April, 16, 1971 The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimated over 2,000 people openly refused to pay part or all of their income tax. “If a thousand [people] were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” – Henry David Thoreau on the Mexican War
April 16, 2000 Between 10,000 and 20,000 activists blockaded meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. Sitting down at intersections and locking arms to form human chains, the protesters were opposed to Bank and IMF policies that increased third-world indebtedness and did little to directly benefit the poor in those countries. “The World Bank is subjugating our economic and social independence,” Vineeta Gupta, a doctor from the Punjab in India, said in a letter he delivered to World Bank President James Wolfensohn at his home. “It is time that we shut the bank down, and this boycott is a great start.”
More from National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee:
War tax resistance means refusing to pay some or all of the federal taxes that pay for war. While you can refuse income tax legally by lowering your taxable income, for many people war tax resistance involves civil disobedience.
In the U.S. war tax resisters refuse to pay some or all of their federal income tax and/or other taxes, like the federal excise tax on local telephone service. Income taxes and excise taxes are destined for the government’s general fund and about half of that money goes for military spending, including weapons of war and weapons of mass destruction.
People take many roads to war tax resistance. Most are motivated by a combination of reasons and actively work for peace in many other ways too. If you consider your motivations this will help you determine your method of resistance.
Refusing to pay federal income taxes is an act of civil disobedience with a long history in the U.S. America’s most well-known war tax resister was Henry David Thoreau, whose refusal to pay his poll tax because of the Mexican-American War earned him an night in jail and the experience that led him to write his influential essay, Civil Disobedience. While those of us who refuse to pay war taxes believe our refusal is just and imperative — and some of us cite international law to back up this belief — the government considers the refusal to pay these taxes to be illegal, and there are potential repercussions through the IRS collection system. For most of us who resist, the dire consequences of voluntarily paying for war are far worse that what the IRS and government can do to us. (snip-MORE)
April 17, 1959 22 were arrested in New York City for refusing to take shelter during a civil defense drill.
April 17, 1960 Inspired by the Greensboro sit-in of four black college students at an all-white lunch counter, nearly 150 black students from nine states formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, with Ella Baker, James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., the founders set SNCC’s initial goals as overturning segregation in the South. They also considered it important to give young blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement, as many had participated in sit-ins that had proliferated to dozens of cities over the previous three months. At the Raleigh conference Guy Carawan sang a new version of “We Shall Overcome,” an adaptation of an old labor song. This song would become the national anthem of the civil rights movement.People joined hands and gently swayed in time singing “black and white together,” repeating over and over, “Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.” What SNCC did to make change happen
April 17, 1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion. An army of 1500 anti-Castro Cuban exiles, mercenaries equipped and trained at a secret Guatemala base by the CIA, landed at Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) in an attempt to “liberate” Cuba from Communist rule. Within three days, the invasion proved disastrous with nearly 1200 members of Brigade 2506 (who had been trained in the U.S.) taken prisoner.
Known as Operation Zapata, it was conceived by Vice President Nixon, planned and approved by the Eisenhower administration, and executed shortly after President John Kennedy’s inauguration. President Kennedy receives the Brigade 2506 flag in Miami in 1962 and declares: “I promise to return this flag in a free Havana.”
Soviet General Secretary Nikita Kruschev sent a telegram to President Kennedy: “Mr. President, I send you this message in an hour of alarm, fraught with danger for the peace of the whole world. Armed aggression has begun against Cuba. It is a secret to no one that the armed bands invading this country were trained, equipped and armed in the United States of America. The planes which are bombing Cuban cities belong to the United States of America, the bombs they are dropping are being supplied by the American Government . . . .” What actually happened
April 17, 1965 The first national demonstration against the Vietnam War took place in the nation’s capital. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the organizers, had expected about 2000 marchers; the actual count was 15,000–25,000. This was the largest anti-war protest ever to have been held in Washington, D.C. up to that time. The number of marchers approximately equaled the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Several hundred students in the protest broke away from the main march and conducted a brief sit-in at the U.S. Capitol’s door. An exam prepared by SDS about the Vietnam War (answers available)
April 17, 1965 Gay rights advocate Jack Nichols The first demonstration promoting equal treatment of homosexuals, Jack Nichols, Barbara Gittings and others picketed in front of the White House. There were no media present. Read more (Go-it’s interesting!)
