

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.


Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
The atrocities and the fury mount. Astoundingly, after a murderous thug shot a mother of three in the face in broad daylight - "He didn't kill her because he was scared, he killed her because she wasn't" - state terror has ramped up with more lies, goons, attacks on "gangs of wine moms," brutish agitprop literally echoing the Nazis'. So when mini-Bovino went to take a leak at a store, the people's wrath, a bittersweet splendor, erupted. Their/our edict: "Get the fuck out."
For now, Trump's America keeps getting scarier and uglier. He's threatened to (illegally) withdraw the US from the world’s most vital climate treaty and 65 other agencies doing useful work. He's trashing a once-thriving economy because he doesn't know how it works, scapegoating longtime Fed chair Jerome Powell, who's (startlingly fighting back, flipping off autoworkers, admiring non-existent ballrooms. After (illegally) killing over 100 Venezuelans and abducting their president - Chris Hedges: "Empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war" - he called oil executives to a dementia-ridden meeting where in a reality check one brave skeptic argued Venezuela is historically "uninvestable." He ordered invasion plans for Greenland - wait what - that joint chiefs are resisting as "crazy and illegal": “It’s like dealing with a five-year-old.” And in a supreme irony overload, he's menacing U.S. protesters while warning Iran's killers of protesters they'll "pay a big price" and urging Iran's people to "take over your institutions." We can't even.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, he's sending yet more thugs, persisting in calling Renée Good "a professional agitator" - Professional Agitators 'R Us! - and warning a besieged, traumatized community, "THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!" Up is down and MAGA minions dutifully follow suit. Tom Homan: "We've got to stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s ridiculous. It’s just gonna infuriate people more." Newsmax and GOP Rep. Pete Sessions agree: Dems have to quiet their "rhetoric," cease "honking of horns," and stop "putting an iPhone on your face." "STOP THE MADNESS," shrieks David Marcus on Fox, blasting "organized gangs of wine moms" across the country - Wine Moms 'R Us! - using Antifa tactics to "harass and impede" ICE: "It's not civil disobedience. It isn’t even protest. It’s just crime." Here, Renée Good was "a trained member" of groups "executing missions that put law enforcement and the public in harm’s way," probably all part of "criminal conspiracies."
To support the insane narrative that the brazen murder of a mother of three in her car in public constitutes "an attack on our brave law enforcement," DHS released crude, "pathological," Goebbels-worthy propaganda that repeats the first day's lies and includes footage of when Good "weaponized her vehicle” by “speeding across the road" while failing to mention it was when "she had just been shot in the fucking face and her dead foot hit the pedal." No wonder the mindless carnage goes on. A thug leers to a cuffed protester she should've "learned her lesson," she asks what lesson, he snarls, "Why we killed that fucking bitch." And gangs of goons rampage door-to-door, barging into households of kids with guns and tasers ready. One brave, calm woman records it all, demands a warrant, barks get your hands off me, mocks how big and bad they are flashing a light in her face and sneers that, on the street, "You're all some pussies without that shit on your chest...Your mamas raised a bitch if you can wear that outfit proudly."
Last week both Illinois and Minnesota, and each state's targeted cities, filed federal lawsuits to end their invasions by thousands of armed, masked, violent goons racially harassing, terrorizing and assaulting their communities. The courts may yet halt the deadly mayhem; the regime sure as shit won't. In the wake of the DOJ's predictable, outlandish announcement they won't investigate Good's murder, multiple attorneys in the civil rights division - for decades "America’s last line of accountability when federal agents kill" - have resigned, the latest in a flood of departures totaling over 250, a 70% reduction. In their stead, the FBI seized control of the "investigation" after blocking local law enforcement's access to evidence. Kash's Keystone Cops are now looking into, not Jonathan Ross, but Good and her "possible connections to activist groups" - also, because there truly is no low, her widow's. "This isn’t a cover-up," said one former DOJ attorney. "It’s the end of civil rights enforcement as we've known it."
