In These Times

01/07/2026

Dozens of states spent the last few years quietly building guardrails around artificial intelligence—rules meant to address discrimination, manipulation, consumer harm and safety as AI systems spread into everyday life.

Now, a new executive order signed by President Trump aims to override many of those state laws in the name of a “minimally burdensome” national framework. The order directs federal agencies to challenge state AI regulations, flag laws deemed “onerous,” and even withhold broadband funding from states that don’t fall in line—while leaving major decisions about enforcement and impact unresolved.

Journalist Anjana Susarla walks through what’s at stake: which state laws could be targeted, how Big Tech has pushed for federal preemption, and why regulations in places like California, Colorado, Texas, and Utah have focused on issues ranging from algorithmic discrimination to transparency and liability for AI harms.

If you’re trying to understand how AI is being governed right now—and how that balance between innovation, safety, and accountability could shift—this article lays out the terrain clearly and carefully.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/open-ai-serious-risks-trump-executive-order-state-regulation-of-artification-intelligence

01/07/2026

01/07/2026

This piece ran in February 2019, but it reads less like history than a warning that was never heeded.

Michael Fox breaks down how the Trump administration framed regime change as “humanitarian aid,” using sanctions, threats, and media narratives to set the stage for violence—while ignoring warnings from the UN and Red Cross and the devastating human cost such interventions always bring.

The details matter: the ultimatums, the aid convoys, the sanctions choking oil revenue, the familiar cast of officials and tactics recycled from past U.S. interventions across Latin America. What was presented as benevolence was, in reality, a strategy built to provoke conflict.

As Venezuela remains a target of U.S. power and rhetoric, this reporting is essential context for understanding how we got here—and why militarized “solutions” only deepen suffering.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/venezuela-maduro-trump-military-aid-colombia-aggression-guaido

01/07/2026

"Lists are being drawn up, but our collective action protects us."

Why we have to be louder and bolder about being against fascism.

01/07/2026

On the night Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral race, he talked openly about dismantling the conditions that allow authoritarianism to thrive. Weeks later, the Trump administration was rolling out a new phase of the “war on terror” — this time aimed inward, with “antifa” cast as an all-purpose enemy.

In Antifa Everywhere, Alberto Toscano traces how that shift is being built: through executive orders that don’t quite exist in law, leaked DOJ memos that encourage anticipatory compliance, and a deliberate blurring of protest, solidarity, and terrorism. What emerges isn’t a portrait of a shadowy organization, but a strategy — one that turns everyday acts of dissent, mutual aid, and migrant defense into objects of suspicion and repression.

This piece connects the dots between high-level policy, far-right fantasy, and the real consequences already unfolding on campuses, in courtrooms, and in communities organizing against raids and deportations. It asks a deeper question, too: if antifascism isn’t a club or a logo, but a set of practices rooted in solidarity and collective survival, what does it mean to criminalize it?

A sobering, necessary read about how power manufactures threats — and why the fight against authoritarianism is inseparable from the fight for each other.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/antifa-everywhere-war-on-terror-cve-material-support-laws-hlf5-terrorism

01/07/2026

In Pennsylvania, parents are challenging Independence Law Center policies while trying to avoid a legal case that could go to the conservative Supreme Court.

"At least 21 Pennsylvania school districts have formal relationships with ILC. But a number of others have proposed or adopted virtually identical anti-LGBTQ policies that originated with ILC —without acknowledging any connection to the group or where the policies came from."

https://inthesetimes.com/article/anti-lgbtq-policies-taking-root-in-local-school-districts-trans-gay-right-wing

01/07/2026

What once sounded like a bizarre late-night idea has now become part of a much more troubling pattern of U.S. foreign policy under Donald Trump.

This week, the Trump administration ordered a military operation in Venezuela, violently kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro in a pre-dawn assault and bringing him to New York City to face charges — a move widely condemned as a violation of international law by world leaders and the U.N. Security Council.

Now consider this alongside renewed talk of buying or even seizing Greenland — a sovereign nation that has made clear it is not for sale and wants equal partnership, not subordination.

This investigation from 2025, by Adam Federman and produced with Type Investigations digs into how what was once derided as a punchline — Trump’s Greenland gambit — is now moving into serious geopolitical maneuvering, tied to resource grabs, Arctic militarization, and an older, expansionist mindset that echoes 19th-century Manifest Destiny.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/trump-greenland-denmark-expansionist-maga

01/06/2026

For years, the Western narrative about Venezuela rested on the idea that Maduro and Chavismo could be toppled by a combination of sanctions, street protests and diplomatic pressure. George Ciccariello-Maher’s 2019 essay, "Another Failed Coup in Venezuela?" challenges that story — showing how opposition forces repeatedly misread the strength and nuanced convictions of Venezuelan grassroots movements and how external actors underestimated what they were up against.

