Brad Reed, Common Dreams

Elon Musk is facing calls for legal ramifications after Grok, the AI chatbot used on his X social media platform, produced sexually suggestive images of children.

Politico reported on Friday that the Paris prosecutor’s office in France is opening an investigation into X after Grok, following prompts from users, created deepfake photographs of both adult women and underage girls that removed their clothes and replaced them with bikinis.

Politico added that the investigation into X over the images will “bolster” an ongoing investigation launched by French prosecutors last year into Grok’s dissemination of Holocaust denial propaganda.

France is not the only government putting pressure on Musk, as TechCrunch reported on Friday that India’s information technology ministry has given X 72 hours to restrict users’ ability to generate content deemed “obscene, pornographic, vulgar, indecent, sexually explicit, pedophilic, or otherwise prohibited under law.”

Failure to comply with this order, the ministry warned, could lead to the government ending X’s legal immunity from being sued over user-generated content.

In an interview with Indian cable news network CNBC TV18, cybersecurity expert Ritesh Bhatia argued that legal liability for the images generated by Grok should not just lie with the users whose prompts generated them, but with the creators of the chatbot itself.

“When a platform like Grok even allows such prompts to be executed, the responsibility squarely lies with the intermediary,” said Bhatia. “Technology is not neutral when it follows harmful commands. If a system can be instructed to violate dignity, the failure is not human behavior alone—it is design, governance, and ethical neglect. Creators of Grok need to take immediate action.”

Corey Rayburn Yung, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, argued on Bluesky that it was “unprecedented” for a digital platform to give “users a tool to actively create” child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

“There are no other instances of a major company affirmatively facilitating the production of child pornography,” Yung emphasized. “Treating this as the inevitable result of generative AI and social media is a harrowing mistake.”

Andy Craig, a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies, said that US states should use their powers to investigate X over Grok’s generation of CSAM, given that it is unlikely the federal government under President Donald Trump will do so.

“Every state has its equivalent laws about this stuff,” Craig explained. “Musk is not cloaked in some federal immunity just because he’s off-again/on-again buddies with Trump.”

Grok first gained the ability to generate sexual content this past summer when Musk introduced a new “spicy mode” for the chatbot that was immediately used to generate deepfake nude photos of celebrities.

Weeks before this, Grok began calling itself “MechaHitler” after Musk ordered his team to make tweaks to the chatbot to make it more “politically incorrect.”

An in-depth report published by the Washington Post on Tuesday offers new details about the damage being done to the Social Security Administration during President Donald Trump’s second term.

The Post, citing both internal documents and interviews with insiders, reported that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is “in turmoil” one year into Trump’s second term, resulting in a customer service system that has “deteriorated.”

The chaos at the SSA started in February when the Trump administration announced plans to lay off 7,000 SSA employees, or roughly 12% of the total workforce.

This set off a cascade of events that the Post writes has left the agency with “record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers,” as the remaining SSA workforce has “struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices.”

The most immediate consequence of the staffing cuts was that call wait times for Social Security beneficiaries surged to an average of roughly two-and-a-half hours, which forced the agency to pull workers employed in other divisions in the department off their jobs.

However, the Post‘s sources said these employees “were thrown in with minimal training... and found themselves unable to answer much beyond basic questions.”

One longtime SSA employee told the Post that management at the agency “offered minimal training and basically threw [transferred employees] in to sink or swim.”

Although the administration has succeeded in getting call hold times down from their peaks, shuffling so many employees out of their original positions has damaged the SSA in other areas, the Post revealed.

Jordan Harwell, a Montana field office employee who is president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 4012, said that workers in his office no longer have the same time they used to have to process pay stubs, disability claims, and appointment requests because they are constantly manning the phones.

An anonymous employee in an Indiana field office told the Post that she has similarly had to let other work pile up as the administration has emphasized answering phones over everything else.

Among other things, reported the Post, she now has less time to handle “calls from people asking about decisions in their cases, claims filed online, and anyone who tries to submit forms to Social Security—like proof of marriage—through snail mail.”

Also hampering the SSA’s work have been new regulations put in place by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that bar beneficiaries from making changes to their direct deposit information over the phone, instead requiring them to either appear in person at a field office or go online.

The Indiana SSA worker told the Post of a recent case involving a 75-year-old man who recently suffered a major stroke that left him unable to drive to the local field office to verify information needed to change his banking information. The man also said he did not have access to a computer to help him change the information online.

“I had to sit there on the phone and tell this guy, ‘You have to find someone to come in... or, do you have a relative with a computer who can help you or something like that?’” the employee said. “He was just like, ‘No, no, no.’”

