Democratic Underground: Forums for U.S. Liberals and Democrats

Airports collect donations for TSA staffers during government shutdown

March 12, 2026, 5:17 PM Multiple airports across the U.S. are collecting donations for Transportation Security Administration employees and federal staffers working without pay during the ongoing partial government shutdown, which started nearly one month ago in February. The partial shutdown began Feb. 14, and TSA workers are set to miss their first paycheck of the shutdown this weekend, as some continue to seek support from places like food pantries or find side jobs to try to make ends mee ...

UpInArms

The US may move its anti-missile system out of South Korea - and it's sparking unease

The US is relocating parts of a missile defence system installed in South Korea to the Middle East, according to officials cited by the Washington Post and South Korean news outlets. The reported move comes 12 days into the US-Israeli war against Iran, and follows reports suggesting Iran had destroyed a key radar used by the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, system in Jordan. Thaad was first deployed to South Korea in 2017 to protect against threats from nuclear-armed North Korea. ...

BumRushDaShow

A bill aiming to treat abortion as homicide has failed in Tennessee

Updated March 12, 2026, 6:25 p.m. ET A bill that sought to charge women who seek abortions with homicide − a crime punishable by the death penalty − failed unceremoniously in Tennessee on March 10. House Bill 570, sponsored by Rep. Jody Barrett, R-Dickson, would have removed legal protections for pregnant women currently in statute, and classified harm done to an unborn child as equal to assault on a person “born alive.” Women who get abortions could have been prosecuted for hom ...

BumRushDaShow

US customs agency says building system for tariff refunds is 40% to 80% complete

11h March 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's work to build a four-part system to refund $166 billion in illegal tariff collections with interest is between 40% and 80% complete, according to a court filing on Thursday. Brandon Lord, an official with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said in a court filing the agency is developing an online claim portal for importers and brokers to submit refund requests. Once submitted, the claims will go through processing, review and refunding, accord ...

BumRushDaShow

Trump weighs Jones Act waiver amid rising fuel prices, White House says

Updated on: March 12, 2026 / 6:12 PM EDT The Trump administration is prepared to waive the Jones Act to loosen shipping rules as the Iran war continues, the White House said Thursday. The 100-year-old statute requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to be carried on ships that are U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged and U.S.-crewed, and it limits the number of tankers domestic shippers can use. "In the interest of national defense, the White House is considering waiving the Jones Act for a limit ...

BumRushDaShow

SNAP Recipients Fight Back In Junk Food Crackdown

Published Mar 12, 2026 at 06:43 AM EDT updated Mar 12, 2026 at 08:35 AM EDT Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients have filed a lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that new restrictions on what they can purchase with the benefits are unlawful and harmful to people who rely on the program. Five plaintiffs sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, seeking to halt and then overturn SNAP "waivers" ...

highplainsdem

AI error jails innocent grandmother for months in North Dakota fraud case

-snip- Officers from North Dakota did not pick up Lipps from her jail cell in Tennessee until Oct. 30 — 108 days after her arrest. The next day she made her first appearance in a North Dakota courtroom to fight the charges. -snip- Greenwood immediately asked Lipps for her bank records. Once they were in hand, Fargo police met with him and Lipps at the Cass County jail on Dec. 19. She had already been in jail for more than five months. It was the first time police interviewed her. Her bank re ...

BumRushDaShow

Bessent says 'international coalition' could escort tankers through Strait of Hormuz

03/12/26 5:34 PM ET Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that an “international coalition” could escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. “Are you starting to think, if this does keep persisting as it is, that the Navy has to go into the Strait of Hormuz to — to help ships get through, which would have a big effect on —” Sky News’s Wilfred Frost asked Scott Bessent in an interview. “Look, that was always in our planning, that there’s the chance that U.S. Navy or perhaps an inter ...

BumRushDaShow

Furious allies lobby Trump to keep deporting migrants

03/12/2026 04:45 AM EDT Top allies of President Donald Trump are furious at the White House’s new rhetorical emphasis on deporting violent criminals over all unauthorized immigrants — and they’re launching a lobbying effort to reverse that reversal. A group of longtime Trump allies, immigration restrictionist groups and hawkish policy experts have formed the Mass Deportation Coalition to lobby the Trump administration to refocus its efforts on deporting all eligible migrants. The group has ...

vanessa_ca

KC-135 tanker involved in Epic Fury goes down in Iraq: CENTCOM

WASHINGTON — A US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker air refueler crashed in Iraq due to an “incident” that “occurred in friendly airspace,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement late Thursday. Casualties and circumstances surrounding the crash are not immediately clear. According to CENTCOM, the incident was “not due to hostile or friendly fire” and occurred during Operation Epic Fury, the US military’s name for the war against Iran. Three US F-15s were recently shot down over Kuwait ...

