The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. [FCC cronies ask why the president should have all the fun of extorting money from people with business before the government](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/15/800070473/news/trumps-fcc-cronies-get-in-on-the-sweet-bribe-action), while Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) pockets tens of thousands from the pork industry she moves to deregulate. Meanwhile, [Trump dismisses responsibility for the Minab massacre, claiming photo evidence is “AI,” though internal Pentagon investigations acknowledge U.S. responsibility for the strike](https://truthout.org/articles/trump-dismisses-responsibility-for-minab-massacre-saying-photo-evidence-is-ai). The same administration plans to strip commercial licenses from undocumented immigrants and transfer them to veterans, with Trump ranting that illegal alien truck drivers who are just killing a lot of people—they can't read.
Workers who resist the war machine pay the price — and sometimes win. [DHL worker and Verdi rep Christopher Tersch won his tribunal on July 8 after being fired without notice for a speech against arms deliveries to Israel at a Palestine protest in Leipzig](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/07/15/xtvl-j15.html). [Labor Notes argues the movement must organize Amazon — one of the largest employers and most powerful corporations in the U.S. today — to maintain and raise standards](https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2026/07/viewpoint-what-amazon-workers-can-learn-successes-and-failures-fight-15). The Venice Biennale’s U.S. pavilion, cultural diplomacy dressed up as art that made no statement — and that's the point.
The assault on bodily autonomy is industrial. [At Houston’s Texas Medical Center, a birth plan for the dying has doctors repairing spinal defects before birth and replacing hearts after a mother’s](https://www.texasobserver.org/abortion-ban-houston-texas-medical-center-fetal-anomaly)… Media manufactures consent for empire: [a FAIR study shows the New York Times, Miami Herald, and Associated Press centered vastly different voices in coverage of the Cuban crisis](https://fair.org/home/whose-voices-are-centered-in-coverage-of-cuban-crisis-a-fair-study). As the Trump administration’s xenophobic rhetoric looms over the World Cup and ICE killings continue in Maine, [data centers from Maryland to Texas tell residents the same thing: “It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on. It’s coming for all of us.”](https://therealnews.com/data-centers-are-not-a-red-state-or-blue-state-problem-theyre-a-working-class-problem)