Social Security was a regular target for Musk during his tenure working for the Trump administration, and he repeatedly made baseless claims that the entire program was riddled with fraud, even referring to it as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

A new poll shows US voters’ approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy has hit an all-time low, even as the president and his officials insist the economy is the best in the world.

The latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released Thursday found that only 31% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, the lowest figure in that survey throughout either of his two terms in office. Overall, 68% of voters said that the current state of the economy was “poor.”

What’s more, Trump’s approval rating on the economy among Republican voters now stands at just 69%, a strikingly low figure for a president who has consistently commanded loyalty from the GOP base.

Despite the grim numbers, the president and his administration have continued to say that the US is now in the middle of an economic boom.

During a Thursday morning interview on CNBC, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the US now has “the greatest $30 trillion economy in the world.”

“We are doing great,” Lutnick said. “Nothing bad is happening. Greatness is happening. We grew at 4% GDP! Come on!”

Lutnick’s message echoes the one Trump delivered earlier this week during a rally in Pennsylvania, where he said that voters’ concerns about being able to afford basics such as groceries, electricity, and healthcare were a “hoax” concocted by Democrats.

“Prices are coming down very substantially,” Trump falsely claimed during his speech. “But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability.”

As NPR reported on Thursday, data shows that the prices of groceries and electricity have continued to rise throughout Trump’s second term, directly contradicting his claims that prices are “coming down.”

University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson told NPR that Trump is playing with fire by making false claims about prices when US consumers can see costs persistently going up.

“Trump’s claims about inflation are false, and you can go to the grocery store and see it yourself,” Stevenson said.

Even some members of Trump’s own party are growing wary of him insisting that America is experiencing an unprecedented economic boom when voters feel otherwise.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told The Hill that Trump’s insistence on making happy talk about the economy would not fly with voters.

“You can’t call it a hoax and suggest that people are going to believe it,” she said. “What you say matters.”

An anonymous Republican senator also told The Hill that they were concerned about the optics of Trump building a massive luxury ballroom in the White House at a time when Americans say they are struggling financially.

“The cost of living just makes life very difficult on people,” the senator stressed.

And Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) gently pushed back on Trump’s messaging by telling CNN that “a lot of people are still having trouble making ends meet” in her state.

A top FBI official struggled on Thursday to answer basic questions about antifa, a loosely organized collective of anti-fascist activists that he labeled the top terrorist threat facing the US.

Michael Glasheen, operations director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, testified before the US House Committee on Homeland Security that antifa was “the most immediate violent threat” facing Americans today when it comes to domestic terrorism.

But when Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, asked Glasheen for specifics about this purportedly dire threat, he mostly came up empty.

“So where is antifa headquarters?” Thompson asked him.

Glasheen paused for several seconds and then said, “What we’re doing right now with the organization...” before Thompson interrupted him.

“Where in the United States does antifa exist?” asked Thompson.

“We are building out the infrastructure right now,” Glasheen replied.

“So what does that mean?” asked a bewildered Thompson. “I’m just, we’re trying to get information. You said antifa is a terrorist organization. Tell us, as a committee, how did you come to that? Whether they exist, how many members do they have in the United States as of right now?”

“Well, that’s very fluid,” Glasheen said. “It’s ongoing for us to understand that... no different from al-Qaeda and ISIS.”

Thompson again interrupted and tried to make Glasheen answer his original question.

“If you said antifa is the No. 1 domestic terrorist organization operating in the United States,” he said, “I just need to know where they are, how many people. I don’t want a name, I don’t want anything like that. Just, how many people have you identified, with the FBI, that antifa is made of?”

“Well, the investigations are active...” Glasheen said.

Thompson then became incredulous.

“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”

Many observers were stunned that Glasheen appeared to know so little about what he proclaimed to be the top domestic terrorist threat facing the US.

“Total amateur hour in US law enforcement,” remarked Democracy Docket news editor Matthew Kupfer, “where the No. 1 terror threat is an organization that does not formally exist and a career FBI official is dancing around before a congressional committee trying to make the Trump strategy sound legit.”

Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan argued that Glasheen’s testimony was proof that the administration was simply concocting domestic terrorism threats with zero basis in reality.

“Wow,” Hasan marveled. “Just a complete admission here that the entire ‘antifa’ threat narrative is totally manufactured by this administration.”

Fred Wellman, a Democratic congressional candidate in Missouri, wondered how many actual dangerous criminals are running free while the FBI focuses on taking down an organization that it apparently knows nothing about.

“This would be comical if there wasn’t real world impact from this idiocy,” Wellman wrote. “We have real crimes and real threats and they are chasing a fake ‘organization’ for politics.”

Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee also piled on Glasheen, citing his testimony as evidence that the Trump administration is completely unserious about law enforcement.

