Stories You May Have Missed, But Still Deserve Your Attention
By: Desmond Price
Independent Thought has taken many forms over the years. It started out as nothing more than my ramblings on a podcast that I thought no one would ever listen to. I treated as my own therapy hour & and thought maybe it would be cool if I had like 10-20 people who occasionally listened. As time went on and it expanded beyond its original intention, I did in fact find a small audience, and eventually a bigger one.
As the audience grew, the number one takeaway I would get from people who would share their feedback with me is, they were thankful when I spoke about a piece of news they hadn’t heard about yet, or I spoke about it in a context they hadn’t thought of.
That feedback always resonated with me.
When I did finally start to amass an audience, I always took the responsibility of disseminating news very seriously. It was not only important to me that I was bringing informed information/analysis, but that I was also providing what I felt to be the most important commodity I could provide…
Value.
The highest compliment I can receive when doing this work, is providing value to the people that follow Independent Thought on our various platforms. To that end, I wanted to try something a little different today. It’s something I previously attempted on YouTube, but I get the feeling it’s going to work better on this format.
Throughout the week, I’m constantly running into stories that I want to talk about, want to share with all of you; there’s frankly too many stories happening in a given week to give each one of them the attention they deserve.
To that end, I thought of this next idea. Originally, I was calling this (albeit a pretty boring title) News of the Week. Not my best work in the title department, but it semi got the point across.
A collection of stories I’ve come across recently that I wanted to share with you. Some of these have been around for a little over a week, but I think they’re still worth sharing.
You may have seen some of these on my Instagram story, but I know the algorithm doesn’t always show these to everyone, or you don’t consistently look at stories on IG.
So here’s a collection of 10 stories I came across recently, with a little bit of my feelings tacked on at the end.
At the end, I would love to hear your thoughts on which story stuck out to you the most. Please comment at the end of this post, or send a reply via email 👍
Story #1
President Joe Biden regrets dropping out of the 2024 presidential race because he believes he could have defeated President-elect Donald Trump, sources close to the White House told The Washington Post.
The Post reports:
Biden and some of his aides still believe he should have stayed in the race, despite the rocky debate performance and low poll numbers that prompted Democrats to pressure him to drop out. Biden and these aides have told people in recent days that he could have defeated Trump, according to people familiar with their comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Aides say the president has been careful not to place blame on Harris or her campaign.
First, just so it’s clear for the stories after this, everything that has the orange bar next to it, will be quotes pulled directly from the articles pictured or named, while my individual opinions will not be.
Regarding Biden’s claim - that’s laughable.
As we mentioned in our previous post that we released on November 24th, titled Everything I Believed About The 2024 Election Has Changed, Biden’s own internal polling showed Trump hitting 400 electoral college votes with Biden in the race.
This revisionist history attempt is nothing more than an old man’s broken pride & an absolutely display of detachment from reality. While I had my criticisms of Kamala Harris and her campaign, there is no doubt in my mind that she ran a better campaign than he would’ve run & there was no scenario where Biden would’ve outperformed Harris in the 2024 election.
Story #2
A 59-year-old Virginia man was sentenced to nearly two decades in prison for harassing Black tenants with racial slurs and stealing their identities to obtain COVID relief funds.
David L. Merryman, who owned more than 60 rental properties in Newport News and Hampton, will spend the next 17 years in prison for wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and race-based interference with housing and employment.
The properties were mostly located in low income areas and he primarily rented to poor Black tenants who had nowhere else to live, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a press release. The homes were in awful condition with holes in the ceilings and walls, leaks and rodent activity, among other issues, according to prosecutors.
Merryman, who is white, also harassed his tenants and hurled racial insults at them while defrauding them by forcing them to pay repeated security deposits. He took the money but never made the necessary repairs.
As a Black man, sometimes I come across these stories and feel a weird sense of pressure for how I’m supposed to respond to stories about race. Almost like, since I am Black, it’s my duty to take this moment & make a statement about racism in America.
However, what I’m actually thinking in this moment is - if you still need to be told about the pervasive nature of racism in America in 2025, or still need someone to tell you how we need to directly oppose systems of oppression that relate to racism, you have directly chosen to not give a f***
And there’s nothing I can say in this moment that’s going to help someone like that be a person who will care about racism.
So instead of wasting my time rehashing everything I hoped someone would’ve learned over the last several years, allow me to focus on this instead ⬇️
For those of you who saw my story about this on IG, you already heard me say this, but I believe stories like this are why I will never be fully on the “abolish prisons” train.
