Behind the crippling economic and political situation in Venezuela is Nicolás Maduro. After years of high inflation and a tumultuous relationship with the United States, the president of Venezuela faces a country waiting for political intervention. US President Donald Trump wants to oust Maduro, a former revolutionary turned anti-democratic leader, and recently said his “days […]

The conservative commentator Erick-Woods Erickson observed on his Substack this week that Twitter has now convinced large swaths of the American right that Europe has been completely overrun by Muslim...

Authorities in Italy are racing to track down a man after he broke out of the maximum security wing of Milan’s Opera prison during the weekend in what has become his fourth successful escape from custody. Police rolled out patrols, checkpoints and tighter border controls within hours, worried that the 41-year-old Albanian inmate Taulant Toma may well attempt to leave the country before anyone catches a sight of him. Toma, dubbed ‘the wizard of escapes’ by Italian press, managed his latest breakout on Saturday, using a tried and tested escape method that still feels ever-so-slightly more Hollywood than real life. He reportedly sawed through the iron bars of his cell using a file stolen from the prison workshop and then climbed down an outer wall using a cobbled-together rope system that involved knotted bedsheets, Euronews reports. He then scaled a six metre wall and vanished away into the darkness. The man’s sentence for robbery and other crimes runs all the way up until October 2048, which may very well explain his determination to keep slipping through the ‘high-security’ cracks. Prosecutors noted that staff at Opera were in the middle of a shift change when Toma made his move; a detail that investigators consider crucial to understanding how the escape was allowed to have happened and gone unnoticed. It’s not the first time that Toma has tested the limits of European prison design. He first broke out of Terni prison back in 2009. But his most talked about escape came in February 2013 when he fled from the maximum security wing in Parma alongside fellow inmate Vamentin Frokaj. Frokaj was later killed by a jeweller during a home invasion in 2015, a grim twist that became part of the escape’s legacy in Italian criminal lore. After the 2013 Parma breakout, police spent a full 40 days searching for Toma. Only to learn he’d already been arrested over in Belgium and held in Liège awaiting extradition. Even that didn’t last long. He managed to escape from Belgian custody a few months later, adding yet another chapter to a file that now spans two countries. Back in Milan, investigators are now reviewing CCTV from Opera prison to see if Toma had some kind of help on the outside. The episode has renewed criticism of Italy’s overstretched penal system which unions say has made even maximum security wings harder to secure. Opera held 1,338 inmates in spaces built for 918 at the time of the escape. While only 533 officers were on duty despite a need for at least 811 in order for the prison to run properly. Gennarino De Fazio, secretary general of the penitentiary police union UILPA, said that the latest incident once again exposes deep structural failures, stating: ‘This umpteenth episode, combined with the drama that is experienced every day in prisons, further certifies the failure of the prison policies conducted by governments for at least the last 25 years’. He added that the situation ‘violates the fundamental human rights of inmates’ and puts ‘prison police corps operators to a very hard test’. (Pictures: AFP/Getty Images) If a bedsheet-based jailbreak sounds unusual, you may well be surprised to learn that they happen a little more than you might expect. While not super common, with degrading prison facilities across the world, it’s not even the only such prison escape in the past week. Authorities in Louisiana were forced to mount a manhunt after a trio of men facing various charges broke out of the St. Landry Parish jail in Opelousas on December 2. The three inmates escaped by removing loose concrete blocks from a crumbling wall then climbing out using knotted sheets. One later died during the search, one was recaptured and the third remains on the run. (Picture: St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office) Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google Add as preferred source

Parents, students and immigrant advocates across the U.S. work to thwart enforcement near schools, creating safe passage to class for Trump targets.

Yineska and her family are trapped between a homeland in ruin and Trump’s mass deportation campaign. “Status: Venezuelan” is a story of them trying to stay together — and stay in the U.S. legally.

