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truthout.orgWe’re Already Living Through Journalism’s Dystopian FutureAI is devouring our industry and undermining access to factual information. We all have a duty to fight back.

15 Sept

3 months ago Google search started to prioritize AI summaries over links, and the impact on journalism could not be more devastating. Truthout's overall readership from Google is down 54% against last year. We lost a huge chunk of our audience overnight that we painstakingly built over decades.

buff.lySupreme Court Clears Texas-DOJ Deal Slammed as “Collusion,” Barring Judges From Pausing DeportationsThe agreement between the DOJ and Texas at the center of the case was labelled as “egregious collusion” by opponents.

The Supreme Court stripped immigration judges of the ability to pause certain deportation proceedings on Tuesday, declining to block a deal slammed as “egregious collusion” between the Justice Department and the state of Texas.

The unsigned order on Tuesday halts the practice known as “administrative closure,” which allows judges to pause deportation cases. The practice affects thousands of cases a year, and has been granted 360,000 times since 1990.

There were no noted dissents to the Supreme Court’s decision, and the Court provided no explanation for its reasoning. The decision hands the Trump administration another tool as immigration officials wantonly violate court orders and pressure judges to issue more deportation orders.

buff.lyTrump Says He’ll Accept Midterm Results If They’re “Honest” — Repeating a Line He’s Used BeforeTrump has repeatedly — and baselessly — suggested that widespread voter fraud may play a role in this year’s races.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he would only accept the results of the 2026 midterm elections if he felt they were “honest” — echoing statements he’s made in the past while peddling baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

Trump has continued to sow doubts about elections, including the upcoming midterms, publishing questionable reports suggesting that thousands of voters are registered illegally. He has pressured states to remove these residents from voter rolls, and has called for "nationalized" elections.

Trump’s most brazen attempt to interfere with this year’s elections took place in Alaska last week, when he ordered the DOJ to preemptively sue to block the state from certifying a U.S. Senate election if the incumbent Republican, a loyalist to the president, lost the race.

buff.lyMike Rogers Solicits Donations to “Protect Elon,” the Biggest Political Donor in Modern HistoryThe Republican’s campaign made the plea to help Musk avoid congressional inquiry into his DOGE work.

Elon Musk, the largest single political donor in modern American history, has poured nearly half a billion dollars into backing Republicans in the midterms. Mike Rogers is now calling on supporters to donate to his campaign in order to “protect Elon.”

“When you stand with my campaign, you are directly shielding Elon Musk, protecting the movement to audit the federal government, and stopping this socialist retaliation plot dead in its tracks,” the leaked email says. “Please, make an immediate, urgent contribution right now to protect Elon.”

buff.lyMike Rogers Receives Last-Minute Donation From Anti-Abortion PACWhile in office, he was a sponsor of four fetal “personhood” bills that aimed to ban nearly all abortions nationwide.

Mike Rogers claimed 2 years ago that he was not interested in undoing a 2022 ballot measure that codified the right to abortion care in Michigan. But a recent campaign contribution from an anti-abortion PAC left abortion advocates warning that he might back attempts to ban abortion nationwide.

buff.lyEgypt Shutters Independent News Site Mada Masr and Detains Its Editor-in-ChiefThis “severe blow” to independent media is an “unprecedented escalation,” says a journalist who previously worked there.

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A court in Cairo has ordered the closure of the independent Egyptian news site Mada Masr. The court also ordered the site’s editor-in-chief, Lina Attalah, to be detained until she pays a fine of over $50,000. She was convicted on charges of managing an unlicensed website.

buff.lyStudent-Led Movement Could Lower Voting Age to 16 for Local Races in Culver City, CaliforniaStudents were motivated to push the proposal due to drastic cuts in funding for their schools that they had no say in.

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Students are campaigning for a ballot measure in Culver City, California, which would lower the voting age for local and school board elections from 18 to 16, allowing teenagers to participate in the decision-making process on many issues that directly affect their lives.

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Teenagers in the city have pressed for the measure to be passed before, including in 2022, when it failed by only 16 votes. The proposal gained additional support after last year, when school board budget cuts led to dozens of school employees and teachers being fired.

buff.lyReport: Trump Admin Backing Far Right Viktor Orbán for UN Secretary-GeneralThe former Hungarian prime minister is “the dream MAGA-conservative candidate,” one US official said.

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The Trump administration has reportedly advocated for Viktor Orbán, ex-PM of Hungary, to serve as UN Secretary-General, despite his record of plunging Hungary into fascist authoritarianism and maintaining power and control through corruption, police violence, surveillance, and censorship.

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Orbán could “act as an apologist for Vladimir Putin and other dictators,” WSJ’s editorial board wrote. But the U.S. is willing to set such concerns aside for the rabidly anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ figure because he is “the dream MAGA-conservative candidate,” a U.S. official said.

buff.lyPrivate Prison Companies Are Pouring Money Into GOP Coffers Ahead of MidtermsDonald Trump’s second term has been a financial boon to the private prison industry.