Experts say the escalating malfeasance and accompanying thuggery are the logical culmination of a longtime "culture of violence" within border control agencies. Ryan Goodman of Just Security describes a scathing 2013 report, commissioned but then buried, that specifically cites agents' proclivity for standing in front of blocked vehicles as a pretext to open fire on drivers attempting to flee a tense encounter. Thank God we don't see that anymore. Nor do we have to see Stephen Miller's nightmare vision of Dems in power making "every city into Mogadishu or Kabul or Port-au-Prince," complete with roaming convoys of masked, armed, hefty hoodlums snatching people off the streets, dragging them out of their cars, beating them up, kneeling on their necks (illegal under post-George-Floyd Minnesota law), and brutalizing them for unknown offenses until they go limp, fate unknown, like in this video by Ford Fischer last week. For MAGA, ICE proudly represents "the fearsome power of the American state." But don't call them fascists.
It was sick Greg Bovino's knee on that neck. Then he went on Sean Hannity's show to praise Jonathan Ross for shooting Renée Good three times in the face - "Hats off to that ICE agent" - because "a 4,000-pound missile is not something anyone wants to face." Hannity readily agreed it was "not even a close call...There is no ambiguity for anyone with eyes to see that (Good) had been taunting officers," which is not true, also definitely a death penalty offense. Later, Bovino claimed that 90% of the public "are happy to see us." Last week, a YouGov poll disagreed, finding a majority of Americans disapproved of the murderous job ICE is doing, and almost half support abolishing it entirely. That may be why, when Bovino went to take a piss last week at a Target in St. Paul, accompanied by a phalanx of surly stormtroopers with itchy trigger fingers and nervous cameras held aloft, they were met by pure, gut-level fury, and a crowd of we the people with no fucks left to give. More video from Ford Fischer of News2Share.
A handy transcript: "You’re a fucking bum. you’re a bitch. and if your wife’s got a problem, fuck her, too. you guys are all bitches. you can’t do shit to me. you can’t do a thing. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here. right. get the fuck out. walk the fuck, you stupid bitches. get the fuck out of here. coward. you’re a fucking coward, bitch. you’re a fucking bitch. fuck you. hold on, babe, I’m on the phone with these bitch-ass niggas. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here, you stupid bitches. you’re a fucking coward piece of shit. fuck you. and if you didn’t have a gun or a vest, I would beat the shit out of you. take that fucking badge off, and that fucking gun, and see what happens to you. you shut the fuck up, you’re not fucking tough. you’re a bitch and get the fuck out, you fucking pussy. you fucking bitch-ass white boys. I’ll fucking spit on you. fucking get out of here. get the fuck out. shut the fuck up. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here."
Among Minnesota's ICE victims was a Marine veteran who said she was following agents "at a safe distance" when they rammed the car, broke the window, dragged her out by the neck, slammed her face into the ground, tightly cuffed her and snarled, per their memo, "This is why we killed that lesbian bitch." Shaken, she told a reporter, "I took an oath, and they're spitting on it. They're Nazis. They're Gestapo. This isn't Germany." Not yet. But close, says James Fell's Sweary History: "Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says 'fuck' a lot." When ICE Barbie, "this puppy-killing, plasticized bag of fascism" called Good a domestic terrorist, he notes, her podium read, "One of Ours, All of Yours" - the phrase Nazis used when the Resistance killed "murderous motherfucker" Reinhard Heydrich, and Nazis retaliated by killing thousands of Czechs and most of the village of Lidice, where they (wrongly) thought the assassins came from. Kill one of ours, we murder all of yours: "This is what DHS is threatening should people dare to resist the American Gestapo."
Dark echoes keep coming. In more Goebbels-worthy agit-prop, the Dept. of Labor just posted a bizarre musical photo montage captioned, "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage," which even X's AI chatbot Grok noted is just like the Nazi slogan, "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" - One People, One Realm, One Leader. Huh, said many: "Sounds familiar," "Sounds better in the original German," "I didn't have DOL dropping race-baiting propaganda with moody techno music on my 2026 Bingo card," "I remember this one from history books," "Can't wait for the sequel! Labor Creates Liberty!" and, "That 1930s retro energy really matches the new vibe." The video added, "Remember who you are, American." Rob Kelner responded, "I remember who I am. I am the grandchild of immigrants, in a nation that welcomed all four of my grandparents, dirt poor...fleeing tyranny." We have fallen so far, and lost so much. But some truths remain: "There is no world in which these are the good guys. None."
