Category: World News

By Theodoric Meyer and  Mariana Alfaro / Washington Post / June 3, 2026

The House passed a resolution Wednesday to block President Donald Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran, ratcheting up pressure on the administration to find a way to end the unpopular war.

The 215-208 vote marked the first time that such a measure has cleared the House or Senate on a final vote since the start of the conflict more than three months ago. The Senate advanced a similar resolution last month on a procedural vote, reflecting growing impatience with a war Congress hasn’t authorized.

The effort faces sizable hurdles, however, before Congress could force Trump to end hostilities.

In the House, four Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie (Kentucky), Tom Barrett (Michigan), Warren Davidson (Ohio) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania) — joined Democrats in voting to force Trump to end the war.

By Kurt Johnston / UCSD The Guardian / May 26, 2026

1. FIFA ‘Americanizes’ the game

In about two weeks, the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will host the most bizarre World Cup that FIFA has ever organized. Yes, that includes Benito Mussolini’s personal propaganda tournament in 1934, Vladimir Putin’s personal propaganda tournament in 2018, and the Qatari regime’s personal propaganda tournament in 2022. Take a bow, Gianni Infantino.

FIFA is billing the 2026 edition of the world’s biggest sporting event — soon to be President Donald Trump’s personal propaganda tournament — as an overdue expansion of the beautiful game. The month-long spectacle will span three host countries, increasing to 48 participants for the first time in World Cup history. It will instead be remembered for a number of other first-time inclusions that threaten the sport’s integrity.

Most egregiously, all matches will be paused for mid-half water breaks.

4 Republicans — Including Bill Cassidy — Joined Democrats Led by Tim Kaine in Voting to Enforce War Powers Resolution

By Theodoric Meyer / Washington Post / May 19, 2026

The Senate voted Tuesday to advance a resolution to block President Donald Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran, defying the White House nearly three months into an unpopular war.

Four Republicans — Sens. Rand Paul (Kentucky), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Bill Cassidy (Louisiana) — joined Democrats in voting to discharge a war powers resolution from committee, the first step toward forcing Trump to end a war that Congress never authorized. Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) was the lone Democrat to vote no.

The 50-47 procedural vote was a breakthrough for Democrats, but the measure still faces considerable hurdles before it could force Trump to end the war.

Are you confused as I am about whether we’re still at war with Iran?

For me to even ask the question displays a lot about this particular moment. Are we at war still, after over 2 months of war? Who knows? I wish somebody would please tell us, to get us out of this confusion.

We have good reasons for our confusion. The Trump White House, Trump himself, and his cabinet secretaries all are saying different things. We aren’t at war, we are at war, it’s an “excursion,” a “blip”, it’s an operation, not war.

Yet, for good times, try this.

Supposedly, the White House and Iran are looking at an agreement spelled out in a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations. On this news, the DOW shot up.

Then also Trump put Project Freedom on pause last night,

By Marc Snelling

The distance between the Trump regime and the American people continues to grow, as the United States and Canada are set to renegotiate their trade pact. Trump’s fellow Epstein Island visitor Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently offered his insightful analysis of the deep ties between the countries saying of Canada “they suck.” Lutnick is following Trump’s lead who earlier stated “We don’t need anything from Canada.”

Headlines in Canada are being made with foreign support being uncovered in Alberta’s proposed referendum over separation. Many have likened the Trump regime support for Alberta separatism with the disinformation campaign from the Putin regime in Ukraine’s Donbas region leading up to the Ukraine-Russian War. Trump minion, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaking of Alberta said “they want sovereignty, they want what the US has got.”

While regime officials run their mouths the American people, particularly in the States that border Canada, have been singing an entirely different tune. The Trump Slump continues unabated with Canadian’s boycott of American tourism and products growing. The boycott is not easily reversed by government action on either side of the border as it is a grassroots effort.

By Jordan Atwood / Nation of Change / April 30, 2026

A deadline written in the aftermath of Vietnam to prevent presidents from waging open-ended wars without congressional approval is colliding with President Donald Trump’s military campaign in Iran, raising the prospect of a constitutional test over whether Congress can still restrain unilateral war-making. On May 1, the 60-day limit established under the War Powers Resolution expires for military operations Trump initiated without formal authorization from lawmakers. Under the 1973 law, hostilities undertaken without congressional approval are supposed to end unless Congress authorizes the conflict or the president invokes a narrow extension tied to “unavoidable military necessity.”

That legal deadline has transformed what began as a fight over the Iran campaign itself into a broader struggle over presidential power, congressional authority, and whether statutory checks on war-making still have force.

