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Nov 24, 2025 - World

Surrounded by cardboard “tombstones” that displayed likely causes of death of thousands of people in the United States under Republican policies, Bishop William J. Barber II on Monday gave a eulogy in Raleigh, North Carolina, honoring those who are being directly targeted by the Trump administration’s cuts to healthcare, public health funding, and other essential government programs.The word “eulogy,” he said, comes from the Greek word “eulogia,” and means “good words.”“But the question is, what is the ‘good word’ when people shouldn’t be dead?” asked the president of the grassroots group Repairers of the Breach and the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, adding that the people he was speaking about are projected to die in the coming year solely due to “policy violence.”“We will not let them die ignored,” said Barber. “We will not let their deaths go unregistered on the conscience of this nation and this state, and among the people.”375,000 people are at risk of loosing food assistance in North Carolina, millions more nationally. #MoralMonday gatherings are taking place in AL, AZ, AR, CT, DE, IN, KY, MS, MO, NE, NJ, NC, OH, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WV, calling for elected officials to stop #PolicyViolence. pic.twitter.com/CHfnL5r6L6— Repairers of the Breach (@BRepairers) November 24, 2025 Barber spoke at the flagship event of Repairers of the Breach’s regular Moral Mondays prayer protest, while supporters in more than 15 states including Alabama, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and Texas also delivered eulogies for those who are expected to die as a result of the $186 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, and funding slashed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that was passed in July.Roughly 51,000 people are expected to die annually as they lose access to SNAP and Medicaid, as well as those whose healthcare costs will skyrocket if Affordable Care Act subsidies are allowed to expire at the end of the year. People with disabilities and low-income senior citizens are also expected to be impacted by OBBBA provisions that will make it harder for them to access Medicare Savings Programs."Because we are fighting for the life of those who yet remain,“ said Barber. ”When they passed the Big Ugly Deadly Destructive Bill—don’t ever call it the Beautiful Bill—when they passed it, it represented a death sentence.“Standing Against Deadly Policy Violence | National Moral Monday Flagship Broadcast 11-24-2025 https://t.co/uFk1mNdse3— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) November 24, 2025 Barber noted that Republicans were able to pass the law after lying about “waste and fraud and abuse” in the federal programs that rely on them for healthcare and food assistance.“They had to tell a lie to keep their promise to the wealthiest people in America,” said the bishop, referring to thousands of dollars in annual tax cuts for the richest households that are included in the OBBBA.Sloan Meek, who has cerebral palsy and relies on Medicaid, also gave a statement.“I feel a lot of fear and worry right now that every cut and rate reduction to Medicaid will change my whole life,” said Meek. “Having disabilities does not mean I am sick, but it does mean I need consistent treatment and care to stay healthy. I do not want to become sick. I do not want to lose my community. I do not want to lose my voice. I do not want to be forced out of my home to live and receive care from a bunch of strangers. I do not want to die because of a political issue. These are the fears I share with every disabled person using Medicaid in North Carolina right now. I would like to ask every legislator to please see us as having valuable and important lives that are worth supporting.”The event also aimed at the Trump administration’s actions weakening the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—with the federal government denying and delaying states’ disaster assistance requests—and President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which most recently unleashed federal agents on North Carolina communities from Charlotte to Raleigh.The tombstones that flanked Barber read, “I lost Medicare,” “I was disappeared,” “I lost medical research,” “FEMA did not respond.”“The big, bad, deadly budget bill proved that Washington lawmakers are more than willing to kill tens of thousands of people to line the pockets of the wealthy—but now even that level of destruction and death wasn’t enough,” said Barber in a statement ahead of the event. “Lawmakers are now allowing healthcare subsidies to expire, forcing millions of people to come up with more money for health plans—or die trying. And the Trump administration just unleashed its masked army of ICE agents to terrify and abduct immigrants in Charlotte and Raleigh.”“One of the grandest, cruelest ironies is that many of the leaders greenlighting these deadly policies profess to be Christian. I’m not sure what Bible they’re reading, but my Bible tells me to protect all people—including poor people and foreigners—without condition or judgment,” Barber continued. “We cannot stay silent in this moment.”Barber said the event was being held two days before Repairers of the Breach was preparing to send an open letter to every member of the North Carolina General Assembly, calling for the body to hold an “emergency session and vote to tell Congress and the president to take hands off the people of North Carolina, to reverse policies that will hurt 307,000 North Carolinians that will lose Medicaid, that will cause 375,000 to lose food stamps.”On Monday evening, the organization was planning another event to call on Congress and the White House “to immediately cease and desist” their attacks on Latino and immigrant communities across the country, deploying “Liberty Vans”: mobile rapid-response command centers staffed by volunteer lawyers and campaigners to provide support to communities targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.

