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Two Different America's (Sic)
Hoo boy. With the approach of what bleakly promises to be "the super-Islamophobic midterms," the Bigot-In-Chief is letting his racist freak flag fly by attacking Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, whose smarts, strength, hotness, accomplished wife and Michigan win clearly terrify him. Cue charges of "communist," "man of hate," and, probs soon, AI slop featuring suicide vests. Meanwhile, El-Sayed, a far sharper tool in the shed, has embraced the charge they represent "(two) America’s": The ads write themselves.
Planet MAGA, of course, is already so delusional Trump just boasted of his "Great Poll Numbers," which now sit at rock-bottom lows of 38% to 33%. For a bunch of hacks led by a fragile narcissist who's never seen a scapegoat he didn't relish, the fantastical goes hand-in-stubby-hand with the fear-mongering: vandals in the Reflecting Pool, domestic terrorists at No Kings, migrant caravans, lunatic Bolsheviks, weird names or just brown-or-black skinned success, more terrifying to many of these losers than any threat of extremism. Enter, in peril, the high-achieving epidemiologist, health official, author and "Muslim boogeyman" El-Sayed. “Expect them to throw the whole bigoted kitchen sink at El-Sayed," says Mehdi Hasan. "This will be the anti-Zohran Mamdani campaign on anti-Muslim steroids."
Unsurprisingly, it began in earnest the minute the good doctor won Michigan's against-the-odds primary against establishment Dem Haley Stevens. He'll face off against GOP Rep. and racist ijiot Mike Rogers, who of course has rushed to call the U.S.-born-and-bred El-Sayed "anti-American" and - pulling the same juvenile "Barack Hussein Obama" crap to undermine his legitimacy - to use his full, scary, def-not-in-Kansas-anymore name Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. But Abdulrahman, who doesn't suffer fools gladly, has brutally pushed back. "With a name like mine, I never thought running for office would be possible," he said at a campaign event. But if "Mike" wants to focus on his 11-letter (a lot!) first name, he just wanted to remind him, "If you don’t know how to say it, keep the name out of your damn mouth.”
In moronic lockstep, MAGA's bigots, brown shirts and zealots have followed suit with "cartoonishly Islamophobic attacks." They use his full name and say he's a "socialist," which they can't define but anyway he isn't. Anti-trans goon Nancy Mace charges, “Every single Muslim holding public office (is) a Trojan Horse and a threat to national security and our republic," and woe is us when "our granddaughters are wearing burkas to school." Vapid scumbag JD calls him a "crazy" guy who doesn't want Trump's rip-off, oligarch-run "prosperous economy" and flings "personal insults" at Vance's family, though hours later Trump attacked El-Sayed's wife, who is U.S.-born and thus not an alleged Einstein Visa immigrant third wife who somehow after 30 years here can still barely speak English. Maybe it was an Epstein Visa?
As usual, Trump has eagerly led the racist, vulgar charge. Along with a communist man of hate, he's also called El-Sayed a "jihadist" from a rigged, "strictly Third World" state who's "full of shit." It turns out El-Sayed is also "the absolute best at casually burning Trump to the fucking ground": Asked about the barb, El-Sayed snapped back, “At least I don’t let mine go in the middle of the Oval Office." And as with another smart, quick, non-white guy who's way above his pay grade and lives rent-free in his wee puerile mind, he likes to sneeringly recite, often stumbling, the full, scary name of a guy who this time actually would be the first Muslim U.S. senator. Presumably, the ketchup really hit the White House walls last weekend when El-Sayed said he'd had "a really good conversation" with Obama about "what we need to do to win."
Above all, the bigot for all seasons pivots to the trope of anyone Arabic - El-Sayed's parents immigrated from Egypt - being anti-Semitic. "He doesn't love Jewish people," babbles Trump. "He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart." In fact, El-Sayed has plainly, repeatedly said he opposes not Jews but Israel's genocidal policies, AIPAC and the dark U.S. money that abets both: "I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for all people." That call for equality under the law has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, notes Peter Beinart; cognizant of history. he also warns that a political party or ideology willing to be "nakedly bigoted" toward any group of people, in this case Muslims, in order to maintain power would, if the politics were to shift, "do the same thing to Jews in a heartbeat."
Obviously, such subtlety is beyond the dim-witted likes of Trump and his MAGA zombies, who alone could look at Dr. El-Sayed and his (one) wife Dr. Sarah Jukaku, a psychiatrist whose parents emigrated here from India, and see a threat. Both are U.S.-born-and- raised doctors with undergrad degrees from University of Michigan, where they met, and advanced degrees from Columbia and Oxford. In his book Healing Politics, El-Sayed offers a rigorous framework for understanding systemic medical and political failure, and building conditions for lasting healing. He also calls Jukaku his “rock" and praises the "quiet confidence" that led her to work with people confronting pain. "I struggled to learn who I was,” he wrote of their earlier selves. “Sarah did not. She danced with her emotions. I wrestled with mine." The couple has two daughters.
No wonder, then, a needy, hollow rapist, con-man, bully and aspiring tinpot dictator, routinely raking in billions while kids go hungry and stuffed into a cheap tux for his fellow billionaire felons, posted a photo of himself with his tacky, mail-order, call-girl wife in a tight dress with "redacted Epstein files written all over it" - both smirking, "We're richer and be better than you and just ignore our vile name appearing in those pedo files thousands of times" - alongside the other couple, warmly smiling after a pancake breakfast in a diner, El Sayed in a t-shirt, Jukaku in a hijab so she must be a terrorist (though Trump, suspect, is wearing a cat.) The caption for the side-by-side pics, which only the spectacularly tone-deaf Trump could remotely imagine as a mic-drop: "Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s (sic).” Umm. Sure.
Kudos to El-Sayed, prince among men, who didn't even stoop to pick the low-hanging fruit of Trump's "grammatical shitbaggery" - one comment: "What a maroon" - emblematic of a proudly semi-literate GOP somehow come to power in our debased America without understanding how apostrophes work. Instead, El-Sayed went for the meat of the matter. "Yeah, he's right," he told CNN. Swiftly, he embraced the campaign-ready concept of two Americas: "Trump's vision, the one you're living in right now (in) which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other, but join in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you...Or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, and want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that family is going to have the good things."
Those "good things" - health care, good jobs, clean air and water, a relatively level playing field to replace gross inequality, a country where people can live peaceably together "with their sisters and brothers" - are what he and his wife want for their kids, and he wisely gauges most of the rest of us do too. And no, he says, rebutting GOP charges, it's not "radical" to believe people should be able to afford groceries, have health care, partake in free elections. Also, he and his wife actually "like each other," he adds; as to the couple in the "very different" America, "From what I've heard, it's a bit of a rocky road." As mid-terms loom. “They are going to try to paint me as a certain thing, (but) America is a lot bigger than (these) very small people make it out to be," he says. "They all think we won't step up and fight...We fight for each other."
@abdulelsayed They all think we won't step up and fight... They think they're the biggest, baddest bully on the playground... That they're going to show up and we're going to run away...
