Raw Story

A former Biden administration official and human rights expert warned Wednesday that harmful MAGA immigration policies have crippled struggling local economies — further damaging Americans.

Michelle Brané, a non-resident fellow at the Cornell Law Migration and Human Rights Program and the executive director of Together and Free, wrote in a Newsweek opinion piece that immigrants working legally have been pulled off job sites, costing them and their employers thousands of dollars fighting legal battles they shouldn't have to.

Brané, who served as the immigration detention ombudsman for the Biden administration and the executive director of the Family Reunification Task Force, shared a story of Jaime in New York, who was detained for almost two months despite showing his work permit. Jaime was pulled from a job during an ICE raid where dozens were arrested.

"Jaime’s detention also harmed his employer, a family-owned business," Brané wrote. "After the raid, the company was forced to reduce output to 25 percent of capacity and could not fulfill orders. In communities already struggling with labor shortages, raids cripple local economies."

Jaime was flown to Texas, where it cost him thousands to fight the legal battle — all because bond wasn't an option for him.

"The almost two months he spent in detention took an enormous emotional toll on him, his family and his community. It also imposed a steep financial burden to taxpayers, local governments and private businesses," she said.

Jaime also had to deal with a "clogged immigration system." Before the detention, he had earned $22.50 an hour and contributed to the American tax system.

"Immigrants contribute $580 billion in taxes per year. Mass detention and deportations shrink that base, harming programs like Social Security and Medicare," Brané argued.

Removing Jaime and other people in the U.S. who work legally creates more damage in communities, she added.

"Mass detention is an expensive illusion of enforcement. It doesn’t make us safer or stronger. It just ensures that everyone—taxpayers, workers and families alike—pays the price," Brané wrote.

Last month, some House members publicly acknowledged that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. It’s a judgment that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unequivocally proclaimed a year ago. Israeli human-rights organizations have reached the same conclusion. But such clarity is sparse in Congress.

And no wonder. Genocide denial is needed for continuing to appropriate billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, as most legislators have kept doing. Congress members would find it very difficult to admit that Israeli forces are committing genocide while voting to send them more weaponry.

Three weeks ago, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution titled “Recognizing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Twenty-one House colleagues, all of them Democrats, signed on as co-sponsors. They account for 10 percent of the Democrats in Congress.

In sharp contrast, a national Quinnipiac Poll found that 77 percent of Democrats “think Israel is committing genocide.” That means there is a 67 percent gap between what the elected Democrats are willing to say and what the people who elected them believe. The huge gap has big implications for the party’s primaries in the midterm elections next year, and then in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

One of the likely candidates in that race, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), is speaking out in ways that fit with the overwhelming views of Democratic voters.

“I agree with the UN commission's heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,” he tweeted as autumn began. “What matters is what we do about it – stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.”

Consistent with that position, the California congressman was one of the score of Democrats who signed on as co-sponsors of Tlaib’s resolution the day it was introduced.

In the past, signers of such a resolution would have reason to fear the wrath — and the electoral muscle — of AIPAC, the Israel-can-do-no-wrong lobby. But its intimidation power is waning. AIPAC’s support for Israel does not represent the views of the public, a reality that has begun to dawn on more Democratic officeholders.

“With American support for the Israeli government’s management of the conflict in Gaza undergoing a seismic reversal, and Democratic voters’ support for the Jewish state dropping off steeply, AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill,” the New York Times reported this fall. Notably, “some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations.”

Khanna has become more and more willing to tangle with AIPAC, which is now paying for attack ads against him.

On Thanksgiving, he tweeted about Gaza and accused AIPAC of “asking people to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes.” Khanna elaborated in a campaign email days ago, writing: “Any politician who caves to special interests on Gaza will never stand up to special interests on corruption, healthcare, housing, or the economy. If we can’t speak with moral clarity when thousands of children are dying, we won’t stand for working Americans when corporate power comes knocking.”

AIPAC isn’t the only well-heeled organization for Israel now struggling with diminished clout. Democratic Majority for Israel, an offshoot of AIPAC that calls itself “an American advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies within the United States Democratic Party,” is now clearly misnamed. Every bit of recent polling shows that in the interests of accuracy, the organization should change its name to “Democratic Minority for Israel.”

Yet the party’s leadership remains stuck in a bygone era. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, typifies how disconnected so many party leaders are from the actual views of Democratic voters. Speaking in Brooklyn three months ago, she flatly claimed that “nine out of 10 Democrats are pro-Israel.” She did not attempt to explain how that could be true when more than seven out of 10 Democrats say Israel is guilty of genocide.

The political issue of complicity with genocide will not go away.

Last week, Amnesty International released a detailed statement documenting that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” But in Congress, almost every Republican and a large majority of Democrats remain stuck in public denial about Israel’s genocidal policies.

Such denial will be put to the electoral test in Democratic primaries next year, when most incumbents will face an electorate far more morally attuned to Gaza than they are. What easily passes for reasoned judgment and political smarts in Congress will seem more like cluelessness to many Democratic activists and voters who can provide reality checks with their ballots.

• Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

President Donald Trump playfully scolded Sean Duffy for mispronouncing "Buttigieg" during a White House press conference on Wednesday.

Duffy, Secretary of Transportation and acting administrator for NASA, was commenting on an announcement that the Trump administration is slashing fuel economy standards put in place by former President Joe Biden. The move is aimed at making it easier for automakers to sell gasoline-powered vehicles.

"Congress set a rule that says you have to look at combustion engines. Biden and Buttigieg actually did an analysis..." Duffy said, before Trump interjected to correct his pronunciation of Buttigieg, the last name of Pete Buttigieg, former Secretary of Transportation.

"Boot edge edge!" Trump exclaimed, correcting Duffy.

Laughter broke out among the lawmakers surrounding Trump and the press.

"Edge. Edge. I'm sorry," Duffy said.

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) raised eyebrows on Fox Business Tuesday when she endorsed a U.S. invasion of Venezuela — but then she took it a step further, telling anchor David Asman, with no evidence, that Venezuela is "giving uranium" to hostile foreign powers and terrorist groups.

"This is going to be a very major success story, not only for [the Venezuelan people], but for us," said Salazar. "And I salute President Trump for having the fortitude, the courage, the political vision to be doing this. Because [Nicolas] Maduro is the head of a transnational criminal organization. Maduro is not the legitimate president of the country, so we're not invading a sovereign country that has a free and fair elected democratic president. No. This guy is a thug."

"And he's good friends with Hezbollah, and they're giving uranium to Hamas and to Iran and to North Korea and to Cuba and to Nicaragua," she continued. "Come on. It's time for the United States to do what we need to do. And thank god that Trump is doing it."

She went on to say Venezuela has "the largest reserves of oil in the world" and it'll be a "windfall" for America.

While Venezuela does have speculated uranium reserves, and the Iranian government helped carry out exploratory operations in 2009, there is no evidence that Venezuela is even currently mining uranium, let alone exporting it to any of the countries or groups Salazar mentioned.

Despite the questionable uranium claims, Venezuela has seen extreme economic and political repression under Nicolás Maduro, who has assumed the presidency for multiple terms by banning key opposition leaders and holding sham elections. Millions of people have fled the country to escape hyperinflation, hunger, and authoritarian policies.

The United States has sanctioned the Maduro regime for years under presidents from both parties, but Trump has escalated, with not just harsh new sanctions, but reportedly plans for attacks on military assets under the guise of drug strikes.

Former Department of Justice officials who were either forced out or resigned in protest of President Donald Trump's administration left some scathing resignation letters for their bosses, and a new organization is seeking to preserve as many of the letters as possible, according to a new report.

Since Trump took office in January, about 5,000 employees at the Department of Justice have either quit or resigned, CBS News reported on Sunday. Meanwhile, a cadre of those former employees is banding together to create a public display of the messages the former employees left for their bosses. Those employees have created an organization called Justice Connection that is organizing and posting the messages, the report added.

Stacey Young, a former civil division attorney for the Justice Department, is leading Justice Connection. A spokesperson for the organization told CBS News that they are working to preserve the messages because they "show what is happening in our country at this moment."

The repository includes messages left by high-profile former employees such as Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey.

"Fear is the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought," Comey wrote in a message. "Instead of fear, let this moment fuel the fire that already burns at the heart of this place."

Another former DOJ lawyer, Hagan Scotten, who resigned in protest of the Trump administration's decision to stop prosecuting New York City Mayor Eric Adams on corruption charges, also had her farewell message captured in the online database.

"If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion," Scotten wrote. "But it was never going to be me."

Read the entire report by clicking here.

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board slammed President Donald Trump's Health Secretary over his "ideological crusade" to turn the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into an anti-vaccine agency.

Last week, the CDC revised its Vaccine Safety page to include a new advisory for claims that "vaccines do not cause autism." The website now says the claim "is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”

The new guidance cites a discredited study authored by a scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who wrote a newsletter for Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. led, WSJ's editors wrote in a new editorial.

Kennedy has repeatedly asserted that there are ties between vaccines and childhood rates of autism, although experts have questioned the evidence he's provided to support such claims.

The editors noted that the revised guidelines seem like a lawyerly attempt by Kennedy to keep his promise to GOP Senators like Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) not to change the CDC's vaccine advisory.

"He is also breaking his pledge to Mr. Cassidy not to push vaccines for children off the market," the editorial notes. "Early next month, Mr. Kennedy’s handpicked Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will discuss aluminum adjuvants and could require manufacturers to remove them from vaccines. That could force a dozen vaccines out of use."

"The aluminum ingredient in vaccines isn’t the same as what’s in kitchen foil," the editorial adds. "Aluminum is naturally present in plants, soil, water, and many foods, including vegetables, tea, and chocolate. During the first six months of life, infants ingest significantly more aluminum from breast milk or formula than they get from vaccines. But RFK Jr. is on an ideological crusade. Reformulating these vaccines with different adjuvants would cost billions of dollars and could take years."

Read the entire editorial by clicking here.