Republicans’ Big Class War Bill
Plus, Khalil’s release, Mamdani’s victory, phony terrorism charges against Palestine Action in the UK, and more.
This article is part of a digest series delivered every Thursday, highlighting what I find to be the most interesting stories covering politics, working class struggles, and international current events of the week, along with my own brief commentary.
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I was unable to publish an entry in the digest last Thursday due to personal obligations and travel. As such, I have tried to cram two week’s worth of stories into this edition.
U.S. Politics
📜🤑 The One Big Beautiful Bill Is a Big Corporate Cash Grab - Donald Shaw and David Moore/Sludge/More Perfect Union
Trump’s steaming pile of a “Big, Beautiful Bill” narrowly passed another round of votes in the House after being amended in the Senate. It is estimated that the provisions in this bill will result in the deaths of 51,000 additional people per year. As has been thoroughly articulated elsewhere, this legislation represents class war against working Americans, slaughtering a cornucopia of social services in the interest of delivering a multi-trillion dollar tax cut to the richest among us. To name just a few infractions against the working class, this bill kicks 17 million people off of their health insurance through Medicaid cuts, increases the cost of healthcare dramatically through the reduction of Affordable Care Act subsidies, cuts food stamp provisions, increases the cost of electric vehicles through the elimination of subsidies, restructures student loan payment programs to be more costly… the list goes on and on, and we haven’t even mentioned the downstream ramifications, such as the inevitable job cuts that are bound to spring forth from this ungodly abomination of a reconciliation package. All of this is being done in service of one of the largest handouts to America’s wealthiest cohort in history, in the form of massive tax cuts — a tale as old as time.
In the More Perfect Union piece linked above, the authors take a magnifying lens to which industries specifically are benefitting from the handouts provisioned in this legislation, scrutinizing a several levels deeper than the broader “ultra wealthy” moniker often attributed as the greatest beneficiaries of this bill. Industries from Big Pharma to Private Prisons stand to rake in the dough on our dime.
⛓️💥🇵🇸 Mahmoud Khalil Released From ICE Detention - Prem Thakker/Zeteo
Columbia University student, Palestinian rights activist, and political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil was finally released over 100 days after his unlawful detention by the Trump Administration. His release marks yet another defeat in a string of legal battles against the Trump Administration, who has been targeting student visa holders who advocate for Palestinian rights. Other recent notable wins include Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was imprisoned seemingly over writing an op-ed mildly critical of Israel in the school paper, and Mohsen Mahdawi, also a student activist of Columbia University.
🥇🚩 In Zohran Mamdani’s Win, Socialism Beat the Status Quo - Nick French/Jacobin
In spite of massive uphill resistance from establishment figures and institutions, Zohran Mamdani, the upstart Democratic Socialist mayoral candidate for New York City, who was an unknown quantity not long ago, managed to secure a victory in the Democratic Primary against the disgraced, corrupt ex-governor of the state Andrew Cuomo. Zohran still has to win in the general election this November, Democratic Party leadership is hesitant to rally behind him, and he will face independent bids from both Cuomo and incumbent mayor Eric Adams. However, as Nick French writes in the article linked above, there are lessons any pro-working-class political entity should take from the success of Zohran’s campaign.
While you’re at it, check out my article rebuking one of many baseless and incendiary hit pieces published in The Atlantic against Zohran’s campaign.
The Atlantic Preemptively Calls for Regime Change in New York
American media has a long and storied tradition of serving as a mouthpiece for the foreign policy blob in their eternal quest to frame select foreign governments as illegitimate, generally on shaky pretenses based in appeals to human rights, anti-authoritarianism, or electoral integrity. Never mind
☣️🥽 E.P.A. Plans to Reconsider a Ban on Cancer-Causing Asbestos - Hiroko Tabuchi/New York Times
Trump’s EPA appears to be considering reversing a ban on asbestos, a material that was previously ubiquitous in construction across this country and is responsible, even currently, for around 40,000 deaths per year across the country due to its carcinogenic nature.
🏞️💰 Plans to Sell Millions of Acres of Federal Land Dropped - Jasmine Laws/Newsweek
A plan by Republican Senator Mike Lee to sell off millions of acres of protected federal land, including natural parks and other preserved spaces, has seemingly been thwarted after proposal faced massive bipartisan backlash.
Global News
🌍🇬🇧 UN experts urge United Kingdom not to misuse terrorism laws against protest group Palestine Action - United Nations
Palestine Action, a UK-based Palestinian activist group, has carried out several actions to successfully impede or deter corporations like Elbit from supplying Israel with military aid. In light of this, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper plans to imminently designate the group as a terrorist organization, which could result in 14 year prison sentences for anyone associated. Human rights experts at Geneva are urging the UK government to reconsider its stance, as this would constitute an egregious weaponization of the terrorist label against activists.
🚀🇮🇷 US strikes failed to destroy Iran's nuclear sites, intelligence report says - Gram Slattery, Alexander Cornwell and Parisa Hafezi/Reuters
After a 12 day scuttle between the United States, its proxy Israel, and Iran culminated in US strikes on Iranian soil, allegedly in the interest of terminating their ability to produce a nuclear weapon, it appears that the United States has barely made a dent in their capacity, according to US intelligence reports. As far as deterring Iran from acquiring a nuke more generally, it would seem that Iran is now even more likely to accelerate their program to develop one. If the fates of Muammar Gaddafi and Ukraine in light of their disarmaments are anything to go by, then the Iranian regime is unlikely to stop pursuing nuclear weapons any time soon given ramping hostilities in the region.
☠️📈 From economy of occupation to economy of genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 - United Nations
UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has just released a report naming several western corporations for their direct participation in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as their occupation efforts in the West Bank. Notable entities named in the report include:
Lockheed Martin
Elbit Systems
Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), and Amazon
Palantir
Airbnb
Blackrock
Vanguard