Aug 10, 2026
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Human-Caused Climate Emergency Made Canada's Summer Wildfires Twice as Likely: Study
Committed to climate denial, President Donald Trump has insisted in recent weeks that hundreds of wildfires currently burning across Canada are the result of the country's mismanagement of its vast boreal forests—but scientists confirmed in a study out Thursday that "human-induced climate change" made the fires twice as likely.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA), a consortium of scientists who study how planetary heating and the climate emergency fuel extreme weather, examined the weather conditions connected to fast-spreading fires, including extreme heat, drought conditions, humidity, and wind.
They measured the Canadian index for those conditions and then compared the country's current weather patterns to a world without the 1.4°C of warming that has occurred since humans began burning fossil fuels.
"The weeklong weather conditions that led to the fires in Ontario are now the type that can happen every six years or so," WWA reported.
In the Northwest Territories, where more than 5,000 square miles of forest burned, sending smoke drifting thousands of miles into the continental United States, WWA noted that lightning initially caused the fire, "but it was the climate conditions that took that initial ignition and made the fire burn intensely and spread too fast to control."
Theodore Keeping, a member of WWA and a weather expert at Imperial College London, told The Guardian that "adaptation alone is not enough. We need to rapidly move away from fossil fuels to avoid events like this becoming even more of a reality.”
“Smoke does not carry a passport, but carbon pollution does have a history. President Trump is pointing at the smoke while ignoring America's fingerprints on the climate conditions behind it.”
The weather conditions that dry out vegetation and make them more prone to catching fire are now expected to occur every 2-6 years in the Northwest Territories.
"If humanity hadn’t overheated the planet by burning coal, oil, and gas, the scientists determined, such extreme fire conditions would occur less than once every 40 years," said WWA.
The study was released as a new wildfire in the Vancouver area broke out, prompting air quality warnings and evacuations.
Wildfire smoke contains significant amounts of particulate matter (PM2.5), which can lodge itself in human lung cells and enter the bloodstream.
Trump asserted last month regarding Canada, "If they managed their forests, they wouldn’t have the fires.”
But Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, who was not part of the WWA study, told ABC News that forest management and prevention efforts can only go so far in a country where much of the boreal forest is remote and hard to access.
“In Canada, when things are extreme, you have about a 30-minute window to put that fire out,” Flannigan said. "If you don't get there in 30 minutes, you're out of luck. And many of the fires that start in Canada are northern remote areas that are more than 30 minutes away from an airport. So even with perfect detection systems, we would get there too late and these fires are going to burn.''
By continuing to burn fossil fuels, Flannigan added, “we're putting nails in our coffins."
The study comes days after Trump's Interior Department moved to further expand offshore drilling by proposing weakened protections for drilling in the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf, and as his push for artificial intelligence data centers has sent the demand for natural gas soaring. He has also accelerated approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals.
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at University of Victoria in British Columbia, noted that in addition to Trump's push for more fossil fuel extraction, the US has caused more carbon pollution than any other country in history.
“Smoke does not carry a passport, but carbon pollution does have a history," Weaver told ABC News. “President Trump is pointing at the smoke while ignoring America's fingerprints on the climate conditions behind it.”
WWA also found recently that wildfires in Spain this summer were made 20 times more likely by the climate emergency.
“What is going to be next?” Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and a co-author of the study, said to The Guardian. “Time and again we see the same results: Climate change is a key driver behind uncontrollably large and unprecedented fires. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The science has been clear for decades: Burning fossil fuels is making these wildfires more frequent, more intense, and more difficult to contain.”
Aug 06, 2026
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Noting ‘Trillions Within Reach,’ Campaigners Demand Justice at UN's Global Tax Treaty Talks
As world governments meet at the United Nations for another round of negotiations on a first-of-its-kind "Global Tax Treaty," economic justice campaigners are urging them to think big or risk leaving on the table trillions of dollars that could help alleviate global inequality and the climate crisis.
The fifth round of negotiations for the treaty began in New York on Monday, with countries ironing out its language line by line as they seek a global framework to more fairly tax the rich and multinational corporations and crack down on tax avoidance.
Jenny Ricks, the general secretary of the Fight Inequality Alliance—a global coalition of anti-inequality groups—said the framework, which was first conceived in 2022 at the urging of poorer nations in Africa, "aims to make global tax governance more inclusive, transparent, and equitable, shifting it away from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and giving the global majority a genuine say in rules that have long been set by wealthy states."
The first drafts of the proposed tax convention were released in late July in advance of this month's negotiations. Advocates at Greenpeace International, however, argue that they contain many gaps that fail to adequately tax fossil fuel companies driving the climate crisis or other multinational corporations and extremely wealthy individuals.
In a briefing document released to media organizations, Greenpeace argued that the text lacks clear language linking taxation to sustainable development, despite it being demanded by 24 countries, and that it lacks provisions requiring polluters to bear the public cost of environmental damage.
The group also criticized the weakening of an article covering taxes on high-net-worth individuals, the lack of a minimum tax on multinational profits, and the absence of specific rules for taxing extractive industries such as oil, gas, and mining.
The oil and gas industry, the group pointed out, is in the midst of a boom, with companies reporting record profits as President Donald Trump's war against Iran drives global oil prices higher.
"The money is right there," said Nina Stros, Greenpeace International's global senior policy expert. "It is about time governments recognized this once-in-a-generation opportunity to make those most responsible for the climate, nature, and inequality crises we are facing pay their share, and reclaim trillions of dollars to invest in our shared future.”
An open letter from Tax and Fiscal Justice Asia, a group of over 50 civil society organizations across 13 Asian countries, emphasized many of the same concerns that the conference could end up merely affirming broad principles without creating concrete rules.
They said representatives of Asian nations at the negotiating table needed to push for a shift in taxing power away from wealthy countries where corporate headquarters are located and toward poorer ones where much of the workforce and resources are concentrated. They also argued for a move away from regressive consumption taxes that disproportionately fall on lower-income people.
"The majority of states in Asia were among the 125 states that voted in November 2023 to adopt a resolution for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC)," the letter said. "The vote has brought forth a historic opportunity to leave behind unjust systems and build a new global tax architecture."
Aug 04, 2026
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Scale of Trump's Raid on National Parks Funds for White House 'Vanity Projects' Revealed
Internal documents from the US National Park Service reportedly show that massive sums of money have been diverted to fund assorted projects commissioned by President Donald Trump.
According to a Sunday report from journalist Scott MacFarlane, NPS records show that $323 million has been rerouted to fund projects on the White House grounds this year alone, representing an increase of nearly 5,000% from the amount spend on such projects in 2024.
Additionally, the documents show NPS allotted nearly $100 million for projects on the Washington National Mall, a tenfold increase on the amount spent two years ago.
At the same time, the records show "multimillion-dollar reductions" in funding for several famous national parks, including Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon.
In fact, the total spending for projects at the White House and National Mall is larger than the combined spending at nine of the largest US national parks, MacFarlane found.
One anonymous federal employee who spoke with MacFarlane said that the spending shifts documented in internal records are "part of a pattern of the National Park Service being forced to prioritize Trump’s vanity projects over our own needs."
Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, similarly argued that "the National Park Service is being used as a piggy bank for Trump’s vanity projects," which he said was "costing the American people."
Some Democratic critics of Trump pounced on the report, which they said was the latest example of the president corruptly wasting taxpayer dollars.
"Let’s ask the American people," wrote Democrats on the US House Ways and Means Committee in a social media post, "would you rather have your nearest national park preserved and protected or another monument to Trump?"
