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Pompeo supports the use of torture. He has longstanding relationships with anti-Muslim extremists. And his hawkish views on Iran and North Korea could very well lead us into another disastrous war. I will vote no on his nomination.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 9, 2018

Bernie Sanders calls for repeal of GOP tax law

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called Monday for the Republican tax law to be repealed after the Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit will hit $1 trillion in 2020.

The CBO projected that the budget deficit will rise to $804 billion for 2018 before hitting the $1 trillion mark in 2020 — two years earlier than anticipated. The national debt is also expected to hit $33 trillion in ten years after it hit the $21 trillion mark last month. Democrats are laying blame at the acceleration of the deficit and debt with the tax law that was passed in December.

“Over and over again, President Trump and his administration falsely claimed that their $1.5 trillion tax cut bill would pay for itself,” Sanders said in a statement. “Today’s Congressional Budget Office report puts that myth to rest.”

“According to CBO, President Trump’s massive tax break for the wealthy and large corporations is the primary reason that the federal deficit and national debt will explode over the next decade,” Sanders said. “Republicans are already using the huge increase in the debt that they caused as an excuse to make major cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. That is unacceptable.”

“At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we have got to repeal all of President Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations and rebuild the disappearing middle class,” he added.

Millions of people are raising money on GoFundMe right now to fund their health care and life-saving medication. To my mind, that is not a functioning health care system. We must pass Medicare for all. pic.twitter.com/Xz0IqFtoZA

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 9, 2018

We do not need more evidence to show us that pipelines are dangerous and must be stopped. We need to break our addiction to fossil fuels, create a sustainable energy system and end these disasters for good.https://t.co/cX4Mm4ePMz

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 9, 2018

https://youtu.be/TmRss1mAlRo

The Vindication of Dennis Kucinich -When he ran for president, he was ridiculed and dismissed. It turns out he was the future of American politics.

Almost everybody laughed at Dennis Kucinich during that race, except a fervent coalition of students and antiwar protesters who believed in him. He was the last to bow out to Kerry, right before the party convention, yet he had fewer than 100 delegates — about 3 percent of the total required to be nominated. He lost his own state of Ohio and even his congressional district.

“I feel like Johnny Appleseed,” he told the New York Times before the end. “I’m planting seeds all over this country: seeds of peace, seeds of hope. At some point, maybe years from now, there will be orchards.”

Today, Kucinich, 71, is running for the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio, and those orchards aren’t just blooming — they are on the verge of taking over the entire landscape of American politics. It has been six years since he lost his congressional seat, but the stunning beatdown of both the Democratic and Republican establishments during the 2016 presidential campaign was Kucinich’s invitation to come in from the fringe. Populist causes that he has championed forever despite derision and dismissal — universal health care, free college tuition, rethinking trade agreements, reining in the surveillance state, bringing troops home, making huge investments in infrastructure — are now mainstream positions within his own party.

“Kucinich was ahead of his time in terms of having that progressive politics before it’s popular, before it’s cool,” says Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, the national progressive advocacy group born out of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. (Our Revolution has endorsed Kucinich in the governor’s race, though Sanders himself has not taken a position.)

But Kucinich didn’t just anticipate where the left was headed. He previewed elements of where the right was going, too. “I have multitudes of humanity within me,” Kucinich has said, paraphrasing Walt Whitman, and those multitudes reflect both the rainbow utopianism of Sanders and the working-class populism of President Trump’s campaign (if not always his administration). Kucinich — who spent some of his time away from elected office serving as a Fox News contributor — is a rare politician who is now occupying that sweet spot where Sandersism meets elements of Trumpism. He is not the only sentinel posted at this curious crossroads, but he may be the most prominent one currently running for office.