Hatred like this cannot be “rehabilitated” and no punishment other than incarceration should be acceptable for people like this.
There’s obviously long discussions to be had about the carceral system in America. How unjust the system is, how it directly relates to systemic racism, how it’s directly manipulated to imprison the impoverished & how it protects the wealthy.
While I believe its current format causes more harm than good, I don’t believe that the solution should be its eradication. People like David L. Merryman, should be in prison. I want a lot less people in prison, but I do believe they need to continue to exist on some level.
Story #3
This news was brought to us by the High Country Press, a smaller publication based out of North Carolina. There are lots of different ways to address this story, a story that’s a stark contrast from the previous one mentioned in this post. We could highlight he goodwill of the folks who came down to NC to build these tiny homes, the inaction of our government to provide a solution like this, the climate crisis that caused the storm, or even the lack of headlines feel good stories like this one garnish in our media.
However, I want to take a moment to highlight the end result. The fact that when people were in a state of crisis and needed shelter, it didn’t take that long or that much money (comparatively speaking) to house unhoused people.
This country has the resources and the people necessary, to put together an operation like this across the country, and house every unhoused person in America. We have the money, we have the means, what we lack are people in power who are willing to put plans like this in motion.
That has to change.
We have to demand that change.
Story #4
Reflecting on the vote to accept the new agreement, BCTGM International President Anthony Shelton stated,
“This has been a difficult fight for our striking BCTGM workers and their families. I could not be more proud of these hard working members who put it all on the line—and braved the frigid Buffalo elements—to fight for a fair contract.”
Union members stood strong for eight weeks against an increased cost to their health care, low wages and the company’s blatant disrespect for the law and its employees.
In the end, their resolve secured a record wage increase over the course of the three-year contract. They will receive a signing bonus and holiday bonus to ease the transition back to work in time for the Holidays. Most importantly, the health care plan will remain affordable and the workers secured cost certainty for the duration of the contract.
Here’s what we know with absolute certainty - the major corporations are enjoying their highest margins in profit in almost 70 years. All the while, workers who are powering those profits are being paid less and less.
If the myth of the meritocracy was true, bosses/executives would be voluntarily increasing wages and benefits, as their profits continue to climb.
Yet we see the opposite.
A collection of wealthy executives who stifle upward mobility, withhold wage increases, and find new ways to slash benefits or keep them from you entirely.
In a just society, unions wouldn’t be necessary. They’re necessary in this one, because these corporations do everything in their power to maximize profits, at the expense of the very workers who made them wealthy in the first place.
Unions are necessary.
Strikes absolutely work.
Workers are more powerful as a collective.
Collective action is our best way to navigate our current system.
Quick Programming Note ⬇️
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Back to the story
Story #5
As Kansans head into the new year, they may notice a slight decrease in their household bills starting Wednesday, Jan. 1. That’s because the final phase of the state’s food tax elimination goes into effect on New Year’s Day. Kansans will no longer pay sales tax to the state on many grocery items.
The elimination of Kansas’ sales tax on food is the third and final step in a multi-year process. On Jan. 1, 2023, the tax was lowered from 6.5% to 4%. The following year, it dropped from 4% to 2%. Now, that 2% finally decreases to 0%. “We showed that when the food sales tax was fully eliminated, the average household of four saved about $500 a year,” Ginther said.
This was reported on by the - Kansas City Star
Sales taxes by nature are regressive taxes. They disproportionately effect lower income people far more than they effect higher earners in America. For essentials like food, this is an absolute no-brainer in my mind.
In fact, I would love to see this policy take root throughout the country.
Making America more equitable can take many forms, but finding ways to improve the economic conditions for lower income Americans is the most direct way to address our declining quality of life.
Do you live in a state that has income tax? Would you like to see income taxes removed from food items?
Story #6
Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States behind tobacco use and obesity. Alcohol consumption contributes to roughly 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 deaths each year. A new advisory says alcoholic beverages should have a warning label about the risks. And a new advisory out today from the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy says alcoholic beverages should have a warning label about those risks.
The above passage came from article from - PBS
I’ll keep my thoughts brief here.
I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with this development & welcome the continued attempt to inform the public about any inherent dangers that may come for the products we’re routinely putting in our bodies.
I have been concerned in recent years that listening to the advice of medical professionals has become politicized, but that’s a whole different conversation rabbit hole 🕳️
It was shocking to see this news come down, but at the same time, it’s hardly something anyone should find to be surprising.
Story #7
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed a new measure into law earlier this week that permits police departments to charge the public to release camera footage from its officers — including dash, body or surveillance video.