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), whose state has been hit by devastating wildfires this summer, accused the president of "raiding wildfire prevention funding to pay for his vanity projects."
Fred Wellman, a Democratic candidate for the US House of Representatives in Missouri, said that "Trump and his complicit Republican Congress have been robbing us to gild statues and build his private home without any oversight or approval."
"This is theft on a grand scale," Wellman added, "and all of us are paying for it."
Aug 10, 2026
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'They Were Determined to Break Me': Kurdish Filmmaker Recounts ICE Force-Feeding Horror
In the latest articles in his series on former hunger-striking asylum-seekers who were force-fed while detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Guardian immigration reporter José Olivares on Monday featured a Kurdish filmmaker who said he is still suffering from physical and psychological pain from the torture he endured last year.
Iran-born Gabar Choli told Olivares that he went voluntarily with guards to the infirmary at ICE's Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, the first time he was force-fed.
“First I did not resist," he said. "But after I saw they were torturing me, I started protesting: ‘I’m not coming with you people.'"
From there, things only got worse. Choli said that guards would pin him down while staff shoved a plastic tube through his nose, down his throat and esophagus, and into his stomach to pump him full of nutritional liquid without his consent.
“Two guards would hold my feet; two hold my hands; one hold my head—and they would shove tubes in my nose,” Choli told Olivares. “It’s not easy to be wrestled to the ground twice a day by men that are stronger than you. And you just take it. You have 60cm (2 feet) of tube going through you, and you just feel every centimeter of it.”
“I was respectful. I just told them I am protesting for humane treatment, nothing else,” he said. “But they were determined to break me.”
Choli recounted how one nurse working for ICE “shoved the tube so hard” that “he tore my nose from the inside.”
“They would take me to solitary cell and I would just choke on my blood and drink the blood from inside [my throat],” he said.
The force-feeding continued for the next eight months. One time, a guard's rough treatment injured his ribs and made breathing painful for weeks. Another time, guards “pressed so hard on my shoulder, I thought my chest was going to break in half."
During another session, medical staff ignored Choli's warnings and accidentally shoved the nasogastric feeding tube into his lung.
On some Fridays, Choli agreed to drink the nutritional shakes if guards let him pray and socialize with other detainees.
Court records viewed by Olivares showed Choli suffered injuries and medical issues including swollen sinuses, esophageal damage, and stomach problems following his force-feeding.
Dr. Chanelle Diaz, an assistant professor at Columbia University’s medical center, told The Guardian, "That is just not medical care, that is torture."
Choli admitted: "It just broke me, mentally broke me. It came to a point that I decided to write my body an apology letter.”
The writer and director of short dramas including Waves Goodbye, Love if Loud, and We Don't Understand Him, He Speaks in Broken English, Choli advocates for Kurdish independence and legally sought asylum in the United States upon entering the country from Canada in 2022. He lived legally in Los Angeles, attended his required ICE check-ins, and obtained a US work permit while his asylum case was processed.
An immigration judge denied Choli's asylum claim in 2024, but granted him protection against being deported to Iran, barring the government from sending him back there. He was arrested in February 2025 during a routine ICE check-in following President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Choli was first sent to the Desert View Annex in Adelanto, California—run by private prison profiteer GEO Group—where detainees have reported medical and mental health neglect, excessive use of force and pepper spray, mold, punsafe drinking water, inadequate food, poor sanitation, and use of solitary confinement, among other alleged abuses.
The following month, as ICE officials pressured him to agree to be deported to Iran—where his advocacy for Kurdish independence could cost him his life—Choli began his hunger strike, demanding better conditions and a fair resolution to his case.
“I am not suicidal,” Choli declared to a judge. “I am using hunger strike as the only available option to protest the abuse and mistreatment.”
Around two weeks after beginning his hunger strike, Choli was transferred to Port Isabel, where he was held in solitary confinement—which survivors and experts call a form of psychological torture—as he continued his hunger strike.
US District Judge Rolando Olvera—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—ordered Choli's force-feeding following a request from ICE, which called the detainee's hunger strike an attempt "to manipulate the immigration system" and “a serious threat to the security and good order” at Port Isabel. Olvera did not meet with Choli, who had no legal representation throughout his ordeal.
The US Department of Homeland Security told The Guardian that ICE “provides involuntary medical treatment only to prevent imminent life-threatening harm or death."
However, under the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Malta, doctors are advised not to force-feed prisoners who choose to hunger strike and understand the consequences of their actions.
During The Troubles in Northern Ireland, British authorities allowed 10 imprisoned Irish Republican Army members, including former Member of Parliament Bobby Sands, to starve themselves to death.
In contrast, force-feeding is institutional policy in US prisons, including the Guantánamo Bay concentration camp in Cuba, where detainees—most of whom were charged with no crime—were force-fed during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
During Trump's two terms, hundreds of people have gone on hunger strike at ICE detention centers across the country to protest overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, spoiled and worm-infested food and water, inadequate medical care, delays in immigration procedures, alleged physical and psychological torture, and other mistreatment.
In May, US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed the hunger strikers as a “handful” of detainees whom he falsely claimed were striking because they “want their ethnic right food.”
"This isn't Holiday Inn," Mullin said, referring to the hotel chain.
In early January, ICE deported Choli to Canada, where he was reunited with his siblings. He told Olivares that he had to learn to eat again.
"The price of it was my kidneys, my gallbladder," he said. "My intestines. My being. My bladder, you know, is damaged. Every time I twist and turn, I feel pain. But this is the price you pay for making a stand for what is right.”
Aug 10, 2026
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What Kind of Ceasefire Is This? UNICEF Says 300 Children Killed in Gaza Over 300 Days
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
That was one United Nations spokesperson's assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Thursday, which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported.
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised."
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with "painfully simple" and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.
Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: "When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?"
300 children gone in 300 days.
300 days of the ceasefire in #Gaza has seen at least 300 children killed.
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
- @UNICEF's Louise Wateridge pic.twitter.com/1rmJz3YExW
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) August 6, 2026
Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump's Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel's withdrawal from the exclave.
UN officials on Thursday expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.
"Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action," said Beigbeder.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Thursday that continued airstrikes have damaged civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and medical supplies.
UNICEF warned that children are continue to face acute malnutrition almost a year after Israel agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as suffering from disease and a lack of sanitation.
An attack on a medical storage facility next to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah last week destroyed supplies that had been delivered by the UN, said the World Health Organization.
The UN is working to help "exhausted and hungry mothers" arriving at health centers with their malnourished children, and are fighting to save newborns born prematurely or with health issues, with extremely limited resources.
“There’s not enough incubators and in some cases [health workers are] saying they see two or even three babies sharing a single machine,” said Wateridge. “In Gaza, children only days old are already fighting to stay alive, born into partially functioning hospitals lacking equipment and medicine. This is what the world has chosen to tolerate. The killing must stop, aid has to enter at scale and children must be protected.”
According to OCHA, at least 1,209 people have been killed and 3,943 have been injured since the ceasefire deal was reached last October.
Aug 06, 2026
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Advocates Call for End of Deadly Tactic Used by For-Profit Health Insurers to Deny Treatment
Researchers found prior authorization—which allows insurers to overrule physicians and deny coverage—acts as a “corporate care veto” that drains tens of billions of dollars each year that could go toward patients.
