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What's happening:

-Co-plaintiff, Professor Wa Ngũgĩ: “We shouldn’t be punishing the people who are calling out what clearly is a genocide”

-Eric Lee: “If democracy is going to be defended, it is not going to come from the Democratic Party.”

-Taal’s lawyer, Eric Lee: This “is a test case to determine whether the government can... put you in jail for the things you say”

-“I’m afraid it’s just leading to a fascist state” Hearing begins today on Momodou Taal’s case against Trump

-Lawyers for Momodou Taal denounce Trump administration’s deportation effort as unconstitutional political retaliation-

In a development that will be recorded as a dark turning point in the destruction of public health in the United States, the Senate has now confirmed two of the most reactionary and anti-scientific figures to helm the core institutions of the American biomedical establishment. In a party-line vote Tuesday, Jay Bhattacharya was confirmed as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dr. Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Both Bhattacharya and Makary are aligned not merely with the Trump administration’s agenda, but with a sweeping assault on public health infrastructure, biomedical research, and scientific truth. Their nominations are not isolated appointments but components of a broader political project: the reconstitution of federally funded scientific research under the heel of the far right, led by a government that is openly contemptuous of life-saving knowledge and hostile to any measure that might impede the flow of corporate profits.

Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford economist and co-author of the notorious Great Barrington Declaration, made his name during the COVID-19 pandemic as a leading advocate of the fascistic policy of “herd immunity”—a pseudoscientific euphemism for mass infection, death and disability. The Great Barrington Declaration was drafted at the headquarters of the libertarian American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), itself a product of the reactionary right’s war against any role of the state in regulating industry or protecting the public good.

Martin Makary, meanwhile, has gained notoriety for his anti-vaccine grandstanding and COVID minimization, falsely claiming in 2021 that “the pandemic is over” and that 90 percent of the population was immune to the virus at that point, an absurd lie. His nomination to lead the FDA—an agency responsible for ensuring the safety of vaccines, medications and food—marks a deliberate move to undermine trust in these institutions and facilitate a deregulated pharmaceutical and food industry.

Recent actions by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Massachusetts, coupled with policy changes spearheaded by Democratic Governor Maura Healey, underscore the deepening collaboration of Democratic Party leaders with the Trump administration’s fascistic immigration agenda. While claiming opposition to Trump’s policies, Democrats have aligned themselves with measures that scapegoat migrants and undermine the democratic rights of the working class.

Between March 18 and March 23, ICE conducted a major enforcement operation across Massachusetts, arresting 370 individuals. The agency claimed to target “dangerous alien offenders,” including alleged members of transnational gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. In fact, the operation swept up individuals with minor offenses or tenuous connections to criminal activity, further criminalizing undocumented immigrants.

Local radio station WBUR reported that civil rights activists dispute how ICE characterized its operation and quoted Neenah Estrella-Lune of East Boston, who said it was likely that many of the people apprehended have only minor criminal records.

“The overwhelming majority of the people are not criminals in that way,” she said. “They’re people who, at worst, they overstay their visa and—Oh, God forbid, they’re painting people’s homes.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in Hollywood has steadfastly refused to release a statement in defense of Hamdan Ballal, co-director of No Other Land, who was brutally assaulted by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied West Bank Monday night.

Precisely three weeks earlier, Ballal had stood on the platform at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles and received, along with Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the prize for Best Documentary Feature Film.

The pretentiously named Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as we have previously noted, has a thoroughly unprincipled history. It was set up in the 1920s by studio boss Louis B. Mayer to subvert the unionization of film workers. The establishment of a corporatist entity, with different branches, would—Mayer and the others hoped—induce writers and others to feel they were part of the industry and not make any unreasonable demands.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, during the Red Scare and the purges of Communist Party and other left-wing actors, writers and directors, the Academy played a rotten role.