April 17, 1986 Reverend Jesse Jackson, future congresswoman Maxine Waters and others co-founded the Rainbow Coalition, initially intended as a progressive public-policy think tank within the Democratic Party.
Representative Maxine Waters, Harry Belafonte, John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Willie Nelson August 6, 2005-Atlanta, Georgia.
April 17, 1992 On Good Friday morning, about 50 people accompanied Fr. Carl Kabat and Carol Carson to Missile Silo Site N5 at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the same silo that Carl and other members of the Silo Pruning Hooks (see below) disarmed in 1984. They cut through a fence and, once inside, Carol used a sledgehammer on the concrete lid of the silo while Carl performed a rite of exorcism. Eventually, the police arrived and arrested Carl and Carol. They were jailed and held until their court appearance. At that time, they made a preliminary agreement with federal prosecutors wherein they would plead “no contest” to trespass in exchange for the property destruction charge being dropped; they were sentenced to six and three months, respectively, in a halfway house. Carl Kabat A History of Direct Disarmament Actions About the Silo Pruning Hooks action
I was especially interested in the Justice Clarence Thomas comments, which I read, then became disinterested for reasons you’ll get if you read them. Lots of news of the day here.
A thin-skinned and prickly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went off on journalists in his press conference this morning, resorting to the classic “attack the messenger” defense to a unpopular war going poorly.
It’s not the first time Hegseth has succumbed to blaming a lack of patriotism among reporters for unfavorable headlines and critical reporting on a Middle East conflict ignited by the Trump administration. But today’s screed was striking for how it mixed the old worn-out reflexive questioning of the loyalty of reporters with biblical references that reflect Hegseth’s personal Christian nationalism:
“Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” Hegseth said. “It’s incredibly unpatriotic.”
In the decades since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon had haltingly moved away from the defensive crouch it often took in the face of criticism toward a more transparent and self-reflective public response to bad news. It was not always consistent and the backsliding was dramatic during periods of sustained setbacks, like in Iraq during the aughts, but the general trajectory was away from the kind of knee-jerk circle-the-wagons approach that Hegseth rolled out this morning.
Questioning the loyalty of journalists — or any regime critics — harkens to earlier dark eras of America history and to authoritarian regimes worldwide. But Hegseth’s diatribe came with a strong Christian twist, as he compared journalists to the Pharisees who rejected Jesus in the Bible:
“The Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to record, but their hearts were hardened, even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter,” Hegseth said.
“They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him,” he continued.
“I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees, not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press, your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he added.
Hegseth — callow, reactive, driven by a warped theology of nationalism, and poorly grounded in history — personally represents a dramatic break from decades of training, education, and refining of a professional officers corps. In 15 months in office, Hegseth has done more to politicize the military than any secretary of defense in at least the last half century.
Third Boat Strike in Three Days
The accelerated pace of unlawful strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats continued in the eastern Pacific, with the third such strike in the last three days. Three people were killed in the 51st strike of the U.S. campaign, bringing the death toll to at least 177 people.
What Trump Foreign Policy Looks Like
USA Today: Pentagon ramps up planning for possible military ops in Cuba
WSJ: Pentagon Approaches Automakers, Manufacturers to Boost Weapons Production
WaPo: Trump administration pushes nations to sign ‘trade over aid’ declaration
SCOTUS Watch
Justice Sonia Sotomayor apologized privately to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and followed up with a public apology released by the Supreme Court for remarks last week that, without naming him, attributed his defense of what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops” to his posh upbringing.
In a public appearance at Yale Law School, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the Roberts Court’s handling of its emergency docket.
In unusually pointed remarks carried live by CSPAN, Justice Clarence Thomas launched a broadside at progressivism.
Jan. 6 Never Ends
Trump lawyer and coup plotter John Eastman was officially disbarred in California after the state Supreme Court declined to take up his appeal.
Trump I White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is seeking reimbursement from the Trump DOJ of his legal fees incurred as a witness in both of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations.