Aug 11, 2026
A new report is making the case for ending a widely-hated and sometimes deadly tactic used by for-profit health insurers to deny needed care.
It's called "prior authorization," and it allows health insurance companies to override physicians and decide whether certain care is medically necessary before it is covered.
The policy brief, published Monday by the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), an anti-monopoly think tank, argues that the system is a massive drag on the US healthcare system, draining doctors of their time, fueling hiring shortages, and—most importantly—worsening treatable health problems for millions of Americans.
"This practice has massive financial and human costs, as I know personally from my family’s own tragic experience,” said the report's author, Hannah Garden-Monheit—a senior fellow at the AELP, whose late father was denied rehab by UnitedHealthcare after cancer forced his leg to be amputated.
"Prior authorization may have started as a narrow cost-control tool," she explained. "But it’s mushroomed into private insurers’ strategy for diverting resources from care toward their own profits. It’s time to ban prior authorization as we know it.”
The report examines how prior authorization went from a tool used sparingly to prevent payment for unnecessary treatments to what Garden-Monheit and co-author, AELP senior healthcare fellow Emma Freer, described as a "corporate care veto."
Around 1 in 5 adults with private insurance report that they or a family member had experienced a coverage denial in the past year, with 28% reporting that it worsened their health problem, according to a June survey from the Commonwealth Fund.
While insurers claim that their decisions to deny care are "evidence-based," the authors say that "in reality, the practice empowers distant corporate entities with a financial conflict of interest to override the professional judgment of physicians with firsthand knowledge of patients’ medical needs."
"There is generally little to no transparency or accountability for these decisions," the authors wrote.
While insurers claim that denials are reviewed by qualified clinicians, one survey from the American Medical Association (AMA) found that only 16% of physicians participating in peer-to-peer reviews reported that the “peer” was often or always qualified.
Garden-Monheit said United denied her father's claim multiple times, first citing his cancer diagnosis—the reason his leg was amputated in the first place—then by claiming that he had made significant enough "progress" that paying for rehab was unnecessary. The "progress" was that he "had figured out how to hop on one leg from his hospital bed to a chair."
Garden-Monheit describes how she, her father, and their care team were forced to navigate a "bureaucratic maze" by United, which ultimately led them to give up.
"At least twice, I learned of a denial only after calling United to check on the status of their request. They hadn’t even bothered with a letter," she said. "While the lines of communication felt frustratingly unpredictable, the answers always led to the same place: 'no.'"
As she explained in a recent op-ed for MS NOW: "My family’s experience wasn’t a one-off glitch. For United, the system was working as designed."
Former United chief medical officer Dr.Archelle Georgiou estimated that across just two Medicare Advantage plans from United and Humana, the companies save an estimated $100 million per year by denying claims that never get appealed. She said that's a "conservative estimate." Across the two plans, 1.75 million people were denied care, even after appeal.
While insurers pad their profits, patients suffer, the researchers found. Among people reporting a prior authorization denial, 41% said it delayed their care and 28% said their health problem worsened, according to the Commonwealth survey.
"My family’s experience wasn’t a one-off glitch. For United, the system was working as designed."
Meanwhile, the AMA survey found that 95% of physicians said that prior authorization delays care, 79% said it causes patients to abandon recommended treatments, and more than 1 in 4 doctors said it has caused a serious adverse event, including hospitalization, permanent impairment, or death.
Denied timely treatments, many patients end up paying for costly and ineffective alternatives that only make their situations worse and cause the costs to increase down the line.
"It was extremely difficult to obtain authorizations for substance abuse treatment when I covered the emergency department as a practicing psychologist," one healthcare professional, identified in the report as Nancy, said. "Other times, in my private practice, I would get authorizations and later experience ‘clawbacks’ where Blue Cross, for example, would decide the treatment was not medically necessary and take back the money already paid."
"It is impossible at times to provide sound ethical treatment and extremely hard to make a living," she said, "when reimbursement rates kept going down, and the insurance companies could take back the money they had already paid for no obvious reason.”
Prior authorization doesn't just deny care to patients. It also creates piles of paperwork for their doctors, taking away precious time that could be dedicated to their care.
The report found that physicians and their teams now spend so much on prior authorization paperwork that it consumes the equivalent of nearly 100,000 full-time physician and advanced practice clinician workloads, plus more than 213,000 clinic staff, costing as much as $32.7 billion each year. If prior authorization were eliminated, they found, it would free up enough capacity to turn a national physician shortage into a surplus.
(Graphic: American Economic Liberties Project)
A YouGov poll for AELP found that more than two-thirds of voters in both parties want legislation banning prior authorization outright. But the researchers said both the Trump and Biden administrations have enacted only minor reforms that "fail to address the structural conflict of interest that underpins the corporate care veto strategy."
Meanwhile, the industry is making the denial process even more ruthlessly efficient, increasingly deploying artificial intelligence to deny requests en masse.
According to a 2023 class action lawsuit, United's NaviHealth system used a predictive AI model to determine whether Medicare Advantage patients should receive rehabilitation care despite knowing that the model had a 90% error rate.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has expanded prior authorization for traditional Medicare through a pilot program that allows AI models to adjudicate claims in some states. In July, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats' attempt to end the pilot program.
As part of a national pro-AI strategy, Trump has also sought to preempt state laws banning the use of AI to deny care.
The AELP researchers called for a series of reforms to end prior authorization as it currently exists. Among other changes, they said decisions to authorize treatments should be made by independent third parties without the incentive to deny care, that denials must be evidence-based, that the use of AI tools to deny claims should be banned, and that physicians should review patients in person before denying their claims.
“For too long, prior authorization has allowed insurance companies to put profits ahead of patients by overruling doctors and delaying and denying essential care,” Freer said. “This status quo is failing patients, ratcheting up costs, and undermining the basis of effective, expert-informed care. It’s time to end this ‘corporate care veto’ and put medical decisions back where they belong: with patients and their doctors.”
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After Months of Denials, Pentagon Says US Killed and Wounded Hundreds of Civilians in 2025 Yemen Airstrikes
The US Department of Defense had initially denied that any civilians were killed in its operations in Yemen.
Aug 11, 2026
An internal review conducted by the US Department of Defense found that US airstrikes in Yemen last year killed and wounded hundreds of civilians.
As reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday, the Pentagon review estimated that US strikes killed more than 150 Yemeni civilians while wounding nearly 250 others.
The strikes were carried out as part of an operation authorized by President Donald Trump targeting Houthi rebels, who were suspected of launching attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The body count from US strikes in Yemen could be even larger than the Pentagon's current estimates, which only cover three attacks that were determined to have "more likely than not" harmed civilians. An additional 15 incidents are still being reviewed by the DOD.
The deadliest operation carried out by US forces was a strike on Ras Issa Port in the city Hodeidah, which the DOD estimates killed 80 people and wounded 171 others.
As noted by NBC News, the DOD initially said the Yemen strikes did not cause any civilian deaths, and the Pentagon "has yet to publicly acknowledge the casualties or share a full account with Congress."
Stanford University historian Robert Crews remarked that the internal DOD report shows that there is "no end in sight for America’s brutal colonial wars" and "still no substantive domestic anti-colonial movement in the US."