Nov 24, 2025 - World

Since Donald Trump has been back in office, energy prices have increased at more than double the rate of inflation. The Consumer Price Index from the end of October reported an “all items price index” increase for food, shelter, and transportation of 3.0 percent over a 12-month period, while energy services for the same period rose by 6.4 percent. After promising to slash energy prices, Trump has done the opposite. His energy policies reflect the same ethos driving everything else in his retribution playbook: reward donors and inflict pain on Democrats, even when the economic consequences are nationwide.Lust for retributionIn early October, Trump announced the claw-back of billions of dollars in federal funding for utilities, money that had been appropriated to reinforce power grids and reduce electricity prices. Targeting blue states exclusively, Budget Director Russ Vought announced the cancellation of “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” In all, 321 Congressionally set awards supporting 223 wind, solar, and transmission projects were trashed. Trump’s aversion to clean energy isn’t the only factor driving costs. His refusal to upgrade the grid, his half-baked export and tariff initiatives, and his blind support for energy-sucking AI data centers are all contributing to surging energy prices with no relief in sight. As Canary Media framed it, “Trump slapped tariffs on certain wind turbine materials and opened a sham “national security” probe to pave the way for even more. He halted construction on a nearly completed offshore wind farm and moved to revoke permits for two more. He canceled hundreds of millions in port funding critical to offshore wind development and imposed new directives to stifle renewable projects on federal lands.” Trump’s dedication is showing: after only ten months of Trump 2.0, US household electric bills have increased by 10 percent, and are expected to continue climbing.UN Climate SummitTrump is doing more than reversing US climate successes, he’s also undermining progress in other parts of the world. Last month, when the International Maritime Organization agreed on the world’s first carbon tax on global shipping to encourage the transition to cleaner fuels, Trump released a childish Truth Social rant threatening to retaliate. This month, he ignored the UN Climate Summit in Brazil. Thankfully, California Governor Gavin Newsom attended, representing the world’s fourth-largest economy. Newsom highlighted California's efforts to step up on climate where Trump has stepped out. Facing down the embarrassment of an antiquated, know-nothing, pro-fossil fuel regime, Newsom didn’t hold back. When asked about the US retreat from global climate action, he called Trump “an invasive species … He’s a wrecking ball president trying to roll back progress of the last century … he’s doubling down on stupid.” Newsom did more than talk. While he was at the summit, he signed new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with Brazil, Colombia, and Chile to advance clean energy, wildfire prevention, and other climate-related initiatives. He also expanded California’s existing partnerships with China and Mexico on clean energy development and zero-emission freight corridors. Newsom managed to bolster California's profile as a stable international business and climate partner despite the optics of a US president ruled by ego and impulse.Our loss, China’s gainIn September, addressing the UN, Trump called climate change a “con job” and urged other world leaders to abandon their climate efforts despite the Earth’s rising temperatures. Trump claimed falsely that China sells wind turbines to the world without using them at home, and told assembled leaders, “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.” The next day, China pledged the reverse. Xi Jinping announced China’s plan to increase electric vehicle sales and dramatically increase wind and solar power, targeting a 600 percent increase over 2020 levels. Despite Trump’s claim, China has vastly expanded wind power developments at home, adding 46 gigawatts of new wind energy this year alone, enough to power than 30 million homes. Meanwhile, our Cro-Magnon regime froze permits for wind farms and issued stop work orders, ending tens of thousands of wind energy jobs in the process.Critics agree that Trump’s withdrawal from climate efforts ceded valuable ground to China, which is now rapidly expanding its renewable and EV industries. China’s Ming Yang Smart Energy just unveiled OceanX, a two-headed offshore wind turbine. OceanX is expected to cut offshore energy costs to one-fifth of Europe’s costs while allowing wind farms to operate with fewer, more powerful turbines. “China gets it,” Newsom said at the UN Climate Summit, “America is toast competitively, if we don’t wake up to what the hell they’re doing in this space, on supply chains, how they’re dominating manufacturing, how they’re flooding the zone.”Newsom is right. Americans are suffering the tragedy of an uninformed and unstable president who rejects science, a president who wants to take us back to the 19th century. We have also inflicted our tragedy on the rest of the world.Pope Leo frames climate action as a moral and spiritual imperative, tying the “cry of the Earth” to the “cry of the poor,” because small island nations and the global south, including poor states in the US, will continue to suffer the most from extreme weather and climate destruction. Trump will be dead before climate change becomes an obvious existential threat. As Newsom said, he is only temporary. But the global destruction he leaves behind could be permanent. We owe it to our children, ourselves, and all the earth’s inhabitants to never again elect an imbecile, and to shut this one down before he kills us all. Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Nov 24, 2025 - World