By Rev. Michael J. Christensen

Don’t be naïve: what’s being sold right now in renewed negotiations with Iran— and in the wider conflicts touching Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, and Ukraine— is not really peace. It’s a deal.

Cap uranium enrichment at a negotiated threshold. Reopen inspections. In exchange, ease sanctions, unfreeze assets, lower the temperature. Declare a breakthrough. Claim victory.

We’ve seen this script before. It’s essentially a reboot— an updated version of the same nuclear framework under President Biden, repackaged for a new political moment.

To be sure, deals like this can slow a crisis. They can buy time. They may even avert immediate catastrophe.

But they don’t reach the deeper fractures driving the conflict in the first place—generational wounds, historical grievances, cycles of injustice and retaliation.
The biblical prophet Jeremiah would call it out for what it is:

“They have treated the wound of my people lightly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”

Call it peace lite.

War Powers Act Has 60-Day Limit

By Erwin Chemerinsky / The New York Times RSN / April 27, 2026

President Trump’s war with Iran is almost certainly illegal: Congress hasn’t declared war or authorized it by statute, and it wasn’t precipitated by an imminent attack or a national emergency. If the war continues through Friday without congressional approval, it will clearly be illegal, having passed the 60-day threshold and the 48-hour notice period that the president is given, under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, to conduct this kind of military operation.

[Please see original for all and any links]

Whether you support or oppose this war — or, as Mr. Trump has called it, this “excursion” — time will be up. And it is the obligation of the federal courts to say so.

The resolution, often called the War Powers Act, was adopted during the Vietnam War. It applies when American troops are engaged in hostilities or in situations in which hostilities are impending — such as during this war with Iran.

Despite Mr. Trump’s saying, on Thursday, “Don’t rush me” regarding the war’s timeline, the act requires that the president withdraw our military from participation in hostilities after 60 days unless Congress has declared war,

Sheinbaum Also Pushes Back on Trump’s Policy on Cuba

By Megan Janetsky and Will Weissert / Associated Press PBS News / April 14, 2026 

The Mexican government on Tuesday protested the deaths of its citizens in U.S. immigration custody as President Claudia Sheinbaum pushes back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies on multiple fronts.

The progressive Mexican leader has walked a careful line with Trump for more than a year, addressing provocations with a measured tone and meeting U.S. requests to crack down on criminal cartels more so than her predecessors, in an effort to offset threats of tariffs and U.S. military action against the gangs.

But in the wake of mounting deaths of Mexican citizens in custody of immigration officials and the Trump administration’s decision to impose an energy blockade on Cuba — a key Mexican ally — Sheinbaum has taken a harder line.

The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment

By Rebecca Solnit / The Guardian / April 12, 2026

The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled. All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out in news stories about this specific incident or department, the reports never adequately describe an administration sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and also trashing the global economy, international alliances and relationships, and the national and global environment in ways that will have downstream consequences for decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate, centuries.

Across the branches of government, the services that are supposed to protect us – nuclear stockpile monitoring, cybersecurity, counter-terrorism – are being undermined, understaffed or trashed. A different kind of protection that consists of public health, vaccination programs, food safety, clean air and water, social services, civil rights and the rule of law is also under attack. The federal government that serves us is being starved while the federal government that serves the Trump agenda and the oligarchy is glutting itself on taxpayer money, including the grotesque sums dumped on the Department of Homeland Security and the US military now being warped into Pete Hegseth’s twisted vision of a ruthless mercenary force. Hegseth has reportedly stood in the way of promotions for more than a dozen Black and female officers.

Editordude: The following is an unsolicited response to a recent Rag post entitled, “Open Letter to the Demonstrators at the Corner of Sunset Cliffs & West Point Loma,” which has garnered quite a bit of attention but not a lot of actual dialog, which was our intent in publishing it. Until this … from Code Pink activists. 

Dear Clandestina Urbanista,

We appreciate you taking the time to write. We also want to be straightforward in response.

We are members of the San Diego chapter of CODEPINK, and we speak for our chapter only. Together with members of Veterans For Peace, Jewish Voice For Peace, and several other organizations throughout San Diego, we gather each week because what is happening in Gaza is not an abstract “complexity” – it is mass killing, carried out with the full support and funding of the United States government. As U.S. taxpayers, we refuse to be silent in the face of it.

We reject the framing that asking the public to hold “all sides” equally, in this moment, is a neutral act. It risks obscuring the scale, power, and ongoing nature of the violence being inflicted on Palestinians, as well as Iranians and Lebanese.