FEATURING LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN – The House on Thursday passed a massive $2.7 trillion budget bill with overwhelming support from Democrats and only 65 Republican votes. The bill suspends the looming debt ceiling for 2 years, until just before a new Presidential term begins. And it covers not one, but two years. Although it included an increase in social spending, the military budget also got a boost. 

President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to the deal ahead of the vote. But many Democrats were angered over a lack of conditions preventing Trump from using budgeted military spending to build his border wall, among other things. And Republicans were angry about the bill including spending on anything other than the military. 

Lindsay Koshgarian, Research Director at National Priorities Project, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

FEATURING KEALOHA PISCIOTTA – A standoff between those calling themselves protectors of the Mauna Kea, and advocates of a major telescope project continues in Hawaii. Astronomers have planned a massive 30-meter telescope to sit atop the summit of Mauna Kea – one of the two mountains on Hawaii’s Big Island. Already that summit is home to a number of telescopes in partnership with the University of Hawaii. But Hawaiians – who consider Mauna Kea one of the most sacred places in the world – have opposed this latest telescope project. 

Kealoha Pisciotta is a practitioner of traditional and customary cultural and religious practices relating to Mauna Kea. She worked at the observatories for more than 12 years. She is also the President of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou (MKAH), the group that has brought multiple legal challenges against the TMT.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released a critical report on election security in the United States that showed all 50 states’ electronic vote counting systems were targeted by efforts tied to Russia in the 2016 election. The report, which came just a day after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued a dire warning about Russian election interference, was the first of several reports. But so much of the report was redacted at the request of US intelligence agencies, that some of the most serious aspects of interference may remain out of public sight. In the case of Illinois, the report says, “Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data.” But there was no evidence that they did actually alter results. Republican Senators killed several bills aimed at strengthening election security on the day the report was issued. President Donald Trump also appears unconcerned about election security. According to the New York Times, “Some administration officials have suggested that the issue is not getting enough high-level attention because President Trump equates any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory.”

House Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler announced he is going to court to enforce subpoenas requesting secret grand jury evidence from the Special Counsel investigation into the 2016 election and Trump Presidency. The evidence includes secret testimony from former White House counsel Donald McGahn. Nadler explained his plan to the press.

Meanwhile House Democrats released documentation showing that in 1973 when Congress requested President Richard Nixon’s tax returns from the IRS, they were handed over the very same day. The documents were intended to contradict Trump and the GOP’s claim that Congressional requests for Trump’s tax returns were unprecedented. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal is suing the Trump administration over its refusal to hand over Trump’s taxes. 

Massachusetts Representative Katherine Clark has become the highest-ranking Democrat in the House to back impeachment of the President. She explained her motivation in a statement saying, “I deeply respect the committee work of House Democrats to hold the president accountable, including hearings, subpoenas and lawsuits. All of our efforts to put the facts before the American people, however, have been met with unprecedented stonewalling and obstruction.”

In other news, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi posted a photo on Twitter of herself with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying that the two of them, “sat down to discuss working together to meet the needs of our districts and our country, fairness in our economy and diversity in our country.” The post was an obvious attempt to address the growing rift between two political factions within the Democratic Party that the lawmakers represent.

Trump’s nominee for a top position at the Treasury, Monica Crowley, has a racist past not unlike the President himself. Crowley has been named for the position of assistant treasury secretary ...

FEATURING KSHAMA SAWANT – The Republican Party has deliberately crafted a strategy to win elections by painting their opponents “socialists.” When President Donald Trump was accused of using racist language against the Squad of four Congresswomen of color, his GOP defenders justified his words by claiming that the targets of his vitriol were socialists. Republicans want to make the 2020 election be about “freedom versus socialism.” Are Democrats capable of handling these attacks? 

We turn to a proud socialist who has not only embraced the label but lived up to it, won an election, and is running for reelection.

Kshama Sawant, a member of Seattle’s City Council and the first socialist to be elected to that body. She is affiliated with the Socialist Alternative party and is up for reelection. 

FEATURING SAIRA RAO – A massive walkout of workers with the online furniture retailer Wayfair made headlines last month. Under the banner of Wayfair Walkout, hundreds of employees marched to protest the company’s contract with immigration authorities to provide beds and other furniture to detention centers. 

But Wayfair is acting as though it has weathered the storm, announcing a Black Friday sale in July. Now, activists are discussing the possibility of a boycott. 

Saira Rao has written about the responsibility of the South Asian American community to hold CEO accountable. Niraj Shah, Wayfair’s co-founder is a first generation Indian American. 

Read Rao’s article ‘Wayfair’s CEO, Niraj Shah, is one of us. We must hold him accountable,’ HERE.

Saira Rao, former congressional candidate and co-founder of In This Together Media, Race2Dinner and Healing from Hate. Her forthcoming memoir, is called Broken News.

Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rosselló has finally announced his resignation, two weeks after sustained mass street protests began demanding that he step down. After reports emerged early on Wednesday morning that Rossello would resign, the Puerto Rican legislature threatened to begin impeachment proceedings against Rosselló immediately unless he stepped down. Still, it wasn’t until just before midnight on Wednesday that the Governor issued a video message saying he would step down next Friday August 2nd. His successor would be Secretary of Justice Wanda Vásquez. But protesters made it clear even before his resignation that they would fight her as Governor as well. Protesters reacted with euphoria on the streets of San Juan on Wednesday night, lighting fireworks and singing the revolutionary anthem.

