Speakers in Berlin traced how Germany’s rearmament, US-led violence abroad and the repression of solidarity at home are converging in a dangerous drive toward war. BEN CHACKO reports
“HEAD over heels into war” was the theme of this year’s Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin, organised as ever by the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt.
And the voices of school strikers, trade unionists, human rights activists, economists and socialist campaigners throughout the day left no doubt that this is the trajectory of Germany and the whole of Europe.
The shadows of genocide in Gaza and the shredding of international law through US boat bombings, piracy at sea and the kidnap of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro loomed over the thousands who came to discuss how to stop a world war that looks ever closer.
The crisis in the Caribbean prevented Emilio Lozada — head of international relations for the Communist Party of Cuba — from attending as planned, but Manuel Pineda of the Communist Party of Spain struck an urgent note on solidarity with the socialist island.
“Cuba is in danger,” he warned. “Trump is a fascist. He is a danger to humanity as a whole — and he wants Cuba to collapse. Cuba is being strangled.”
Already reeling under the impact of a 64-year blockade — “the most extensive, complex and long-lasting sanctions regime in history,” which made everything from stocking shop shelves to running buses a constant struggle, the US’s increasing readiness to simply steal supplies headed for Cuba, as it did with a Venezuelan tanker shipping oil to the island last month, represents an existential threat.
“Cuba has shown us what solidarity is,” he said, speaking of the medical brigades sent to crisis points across the world — including Europe during the pandemic.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Harmeet Dhillon speaks at the National Conservative Convention in Washington DC on September 2, 2025. (Photo by Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
“The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans,” one former DOJ attorney said recently. “It doesn’t exist to enact the president’s own agenda.”
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is seeing its latest mass resignation over its handling of the case of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent last week in Minneapolis.
Days after Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced that the agency’s Civil Rights Division would not be investigating the shooting—despite the fact that the office’s criminal unit would ordinarily probe any abuse or improper use of force by law enforcement—four top officials in the section have resigned.
As MS NOWreported Monday night, the chief of the criminal unit—listed on the DOJ website as Jim Felte—has resigned, as well as the principal deputy chief, deputy chief, and acting deputy chief. The outlet reported that other decisions by administration officials also contributed to their decision to leave.
The FBI announced late last week that it would be probing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross’ shooting of Good, who was killed while sitting in her car on a street in Minneapolis where ICE was operating—part of a surge of federal immigration agents who have been sent to the area in recent weeks, with the Trump administration largely targeting Somali people.
Despite video evidence showing that Good’s wheels were turned away from Ross, who was one of a number of officers who had approached her car and reportedly given her conflicting orders, the Trump administration is continuing to claim that she purposely tried to drive into the ICE agent and that Ross fired “defensive shots”—something law enforcement agents including ICE officers are trained not to do in situations involving a moving vehicle.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office.”
As administration officials have aggressively pushed a narrative painting Good as a “domestic terrorist”—a designation that ordinarily would never be used by the government until a full investigation had been carried out—the FBI has blocked Minnesota authorities from conducting a probe, leading the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to file a lawsuit Monday.
As the Washington Postreported Monday, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division would typically work alongside the FBI “to guide investigatory strategy” on a case like Good’s. Prosecutors with the division were involved in trying the officers who killed George Floyd in MInneapolis and Tyre Nichols in Memphis.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office,” Vanita Gupta, who led the division during the Obama administration, told the Post. “I cannot think of another high-profile federal agent shooting case like this when the Civil Rights Division was not involved—its prosecutors have the long-standing expertise in such cases.”
Hundreds of attorneys in the Civil Rights Division have resigned since President Donald Trump began his second term a year ago. Stacey Young, a former division attorney who left the DOJ soon after Trump was inaugurated, toldNPR that the division is “not an arm of the White House.”
“The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans,” Young said. “It doesn’t exist to enact the president’s own agenda. That’s a perversion of the separation of powers and the role of an independent Justice Department.”
Dhillon, who has said the division will work to carry out the president’s priorities, said last April that she was “fine” with the mass departure of civil rights attorneys.
“The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws—not woke ideology,” she said.
Dhillon’s announcement that the division would not investigate Good’s killing suggested that the DOJ views probing improper use of force cases as it has in the past as “woke ideology.”
The mass resignation at the Civil Rights Division comes a month after more than 200 former DOJ employees signed an open letter condemning “the near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel.”
“The administration wants you to believe that career staff who fled the Division ‘were actively in resistance mode’ and ‘decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do,’” said the former employeees. “That could not be further from the truth. We left because this administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights.”