“If your ‘top threat’ has no headquarters, no organization, and no definition then it’s not a top threat,” they posted on social media. “The Trump administration is ignoring real threats, and the American people see right through it.”

The Trump administration released its official National Security Strategy this week — and many critics noted that it was loaded with rhetoric frequently used by white nationalists.

Some of the most inflammatory language in the document is aimed at US-allied European countries that supposedly face “the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure” within the next 20 years.

In particular, the document accuses the European Union of enacting policies “that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

The document goes on to claim that “should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” while emphasizing that US policy is to help “Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”

Jon Henley, Europe correspondent for the Guardian, noted in a Friday report that the document “appears to espouse the racist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory, saying several countries risk becoming ‘majority non-European.’” Henley added that the document “underscores the Trump administration’s clear alignment with Europe’s far-right nationalist parties, whose policies centre on attacking supposed EU overreach and excessive non-EU migration.”

Scott Horton, legal affairs and national security contributor to Harper’s and an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, wrote on Bluesky that the document “reads like something written by Vladimir Putin,” given its depiction of Europe as being “degenerate and... racially adulterated through the in-migration of dark-skinned people.”

Progressive activist Max Berger argued that the document “contains some pretty explicit white nationalism.” He pointed to the document’s support for dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as a way to restore “a culture of competence.”

Berger also flagged a section in the document that named “ending mass migration” as the top US national security priority, which he described as “a pretty explicit defense of using the state as a means of enforcing white supremacy.”

Edmund Luce, a columnist for the Financial Times, also took note of the administration’s emphasis on “competence and merit” in the document. This is ironic, Luce continued, because “this administration personifies the opposites” of those traits.

Journalist Michael Weiss argued in a post on X that the document shows that it is now official US policy to promote and assist far-right parties in Europe.

President Donald Trump is being roundly condemned for making bigoted attacks on Somalis, whom he referred to collectively as “garbage” earlier this week.

During a Tuesday Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump unleashed a racist tirade against Somali Americans living in Minnesota, whom he falsely portrayed as layabouts who sponge up welfare money.

“I don’t want ‘em in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” Trump said. “Their country’s no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want ‘em in our country. I can say that about other countries too... We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

Trump then singled out Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a refugee from Somalia, as being “garbage,” and then added that “her friends are garbage.”

Omar fired back at Trump in an op-ed published Thursday in The New York Times, in which she said the president was resorting to overt bigotry against her community because he is rapidly losing popularity as his major policy initiatives fall apart.

Omar also defended her community against the false stereotypes deployed by Trump to disparage it.

“[Trump] fails to realize how deeply Somali Americans love this country,” she wrote. “We are doctors, teachers, police officers, and elected leaders working to make our country better. Over 90% of Somalis living in my home state, Minnesota, are American citizens by birth or naturalization.”

Speaking on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) defended Omar and the Somali community, and called Trump’s attacks on them “unacceptable and un-American.”

“Not only does Trump’s dehumanizing language put a target on her back and put her family at risk, it endangers so many across our country who share her identities and heritage,” García added. “We know just how dangerous this racist and inflammatory rhetoric is in an already polarized country.”

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh (D-62), who is also of Somali descent, said Trump’s attacks were “hurtful” and “flat-out wrong” given what many Somalis in the US have accomplished.

“It is a community that has been resilient, that has produced so much,” he said. “We are teachers and doctors and lawyers and even politicians taking part in every part of Minnesota’s economy and the nation’s economy.”

He also emphasized that Trump’s rhetoric was putting the entire Somali community in danger.

“We’ve had our mosques be targeted,” he said. “Myself, I had a campaign office vandalized earlier this year, and so we want to make sure that our neighbors understand that we’re standing up for one another, showing up in this time in which we have a hostile federal government.”

Trump’s bigoted attacks on Somalis are also making waves overseas. Al-Jazeera also spoke with a resident of Mogadishu named Abdisalan Ahmed, who described Trump’s remarks as “intolerable.”

“Trump insults Somalis several times every day, calling us garbage and other derogatory names we can no longer tolerate,” he said. “Our leaders should address his remarks.”

US farmers warned on Tuesday that they are under increasing strain thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and they predicted more price increases were coming for American consumers during the holiday season.

As reported by The Packer, representatives from the Kansas Farmers Union, supermarket chain supplier Royal Food, and North Carolina-based Red Scout Farm detailed during a conference call how Trump’s tariffs on nearly all imported goods were raising prices on vegetables, fruits, grains, and meats.

Mary Carol Dodd, owner of Red Scout Farm, said during the call that her farm depends on products imported from other countries, including greenhouse materials, insect netting, and produce bags. With no low-cost domestic substitutes for these products available, said Dodd, she will have no choice but to raise prices.

