security clearance."

The US Justice Department is investigating disclosures from government sources to "60 Minutes" and the New York Times that raised the possibility of sedition charges against members of the Oath Keepers who were involved in the Capitol insurrection.

During a videoconference call with lawyers for the government and 10 Oath Keeper defendants, US District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta expressed concern about an interview given by former Acting US Attorney Michael Sherwin to "60 Minutes" and a story in the New York Times that ran on Monday. Sherwin, who was appointed to head the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia by former Attorney General Bill Barr and led the investigation into the Capitol insurrection until his resignation on March 3 told "60 Minutes" that he believes the facts support charges of sedition, while specifically discussing the Oath Keepers' actions at the Capitol. The New York Times reported that Justice Department officials are weighing whether to charge the Oath Keepers with sedition, based on statements from "unnamed law enforcement officials briefed on the deliberations."