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June 23, 2026
Fedral judge strikes down key SAVE act issues
Independent - A federal judge has declared a recently updated federal tool, central to President Donald Trump’s election integrity strategy, unlawful and prohibited its continued use. The ruling marks a significant blow to the administration's efforts to combat alleged noncitizen voting.
U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups who argued that the revamped program, known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), improperly collected sensitive personal data.
Critics warned this aggregation could lead to American citizens being wrongly removed from voter rolls.
"All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote," Judge Sooknanan stated in her order. "This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens."
She further noted that Congress had explicitly forbidden the centralization of Americans’ personal identifying information, and that the federal agencies involved were aware that the SAVE database violated these statutory protections.
The decision represents a major legal setback for President Donald Trump, who has sought to leverage federal agencies for a nationwide crackdown on noncitizens on state voter rolls.
Where young people work
Specifically, a quarter of people in this age range had leisure and hospitality jobs, the highest percentage among young people in any industry. This category includes hotel and resort clerks, restaurant servers, cooks in sit-down and fast-food restaurants, amusement park attendants, and more.
Another 16.9% of teens and young adults worked as cashiers, customer service representatives, and supervisors and managers in the retail industry.
Racial and ethnic demographics vary among young workers and their industries. Young Black or African American workers had the highest share of employment in leisure and hospitality (28.9% of Black or African American workers ages 16 to 24). Young white workers had the second-highest rate (24.9%).
Young Asian workers had the highest employment rate in education and healthcare services (20.9%). For comparison, 16.8% of Black youths, 13.2% of white youths, and 12.3% of Hispanic youths worked in education and health.
Real Dangers
Forward Blue - Trump's budget bill is moving through Congress right now, and it could gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid before the end of the month. We're not exaggerating. Lawrence O'Donnell called it the cruelest budget bill in American history. And he's right.
We've been sounding the alarm for weeks. So has every senior advocacy group in this country. But here's the brutal truth: if grassroots Democrats don't step up today, the safety net that millions of Americans depend on could be dismantled before summer.
Britain
Axios - Keir Starmer was elected as a competent, level-headed antidote to 14 years of Conservative rule — a period consumed by austerity, ideological warfare and the chaos of leaving the European Union. His resignation yesterday, less than two years after a historic Labour landslide, reveals Britain's chronic instability has outgrown partisan explanation.
For many Western leaders, the U.K. is the ultimate cautionary tale — a live experiment in modern populism, unfolding inside one of the world's oldest and wealthiest democracies.
- Brexit began with utopian promises of an unshackled "Global Britain" that could curb immigration, slash red tape and take back control of its borders and budget.
- Instead, a succession of Conservative prime ministers plunged the country into deeper dysfunction: Theresa May was broken by the Brexit negotiations, Boris Johnson by scandal, Liz Truss by market panic, and Rishi Sunak by electoral humiliation.
- Today, Britain remains marooned in a low-growth cycle — saddled with trade friction, high prices, strained public services and a hyper-sensitive electorate that tolerates virtually no political failure.
Starmer's tenure was consumed by migration and cost-of-living crises, providing ideal conditions for Nigel Farage's right-wing Reform UK to peel away Labour's traditional working-class support.
- Enter Andy Burnham: The former Greater Manchester mayor and charismatic "King of the North" is widely seen as the lone Labour heavyweight with the authentic populist appeal needed to blunt Farage's momentum.
- In a special election engineered to return him to Parliament, Burnham beat Reform decisively, likely clearing the way for him to take over the Labour Party and become Britain's next prime minister.
If and when he enters Downing Street, Burnham's greatest challenge will be incumbency — a proven liability across the democratic world in the years since COVID.
- In France, Emmanuel Macron's approval rating has at times fallen as low as 11%, while the far-right National Rally is polling as the favorite to win next year's presidential election.
- In Germany, the far-right AfD has made unprecedented gains and continues to widen its lead over Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives.