"Get it all on record now. Get the films. Get the witnesses. Because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander of the Allied Forces, on atrocities committed by the German Nazis.

Developers behind two of the five offshore wind projects recently targeted by the Trump administration took action in federal court this week, seeking preliminary injunctions that would enable construction to continue while the legal battles play out.
Empire Offshore Wind LLC filed a civil lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday, challenging the Department of the Interior's (DOI) December 22 stop-work order, which the company argued is "unlawful and threatens the progress of ongoing work with significant implications for the project" off the coast of New York.
"Empire Wind is more than 60% complete and represents a significant investment in U.S. energy infrastructure, jobs, and supply chains," the company highlighted. "The project's construction phase alone has put nearly 4,000 people to work, both within the lease area and through the revitalization of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal."
The filing came just a day after a similar one in the same court on Thursday from the joint venture between Skyborn Renewables and the Danish company Ørsted, which is developing Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut. That project is approximately 87% complete and was expected to begin generating power as soon as this month.
"Sunrise Wind LLC, a separate project and wholly owned subsidiary of Ørsted that also received a lease suspension order on December 22, continues to evaluate all options to resolve the matter, including engagement with relevant agencies and stakeholders and considering legal proceedings," the Danish firm said. That project is also off New York.
As the New York Times noted Friday: "At stake overall is about $25 billion of investment in the five wind farms. The projects were expected to create 10,000 jobs and to power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses."
Trump’s attack on offshore wind is really an attack on our economy. He’s jacking up energy bills, firing thousands of union workers, & leaving our nation behind. We need more energy in order to bring down costs. Trump is leading us in the wrong direction.
[image or embed]
— U.S. Senator Jack Reed (@reed.senate.gov) January 2, 2026 at 4:37 PM
The other two projects targeted by the Trump administration over alleged national security concerns are Vineyard Wind 1 off Massachusetts and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. The developer of the latter, Dominion Energy, launched a legal challenge in federal court in Virginia the day after the DOI's lease suspension order, and a hearing is scheduled for this month.
"Delaying the project will lead to increased costs for customers and threaten long-term grid reliability," Dominion spokesperson Jeremy Slayton told NC Newsline on Tuesday. "Given the project's critical importance, we have a responsibility to pursue every available avenue to deliver the project as quickly and at the lowest cost possible on behalf of our customers and the stability of the overall grid."
President Donald Trump's public opposition to offshore wind energy dates back to before his first term as president, when he unsuccessfully fought against the Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm near his golf course in Scotland. Since entering US politics, the Republican has taken money from and served the interests of fossil fuel giants while waging war on renewable power projects and lying about the climate emergency.
As the Times detailed:
Mr. Trump has falsely claimed that wind farms kill whales (scientists have said there is no evidence to support that) and that turbines "litter" the country and are like "garbage in a field"...
This week President Trump posted on social media a photo of a bird beneath a windmill and suggested it was a bald eagle killed in the United States by a wind turbine. "Windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles," the president wrote. It was also posted by the White House and the Department of Energy.
The post turned out to be a 2017 image from Israel, and the animal was likely a kestrel. On Friday Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social again, this time an image of birds flying around a wind turbine, that read, "Killing birds by the millions!"
While the DOI did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment, and the department referred the Hill to its December statement citing radar interference concerns, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told NC Newsline earlier this week that Trump has made clear that he believes wind energy is "the scam of the century."
"For years, Americans have been forced to pay billions more for the least reliable source of energy," Rogers said. "The Trump administration has paused the construction of all large-scale offshore wind projects because our number one priority is to put America First and protect the national security of the American people."
Meanwhile, climate campaigners and elected Democrats have blasted the Trump administration's attacks on the five offshore projects, warning of the economic and planetary consequences. Democratic senators have also halted permitting reform talks over the president's "reckless and vindictive assault" on wind power.
