Category: Election

Videos on social media are circulating showing Latinos rejecting or turning away from American products in response to mass deportations taking place around the country.

One video shows a family about to have dinner together when a young man emphatically tells his mother “how could you do that when Coca-Cola is turning its back on Mexicans.”

In response, the mom takes a large bottle of Coke and pours its contents down the drain.

This is part of an effort by a group called Freeze Latino Movement to boycott American companies while poking fun of the ongoing deportations launched by the Trump administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

By Erwin Chemerinsky / OpEd LA Times / Feb. 10, 2025

If one were to design a path to authoritarian rule, it would be what we have seen in the first weeks of the Trump administration. For my book No Democracy Lasts Forever, I studied how democracies die and are replaced by authoritarian regimes. Almost always the rulers are elected rather than coming to power through a coup, and then they consolidate authority and silence their critics.

Where are we on the path?

Checks and balances are being destroyed. The quintessential legislative power is control over the purse. But President Trump and those around him have asserted that he can control that by refusing to spend money appropriated by federal statute. The newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, at his confirmation hearings, was explicit that the president could refuse to spend funds notwithstanding a federal law — the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 — that prohibits this. And the president already has done this on a large scale, by signing an executive order freezing a massive amount of federal expenditures (enjoined by two federal courts), and by all but eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was created and funded by federal statutes. At the same time, he has asserted the power to spend money without congressional authorization as in the offer of a buyout to federal workers.

From downtown San Diego to the streets of Los Angeles and across the country to countless other cities, to the stately rooms of dozens of federal courts, to the California legislature in California, to the halls of Congress and the Senate, the resistance to Donald Trump and Elon Musk is growing.

Just on Sunday, February 9, in San Diego several thousand people gathered at two different protests of Trump, Musk and his immigration policies.

In the Streets

Protesters began demonstrating at Waterfront Park Sunday, voicing “anger, fear, courage and resistance to hate, fascism, oligarchy and eroding civil rights,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported this morning, citing it was the third time this week alone that protesters against Trump had marched through downtown San Diego.The U-T:

“…people came from Point Loma, El Cajon, Vista and Santee. There were babies, high school students, families and retirees in a crowd that appeared to easily top 1,000 people.”

They were united in protesting two U.S. leaders — Elon Musk and President Donald Trump — and one scourge: fascism. “Hey hey, ho ho, Nazis have got to go,” attendees chanted. While the president was a primary focus, at least as much of crowd’s ire was directed at Musk, who is the appointed head of the new Department of Government Efficiency and whose directives have aimed to shrink the federal government and replace civil servants with new hires loyal to the current administration.

The president has left a breadcrumb trail suggesting nothing would make him happier than to see the Eagles get slaughtered in the Super Bowl.

By Charlie Mahtesian / politico / Feb. 7, 2025

A record audience is expected to watch the Super Bowl this weekend, including Donald Trump, who will be the first sitting president to attend the game in person.

While polls suggest a majority of Americans will be rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles to defeat the dynastic Kansas City Chiefs, Trump won’t be one of them. He hasn’t explicitly expressed his preference, but he’s left a breadcrumb trail suggesting nothing would make him happier than to see the Eagles get slaughtered in the biggest event in American sports.

Trump’s disdain for the NFL team traces back to 2018, the first and only time the Eagles have ever won a Super Bowl. The game took place against the backdrop of an unusually politicized season, marked by the polarizing issue of players refusing to stand for the national anthem in symbolic protest of racism. In his first year as president, Trump objected to the practice, harshly criticizing players who took a knee.

By JW August / Special to OB Rag

It’s not a book banning or burning but it is the equivalency of it in the age of the internet. Another word for it is censorship.

I learned  E&E (Energy and Environment) News by Politico, an online newspaper, is banned from U.S. Federal agencies.  My source “S” works in a federal agency that has a full agenda of responsibilities but right now the work of the agency is distracted, agitated by the Trump administration’s latest “burn down.”

The source believes that “the ban” is occurring at other agencies as well. Workers  are not allowed to receive E&E, subscribe to it, and it’s “not allowed to come into the building.”

On the website www.eenews.net  is this invitation: “A new Washington is taking shape. Stay informed with E&E News.”

And while there are other options to get accurate information, at least for now, this is a vindictive move and no democracy can allow its government to decide what is appropriate reading for its workers. This reeks of 1984, George Orwell’s book, and the use of Doublethink,

Editordude: This is NOT satire and is the current true cover of Time magazine for Feb. 24.

Breaking down the president’s suggestion — and whether it’s a distraction, a negotiating ploy or something more.

by Aaron Blake / Washington Post / Feb. 5, 2025

President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered the most untethered idea of an increasingly untethered second term.

Trump said at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip,” will “own it” long-term and will redevelop it — even floating turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump’s promise has shocked the Middle East, Trump’s opponents and his domestic allies alike. Pursuing such a course would mean the displacement of 2 million Palestinians from their land — Trump proposed setting up “various domains” for them elsewhere — and injecting Americans into the cauldron of the Middle East.

It would also in all likelihood require a massive mobilization of U.S. troops, despite Trump’s years-long attacks on the concept of foreign nation-building.

The immediate question is, of course, whether he’s actually serious. Here are a few theories.

By Arturo Castañares / La Prensa San Diego / Feb.3, 2025

Democrats and labor unions, which are usually united in campaigns, are facing off against each other in a contentious special election to replace San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas, who resigned unexpectedly just weeks after winning a second term.

Three elected Democrats are among the seven candidates who qualified to run in the April 8th Special Election called by the four remaining County Supervisors.

Vargas, 52, who was elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors’ District 1 in November 2020, won her re-election in November 2024.

District 1 includes the South Bay areas of San Ysidro, Nestor, Otay Mesa, Imperial Beach, Chula Vista, National City, Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, and areas of San Diego to North Park.

But on December 20th, just two weeks before the date to assume her second term, Vargas announced she would not attend the January 6th meeting to be sworn in.

Within days of her announcement, several potential candidates emerged to run for a seat that has only been open for election without an incumbent once before in more than 50 years.

By Josh Meyer / USA TODAY / Tue, February 4, 2025

Democratic lawmakers and government watchdog groups are pledging to fight back against Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government’s payment system, which they say may be the biggest privacy and security breach in American history.

“If we were watching this happen in Venezuela or Malawi and we saw a billionaire seize the money supply and the checkbook of the government, we would call it a coup,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative economic policy group and a former Senate senior economic policy advisor.

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, is an unpaid advisor to President Donald Trump. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has been tasked with finding ways to cut spending and regulations.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY, said that Musk sent young DOGE computer programmers into the Treasury Department’s headquarters, where they allegedly strong-armed civil service workers to gain full access to the system that cuts checks for all congressionally authorized government payments.

Reports emerged over the weekend that Musk’s DOGE operatives were at Treasury, going through the payment systems and that they had effectively ousted the top civil servant at the Treasury Department, David Lebryk, after he refused to grant access to Musk’s emissaries.

And they ultimately pressured Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “turn the keys over” to them, said Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.