- In Hungary, voters ended Viktor Orbán's 16-year rule this April, toppling the most entrenched nationalist government in the EU.
Between the lines: Even President Trump, who faces a treacherous midterm test in November, is proving vulnerable to the same toxic anti-incumbent forces.
- His 2016 victory was intertwined with Brexit's geopolitical shock — a warning that voters across the West were willing to torch the establishment to express disgust with migration, globalization and elites' failures.
- But now Trump is the establishment. High prices and the Iran war have dragged his approval into the high 30s. The world's most successful anti-system politician is suddenly struggling to run against a system he controls. Share this story.
Socialists in America
NY Times - Socialist mayors were a real thing in the first half of the 20th century, when the Socialist Party of America held political sway. Milwaukee had a roughly 40-year run of them, so-called sewer socialists committed to building out the city’s infrastructure and instituting political reform. They lost power in 1960.
Then there was Bernie Sanders in Burlington, Vt., for most of the 1980s. “I’ve stayed away from calling myself a socialist,” he told The Boston Globe after his first win in 1981, “because I did not want to spend half my life explaining that I did not believe in the Soviet Union or in concentration camps.” He soon embraced the label.
And now? The mayor of New York City, the nation’s largest city, is a democratic socialist. Another one could become the leader of Los Angeles, the nation’s second biggest city. The mayor of Seattle is a socialist. And next year, a democratic socialist is all but sure to occupy the mayor’s office in Washington, D.C., a 15-minute walk from President Trump’s residence at the White House.
No one can say for sure whether their success portends national change. Their victories, or their chances of victory, have mostly come in dark-blue Democratic cities. And not every socialist running for mayor in a largely Democratic city has triumphed. Left-leaning candidates recently lost in San Francisco and Philadelphia.
But as my colleagues Campbell Robertson, Jill Cowan and Anna Griffin write, the success of those socialist mayors who did win their races says something about the state of the Democratic Party in the run-up to this fall’s midterm elections. And it gives us a glimpse at what happens when the far left actually takes office.
Immigration
Time - The Trump Administration is seeking to raise the price tag for immigrants applying to become naturalized U.S. citizens by hundreds of dollars. A proposed rule from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would increase the cost by 75%, from $760 to $1,330, and the cost of submitting the form online would increase by 80%, from $710 to $1,280
The Guardian - A California court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump’s administration against Los Angeles over a city ordinance making it a “sanctuary city” and limiting its cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Fernando Olguin, a judge in the central California US district court, rejected the administration’s argument that the city’s policy was unconstitutional. He gave the administration permission to file an amended complaint. The White House did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. |
| The Los Angeles city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, said: “This order reinforces the well-established principle that local governments have the authority to decide how to use their personnel and resources. The goal of this ordinance … is to encourage victims of and witnesses to crime to feel safe coming forward to seek help from LAPD regardless of their immigration status. It does not obstruct or impede lawful federal immigration enforcement operations.” |
Donald Trump
Time - President Donald Trump blamed vandalism for persistent issues with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which reopened on June 6 after more than $16 million in renovations to make the pool appear “American flag blue.” The pool’s new blue paint appeared to be peeling off less than two weeks after its completion, and it has been plagued by an algae bloom that has given the water a green tint
June 22, 2026
Age and Politics
Alternet America - A paper published last month in Nature analyzed individual health data from a long-term study of a large, representative sample of Americans across all 50 states. The finding is blunt: conservatives are dying at significantly higher rates than liberals, and the gap did not exist a decade ago.
“2010 is the last year in which we can say fairly clearly that there is not this gap,” coauthor Elizabeth Elder told Fast Company. By 2016 it showed up in biomarkers. By 2020 it was showing up in deaths from heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
The numbers are stark and specific. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.
Voting
CBS News - A federal judge on Monday ruled the Trump administration acted unlawfully when it created a centralized database that contains Americans' private information, which she said has since been used by some states to incorrectly remove U.S. citizens from their voter rolls.