Additionally, as Common Dreams reported Monday, the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility warned congressional committees that the DOI orders are "not legally defensible" and raise "significant" questions about conflicts of interest involving a top department official's investments in fossil gas.
The House Republican Study Committee on Tuesday released a blueprint for a new budget reconciliation package with the purported goal of making "life more affordable for working families."
However, according to an analysis by Washington Post economic policy reporter Jacob Bogage, two of the three most expensive items in the GOP budget blueprint would be the elimination of the federal estate tax, which would provide a massive windfall to the richest US households, and indexing capital gains to inflation, which even the conservative American Enterprise Institute contends "would further distort taxpayer decisions and increase the ability to shelter income from taxation."
Other items in the GOP blueprint include refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with oil seized from Venezuela, blocking federal funds for abortion providers, and a new "excise tax on colleges that allow trans women in sports."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, wasted no time ripping the proposal from the largest right-wing House caucus to pieces.
"After passing the largest health care cut in American history, Republicans are doubling down on a failed agenda that benefits billionaires and giant corporations while ripping away food, healthcare and other basic necessities,” Wyden said. “This legislation will eliminate protections for Americans with preexisting conditions, place more red tape between families and their healthcare, and seize ideological trophies instead of focusing on making life more affordable. Americans will pay a steep price if Republicans move forward with this disastrous agenda.”
Richard Phillips, pensions and tax policy director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), marveled at the GOP loading up a bill supposedly focused on working families with massive giveaways to the wealthiest Americans.
"As part of it's new affordability agenda for the American people the Republican Study Committee reveals its plan to give the wealthiest 0.2% of estates a $281 billion tax break?" he wrote in a post on X.
Chuck Marr, vice president of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, similarly called the GOP blueprint "tone deaf."
"Nothing says attack the affordability crisis working-class people face than Rs calling for eliminating the estate tax for the wealthiest heirs in the country—just months after giving them a $30 million tax free exemption," he wrote.
The GOP's second attempt at a budget reconciliation package comes months after it passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a reconciliation package that gave more tax breaks to the rich, but cut Medicaid spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, while also slashing spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by nearly $200 billion over the same period.
Amid unprecedented backlash against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom—considered a leading contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—is being accused of giving the increasingly violent agency a pass after an interview with right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro in which he softened his criticism of ICE.
In recent days, following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, officers of ICE and other federal agencies have been documented engaging in blatant racial profiling, unconstitutional “citizenship checks,” and extreme uses of physical force, including dragging a disabled US citizen from her car on the way to a doctor's appointment, as the Associated Press reported Friday.
It is part of a pattern of behavior by ICE that Newsom's press office described as "state-sponsored terrorism" as recently as January 7, when he used the term to describe Good's killing by agent Jonathan Ross, who was recorded shooting Good in the head after stepping in front of her vehicle and referring to her as a "fucking bitch." Agents also obstructed emergency medical services from arriving at the scene of the shooting to assist Good, according to video and eyewitness accounts.
But when questioned by the cantankerous debater Shapiro on his podcast, This is Gavin Newsom on Thursday, the governor backed off that forceful description of the agency.
“Your press office tweeted out that it was state-sponsored terrorism, which, I mean, Governor, I just have to ask you about that. That sort of thing makes our politics worse, and it does,” said Shapiro, to which Newsom responded, “Yeah.”
Shapiro continued: “Our ICE officers obviously are not terrorists. A tragic situation is not state-sponsored terrorism.”
“Yeah, I think that’s fair,” agreed Newsom.
A short clip of that exchange, shared in celebration by Shapiro's outlet, the Daily Wire, was met with widespread criticism on social media from those who wanted to see one of the Democratic Party's most prominent leaders take an unapologetic stance against ICE.
Mehdi Hasan, founder of the news outlet Zeteo, questioned why "Newsom is trying to wreck his otherwise very strong chance of winning the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination by doing this self-destructive podcast where he allows right-wing guests to walk all over him and then promote clips online of them walking all over him."
But this clip showed only one of several instances during the nearly two-hour interview in which Newsom rolled over to his guest's pro-ICE framing.