But the struggle didn’t end there. This week, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped and flown to New York after a U.S. military operation, an action denounced by many — including Maduro himself — as a blatant violation of Venezuelan sovereignty.

This dramatic turn — which saw Maduro appear in a U.S. federal court and sparked global debate over intervention and international law — shows that the ambition to control Venezuela has not gone away, even as previous coup efforts faltered and failed.

Geo Maher helps us understand why earlier attempts fell short, why ordinary Venezuelans didn’t line up behind regime change, and how sanctions and foreign interference have prolonged suffering without producing the outcomes their backers promised.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/venezuela-guaido-maduro-lima-group-pence-trump-coup-chavista-opposition

01/06/2026

What does it mean when the government starts treating opposition to fascism as a threat?

Azadeh Shahshahani and Stephanie Guilloud trace how Trump-era directives are once again blurring the line between dissent and “terrorism,” targeting teachers, librarians, organizers, nonprofits, and everyday people who stand up for trans rights, racial justice, economic equity, and democracy itself.

Drawing clear parallels to COINTELPRO and the post-9/11 expansion of mass surveillance, Shahshahani and Guilloud argue that fear and silence have always been tools of repression—and that history shows they don’t protect us.

Collective action does.

They insist this is not a moment to retreat, soften language, or play it safe. It’s a moment to name what we’re up against, to be clear about our values, and to build broad, courageous movements capable of resisting the consolidation of fascism in all its forms.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/antidote-to-fear-is-courage-fascism-antifa-trump

01/06/2026

Over the past few years, parents across Pennsylvania have shown up to school board meetings expecting to debate curriculum, budgets or staffing—and instead found themselves confronting a quiet, coordinated push to restrict the rights of LGBTQ students.

This investigation by Kathryn Joyce, produced with The Hechinger Report, traces how a Christian Right legal group, the Independence Law Center, has embedded its anti-LGBTQ model policies into school districts across the state—sometimes openly, often behind closed doors, and increasingly without acknowledging where those policies even came from.

Through public records, local reporting and on-the-ground interviews, the story shows how school boards copied and pasted bans on trans students, bathroom restrictions, pronoun policies and book bans, even as parents faced blocked records requests, secret meetings and procedural maneuvers designed to keep the public in the dark.

In some districts, the consequences have been devastating—fueling fear, harassment and loss, including the deaths of trans youth in communities where these policies took hold.

What’s especially chilling is how local fights are shaped by national ambition: parents and advocates fear that provoking legal challenges could hand this group exactly what it wants—a path to the Supreme Court and a ruling that could strip protections from LGBTQ students nationwide.

This is a story about how power actually moves in public education, how “parents’ rights” rhetoric masks religious ideology, and why school board elections and hyperlocal organizing matter more than ever.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/anti-lgbtq-policies-taking-root-in-local-school-districts-trans-gay-right-wing

01/06/2026

For more than a decade before January 6, right-wing political violence was growing in plain sight—and largely ignored or mischaracterized by mainstream media.

In 2023, Rick Perlstein traced how the Tea Party was framed as a benign, fiscally focused movement, how militias like the Oath Keepers were minimized or normalized, and how warning signs—from foiled terror plots to open calls for violence—were missed, dismissed, or left unreported.

He examines how this long pattern of denial left journalists, institutions, and the public unprepared for January 6—and asks whether the media has learned anything since.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/far-right-mainstream-media-right-wing-tea-party-oath-keepers

01/06/2026

After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, lawmakers promised accountability. But as Branko Marcetic reported in 2022, much of the response has taken a different turn.

Across the country, January 6 has been used to push anti-protest laws, expand policing powers and advance domestic “terror” frameworks that reach far beyond the far right. These policies have fallen heavily on left-leaning movements, from racial justice and environmental activism to anti-capitalist organizing.

Marcetic describes how fear-driven narratives and rushed legislation have reshaped protest rights.

"The event’s clearest legacy is the expansion of the Capitol police into a national anti-terrorism force, one that operates largely free of public accountability and oversight."

https://inthesetimes.com/article/january-6-capitol-riot-trump-anti-protest-left