Human rights groups have long been critical of US operations in Yemen, and Human Rights Watch last year described the attack on Ras Issa Port as "an apparent war crime."
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'Stop Stealing Our Future': Students Arrested in Protest of OpenAI's Lobby Office
“Our generation doesn't have any guarantees about whether we'll have jobs after college, or whether there will be clean drinking water for all of us."
Aug 11, 2026
With the pro-artificial intelligence super political action committee Leading the Future projected to spend $200 million on the midterm elections as the industry fights regulations and accountability for the harm its technology can cause, dozens of students rallied Monday at the new Washington, DC lobbying headquarters of OpenAI—with several placed under arrest for the peaceful protest.
More than 30 student activists gathered at the lobbying office—nicknamed "The Workshop"—just blocks from the White House on Monday after the Sunrise Movement, QuitGPT, and the Young Democratic Socialists of America held a training on how young people on college campuses can organize their communities to fight "tech companies propping up authoritarianism."
Sunrise reported that 13 people were arrested at 2:30 pm ET, two hours after the group had begun occupying the front lobby of the office.
A student protester is arrested in Washington, DC on August 10, 2026.
The students unfurled a banner reading, "Stop Stealing Our Future," and others displayed signs that said, "OpenAI Bought My Senator."
Both Democrats and Republicans have pushed legislation aimed at expanding AI, even as the massive data centers the technology requires have proven deeply unpopular across the political spectrum, and scientists and advocacy groups alike have warned the technology is likely to lead to job loss for the working class as well as harm users of AI chatbots.
Communities have rallied against the construction of data centers in their towns, citing concerns about the facilities' massive water and energy consumption, failure to bring long-term employment to regions where they're located, and carbon pollution.
“My friends chose to risk arrest to bring the fight to OpenAl,” said Raya Gupta, a student organizer who attended the protest. “Our generation doesn't have any guarantees about whether we'll have jobs after college, or whether there will be clean drinking water for all of us or whether people will have any power left in politics since our elections keep getting bought by Big Tech. We all believe that not taking action now, as the scales slide between the people and the billionaires, puts our futures in great jeopardy.”
Since starting its lobbying operation, OpenAI has pushed to ban states from writing their own AI regulations—an effort backed by President Donald Trump; secure legal immunity in cases where AI tech causes mass killing, such as if a bad actor uses the technology to "create a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon"; and win lucrative defense contracts that could result in AI surveillance.
The company's ties to the president have already appeared to benefit OpenAI, which received a $200 million Pentagon contract after OpenAI president Greg Brockman donated $25 million to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA, Inc.
“Tech billionaires are trying to rob us of our future,” said Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay. “They’re building unpopular data centers, they’re taking away our jobs, and they’re polluting our planet. And because they know how unpopular they are, they need to spend millions of dollars in legalized bribes to stop any regulations coming their way. They are sending us careening into fascism, just so they can make more money.”
As Congress is in its August recess, organizers are holding actions across more than 20 states as they demand that elected officials "Dump Big Tech."
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Mamdani Backs Proposal to End Amazon's 'Exploitative' Delivery Model in New York City
If passed, the Delivery Protection Act would be the first law in the US to regulate Amazon's vast network of subcontractors that handle the company's deliveries.
Aug 11, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has thrown his support behind legislation that could become a first-in-the-nation law to regulate Amazon's network of subcontractors that deliver the $3 trillion company's packages—an "exploitative business model" that shields the e-commerce giant from accountability, as Mamdani said Monday.
The Democratic mayor endorsed the Delivery Protection Act, proposed by New York City Council Member Tiffany Cabán, which would establish new safety, training, and labor standards for "last-mile" warehouses and distribution facilities in New York City, and hold the companies that operate the facilities, such as Amazon and FedEx, liable for employing the workers who make hundreds of deliveries per day across the city.
As the mayor's office said Monday, at least 11 last-mile facilities have opened across New York City since 2020, with subcontractors running the warehouses as Amazon directs the hiring of delivery drivers, the routes they use, and requires them to use Amazon-branded vehicles and uniforms.
But while exerting control over the deliveries, Amazon pushes responsibility for the vehicles used onto the subcontractors, as delivery workers explained in a video released on social media by Mamdani on Monday.
"When injuries and worker accidents skyrocket, Amazon says they have nothing to do with it. They can't have it both ways," said the workers.
If it looks like an Amazon delivery and drives like an Amazon delivery, then it's an Amazon delivery, right? Not according to Amazon.
Big companies like Amazon have built a vast network of subcontractors who deliver their packages while shielding them from accountability.
It… pic.twitter.com/6hQVV8GoNH
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) August 10, 2026
According to a report by the Office of the Comptroller in New York City last year, 78% of areas surrounding last-mile facilities saw an increase in injury-causing crashes after the warehouses opened.
“Corporations like Amazon build billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting," said Mamdani in a statement. "As last-mile delivery centers have exploded across New York, so too have traffic accidents and worker injuries. The Delivery Protection Act is commonsense regulation that protects delivery workers, safeguards the communities where these facilities operate, and ensures that the corporations benefiting from workers’ labor are responsible for the consequences of their business practices."
"The people who make these companies run deserve dignity, stability, and a safe workplace," he added. "It's time to end the subcontracting model that puts profits over people and build an economy that works for working New Yorkers.”
By using subcontractors, Amazon can avoid municipal regulations regarding minimum pay and benefits. A nationwide survey by the Shift Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy last year found that Amazon delivery drivers are paid an average of $19 per hour, compared with $35 per hour at UPS and $25 per hour at FedEx. Pay does not rise with tenure at Amazon, as opposed to its delivery competitors, and fewer than half of Amazon drivers have access to health insurance, paid vacation, and retirement plans that are provided to nearly all UPS delivery workers.
In New York City, pay for the drivers who make Amazon's deliveries is higher, starting at about $20 per hour and averaging close to $24 per hour. But one driver in Queens, Luc Rene, told The New York Times that Amazon controls the volume of packages he delivers and has refused to allow the subcontractor he works for, DNA Logistics, to lighten the workload during extreme heat and other inclement weather.
The company could not be reached for a comment to the Times, and Amazon did not address Rene's allegations but claimed it adjusts drivers' routes due to inclement weather.
Amazon has claimed that the Delivery Protection Act—which would require last-mile facilities to obtain licenses from the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, ensure worker protections, and hold companies accountable for delivery quotas, schedules, and routes—would raise costs for people who use delivery services, with one Amazon-commissioned study claiming households would spend $664 more annually if the company had to comply with the law.
But Brendan Griffith, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said the workers and communities in New York City are already "paying the price" for Amazon's reliance on subcontractors.
“The Delivery Protection Act will establish stronger protections for worker safety, employment, and responsible operations while bringing long-overdue oversight to an industry where major operators have too often hidden behind subcontractors," said Griffith. "To be clear: when these companies 'raise the alarm' of fewer jobs, higher prices, or service reductions, they are describing choices that they may make, not in the best interest of consumers and workers but to protect their bottom line. We thank Mayor Mamdani for standing with the Amazon Teamsters and the labor movement in support of this legislation that puts NYC workers—who are also consumers—first, and we urge the City Council to pass it without delay.”
Mamdani's advocacy for the legislation in New York City caught the attention of at least one lawmaker across the country.
"We should pass something like this in Colorado," said state Rep. Javier Mabrey (D-1).
