TRUMP EXPLOITS 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF US INDEPENDENCE FOR YET ANOTHER GRIFT. Allies of the Trump administration, in partnership with the White House, are reportedly using the upcoming 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as another opportunity to solicit deep-pocketed donors, enticing them with promises of access to the president and other rewards, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (2/9).
The New York Times reported Feb. 8 that donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250—a group announced by President Donald Trump in December—have been promised a path to “gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fundraising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters,” including through his crypto scam and ballroom project.
Trump has described Freedom 250 as a “public-private partnership” dedicated to organizing “a celebration of America like no other” later this year. Listed as official corporate sponsors of the initiative are prominent corporate names, including ExxonMobil, Mastercard, and Palantir.
The Times obtained a donor solicitation document circulated by Meredith O’Rourke, Trump’s top fundraiser. Donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250 “will receive prominent logo placement at Freedom 250 events,” which are expected to include UFC fights and an IndyCar race.
Freedom 250 appears to have been created to dodge oversight that applies to America250, a bipartisan congressional commission formed to plan official celebrations of the nation’s semiquincentennial.
“American history is being subordinated to Trump’s cult of personality,” Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore wrote in Mother Jones’ March-April issue. “The president’s face is suddenly everywhere—next to George Washington on America250-themed National Parks passes; alongside Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on giant banners hanging from federal buildings; on a $1 coin under consideration by the US Treasury.”
“Faced with sporadic pushback from a congressional commission overseeing America250 and from career officials at various agencies, Trump is now seeking to evade even these modest constraints,” they added, pointing to the launch of Freedom 250.
Public Citizen demanded a congressional probe of Freedom 250’s activities, which the watchdog organization’s co-presidents described as a “potential diversion of taxpayer funds for highly partisan purposes.” According to the Times, roughly $10 million in taxpayer funds has “already been redirected to Freedom 250 from America250 for a fleet of six mobile museums called ‘Freedom Trucks’ that rolled out last month.”
“Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise,” said Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert. “Once again, nothing is sacred in the Trump administration, not even the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Everything is for sale to corporate and potentially foreign interests.”
BLACK CAUCUS CHAIR RAKES ‘BIGOTED AND RACIST REGIME’ AS TRUMP REFUSES TO APOLOGIZE FOR OBAMA APE POST. As President Donald Trump refused to apologize for a now-deleted social media post in which former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama are portrayed as apes, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus on Feb. 6 blasted what she called the “bigoted and racist regime” in the White House, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams (4/7).
“It’s very clear that there was an intent to harm people, to hurt people, with this video,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-NY) said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Every week we are, as the American people, put in a position where we have to respond to something very cruel or something extremely off-putting that this administration does. It’s a part of their M.O. at this point.”
After dismissing the widespread revulsion—including by some Republican lawmakers—over Trump’s sharing of the racist election conspiracy video on his Truth Social network as “fake outrage,” the White House subsequently claimed that an aide “erroneously made the post,” which was deleted after nearly 12 hours online.
The president told reporters aboard Air Force One that evening, “I didn’t make a mistake” and that he is the “least racist president you’ve had in a long time.”
Trump launched his political career by amplifying the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists.” Since then, he has made numerous bigoted statements about racial minorities, immigrants, Muslims, women, and others.
Brushing off the administration’s explanation for Trump’s post, Clarke said “they don’t tell the truth.”
“If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from,” she contended.
“Here we are, in the year 2026, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, the 100th anniversary of the commemoration of Black history, and this is what comes out of the White House on a Friday morning,” the congresswoman added. “It’s beneath all of us.”
Asked what it means that Trump—who rarely retracts anything—deleted the post, Clarke said, “I think it’s more of a political expediency than it is any moral compass.”
“As my mother would say,” she added, “‘Too late. Mercy’s gone.’”
Civil rights groups also condemned Trump, with Color of Change posting on Facebook that “this is white supremacy expressed from the Oval Office.”
