Global
“Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.”
The words are those of Renee Good’s wife Becca. They cut to our heart – our humanity. She was shot in the face by an ICE agent, who then muttered: “Fuckin’ bitch.” The murder of this 37-year-old mom as she tried to drive around the ICE guys who stopped her is national news, of course. Almost everyone has seen at least one of the many videos of the incident and, you might say, the national dialogue about virtually anything else has been put on hold.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested, detained, deported, and/or imprisoned many people that it has unilaterally determined to be undesirables. At first, they claimed they would deport only criminals, but it has already gone beyond that. We at the Free Press consider every person who has been sent to the Tecoluca (El Salvador prison), Guantanamo naval base, or detained in other prisons throughout the country to be innocent until proven guilty. We will include students who have been expelled for protesting genocide. It appears the government will revoke Visa's to get rid of undesirable students. This article will be updated as long as is necessary.
American democracy is often framed as a system designed to represent the will of the people. Built on the framework of the United States Constitution, it promises political equality, accountability, and broad participation. Central to this system is the right of citizens to influence government decisions—a principle protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to petition the government.
Over time, however, this principle has evolved into the modern practice of lobbying. Originally intended as a mechanism through which diverse voices could be heard, lobbying today raises fundamental questions about whether American democracy still functions as intended. In theory, lobbying operates as a pluralistic system: businesses, labor unions, advocacy groups, and citizen movements compete to shape public policy. Political theorists such as Robert Dahl argued that such competition prevents any single faction from dominating the system. Ideally, this balance forces policymakers to consider a wide range of perspectives.
With the deadline for paying federal income taxes fast approaching, the thoughts of American taxpayers turn naturally toward the age-old question: Why isn’t there a fairer tax system?
Thursday, March 26, 2026, 8:00 - 9:00 PM
Join our March People Power Action Call
Across the country, people are organizing to defend our rights and push back against abuses of power. From nationwide No Kings mobilizations to the upcoming Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship, this moment demands organized action.
Join ACLU organizers and volunteers on Thursday, March 26 at 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT for our March People Power Action Call.
Together we'll ground ourselves in what's happening, hear updates on key campaigns, and identify the concrete roles volunteers can play in organizing this month.
On this call you'll hear:
Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. Israel is the only country in the world that tries minors in military courts in violation of human rights standards.
I would like to summarize the story of Shadi Khoury, as told by his mother, Rania Ellias, and his grandmother, Samia Khoury, because it describes the typical brutality inflicted on Palestinian children in military court system and detention.
Shadi was seized from his family’s home in Jerusalem in the early morning hours of October18, 2022 at the age of 16. The armed Israeli forces stormed his home, beat and dragged Shadi while handcuffed, blindfolded, barefoot, and wearing only his pajamas. He was placed in detention and interrogated for 41 days. During interrogation, he was subjected to repeated beatings, lost consciousness three times, suffered a broken nose, and was subjected to threats.
This is the first sentence of a column I cannot write . . . of a “war” I cannot win. There’s just no way to condense the psycho-spiritual devastation of an unleashed nuclear bomb into words. All I can do is ask a question that has no answer: What is the opposite of Armageddon?
Can a collective human embrace be larger, more intense and powerful than collective suicide? Is “peace” a force in its own right, or just a brief moment of quiet while humanity reloads?
OK, no answers, just a bit of context with which to ponder the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran (and throughout the Middle East). Lawrence Wilkerson – retired U.S. Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell – put it this way in a recent interview with Democracy Now: “This is a war with long legs and I think Trump has completely misinterpreted it. The only one who has interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu and I think he’s ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks right now.”
The origins of chess are contested, but few dispute that while the game began in India, it was the Sassanian Persian Empire that refined it into a recognizable strategic system. It was Persia that codified its language, symbolism and intellectual framework: the shah (king), the rokh (rook), and shatranj, the modern chess game.
This is not a trivial historical detail. It is, in many ways, a metaphor that has returned with force.
Since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28, 2026, political discourse—across Western, Israeli and alternative media—has repeatedly invoked the analogy of chess to describe Iran’s conduct.
The comparison is seductive. But it is also incomplete.