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'Truly Devastating': Trump Ends Federal Funding for Key Arctic Climate Report
"For two decades," said one of the report's authors, "it has documented conditions across the Arctic system, bringing together physical and social sciences with real-world observations/data and consistent updates."
Aug 11, 2026
The Trump administration has reportedly decided to yank federal funding from an annual National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that examined the state of the Arctic, which is warming significantly faster than other regions of the world as continued fossil fuel extraction and use drive up global temperatures.
Politico, which first reported the decision, noted that the move "jeopardizes public dissemination of the report that NOAA has published since 2006. It has previously been available on the agency’s website, requires NOAA staff for its production, and pools data from NOAA scientists for many of its findings."
Zack Labe, a climate scientist who has been an author on NOAA’s peer-reviewed Arctic Report Card since 2020, wrote on social media that the Trump administration's decision "is truly devastating."
"The Arctic Report Card has been one of my favorite scientific endeavors," Labe wrote. "For two decades, it has documented conditions across the Arctic system, bringing together physical and social sciences with real-world observations/data and consistent updates."
Speaking to the science news outlet EOS, Labe warned that "the loss of the Arctic Report Card would be significant not only for the scientific community, but also for decision-makers and the public."
"Written for a broad audience and developed by more than 100 scientists from around the world, the report is an important resource for consistently documenting changes in one of the fastest warming regions on our planet," Labe added. "Discontinuing it would create a significant gap in our ability to track and connect these changes from year to year, with implications for people and communities around the world."
Last year's edition of the report card found that "surface air temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900."
"The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic," the report observed.
The Trump administration, packed with fossil fuel industry allies and headed by a climate denier, has worked aggressively to gut federal initiatives designed to track the worsening impact of the global climate emergency. Since taking power last year, the administration has dismissed government scientists, scrubbed climate information from federal websites, stopped updating a database that tracked the country's costliest weather disasters, and picked a climate denier to oversee the federal government's flagship climate report.
Rick Thoman, an Arctic climate specialist, called the Trump administration's latest move "devastating news for Arctic environmental monitoring."
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July Was Hottest Month in History of Contiguous US, Breaking Dust Bowl Record
"If we're exceeding records from the Dust Bowl, that says that we're in deep trouble," warned one meteorologist.
Aug 10, 2026
While President Donald Trump continued his war on renewables and support for climate-wrecking fossil fuels, the contiguous United States endured the hottest July on record, according to data released Monday by his own government.
"July 2026 averaged 76.9ºF, the warmest month on record (1895-present)," National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced. That figure was "3.3ºF above the 20th-century average. This was the warmest July—and warmest month—in the 132-year record, 0.1-0.2ºF warmer than July 1936 and July 2012."
The Associated Press highlighted that last month's average for the Lower 48 eclipsed "the Dust Bowl's July 1936 by an eighth of a degree," a development that meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections described as alarming.
"It's not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl, which we are in this case," he told the AP. "And that was a crazy sort of situation where you put tens of millions of people in motion. You had this great migration because of the drought and the heat that hit the center of the US—just a cataclysmic event in US history. If we're exceeding records from the Dust Bowl, that says that we're in deep trouble."
Separately, Masters and fellow meteorologist Bob Henson wrote at Yale Climate Connections that "there's no denying the scorching conditions of the 1930s Dust Bowl. An impressive 24 of the 48 contiguous US states have yet to exceed the single hottest readings observed in each of those states during the 1930s."
"However, the Dust Bowl has been misused for years in climate-denial writing and speaking to argue that human activity isn't warming the nation's climate to any great degree. In fact, human influence played a vast part in the Dust Bowl itself," they explained. "Decades of overplowing by European settlers in the Plains and Midwest—in the erroneous belief that 'rain follows the plow'—left the landscape vulnerable when a sequence of multi-year droughts struck. Huge volumes of topsoil simply blew away, and the denuded land heated up far more quickly than better-managed land would have. The Dust Bowl intersected with the Great Depression to make the 1930s a period of profound misery for millions of Americans."
"A 2022 study, 'How the Great Plains Dust Bowl drought spread heat extremes around the Northern Hemisphere,' showed how the Dust Bowl's physical influence extended well beyond US borders," the pair added. "As lead author Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research put it, 'This is a mechanism that arose in a unique way from human influence—not by burning fossil fuels but from plowing up the middle third of the US.'"
We just broke a heat record set during the Dust Bowl. 😬That record has been a favorite talking point of climate deniers. Now it's bitten the dust: yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/08/the-...New from @drjeffmasters.bsky.social and @bhensonweather.bsky.social
[image or embed]
— Yale Climate Connections (@climateconnections.bsky.social) August 10, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Wildfires broke out across Canada and in the United States' Pacific Northwest last month, burning over 140,000 acres in Oregon alone. NOAA found that "daytime maximum temperatures averaged 89.5ºF, 2.9ºF above average, ranking as the sixth-warmest month on record for average high temperatures, while overnight minimum temperatures averaged 64.2ºF, 3.7ºF above average, ranking as the warmest month on record for average low temperatures, surpassing July 2022 by 0.7ºF."
Those high temperatures overnight can be dangerous. Masters told the AP that "if you're talking heatwaves, that nighttime low is incredibly important for determining total heat stress... So if it doesn’t cool off at night, your body doesn't have time to readjust to all the heat."
While July set a new record in the United States, because of the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis, "this may be one of the coolest years we’re gonna experience for the rest of our lives," the meteorologist also said. He added that humanity needs "to stop burning so many fossil fuels. We also need to be spending money to adapt to the new climate that we've put in place."
Wildfires also impacted the European Union last month—and NOAA's new numbers came out as the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Monday that worldwide, last month was second warmest July on record, tied with 2024. The agency also found that the average global ocean surface temperature was the hottest ever recorded in July, fueled in part by El Niño conditions.
"Our leaders’ response has to be swifter and stronger than El Niño," argued Anne Jellema, executive director of the advocacy group 350.org. "We already know that global heating is supercharging extreme weather damage, and the public wants polluters to pay for it. With Big Oil's earnings skyrocketing while a global food crisis looms, now is the time to act. The only way to stave off a humanitarian disaster is to make those causing it pay upfront—before even more damage is done."
The Guardian pointed out that "an unusually strong El Niño event, a periodic climate feature where a section of the Pacific Ocean heats up causing weather around the world to alter, is likely to cause next year to be the hottest on record globally, surpassing a record set just in 2024. Some scientists think the developing El Niño could even ensure that this year is the one that breaks the record."
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the newspaper that "the bottom line... is that we expect to set record global temperatures as long as carbon emissions continue to warm the planet, and typically these records are set during major El Niño events."
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Trump Order Rooted in Debunked Vaccine-Autism Link 'Will Get Kids Killed,' Warns Critic
Protect Our Care called the president's decree on the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine "a wildly dangerous escalation of the administration’s deadly anti-vax agenda."
Aug 10, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order overhauling federal childhood vaccine recommendations, reviving a discredited theory that vaccines may contribute to autism and prompting condemnation from public health advocates and even rebuke from a Republican senator.
Trump's order, “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans,” calls for separating the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination into three individual shots "once such products are domestically available." The directive also recommends administering childhood immunizations during separate medical visits, "to the maximum extent feasible."
