Common Dreams

Last week, Alabama became the 15th state to enact a law regulating AI deepfakes in campaign communications. Five states had enacted laws on the subject prior to 2024, but the remaining 10 states have done so in just the past four months, according to Public Citizen’s state bills tracker.

State progress on this issue has been proactive and bipartisan — just this year, 29 states have had bills to regulate deepfakes in elections pass in at least one chamber, with 19 of those bills passed by both chambers. Читать дальше...

This week saw a seedy, craven parade of MAGA stooges trooping into court to pay fealty to their two-bit mob-boss on trial for cooking the books to hide hush money payments to a porn star so he could get elected to a job he was stupefyingly unfit for, and still is. Then "God's most pathetic Republicans" - from Mike Handmaid’s Tale to the Beetlejuice Lady - brazenly violated his gag order for him to declare the rule of law "a sham." Nope, nothing to see here.

A new EPA analysis identifies $630 billion in necessary upgrades for the nation’s wastewater and stormwater infrastructure over the next 20 years. The 2022 Clean Watersheds Needs Survey is the first update about the nation’s clean water infrastructure needs in a decade.

As pro-Palestinian college students confront weekend commencements - with walkouts, keffiyeh-draped gowns, signs noting, "There Are No Universities Left In Gaza" - their historic role as "the most reliably correct constituency in America" is celebrated by an earlier generation of activists "seeing them, just as we were, sick at heart," willing to "stand firm for their beliefs" against a genocidal war and its systemic support. To a more judicious generation, they urge, "Don’t emulate us. Transcend... Читать дальше...

The IRS should make Direct File permanent and available nationwide in the years ahead, said 256 groups — including many members of the Coalition for Free and Fair Filing — in a letter sent today to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The signatories, which include organizations from all 50 states, plus D.C. and Puerto Rico, congratulated the two officials on the successes of the Direct File pilot program in its first year.

From almost the moment the 2018 food and farm bill was signed into law, agribusinesses and industry groups have spent more than half a billion dollars lobbying on issues that include the next food and farm bill, according to new research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The UCS report, released today, shows that over the same timeframe, from 2019 through 2023, those corporations and industry associations donated $3.4 million dollars to the campaign coffers of three key food and farm bill architects. Читать дальше...

Because it's an election year and lying white guys gonna lie, Repubs are feverishly working to cheat their way to power by getting rid of all the pesky "voters," real or imaginary, who don't like them. In their demented campaign for "election integrity," they're hounding "illegals" - who already can't vote and aren't - "busting" Biden for trying to "rig" the election by registering voters, shrieking we're "devolving" into a democracy and otherwise, per Jamie Raskin, mindlessly, scarily "fingerpainting... Читать дальше...

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) and Congressional Renters Caucus Chair Jimmy Gomez (CA-34) are leading 26 of their colleagues in calling on the Administration to immediately release the final “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) rule proposed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump told a group of oil industry executives that if they raised $1 billion to support his presidential campaign, he would institute a range of policies favorable to their corporate interests. Separately, Politico reports that oil industry leaders are drafting “ ready-to-sign executive orders” that would boost gas exports and increase offshore drilling.

As the dystopian movie Civil War sets records depicting the "colorful horrors of the American future" on its current trajectory, we saw the same mindless, time-honored rancor play out at "Ole Miss being Ole Miss," where a pack of rabid, jeering, shit-for-brains frat bros with white-supremely punchable faces set upon a black female student protesting genocide in Gaza. On foul display: That "Southern Heritage we’re always Jim Crowing about," and, without change, the next generation of GOP goons and bigots. Читать дальше...