Tag: trump administration
Zohran Mamdani

New York Republicans Beg Trump To Deport Zohran Mamdani

New York’s Young Republican Club has urged President Donald Trump's administration to revoke Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s U.S. citizenship and deport him under the Communist Control Act after his win in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday night.

The New York Republican club wrote a post on the social platform X Wednesday, urging President Donald Trump’s aides to take action.

“The radical Zohran Mamdani cannot be allowed to destroy our beloved city of New York," the post read. It added: "The Communist Control Act lets President Trump revoke @ZohranKMamdani’s citizenship and promptly deport him."

"The time for action is now — @StephenM and @RealTomHoman, New York is counting on you," the tweet read, tagging the official handles of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and immigration advisor Tom Homan.

Mamdani, a 33‑year‑old democratic socialist and New York state legislator, defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary Tuesday. The race drew national attention thanks to his progressive platform centered on rent freezes, free public transit, universal childcare and city-run grocery stores.

Born in Uganda and naturalized as an American citizen in 2018, Mamdani represents a generational and ideological shift in New York politics, energizing younger voters and gaining endorsements from leading progressive figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.).

The nature of the New York Republicans' deportation demand — which would hinge on the 1954 Communist Control Act — means it has virtually no legal basis, given Mamdani’s clearly documented U.S. citizenship. The Communist Control Act of 1954 is a U.S. federal law that formally outlawed the Communist Party and criminalized membership in or support for communist organizations.

This is not the first time Mamdani has faced such an attack from Republicans.

Earlier this month, Republican City Council member Vickie Paladino also called for his deportation in a post on X.

Mamdani responded forcefully, condemning the demand as part of a broader wave of “Donald Trump’s authoritarian administration” rhetoric that has included death threats and Islamophobic attacks.

“This is what Trump and his sycophants have wrought," Mamdani said in a statement to reporters at the time.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump's Fox News Obsession Driving US Toward War With Iran

Trump's Fox News Obsession Driving US Toward War With Iran

President Donald Trump appears to be careening toward a U.S. military strike on Iran as current and former Fox News figures — from posts on the network’s airwaves, elsewhere in the right-wing media ecosystem, and within his administration — fight to influence his decision.

For years, Trump's obsession with the Fox universe has driven policy decisions, administration staffing, and countless stream-of-consciousness social media posts. Now, the network will have an outsized role in determining America's potential involvement in a spiraling regional military conflict.

The George W. Bush administration spent months “following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein” before finally launching that war in March 2003. That strategy — based on cooked intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction dishonestly sold to American people — resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. service members and more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians as well as a massive financial cost.

Two decades later, Trump seems poised to join Israel's attack on Iran, with the stated goal of preventing that country from acquiring nuclear weapons that the U.S. intelligence community says it is not seeking. The president on Tuesday threatened to assassinate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bragged that the U.S. is involved in securing the airspace over that country, and called for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” all while the U.S. military is marshalling forces in the region. And that push has come with little effort to convince the public, which overwhelmingly opposes U.S. military involvement in Iran, of the necessity of such a course.

The Fox propaganda engine is driving this chaotic process. Trump reportedly became more interested in U.S. military action because he saw favorable Fox coverage of Israel’s initial attacks on Iran, while more recent segments have stressed the importance of U.S. involvement. Fox host Mark Levin and his former colleague Tucker Carlson are waging a scorched-earth battle for Trump’s ear, with Levin apparently gaining the advantage. And top administration officials with roles in a potential conflict — including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — are in their positions in the first place because Trump approved of their previous work at the network.

It remains unclear what the president will decide to do and how any of it will play out for the country and the world. What seems likely, however, is that the Trump administration will undertake its Iran policy with the same inconsistency that characterized his tariff policy; the same low quality of staff work that got a reporter added to a text chain where top officials shared info about a forthcoming U.S. strike; the same lack of care for the lives of foreigners that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people; and the same disinterest in following the law on display in his deportation plan.

And Trump’s action, regardless of what it is, will receive sycophantic cheers from his propagandists at Fox.

The Fox-Trump feedback loop is powering Iran policy

A June 17 New York Times story detailing how Trump had shifted from trying to restrain an Israeli attack on Iran while overseeing negotiations with its leaders to supporting Israel’s strike and considering U.S. involvement highlights the role of a key player: Fox.

“When he woke on Friday morning, his favorite TV channel, Fox News, was broadcasting wall-to-wall imagery of what it was portraying as Israel’s military genius,” the Times reported. “And Mr. Trump could not resist claiming some credit for himself.”

Under typical circumstances, a U.S. president shifting the nation’s military posture based on a few cable news segments would sound fantastical. But under Trump, major aspects of federal policy regularly turn on what he is hearing from his favored TV personalities. Fox hosts understand their influence and regularly seek to influence Trump’s decisions, both through their programs and in private conversations with the president.