The future of Texas and its healthcare mean a lot to this little one. That’s why today Olivia is launching #BabiesForBeto in support of @BetoORourke’s campaign for U.S. Senate. If you are a baby looking to show your support for Beto, take a selfie and post it using #BabiesForBeto pic.twitter.com/mCgyAy2KpV

— Miguel Solis (@MiguelForDallas) April 9, 2018

Progressivism As A Brand

ow can you tell if a political candidate is sincere and will actually fight for your values? Anyone running for office is going to make promises, but the difficulty is in figuring out which individuals, if any, do mean what they say and which ones simply “figure out which way the political winds are blowing” and pander accordingly. The latter type are dangerous, because while their lack of convictions may mean you can sometimes pressure them into doing the right thing for purely self-interested reasons, they will also sell you out the moment it is politically advantageous.

As the Democrats try to retake Congress this year and the presidency in 2020, this distinction will be important in choosing nominees. The Bernie Sanders campaign has successfully “dragged the party to the left,” and previously fringe policies like single-payer healthcare and universal free college are now being embraced by mainstream Democrats. But while some Democrats have undoubtedly come to understand why single-payer could make people’s lives better, plenty of others will simply have taken note of the fact that Sanders is the most popular politician in the country and adjusted their Very Strongly Held Personal Beliefs accordingly. And while that might still be good news for the left, ultimately you still need people to hold office who are serious about following through on their promises and will be willing to expend personal political capital for the sake of the public good.

In other words, the Democratic Party needs to stay far away from candidates like Shri Thanedar. Thanedar is a leading contender in the race for Michigan governor who has compared himself with Bernie Sanders and brags in advertisements about being the “most progressive Democrat” in the race. His campaign materials criticize the “very wealthy” for hoarding too much of the nation’s income, and he has embraced the fight for a $15 minimum wage.

And yet, as Zaid Jilani recently reported in The Intercept, there is good reason to conclude that Thanedar doesn’t believe a single word he says. Before he announced his run, Thanedar, the multimillionaire CEO of a chemical analysis company, told a team of political consultants that he “didn’t care” whether he ran as a Republican or Democrat, and wanted to join “whichever side [the consultants] thought he had the best chance to win on.”

‘Horrifying’ Video Shows Israeli Soldiers Shouting With Joy After Sniping Unarmed Palestinian in Gaza

Just days after a journalist and at least eight other Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli forces during anti-occupation demonstrations in Gaza, a recent video of an Israeli sniper shooting an unarmed Palestinian man emerged for the first time on social media Monday, providing further evidence that the deliberate killing of civilians “is routine for Israel.”

“This video may be from months ago, Israel is claiming, which does not in any way make it less horrifying,” Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electric Intifada, wrote on Twitter Monday.

Apparently filmed by an Israeli soldier, the undated video shows what appears to be an unarmed man standing near the fence that separates Israel and Gaza.

After the sniper shoots the man, one of the soldiers yells “yes!” and “son of a bitch!” in celebration as a crowd rushes toward the body.

In response to the video, which sparked outrage as it began to spread on Twitter Monday, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights executive director Yousef Munayyer noted that “while this shows one individual soldier’s act, it is made possible by criminal orders from the top that authorized use of lethal force against unarmed protesters that has resulted in hundreds being sho

As Oklahoma Teachers’ Strike Enters Second Week, Education Supporters Pack State Capitol to Capacity

On the sixth day of a teachers’ strike that has closed 66 school districts across Oklahoma, education supporters denounced comments from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who spoke for the first time of the protest late last week—only to criticize the teachers who are demanding more support for schools.

“I think we need to stay focused on what’s right for kids. And I hope that adults would keep adult disagreements and disputes in a separate place, and serve the students that are there to be served,” said DeVos, according to the Dallas Morning News, provoking angry responses on social media.

‘This Is Huge’: Opposition Forces Kinder Morgan to Halt Trans Mountain Pipeline

Environmental and indigenous groups are cheering after Kinder Morgan announced Sunday it was halting most work on its controversial Trans Mountain expansion pipeline project, citing continuing opposition.

