u/CountingSeaStars

Credit: @radical_left_thug

On Thursday night, Emma Landis was shot by a contractor working for GEO Group at a protest outside the ICE facility in Aurora, CO. Today, she's back to speak about it and continue her advocacy.

Donate to her GoFundMe to help with medical expenses: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-my-friend-after-aurora-ice-shooting

​Lindsey Graham died on Saturday. They announced it on Sunday, picked his unqualified sister to replace him on Monday, and swore her in on Tuesday. She hasn't even had time to plan her brother's funeral and they already got her in office in the US Capitol. Meanwhile, when Representative Sylvester Turner, a black Democrat, died on March 5th, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott waited until April to announce there would be no election to replace him until November, leaving the largely black and Hispanic district here in Houston unrepresented for nearly an entire year.

​This is how Republicans play politics with death. While Democrats are drafting generous statements of condolences for their oppressors, Republicans are callously seizing power from the oppressed. They pulled the same stunt when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died and they wouldn't even hold a hearing on Obama's nominee, but then raced to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she died in the final months of Trump's term. Republicans demand that Democrats observe all kinds of outdated rules about death and mourning, but then break the same rules when Democrats die.

​They're doing the same thing in Kentucky with Mitch McConnell in the hospital. When McConnell started glitching a few years ago, his Republican state legislature passed a bill stripping the Democratic governor of the power to replace him. They were fine when a Republican governor had the power, but they changed the rules for a Democrat. That's because the rules themselves are a trap. Democrats have to follow all the rules, but Republicans get to break them with impunity.

​Just like the rule of meritocracy. Republicans love to whine about affirmative action and DEI, which give opportunities to qualified women and people of color, but they just appointed a US Senator whose main qualification is simply being the sister of a dead senator. And you can't say that both parties do it when one party spent the past few decades claiming to only care about merit. They said that Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were unqualified, but then they sing the praises of people like Herschel Walker, Pete Hegseth, and Donald Trump, who was the first person elected president in US history with no experience in government or military.

​They whine about Democrats being unfair to Republicans in California and Virginia with redistricting while they steal seats in Texas, Florida, and Missouri, and they started it. That's why Trump tried to change the US Constitution on birthright citizenship by executive order. That's why he just fired all the Federal Election Assistance Commissioners while he's trying to seize ballots and intimidate poll workers, and why he's desperately trying to pass a national voter suppression bill to stop mail-in ballots, which he uses himself.

​Rules for thee, not for me. That's the Republican motto. So let this be a lesson. Stop playing by their rules. Republicans have only one rule: power. Every other rule is negotiable. The old rule book has been burned, and we will be too, if we don't wake up.

1. End gerrymandering

2. ​Ban Wall Street from buying single-family homes

3. ​Ban congresspeople from becoming lobbyists

4. ​Ban congresspeople from trading stocks

5. ​Create a minimum tax for billionaires

6. ​Close the loopholes that billionaires use to avoid taxes

7. ​Establish congressional term limits

8. ​Ban dark money donations from political campaigns

9. ​Implement universal paid family leave

10. ​End forever wars by repealing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force

11. ​Release the full Epstein files, redacting only the victims' information

12. ​Ban corporate PACs by overturning Citizens United

13. ​Require mandatory disclosure for all organizations donating to political campaigns

14. ​Require mandatory police body cams

15. ​Ban junk fees

16. ​Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices

17. ​Fully fund Social Security by extending the existing tax to those making over $400,000 a year

18. ​Ban adversarial foreign nations from buying American farmland

19. ​Improve Veterans Health Care access

20. ​Establish common-sense data privacy laws (similar to those in European countries)

21. ​Enshrine the right to repair

22. ​Audit the Pentagon and penalize them with a 0.5% budget reduction if they fail the audit

Natasha Rakotz is one of 15 Minnesotans facing charges in connection to anti-ICE activism over the winter. Prosecutors say the 15 are members and associates of the protest group Direct Action Minnesota, which they describe as an antifa — or antifascist — affinity group.