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Trump’s second term has been a financial boon to the private prison industry. Since Trump took office again, private prison companies CoreCivic and GEO Group have received more than $1 billion in contracts with ICE. Now they are pouring money into Republican coffers.

buff.lyAlaska Officials Call for “Immediate” Dismissal of DOJ Lawsuit Seeking to Block Senate Election ResultsOfficials have “taken significant steps to distinguish” two candidates with the same name on the ballot, they said.

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Alaska election officials have filed a motion calling for the “immediate” dismissal of a lawsuit, brought forward last week by the U.S. Department of Justice, that seeks to invalidate the state’s U.S. Senate race if the Republican candidate loses.

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Beyond the unprecedented nature of preemptively calling for an election result to be dismissed, the DOJ’s filing was unusual in that President Trump ordered it to happen. In previous years, the DOJ has tried to appear nominally independent from the president in its decision making process.

buff.lyPoll Challenges Narrative That Michigan Democratic Voters Are Split on El-SayedNinety-five percent of Democrats say they’re voting for El-Sayed, and just 4 percent say they’re voting for Rogers.

The media narrative detailing a massive split among Michigan Democratic voters is undermined by actual polls that find that 95% of Democrats say they’re voting for El-Sayed, while only 4% say they will vote for Rogers.

3% of Michigan Republicans actually say they’re voting for El-Sayed, but this minuscule number certainly hasn’t led to a host of stories about divisions within the GOP.

buff.ly“Democrats for Mike Rogers” PAC Is Funded by Republicans, Records ShowThe group has spent more than $4 million in an attempt to defeat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Republicans have tried to milk this angle, even funding a "Democrats for Mike Rogers" PAC to try and defeat Abdul El-Sayed.

buff.lyAs the AI Bubble Threatens to Burst, We Must Prepare to Fight a Big Tech BailoutAs firms like CoreWeave and NVIDIA start to wobble, let’s demand that the public won’t be the one left holding the bag.

To disarm the big tech bomb, including AI, the public needs to be on high alert — as AI firms start to visibly wobble, we need clear demands and firm commitments from our leaders that if it all comes crashing down, the public won’t be the one left holding the bag.

buff.lyLong-Awaited Climate Change Case Finally Goes to Court in CanadaThe outcome could prove persuasive in other climate litigation or spur new cases.

15 Canadian youth have accused the government of violating their constitutional rights by failing to adequately address the country’s role in global warming. Although thousands of similar cases have been filed, experts said this case is arguably the most consequential to reach trial. Via @grist.org

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A damning quote from the report: “Trump and Epstein seemed to share the same playbook for recruiting and abusing women, all the way down to the university they promised admission to and the timing of their follow-up phone calls.”

Truthout@truthout.org

A new 50-page report released by House Judiciary Committee Democrats includes a trove of evidence regarding allegations of sexual assault, including a new rape allegation from former Miss Switzerland, against Trump that the lawmakers say has been deliberately covered up by the DOJ.

truthout.orgNew Evidence Allegedly Ties Trump to 11 Sexual Assaults Related to EpsteinA new report notes several patterns of conduct that Trump and Epstein shared in recruiting victims.

truthout.orgNew Evidence Allegedly Ties Trump to 11 Sexual Assaults Related to EpsteinA new report notes several patterns of conduct that Trump and Epstein shared in recruiting victims.

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“These women have spoken to investigators and, in some cases, testified under oath, yet Trump’s DOJ has shut down investigations, deliberately withheld evidence and, through Todd Blanche, prevented Ghislaine Maxwell from discussing a survivor whose account implicated Trump,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin.

buff.lyImmigrant’s Death in Abusive Georgia ICE Facility Reignites Call for Its ClosureLuis Sandoval was detained in a Folkston ICE center, where a hunger strike has been ongoing for over 2 weeks.

Luis Sandoval, a 48-year-old from El Salvador, died on Friday at the Folkston ICE facility, owned by the notorious GEO Group. The detention center is already facing scrutiny over poor conditions.

Earlier this month, roughly 500 people at the facility went on hunger strike, and organizers say that 12 people are still maintaining the strike. It’s unclear if Sandoval was a participant.

buff.lyNetanyahu Extends Assault on Hebron Ahead of Israel’s ElectionsIsraeli forces have displaced over 3,000 Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank city of Hebron since Friday.

Over 3,000 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron since Friday, as Netanyahu carries out collective punishment in a bid to shore up support ahead of Israel’s elections on Tuesday.

On Friday, after two Palestinian gunmen opened fire on an Israeli military checkpoint in Hebron, killing two Israeli soldiers, Netanyahu stated that he would “prepare for a full lockdown across all of Judea and Samaria,” using the Israeli term to encompass the West Bank.

The Israeli military quickly locked down the city of Hebron — the largest city in the West Bank and its economic capital — and destroyed the neighborhood where the checkpoint was located. Bezalel Smotrich filmed himself in front of a building being demolished, saying he ordered the destruction.

buff.lyTrump Calls for Metal Detector in Senate for El-Sayed in New Islamophobic RemarkTrump called El-Sayed a “jihadist” and said people like him should never be allowed in the Senate.