“No law enforcement agency should ever have to choose between diverting resources for officers on the street to move them to administrative tasks like lengthy video redaction reviews for which agencies receive no compensation — and this is especially so for when the requestor of the video is a private company seeking to make money off of these videos,” DeWine said in a statement shared with The Hill.
Governments will be allowed to charge as much as $75 an hour or a maximum total of $750 per request according to reports from local outlet News5 in Cleveland.
You may or may not know this, but usually, police departments siphon an incredible amount of tax revenue out of the communities they’re in. In fact, if we look at our national police spending, and compared it to what other countries spend on their military, it would be the 3rd largest expenditure in the world
And this graphic is a few years old, our military and policing numbers have gone up since then.
I bring all that up to say this - you’ve got to be f***ing kidding me!
The police have an incredible amount of money at their disposal & they are choosing to charge people for this footage?
They absolutely do not need this money, but what this truly does, is put up another barrier for folks in poverty.
Let’s play this scenario out right.
The only time you’d want footage like this, is if you suspect an officer might have done something illegal, or you’re allegeding they were pushing the boundaries on what’s considered ethical.
So as a deterrent from potential exposure, they want to add another barrier for folks to access this footage.
It’s honestly disturbing & it speaks to a larger conversation about how the police have too much power in America.
Do you agree with my assessment here, or do you think there’s another side to this story? Please share your thoughts below ⬇️
Story #8
The factory, where Tesla aspires to start production this year, is part of a broader effort by Musk to ease bottlenecks and build a more robust domestic supply chain of the critical raw material. It has also set off alarm bells among some in the small Texas town (Robstown) who are worried about having enough water to live on, let alone help supply a big factory.
In 2022, Tesla estimated it would need 400,000 gallons per day to run the lithium plant, rising to 800,000 gallons per day at peak usage. Two years later, a Tesla employee told a consulting firm, Raftelis, that the forecast has spiked to as high as eight-million gallons per day, according to South Texas Water Authority records obtained by Bloomberg News through a public records request.
Tesla would be using eight times Robstown’s average residential water use.
This section came from - miningweekly.com
Yet another example, in a long list of examples, about how corporate power in America has gotten out of control.
In any sane world, we would not allow a company to use up so much water in an area, that it would put the residents of that community at risk.
The corporate oligarchy has gotten way out of hand & it’s not going to fix itself anytime soon, while we have politicians in Washington & in state governments, that are completely beholden to these people.
Story #9
The Pentagon on Monday repatriated a Tunisian detainee who was brought to the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the day it opened, was never charged at the war court and was approved for transfer more than a decade ago.
Ridah Bin Saleh al Yazidi, 59, spent years languishing at the wartime prison because deals could not be made to repatriate or resettle him.
It also is not known what family awaits him in Tunisia, and he has apparently not seen a lawyer in nearly 20 years.
The first election I could vote in was the 2008 election. As an 18 year old, I was over the moon to vote for Senator Barack Obama.
One of the promises he made on the campaign trail, was that he intended to shut down Guantánamo Bay. Something that, even at a young age, I felt to be very important. I had heard the stories coming out of that place regarding holding people without due process, humiliation prisoners had to go through, and several accounts of torture.
Guantánamo Bay’s very existence is a black mark on our nation & 23 years after it’s initial opening (so obviously Obama never shut it down), it is still holding people without ever even charging them.
Sometimes, when people start conversations about patriotism, and they ask you if you’re proud to be an American, these are the things I think of.
How could anyone be okay with this?
Guantánamo Bay needs to be shut down. Prisons like this should never exist. Holding people without due process should never be allowed in America, or in any facility that America operates.
Story #10
A Russian-guided bomb attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least 13 civilians and injured about 30 others, Governor Ivan Fedorov said in a statement on social media.
Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza killed at least 17 people late Tuesday, nearly all of them women or children, the territory’s Health Ministry and hospital officials said.Five kids were killed as they sheltered together in the same tent, said Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children’s ward at nearby Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Their bodies were among the eight children and five women brought to the hospital after strikes on tents, homes and a vehicle. Two bodies were unidentifiable.
Without providing evidence. Israel said it took steps to lessen the risk of hurting civilians and blamed Hamas for the civilian casualties.
You can find stories like this everyday, as the atrocities in these countries continue to rage on.
Innocent civilians continue to be massacred both in Ukraine & Palestine.
While these situations are different from one another, they do share the common bond of innocent people’s lives being lost daily, while the world at large has gone numb to their suffering.