At a press conference, Trump explained that the recommendations in his order concern "many subjects, but including autism in particular."
"Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today," the president said. "In those times, people were much healthier and, of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. So, there's a reason for such epidemic rates of autism. And we're going to bring it back to much closer to where it was."
"While we do not know exactly what the cause is with respect to autism, it is essential to our research efforts that we have the very best vaccine recommendations in the entire world," he added. "So we're reducing them, we're changing it to visits over the period of a year, a year and a half, so they get 20% of what they would have gotten in one big shot."
Decades of rigorous research have failed to produce any credible scientific link between vaccines and autism. That has not stopped influential figures, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from claiming such a link. Trump and Kennedy also alarmed experts by claiming last year that acetaminophen, commonly known by the brand name Tylenol, is linked to autism spectrum disorders in developing fetuses when taken during pregnancy.
While anti-vaccine and vaccine skeptic voices applauded Trump’s order, public health experts said the directive will prove deadly.
Trump also claimed that inoculating children with all three components of the MMR vaccine could possibly be "quite lethal," but when asked by a reporter for evidence supporting that claim, the president could offer none.
I put together these two parts of Trump’s event on vaccines.
Trump claims there is a possibility that the MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal.” But later, when asked if he has any evidence to back up his claims, he says no pic.twitter.com/AwuW9IiYNl
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 10, 2026
The Affordable Care Act advocacy group Protect Our Care warned that Trump's executive order on the "nonexistent autism-vaccine link will get kids killed" and "is a wildly dangerous escalation of the administration’s deadly anti-vax agenda."
“Pushing parents to spread out these lifesaving vaccines over time is guaranteed to increase kids’ exposure to these very harmful diseases, including the simple reality that follow-up appointments will be missed," Protect Our Care senior adviserc Anne Shoup said in a statement. "If Trump’s baseless, science-free decree is followed, the end result will not be fewer children with autism, but far more in the ER or even the morgue."
"Whether or not state health departments follow Trump’s ignorant guidance, this official proclamation from the highest level of power will have a further chilling effect on vaccination rates across the board," Shoup added. "All Trump is doing is fanning more unfounded fear, pressuring a further drop in vaccination rates, and welcoming a resurgence of preventable diseases once thought eradicated. For the anti-vaxxer-in-chief, the current record-breaking measles crisis is apparently not on a grand enough scale.”
Anthony Wright, executive director at the health advocacy group Families USA, said in a statement that “today, the president announced yet another change in vaccine policy that is not based on science or medical evidence."
"The science has not changed. Vaccines that prevent common illnesses like rotavirus, hepatitis B, and the flu are just as safe and effective today as they were yesterday," he continued. "The new policy will simply create chaos and confusion for patients and providers, and increase costs for families when getting their kids vaccinated."
"This executive order seeks to sidestep the established panel of experts entirely, replacing decades of bipartisan, public, evidence-based review with the whims of a rogue White House and HHS secretary," Wright said. "This new directive sabotages a science-based process that has successfully prevented widespread outbreaks among American children for generations."
“Downgrading the universal recommendation for common, lifesaving vaccines will cause confusion for parents and providers alike, and confusion costs lives," he added. "Removing the presumption that every child should receive them isn't just dangerous; it risks undermining the guarantee that recommended vaccines are covered without cost-sharing, forcing families to choose between protecting their kids and paying for an expensive doctor's visit."
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, health research group director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that "the Trump administration is continuing a mindless anti-scientific assault on the childhood vaccine schedule and falsely tying vaccines to autism."
"There is no medical reason for the MMR vaccine to be split into three separate single-disease shots that would be administered at separate office visits, changes that would only decrease vaccine coverage and increase healthcare costs," he continued. "Under the draft executive order, mandatory vaccine requirements for children to attend school would be also put at further risk. These and other directives are the exact opposite of ‘Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations’ during the worst year for measles cases in decades."
The resurgence in measles is directly linked to vaccine refusal and hesitancy stoked by influential figures and fora like Kennedy and the Children's Health Defense nonprofit group he formerly chaired.
Trump will sign an executive order proposing reducing childhood vaccines, and separating the MMR vaccine into 3 individual shots.This reckless move will decrease vaccine uptake further at a time where measles cases are at a 35-year high, and the US is set to lose its measles elimination status.
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) August 10, 2026 at 12:24 PM
“Senate confirmation of Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should have restored sanity to the federal government’s vaccine policies," Steinbrook added. "Regrettably, within days of Schwartz’s confirmation, the Trump administration has offered only more irrational nonsense.”
Trump and Kennedy have pursued a broad rollback of federal vaccine policy, including by purging the CDC's entire vaccine advisory committee and replacing its members with controversial figures; reducing or eliminating universal recommendations for several vaccines, including Covid-19, flu, hepatitis B, and some childhood vaccines; canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in mRNA-vaccine development funding; and pushing individual decision-making.
Physicians serving in Congress from both parties also decried Trump's order.
“Donald Trump and RFK Jr. have gambled with American lives and seem determined to turn the clock back on decades of medical and scientific progress," said Congresswoman Kelly Morrison (D-Minn.), an OB-GYN. "Communities across the country continue to face outbreaks of preventable diseases, and Trump and RFK Jr. are doubling down on their dangerous disinformation."
"Meanwhile, working families continue to see their healthcare and prescription drug costs skyrocket—all so Trump can pay for tax handouts for billionaires," she added, referring to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill signed by the president in July 2025. "Families shouldn’t have to worry that Trump and RFK Jr. will stand in the way of protecting themselves and their loved ones from serious illnesses.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a gastroenterologist who voted to confirm Kennedy, wrote on X: "I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The president does not have the expertise to make these changes."
"Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism," he continued. "Breaking up vaccines will mean children have to get more shots to get the same protection, not fewer shots. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe."
"Parents should listen to their child’s pediatrician about vaccines rather than listening to an inaccurate executive order," Cassidy added. "This is so wrong."
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Hegseth: Honor Lindsey Graham by Giving Pentagon $1.5 Trillion
"Lindsey himself said to me, in his office, 'This is the best military budget I've seen since I've been in Congress,'" the Pentagon chief claimed.
Aug 10, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "can't persuade Republicans to back his big budget," but that didn't stop him from pushing the $1.5 trillion proposal during a Monday event to rename Joint Base Charleston after the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
When Graham, who served in the Air Force, unexpectedly died last month, critics remembered the South Carolina Republican as someone who "never met a war he didn't want to send your kids to," as well as "a bloodthirsty bastard who cheered the killing of Muslims and sold his soul to the fascists."
On Monday, Hegseth—who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq—fondly recalled meeting with Graham while part of the group Vets for Freedom. Joined at the base by the senator's replacement, his sister Darline Graham, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is from South Carolina, the Pentagon chief declared that "it falls to us to complete the work that Lindsey Graham began and advocated for for decades."
"As we gather here today, the War Department is seeking a historic, generational investment of $1.5 trillion for America's warriors, and Lindsey himself said to me, in his office, 'This is the best military budget I've seen since I've been in Congress,'" Hegseth claimed, using President Donald Trump's preferred name for the Department of Defense.
"This department pays tribute to Lindsey Graham in the naming of this base, but there could be no greater tribute than for Congress to give and invest in our warriors for the full $1.5 trillion," he added.