At a rally in Michigan, Trump said that El-Sayed would be “unable to get a seat on an airplane” for his supposed “support for jihadists.” “He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.” Trump went on in an Islamophobic rant.

buff.lyData Center Near Yellowstone River Would Cause “Irreparable Harm,” Native Activist SaysThe Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council voted to ban data centers, but the Apsáalooke have yet to take a position.

The Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council voted unanimously this October to ban data centers on tribal land in Montana. But the Apsáalooke, or Crow Tribe, has not taken an official position and remains open to hearing proposals from companies.

The divide over data centers comes as developers eye Montana for its land, water, and power, and as Tribes test how far their sovereignty can actually reach. Tribal bans are enforceable on tribal land, but off-reservation data centers that affect reservation waters are “unlikely to be enforceable.”

“If we put a project like this in around Yellowstone County, in that river valley, it’s gonna be an environmental impact similar to a coal mine, or something that’s gonna cause irreparable harm to the area. I think that’s why there’s so much opposition to it right now.”

buff.lyFor Child Abuse Survivors Like Me, Prison Reactivates Familiar TraumaPrisons will continue to retraumatize survivors as long as society accepts control as care and punishment as protection.

"The man in blue is screaming commands, provoking my trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, though he will never call it that. To him, this is procedure. Policy. Control. To my body, it is a return."

Jazzy Mason's essay is a 2026 winner of the Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize, which honors the work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors who are writing toward a more just world.

buff.lySerbia’s Student-Led Movement Sweeps Strongman Aleksander Vučić Out of PowerStudents “changed our understanding of what’s politically possible for all of us,” says journalist Lela Vujanić.

Serbia’s longtime leader Aleksander Vučić has been swept out of power by a historic student-led opposition movement against Vučić’s right-wing Serbian Progressive Party.

Candidates from the Student List, who are not students themselves but largely first-time politicians selected by student-led popular assemblies, won a majority of seats in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, marking a seismic shift in Serbian politics.

buff.lyMan Who Spent Years Undermining Voters’ Interests May Win Newly Drawn DistrictTennessee congressional candidate Brent Taylor has taken steps to strip authority from elected local officials.

Not two weeks after the Tennessee legislature carved Memphis into three congressional districts this spring, in a move designed to eliminate Democratic representation, Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor made his electoral expectations clear.

Congressional District 9 had stood as the state’s sole majority Black district for more than 40 years. Now, it stretches across half the state and is majority white. In his years as a state senator, Taylor has taken steps to strip authority from local officials elected by many voters in district 9.

buff.lyCancer in Prison: A Death Sentence?All around us, authorities work to steal our life force. I won’t let them take it in the time I have left.

"After the surgeon removed my tumor, my stomach looked like a horror movie connected by twelve inches of staples and yellowish pink flesh. He instructed me to keep my wound clean, but the correctional officers assigned to me refused to let me shower for 7 days. I was also denied food for 5 days."

Harlow Scott’s essay is a 2026 winner of the Keeley Schenwar Memorial Prize, which uplifts the work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers who are sharing their stories firsthand — and calling us to action against brutal state repression.

buff.lyUS Urged to Recognize Lula’s Presidential Victory as Bolsonaro Demands AnnulmentTrump ally Flávio Bolsonaro’s refusal to accept the results sparks fears of political violence and another coup attempt.

Pro-democracy campaigners urged the U.S. government to formally recognize Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva victory in Sunday’s runoff election as his far-right challenger, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, refused to accept the results, sparking fears of political violence.

buff.lyNew Evidence Allegedly Ties Trump to 11 Sexual Assaults Related to EpsteinA new report notes several patterns of conduct that Trump and Epstein shared in recruiting victims.

The House Judiciary Committee Democrats have released a report containing testimony from 11 women regarding allegations of sexual assault, including a new rape allegation, against President Trump in relation to Jeffrey Epstein that the lawmakers say has been deliberately covered up by the DOJ.

truthout.orgAnnouncing the Winners of the 6th Annual Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay PrizeThe prize honors the work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors who are writing toward a more just world.

Today, we are grateful to announce the winners of the 6th annual Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize. The prize, awarded to 2 formerly or currently incarcerated people, is given in memory of Keeley Schenwar, a devoted mother, daughter, sister, friend, writer, and advocate for incarcerated mothers.

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truthout.orgCancer in Prison: A Death Sentence?All around us, authorities work to steal our life force. I won’t let them take it in the time I have left.

Harlow Scott's winning essay, “Cancer in Prison: A Death Sentence?” chronicles her diagnosis with colon cancer, 14 years into her prison sentence. She describes the medical neglect and abuse to which she’s been subjected.

truthout.orgFor Child Abuse Survivors Like Me, Prison Reactivates Familiar TraumaPrisons will continue to retraumatize survivors as long as society accepts control as care and punishment as protection.

Jazzy Mason's winning essay, “For Child Abuse Survivors Like Me, Prison Reactivates Familiar Trauma,” points to the way in which prison “mirrors the dynamics of abuse with chilling precision.”

As repression has escalated in so many realms of U.S. life over the past year and a half, we cannot allow ourselves to forget that nearly 2 million people in this country experience some of the most constant and brutal state repression, in the form of incarceration.