Fox’s hosts thus wield incredible power over Trump’s actions. And in recent days, those figures have been using their platforms to tell the president that U.S. strikes on Iran are both important and likely to succeed with little cost. They know which buttons to push and are banging on them as hard as they can.

“Trump's favorite TV network has staked out the pro-war position – and it isn't making as much room for debate,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported on June 18. “Guest after guest on Fox has played to Trump's ego — simultaneously praising the president and pushing for US intervention through his television screen.”

Carlson and Levin go to war

Carlson and Levin are waging a scorched-earth campaign against each other, with each presenting their own views as the true America First position as they seek to influence Trump’s decision-making.

Carlson, a proponent of the right’s white nationalist and Holocaust-denying wing who tends to oppose foreign military interventions in favor of attacks on domestic enemies, claims that bombing Iran would “shut down Trump’s three core promises.” Levin, a staunch advocate for deploying U.S. power in the Middle East, argues that American intervention would be consistent with Trump’s policy of “peace through strength.”

Levin currently appears to have the upper hand. Politicoreported last week that Levin made his case to Trump directly at a June 4 meeting:

During a private lunch with the president at the White House last Wednesday, conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Trump that Iran was days away from building a nuclear weapon, an argument Trump’s own intelligence team has told the president is not accurate, according to an intelligence official as well as another Trump ally familiar with the matter. Levin urged Trump to allow the Israeli government to strike Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would torpedo the diplomacy.

Carlson subsequently lashed out at Levin and other Fox figures whom he (accurately) described as “warmongers.” He wrote on June 13:

The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians. The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it — between warmongers and peacemakers. Who are the warmongers? They would include anyone who’s calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran. On that list: Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rupert Murdoch, Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson. At some point they will all have to answer for this, but you should know their names now.

Levin replied, calling Carlson “a reckless and deceitful propagandist” who “promote[s] antisemitism and conspiracy nuts” (all obviously true). He added: “It doesn’t occur to you that your supposed sources are disloyal to POTUS. You and they are undermining him and you just declared your break from the President.” In a series of subsequent posts, he denigrated his former colleague as “Chatsworth Qatarlson” and accused him of “rooting for Iran” and “trashing our president.”

Carlson responded in a June 16 appearance on his ally Stephen Bannon’s program in which he claimed that Levin is “terrible on TV” (true) with a screen presence reminiscent of “listening to your ex-wife scream about alimony payments” (sexist but at least directionally correct). He further claimed that Levin’s appearances on Fox demonstrate that what the network is “doing is what they always do, which is just turning up the propaganda hose to full blast and just trying to, you know, knock elderly Fox viewers off their feet and make them submit to where you want them to” (extremely accurate).

Trump, for his part, weighed in on Sunday, June 15, saying of Carlson’s critique of his Iran policy, “I don't know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.” In a Monday night post, he described Carlson as “kooky” (another accurate characterization), adding, “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” Levin swiftly highlighted both comments on social media.

Levin took a curtain call on Hannity’s Fox show on Tuesday night, screaming, “You’re either a patriotic American who’s gonna get behind the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief, or you’re not!”

Many key administration roles are filled by former Foxers

Several senior administration officials who will play key roles in advising Trump on whether and how to conduct military strikes and then implement that policy are wildly unqualified people who got their jobs because the president liked their Fox appearances. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the 23 former Fox employees Trump has appointed to his second administration.

Gabbard, a former Fox contributor from the Carlson wing of the MAGA movement who lacks “the typical intelligence experience of past officeholders,” said in congressional testimony earlier this year that it was the conclusion of the intelligence community that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

Trump, however, apparently preferred Levin’s lunchtime claim that Iran was actually days away from a bomb, telling reporters on June 17, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having a weapon.” The president, Politicoreported Tuesday, “has increasingly mused about nixing Gabbard’s office completely” and, according to one source, “thinks she ‘doesn’t add anything to any conversation.’”

Trump promoted Hegseth from Fox & Friends Weekend co-host to the leadership of the Pentagon, and based on his past Fox commentary, he is likely a voice in favor of military action. His early leadership of the Defense Department is not encouraging for how such action might go — he has driven off his senior staff, discussed U.S. strikes in private texts that subsequently leaked, and oversaw a costly and ultimately ineffective campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Other relevant former Foxers include Mike Huckabee, the former network host Trump installed as U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Tammy Bruce, the former Fox contributor currently ensconced as the State Department spokesperson.