Must Read
Heather Cox Richardson draws a straight line from Lincoln’s assassination to Jan. 6 and the events of this week.
Do as We Say Not as We Do
NBC News: “Anti-abortion advocates met with Justice Department officials Wednesday, just hours after the Trump administration fired prosecutors it accused of coordinating too closely with abortion-rights advocacy groups during the Biden administration.”
Election-Year Islamophobia
When all else fails and their election prospects look dire, Republicans fall back on various forms of racist appeals to solidify their base and wrong-foot Democrats. This year, top Texas Republicans have landed on Islamophobia as the racist appeal of choice. TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on the ground from Grapevine, Texas, where he talks to right-wing activists who are back again to warning about Sharia law and portraying Muslims as an external threat to “real” Americans.
Too often, gullible national media outlets treat these racist effusions like an organic upwelling of nativism, rather than a calculated election year strategy. TPM, I’m proud to say, has never been suckered in.
Thread of the Day
The Corruption: Bitcoin Jesus Edition
ProPublica offers a casebook study in the erosion of white-collar crime prosecutions under Trump II that includes the intervention of DOJ political appointees and the retention of a former Trump criminal defense attorney to outright kill one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency tax fraud cases.
Creepy Text of the Day
“Hearing u/r in town. Wishing you would let me know. I could have made some excuses to get out and show u around. Please keep this private.”—Richard Chavez, father of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, in a text to a young female staff member working for his daughter
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here. (snip)
This is what working for the people, working for the public means. This is what representing the will of the people / public looks like. This is what is attracting the people / public voters to the democrats, yet Chuck Schumer as yet to endorse Mamdani. Why? Because the two are the opposite sides of the political coin. One wants to serve and represent the people / public and the other is a corporate democrat beholden to big money donors and major lobbyist groups. Same with Hakeem Jerofies who only endorsed Mamdani when on election night it became clear he would be the winner. Hugs
This is a doctor working in Gaza. He describes the conditions. The Israelis are sniping World Health doctors. Israelis are moving the “yellow line” that they are claiming is the new boundary line between Israel and Palestinians. They are slowly moving the line deeper ad deeper into Gaza. The Israeli snipers were shooting the young boys in different areas on different days, now they are using drones to fire on young children alone with horrific results. Remember from the last clip he was saying how Israel is blocking and destroying the medical supplies and equipment. Israel is deliberately shooting and killing children. They want the chaos it causes, they like the fear it promotes, and they like that no new generations of Palestinians are growing. The doctor spoke of other atrocities that Israel is inflicting daily on the Palestinians. Israel is a criminal nation doing a genocide, and much of our democratic leadership is deeply in the pockets of AIPAC. Notice that Hakeem Jeffries was also at the same event. People here have asked why I am so anti-democratic leadership; this is one of the reasons why. They are beholden to the big money donors and lobbies doing their bidding while ignoring the desires and will of the people they are supposed to represent, not rule over. Hugs
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has emphasized his commitment to maintaining pro-Israel sentiments within the Democratic Party. In recent statements, Schumer articulated that his role is to ensure that the left remains supportive of Israel, a position he conveyed during an interview with The New York Times. This assertion reflects a broader concern regarding the changing dynamics of the Democratic Party’s support for Israel and Jewish causes. Schumer’s comments have sparked discussions about the implications of this shift, particularly in light of the party’s historical alignment with pro-Israel policies. Opinion pieces have noted that Schumer views the preservation of American institutions as integral to protecting religious minorities, highlighting the intersection of Jewish identity and political advocacy. https://deepnewz.com/middle-east/chuck-schumer-emphasizes-role-keeping-left-pro-israel-says-job-to-keep-the-left-f0ff217c
“I have many jobs as [Senate] leader… and one is to fight for aid to Israel — all the aid that Israel needs,” Schumer said at a gathering of Jewish leaders and community members in New York on Sunday.
“I will continue to fight for it.,” Schumer continued. “We delivered more security assistance to Israel, our ally, than ever, ever before.”