“Trump resents what the Obamas represent: A Black family that is accomplished, respected, and widely admired,” the group continued. “Their success contradicts the worldview he has spent years promoting. His attacks follow a clear trajectory—from birther conspiracies questioning Obama’s legitimacy, to false accusations of treason, to now circulating imagery rooted in centuries of racial dehumanization used to justify slavery, lynching, and violence.”
“Republican leadership has been silent,” Color of Change added. “Elected officials who refuse to condemn this behavior are choosing to normalize it.”
NAACP president Derrick Johnson said in a statement that “Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable.”
Johnson asserted that Trump is attempting to distract from the cost of living crisis and Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
“You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he said. “You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”
JUDGE DENIES DHS BID TO QUICKLY DEPORT FAMILY OF 5-YEAR-OLD LIAM CONEJO RAMOS. The Trump administration’s bid to expedite deportation proceedings against 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his family faltered Feb. 6 as a judge granted them more time to plead their asylum case, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams (4/9).
Danielle Molliver, an attorney for Ramos’ family, told CNN that a judge issued a continuance in the case, postponing it to a later date.
The US Department of Homeland Security filed a motion Feb. 4 seeking to fast-track the Ecuadorian family’s deportation after Liam and his father a federal judge ordered them released from a Texas detention center Jan. 31.
Zena Stenvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public Schools, where Ramos is a student, told CNN the Feb. 6 ruling “provides additional time, and with that, continued uncertainty for a child and his family.”
“Our concern remains centered on Liam and all children who deserve stability, safety, and the opportunity to be in school without fear,” Stenvik added. “We will continue to advocate for outcomes that prioritize children.”
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, in the driveway of their Columbia Heights home on Jan. 20 during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s ongoing deadly immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.
They were taken to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center southwest of San Antonio, Texas. Run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, the facility has been plagued by reports of poor health and hygiene conditions and accusations of inadequate medical care for children.
Detainees report prison-like conditions and say they’ve been served moldy food infested with worms and forced to drink putrid water. Some have described the facility as “truly a living hell.”
Ramos, who fell ill during his detention in Dilley, and his father were ordered released earlier this month on a federal judge’s order, and is now back in Minnesota.
Molliver accused the Trump administration of retaliating against the family following their release. Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed that “there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.”
Arias told Minnesota Public Radio Feb. 6 that he is uncertain about his family’s future.
“The government is moving many pieces, it’s doing everything possible to do us harm, so that they’ll probably deport us,” he said. “We live with that fear too.”
Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who helped accompany Ramos and his father back to Minnesota, said at a news conference that DHS “should leave Liam alone.”
“His family came in legally through the asylum process,” Castro said. “And when I left the Dilley detention center, one of the ICE officers explained to me that his father was on a one-year parole in place, so they should allow that to continue.”
LEAKED DOCUMENT SHOWS FEW IMMIGRANTS DETAINED BY ICE HAVE VIOLENT CRIMINAL RECORDS. An internal US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document shows just 14% of immigrants taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2025 had either been charged with or convicted of violent criminal offenses document leaked to CBS News, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (2/9).
The DHS report also shows 40% of immigrants detained last year have no criminal record at all except for civil immigration law violations, such as living unlawfully in the US or overstaying a visa, which CBS News noted “are typically adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil—not criminal—proceedings.”
The internal document undermines President Trump’s past claims that his administration is focused primarily on deporting “the worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants, such as those belonging to criminal gangs. In reality, the document shows, less than 2% of immigrants detained last year had any sort of gang affiliation.
As noted in January by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, ICE during Trump’s second term has grown more aggressive in detaining people with no prior criminal offenses save for civil immigration law violations.
In January 2024, for example, immigrants with no prior criminal record accounted for just 6% of ICE detainees. By January 2025, that percentage surged to 43%.
ICE has drastically ramped up its arrests of immigrants in the last year, as White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has demanded that the agency hit arrest quotas of at least 3,000 per day.