When Shapiro interrogated Newsom about California's supposed "sanctuary state" policy and suggested the state should “cooperate with ICE in the vast majority of cases,” Newsom responded: “That's exactly what they do in California.”
Newsom then boasted that there have been “over 10,000” deportations he’s cooperated with since he became governor of California. Though he emphasized that the sanctuary law only allows for the state’s correctional facilities to cooperate with ICE, advocates have criticized it for allowing the deportation of those who were never convicted and those who’ve had their cases dropped.
“California has cooperated with more ICE transfers, probably, than any other state in the country,” he continued. “I vetoed multiple pieces of legislation that have come from my legislature to stop the ability for the state of California to do that.”
Newsom has indeed vetoed at least two pieces of Democratic legislation that sought to further limit the state’s cooperation with ICE—one in 2023, which would have repealed requirements allowing prisons to transfer noncitizens to ICE custody after they leave prison, and another in 2019, which would have banned private security companies from entering California prisons to transfer people to ICE custody.
Shapiro later questioned Newsom on whether he agreed with calls from some Democrats to “abolish” ICE in the wake of the shooting, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), another potential favorite for the 2028 nomination.
Newsom said, “I disagree,” adding, “I believe a candidate for president by the name of Harris said that in the last campaign. I remember being on [All In with Chris Hayes] hours later saying, ‘I think that’s a mistake.’”
While she has been critical of the agency and suggested changing its enforcement priorities, it is untrue that former Vice President Kamala Harris has ever called to “abolish ICE,” even saying as far back as 2018 that “ICE has a purpose. ICE has a role, ICE should exist.”
She did not call for ICE to be abolished during the 2024 campaign for president as Newsom suggested, and was criticized by immigrants’ rights activists for running further to the right on immigration than in years past.
By rejecting calls to abolish ICE, critics noted that Newsom was expressing a position far out of touch with the Democratic base and with a widening segment of the country, which has grown increasingly hostile toward ICE over the past year, and especially in the wake of its actions in Minnesota, which have led many to see it more as President Donald Trump's personal paramilitary force than a legitimate law enforcement agency.
A poll earlier this week by the Economist/YouGov revealed that for the first time ever, “abolishing ICE” had more support (46%) than opposition (43%) among American adults. Among those who said they leaned Democratic, 80% favored abolishing the agency, compared with just 11% who opposed it.
“This is an unbelievably stupid move from Gavin Newsom,” wrote the host of the left-wing talk show One Hand Politics, who goes by Mason, in response to the governor's rejection of the call to abolish ICE.
He implored Newsom to “grow a fucking spine and stop chasing Republican moderates that don’t exist. They all hate you.”
Brian Tashman, a political researcher and strategist at the ACLU, noted that Newsom is “not willing to push back against Ben Shapiro but will push back against labor organizers trying to enact a billionaire tax that would affect a few hundred people."
Left-wing commentator Joe Mayall saw the interaction as a window into how Newsom might perform in a possible 2028 presidential debate against Vice President JD Vance, widely seen as the Republican who would succeed Trump.
He wrote: “If you get cooked by Ben Shapiro, you don’t have a chance against Vance."
Several Democratic lawmakers on Friday convened a hearing in Minnesota to hear testimony from local officials and residents about the impact that the surge of federal immigration agents in the state has had on their lives.
The hearing, which was organized by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), featured elected leaders such as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, as well as testimony from US citizens who had been taken into custody by federal agents.
Patty O'Keefe, a 36-year-old US citizen, told lawmakers that her encounter with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began when she and a friend had received a report that legal observers in her neighborhood were being pepper sprayed.
She said they found the agents and began following them in their car while honking their horn and blowing whistles to alert others in the area to their presence.
The ICE agents subsequently stopped their vehicle, surrounded the car, discharged pepper spray into it, then smashed the car's windows and dragged out both O'Keefe and her friend.
O'Keefe said that after being detained by agents, they started taunting her, with one agent telling her, "You guys got to stop obstructing us, that's why this lesbian bitch is dead," an apparent reference to Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent last week.
O'Keefe said this comment left her feeling "rage and sadness," while also asking why anyone would say something like that about the victim of a horrific killing.