Expand Featured Stories

Issue Forums

Latest Breaking News

Guards at Alligator Alcatraz are now wearing Grim Reaper patches: report

29 min ago - Thursday 12 March 2026 20:58 EDT Guards inside Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention facility are reportedly wearing patches featuring the Grim Reaper and the words “You can’t hide.” A former guar ... (The Independent)

Exclusive: Search-and-rescue units respond without tornado-tracking tool after Noem's team let contract lapse

30 min ago - As deadly tornadoes tore through the Midwest and Plains last weekend, state and local search-and-rescue crews rushed to the devastated areas to look for survivors. It wasn’t until the teams deployed that they realized they were operating without ... (CNN)

Democratic senators file war powers resolution to check Trump on Cuba

47 min ago - By STEPHEN GROVES Updated 11:01 PM CDT, March 12, 2026 Leer en español WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats have filed legislation that would prevent the U.S. from attacking Cuba without congressional approval as they seek to force a vote ... (AP)

Fort Bliss detention center to get new operator after scrutiny

1 hr ago - March 12, 2026, 5:24 PM EDT / Updated March 12, 2026, 7:42 PM EDT The Trump administration plans to tap a major engineering and electronic services company to run the country’s largest immigration detention center, where one detainee was killed ... (NBC News)

Dems plan probes into companies, colleges that cooperated with Trump

1 hr ago - 11h House and Senate Democrats are starting to have preliminary discussions to coordinate potential congressional investigations into companies, colleges and law firms in the next Congress, multiple sources told Axios. Why it matters: The early stra ... (msn/Axios)

Trump nominates State official to replace Kari Lake at VOA parent agency

1 hr ago - 03/12/26 7:02 PM ET President Trump on Thursday nominated a State Department official to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America (VOA), after a judge ruled Kari Lake was unlawfully running the agency as its acti ... (The Hill)

A bill aiming to treat abortion as homicide has failed in Tennessee

2 hrs ago - Updated March 12, 2026, 6:25 p.m. ET A bill that sought to charge women who seek abortions with homicide − a crime punishable by the death penalty − failed unceremoniously in Tennessee on March 10. House Bill 570, sponsored by Rep. Jody ... (USA Today)

CoreCivic opens Leavenworth facility, starts admitting ICE detainees

2 hrs ago - Posted 5:28 PM, Mar 12, 2026 and last updated 6:20 PM, Mar 12, 2026 Workers at CoreCivic’s Midwest Regional Reception Center in Leavenworth started admitting Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees Thursday. The news comes less than three ... (KSHB-TV Kansas City, KS)

Four confirmed dead in KC-135 crash, CENTCOM says

2 hrs ago - 0March 13, 2026 Four of the six crew members who were aboard an Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker that crashed in western Iraq have been confirmed dead, U.S. Central Command said Friday. The command said the identities of the service members are being ... (Stars and Stripes)

White House mulls defunding civil rights election observer program that aims to protect minority voting rights

2 hrs ago - Updated on: March 12, 2026 / 6:19 PM EDT The White House is considering ending funding for a longtime civil rights election program aimed at protecting the rights of minority populations to vote, sources familiar with the matter tell CBS News. The fe ... (CBS News)

Republicans, Democrats warn Trump administration against pulling US troops from Kosovo

3 hrs ago - 03/12/26 5:45 PM ET A bipartisan group of lawmakers is warning the Trump administration against drawing down hundreds of U.S. troops serving as peacekeeping forces in Kosovo as tensions rise in the region, according to a letter exclusively obtained b ... (The Hill)

Eswatini says it received more 'third country' deportees as part of deal with Trump administration

3 hrs ago - Thu 12 Mar 2026 17.20 EDT First published on Thu 12 Mar 2026 15.47 EDT The government of Eswatini announced on Thursday it received four more “third country” deportees from the United States, as part of the Trump administration’s multi ... (The Guardian)

Airports collect donations for TSA staffers during government shutdown

3 hrs ago - March 12, 2026, 5:17 PM Multiple airports across the U.S. are collecting donations for Transportation Security Administration employees and federal staffers working without pay during the ongoing partial government shutdown, which started nearly one ... (ABC News)

Leon Black, billionaire financier, to be deposed in Epstein victims' suit against Bank of America

4 hrs ago - March 12, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT Leon Black, former CEO of Apollo Global Management and an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was ordered to be deposed in a lawsuit brought by women who allege that Bank of America facilitated and profited from Epstein’s s ... (NBC News)

Trump weighs Jones Act waiver amid rising fuel prices, White House says

4 hrs ago - Updated on: March 12, 2026 / 6:12 PM EDT The Trump administration is prepared to waive the Jones Act to loosen shipping rules as the Iran war continues, the White House said Thursday. The 100-year-old statute requires goods shipped between U.S. por ... (CBS News)

The US may move its anti-missile system out of South Korea - and it's sparking unease

4 hrs ago - The US is relocating parts of a missile defence system installed in South Korea to the Middle East, according to officials cited by the Washington Post and South Korean news outlets. The reported move comes 12 days into the US-Israeli war against Ira ... (BBC)

US customs agency says building system for tariff refunds is 40% to 80% complete

4 hrs ago - 11h March 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's work to build a four-part system to refund $166 billion in illegal tariff collections with interest is between 40% and 80% complete, according to a court filing on Thursday. Brandon Lord, an official wi ... (msn/Reuters)

Bessent will meet China's vice premier in Paris ahead of Trump's visit to Beijing

5 hrs ago - Updated 3:09 PM EDT, March 12, 2026 WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Sunday and Monday in Paris for a new round of trade talks, the Treasury Department said Thursday, paving ... (AP)

FBI closes 2020 election fraud inquiry ordered by Nevada's top federal prosecutor, sources say

7 hrs ago - The FBI has closed a politically charged voter fraud inquiry sought by Nevada's top federal prosecutor, after finding only 38 non-citizens may have voted in the 2020 presidential election, sources with direct knowledge of the probe told CBS News. The ... (CBS News)

Man who rammed his vehicle into Michigan synagogue was naturalized citizen from Lebanon, DHS says

10 hrs ago - WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (AP) — The armed man who rammed his vehicle into one of the nation’s largest Reform synagogues Thursday has been identified as a 41-year-old naturalized citizen born in Lebanon, according to federal officials. Ayman M ... (AP)