While ICE has not yet reached that goal, they did make an estimated 393,000 arrests during Trump’s first year back in the White House, an average of more than 1,000 per day.
CBS News notes that the internal DHS document “does not include arrests by Border Patrol agents, who the Trump administration has deployed to places far away from the US-Mexico border, like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis,” where they “have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people, including US citizens, to question them about their immigration status.”
FBI SUMMONS STATE ELECTION OFFICIALS TO SECRETIVE MEETING AFTER TRUMP THREAT TO ‘NATIONALIZE’ MIDTERMS. State election officials were left unnerved after being summoned by the FBI to a mysterious conference to discuss “preparations” for this year’s midterm elections, which President Donald Trump has recently called for Republicans to “nationalize” in violation of the Constitution, Stephen Prager noted at Common Dreams (2/6).
On Feb. 3, election officials in all 50 states received an email from Kellie M. Hardiman, who identified herself as an “FBI Election Executive.”
Hardiman said the officials were invited to a call on Feb. 25 with “your election partners” at the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
The email, obtained via a public records request by Matt Berg of Crooked Media, did not specify the purpose of the meeting other than to say it was “to prepare for the 2026 US midterm elections.”
Hardiman added that the FBI and other agencies “would like to invite you to a call where we can discuss our preparations for the cycle, as well as updates and resources we can provide to you and your staff.”
At the end of the email, she reiterated, “We look forward to speaking with you in support of the 2026 midterm elections.”
Berg said he contacted the FBI for comment, to which a spokesperson responded: “Thank you for reaching out. The FBI has no comment.”
The email has heightened fears that the Trump administration is meddling in the midterms or planning to do so; he has suggested on multiple occasions that the elections should be “canceled” outright. Republican strategists are reportedly increasingly worried that the GOP could lose control of both the US Senate and the House.
Although the Constitution plainly states that elections are to be run by state governments, Trump earlier this week said Republicans should “nationalize” elections and “take control of the voting in at least 15 places” led by Democrats.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told Berg he’d never heard of a conference call like this. He said he wrote back to Hardiman: “Is this real? Given what’s occurred over the last two weeks, I am concerned.”
The inclusion of the Department of Homeland Security as one of the election “partners” is also noteworthy, given the recent suggestion by Trump ally Steve Bannon that the president will “have ICE surround the polls,” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The agency has increasingly acted as a sort of paramilitary force for Trump in the localities where it’s been deployed, most recently in Minnesota.
At Trump’s apparent direction, the FBI raided an election hub in Atlanta Jan. 28 to seize materials from the 2020 election to further his already disproven claims that his loss to former President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
And it was reported that back in May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent a team to Puerto Rico to seize voting machines in an effort to investigate another outlandish Trump claim that they were hacked by Venezuela. Sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that no evidence of that conspiracy was uncovered.
“It’s unconstitutional for the president to do what he wants to do,” Aguilar said. “We understand that what he’s trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election, because the ‘26 election is critical to the ‘28 election.”
Aguilar said officials in Nevada are “constantly preparing and strategizing” for whatever Trump might attempt and said, “We have to prepare for that litigation at a moment’s notice, and we will be prepared in Nevada to push back.”
Danny Miller, an attorney who has worked for Renew Democracy and Democracy Forward, expressed fear about Trump’s coordination of federal law enforcement agencies to patrol elections, given that he has already supported one violent attempt to overturn his loss in 2020.
“Trump will try to do something far worse than January 6th before all is said and done,” Miller said. “It’s up to civil society to use all the tools of democracy to stop him.”
NEW PROJECT 25-BACKED TRUMP RULE GUTS PROTECTIONS FOR 50,000 FEDERAL WORKERS. The Trump administration on Feb. 4 finalized a major civil service rule change that makes it easier to fire certain federal employees and replace them with political loyalists—a move that critics say increases the likelihood of abuse of power, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams (4/5).