Former CIA adviser Jim Rickards, a MAGA supporter, admitted that President Donald Trump's plan to end the war in Ukraine was to give Russian President Vladimir Putin "everything he wants.""The criticism of the plan is that it gives Putin almost everything he wants," Rickards told MAGA influencer Steve Bannon on Monday. "Well, I have news for you. That's how we're going to end the war. That's the only way you're going to end the war. The Russians won, you know, with a lot of casualties and a lot of people.""So why should the Russians concede anything? They shouldn't."Bannon agreed: "The Russians won the war.""If you're the United States, you've got two choices. Keep fighting or keep supporting the war, or agree to Putin's plan," Rickards asserted. "Now the criticism that, oh, you know, you're agreeing to Putin's plan. Well, that's the only outcome here, short of World War III.""Ukraine has lost," he added. "The brilliance of this 28-point plan was that it recognizes what I just described."

Nov 24, 2025 - World

Almost lost among Donald Trump’s latest assault on America, has been his utter disdain for our democracy, and love for Russian President Vladimir Putin.Amid Trump’s attack on our government, White House, health-care, food benefits, vote, the arts, environment, our economy, and peace and quiet, the Russia-Ukraine War has raged on.Defying all odds, the Ukrainians and their gutsy, charismatic leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have held off the once-feared Russian army for nearly four years. This should be celebrated as one the most inspirational events of a 21st Century that has been sorely lacking inspiration or good.Putin and his vaunted army were supposed to cut through Ukraine like a knife through butter when they launched their attack on Feb. 24, 2022. When Putin’s army amassed on the Ukrainian border it was estimated by many experts that Ukraine would fall in mere hours.Except that never happened because the Ukrainians proved themselves more feisty and prepared, and Russia weaker and more clumsy, than all these experts expected.By the third day of fighting Zelenskyy was proving himself more than ready for what feeble Russia was bringing him, and produced a video watched my millions that turned down the United State’s invitation to evacuate him, saying:“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride!”Something wonderful was happening on the eastern front, as a small, upstart and proud nation was smacking the murderous Putin and his army right in the mouth.It was scary, thrilling and good news to everybody it seems except for Putin and his puppet, Trump, who wasted no time alerting the world to what side he was on, calling Putin’s attack, “savvy” and “genius.”Just three days later, when he saw what was happening, as the valiant Ukrainians stood up to the bully, and “savvy genius,” Putin, the carnival-barking Trump changed his tone at a CPAC gathering in Florida, on February 27, 2022, and slobbered this:“The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling. We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all.”After surviving this anti-democratic whiplash, instead of apologizing for his grotesque words praising Putin, Trump did what he always did, and has always done: He attacked the United States, and let Putin off the hook, saying:“The real problem is that our leaders are dumb, dumb. So dumb.”But Trump’s phony reversal, and attack on America, was only the subhead of that event in Florida, because he used that never-ending speech to hint loudly at another run for office by taking a swipe at America and its President, Joe Biden:“As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our election was not rigged and if I was the president …”He went on:“In November 2024, Democrats will find out like never before. We did it twice, and we’ll do it again. We’re going to be doing it again, a third time.”Here’s where I will always point out with precision and rage that this anti-American, no-good monster should have been on his way to rotting in jail by now for his attack on our country that had occurred just one year earlier, on Jan. 6, 2021. Except Attorney General Merrick Garland still hadn’t even laid a glove on the traitor, Trump, and allowed him to reclaim his hold over a party that had proven itself morally busted, and incapable of standing up against Trump or Putin, and for America.Now four very painful years later, the proud Ukrainians are still holding off Russia, and Trump is still doing everything he can to make sure Russia prevails.As I type this, Trump has rolled out a U.S. peace plan this is so absurd even the cowards who helped enable him in the Republican Party are speaking out against it, saying it is nothing but a Russian wish list.Here is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC):“Putin is a murderer a rapist and an assassin. We should not do anything that makes him feel like he has a win here.”Here is Sen. Mitch McConnell, (R-KY):“If administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the president ought to find new advisors.”I am aware that both of these men are not seeking reelection, which is why you can be assured they are both finally telling the truth.On Sunday, Trump was right back where he was four years ago, despite all the heroics of the Ukrainians since, blaming the United States, Ukraine and our allies for the attack, by blasting this out on his state-run social media channel:“With strong and proper U.S. and Ukrainian LEADERSHIP, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have NEVER HAPPENED.”“UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA.”Read that again, and try to tell me that Trump is not a traitor.Not a single word of condemnation at the aggressor and murderer, Putin. Only disdain for America, Ukraine, and our NATO allies whose relationship over the decades has been forged in blood and honor.Russia helped install Trump into office in 2016. We know this. In fact, nobody knows it better than his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who chaired the Republican-led bipartisan committee who rendered these findings in August, 2020, which stated:The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat.This is from a PBS story that went into the 1,000-page report. It was the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation:“The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and appear to repudiate the Republican president’s claims that the FBI had no basis to investigate whether his campaign was conspiring with Russia. Trump has called the Russia investigations a “hoax.”Cold irony then that it is the feckless Rubio who seems to be caught in the middle of unfriendly fire right now between Trump and the rest of the free world as his boss attacks the United States and makes excuses for Putin with his pathetic excuse for a “peace plan.”From AP reporting:Lawmakers critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war said Saturday they spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio who told them that the peace plan Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept is a “wish list” of the Russians and not the actual proposal offering Washington’s positions.A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The secretary of state doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.“For being so favorable to Moscow …”Shocking, eh?So here we are again. Donald Trump is doing everything in his seemingly unlimited power to make sure Putin gets what he wants after starting this illegal and immoral war against Ukraine.He is clearly in the tank FOR Russia and AGAINST America.Just what in the hell is going here????(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Nov 24, 2025 - World

The Trump State Department officially added a German antifascist group and three other European far-left groups to its list of foreign terrorist organizations last week. But the action, which freezes U.S. assets and imposes penalties on anyone who offers support to the groups, ignored a transnational neo-Nazi group that has committed acts of violence of its own and is linked to the murder of two men in Florida.The State Department announcement about plans to apply the terror designation to Antifa Ost accused the group of conducting “numerous attacks against individuals it perceives as ‘fascists,’” specifically citing “a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023.”What the announcement leaves out is that the attacks allegedly committed by Antifa Ost took place during an annual gathering, the “Day of Honor,” organized by neo-Nazis to commemorate a battle fought by the German army and local collaborators against the Soviet Union in Hungary during World War II. By the State Department’s own admission, “extreme right sympathizers … attacked groups they took to be antifascist demonstrators” during the event.The first “Day of Honor” march in 1997 was organized by the Hungarian chapter of Blood and Honour. Members of the international Blood and Honour group and its armed wing Combat 18 continue to attend the event, according to a report financed by the German Foreign Ministry. Canada added Blood and Honour and Combat 18 to its list of proscribed terrorist entities in 2019, alongside the UK and Germany. A Spanish court ordered the dissolution of the group in that country. The Canadian government describes Blood and Honour as “an international neo-Nazi network whose ideology is derived from the neo-Nazi doctrine of Nazi Germany,” while saying Combat 18 “has carried out violent actions, including murders and bombings.” As noted by the Canadian government, Blood and Honour members pleaded guilty to murdering two unhoused men in Tampa, Fla. in 1998, reportedly “because they considered them inferior.”“It sure shows the game here that’s afoot,” Tom Joscelyn, a senior fellow at Just Security, recently told a podcast, adding that the Trump administration is “going after what they claim is this international terrorist menace in antifa” by sanctioning Antifa Ost. “But they’re not going after the neo-Nazi group, which is by far larger and has also committed acts of violence in this context. I think it puts everything in stark relief.”‘Greatly inflating the threat’Joscelyn has written extensively about al-Qaida and was a principal author of the final report of the House January 6th Committee.