"Then I remembered that cruelty and humiliation were probably the point," she said.
O'Keefe was then taken to the BH Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul, where she was put into leg shackles and placed in a detention area that had been reserved for US citizens.
While in detention for eight hours at the building, she said she saw people being subjected to inhumane conditions.
"I saw holding cells with over a dozen people each, and a large holding cell of between 40 to 50 people," she said. "Most of the people there were Hispanic and East African, both women and men. Some cells had no room for people to sit or lay down. Most people I saw were staring straight ahead, not talking, despondent and grief stricken. I know I'll never forget their faces."
Mubashir, a 20-year-old US citizen of Somali descent, recounted his detention by federal immigration agents in December, when officers tackled him and took him into custody even though he offered to show them his identification proving his citizenship.
"I repeated, 'I'm a citizen, I have an ID,' the agent kept saying, 'That don't matter,'" Mubashir explained.
Like O'Keefe, Mubashir was taken to the St. Paul ICE detention facility, where he was shackled. Unlike O'Keefe, however, he was told that he was going to be deported despite having proof of his legal status.
Eventually, Mubashir was able to show a photo of his passport card to an official at the facility who instructed officers to release him from custody.
"It is difficult to believe this happened to me," he said. "I knew the president had made statements about Somali people and there would be additional ICE officers in the Twin Cities... But I did not think this would happen to me or someone in my family. We are all United States citizens, so we should not be at risk of being jailed or deported by ICE."
Mubashir also emphasized that "my citizenship did not protect me from being physically detained and hurt by ICE agents."
A group of United Nations experts on Thursday condemned the Trump administration's deadly assault on Venezuela, abduction of its president, and efforts to control its government and natural resources as profound violations of international law that cannot be allowed to stand without accountability.
"It is gravely concerning that, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, this marks the second time in four years that a permanent member of the Security Council has carried out an armed attack in flagrant violation of the UN Charter," the experts, including around two dozen UN special rapporteurs, said in a joint statement.
The UN Charter prohibits "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
“The prohibition against violating national sovereignty through unprovoked armed attacks applies even in the context of serious human rights violations and restrictions on freedoms such as those documented in Venezuela,” the experts added. "Latin America is a zone of peace. The obligation to resolve conflicts peacefully and in accordance with international law must be respected."
Their statement came days after US President Donald Trump expressed contempt for international law in an interview with the New York Times, saying, "I don’t need international law."
Trump added that his "own morality" is "the only thing that can stop" him.
Top administration officials have been similarly dismissive of any legal restraints on the ability of the US to invade nations and seize their resources whenever it pleases.
“We’re a superpower, and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower," top White House adviser Stephen Miller said in a CNN appearance last week. "It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to us.”
Morris Tidball-Binz, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, said in a separate statement on Thursday that the Trump administration has engaged in "excessive and unlawful use of lethal force" at home and abroad, including in Venezuela and on the high seas.
“International law does not allow States to kill on the basis of labels, perceptions of how someone appears, or allegations of wrongdoing,” Tidball-Binz said. “Whether at sea, abroad, or at home, the use of lethal force must be strictly limited by the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, and precaution, and may be used only as a last resort to protect life.”
"Billionaires can’t be allowed to buy elections."
After flirting last year with forming his own political party, far-right billionaire Elon Musk is funding Republican political candidates once again.
Axios reported on Monday that Musk recently made a massive $10 million donation to bolster Nate Morris, a MAGA candidate who is vying to replace retiring US Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Axios described the massive donation, the largest Musk has ever given to a Senate candidate, as "the biggest sign yet that Musk plans to spend big in the 2026 midterms, giving Republicans a formidable weapon in the expensive battle to keep their congressional majorities."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) reacted with disgust to the news, and said that Musk's enormous donation was indicative of a broken campaign finance system.
"Are we really living in a democracy when the richest man on earth can spend as much as he wants to elect his candidates?" Sanders asked in a social media post.
"The most important thing our nation can do is end Citizens United and move to public funding of elections," he added, referring to the 2010 Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for unlimited spending on elections by corporations. "Billionaires can’t be allowed to buy elections."