The new policy at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—the federal government’s independent central human resources agency—reclassifies tens of thousands of federal workers as “policy/career,” making them effectively at-will employees and easier to terminate.
The policy, known as Schedule F, was first proposed by President Donald Trump during his first term, which expired before he could fully implement it. Former President Joe Biden rescinded the policy, but Trump revived it on his first day back in office in January 2025, despite warnings from experts who say it is illegal.
Schedule F is one of the policies recommended in Project 2025, the far-right initiative to boost the power of the presidency and purge the federal civil service.
OPM estimates that around 2% of the federal workforce, or approximately 50,000 employees, will be affected by the rule change, which the agency said is aimed at “strengthening accountability, improving performance, and reinforcing a merit-based federal workforce.”
Scott Kupor, who heads the OPM, said in a statement that the rule change “restores a basic principle of democratic governance: Those entrusted with shaping and executing policy must be accountable for results.”
“This rule preserves merit-based hiring, veterans’ preference, and whistle-blower protections while ensuring senior career officials responsible for advancing President Trump’s agenda can be held to the same performance expectations that exist throughout much of the American work force,” he added.
However, critics are sounding the alarm over parts of the new policy, including a provision allowing agencies to fire employees who “obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting presidential directives.”
“This rule is a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service and the government services the American people rely on every day,” American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley said in a statement.
“When people see turmoil and controversy in Washington, they don’t ask for more politics in government, they ask for competence and professionalism,” Kelley continued. “OPM is doing the opposite. They’re rebranding career public servants as ‘policy’ employees, silencing whistleblowers, and replacing competent professionals with political flunkies without any neutral, independent protections against politicization and arbitrary abuse of power.”
“A professional civil service means nurses and doctors can advocate for patient safety, inspectors can report violations, cybersecurity experts can warn about threats, and benefits specialists can tell the truth about what it takes to deliver services—without worrying they’ll be punished for it,” Kelley argued.
“Turning tens or maybe hundreds thousands of these professionals into at-will employees doesn’t make government more accountable,” he added. “It makes it more vulnerable to pressure, retaliation, and political interference, which is exactly the opposite of what the public is asking for right now.”
Democracy Forward, which represents AFGE and another public sector union in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s revival of Schedule F, said in a statement Thursday, “The final rule continues to weaken more than a century of bipartisan civil service protections by allowing the administration to remove experienced, nonpolitical federal employees at will while stripping away civil service protections, meaningful oversight, and appeal rights.”
“Existing law already provides mechanisms to address employee misconduct,” the group added. “This rule is not about accountability, but about politicization.”
ECONOMIC FALLOUT FROM TRUMP POLICIES IS HERE — AND IT’S UGLY. As President Donald Trump tries to gaslight Americans into believing that he’s fixed the economy, a number of economic indicators are now flashing red as his idiotic trade and immigration policies are finally having the consequences economists warned about, Emily Singer noted at DailyKos.com (2/5).
On Feb. 5, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the number of job openings has fallen to a more than five-year low, confirming Americans’ fears that it is really difficult to find a job right now.
As of the end of December, there were 6.5 million job openings, a decline of 386,000 from the month prior.
“The U.S. ‘hiring recession’ shows no sign of ending,” Navy Federal Credit Union chief economist Heather Long wrote in a post on X, adding that, “Firms aren’t even thinking about hiring (outside of healthcare and all-star AI talent).”
What’s more, layoffs in January were up 118% from the same point in 2025, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Feb. 5. Companies axed 108,435 workers in January, the highest number for any January since 2009, when the economy was cratering during the Great Recession.
Trump has been whining about polling showing that Americans believe the economy sucks and that he is to blame. In fact, he went as far as threatening to sue The New York Times when it released a poll showing Americans think he’s made the situation worse since he took office a year ago.
But the economic numbers show that Americans are right in their belief that the economy is on the brink. And no amount of lying from Trump can fix that.