Now in the wake of Good’s killing, said one observer, the division under Dhillon’s leadership “refused to probe a murder. The people with consciences walked out.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
A US Customs and Border Patrol agents pulls the pin out of a canister of tear gas before tossing it towards residents in a residential neighborhood after a minor traffic accident in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 12, 2026. (Photo by Madison Thorn/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The president’s declaration came as new reports documented brutality and other abuses carried out by federal immigration agents.
President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday that “reckoning and retribution is coming” to the state of Minnesota as new reports documented the brutal actions of federal immigration agents throughout the US.
In a Truth Social post that was amplified by the official White House rapid response account on X, Trump addressed Minnesota residents and asked them if they “really want to live in a community in which their (sic) are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign asylums and mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention.”
In reality, the operations being done in Minneapolis and across the US by federal immigration agents have little to do with taking violent criminals off the streets.
Recently released data flagged by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, shows that a plurality of people detained by ICE in recent months have no prior criminal convictions.
Trump ended his message with an all-caps declaration to “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”
Trump’s vow of retribution came just hours after ProPublicapublished a lengthy investigation documenting 40 instances in which federal immigration agents across the country used “chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing,” including nearly 20 instances where agents “appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits ‘unless deadly force is authorized.’”
The publication also identified several videos in which federal immigration agents were kneeling on the backs of people’s necks, similar to the way that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd as he suffocated to death in 2020.
Eric Balliet, a former law enforcement official who worked at both Homeland Security Investigations and Border Patrol, told ProPublica that he has never seen immigration agents use such tactics before, even if they were arrested people suspected of serious crimes.
“I arrested dozens upon dozens of drug traffickers, human smugglers, child molesters—some of them will resist,” he said. “I don’t remember putting anybody in a chokehold. Period.”
Arnoldo Bazan, a 16-year-old US citizen who was put into a chokehold by federal immigration agents last year, told ProPublica that he “felt like I was going to pass out and die” because of it.
MPR Newsreported on Tuesday that immigration agents in Minneapolis have apparently been using license plate readers to identify local activists who have been observing and documenting operations in their neighborhoods.
John Boehler, a policy counsel with the ACLU of Minnesota, told MPR News that the agents’ actions appear to violate Minnesota state law, which says accessing people’s personal data in this manner can only be done if they are suspects in an active criminal investigation.
There is no reason, Boehler emphasized, that observers should be under any kind of criminal probe.
“Following or observing or reporting on federal agencies or federal activities is not a criminal activity—it’s protected First Amendment activity,” Boehler explained. “To be using those cameras, to use those license plate readers, to surveil protesters has a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, and that’s what we think the goal is.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Trump and Starmer at Chequers in September 2025. (Photo: Leon Neal / Alamy)
From Iran to Libya, from Panama to Venezuela, there is a history of the UK supporting illegal US military interventions
Forty years ago, US warplanes bombed Libya, attempting to assassinate its leader Muammar Gaddafi. Failing in that task, they managed to kill dozens of civilians in Tripoli, Libya’s capital.
The attacks, which were in response to the bombing of a Berlin nightclub blamed on Gaddafi, were strongly supported by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Indeed, she allowed some of the US jets to take off from bases in Britain.
In the face of widespread public opposition to the US raid, a defiant Thatcher told parliament it was “a necessary and proportionate response to a clear pattern of Libyan terrorism” and to “uphold international law”.
However, the UN General Assembly, and most world opinion, condemned the attack as a violation of international law.
But for the British prime minister: “The United States has stood by us in times of need, as we have stood by her. To refuse their request for the use of bases here would have been to abandon our responsibilities as an ally and to weaken the fight against terrorism.”
Fast forward two decades, and we find ourselves in a not dissimilar situation over US attacks on Venezuela.
UK ministers give their backing to the kidnapping of a foreign head of state amidst a military intervention, condemned in the wider world but supported in Whitehall because of the so-called “special relationship”.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Original article by republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
People protest against ICE after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 10, 2026. A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good on the streets of Minneapolis on January 7, leading to huge protests and outrage from local leaders who rejected White House claims she was a domestic terrorist. (Photo by Charly Triballeau / AFP via Getty Images)
“It feels like maybe we’re hitting a tipping point.
With more such events set for Sunday, hundreds of demonstrations took place in cities large and small across the United States on Saturday to denounce the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration enforcement officer last week in Minneapolis.