Tucker Carlson leaves the GOP
Alternet - Speaking for his podcast Can’t Be Censored, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said he is leaving the Republican Party — and he blames President Donald Trump’s ostensible support for Israel.
.... Carlson argued that, by starting a war against Iran in February, he prioritized Israel’s interests over those of the United States. Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, Carlson asserted that the president was unduly influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enter a war that America has “effectively lost already.” He added that he believes Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign was funded by individuals whose “loyalty to Israel” does not align with American foreign policy priorities.
The right-wing podcaster’s split with Trump over Israel is part of a broader pattern on both sides of the aisle. A February poll taken by Gallup found support for Israel has dropped among Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. Independents support Palestinians over Israel by 41 to 30 percent and Democrats do so by 65 percent to 17 percent. Republicans still overwhelmingly support Israel, by 70 percent to 13 percent, but this still counts as a 10-point drop since 2024. Overall American support for Israel has fallen from 46 percent to 33 percent in favor of Israel in 2025 to 41 percent to 36 percent against Israel in 2026.
Senate passes housing affordability bill
NBC News - The Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday to pass a sweeping housing affordability bill aimed at lowering costs, putting Congress on the brink of a rare bipartisan victory in President Donald Trump’s second term.
The vote was 85-5. Several senators missed the vote due to severe thunderstorms in the Washington area that led to a ground stop at Ronald Reagan National Airport.
The legislation, which would make it easier to build homes and slap limits on Wall Street investors’ buying up houses, now goes to the House, which hopes to vote on it in the next few days. Then, it would go to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
Donald Trump
The Hill - President Trump’s relationship with key Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), is crumbling after repeated clashes over strategy on an array of issues. The two sides are splitting further apart as the midterm election nears and GOP lawmakers fear the potential loss of both chambers of Congress.
GOP senators say there has been a major loss of trust between the president and many members of their conference as the White House has repeatedly blindsided Thune and other Republican leaders.
...The president undercut GOP leaders last week when he suddenly ordered Jay Clayton, his nominee to serve as director of national intelligence, to not show up at his Senate confirmation hearing. The reversal of the plan left Thune and other Republicans dumbfounded.
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who lost his Senate Republican primary runoff by 27 points after Trump blasted him as “very disloyal” and endorsed his opponent, said Republican colleagues are feeling betrayed by what some of them view as the president’s lack of respect for them as senators and, in most cases, loyal Republicans.
Polls
The Guardian - If any demographic group was key to Donald Trump’s election victories in 2016 and 2024, it was white, blue-collar voters. But in perhaps perilous news for Republicans, Trump’s support from that group has plummeted – as many white, working-class voters have grown upset about everything from increased inflation and gas prices to Trump’s war against Iran. These glaring cracks in Trump’s blue-collar base point to big trouble for Republicans in this November’s midterm elections.
In 2024, Trump won 66% of white voters without a college degree, but a new CBS News poll found that 54% of that demographic disapprove of his performance. That was up from 45% disapproval in February (before Trump began bombing Iran) and up sharply from 32% in February 2025.
This shows severe cracks in Trump’s white, blue-collar base, a group that candidate Trump wooed by promising to crack down on immigration, to reduce prices on day one, to bring back manufacturing jobs and to not start new foreign wars. Many blue-collar voters see that Trump has failed to deliver on any of these promises except for his massive crackdown on immigrants.
Trump calls NY Times treasonous
Independent - Donald Trump lashed out late Sunday night over negative press coverage of his war with Iran, singling out The New York Times for criticism after it asked what the conflict had actually achieved. “The way the Corrupt and Failing New York Times is covering stories on a very battered and beat up Iran, through FAKE & MADE UP ‘FACTS’ is, in my opinion, ‘TREASONOUS,’” the president threatened on his Truth Social platform.
“I will be adding all of their false and ridiculous reporting to my multi Billion Dollar lawsuit against them. They are Criminals!”
National parks: visitors up, staff down
NY Times - Soaring international airfares and other fallout from the war in the Middle East have many Americans looking to stay closer to home this summer, and the 433 National Park Service locations are looming large in those plans.