According to Jacob Kornbluh, who provided footage of the remarks while reporting for The Forward, Schumer told the audience that his support for Jewish security funding will only continue growing under his leadership, calling it his “baby.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/schumer-israel-aid
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said on Sunday that one of his most important jobs as Senate minority leader is to “fight for aid to Israel,” as the Trump administration’s masked federal agents continue their deadly raids of the U.S. with little to no pushback from Democrats.
Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian emergency room physician who has been volunteering in Palestine joins the program from Gaza for a harrowing interview. If you can, please support Dr. Loubani’s Glia Project, a medical solidarity organization that empowers low-resource communities to build sustainable, locally-drive healthcare projects.
Last year I posted about this, because of the consensus of attendees that they should prepare for war. Gee whiz they called that! A lot of people ignore this, because it’s all a buncha rich people who think they run the world. Well, it is a buncha rich people, and no doubt they do run some parts of the world, but all the wee little people all have free will, and they use it. Bilderberg prepares those with all the money for what appears will happen due to free will’s this, that, and the other thing. I don’t care who wore what, or even who was there, but the tiny things within the name-dropping matter; that tells us what they come away with as info for keeping their interests safe. So, in case I’m not the only one, here is this.
This year’s conference had plenty of newsworthy aspects, but it’s a mystery why the press fails to talk about it
The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies.
Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty for the alliance. In recent weeks, with Trump threatening at every turn to withdraw from the “paper tiger” of Nato, the “Trans-Atlantic Defence-Industrial Relationship” (as it’s called on the agenda) has reached a strained breaking point.
The head of Nato and Bilderberg regular Mark Rutte arrived at the conference fresh from a “very frank” conversation at the White House. But away from Trump’s bluster, and for all his rhetoric about abandoning Nato, there were no signs that the Americans are withdrawing from Bilderberg. Far from it – the Americans were there in force.
Wall Street titans, including the CEOs of KKR and Lazard, and the heads of huge corporations like Pfizer, met behind closed doors with a delegation of senior politicians close to the president. Big business lobbying in private is Bilderberg’s speciality, and this secretive mix of the private and public sectors fits perfectly with Trump’s brand of crony-capitalism.
Trump’s trusted secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, was attending, alongside his favourite trade guru, Robert Lighthizer. They were joined by Trump’s economic ally Jason Smith, the chair of the influential House ways and means committee, and his secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll, known as Trump’s “drone guy”.
It was no surprise with the conflict in Iran dominating the global news cycle that this year’s conference had a wartime flavour: with the “Future of Warfare” on the agenda, and a participant list including the four-star admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command. From the private sector there was a healthy contingent of military contractors and drone manufacturers, led by the Bilderberg insider Eric Schmidt, who’s the former head of Google and a keen evangelist for drone warfare.
Earlier this year, Schmidt told the FT that “future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons”, with “swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting”. Thriving in this rich overlap between drones and AI are companies like Anduril Industries, whose co-founder and CEO, Brian Schimpf, is attending the Washington conference, alongside his collaborator in Trump’s “Golden Dome” project, Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp.
Karp is close to fellow billionaire tech-bro Peter Thiel, whose name, remarkably, is absent from this year’s participant list. Thiel has been a member of the group’s steering committee since 2008, and it was unheard of for him to miss a Bilderberg. Thiel’s reach runs deep into the Trump administration, and his influence within Bilderberg has also been growing through the years. Through the American Friends of Bilderberg Inc, he largely funds the lavish Washington-based meetings, alongside fellow steering committee member and billionaire Schmidt.
Thiel operates in the powerful liminal area between big finance and big intelligence – most notably, he set up Palantir with the help of funding from the CIA. This shady intersection was the birthplace of Bilderberg, and is baked into its history: the group was set up by British and American intelligence, and there’s always a handful of spy chiefs at the conference. This year, three intelligence directors were present, including the head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli. It is a fascinating backstage world which Thiel will now miss along with the strategising, the talent spotting and the big ideological discussions on “China” and “the west”.
It was no small thing for the arch-networker Thiel to skip Bilderberg. After all, Bilderberg is all about the chance to stay three steps ahead with all that lovely, off-the-books access to policymakers such as breakfast with the president of Finland, tea with the head of the IMF, and cocktails with the King of Holland.
