Global
The recent announcement by the Department of Justice regarding a $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" is not merely a policy decision, it is a profound affront to the American taxpayer and the rule of law. We are witnessing the formalization of what can only be described as a federal "slush fund"—a mechanism designed to provide financial redress for those who claim they were victims of the legal system, a category that conveniently encompasses the very individuals who participated in the January 6th insurrection.
Trump on a tear: unpresidented corruption riles the GOP. Bossman distracts by renaming the war. Colbert is done for now, but the regime pretty much satirizes itself. The semiquincentennial celeb is an almost perfect lie; we expected nothing less. And Kars4Kids apparently benefits different kids, paying for teen trips to Israel for free indoctrination.
As of today, Friday, May 22, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has announced her resignation, effective June 30, 2026. She cited her husband’s recent diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer as the reason for her departure.
Her departure is just part of a broader trend happening this year and an echo of the defections and terminations during Trump’s first term. Gabbard’s announcement follows a string of other high-level exits, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Department Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Additionally, the earlier resignation of Joe Kent (Director of the National Counterterrorism Center) in March—who stepped down over objections to the administration's policy regarding the war in Iran—serves as a primary example of the internal friction currently affecting Trump’s cabinet.
The Treasury Resignation
The resignation of Brian Morrissey preceded the most recent major announcement.
According to If Americans Knew, under the terms of the Oslo Accords, Israel collects import and export taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which are supposed to be transferred to the PA for its operating budget. Israel regularly withholds part of this revenue—now totaling over $4 billion—claiming it is being used illegally for the so‑called “Pay‑for‑Slay” program (Palestinians often call it the Martyrs’ Fund), a social safety net for Palestinian families who have lost their breadwinner due to the conflict with Israel.
Never mind that many Palestinian “martyrs” were not killers or attackers, but were themselves killed while walking to school, participating in peaceful demonstrations, or sleeping in their beds. Israel does not differentiate, claiming the program encourages Palestinians to volunteer for suicide missions. Meanwhile, Israel is not subjected to any “Pay‑for‑Slay” restrictions, despite receiving $3.8 billion annually from the United States. This gives Israel impunity to oppress Palestinians and avoid accountability.
US President Donald Trum’'s state visit to China will go down in history as the day the United States finally acknowledged Beijing’s ascendancy as a global superpower. That acknowledgment does not need to be articulated in a formal statement; it can be clearly read in the subtext of diplomatic behavior, global perception, and shifting media coverage.
During the summit, Trump’s delegation—accompanied by prominent American corporate leaders—engaged with President Xi Jinping not from a position of absolute global dictation, but through a lens of defensive pragmatism. This transactional approach focused on securing bilateral trade commitments and preventing catastrophic economic friction.
The recent resurgence of monarchist politics around Reza Pahlavi—son of the former shah of Iran—particularly following the war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, has intensified debates about the future of political opposition to the Islamic Republic. For many Iranians, opposition to the current system has long been rooted in demands for democracy, political pluralism, social justice, and freedom from authoritarian rule. The central question, therefore, is not simply how to oppose the Islamic Republic, but what kind of political order should replace it.
For more than four decades, Iranians have resisted a deeply repressive state through labor organizing, feminist movements, student activism, minority struggles, journalism, and mass protest movements. Thousands have been imprisoned, tortured, killed, or forced into exile for demanding political freedoms and democratic accountability. Many critics of the monarchist revival argue that these struggles were never intended to culminate in the restoration of another centralized and hereditary political order. As an Iranian proverb suggests, it is like escaping one pit only to fall into another.
I was in graduate school in Los Angeles, a city with a sizeable Latino/a population when I heard the news that the Cuban government had shot down two aircraft killing four U.S. nationals. These Cubans reportedly comprised a humanitarian group called Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that canvassed the waters off the coast of Florida seeking to aid and assist Cuban migrants using make-shift rafts and other flimsy vessels to flee to America. A third airplane evaded attack that day and made it safely back to Miami. That was on February 24,1996.
On a campus as diverse as the University of Southern California, conversations about this development forced professors in some classes – especially political science, public policy, international relations and comparative politics – to put aside their lesson plans, at least for part of their classes and allow space for discussion of this news story. Cuban officials claimed the pilots violated Cuban airspace, while the International Civil Aviation Organization argued differently, maintaining that the airplanes were shot down in international air space.