A summer travel industry forecast released last month by Expedia Group said that interest in national parks and other outdoor hot spots has spiked 65 percent over last year, and that seems to be bearing out: Last month was Yellowstone National Park’s busiest May on record.
Despite major staffing cuts and a 43-day partial government shutdown, more than 323 million people visited national parks last year, about 3 percent fewer than the record-breaking numbers logged in 2024. To accommodate the crowds, parks pulled workers from other duties to focus on visitor services.
This year, staffing remains sharply reduced, and some parks have scrapped their reservation systems, already leading to gridlock at popular sites. In addition, steep new fees for foreign visitors have caused confusion at entry gates, resulting in delays.
Pope Leo: Feed the hungry not war
Independent - Pope Leo on Monday accused world leaders of "feeding" wars instead of the hungry, declaring global priorities "badly skewed". The pontiff, who has been outspoken on political issues in recent months, said governments should increase spending on combating hunger and avoid subjecting food aid to geopolitical limits.
"Conflicts are 'fed' more readily than people are nourished," the first US pope said during his visit to the World Food Programme (WFP) headquarters.
He said this "reflects not only operational shortcomings but also a fundamental imbalance in political and moral priorities." Leo, who drew President Donald Trump's ire earlier this year after criticising the Iran war, did not mention any specific leaders.
The WFP is the largest provider of food aid worldwide. Its biggest donor is the ?US, which announced a new $800 million contribution last week, following earlier cuts by President Donald Trump that more than halved planned US funding.
Gray divorces growing
NY Times - Rates of “gray divorce” — splits among those 50 and older — have risen sharply in the United States, doubling between 1990 and 2010. Though those rates have stabilized since the pandemic, nearly 40 percent of divorces today occur between people 50 and older.
While divorce rates have been dropping across age groups in recent years, the exception to that trend is among Americans ages 65 and up. The reasons are complicated, but it’s becoming clear that some Gen Xers and baby boomers are increasingly unwilling to stay in what sociologists call “empty-shell marriages.”
These are relationships in which there is no real connection or vitality, where one or both partners are not happy, said Susan Brown, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University who co-directs the National Center for Family and Marriage Research. Traditionally, such couples often decided to stay together for the sake of their kids, in view of economic stability or out of fear of stigma.
... Longer life spans are driving older people’s decisions to divorce, said Justin Garcia, the executive director of the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Ind., and the author of “The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love.”
“We as a species are in longer relationships than our ancestors ever were,” he said. “Lifelong monogamy maybe meant a few decades.” Now, though, there are couples who have been together for 50, 60 or even 70-plus years. “That is evolutionarily unprecedented for our species,” Dr. Garcia said.
Sea level rise force island dwellers to leave
Inside Climate Change- Terry Parks stood in the rear of a boat passing the western shore of Tangier Island. A native of this Chesapeake Bay island, he pointed to an area of bulky rocks with withered and wispy green grasses under the sun. A blue water tower stood in the distance.
“That’s grandma’s house,” Parks said, pointing to the gray peaked roofs of homes. “When I was a kid, about a hundred or so yards off the bank is where I used to play. Now there’s about five feet of water there.”
Under the blue sky, wind gusts pushed choppy seas into the vessel, causing people to sway as sea water sprayed onto the deck. Crab traps deep below the surface are marked by buoys. Stilted shanties line the channel that cuts through the middle of the archipelago the island is part of.
Locally, some members of the community leave the fate of the island to God and blame natural erosion, the loss of land because of waves crashing into it, knocking sand and dirt free into the sea. In 2017, Mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge debated former Vice President Al Gore, claiming that sea level rise is not responsible for what’s happening to the island. The coverage prompted President Donald Trump to call and pledge support to Eskridge. But even the mayor now acknowledges that the climate is changing, from differing wind patterns to extreme low and high tides, though he stopped short of saying fossil fuel emissions are what’s putting his people at risk.
