Burning River Brigade

06/07/2026

Sounds like Mainers are paying close attention to the Platner Campaign. We urge everyone in Maine to look to Independent news sources not financed by billionaires and shareholders, and make sure you understand what motivates all involved in this campaign.

PLEASE SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE. This is about Dark $$$$, AIPAC, Bill...

06/06/2026

Pride in the CLE is happening today in downtown Cleveland, and everyone is welcome. The march starts at Public Square at 11 AM and winds through downtown, then the festival takes over Malls B and C from 12 to 6 PM. It's free, it's family friendly, and it's open to the whole community.

People still ask why there's no straight pride. Here's the answer in two numbers. 64 countries still criminalize consensual same-sex relationships. At least 7 of them can punish it with death.

Pride exists because visibility is still a matter of survival in much of the world, and because the rights we hold here were fought for and can be taken back. We show up so nobody has to hide. We show up so the next generation inherits more freedom than fear.

If you believe every person deserves to live openly and safely, this is your community too. Come downtown today, bring your friends, bring your family, and stand with your neighbors.

— in solidarity, the Burning River Brigade, Cleveland 🔥

06/04/2026

CITIZENS BANK FUNDS ICEHOLES

Boycott Citizens Bank. Your tax dollars are being thrown away on empty prison cells. ICE pays private prison companies for a guaranteed minimum number of beds every single day, filled or not. In one New Mexico facility, taxpayers were billed for at least 714 beds while it held an average of 152 people. We paid for the empty cells, while investors in these private prisons pocketed money that could have gone to healthcare or anything that helps actual Americans. The whole structure rewards detaining more people, not fewer, and that money flows to GEO Group and CoreCivic, who pulled in roughly 1.2 billion and 742 million dollars from ICE last year. Citizens Bank helped finance both with around 2 billion dollars in loans.

More bodies always means more money, so the machine goes looking for easy people to lock up. It found them at courthouses. Immigrants who showed up exactly as required for their hearings, some who entered the country legally, have been arrested in the hallway the moment a judge dismissed their case, then fast tracked for deportation with no chance to respond. A federal court has already ruled these courthouse arrests unlawful, and government lawyers admitted in court that their own justification was based on erroneous information. People did everything right and got detained for it, because the beds had to be filled.

Around 60 percent of Americans report having nothing left after paying their bills, and that includes 40 percent of households earning over 100,000 dollars a year. These are working people across the political spectrum, they're not lazy, and their taxes are paying for empty prison beds and the detention of people who followed the law. There is a national day of action against Citizens Bank this Saturday, June 6. Move your money. Close the account. Get your mortgage or car loan at your local credit union instead.

06/04/2026

Trump's failures this week:

• A federal court ruled his takeover of the Kennedy Center unlawful and ordered his name removed from the building.

• A federal court blocked his $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, which Republicans had also opposed, forcing the Justice Department to abandon it.

• Congressional Republicans dropped funding for his proposed White House ballroom, including the $1 billion he requested for security.

• A federal court reopened litigation into the IRS to examine alleged coordination between Trump and the Justice Department.

• His endorsed candidate for Iowa governor lost the Republican primary, the first defeat of a Trump-backed candidate this election cycle.

• Republicans in both the House and Senate broke with him to advance war powers resolutions limiting his authority to keep attacking Iran without Congress. The House passed it 215 to 208.

• Questions mounted over his health after finasteride was quietly dropped from his White House medical report with no explanation, and the White House refused to clarify whether he still takes it.

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06/04/2026

HILTON HOUSES ICEHOLES

Boycott Hilton. In January a Minneapolis hotel owner refused to let ICE agents stay in his rooms, and Hilton corporate stripped his franchise for it. The owner who tried to keep ICE out is the one Hilton punished. This wasn't one hotel. It was Hilton Worldwide overruling a local franchisee from the top to keep ICE welcome in its hotels. A nationwide Hilton boycott followed, with Hilton Honors members canceling accounts and travelers booking elsewhere. Cleveland came out in the cold to join it. Hilton made housing ICE a corporate decision, so meet it with a corporate consequence. Cancel the reservation. Drop the Honors account. Boycott Hilton until it stops housing ICE.

06/03/2026

The House just voted 215 to 208 to rein in Trump's war on Iran, more than 90 days past the deadline that exists to stop exactly this. 208 Republicans still voted to let it keep running. This still has to clear the Senate, and the White House is already calling it unconstitutional, so it isn't over.

06/03/2026

Trump is celebrating Pride Month by hitting new bottoms.

Three different national polls, The Economist, Marquette, and Harvard, all land in the same place. He is underwater on basically every issue people actually care about, from gas prices to the economy to the war nobody wanted.

Other recent polling shows the same trend, so this isn't one cherry picked survey. It's the pattern.

While we're here, Burning River Brigade wishes everyone a happy Pride Month. To our LGBTQ+ friends, family, and neighbors, you are loved and you belong. To the homophobes, we wish you a very long, very uncomfortable month.

Credit to Cameron Kasky

06/03/2026

We displayed this message over I71 in Cleveland back in December.

Six months later it hasn't aged the way the White House would like. The President hasn't made a public appearance in roughly a week. His Walter Reed physical took unusually long to release, and an outside vascular surgeon called the report a filtered narrative missing data doctors normally include. Now there's visible swelling around his eye.

Look at the pattern. Three trips to Walter Reed in roughly a year. Persistent bruising on the right hand for a year, then a fresh bruise on the left, explained first as handshakes, then as a table corner. Then at one point a red spot on his neck. People have watched him appear to nod off in meetings and walk unsteadily. The White House keeps claiming he's in excellent health yet they keep hiding the records that would prove it.

Biden was too old for the job, and many of us said so. This is worse, the same standard has to apply. A president's fitness is not a partisan question. All Americans deserve full transparency.

We're not his doctor. We can't tell you what's wrong. We shouldn't have to guess. Americans deserve a full and honest medical report on the oldest president in our history, and we're not getting one.

We're asking again. What aren't they telling us?

06/03/2026

CLEVELAND SAYS GO HOME ICEHOLES. We displayed this over I90 back in January, and the data says Cleveland and Ohio have our backs.

Even a poll weighted to match Ohio's Trump-leaning vote found most Ohio voters oppose ICE raids, oppose the unmarked cars, and oppose agents hiding their faces behind masks. Independents oppose the raids by a 46-point margin. This isn't a fringe position in a red state. It's the majority.

Mayor Bibb put it plainly after the January raids swept Northeast Ohio. His administration won't help deport people who haven't committed violent crimes, and he's right that no law requires the city to. Deport the violent. Leave the working families who show up, pay taxes, and break no laws.

The headlines moved to war. The raids didn't stop, so neither will we.