“When the price of everything it takes to grow vegetables goes up, from soil to tools to fertilizer, packaging, transportation, then the vegetables on the holiday table go up as well,” Dodd explained. “For a small, diversified farm like us, those costs add up quickly. Our profit margins are already very thin, so every increase means tough choices.”

For Dodd, those tough choices have taken the form of a 50% price hike on collard greens and kale, and a 50-cent price increase on mixed-lettuce bags.

Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union, said during the call that price increases were inevitable given that most farms already operate on razor-thin profit margins.

“Every added cost in the supply chain eventually shows up at the checkout line,” he said. “Tariffs stack up on top of already high input costs, and families end up paying more for the same ingredients they bought last year.”

Colin Tuthill, president of Royal Food, expressed bewilderment that the president would enact policies that raised Americans’ food prices, especially after he won an election last year on the promise to reduce grocery prices starting on his first day in office.

“Placing a tariff or a tax on any kind of food item makes absolutely no sense to me,” he said. “We’re raising the price of food for the most in need.”

The American Federation of Teachers, Century Foundation, and Groundwork Collaborative last week issued a report estimating that Thanksgiving costs for US consumers have gone up by roughly 10% over the last year, with staples such as onions, spiral hams, and cranberry sauce all recording increases of 22% or higher.

The groups also found that Trump’s policies were squarely to blame for the price increases, and not just the tariffs. Specifically, they pointed to chaos at agencies such as the US Department of Agriculture that have weakened efforts to contain bird flu on US farms, which has in turn hurt the supply of poultry heading into the holiday season.

Although Trump has walked back some of his tariffs on staples such as coffee, bananas, and chocolate, the groups noted that this rollback likely came too late to offer relief to US families this year.

“Trump campaigned on bringing down the price of groceries on day one,” they wrote. “Yet in the biggest grocery week of the year, families across the country aren’t seeing any savings. Instead, their budgets are being carved up alongside the Thanksgiving turkey.”

Dozens of former US Department of Justice attorneys have now gone on record to describe the unprecedented corruption of federal law enforcement taking place during President Donald Trump’s second term.

In a lengthy story published on Sunday by the New York Times, the former DOJ attorneys described rampant politicization of prosecutions, directives to dig up evidence on Trump’s political foes, and orders to drop investigations into potential terrorist plots and white-collar crimes.

Several attorneys told the paper that the corruption of the DOJ began on Trump’s very first day in office when he issued a blanket pardon to everyone who had been convicted of rioting at the US Capitol building on his behalf on January 6, 2021, in a last-ditch effort to prevent the certification of former President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Gregory Rosen, who oversaw the unit at the DOJ that prosecuted January 6 rioters, told the Times that he felt “numb” seeing the pardons of the rioters, but he nonetheless facilitated the pardons because he understood they were within the president’s constitutional powers.

Mike Romano, a prosecutor who worked on January 6 cases, said that he had to resign as soon as he saw the broad scope of the pardons, which included rioters who were guilty of assaulting police officers.

“It’s incredibly demoralizing to see something you worked on for four years wiped away by a lie—I mean the idea that prosecution of the rioters was a grave national injustice,” he said. “We had strong evidence against every person we prosecuted.”

The mass pardon of the Capitol rioters was only the beginning, as prosecutors said that this politicization soon swept over the entire department.

In early March, for instance, Trump signed an executive order targeting law firms that had in the past represented prominent Democrats. Among other things, the order demanded federal agencies cancel government contracts with the firms and strip the firms’ employees of their security clearances.

The orders also accused some of the firms in engaging in supposed racial discrimination for maintaining policies related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Dena Robinson, a former attorney at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, told the Times that the DEI investigation into law firm Perkins Coie was a particularly extreme example of the department’s politicization under Trump.

“The idea of the investigation was that Perkins Coie supposedly engaged in illegal discrimination against white men,” she explained. “But Perkins Coie is an extremely white firm—only 3% of the partners are Black. When my colleague pointed that out, the leadership didn’t care. They’d already reached their conclusion.”

Robinson said that this attitude was emblematic of how Trump appointees conducted investigations: They begin with desired conclusions and systematically ignore evidence that undermines them.

“I wouldn’t even call it the Justice Department anymore,” she said. “It’s become Trump’s personal law firm. I think Americans should be enraged.”

Another aspect of the DOJ under Trump that has drawn scrutiny has been his use of pardons for political allies, including his decision last month to pardon Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023, and who had helped boost the value of the Trump family’s own cryptocurrency venture.

A new investigation from ProPublica found that Trump’s use of the pardon hasn’t just been relegated to prosecutions that took place during Democratic administrations.