Democratic Maine State Auditor Matt Dunlap, currently running to represent Maine's second congressional district, also denounced Musk for throwing his weight around to buy politicians.
"Billionaires buy our elections, rig the tax code, and undermine our democracy," wrote Dunlap. "Working people deserve a government that works for them—not for billionaires like Elon Musk."
Musk is no stranger to spending big to help elect Republicans, having spent more than $250 million in 2024 to help secure President Donald Trump's victory.
However, his riches are no guarantee of a GOP win. Last year, for example, Musk spent millions to elect former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel to a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, only to wind up losing the race by 10 points.
"The first priority, as you know, in these emergencies is always to fight and extinguish the fire. But we cannot forget, at any time, that there are human tragedies here," said the country's president.
On the heels of another historically hot year for Earth, disasters tied to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency have yet again turned deadly, with wildfires in Chile's Ñuble and Biobío regions killing at least 18 people—a figure that Chilean President Gabriel Boric said he expects to rise.
The South American leader on Sunday declared a "state of catastrophe" in the two regions, where ongoing wildfires have also forced more than 50,000 people to evacuate. The Associated Press reported that during a Sunday press conference in Concepción, Boric estimated that "certainly more than a thousand" homes had already been impacted in just Biobío.
"The first priority, as you know, in these emergencies is always to fight and extinguish the fire. But we cannot forget, at any time, that there are human tragedies here, families who are suffering," the president said. "These are difficult times."
According to the BBC, "The bulk of the evacuations were carried out in the cities of Penco and Lirquen, just north of Concepción, which have a combined population of 60,000."
Some Penco residents told the AP that they were surprised by the fire overnight.
"Many people didn't evacuate. They stayed in their houses because they thought the fire would stop at the edge of the forest," 55-year-old John Guzmán told the outlet. "It was completely out of control. No one expected it."
Chile's National Forest Corporation (CONAF) said that as of late Monday morning, crews were fighting 26 fires across the regions.
As Reuters detailed:
Authorities say adverse conditions like strong winds and high temperatures helped wildfires spread and complicated firefighters' abilities to control the fires. Much of Chile was under extreme heat alerts, with temperatures expected to reach up to 38ºC (100ºF) from Santiago to Biobío on Sunday and Monday.
Both Chile and Argentina have experienced extreme temperatures and heatwaves since the beginning of the year, with devastating wildfires breaking out in Argentina's Patagonia earlier this month.
Scientists have warned and research continues to show that, as one Australian expert who led a relevant 2024 study put it to the Guardian, "the fingerprints of climate change are all over" the world's rise in extreme wildfires.
"We've long seen model projections of how fire weather is increasing with climate change," Calum Cunningham of Australia's University of Tasmania said when that study was released. "But now we're at the point where the wildfires themselves, the manifestation of climate change, are occurring in front of our eyes. This is the effect of what we're doing to the atmosphere, so action is urgent."
Sharing the Guardian's report on the current fires in Chile, British climate scientist Bill McGuire declared: "This is what climate breakdown looks like. But this is just the beginning..."
The most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, where world leaders aim to coordinate a global response to the planetary crisis, was held in another South American nation that has faced devastating wildfires—and those intentionally set by various industries—in recent years: Brazil. COP30 concluded in November with a deal that doesn't even include the words "fossil fuels."
"This is an empty deal," Nikki Reisch of the Center for International Environmental Law said at the time. "COP30 provides a stark reminder that the answers to the climate crisis do not lie inside the climate talks—they lie with the people and movements leading the way toward a just, equitable, fossil-free future. The science is settled and the law is clear: We must keep fossil fuels in the ground and make polluters pay."
"This is a board of colonial administration, run by war criminals and kleptocrats," said one critic. "It has zero legitimacy."
Criticism of President Donald Trump's so-called "Board of Peace" mounted Monday after the White House invited controversial figures—including two leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes—to join the body tasked with supporting the management and reconstruction of Gaza.