_When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” —**Frédéric Bastiat, Economic sophisms, 2nd series (1848)**_ With so little pushback to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s murders in the Caribbean and ICE’s domestic cruelty and violence that highlights Trump’s brutality, we’re watching the final fulfillment of a 50-year plan. Louis Powell laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have followed it. It was a plan to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations. It was a plan to replace democracy with oligarchy. A large handful of America’s richest people invested billions in this plan, and its tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions. **As any advertising executive can tell you, with enough money and enough media — particularly if you are willing to lie — you can sell anybody pretty much anything.** You can even sell a nation a convicted felon, rapist, and apparent agent of America’s enemies. America was overwhelmed in the 2024 election by billions of dark-money dollars in often dishonest advertising, made possible by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court, and it worked. Democrats were massively outspent, not to mention the power of the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News” and 1,500 hate-talk radio stations and podcasters, many subsidized by Russia and rightwing billionaires. **Open the lens a bit larger, and we find that it goes way beyond just that election; virtually every crisis America is facing right now is either caused or exacerbated by the corruption of big money authorized by those corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court.** They’re responsible for our crises of gun violence, the drug epidemic, homelessness, political gridlock, $2 trillion in student debt, our housing crisis, our slow response to the climate emergency, a looming crisis for Social Security and Medicare, the ongoing brutality of ICE, and even the lack of affordable drugs, insurance, and healthcare. **All track back to a handful of Supreme Court justices who sold their votes to billionaires in exchange for extravagant vacations, luxury yacht experiences and motorhomes, private jet travel, speaking fees, homes, tuition, a spouse’s employment, and participation in exclusive clubs and billionaire networks that bar the rest of us from entry.** For over two decades, according to reporting, Clarence Thomas and his wife have been accepting millions in free luxury vacations, tuition for their adopted son, a home for his mother, private jet and mega-yacht travel, and entrance to rarified clubs. Sam Alito is also on the gravy train, and there are questions about how Brett Kavanaugh managed to pay off his credit cards and gambling debts. John Roberts’ wife has reportedly made over $10 million from law firms with business before the court; Neil Gorsuch apparently got a sweetheart real estate deal and his mother had to resign from the Reagan administration to avoid corruption charges; Amy Coney Barrett has refused to recuse herself from cases involving her father’s oil company. **None of this is illegal because when five corrupt Republicans on the Court legalized members of Congress taking bribes theylegalized that same behavior for themselves.** As a result, we have oligarchs buying and running our media, social media, and funding our elections, while the Supreme Court, with _Citizens United_ , even legalized foreign interference in our political process. **Our modern era of big money controlling government began in the decade after Richard Nixon put Lewis Powell — the tobacco lawyer who wrote the infamous 1971 “Powell Memo” outlining how billionaires and corporations should take over America — on the Supreme Court in 1972.** **In the 1976** _**Buckley v. Valeo**_**decision, the Court ruled that money used to buy elections wasn’t just cash: they claimed it’s also “free speech” protected by the First Amendment that guarantees your right to speak out on political issues.** In the 200 preceding years — all the way back to the American Revolution of 1776 — no politician or credible political scientist had _ever_ proposed that spending billions to buy votes with dishonest advertising was anything other than simple corruption. **The “originalists” on the Supreme Court, however, claimed to be channeling the Founders of this nation, particularly those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, when they said that money is the same thing as free speech. In that claim, Republicans on the Court werelying through their teeth.** In a letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1816, President and author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson explicitly laid it out: > “Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.” > But the Republicans on the Supreme Court weren’t reading the Founders. They were instead listening to the billionaires who helped get them on the Court in the first place. Who had bribed _them_ with position and power and then kept them in their thrall with luxury vacations, “friendship,” and gifts. **Two years after the 1976** _**Buckley**_**decision, the Republicans on the Supreme Court struck again, this time adding that the “money is speech and can be used to buy votes and politicians” argument applied to corporate “persons” as well as to billionaires. Lewis Powell himself wrote the majority opinion in the 1978** _**Boston v Bellotti**_**decision.** Justices White, Brennan, and Marshall dissented: > “The special status of corporations has placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power which may, if not regulated, dominate not only our economy but the very heart of our democracy, the electoral process.” > But the dissenters lost the vote, and political corruption of everything from local elections to the Supreme Court itself was now virtually assured. **That ruling came down just two years before the Reagan Revolution, when almost all forward progress in America came to a screeching halt.** **It’s no coincidence.** And it’s gotten worse since then, with the Court doubling down in 2010 with _Citizens United_ , overturning hundreds of state and federal “good government” laws dating all the way back to the 1800s. **Thus, today America has a severe problem of big money controlling our political system. And now it’s hit its peak, putting an open fascist in charge of our government.** **No other developed country in the world has this problem, which is why every other developed country has a national healthcare system, free or near-free college, and strong unions that maintain a healthy middle class.** **It’s why people living in other developed countries can afford pharmaceuticals, are taking active steps to stop climate change, and don’t fear being shot when they go to school, the theater, or shopping.** **It’s why — with the exception of Hungary, which Trump is now emulating — those countries are still functioning democracies.** The ability of America to move forward on any of these issues is, for now, paralyzed, even with the extraordinary showing in the streets with the No Kings protests. **This is not the end, though; hitting bottom often begins the process of renewal and the behavior and violence of this administration certainly qualifies as a “bottom” in modern American history.** **Thus, right now we need to prepare for the 2026 elections, join with organizations likeIndivisible to stand up and protest this corruption, and make sure everybody we know is registered to vote.** Many Americans will continue to speak out and fight for a democracy uncorrupted by the morbidly rich supporters of this neofascism. If you haven’t already, join us.

