Progressive search for action

10+ min ago (284+ words) A former White House official from President Donald Trump's first term blasted the president's trade agenda on Tuesday during an interview on CNN. Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, discussed Trump's trade agenda on Tuesday's broadcast of "The Arena" with host Kasie Hunt. He commended Trump for bringing energy prices down, but argued that doing so revealed that the president's agenda has been a complete "failure." "The fact that he has lowered energy prices is significant, as he has by 25%, in some way, just exacerbates how bad the trade agenda is, because if you actually lower energy prices by that much, and you still have inflation at 3%, it shows this trade agenda is a failure, and it's not working," Short said. A signature element of Trump's trade agenda is increasing tariffs on foreign goods. Trump…...

32+ min ago (571+ words) But the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) was among those wondering whether the Dells' investment of $6.25 billion'a fraction of their $148 billion fortune'would ultimately benefit wealthy investors far more. The Dells, who are behind Dell Technologies, announced the investment plan months after President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law. The tax and spending law includes a provision that would start an investment account for every US citizen child born between January 2025 and December 2028, with a $1,000 investment from the US government. As Jezebel reported, the couple's contribution would go to an additional 25 million children, up to age 10, who were born prior to the 2025 cut-off date for the initial Trump Accounts. "Around 80% of children born between 2016-2024 would theoretically qualify, although there are cutoffs based on household income: Applying families would have to live in ZIP codes where the median…...

1+ hour, 18+ min ago (264+ words) U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a cabinet meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 2, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made an eyebrow-raising comment about President Donald Trump during a recent meeting of the Trump administration's Cabinet. While in the middle of her remarks at the meeting, Noem observed that no hurricanes had made landfall in the U.S. during the 2025 hurricane season, which typically lasts from June through November. Her comment was met with laughter from the assembled Cabinet members. "Sir, you made it through the hurricane season without a hurricane " you kept the hurricanes away. We appreciate that," Noem said. The Homeland Security secretary's praise of Trump was immediately met with ridicule from various elected officials, journalists and commentators. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), took a sarcastic tone while also…...

1+ hour, 21+ min ago (283+ words) U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) departs the House floor, following the vote of the U.S. House of Representatives, which passed the bill seeking to release files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 18, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) grip on power appears to be slipping, as a growing number of the House Republican Conference publicly denounces his leadership. That's according to a Tuesday article by Politico's Meredith Lee Hill and Hailey Fuchs, who reported that Johnson's tenure as speaker appears to be teetering "on a razor's edge" as numerous Republicans take stances against him. "Increasingly, rank-and-file House Republicans are bringing their spats with Johnson into the open, suggesting the speaker is losing further control over his restive members as his already slim majority threatens to narrow further and potentially devastating…...

1+ hour, 39+ min ago (161+ words) President Donald Trump wants to keep former special counsel Jack Smith's final report classified, according to a new court filing Tuesday. In the filing from his personal lawyer, the president told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon " a judge he appointed and his first direct request of her " to continue an extension on an 11-month order to block the Justice Department from sharing the report, Politico reported. Smith submitted it just before Trump's second inauguration and reportedly tells the story of the criminal case against the president after he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, including in a bathroom. "The filing is infused with the typical disdain Trump has expressed for his former prosecutors, labeling Smith a 'so-called special counsel' and saying the case was 'marred by numerous deficiencies and repeated abuses of office,'" the outlet reported. ALSO READ: GOP judge…...

1+ hour, 54+ min ago (1716+ words) A mass movement is needed to address ten major issues. British history. Its political system has utterly failed to confront a genocide. Rather, that system has allowed the British establishment to be complicit in one of the worst horrors of our time " Israel's two-year offensive against Palestinians, complete with ethnic cleansing, systematic attacks on schools and hospitals, and crimes against humanity. Now, under a current supposed ceasefire, Israel is still killing Palestinians and their plight in Gaza remains dire, as the world sees the extent of the mass destruction visited on them. Throughout the attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, British leaders have actively cooperated with Israel in their military, trade and diplomatic policies. Still now, significant sanctions on Israel are completely off the government's agenda " a striking contrast to Russia " because the establishment chooses to back Israel even in its…...

1+ hour, 56+ min ago (729+ words) As 24th annual meeting of member states kicks off. International Criminal Court (ICC) officials on Monday said the court is implementing countermeasures to protect the court from US sanctions, but they will remain confidential to ensure their effectiveness. The officials spoke in The Hague on the first day of the annual meeting of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), which is made up of representatives from 125 countries that have ratified the ICC's founding Rome Statute. The gathering is taking place at a time of unprecedented threats to the court, prompted mostly by its investigation into Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories. Since February, US President Donald Trump's administration has imposed financial and visa sanctions on the court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. In August, Trump then sanctioned two deputy prosecutors, Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye…...

2+ hour, 14+ min ago (1209+ words) The raid on humanitarian aid providers on the U.S.Mexico divide late last month was the first where Border Patrol entered structures without a warrant. U.S. Border Patrol agents raided a humanitarian aid station in the Arizona desert late last month, taking three people into custody and breaking into a trailer without a warrant. Video taken by No More Deaths, a faith-based aid group out of Tucson that operates the site, shows agents with flashlights prying open a trailer door and entering the structure. The camp, located just miles from the U.S.Mexico border, has long been used to provide medical care to migrants crossing one of the world's deadliest stretches of desert. Monica Ruiz House, a No More Deaths volunteer who'd recently been involved in deportation defense work in Chicago, said the warrantless raid spoke to a rising culture of lawlessness among…...

2+ hour, 21+ min ago (277+ words) U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reacts as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 2, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder One Republican member of Congress with an extensive military record is calling on President Donald Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. During a Tuesday interview with CNN reporter Manu Raju, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force and serves on the House Armed Forces Committee, expanded on his view that the embattled defense secretary should be "held accountable" in the wake of a Washington Post report alleging that he ordered the deaths of two people who survived a missile strike. "We do not kill two survivors who are not posing an imminent threat to anybody," Bacon said. "I just want to make sure I get the facts....

2+ hour, 30+ min ago (826+ words) The founding conference of Your Party, the new left formation led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, took place this weekend in Liverpool. The unelected leadership installed by Corbyn suffered some narrow defeats. Members of the UK's new left party gathered in Liverpool this weekend for a founding conference. The formation launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, two politicians expelled from the Labour Party, was provisionally called Your Party. On Sunday, 37 percent of members voted to confirm this as the permanent name. But the conference only had four names to choose from " the alternatives were Popular Alliance, For the Many, and Our Party. How had those four options been whittled down from countless suggestions? Who had done the whittling? This was not quite clear. The night before the conference started, this not-yet-founded party announced the expulsion of a number…...