“There is a threat from antifa adherents inside the U.S., and no one will be surprised if there’s a successful antifa-style attack in the future,” Joscelyn told Raw Story. “However, the administration is greatly inflating the threat for their own political purposes while ignoring well-established threats from far-right and neo-Nazi groups.”In order to designate a group as a foreign terrorist organization, the State Department is required to demonstrate that a group’s activities “threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security (national defense, foreign relations, or the economic interests) of the United States.”Thomas Brzozowski, formerly domestic terrorist counsel for the Department of Justice, said the State Department announcement cited “no attacks or alleged attacks on Americans” and “no plots against Americans” by members of Antifa Ost or the three other left-wing groups.“We do not discuss deliberations or the potential deliberations of our designations process,” an unidentified State Department spokesperson said in a statement to Raw Story.The German government has said the threat posed by Antifa Ost has “decreased significantly” thanks to the successful prosecution of several prominent members, according to Reuters. The outlet reported that the German government said it was not consulted by the U.S. before plans to designate Antifa Ost as a foreign terrorist organization were announced.Brzozowski said he thinks “even the folks at State know” there’s no way to show Antifa Ost as a legitimate national security threat. “And they’re doing their best, I’m sure,” he said. “But come on! They’re put in a bind. They’ve got to deliver, or else they’re going to get fired.“The sequencing is all backwards at this point. And that’s dangerous. Because this is really political theater, is what it is. This is giving effect to a presidential directive.”Brawling with neo-NazisThe violence at the “Day of Honor” event in Budapest has been politicized in Hungary.Légió Hungária, a neo-Nazi group that assumed responsibility for organizing the event from Blood and Honour, receives support from the ruling Fidesz party, led by Trump ally Viktor Orbán, according to the 2023 report by B’nai B’rith and Amadeo Antonio Foundation, underwritten by the German Foreign Ministry. In 2019, members of Légió Hungária vandalized a Jewish community center in Budapest during a nationalist gathering commemorating the 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union, as reported by the State Department during Trump’s first term.This September, Hungary declared Antifa Ost a terrorist organization, in alignment with Trump’s agenda. But the Trump administration has remained silent on the 2019 attack carried out by Légió Hungária, as well as reports cited by B’nai B’rith that participants in the 2020 “Day of Honor” chanted, “Jews out!” The report also cited “Holocaust denial and distortion, historical revisionism of World War II, and worship of the Waffen-SS as core ideological elements of the event.”Shortly after taking office this year, President Trump announced the launch of a Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which accused U.S. universities of turning a blind eye to the issue, amidst an administration campaign to deport pro-Palestine activists.“Anti-semitism in any environment is repugnant to this nation’s ideals,” said Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights and leader of the task force, when the effort was launched. “The [Justice] Department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found.”The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from Terrell for this story.Despite Légió Hungária receiving state backing, Hungary’s Supreme Court reportedly upheld a police ban on the 2023 “Day of Honor,” finding: “Extreme groups are expected to appear at this event. The holding of the event in their presence may be accompanied by considerable attack on public order and peace.”But, as a 2023 State Department report noted, neo-Nazis sidestepped the ban.“Media outlets reported that despite the police ban, several hundred extreme-right and neo-Nazi sympathizers gathered in the Buda Castle to commemorate ‘Day of Honor.’ Police successfully prevented them from clashing with a group of 100-200 Hungarian and international counter-protesters in the area,” the report reads.“According to statements by police, antifascist demonstrators elsewhere in the city assaulted several individuals they assumed to be affiliated with the extreme right,” the report continues. “Similarly, extreme right sympathizers reportedly attacked groups they took to be antifascist demonstrators.”The circumstances of violence allegedly committed by antifascists in Budapest is telling, Joscelyn told Raw Story.“The U.S. went from designating al-Qaida for the 9/11 hijacking to designating overseas antifa adherents for brawling with neo-Nazis,” he said.The State Department’s selective sanctions against antifascists while turning a blind eye to neo-Nazi violence reveals the Trump administration’s actual objectives, Joscelyn added. “You saw even during the No Kings protests there were very prominent MAGA Republicans that said this was an extremist effort and warning of violence and warning of events that didn’t happen. “That shows how desperate the administration and its supporters are to portray its opposition as extremists. The concept of antifa is the cudgel they’re using to bash their opposition.”