Among Trump's latest invitees to the board are Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lukashenko has repressively ruled Belarus for over 30 years and supports Putin's ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukraine, for which the Russian president is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes. Netanyahu is also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Trump—who has bombed 10 countries over his two terms in office—will chair the organization, whose executive board will also include former British leader and alleged war criminal Tony Blair, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Mideast Envoy Steve Witkoff, World Bank President Ajay Banga, billionaire businessman Marc Rowan, real estate investor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner—who has publicly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—and others.
"As if the people of Gaza have not suffered enough," Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden said on Bluesky. "But Blair’s inclusion confirms the obvious—this is a board of colonial administration, run by war criminals and kleptocrats. It has zero legitimacy."
Leaders of countries including Argentina, Canada, Egypt, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, and Turkey were also invited to join the board. So was the European Union, with whom US relations are strained over issues including Trump's tariffs and threats to invade Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory and NATO member.
Countries seeking permanent Board of Peace membership will be required to pay a $1 billion fee. A US official told the Associated Press that the fee would go toward reconstructing the obliterated Palestinian strip following more than two years of Israel's genocidal assault and siege.
There are no Palestinians on the board.
A separate National Committee for the Administration of Gaza—a 12-member technocratic body led by Palestinian official Ali Shaath and tasked with managing day-to-day affairs in the strip—held its inaugural meeting last week in Cairo as Witkoff said that Phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza had begun.
While Trump's invitation letters to prospective Board of Peace members said the body will “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict," critics panned the panel as a vanity project for Trump, who fancies himself a grand peacemaker despite having bombed seven countries this year alone.
"I hope he can find time to attend Board of Peace meetings between meetings about invasions of Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Canada, and Minneapolis," University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket said of Trump in a Bluesky post.
Former US State Department diplomat Aaron David Miller told the Washington Post Monday, “The Board of Peace is a concept tethered to a galaxy far, far away, not tethered to the realities back here on planet Earth."
"The Board of Peace is not going to be able to solve the conflict in Sudan. It is not going to do what American mediators and Europeans couldn’t do with respect to getting a ceasefire in Ukraine," he continued.
"We need on-the-ground diplomacy, not the performative creation of committees and bringing large numbers of countries and individuals into a process in which most of them will have no role," Miller added. "You need Trump. You need Netanyahu. You need Hamas’s internal and external leadership, and you need the Qataris and the Turks.”
On Monday, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich condemned the Board of Peace.
“It is time to explain to the president that his plan is bad for the state of Israel and to cancel it,” Smotrich said during a ceremony to inaugurate the new Yatziv apartheid settlement in the illegally occupied West Bank. “Gaza is ours, its future will affect our future more than anyone else’s. We will take responsibility for what happens there, impose military administration, and complete the mission.”
This, after Netanyahu said earlier in a rare public rebuke of Trump that the board “was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy.”
Nearly a year ago, Trump also said that the US would "own" Gaza, ethnically cleanse it of Palestinians, and transform the coastal strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East." He later clarified that he meant the "voluntary" transfer of Palestinians, which critics said amounted to a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
The White House also reportedly circulated a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into a high-tech hub replete with a "Gaza Trump Riviera and Islands" development and an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone."
Palestinians have largely been highly skeptical of the Board of Peace.
"When I read the names of the peace council members, I felt this was not a plan that prioritizes the interests of Gaza's residents," Sameh Abu Marsa, a forcibly displaced Palestinian living in a refugee camp in Gaza City, told Xinhua Monday. "It looks more like a new form of international mandate, with decisions made externally and without participation from people on the ground."
"These names suggest political deals rather than genuine peace," he added.
Khaled Elgindy, a Palestinian scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, said on X Saturday that "tellingly, there is not a single reference to Palestinians, their rights, interests, or even a future [Palestinian] state—none of which are a priority for Blair, Trump, or the so-called Board of Peace."
Others noted the continuing dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel restricts the entry of aid, as well as Israel's more than 1,200 violations of the three-month ceasefire with Hamas. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 465 Palestinians have been killed and 1,287 wounded since the tenuous truce took effect on October 10.
"How can we talk about a peace council while Israel's violations continue here?" asked Khan Younis resident Abdul Raouf Awad.