The wave of “ICE Out for Good” protests arrives as a consolidated expression of outrage directed at President Donald Trump for his authoritarian tactics, cruel policies, and a lawlessness seemingly without end. Just a day after Good was killed in Minnesota, two other people were shot and wounded by federal agents in Portland, Oregon.
“Renee Nicole Good and the Portland victims are just the most recent victims of ICE’s reign of terror,” said the 50501 movement, one of the groups behind the weekend protests, said in a statement. “ICE has brutalized communities for decades, but its violence under the Trump regime has accelerated.”
The killing of Good by Jonathan Ross, a 10-year veteran of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency, came just days after Trump’s unlawful military attack on Venezuela which culminated in the arrest of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Many who protested Saturday noted that the two events are deeply related as they epitomize the increasingly violent nature of the president’s second term.
⚡️🇺🇸NOW:
Massive protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after the murder of 37-year-old Renee Good by ICE. pic.twitter.com/6FktgPsjn7
Also notable is how the act of war against Venezuela and the killing of Good bookended the fifth anniversary of the Trump-backed insurrection that took place on January 6, 2021. While many marked that occasion with solemn remembrances, the Trump administration released a fabricated version of the day that was denounced as Orwellian and gaslighting of the highest form.
As Mother Jones’ David Corn wrote on Thursday: “The military assault on Venezuela, the shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent, the launch of the White House’s new revisionist website about January 6—these three events convey a powerful and unsettling message from Donald Trump and his crew: Violence is ours to use, at home and abroad, to get what we want.”
Saturday’s protests—organized by the Not Above the Law Coalition, MoveOn, the ACLU, Indivisible, and others—took place from Minneapolis to New York and from Chicago to Los Angeles. Demonstrations and rallies also took place in Portland, Oregon as well as Portland, Maine, with hundreds of events and rallies in smaller cities and communities nationwide.
More details about the events, including a growing list of Sunday’s demonstrations and rallies, is available here.
After hundreds of nationwide events yesterday, hundreds more marches and vigils are happening today to say ICE Out For Good.Please join us to demand accountability for ICE’s horrific killing of Renee Nicole Good and make visible the human cost of ICE’s terror: mobilize.us?tag_ids=2913…
“It feels like maybe we’re hitting a tipping point,” 49-year-old Ben Person, who marched in Minneapolis, told the New York Times.
“We’re here to say fuck Trump, abolish ICE, arrest Jonathan Ross, impeach [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem, and bring justice to anyone who’s ever been wronged by the patriarchy and fascist communities,” another demonstrator in Minneapolis told Status Coup News.
"We're here to say f*ck Trump, abolish ICE, arrest Jonathan Ross, impeach Kristi Noem, and bring justice to anyone who's ever been wronged by the patriarchy and fascist communities," -one of thousands of Minneapolis protesters marching after ICE murdered Renee Good. LIVE NOW ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/9HlpuQntCW
“The shootings in Minneapolis and Portland were not the beginning of ICE’s cruelty, but they need to be the end,” said Deirdre Schifeling of the ACLU. “These tragedies are simply proof of one fact: the Trump administration and its federal agents are out of control, endangering our neighborhoods, and trampling on our rights and freedom. This weekend, Americans all across the country are demanding that they stop.”
At a rally in Portland, Maine on Saturday evening, Troy Jackson, the Democratic former president of the State Senate now running for governor, said the killing of Good in Minneapolis made clear to him that such violence against regular citizens could indeed happen anywhere:
I believe in law enforcement. I respect law enforcement. Hell, police have covered my butt plenty of times at picket lines, logging blockades, and other peaceful protests over the years.
What ICE is doing now isn’t law enforcement. We can’t stand for it, and we can’t be silent. pic.twitter.com/To1C3XIxnY
For one demonstrator in Minneapolis, the imperial and authoritarian drive of the Trump administration reminded him of the galactic villains of the Empire in the Star Wars series:
Protester: Well, our current government reminds me of the galactic empire from star wars. You have a guy that wants to be the supreme ruler, the emperor, his second in command that will do whatever he says to do, whether it's right or wrong… pic.twitter.com/GwMh9pghY0
The organizers of the weekend protests said that public shows of dissent will remain key in the coming days, weeks, and months.
“We will resist the government’s attacks by building community, by documenting atrocities, by protesting nonviolently, by showing kindness and solidarity at all times,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, another of the organizing groups.
“We will meet them in the streets, in the courts, at the day labor corners. We will meet them everywhere. And we will win. We are not afraid or discouraged. And we will not be defeated,” Alvarado added. “The more we stand together as a community of determination and love, the harder it will be for them to divide and destroy us.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