The GOP narrowly controls both chambers of Congress, but as Politico reported just hours before the event, "Hegseth hasn't persuaded Republicans to steamroll Democrats and advance the record-breaking plan, despite regularly trekking to the Hill in recent weeks and hobnobbing with lawmakers. Instead, an increasingly vocal group of GOP lawmakers argue the administration hasn't explained why Republicans should burn valuable political capital in pursuit of Trump's vision—especially with the midterms just months away."
"Several top Republicans are skeptical about the Trump administration's two-track approach to clinching $1.5 trillion. This relies on the GOP using the partisan reconciliation process—which allows the majority to bypass Democrats entirely—to provide $350 billion, the bulk of the increase," the outlet detailed. The Republican majority "has—mostly—had Hegseth's back" since the battle to confirm him, despite widely condemned bombings of boats allegedly trafficking drugs on the high seas and the ongoing war on Iran.
Hegseth on Monday shared some supposed details from his last meeting with Graham, who chaired the Senate Budget Committee.
"Mr. Secretary, what do you need for a reconciliation?" Graham said, according to Hegseth. "I said: 'Well, in total, sir, we're going to need $350 billion for our military. That's what we believe gets us to $1.5 trillion—$115 [billion] in the base budget, $350 [billion] in reconciliation, and we'll be ready.'"
"He looked at me and said, 'How's $355 [billion] sound to you?' He wanted to give even more than $350 [billion]," Hegseth continued. "I saw firsthand as a young first lieutenant, as a captain in a combat zone, and as a secretary, the unwavering commitment of Lindsey Graham."
Hegseth's recounting of their meeting isn't the first time Graham's pro-war ideology has been highlighted since he died. As Common Dreams reported late last month, footage filmed for a documentary that was in the works shows the then-senator joyfully reacting to Trump's Iran War. He said: "I almost cried. I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this?"
Responding to the release of that footage, Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, said that "the warmonger got his wish and the result has been a catastrophe."
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Omar Demands Answers After ICE Agent in Car With Mismatched Plates Spotted Outside Her Town Hall Event
"Trump is continuing to use ICE and DHS to intimidate Americans who disagree with him."
Aug 10, 2026
Rep. Ilhan Omar is demanding the US Department of Homeland Security explain why a federal immigration enforcement officer was stationed outside one of her monthly town hall gatherings in Richfield, Minnesota.
In a letter sent last week to Michael McCarthy, interim special agent in charge of the St. Paul Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) field office, Omar (D-Minn.) explained that local law enforcement officials on Thursday spotted a woman sitting in a Ford Explorer who appeared to be monitoring the building where her town hall was taking place.
A Richfield Police officer scanned the woman's license plates and found they were registered to a different vehicle. As noted in a Monday report from HuffPost, it is illegal under Minnesota state law for federal immigration agents to drive in vehicles with mismatched plates.
The officer then approached the car and asked the woman to identify herself, and she said she was an agent for HSI, which is an agency within US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Although the agent left the property without incident, Omar nonetheless said that HSI "put an entire community at risk" by improperly deploying personnel there.
"Instead of monitoring the area for those who might wish harm to me and my constituents," Omar wrote, "Richfield Police were required to devote time to investigating why an HSI agent was outside of a congressional event in a vehicle with mismatched plates."
Omar then linked the HSI agent's presence with "many Americans' growing concern that the Trump administration uses ICE to surveil political opponents and interfere with our democracy."
The Minnesota Democrat demanded to know more details about the agent's deployment, including why she was stationed outside of Omar's town hall event, an overview of the agent's training, and the coordination that HSI is supposed to have with local law enforcement before engaging in such an operation.
In a separate social media post, Omar said that President Donald Trump "is continuing to use ICE and DHS to intimidate Americans who disagree with him," although she offered no specific evidence that this HSI agent was sent as part of an intimidation campaign.
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'Devastating to Watch': Texas Democrats Condemn Destruction of Big Bend for Trump Border Wall
"State leadership should be stopping this purely political stunt destroying Big Bend," said one lawmaker of Republican officials. "They don’t have the courage to stand up to Trump."
Aug 10, 2026
The arrival of bulldozers at Big Bend National Park along the US-Mexico border in Texas to clear native vegetation for an access road for President Donald Trump's border wall was more than enough to send outrage through the state Democratic Party and advocacy groups last week—but on Monday one lawmaker directed her ire at Republican officials who have done nothing to stop the destruction of one of Texas' most prized landmarks.
"This is devastating to watch. State leadership should be stopping this purely political stunt destroying Big Bend. They don’t have the courage to stand up to Trump," said state Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D-47), who is running for lieutenant governor.
She demanded to know whether Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and his government are "fine" with the plan to build 175 miles of the border wall across Big Bend and the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area as well as over 200 miles of patrol roads in the region, following the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) unprecedented waiving of dozens of environmental laws earlier this year.
"If not, stop it from continuing," said Goodwin.
The state representative was joined by US Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) in calling out Republicans in the state who have taken no action to stop the bulldozing of a national park which supports thousands of jobs, generated $63.7 million in total economic output in 2024, and is not even a region where a border wall would fulfill Trump's stated goal: stopping unauthorized crossings from Mexico.
"Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, could sue the federal government to stop this," said Escobar on Sunday. "Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, could fight the federal government to stop this. But neither one is truly willing to fight for the people of Texas."
The state AG is running for US Senate, while the governor is seeking another term. Escobar said that Paxton and Abbott's Democratic opponents in the November elections—state Reps. James Talarico (D-50) and Gina Hinojosa (D-49)—would take action to stop the construction of the border wall.
"When I’m governor, I will defend our sovereignty, our land, and our inheritance," said Hinojosa last week. "Gov. Abbott is either too weak to defend Texas and stop this, or he just doesn’t care."
As the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) noted last week, the Big Bend Sector covers more than a quarter of the US-Mexico border, but no unauthorized vehicle crossings have ever been documented in the mountainous region. In 2025, 1.3% of all border apprehensions took place in the area, and in the national park itself, apprehensions accounted for 0.045% of the national total.
"This absurd project is despised by everyone in West Texas," said Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for CBD, on Saturday. "When will Texas leadership step in?"
All five sheriffs in the Big Bend border region oppose the building of the border well, while county judges in all 14 of the state's border counties have spoken out against the project and seven former superintendents of the national park wrote to DHS in June, asking them reject waivers of laws including the National Park Service Organic Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
As Common Dreams reported in June, the environmental laws were waived as planning documents showed miles of planned barriers to stop vehicles from crossing the border at Big Bend, as well as patrol roads cutting through the park. For some of the construction, such as in remote areas like Mariscal Mountain, extensive dynamite blasting will be required, according to CBD.
In May, DHS awarded a $1.7 billion contract to Southwest Valley Constructors, a subsidiary of Kiewit, as well as contracts to North Dakota-based Fisher Sand & Gravel and Montana-based Barnard Construction.
The chairman of the latter company, Tim Barnard, has contributed millions of dollars to Republican candidates, including $1 million to Trump, High Country News reported in June. Barnard's largest contract was awarded without competitive bidding.
"We don't need to give billions of our tax dollars to out-of-state vendors," said Talarico on Sunday. "We don't need to desecrate this sacred land. We don't need this useless, disgraceful, corrupt Big Bend border wall."
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