The post-modern philosopher Jean Baudrillard infamously argued in 1991 that the Gulf War did not take place, by which he did not mean that no fighting had actually occurred, but that the real events were something entirely separate from the carefully choreographed presentation the world saw thanks to the novel phenomenon of 24-hour cable news. […]

The courtroom was already tense on Tuesday morning when the first words of the day landed in Richmond, Virginia. “Neither federal statutes nor the Constitution compel states to fund sex reassignment surgeries,” a conservative attorney told three judges. **_Keep up with the latest in_** _**_LGBTQ_**_** _+ news and politics._**_**_Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter._**_ With that opening line, West Virginia’s solicitor, Caleb B. David, urged a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to reverse its own ruling and reinstate the state’s categorical Medicaid ban on gender-affirming surgery for transgender adults. The case, _Anderson v. Crouch,_ had returned to the court after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated its ruling and remanded it for reconsideration following the high court’s 2025 decision in _U.S. v. Skrmetti_ , a case focused narrowly on restrictions for minors. **Related:**SCOTUS trans care ruling opens harmful loophole to take access from all trans people, says Leah Litman What unfolded over the next three-quarters of an hour revealed a court wrestling with medicine and money, yet constrained by its own limits of power. David argued that West Virginia’s exclusion is not about sex or transgender identity at all, but “medical use.” Under that notion, he said, heightened constitutional scrutiny never applies. “[Gender-affirming] surgery isn’t covered for any Medicaid beneficiary regardless of sex or transgender status,” he told the judges, using an outdated term referring to trans people. “The only relevant question … is what is the procedure’s medical use?” Judge Paul Niemeyer tested that logic, pressing David on whether Medicaid’s requirement that states adopt “reasonable standards” had any meaningful teeth. David replied that states must retain broad discretion to allocate limited public funds, invoking concerns about safety, efficacy, and cost. Legislatures, not courts, he insisted, are entrusted with those judgments. Judge Julius Richardson asked whether Medicaid recipients can still sue at all. **Related:**W.Va. ends exemption from gender-affirming care ban for trans youth at risk of suicide The judges’ questions centered on the Supreme Court’s June decision in _Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic_ , which held that the Medicaid Act’s “any qualified provider” provision does not clearly grant patients a private right to sue under federal civil rights law. The ruling significantly narrowed the circumstances under which Medicaid beneficiaries can bring legal challenges against state health policies. In light of that decision, Richardson suggested that the private right of action long assumed in Medicaid litigation may no longer exist. David agreed. Post-_Medina_ , he said, “There is no cause of action.” If correct, that threshold issue alone could dispose of the case, no matter how unconstitutional the policy might be. The case traces back to a 2022 ruling that once appeared to settle the question. That August, U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers ordered West Virginia’s Medicaid program to begin covering gender-affirming surgery for transgender patients, finding that the state’s exclusion “invidiously discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status.” The lawsuit, brought by Lambda Legal, the Employment Law Center, and Nichols Kaster on behalf of Christopher Fain and Shauntae Anderson, challenged both Medicaid and the state employee health plan. A prior settlement lifted the ban for state workers; Chambers’s ruling extended that protection to all transgender Medicaid recipients statewide. Next, Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and health care strategist at Lambda Legal, argued that West Virginia’s policy is not a neutral budgetary decision but a targeted exclusion that singles out transgender people through the language it uses and the population it harms. Unlike other exclusions in the state’s Medicaid plan, he said, this one does not merely describe a procedure — it describes who receives it. **Related:**Supreme Court rules states can ban gender-affirming care for youth in U.S. v. Skrmetti “This exclusion stands out because it doesn’t describe any particular service, but rather a broad category of services because of who attains them,” he told the court. Niemeyer pushed back. The policy, he noted, excludes numerous surgeries while still paying for hormones, counseling, psychiatric care, and lab work for people with gender dysphoria. “It’s hard to say that they’re discriminating when they actually provide care for dysphoria,” he said. “They just don’t provide surgery.” Gonzalez-Pagan countered that the effect of the exclusion is unlike any of the others the court had named. This one, he said, falls “exclusively” on transgender people — not overwhelmingly, but entirely. And he rejected the state’s claims about cost and medical uncertainty, pointing to unrebutted testimony that West Virginia never seriously studied the actual expense and that providing surgery could reduce long-term spending on mental health care and related services. On Tuesday, again and again, Richardson returned to the Supreme Court’s requirement that plaintiffs show discriminatory intent, not merely discriminatory impact. Did Gonzalez-Pagan have evidence that lawmakers adopted the exclusion for that purpose? Direct proof, he conceded, is absent from the record. Instead, he urged the court to look to circumstantial markers: the language of the exclusion, its exclusive effect, and what he characterized as implausible state justifications. **Related:**Justice Sonia Sotomayor slams gender-affirming care ruling as 'state-sanctioned discrimination' But even as the judges probed the past, the future loomed larger. How far does _Skrmetti_ reach? David insisted the Supreme Court’s reasoning applies broadly to medical regulation tied to sex. Gonzalez-Pagan argued just as forcefully that _Skrmetti_ was about minors, and minors alone, and does not disturb the settled rights of adults. In rebuttal, David acknowledged that West Virginia’s policy uses what he called “outmoded language.” In 2003, he said, gender dysphoria was not yet a DSM-5 diagnosis. But, he argued, changing the terminology would not change the law’s function. “If we said gender-affirming surgery … it wouldn’t change it,” he said. “The function of it is the exact same.” When the arguments ended, Niemeyer thanked both lawyers for their “very fine arguments.” Then the panel left the bench. No timeline was given for a decision. But what the judges decide now could determine not only the fate of transgender adults in West Virginia, but the legal framework governing Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care across the entire Fourth Circuit and ultimately the nation as a whole.