“This is a sign that organizing works, and it could well be the beginning of the end for this dangerous pipeline,” declared Clayton Thomas-Muller, a Stop-it-at-the-Source campaigner with 350.org.

“This is huge,” added British Columbia-based advocacy group Dogwood.

In the company’s statement announcing the move, chairman and CEO Steve Kean said Kinder Morgan was suspending “all non-essential activities and related spending” as a result of the “current environment” that puts shareholders at risk.

“A company cannot resolve differences between governments,” he added, referencing resistance from B.C. lawmakers that is at odds with support for the project coming from Ottawa and neighboring Alberta. “While we have succeeded in all legal challenges to date, a company cannot litigate its way to an in-service pipeline amidst jurisdictional differences between governments,” Kean said.

Unless legal agreements are reached by May 31, Kean said that “it is difficult to conceive of any scenario in which we would proceed with the project.”

Tree cutting for Mountain Valley Pipeline continues despite March deadline

The crews taking down trees along Mount Tabor Road in Montgomery County were back on Saturday, felling large trees along the edges of the pipeline corridor.

Pipeline opponents say they were surprised that the work continued after a March 31st deadline designed to protect endangered species, in part because caves in the area are home to hibernating bats.

Lynda Majors is a pipeline opponent who lives in Montgomery County.

“That was the whole legal push for early entry, that they had to get this done by March 31st,” Majors told WDBJ7. “And what do we see here? They’re still cutting. They’re still cutting hundred-year-old trees.”

The start of a new work week brought another challenge in Roanoke County, where pipeline opponents were raising similar concerns about tree cutting on Poor Mountain.

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Genesis Chapman, another pipeline opponent. “And we will be observing and making sure that everything is done exactly as the court ordered.”

Iowa’s Anti-Protest Bill Would Make The Boston Tea Partiers Felons

In what might be one of the most dramatic crackdowns on non-violent protest in recent years, the Iowa state legislature just passed a bill to make it a felony, punishable by up to 25 years in jail, for any “unauthorized and overt act intended to cause” a substantial and widespread “interruption or impairment of a fundamental service” of gas, oil, petroleum or refined petroleum products.

The bill is a ramped-up version of the generic “Critical Infrastructure Protection Act” that the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Virginia-based national conservative group, is pushing across the country. Iowa’s legislation criminalizes protest on any “land, building, conveyance, or other temporary or permanent structure” or a “water supply treatment, collection, storage or delivery system” considered part of the fossil fuel industry’s “critical infrastructure.”

This sweeping definition, now sitting on the desk of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) for her approval, is not just a harbinger of constitutional violations in an age of authoritarian crackdowns. It also seeks to rewrite our American tradition of nonviolent dissent.

To put this in a national context: Last week in Boston, District Court Judge Mary Ann Driscoll made a potentially landmark ruling in favor of the “necessity” defense ― that the harms of climate change are reasonable justification for citizens to engage in disruptive protest ― as she reduced criminal charges to a single civil infraction for 13 defendants arrested in a 2016 gas pipeline protest.

Meanwhile, Iowa is on the verge of outlawing the modern-day equivalents of the Boston Tea Party.

President John Adams would be appalled. Once a critic of dissent, Adams had been converted by the American resistance to meddlesome British rule. He embraced the radicalism of the “Sons of Liberty” in 1773 and called the historic act against private property at the Boston Tea Party “the most magnificent Movement of all.”

Trump decries ‘attack on our country’ after FBI raids his lawyer’s office

Donald Trump declared an “attack on our country in a true sense” was under way after FBI agents conducted a raid on the office of his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, on Monday.

The raid was carried out after a referral from the special counsel, Robert Mueller, to New York-based federal prosecutors, a lawyer for Cohen said. It was not clear that the raid related to Mueller’s investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Yet in an extraordinary scene inside the White House late on Monday, Trump connected those dots and more, saying the raid represented part of an ongoing attack on him engineered, he said, by “the most biased group of people” with “the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen”.