But science shows the culprit is sea level rise driven by climate change. Tens of millions of dollars are being spent to buy more time for the 1.2 square-mile island, which was first settled by Europeans in the 18th century....
.... Southeast of Washington D.C., Tangier Island is about a 50-minute boat ride heading west from the Delmarva Peninsula. ...“Eventually it’s going to affect a lot more people than it already affects. People don’t really pay much attention to it until it really affects them,” said Eskridge, of the flooding. “The climate is definitely changing and changing fast … you’re going to need to adapt. If you’re unable to adapt you are in trouble.”
... Research from BayLand, an engineering and consulting firm working with Tangier Island, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, show that parts of the island have experienced a rate of 32 feet of land loss a year.
Trump regime
Headline USA - The Pentagon has told Congress that it needs $80 billion to pay for the Iran war and other non-war-related costs, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
The Pentagon had previously claimed that the war cost $29 billion as of mid-May, a number that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, as an analysis from Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute found that the war had cost about $72 billion in just the first 60 days, an estimate that doesn’t factor in indirect costs.
The costs have continued to add up despite the ceasefire, and the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding, as the US is maintaining its military posture in the Middle East, which includes major naval armadas that were enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports.
There is a concerted effort to move away from the current ‘Duration of Status’ system, which allows students to stay in the country as long as they remain enrolled and maintain academic progress. Under the proposed rules, students would instead receive a fixed period of admission.
Those whose studies extend beyond that period would need approval from U.S. immigration authorities to remain in the country. These changes would be notable for international students who move from undergraduate programs into master’s or doctoral programs, transfer schools, or use programs such as Optional Practical Training (OPT) to work in the United States after graduation.
The Epstein files
New Republic - The Department of Justice claims that it’s released every document that’s required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But the agency previously said it collected more than six million pages of material during its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, and it only released around three million. So what’s in the rest of the Epstein files?
The DOJ claims that the other three million pages are either duplicates, unrelated to Epstein, or protected by legal privilege. But because of the administration’s lack of transparency in regard to Epstein, many are concerned that something is still being hidden.
CBS News analyzed the available files to try to figure out which documents appeared to be missing, and found a number of notable omissions: questionable redactions, missing emails from older accounts, lack of massage scheduling records after 2009, missing prison surveillance footage, and more.
Notably, most of the emails in the released files were from an email account created in 2008, around the time Epstein went to jail...
But Epstein had other, older email addresses that were mentioned in only a few, highly redacted publicly released files. One missing account, littlestjeff@yahoo.com, was from the early 2000s—the time when Epstein was most in touch with Donald Trump.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is innocent of all charges when it comes to his connection with Epstein. But, as this analysis by CBS reveals, we may still be missing major pieces of the puzzle.
Middle East
If our coverage of the Iran crisis seems a bit weak, it's because both sides in the conflict are currently involved in negotiations and their descriptions of the status is highly unreliable.
How clinical psychologist Dr Mary Trump views her uncle
Alternet - President Donald Trump's niece, Dr. Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist by profession, is sounding the alarm that her elderly uncle is spiraling. In a conversation with reporter Steven Beschloss for her Sunday newsletter, Dr. Trump explained, “He may still have moments when he appears more coherent, but psychically he’s in a downward spiral. He’s experiencing constant narcissistic injuries, and nothing terrifies Donald more than humiliation.”
Beschloss questioned whether she felt that the 80-year-old president looked “unusually diminished” as of late. Dr. Trump cautioned, “I think this is simply the direction things are heading.”
"He’s experiencing constant narcissistic injuries, and nothing terrifies Donald more than humiliation," she continued. "The problem for him is that nobody humiliates Donald more effectively than Donald humiliates himself. The G7 came immediately after the sixty-million-dollar taxpayer-funded spectacle at the People’s House. Everything he’s doing now exists in service of protecting his fragile ego and trying to fill what I’ve long described as the black hole of need within him."
