“Silicon Valley firms supplied the software and computing infrastructure that enabled Trump’s policies. Companies like Babel and Palantir entered into contracts with ICE in 2015, becoming the bread and butter of ICE’s surveillance capacities by mining personal data from thousands of sources for government authorities, converting it into searchable databases, and mapping connections between individuals and organizations. By 2017, conglomerates like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google were becoming essential too, signing over the cloud services to host mounds of citizens’ and residents’ personal information. … Where AI falters technically, it delivers ideologically. …”

“ After months of propaganda claiming Maduro is the head of the dangerous drug-smuggling cartel, the U.S. government has admitted it was all a ruse in order to kidnap a sitting head of state.”

Writing in The Guardian last week, Solomon asserted that the party’s governing body, the Democratic National Committee, “is now replicating the kind of tacit disdain for rank-and-file Democrats that fueled the 2024 catastrophe. … A party unable to publicly examine its own failings is unlikely to climb out of the rut that proved so helpful to Donald Trump in 2024.”

GABRIEL AGUIRRE, [in Venezuela], [email protected], @WorldBeyondWar    Aguirre is Latin America Organizer for World BEYOND War.  STEVE ELLNER, [email protected], @sellner74    Ellner is a retired professor at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. He is now an associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives. DAVID SWANSON, [email protected], @davidcnswanson    In 2023, Swanson wrote the book The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace it With. His articles include”The Monroe Doctrine and the Roots of U.S. Hegemony.” NORMAN SOLOMON, [email protected]    Solomon is the author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. He is co-founder of Roots Action and is IPA’s executive director. 

    “U.S. President Donald Trump’s claims about the illegal drug trade regarding both Venezuela and over 100 people thus far killed in boats with U.S. missiles from drones are without evidence and widely considered not even plausible.” See full statement and link to more resources.

In testimony at the U.N. Security Council last year, a Doctors Without Borders representative said the group is afraid Israel will punish his colleagues as a result of his talking about Israeli war crimes.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is arriving in the United States with a familiar list of demands. As NBC News has reported, Netanyahu plans to press Donald Trump for U.S. backing for another round of war with Iran, now framed around Iran’s ballistic missile program. This comes after Trump has repeatedly declared Iran’s nuclear program destroyed, a claim that has politically closed the nuclear file and removed Israel’s most powerful historical justification for U.S. support for war with Iran.“

According to the Washington Post, the Trump administration has “terminated seven grants totaling millions of dollars to the American Academy of Pediatrics, including for initiatives on reducing sudden infant deaths, improving adolescent health, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome and identifying autism early.” The Department of Health and Human Services is trying to justify  these cuts based on AAP’s use of “identity-based language.” 

Drop Site News reports: “At least three killed in continued Israeli attacks on Gaza. A report from The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) finds Gaza still facing starvation. UN warns impacts of Israeli restrictions on NGOs working in Palestine will be ‘immediate and catastrophic.’” Today marks deadline for release of “Epstein files” — the outlet has reported extensively on Epstein’s ties to Israel, see their latest: “Epstein, Israel, and the CIA.”

Responding to the news that the Democratic National Committee is blocking the release of its own autopsy on the 2024 Democratic defeat, RootsAction issued a statement today pointing to the exhaustive autopsy that the group recently released: “The DNC is failing to acknowledge, much less learn from, the Democratic Party’s avoidable failures in 2024. This is a recipe for future disasters.” The RootsAction autopsy is posted at DemocraticAutopsy.org For further information, contact: JEFF COHEN, [email protected]    Cohen is co-founder of RootsAction.