Officials arrested most of the defendants June 16 “for conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers” and for efforts to allegedly “violently oppose immigration law enforcement.” They made their initial appearances in court as a large crowd protested outside in St. Paul.

Minneapolis resident Rakotz was one of two yet to be detained, who U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen called “fugitives at large." She turned herself in on June 17.

“I'm just one of many people trying to help our immigrant neighbors, and they're untrue. These charges are absolutely untrue," Rakotz said.

Story by Feven Gerezgiher
Video by Anne Guttridge

Source: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTB8MG2A2/

Conventional wisdom has it that the only way to end the Citizens United regime is for a future Supreme Court to overturn it or to amend the Constitution – getting two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures to defy the billionaires and big businesses. But analysts led by Center for American Progress fellow and former FEC lawyer Tom Moore have been pushing an innovative approach to take on corporate power: rewriting state codes to explicitly deny corporations they charter the authority to spend in elections.

This idea has taken off. Legislation pursuing this method of end-running Citizens United has been introduced in 15 states (see the list here), and folks in Montana are trying to push it through as a ballot initiative. Hawai’i passed their version, S.B. 2471, nearly unanimously, and yesterday Governor Josh Green signed it into law. This could be a game-changer.

This, to be clear, is not a perfect or complete solution. We are going to see legal challenges against this effort for years to come, in a judicial system stacked with the sort of right-wing judges who caused this mess in the first place. Even if it does stand, it impacts corporations, not individuals - folks like Elon Musk, Ken Griffin, Richard Uihlein and Jeff Yass will still be able to spend what they want. But we’re talking about getting billions out of our elections, the first major disruption to this crooked system. And we’re talking about rejecting the ridiculous idea of “corporate personhood” that has been forced on us by the puppets of the powerful. We are taking power back for regular Americans and restoring a little bit of sanity to politics.

Let’s make sure Hawai’i is just the beginning.

🗣️ We can contact our own legislators and governors and ask them follow the Aloha State’s lead. We can find call scripts here and email language here, or send this message directly using Resistbot by texting SIGN PSIYZJ to 50409. We can also check whether there are bills already introduced in our state we can encourage them to support here. 🗣️

CALL/EMAIL LANGUAGE

SEND A RESISTBOT

🙋🏽‍♀️ We can also join the fight to pass it via ballot initiative in Montana. If we’re in the state, we can find out how to add our signature to get it on the ballot here and sign up to volunteer here. The Transparent Election Initiative will also be holding a webinar on Monday at 7PM ET/5PM MT about “the Montana Plan,” emphasizing how supporters across the country can help advance I-194. Let’s sign up to join them here. 🙋🏻‍♀️

VOLUNTEER IN MONTANA

GET INVOLVED FROM ANYWHERE MON @ 7PM ET

🙋🏿We can get more information and sign up to be part of this movement with the Transparent Election Initiative here. 🙋🏻

VOLUNTEER FROM ANYWHERE

🔁 And we can share this video explaining this new approach with our networks. Huge majorities of Americans have long wanted to take our country back from the oligarchs, let’s them know we’ve got a plan! 🔁

SPREAD THE WORD

Also in today's Rogan's List:

• The next phase of the fight for voting rights starts now - join solidarity events for All Roads Lead to the South tomorrow, help lead voter registration and engagement for Good Trouble Lives On, volunteer with Fair Fight Action
• Republicans won’t hold their own accountable, so the voters must – helping vote out Cory Mills, Chuck Edwards, Max Miller and Jen Kiggans
• Mifepristone access is safe for now – let’s use this pause to keep spreading the word about available resources for abortion
• Learn best practices and get plugged in with support to hold freedom vigils at detention sites, call Monday @ 8PM ET
• Anger at data centers is real, let’s make sure we can use it effectively – training on power mapping Wednesday @ 8PM ET
• A sitting supreme court justice hasn’t lost reelection in Georgia in more than 100 years… we’re going to change that on Tuesday! Phonebank for pro-choice, pro-democracy progressives TODAY at noon and 6PM ET, SATURDAY at 2PM ET, and SUNDAY at 1PM and 4PM ET