Building a working class political party
Redneck Gone Green - Tune in today, Monday, June 22nd starting at 3pm pacific, 6pm eastern when Shane and I will be in conversation with Les Lopold, co-founder of the Labor Institute and author of The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own. As always, the video broadcast will be on the Democracy@Work Youtube channel.
Les Leopold has long occupied a distinctive position within American labor intellectual life. Les is part educator, part movement historian, and part strategic diagnostician of working-class decline. As co-founder and executive director of the Labor Institute, he has spent nearly five decades translating the abstractions of political economy into concrete, understandable, and usable tools for union educators and rank-and-file organizers. His work—from Wall Street’s War on Workers to Runaway Inequality—has consistently argued that the central conflict in American politics is not primarily cultural or partisan, but structural: the systematic transfer of wealth and power upward.
The new book, The Billionaires Have Two Parties, We Need a Party of Our Own, extends this argument into explicitly electoral terrain. His wager is that working-class Americans already hold broadly shared economic preferences across racial, regional, and partisan lines, but lack an organizational form capable of expressing them independently of the two-party system.
His career emerged in the aftermath of deindustrialization, union decline, and the consolidation of finance capital. Unlike many academic political economists, he has consistently prioritized pedagogy over theory-building: workshops, training manuals, and popular education materials designed to make systemic critique legible to workers themselves.
This orientation matters because The Billionaires Have Two Parties is not written as a theoretical intervention but as a strategic manual. Its empirical backbone is a multi-state poll of working-class voters in the industrial Midwest, which finds broad support for policies such as price controls on pharmaceuticals, limits on corporate layoffs, and expanded public employment. The implication is clear: ideological polarization is far less entrenched at the level of material interest than electoral behavior suggests.
UK
The Guardian - Keir Starmer has announced he will stand down as prime minister after days of intense pressure from Labour MPs, paving the way for Andy Burnham to take over at Downing Street. Less than two years after a historic election victory, Starmer had faced calls from his MPs, including privately from cabinet ministers, to set out a timeline for his departure, with many of them unnerved by the threat from Nigel Farage’s party before the next general election.
Starmer’s decision to announce his departure kickstarted the process to become the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years.
Burnham confirmed he would run for the Labour leadership, saying an “orderly and responsible” transition of power would ensure “stability, seriousness and a continued focus” on the issues that mattered most to the country.
Within minutes of Burnham’s statement, Wes Streeting – the politician most likely to have run against the former mayor of Greater Manchester – announced he was instead throwing his weight behind Burnham, making a coronation highly likely despite the misgivings of some MPs.
Burnham, who was travelling down to Westminster from Manchester on Monday, is likely to have just over three weeks to prepare for government, including confirming his policy priorities and picking his cabinet, with his choice of chancellor eagerly anticipated.
NPR - Part of Starmer’s challenge was his failure to
connect with people and to deliver the real change he promised after
14 years of austerity under the previous Conservative rule, NPR’s Lauren Frayer
tells Up First. In recent weeks, Starmer's own Labour lawmakers and
parliamentary party began to turn against him. Burnham is viewed as more folksy
and could be more relatable with voters in a way Starmer was not. He is also
likely slightly to the left of Starmer and more inclined to robustly defend the
welfare state. Burnham will face the same
challenges that Starmer did, including rising global energy prices and
strained public finances. Frayer says this shift represents more of a change in
personality rather than policy, given that they belong to the same party.
June 21, 2026
Polls
Futurism - In a sweeping new poll conducted by Pew Research, only 16 percent of respondents said they believed AI will have a positive impact on society — a number as dismal as the perception of the tech.
Meanwhile, 49 percent of adults say they use AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which remains the most popular by a considerable margin, with a quarter saying they use the tools daily. That proportion is considerably higher than the 33 percent of American adults who said they used AI chatbots in 2024.
In other words, the tech’s widespread adoption isn’t helping its perception. A full 40 percent of respondents said they anticipate AI will have a negative impact on society, and 31 percent said it will impact them personally in a negative way, too.
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