IMMIGRANTS DELIVERED $14.5 TRILLION SURPLUS TO US ECONOMY OVER 30 YEARS: REPORT. A groundbreaking new report released Feb. 2 details how immigrants in the U.S. over the last three decades have contributed a massive surplus to the nation’s economy, resulting in a total of more than $14 trillion over that period because immigrant families generate significantly more benefits to fiscal health than they take away in the form of benefits received or downside costs, Jon Queally noted at Common Dreams (4/4).
The white paper by the libertarian free-marketeers at the Cato Institute, not a left-leaning outfit, builds on an existing model developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to create a first-of-its kind analyses to determine “how immigrants, both legal and illegal, and their children affect government budgets” in a cumulative manner.
Looking at 30 years of data, the 95-page report — titled “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023” — discovered that immigrants overall “generated a fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion” over those years. In part, the NASEM-Cato model shows:
• Every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
• Immigrants generated nearly $10.6 trillion more in federal, state, and local taxes than they induced in total government spending.
• Accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt, immigrants saved $14.5 trillion in debt over this 30-year period.
• Immigrants cut US budget deficits by about a third from 1994 to 2023, and fiscal savings grew to $878 billion in 2023.
The paper concludes that “the average immigrant is much less costly than the average US-born American, and that immigrants impose lower costs per person on old-age benefit, education, and public safety programs.”
ARE TRUMP AND HIS TEAM TRYING TO LOSE THE MIDTERMS? President Donald Trump and the top idiots in his administration are running a master class in how to alienate voters ahead of a critical election, so much so that they should make a movie called “How to Lose the Midterms in 10 Days.”
Having already flipped many Hispanic voters back to Democrats with his cruel and deadly immigration enforcement, and turned moderates away with the general chaos he’s inflicted on American life, Trump and his top officials are now angering the gun lobby and right-wing Second Amendment supporters by—I kid you not—threatening to take away their guns, Emily Singer noted at DailyKos.com (2/3)
“[If] you bring a gun into the district, you mark my words, you’re going to jail,” Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Monday night on Fox News. “I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail and hope you get the gun back.”
Yes, the Trump administration is now threatening to do the very thing Trump and Republicans have long said Democrats want to do: take your guns.
Republicans—whose gun worship has prevented reforms to decrease horrific mass shootings—were quick to condemn Pirro’s head-scratching comment.
“Shall NOT be infringed is NOT a suggestion,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, the unhinged Georgia Republican who wore an assault-rifle pin on his suit lapel after a spate of mass shootings, wrote in a post on X. “We need nationwide concealed carry reciprocity NOW. Our Second Amendment freedoms don’t disappear when we cross state lines or enter our nation’s capital city.”
“This is not how this works,” Rep. Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, wrote in response to Pirro’s comments. “[Attorney General Pam Bondi] needs to have a quick conversation & course correction here.”
“I bring a gun into the district every week,” Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida wrote in a post on X, tagging Pirro’s government-associated username. “I have a license in Florida and D.C. to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others. Come and Take it!”
“Second Amendment rights are not extinguished just because an American visits D.C. American gun owners who conceal carry are among the most law-abiding citizens in the nation. They are friends of law enforcement; they should not be targeted by law enforcement,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a post on X.
Pirro’s comments so angered the GOP that she had to issue an apology and clarification on Tuesday.
“Let me be clear: I am a proud supporter of the Second Amendment,” she wrote in a post on X. “Washington, D.C. law requires handguns be licensed in the District with the Metropolitan Police Department to be carried into our community. We are focused on individuals who are unlawfully carrying guns and will continue building on that momentum to keep our communities safe.”
This is just the latest instance in which the Trump administration has angered “Second Amendment people,” as Trump once infamously put it.
After intensive-care nurse Alex Pretti was shot to death by Trump’s newly unmasked immigration agents in Minnesota, Trump defended the officers and said Pretti’s killing was justified because Pretti was carrying a firearm in public.
“You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns,” Trump said in days after Pretti was shot to death.