If you’ve been following me at all on Instagram, I’m sure you’ve heard me speak numerous times about my thoughts on Israel’s genocide on Palestine.
While I’ve said it before, I feel as though it must continued to be said ⬇️
Please don’t normalize what’s happening to these people. Please don’t “both sides” an annihilation of a population that is almost 50% children.
Our corporate media will have you believe this is a “war”, but the overwhelming majority of casualties are people running and hiding for their lives.
That’s not a war. That’s a slaughter.
Please don’t refer to it as a “war” or a “conflict”.
At the top of this piece, I wasn’t sure if trying to do 10 stories was going to be too ambitious or not. I would love to hear what you think. Was that just right or too many?
I plan on doing another post like this in the future & would love to know if you liked it/found it to be a valuable.
Until next time,
Desmond
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I dont think ten stories was ambitious for us to read, but perhaps for you to go through and then write? Just don't burn yourself out. Dealing with these stories day in and day out can start to really impact one's mental health. I know mine is shot.
There were a few stories that really resonated with me. The following are my thoughts on these events:
The release of a Tunisian man from Guantanamo after 23 years and with no due process. This is terrible and terrifying all in one article bc it means it can happens to anyone in America. I feel we owe this man as a country for the years taken from him that he can never get back. Though I do not know how this could ever be made up for or if anything could make this man whole. As a veteran I'm deeply troubled by Guantanamo. As soldiers we take an oath to protect the CONTITUTION. A document which gives power and voice to the rights of Americans. If these rights are so fundamental to one's existence as that document attests, why were this man's rights violated for 23 years. Why are there no repercussions for such an atrocity?
The OH governor signing that dumb bill. Forgive my frankness. When I saw that yesterday, I sent the article to my sister immediately who lives in Columbus. There is absolutely no reason why a police force, paid with tax dollars already, can't complete these tasks without charging for them. Honestly, how is this not another "tax" for their services? I guess I just don't understand how they're being paid to do their job twice??? And the only reason to request this is suspicion of a police officer violating his duties. I'd think we'd want to ensure our police force were of the best quality and training however, since they are not even legally required to protect citizens, that's a joke. This just creates further obstacles for anybody who's rights have been violated. Protect the oppressor, not the oppressed seems to be the order of the day.
The man that went to prison for harassing and robbing his tenants of their identities, money, and dignity. This man belongs in prison. Periodt. However, I would find it more productive and society better as a whole, if he were forced to recognize and then reconcile with his hatred in a more reformative and restorative system. Instead, he will be placed in a system where he will join like minded men and they will feed off of each other. Eventually, the men he's come in contact with in prison will be released. More than likely they will carry on with hatred and violence. Recidivism is another tool of oppression. The cycle will repeat. We need to to try something better. For all our sakes.
The Amish community that built the small homes in under 48 hours in NC. If this is possible, and for the amounts represented, why are we not working with these communities to help our unhoused population and/or the "housing shortage" (really just an issue of private equity using the housing market to keep everyday Americans from buying and perpetually renting but that's another topic). The Amish are incredibly skilled builders that wouldn't throw up a few boards and call it house either. The point is, clearly this is possible and can be accomplished. With the fires in CA and the LA government redistributing money from the shelter fund for the unhoused crisis and from the fire department fund into the LA police fund ppl in CA need places for shelter from the fires more than ever.
Anyways, that's just my two cents on the topics that stuck out to me. I appreciate your time and energy. I hope this next four years is not as terrible as we all believe it will be, but nobody is saving us so we have to save ourselves. Accurate information and access to it are so important right now. It seems our avenues for educating the public keep coming under attack from the billionaire class and that is a frightening development. Take care in the new year and find community of you haven't one already.
Rebecca
The problem is that prisons reinforce the systemic inequalities that allow people like this to get away with what they do. Prisons are the cudgel over the heads of the homeless, threatening them with being shuffled off into slave labor for being in financial crisis. Prisons even reinforce this landlord's ability to take advantage of tenants because landlords like this tend to have law enforcement on their side, and they will hold the threat of arrest and/or eviction over people's heads.
Incarceration doesn't make whole the person who was harmed by the actions of the incarcerated. Incarceration will never be used against people who do things like this in the same manner it's used against marginalized communities. As long as the institution exists, it will always be used against marginalized people first. That's why we fight for abolition. We know there are better approaches that focus on restoration and justice. Putting people into a box for years doesn't solve things, and so many people are being shoved into the box because it exists. The idea behind abolition isn't (necessarily) to just open every door and set everyone free. It's finding a way to make a system that prioritizes community care and restorative justice over punitive retribution.