No matter what happens, this much is certain: A bunch of current and former Fox News employees are essentially deciding whether the U.S. is going to war.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Echoes Of Iraq Invasion As Trump Lurches Toward War On Iran

Echoes Of Iraq Invasion As Trump Lurches Toward War On Iran

President Donald Trump is publicly toying with the possibility of joining Israel's war on Iran, ignoring his own administration’s intelligence assessment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”—giving nightmarish flashbacks to President George W. Bush’s war on Iraq.

“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble,” Trump said on the White House lawn Wednesday morning.

According to The New York Times, Trump is inching closer to U.S. involvement in Iran, even though national intelligence disputes Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was weeks away from achieving nuclear capabilities. It’s the same claim Netanyahu has been falsely asserting for three decades, making him sound like the boy who cried wolf.

Meanwhile, Trump is feuding with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified before Congress in March that Iran isn’t building a nuclear weapon and is now seemingly trying to deter Trump from going to war.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday. “I think they were very close to having a weapon.”

And like Bush, who was goaded into invading Iraq by fellow bloodthirsty Republicans—like Vice President Dick Cheney, who falsely claimed that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction”—Trump is being provoked by GOP hawks advocating for bombing Iran.

"He's very focused, very calm," warmonger Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told CNN. "I feel like when he says no nukes for Iran, he means it. He gave them a chance for diplomacy. I think they made a miscalculation when it comes to President Trump."

And Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, told Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” that Iran is "very close to having enough pure weapons-grade uranium for several weapons."

He also said that Trump has "appropriately kept all options on the table."

This is terrifying because Trump has a history of believing the last person he speaks to on an issue. And given that the Iran hawks now have his ear, it looks like Trump may be swayed by their bloodlust and enter the United States into another aimless war.

"He’s easily manipulable, but this is on him. That is where we are now. He has engaged the U.S. in a new war in the Middle East, and he seems to be on the brink of going just all in," Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, told the New Republic.

What’s more, Republicans and right-wing media are also painting people against U.S. involvement in the war as un-American—trying to pressure Trump’s base, which is uneasy about it, to fall in line. It echoes right-wing media tactics used to sell the public on the war in Iraq in 2002.

"This is good versus evil. You’re either a patriotic American who is going to get behind the president of the United States—the commander-in-chief—or you’re not," Fox News personality Mark Levin said Tuesday night.

Sound familiar?

As the saying goes: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Labor Movement Enraged By ICE Arrest Of California SEIU Chief

Labor Movement Enraged By ICE Arrest Of California SEIU Chief

Unions across the United States have been rallying against the detainment of California labor leader David Huerta, who was arrested at an immigration protest on June 6 and released Monday afternoon on a $50,000 bond.

UPDATE: David Huerta was just released from custody!

[image or embed]

— SEIU California (@seiuca.bsky.social) June 9, 2025 at 10:50 PM

Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union California was injured during the arrest and charged on Monday for purportedly impeding Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

The Trump administration triggered protests by rounding up immigrants in the Los Angeles area in an effort to increase its deportation numbers.

“What happened to me is not about me; This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening,” Huerta wrote in a statement on June 6. “Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”

The Trump administration’s decision to arrest and charge Huerta is serving as a rallying point for labor unions, immigrants, and minority communities that are being targeted.

“They have woke us up,” Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California, told the Los Angeles Times.

With more than 750,000 members, SEIU California called for Huerta’s immediate release during a rally in downtown Los Angeles Monday. Similar rallies also occurred in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Boston, and Chicago.

Other unions lent their voices to the cause, too.

“The nearly 15 million working people of the AFL-CIO and our affiliated unions demand the immediate release of California Federation of Labor Unions Vice President and SEIU California and SEIU-USWW President David Huerta,” the AFL-CIO wrote in a release on June 7.

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, accused ICE agents of violating Huerta’s First Amendment rights by arresting him in the first place.

“AFSCME stands in unwavering solidarity with our union brother David Huerta. We demand his immediate release, and we will not be silent until justice is done,” Saunders wrote in a statement on June 8.

The arrest was also condemned by lawmakers like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who, in a statement released Sunday, said that the arrest of Huerta was “unacceptable.”

“This is the United States of America and we will not be intimidated by a wannabe dictator in the executive branch,” Jeffries wrote in a statement on June 8.

President Donald Trump spent much of the weekend attempting to escalate the situation in Los Angeles, particularly by deploying National Guard troops to the area over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

Trump and his border czar Tom Homan also promoted the idea of arresting Democratic leaders for opposing the Trump administration’s mass deportations.

In addition to vocal opposition from multiple unions and political leaders, other Democrats have criticized the escalating conflict created by the Trump team.

“Governors are the Commanders in Chief of their National Guard and the federal government activating them in their own borders without consulting or working with a state’s governor is ineffective and dangerous,” 22 Democratic governors wrote in a statement released on Monday.

“Further,” they continued, “threatening to send the U.S. Marines into American neighborhoods undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust, and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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