He called it “an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”

Unusually affronted by the move against a member of his inner circle, it seemed, Trump described the raid as an extension of a conspiracy against him that had “started right after I won the nomination”.

“It’s a disgraceful situation, it’s a total witch-hunt, I’ve been saying it for a long time,” Trump said. Mueller’s investigation so far has produced 19 indictments or guilty pleas.

Chairman of Sinclair TV network met with Trump during White House visit

The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group met Donald Trump at the White House during a visit to pitch a potentially lucrative new product to administration officials, the Guardian has learned.

David D Smith, whose company has been criticised for making its anchors read a script echoing Trump’s attacks on the media, said he briefed officials last year on a system that would enable authorities to broadcast direct to any American’s phone.

“I just wanted them to be aware of the technology,” Smith said in an interview. He also recalled an earlier meeting with Trump during the 2016 election campaign, where he told the future president: “We are here to deliver your message.”

Sinclair is the biggest owner of local TV in the US, and may soon reach 72% of American households if a proposed $4bn takeover of a rival is approved by federal regulators. It is accused by critics of having a conservative bias, which it denies.

US sheriff once said it was ‘financially better’ to kill than badly injure suspects

The sheriff of a county profiled by the Guardian after it was found to have the highest rate of killings by police in the US once said it is “better financially” for local authorities if officers kill suspects rather than badly injure them.

Sheriff Donny Youngblood of Kern county, California, who is currently running for re-election, made the remarks while addressing rank-and-file officers during his first campaign in 2006. Video of the meeting was recently found by an officers’ union.

“You know what happens when a guy makes a bad shooting on somebody and kills them? Three million bucks and the family goes away after a long back and forth,” Youngblood said.

He went on to say: “Which way do you think is better financially – to cripple them or kill them – for the county?” An unidentified man offscreen said “kill them”, to which Youngblood replied: “Absolutely. Because if they’re crippled we get to take care of them for life. And that cost goes way up.”

Tammy Duckworth becomes first senator to give birth in office

Tammy Duckworth of Illinois has become the first US senator to give birth in office. The Democrat announced that she had given birth to her second daughter, Maile Pearl Bowlsbey, on Monday. Her office said the senator and her family were doing well.

The family “couldn’t be happier to welcome little Maile Pearl as the newest addition to our family”, said Duckworth, 49, who is a veteran of the Iraq war.

After sharing the news she was pregnant, Duckworth prompted a conversation about the way women balance high-powered careers and motherhood. Some welcomed her pregnancy as a sign of progress for female politicians. Others saw it as a reminder of the slow pace of change – and of the gender gap that persists in Congress.

“I feel like the Senate is actually in the 19th century as opposed to the 21st somehow and that’s really unfortunate,” Duckworth told the Guardian in an interview last month.

Asked how she felt about being the first woman to give birth while serving in the Senate, she told the Chicago Tribune: “Well, it’s about damn time. I can’t believe it took until 2018. It says something about the inequality of representation that exists in our country.”

Chelsea Manning Talks National Security At SDSU

Chelsea Manning has emerged from court-martial, years of imprisonment and vicious criticism for everything from her Wikileaks disclosures to her gender transition. And she has not retreated into a quiet life.

Manning was convicted by court-martial in 2013 for leaking classified information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as confidential U.S. Department of State messages. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but President Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.

Manning now is traveling the country as a public speaker. She is also running against U.S. Senator Ben Cardin in Maryland’s Democratic primary. Manning is appearing at San Diego State University Monday night, giving a talk ranging from national security to resistance in the age of artificial intelligence.

Manning joins KPBS Midday Edition on Monday to explain what that resistance could look like and confronting criticism that she betrayed her country.

Tall Paul’s tribute to Jim Thorpe: