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- Nancy Mace Shreds Darline Graham Over Shocking Debate Answer: ‘Jesus, I Ca...
“Darline, darlin’, you are running for the United States Senate...” the South Carolina congresswoman said. [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago - This Palantir Billionaire’s Passion Project is Criminalizing Homelessness
Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the weapons-tech company Palantir, is also a major force behind the Trump administration’s policy of pushing unhoused people toward incarceration. Lonsdale, a longtime critic of “housing first” policy—which proposes that homelessness be solved by supplying those in need of housing with somewhere to live—argues that fining and arresting people for sleeping in public will push them into mental health treatment. “We’ve made it easier to civilly commit those who are mentally ill and need treatment,” Lonsdale wrote in the New York Post in 2023. “With non-ideological policies rooted in incentives, accountability, and competence, we will show a better way and build a brighter future for our urban centers.” But there is data to suggest this might not be the right approach. One study of homelessness-criminalization measures in 100 US cities found that the ordinances did not lead to a decrease in the number of people counted as homeless. “It’s absurd to think that fining people will get them into treatment,” Dr. Margot Kushel, a physician who directs the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, told the New York Times. “Many people are desperate for treatment and can’t get it.” And since Trump cut Medicaid, which finances most of the healthcare options available to unhoused people, “it’s hard not to see the cynicism in this,” she said. The Cicero Institute, a lobbying group he founded eight years ago, has been instrumental in passing laws criminalizing camping or sleeping in public in 16 states, according to the New York Times. In total, the think tank has worked to pass 241 pieces of legislation in the past 5 years, on issues ranging from education to healthcare. Its c4 arm, Cicero Action, has engaged in lobbying related to military spending and defense contracts, according to the National Homelessness Law Institute. But time and again, Lonsdale and Cicero return to their push to eliminate unhoused people from public life. That push has now gone federal. In 2024, in a Supreme Court decision called Grants Pass, the court found that camping bans do not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, even if the only available alternative to camping is incarceration of the unhoused. And Trump has now issued an executive order that closely mirrors the Circero Institute’s policies. Lonsdale’s allies see him as a man of principle. “In some… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago - Federal Judge Strikes Down Trump’s 75-Country Visa BanThis January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed consular officers to refuse to process immigration visas for people from 75 countries because, he said, those immigrants would be more likely than others to “extract wealth” or “take welfare and public benefits” from the US. Since January, people from those 75 countries—all located in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe—have had their visa applications frozen or denied. On August 21, though, a federal judge in New York struck down this blanket visa ban, on the grounds that it violates the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965’s prohibition on nationality-based discrimination in issuing a visa. As my colleague Julia Métraux reported earlier this year, these “public charge” bans are in part based on eugenicist ideas. Since the 19th century, the United States has used “public charge” rules to restrict entry, alleging that immigrants and even visitors would strain public services—reasoning very much rooted in the eugenicist and ableist thinking that shaped key aspects of public policy in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including the claim that so-called “defective” people would produce “defective” children. As president, especially in his second term, Donald Trump has brought eugenicist immigration policy roaring back. Judge Jeannette Vargas’ August 21 ruling in CLINIC v. Rubio reverses any visa denials that occurred solely due to the “public charge” visa ban. The policy, Vargas found, “is contrary to law and was issued in excess ofSecretary Rubio’s statutory authority,” and “has the effect of categoricallybanning the issuance of immigrant visas to nationals of nearly 40% of the world’scountries.” The government may still appeal the decision. In a written statement to reporters, the nonprofit groups and private law firms involved in the suit praised Vargas’ ruling. “This latest attempt by the Trump administration to enforce its white nationalist worldview through US immigration policy is, like the others, equal parts retrograde and unlawful,” said Baher Azmy, Legal Director of The Center for Constitutional Rights. “We are proud to stand by communities that will not stop fighting against the administration’s attempts to project its racist insecurities to tear apart families.” [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
- A Natalie Harp Conspiracy Theory (Not Really)A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. It’s very easy to be a conspiracy-monger. Let’s give it a shot. This week, there was a hullabaloo about Natalie Harp, Donald Trump’s 35-year-old aide who’s been derisively referred to within the White House as the “Human Printer.” She’s always by Trump’s side, typing his social media posts and printing out and feeding him positive and misleading information about his presidency. (“Look, this poll shows that 110 percent of all Republican voters think you’re better looking than Jesus Christ!”) She’s also a conduit for aides and foreign leaders who want to slip Trump a message. There’s been much speculation and tittering about her devotion and physical closeness to Trump. She was part of the small elite band that was hustled into that now-infamous catering compartment in Turkey when Trump covertly fled Air Force One to use another aircraft due to a security threat. Her notes to Trump read like love letters. (“You are all that matters to me.”) This new shot of attention for Harp was triggered when Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, said at a campaign rally, “[Trump] golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” Outraged MAGA-ites and Trump defenders pounced (see Dumbass Comment of the Week below) and slammed Ossoff for supposedly implying Harp and Trump were trysting and denounced him for denigrating a hard-working woman. Harp’s 24/7 presence in Trump’s life has prompted the predictable and icky whispering. But we can be even more conspiratorial. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether Ossoff unfairly insinuated anything and demeaned Harp. His remark was at least partially prompted by the reports that Harp was one of the few aides who accompanied Trump when he skedaddled from Air Force One and left behind the seemingly expendable Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Whether he intended to or not, Ossoff spurred a national conversation about Harp—and about the appropriateness of discussing her bizarre relationship… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
- In the Wake of a Toxic Disaster, Roseland Parents Still Struggle to Keep Their C...This story was originally published by Capital B and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As a young boy in the 1960s, almost every weekend Elbert McGee walked a half-mile with his father through the wooded streets of Roseland, Louisiana, to the Tangipahoa River. There, he learned to swim and fish for bass, crappie, and the occasional catfish. “We had a good, good life as children,” McGee said, unloading fishing gear from his truck. “We grew up healthy and in community.” Today, McGee still lives in the home where he was raised. But he no longer makes the 10-minute walk to the river to fish. Instead, he drives three hours to Grand Isle. That change only came after August 22, 2025, when Smitty’s Supply, an oil facility in the majority-Black town, exploded. The disaster released an estimated 12 million gallons of oily liquid and chemical waste into the river, and painted hundreds of homes, churches, schools, and playgrounds with black oily streaks. Within weeks, McGee’s then-15-year-old son, Markel, began having nosebleeds severe enough to make him miss school. A friend who is battling cancer developed a respiratory illness. Neither family has received a definitive answer as to whether those conditions are linked to the blast. For McGee, who has a combined eight children and grandchildren, and other Roseland parents, the loss of the river has been surpassed by a much more pressing question: What does it mean to be a parent when you cannot stop harm from reaching your children? Across Roseland and communities like it, protecting a child from refineries, railyards, and contaminated water becomes a never-ending, intimate form of vigilance—one Black parents shoulder disproportionately. Research shows Black children experience higher exposure to environmental toxins like lead, air pollution, and pesticides than children of any other race in the US, turning everyday parenting into an act of defense against threats they never chose and often cannot see. “This is my home,” McGee said. “I have no other realistic option to leave.” McGee, 63, has begun to sit with the devastating thought that he may have failed to protect his children by raising them here.“They’re not gonna be healthy here, especially doing anything in the dirt or the river,” he said. “We can’t control the government or these companies,” he added. “We can pray on it. But you want the best for your children, and it hurts not to be able to give it to them.”… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
- 40 Acres and a Lie Part 3The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its “40 acres” promise to formerly enslaved people—and it has continued over decades. Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation. “They lost land due to racial intimidation, where they were forced off their land [to] take flight in the middle of the night and resettle someplace else,” said Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an assistant professor of Africana studies at Morehouse College. “They lost it through overtaxation. They lost it through eminent domain…There’s all these different ways that African Americans acquired and lost land.” This week on Reveal, we dive into the examination of American history happening at the state, city, even county level as local government task forces are on truth-finding missions. Across the country, government officials ask: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how? This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024. [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
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