The ProPublica report found Trump had wiped out convictions in “at least a dozen criminal cases that originated during his first term,” many of which involved politicians convicted of taking bribes or engaging in kickback schemes.

Frank O. Bowman III, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Missouri, told Pro Publica that the Trump pardons taken together are part of what he described as “the systematic destruction of the Justice Department as an objective agency that seeks to uphold the law and fight crime.”

In addition to this, Joseph Tirrell, former director of the Departmental Ethics Office, told the Times that the Trump DOJ has been hacking away at rules that bar law-enforcement officials from accepting gifts.

In one instance, Tirrell said he tried to intervene to stop DOJ employees from accepting cigars given by mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor and a soccer ball from the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).

“I felt like I really had to go to the mattress to convince the AG’s office: You can pay for the item or you can return the item or you can throw the item away,” he said. “There’s no other way to do this.”

Shortly after this, Tirrell said he got a call from the FBI general counsel inquiring “about changing exceptions to the gift rules because his boss, [FBI Director] Kash Patel, felt like he should be able to accept more expensive gifts.”

Tirrell said that he then reminded the counsel that “his client was not Mr. Patel, but the United States.”

Patel in recent weeks has come under scrutiny for some of the perks he’s taken during his time as FBI director, including using the FBI’s private jet to fly to a wrestling event where his girlfriend, country music singer Alexis Wilkins, was performing the national anthem.

MS NOW reported on Monday that Patel has also given Wilkins “a security detail made up of elite FBI agents usually assigned to a SWAT team in the FBI field office in Nashville,” an unprecedented arrangement for the girlfriend of the FBI director.

Christopher O’Leary, a former senior FBI agent and MS NOW law enforcement contributor, said that there is “no legitimate justification” for granting Wilkins this level of security.

“This is a clear abuse of position and misuse of government resources,” he said. “She is not his spouse, does not live in the same house or even the same city.”

The No Kings Alliance on Friday announced that it was mobilizing in support of Starbucks workers who went on strike this week to demand a fair contract.

The alliance, which organized one of the largest demonstrations in US history last month with nationwide “No Kings” protests against President Donald Trump’s administration, pledged solidarity with the striking workers, while highlighting the massive disparity in pay for Starbucks baristas and the company’s CEO.

“Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol was paid $96 million for just 120 days of work in 2024, paying himself 6,666 times what the average barista made—the worst CEO-to-worker pay inequity in the country,” said the alliance. “At the same time, Trump and his billionaire backers are doing their best to scare people out of speaking up for their rights on the job and in their communities.”

“Don’t cross the picket line,” the alliance urged its supporters, while also encouraging them to sign the “No Contract, No Coffee” pledge, an online petition demanding that the company negotiate with Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) on a just contract.

“I call on you to bargain a fair contract with Starbucks Workers United baristas!” the pledge reads. “I support Starbucks baristas in their fight for a union and a fair contract, and pledge not to cross the picket line. That means I will not patronize any Starbucks store when baristas are on [unfair labor practices] strike.”

The striking Starbucks workers also got a pledge of solidarity from the AFL-CIO, which on Thursday urged the company to hammer out a deal with its workers to ensure fair pay and schedules.

“For four long years, SBWU members have fought tirelessly for better pay, fair hours, and adequate staffing for more than 12,000 workers and counting,” said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. “Yet Starbucks has dug its heels in, engaging in shameless and persistent union busting... We urge Niccol and Starbucks corporate executives to finally do right by the workers who drive the company’s profit and negotiate a long-overdue fair contract.”

SEIU pledged support for the Starbucks workers, while also placing the strike in the context of the broader fight between labor and capital.

“Today’s strike isn’t just about Starbucks,” the union wrote in a social media post. “It’s about a broken system where billionaires and CEOs keep getting richer while the politicians they bankroll gut our wages, healthcare, and rights. Baristas are fighting for a fair contract and for a more just society.”

Some progressive politicians also gave the striking workers a shoutout.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) vowed to keep out of Starbucks franchises until the workers’ demands are met.

“When we strike, we win!” Tlaib exclaimed.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani joined the Starbucks boycott and encouraged all of his supporters to follow suit.

“Together, we can send a powerful message: No contract, no coffee,” the democratic socialist wrote.

Democratic socialist Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson—whose city is home to the coffee giant’s headquarters—attended an SBWU rally where she joined them on the picket line and said, “I am not buying Starbucks, and you should not either.”

Starbucks workers began their strike on Thursday, and SBWU has warned the company that it is prepared to dig in for a long fight unless it returns to the negotiating table.

