#progressivepolitics

Elon Musk Tests What Nearly Half a Billion Dollars Can Buy in the Midterms

Melat Kiros becomes the first Gen Z woman elected to Congress

‘Our aim is that children are protected’: besieged West Bank school fortifies its defences against settler violence After deaths of five students at hands of Israeli settlers in last academic year, al-Mughayyir’s teachers and pupils are on high alert To reassure parents, teachers of the public secondary school gave a tour of the facilities, which they had spent the summer break fortifying. Metal fences now towered over the schoolyard’s walls and the door had been replaced by a sturdy metal gate. A new wall shielded the classrooms from a hilltop where last academic year a settler had shot dead two people, including a student.

Marco Rubio Posts Job Offer for CIA Agents in Cuba. It’s Not What It Seems. cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/54847277 [weekly newsletter about Cuba from the Belly Of The Beast news collective. Their videos can be found at: peertube.world/c/cuba_botb_videos/videos] November 2, 2026 Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently urged Cubans in a post on X to form a “discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA." That same day, the CIA posted a video in Spanish providing step-by-step instructions on how Cubans could contact the agency. This week, Belly of the Beast journalist Blake Burdge speaks with a former CIA analyst and Cuba experts about Rubio’s not-so-discreet recruitment pitch to prospective coup plotters and the decades-old U.S. strategy behind it.

Voting is Easier than Revolution cross-posted from: infosec.pub/post/54415745

[Video] U.S. military air defense systems seen deployed around President Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach after rumors of strikes on Iran source

Sums it up quite precisely

Supreme Court rejects Trump’s push for California to set aside thousands of disputed mail ballots The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a push for California to set aside thousands of mail ballots from people President Trump’s administration claims are noncitizens, a decision that comes on the eve of the pivotal midterm elections. The high court refused to intervene in a case involving 20,000 people the Republican administration flagged as likely noncitizens on the largely Democratic state’s voter rolls. It was the latest in a flurry of election-related litigation the day before the midterm elections, which will decide control of Congress for the last two years of Trump’s second term.

A Democratic Betrayal and GOP Panic: The Wild Finale of the Midterms It’s almost over, and on this special Election Eve edition of Stress Test, David Corn and Garrison Hayes deconstruct the manic final moments before America votes. The big last-minute surprise was the 11th-hour bombshell out of Michigan. Defeated Democratic primary contender Haley Stevens sent shockwaves through the political world on Sunday when she rescinded her […]

Former federal Judge Jeremy Fogel and the Trump admin's attacks on the rule of law A recording from Chris Geidner’s live video

“Democrats File Suit Over Closed Polling Places in Rural Alaska” NYT: As a Justice Department lawsuit challenging the presence of two U.S. Senate candidates named Dan Sullivan on the Alaska ballot plays out, Democrats have filed a lawsuit in Alaska accusing election officials of failing to properly operate at least… Continue reading The post “Democrats File Suit Over Closed Polling Places in Rural Alaska” appeared first on Election Law Blog.

'Machinery of death': Dock workers worldwide protest against arms shipments to Israel

This Week in Democracy – Week 93: Trump Targets El-Sayed, California Voters, and a Familiar Foe Ahead of Midterms Zeteo’s weekly round-up, documenting the growth of authoritarianism in Trump’s second term.

[Video] Dr. Jill Stein is facing 18 months in prison by the US regime for protesting against genocide source

Massive Groups of Volunteers Are Ready to Face Down ICE at the Polls

cross-posted from: infosec.pub/post/54243760

For the past six months, President Trump and his allies have declined to rule out possible deployments to voting locations during the midterms, even though they would be illegal under federal law. When asked in May if he would deploy the National Guard or ICE during the midterms, Trump said: “I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections. We have to have honest elections.”

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But for organizations on the ground interacting with voters in communities that have been targeted by ICE during Trump’s second term in office, the reality feels very different. Hundreds of different groups are part of the fight against possible ICE intimidation at the polls, and they are all working in coordination with each other.

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To combat this scenario, groups like 614 ICE Watch in Columbus are organizing patrols in neighborhoods near polling locations. “We send our folks in pairs or in groups. We never want to send anyone alone; we always want to have multiple people there so they can help take control of the situation,” Baiman says, adding that they have trained volunteers in a unique method of de-escalation: “If it starts to get very tense, we teach our folks to hum, to sing, to calm themselves down.”

The goal is not to interact with ICE agents but to document what they are doing so that events can be properly recorded and shared publicly. In January, just days after Alex Pretti was shot and killed in Minneapolis, more than 200,000 people logged into an “Eyes on Ice” Zoom training session, designed to teach people how to properly document ICE activities. Those skills are now being deployed during the midterm elections, Ezra Levin, cofounder of Indivisible, a group founded to stop the rise of authoritarianism in the US, tells WIRED.

On a much smaller scale, Living United for Change in Arizona has been training volunteers to become “constitutional defenders” in person, as the group prepares for next week’s vote. To track ICE activity, the group created a heat map that volunteers use to log and track ICE activity. The map is not available publicly, but WIRED was given access to the website and reviewed hundreds of recorded incidents of ICE activity in Maricopa and Pima counties.

Groups are also using social media to draw attention to what is happening. Last week in Sutter County, California, six ICE vehicles showed up in the parking lot of the Yuba City board of elections building, where a ballot drop box is located. Following a call from a local resident, NorCal Resist, a mutual aid organization, was able to send one of its trained volunteers and post an alert on Instagram.

“They don’t like the attention, [and] when there’s more community attention, they do often leave,” Giselle Garcia, programs director with NorCal Resist, tells WIRED.

Electrocutions, disease and no pay: how workers risk exploitation in Europe’s datacentres

ICE Watch: America’s Mass Detention Nightmare Continues Ahead of Midterm Elections Fear of ICE agents at the polls has people on edge. The federal government says federal immigration agents will not be patrolling those locations but also has not ruled it out entirely, both in the Southland and beyond. The post ICE Watch: America’s Mass Detention Nightmare Continues Ahead of Midterm Elections appeared first on L.A. TACO.

Trump Officials Discussing Sanctions Relief for Russian Fund, Russia Acknowledges A Russian official said potential relief for a state investment fund was part of talks. Russia has sought to wring economic benefits from the negotiations on ending the war with Ukraine.

Just In: Judge Warns Trump DOJ to Stop Threatening Election Workers U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of Los Angeles just concluded a 3 1/2 hour hearing (minus recesses) in the…

Jeffrey Toobin Shreds New Comey Charges as a ‘Fiasco’ Fueled by Trump’s ‘Insane Vendetta’ Jeffrey Toobin shredded the DOJ’s latest criminal charges against James Comey as a “fiasco” and a “disgrace,” accusing Trump of waging an “insane vendetta." The post Jeffrey Toobin Shreds New Comey Charges as a ‘Fiasco’ Fueled by Trump’s ‘Insane Vendetta’ first appeared on Mediaite.