Quite why the press fails so spectacularly to talk about Bilderberg, such a major annual summit with so many senior politicians present, is an enduring mystery. This year’s conference had plenty of newsworthy aspects, not least the presence of Vivian Motzfeldt, the former Greenlandic foreign minister and ex-speaker of the Inatsisartut (Greenland’s parliament).
Motzfeldt was the first Greenlander to appear at Bilderberg, and her presence was a clear signal to the Trump administration that Greenland has powerful allies within the Trans-Atlantic partnership. Motzfeldt no doubt contributed to the session on “Arctic Security”, and might even have been moved to quote the final sentence of Trump’s recent anti-NATO vent: “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”
But as there was no press oversight for this conference, it is something that we will probably never know.
I would rather have the undocumented workers live in my neighborhood than the greedy scheming homeowner who used these men for their skills and then not only stole their hard earned agreed to payment but also screwed them into what is basically a prison awaiting deportation to a place they may have no connection with. Ask yourself which party is the more moral and just? I read that the homeowner gave ICE the ladder to get to the men. This is slave labor and the reason why big companies use undocumented workers, they can hold their status over them to abuse them. Hugs
The moment in Cambridge was captured on video and shared on social media by a co-worker identified as Bryan Polanco.
“Seeing it is not the same as experiencing it,” Polanco could be heard saying in Spanish in the video reviewed by Newsweek. “I’ve seen many videos, and sadly today I had to experience it.”
A spokesperson for ICE told Newsweek, “This was a targeted enforcement operation, not a tip from a caller. On March 23, ICE conducted targeted enforcement operations near Cambridge, Maryland, resulting in the arrest of six illegal aliens. Of those arrested, several have final orders of removal—a felony—and one has been previously convicted of illegal reentry. During the encounter, the aliens refused to comply with lawful orders, taunted officers and attempted to flee. The illegal aliens ultimately complied and were taken into custody.
Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the construction company believed to have employed the workers, the reported homeowner, and Polanco for comment on Thursday afternoon.
Immigrants without legal status are known to work in key industries, including construction, and advocates have raised concerns multiple times that they would be targets for ICE, despite largely lacking criminal histories.
Stills from a video shared on social media of ICE agents arresting Guatemalan construction workers in Cambridge, Maryland, on March 23, 2026. | Instagram/@elsalvadordeantes
What To Know
The video was originally shared to Instagram as a 30-minute livestream before appearing as an edited clip on X on Wednesday afternoon.
In the footage, which begins on the roof of the property, federal agents could be seen on the lawn waiting for workers to get down. A ladder is brought, the workers get to the ground and ICE officers begin making arrests.
Polanco, the man believed to be filming and narrating the incident, is heard saying they are surrounded and telling agents he is filming, which he is entitled to do. He told agents that he was cooperating and asked why they were there.
Agents were then seen holding a group of workers on a mat on the ground before taking them away while the construction materials were left behind.
The woman was reported to owe the workers $10,000 for a three-day job, according to Univision, a local TV network. If that is proved to be true, she could potentially face charges under Maryland law, which includes a clause on a person not being able to obtain labor from another person if their consent is induced with the threat or wrongful use of notifying law enforcement of the worker’s undocumented or illegal immigration status. This also applies to withholding wages.
The outlet reported that the men were Guatemalan nationals and had traveled from Glen Burnie to start the project. Polanco told Univision that the woman said that if immigrants came back to finish the job, she would call ICE again.
Newsweek has not yet been able to identify the immigrants arrested or confirm their immigration status.
What People Are Saying
Bryan Polanco told Univision: “Very sad about the situation…many Hispanics here in the United States have felt like they were being persecuted. We left home and we don’t know if we are going to return.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, on X: “Very serious and disturbing allegation about a homeowner calling ICE on people working on her roof to avoid having to pay them. While the facts aren’t fully in yet, if the allegation is true it seems that this would be a felony under Maryland law.”
What Happens Next
DHS is yet to provide details on those arrested. Some social media users reacting to the video said the homeowner could face charges if she employed immigrants to carry out work, knowing she would call law enforcement on them.
Update, 03/27/26, 11:57 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from ICE.
Carl Kabat
Scottie's Playtime 