In other news former Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent 7 hours on Wednesday testifying in front of two House committees about his 2-year investigation of the Trump campaign and presidency. During his second hearing House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff asked Mueller about the Trump campaign’s openness to accepting the help of foreign governments in US elections. Just hours after the hearings on Wednesday Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi blocked a series of bills strengthening election security that the House voted on, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday personally objected to the bills on election security. 

Media reports widely suggested that while Mueller’s performance did not offer the explosive basis for impeachment that Democrats hoped, neither did it help Trump make his case that the investigation exonerated him. Trump responded to the hearings in remarks to reporters. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also spoke to press on Wednesday explaining what the Democrats’ next steps are after the Mueller hearings. Representative Schiff on Thursday downplayed talk of impeachment saying the only way Trump would leave office would be “by being voted out.”

Meanwhile, the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Thursday issued subpoenas for the private communications of several top current and former Trump aides including Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Steve Bannon. 

The Washington Post has spotted that the Presidential seal Trump spoke in front of at his Monday event for the ultra-right wing group Turning Point USA, was doctored. The seal, which usually sports a Bald Eagle clutching arrows in its claw was replaced by a bird very similar to that seen on the Russian flag, holding golf clubs instead. Written in Spanish across the top were the words “45 is a puppet,” instead of “E pluribus unum.” Turning Point USA insists that there was nothi...

FEATURING RON FEIN – Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified in front of two House panels back to back on Wednesday, fulfilling a long-standing Democratic demand that he submit to public questioning about his investigation into Russian election interference. 

He opened his testimony at the House Judiciary Committee hearing by reiterating the seriousness of Russian efforts. Several Democrats forced him to reiterate what his report already says: that he did not exonerate President Donald Trump of wrong doing, especially in the section regarding obstruction of justice. 

Republicans meanwhile stuck largely to a line of inquiry heard nowhere else but Fox News, raising conspiracy theories and the so-called Steele Dossier, or why resources were not spent on investigating Hillary Clinton instead. 

Mr. Mueller appeared at times overwhelmed and hesitant and at other times defiant. He largely stuck to his pre-hearing assertion that he would not say anything beyond what he wrote in the report.

For more information visit  www.impeachmentproject.org.

Ron Fein, Legal Director of Free Speech for People, and a constitutional lawyer who previously served as Assistant Regional Counsel in the US EPA. He is the co-author with John Bonifaz and Ben Clements of the book The Constitution Demands It: The Case for The Impeachment of Donald Trump.

FEATURING BEVERLY L. LONGID – The controversial president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, gave his annual “state of the nation” speech on Monday remaining defiant in the face of mass protests against his oversight of a deadly drug war that has claimed thousands of lives. Earlier this month the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a crucial resolution to hold Duterte’s administration responsible for mass violations of human rights. 

Here in the US, the Filipino American diaspora has held weeks of protests in cities around the nation aimed at Duterte and his broader extremist agenda.  

For more information, visit www.malayamovement.com.

Beverly L. Longid, Global Coordinator of the International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL) and Co-chair of the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness. She is also a member of the Philippine Universal Periodic Review Watch and was a central witness in advocating alongside Amnesty International for the passage of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation of the killings in the Philippines.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller gave public testimony to two House committees on Wednesday about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and President Donald Trump’s efforts to obstruct justice. In his opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee, Mueller said this. House Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler wasted no time in getting to the heart of why Democrats held the hearing – to make clear that the report did not exonerate the President as he has repeatedly claimed. Democratic Representative Ted Lieu continued that line of questioning. Republican Representative Ken Buck questioned Mueller about indicting a president after he leaves office. Meanwhile President Trump went off on social media firing off tweet after tweet to counter what he considers a “witch hunt.”

A day before the Mueller hearing FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to the US Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the GOP’s efforts to investigate the origins of the Special Counsel probe. During his testimony Wray shared a statistic that has received very little news coverage about domestic terrorism. Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that the majority of domestic terrorism cases that the FBI has investigated involve white supremacist violence. 

A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll has just found that a majority of Americans consider the chants heard at Trump’s North Carolina rally of “Send Her Back” to be racist. The chants were in response to Trump’s frenzied whipping up of hate aimed at Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a refugee and the first Somali American member of Congress. Fifty eight percent of Americans felt the chants were racist. But among Republicans alone that number was only 24%. 

On Tuesday Trump addressed an ultra right-wing youth summit organized by Turning Point USA, a group whose leaders are documented white supremacists. During his speech he denounced Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Muslim American woman of color, as a “crazed lunatic,” and continued his attacks on other members of the Squad of Congresswomen of color. He also disturbingly made a claim about having the Constitutional power to do whatever he wants.  

On Tuesday Trump filed a suit in federal court to stop the Democratic Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee to obtain his state tax returns after the state of New York passed a law allowing it. Democrats in the House responded by getting ready to pass a measure strengthening their standing to subpoena Trump’s financial info...

FEATURING ROSA CLEMENTE – Mass protests continued in Puerto Rico on Monday, a day after embattled Governor Ricardo Rosselló pledged to not run for reelection. But about half a million of the island’s residents poured into the clogged streets of San Juan in what many considered the largest protests in history. The movement has adopted a rallying cry of “Ricky Renuncia” demanding Rosselló’s resignation. 

Although Rosselló was becoming increasingly unpopular over charges of corruption and more, it was the recent publication of 800 pages of secret messages exchanged between him and his aides after Hurricane Maria that pushed Puerto Ricans over the edge. The messages espoused misogynist and homophobic sentiment and expressed violence toward prominent people as well as ordinary residents. 

Rosa Clemente is a news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali. She is also a community organizer, 2008 Green Party Vice Presidential candidate, and currently a doctoral candidate in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of AfroAmerican Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.