As late as 1957, on the eve of the collapse of the blacklist, the AMPAS passed a by-law decreeing that no one who had invoked his or her Fifth Amendment rights (against self-incrimination) in front of the witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) could receive an Academy Award. It had also stripped award eligibility from anyone who had been a member of the Communist Party. In 1999, the Academy despicably went out of its way to bestow an honorary award on arch-informer, director Elia Kazan.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke recently with a United States Postal Service (USPS) letter carrier about the effects of the consolidation of a former facility into a new Sorting and Delivery Center (S&DC). The consolidation of offices into larger S&DCs has accelerated under the Delivering for America (DFA) initiative, now in its fourth year, which is aimed at consolidating operations into large Amazon-style automated facilities, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs.

According to the Save the Post Office website, as of last year, more than 3,300 postal delivery routes from 200 spoke offices had been consolidated into 60 S&DCs, a process which appears to be accelerating.

WSWS: What kinds of changes were introduced with Deliver for America?

LC: Now a new machine has been added, the SDUS, which increases the speed but has lowered the efficiency. Packages not only are more likely to end up in the wrong gurney, but they also sort big [within weight and dimension limits of the machine] and small packages together.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35424526

Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom has once again revealed his true allegiance—not to working people, nor to environmental protection, but to corporate interests.

His latest executive order, which suspends California’s landmark environmental regulations to fast-track utility infrastructure rebuilding in wildfire-affected areas, is a direct attack on democracy, environmental safeguards and working class communities. It is a measure that aligns perfectly with the interests of private energy corporations like Southern California Edison (SCE) while dangerously mirroring the authoritarian methods of the fascistic Trump administration.

Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom has once again revealed his true allegiance—not to working people, nor to environmental protection, but to corporate interests.

His latest executive order, which suspends California’s landmark environmental regulations to fast-track utility infrastructure rebuilding in wildfire-affected areas, is a direct attack on democracy, environmental safeguards and working class communities. It is a measure that aligns perfectly with the interests of private energy corporations like Southern California Edison (SCE) while dangerously mirroring the authoritarian methods of the fascistic Trump administration.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23750069

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27481391

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35401044

In a unanimous vote last Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council has taken a decisive step toward dismantling the LA Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and shifting control of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to private homeless service providers.

The council’s decision follows two scathing audits that exposed failures in LAHSA’s financial oversight, but the true significance of this move extends far beyond the agency’s mismanagement. At its core, this is not about fixing homelessness; it is about turning the crisis into a lucrative business opportunity for the private sector.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who spearheaded the effort, branded LAHSA a “monstrosity,” citing delayed provider payments and failures to track spending. Yet, rather than addressing the deeper systemic failures of the city’s (and, in fact, the state’s) approach to homelessness, the council is using LAHSA’s dysfunction as a pretext to accelerate the privatization of services. This is not a genuine effort to improve conditions for the nearly 50,000 unhoused individuals in Los Angeles, it is a deliberate strategy to carve up public funding and distribute it among politically connected private contractors.

In a unanimous vote last Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council has taken a decisive step toward dismantling the LA Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and shifting control of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to private homeless service providers.

The council’s decision follows two scathing audits that exposed failures in LAHSA’s financial oversight, but the true significance of this move extends far beyond the agency’s mismanagement. At its core, this is not about fixing homelessness; it is about turning the crisis into a lucrative business opportunity for the private sector.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who spearheaded the effort, branded LAHSA a “monstrosity,” citing delayed provider payments and failures to track spending. Yet, rather than addressing the deeper systemic failures of the city’s (and, in fact, the state’s) approach to homelessness, the council is using LAHSA’s dysfunction as a pretext to accelerate the privatization of services. This is not a genuine effort to improve conditions for the nearly 50,000 unhoused individuals in Los Angeles, it is a deliberate strategy to carve up public funding and distribute it among politically connected private contractors.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/34548573

The California governor has been sending prepaid cell phones to executives throughout his state.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/34538453

Two different teams of astronomers have detected oxygen in the most distant known galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0. The discovery, reported in two separate studies, was made possible thanks to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. This record-breaking detection is making astronomers rethink how quickly galaxies formed in the early Universe.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20250320183812/https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2507/

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.