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DO SOMETHING on a local level for your community and your country. Take the time to register to vote and help others do the same, write postcards to government officials, create zines, and have a little catharsis with your fellow firework-hating neighbors. Organizers are inviting folks to “hang out among us, your local artists that support trans rights, immigrants, rights to protest, bodily autonomy, and all the good stuff.” Hell yeah, pals. That’s what I call America.

DO SOMETHING on a local level for your community and your country. Take the time to register to vote and help others do the same, write postcards to government officials, create zines, and have a little catharsis with your fellow firework-hating neighbors. Organizers are inviting folks to “hang out among us, your local artists that support trans rights, immigrants, rights to protest, bodily autonomy, and all the good stuff.” Hell yeah, pals. That’s what I call America.

As a United States marine, Arturo Flores served in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he worked as a military police officer and trained dogs to find roadside bombs.

It’s his experience in the military that has made what he’s seen on the streets of southern California in recent weeks all the more disturbing to him, Flores said.

Flores is the mayor of Huntington Park, in south LA county.

Like in other parts of LA, many Huntington residents have been terrified amid reports of masked federal agents detaining immigrants, or those that look like immigrants, on the street, in parking lots, at swap meets or large stores and soldiers deployed into the city against the wishes of local officials and the governor.

“It is a campaign of domestic terror that is being imposed on our residents on a daily basis,” Flores said. “It is a level of psychological warfare that I’ve only seen in theaters of war. It’s terrifying seeing it being displayed here in my city.”

I would build a big spaceship and lure the worst people in the world into it with promises of a multimillion-dollar wedding party. Then off they would go to circle the solar system, leaving the rest of us in peace.

Vice President J.D. Vance took heat from critics this week when he downplayed legislation that would result in millions of Americans losing Medicaid coverage as mere "minutiae."

Vance defended the budget megabill that's currently being pushed through the United States Senate by arguing that it will massively increase funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which he deemed to be a necessary component of carrying out the Trump administration's mass deportation operation.

As the legislative branch works their magic math to kill as many poor people as possible the judicial branch has been doing much of the same.

Elie Mystal joins us to break down last week’s slew of tragic rulings.

“As we record this, the United States has dropped 14 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs over three different locations in Iran that supposedly were developing a nuclear weapon. This in the face of President Donald Trump's own Intelligence Department's assessment that Iran was doing no such thing. Trump and his minions have declared the strikes a success that has, quote, obliterated, unquote, Iran's nuclear program.

However, a leaked Classified Intelligence Assessment indicates that while there was significant damage done, the bombing failed to bust the bunkers and only set back Iran's nuclear program a couple of months.”

—Ralph Nader Radio Hour

The GOP, which first lost command of the white vote in cities and, gradually, the suburbs, is in actuality the minority party. Without certain institutional (and therefore structural) advantages, the country should have long accepted the obvious fact of its multiculturalness and been organized by a politics that spanned from the likes of Joe Biden (conservative) to the likes of Mamdani (progressive).

The urban values supported by the Democratic Party should be regarded as conventional, as the usual, as the everyday. What must be registered as bizarre is not Mamdani, but Stephen Miller.

“A city we can afford.” Zohran’s slogan is unremarkably moderate and unabashedly progressive. In a city whose median income is rising sharply in spite of a 25% poverty rate, only the rich are comfortable, while everyone else, from students to firefighters to families with more than one kid struggle – or leave.

Asked by a local Fox TV interviewer what a democratic socialist is, Mamdani answered: “To me it means that every New Yorker has what they need to live a dignified life – it’s local government’s responsibility to provide that.” His platform includes a rent freeze on the city’s 2.3m regulated apartments; free childcare starting at six months; no-fare buses; and a $30 minimum wage – about the city’s living wage – by 2030. Basically, he believes life in the city can be easier and happier.

This platform resonates.

“The big beautiful budget bill is now open for debate in the Senate after winning Saturday's procedural hurdle. Two more Republican moderates head for the exits. The messaging Democrats need to win the race for mayor of New York City gets even uglier.

Why throwing millions of Americans off Medicaid and food stamps is the Republican Party's latest iteration of voter suppression”

Police in southern California arrested a man suspected of posing as a federal immigration officer this week, the latest in a series of such arrests, as masked, plainclothes immigration agents are deployed nationwide to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation targets.

The arrest is one of several cases involving people allegedly impersonating immigration officials, as the nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants intensifies.

Experts have warned that federal agents’ increased practice of masking while carrying out immigration raids and arrests makes it easier for imposters to pose as federal officers.

“Yes, I'm coming to you from New York City, where I was stunned to discover that the guy I voted for actually won. It looks like the world headquarters for capitalism may have actually elected Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old socialist. Now, because the winner of Tuesday's election is Muslim, and he became a naturalized citizen just six years ago, that's the story of America, by the way, there already are calls from the right wing for Tom Homan, our nation's border czar, to deport him.”