Negotiations between the union and Starbucks stalled out last spring, and more than 90% of unionized baristas last week voted to authorize a strike intended to hit the company during the busy holiday season.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani may have a chance to fulfill one of his campaign promises on his first day of office, although legal experts have repeatedly cast doubt on his power to make it happen.

Republican New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov on Tuesday sent a formal invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in New York City on Jan. 1, while at the same time daring Mamdani to keep his pledge to have him arrested on war crimes charges.

“On January 1, Mamdani will take office,” Vernikov wrote in a post on X. “And also on January 1, I look forward to welcoming Bibi to New York City. NY will always stand with Israel, and no radical Marxists with a title can change that.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) last year issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed at least 69,000 Palestinians.

During his successful mayoral campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said that he would enforce the warrant against Netanyahu should the Israeli leader set foot in his city.

Although Mamdani backed off some of his most strident past statements during the campaign, particularly when it comes to the New York Police Department (NYPD), he doubled down on arresting Netanyahu during a September interview with The New York Times.

“This is a moment where we cannot look to the federal government for leadership,” Mamdani told the paper. “This is a moment when cities and states will have to demonstrate what it actually looks like to stand up for our own values, our own people.”

However, legal experts who spoke with the Times cast doubt on Mamdani’s authority as the mayor of a major American city to arrest a foreign head of government, even if the person in question has been indicted by the ICC.

Among other things, experts said the NYPD does not have jurisdiction to arrest Netanyahu on international war crimes charges, and the Israeli leader would have to commit some crime in violation of local state or city laws to justify such an action.

Additionally, the US has never been a party to the ICC and does not recognize its legal authority.

Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School, told the Times that Mamdani’s stated determination to arrest Netanyahu was “more a political stunt than a serious law-enforcement policy.”

President Donald Trump’s push for mid-decade redistricting to prevent Republicans from losing control of the US House of Representatives appears to be on the verge of backfiring.

The latest blow to Trump’s nationwide redistricting efforts came in Utah, where District Court Judge Dianna Gibson shot down a proposed map drawn by Utah Republicans because it failed to abide by a 2018 ballot measure that restricted partisan gerrymandering in the state.

As reported by NBC News, Gibson instead approved a map that created “a solidly Democratic seat ahead of next year’s midterm elections,” thus giving Democrats a likely net gain of one seat in the US House.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin hailed Gibson’s ruling and vowed that Democrats weren’t finished fighting Trump’s efforts to rig next year’s elections in his favor.

“Utah Republicans gerrymandered the maps because they knew they were losing power in the state,” he said. “Republicans doubled down when they chose to submit another gerrymandered map, but today, they were once again thwarted by impartial Courts. Democrats will continue to fight for fair maps in Utah, regardless of what Donald Trump and Utah Republicans try next. Every seat counts, and Democrats everywhere are fired up and ready to take back the House in the midterms in 2026.”

Dave Wasserman, a senior elections analyst at Cook Political Report, wrote in a post on X that the Democrats’ Utah victory, along with California voters’ approval of newly gerrymandered maps and reported plans to redraw maps in Virginia, have “pushed the mid-decade redistricting war closer to a draw.”

In a lengthy analysis published in Bloomberg on Tuesday, columnist Mary Ellen Klas argued that Republicans should take a deep breath before going all-in on Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting crusade, which began in Texas and subsequently spread to Missouri and North Carolina.

The issue, Klas explained, is that Republicans in those states have carved out more GOP-friendly districts based on assumptions that Republican gains among Latino voters and young men would hold in 2026. As last week’s sweeping Democratic victories showed, however, the GOP now appears to be hemorrhaging support among these two demographics.

“In New Jersey, 68% of Latino voters broke for Democrat Mikie Sherrill,” wrote Klas. “So did 56% of men under the age of 30. In Virginia, 67% of Latino voters went for Democrat Abigail Spanberger. So did 57% of men under 30. Many of these voters had voted for Trump last year. The exit polls show that both Sherrill and Spanberger won 7% of Trump’s 2024 voters, with Sherrill getting a whopping 18% of Trump’s Hispanic support in the state.”

If those trends hold over the next year, it could wipe out advantages the GOP had hoped to gain with its Texas gerrymander, which assumed that Latino voters who swung to Trump in the state would remain loyal partisan soldiers.

“Republicans are hardly going to admit it, but they should evaluate whether Trump’s push to ignite a redistricting arms race may have made it easier for a blue wave to wipe out more Republicans than if they had left their maps alone,” argued Klass.

In fact, some Republican strategists are already fretting about Trump’s gerrymandering plan, as one anonymous GOP insider told NBC News that if the endgame of the plan was “to net one seat across the country, then it will not have been worth it.”

A second anonymous GOP insider told NBC that there was “some concern” about whether Texas Republicans may have made themselves more vulnerable to a blue wave next year.

“In Texas, I do think there is some sense those seats will be ours, but nothing is guaranteed, so some concern there,” they said.

Chicago residents are increasingly resisting operations being conducted by federal immigration enforcement operations in their city, while at the same time warning the rest of the country about the trauma federal agents are inflicting on their communities.

In a lengthy article published in the Chicago Tribune over the weekend, journalist Andrew Carter documented how residents of the Little Village neighborhood in Chicago, which has been the target of multiple raids over the last month, have created a network of neighbors who carry whistles with them at all times so they can alert people when federal agents are in the area.

Baltazar Enriquez, president of the community counsel in Little Village, told Carter that he began walking around wearing a whistle this past June, and he said that since then “it grew like wildfire,” and spread to other neighborhoods in the city.

One person who has joined in the resistance to the immigration raids is Lisa Porter, a 53-year-old suburban mother who told Carter that she had never been much of an activist until she found herself horrified by videos of masked agents snatching people off the streets.

Porter said that she’s been following the lead of other Chicagoans in trying to warn people in her neighborhood whenever federal agents are in the area. In one particularly memorable instance, Porter said she saw a young man mowing a lawn in her neighborhood and told him to keep an eye out for Immigration and Customs Enforcement patrols that she’d seen earlier.

“They came and took my dad 10 minutes ago,” the young man said in reply.

Kyle Kingsbury, a Chicago-based computer safety researcher, wrote on his personal blog over the weekend about the pervasive sense of fear that has consumed his community ever since immigration officials began ramping up operations earlier this fall.

In his lengthy essay, Kingsbury said that he is constantly receiving messages from neighborhood watch groups alerting him about masked federal agents detaining people while going about their daily lives, including one notorious recent incident where officials dragged a woman out of the local childcare facility where she worked.

“This weight presses on me every day,” he explained. “I am flooded with stories. There are so many I cannot remember them all; cannot keep straight who was gassed, beaten, abducted, or shot. I write to leave a record, to stare at the track of the tornado. I write to leave a warning. I write to call for help.”

Kingsbury also warned that federal immigration officials, whether in the form of ICE or the US Border Patrol, are acting like an unaccountable secret police force akin to those typically seen in totalitarian states.

“I want you to understand, regardless of your politics, the historical danger of a secret police,” he wrote. “What happens when a militia is deployed in our neighborhoods and against our own people. Left unchecked their mandate will grow; the boundaries of acceptable identity and speech will shrink.”

Chicago Alderman Mike Rodriguez, who represents Little Village, told Block Club Chicago on Monday that recent Border Patrol operations in the neighborhood have been like a “reign of terror,” and he noted that agents once again deployed tear gas while making arrests over the weekend.

Despite angry condemnations from local officials and residents, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino appears completely unbowed.

As Block Club Chicago reported, Bovino brought dozens of agents with him on Monday for a photo-op at the famous Cloud Gate sculpture—often called The Bean—in Millennium Park in which they smiled and collectively said “Little Village,” in mocking reference to the neighborhood they’ve been raiding, as photographers snapped pictures.

Sen. Angus King, one of the senators who broke with the majority of the Democratic caucus to support a deal to end the federal government shutdown, drew swift anger when defending his vote on Monday morning.

During an appearance on MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe,” King (I-ME) tried to make the case that shutting down the government had only given President Donald Trump a free hand to consolidate power in the White House.

“In terms of standing up to Donald Trump, the shutdown actually gave him more power, Exhibit A being what he’s done with [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program],” he said. “So, standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work, it actually gave him more power.”

Senate Democrats who supported the deal have been denounced by progressives, and even some moderates, for agreeing to fund the federal government without securing an extension for enhanced tax credits for people who buy health insurance through Affordable Care Act exchanges. The tax credits have been at the center of the shutdown—the longest in US history—but the Democrats who voted with the GOP did so after securing only the Republicans’ claim that they’ll hold a vote on healthcare in the future.

Polls have shown a majority of voters have blamed the Republican Party for the shutdown, and a plurality of respondents to a KFF survey last week said Democrats should hold firm in their demand on healthcare subsidies. Trump said last week that the election results put more pressure on the GOP—not the Democrats—to take action to end the shutdown.

Additionally, the decision to cave on the shutdown came less than a week after Democrats won sweeping victories in key elections where candidates unapologetically stood up to Trump and vowed to fight his administration’s unpopular policies.

Given this, King’s statement that “standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work” was met by swift and immediate blowback.

“Bold choice going with a strategy of ‘we are losers,'” wrote Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, in a post on X.

“Breaking Points” host Krystal Ball reacted with angry profanity to King’s statement.

“Jesus f---ing Christ,” she fumed. “Resign. Genuinely just f---ing resign.”

Photographer Brett Banditelli accused King and his like-minded Democratic senators who supported the deal of “living in another reality.”

“They’re just DC brained,” he wrote on Bluesky. “They live in a world where Politico and Punchbowl News are the most important publications.”

Indivisible cofounder Leah Greenberg sarcastically imagined Democrats incorporating such “inspiring messaging” about failing to stand up to Trump into fundraising appeals.

Fordham University economist Tony Annett marveled at King’s belief that it was ineffective to stand up to a president with historically low approval ratings, which stood at just over 41% last month according to one poll.

“No wonder their brand is in the toilet,” he said of the Democratic Party.

A Pew Research poll released in late October found that two-thirds of Democratic voters said they were “frustrated” by the party, with the top listed reason being that Democrats have “not pushed back hard enough against the Trump administration.”

Democrats’ sweeping victories in elections across the country this week may not be buying goodwill for party leadership among grassroots Democratic activists.

Progressive organizing group Our Revolution on Thursday released a survey over more than 3,500 voters showing there is overwhelming support for running primary challenges against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who for months have come under fire for failing to more aggressively combat President Donald Trump’s administration.

Overall, the survey found 90% of respondents want Schumer to step aside as leader, while 92% would back a primary challenge against him when he’s next up for reelection in 2028.

The survey showed less support for dumping Jeffries, although 70% said he should step aside, with 77% backing a primary challenger.

Additionally, two-thirds of respondents said that “current Democratic leaders do not understand the struggles of the working class, with confidence in party leadership remaining in the single digits.”

Our Revolution also hailed New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent campaign as a successful model for Democrats across the country, as the organization said a message of “lowering the cost of living and holding corporations accountable” strongly resonated with progressive voters.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, warned that establishment Democrats could pay the price if they try to brush off democratic socialist Mamdani’s victory as a fluke.

“Mamdani’s victory was not an outlier. It was a rallying cry,” he said. “The grassroots are demanding change. They want a Democratic Party that fights for working families, taxes the rich, and takes on Trump and the oligarchs driving this affordability crisis. The old guard must step aside or risk losing the movement that delivered these wins.”

Mamdani wasn’t the only candidate to successfully run on lowering the cost of living, as Democrats on Tuesday also scored upset victories by flipping two seats on the Georgia’s Public Service Commission, which is responsible for regulating utility prices in the state. In those elections, the Democrats hammered GOP incumbents for signing off on six rate increases for the state’s largest electricity provider over the past two years.

The US labor market, which in recent months had ground nearly to a halt, now appears to be entering a downward spiral.

As reported by the Washington Post on Thursday, new data from corporate outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that employers in October announced 153,000 job cuts, which marked the highest number of layoffs in that month since October 2003.

Total announced job cuts in 2025 have now reached 1.1 million, a number that the Post describes as a “recession-like” level comparable to the steep job cuts announced in the wake of the dotcom bust of the early 2000s, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

John Challenger, the CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told the Post that the huge number of October layoffs showed the economy was entering “new territory.”

“We haven’t seen mega-layoffs of the size that are being discussed now—48,000 from UPS, potentially 30,000 from Amazon—since 2020 and before that, since the recession of 2009,” he explained. “When you see companies making cuts of this size, it does signal a real shift in direction.”

CNBC noted that the Challenger report found that the tech sector is

currently being hardest hit by the layoffs, and it said that the adoption of artificial intelligence was a significant driver of job cuts.

“Some industries are correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic, but this comes as AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs drive belt-tightening and hiring freezes,” the report said. “Those laid off now are finding it harder to quickly secure new roles, which could further loosen the labor market.”

With the backing of Big Tech investors, President Donald Trump has pushed to prevent states from regulating AI, over the objections of labor groups and progressive lawmakers. Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned that without strong regulation, tech billionaires’ investments in AI will likely “increase their wealth and power exponentially” while wiping out “tens of millions” of jobs.

According to Bloomberg, however, AI adoption is just one factor in companies’ decision to enact mass layoffs, as some firms have also cited the need to protect their profit margins from the impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which have raised prices for a wide variety of products and materials.

Democratic lawmakers were quick to seize on the news of mass layoffs as evidence that Trump is sending the US economy into a ditch.

“Trump put billionaires in charge of everything,” remarked Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) in a social media post. “It’s a disaster.”

“Trump inherited the fastest growing economy in the [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development], fastest reduction in inflation, record job creation,” said Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL). “Dumb tariffs, racist immigration policies, attacks on the rule of law and termination of congressionally mandated programs did this.”