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Purchased With Blood and Lies
Another Memorial Day: boasts, insults, "self-defense strikes," cheap clichés from a "Secretary of War" prattling about dead boys "delivered from the battlefield into the arms of a loving Lord and savior." Spare us. And maybe revisit the war to end all wars, which didn't - its "infinity of waste" and trenches with skulls in the sides where "he who had a corpse to stand on was lucky." Pat Barker: “A society that devours its own young deserves (no) unquestioning allegiance.”
"Happy Memorial Day to all," babbled our ever-unseemly Idiot-In-Chief, "including the Dumocrats, who disrespect our Military and all of the tremendous success that it has had over the last year," because obviously the best way to honor the dead is to not acknowledge their sacrifice but to denigrate half the ravaged country they died defending. Also, at Arlington National Cemetery, the infinitely hollow, "Wherever the American soldier (falls), he does it for the destiny of a nation like no other - there’s never been anybody like you." Also, noted Private Bone Spurs, 18,000 Williams, over 20,000 Johns, and other names fell, but "not too many" Donalds. Huh.
Adding to the day's eloquence with a much-needed "monster truck rally vibe" was inexplicably non-veteran, Hegseth bestie, tawdry aging rock star Kid Rock. Because "Tokyo Rose wasn't available," he was chosen by the Pentagon to honor American service members' ultimate sacrifice in a hoodie, fedora, gold chain and sunglasses, looking like "a creature you’d expect to hiss at you from the dank depths of a garbage bin" and intoning, "We are remembering the sacrifice and service of so many who are not with us today...It’s a special day. We’re thinking of them... Keep on Kid Rocking in the free world."
Then there was bombastic, dime-store-cliché-spouting Christo-fascist Pete Hegseth urging we "remember our republic was forged and purchased with blood, American blood," evidently only male according to his pronouns. Ever a fatuous buffoon, he declaimed "the sacred names of bygone eras to the 13 souls of Epic Fury (who) answered the call when it mattered the most (and) gave the last full measure of devotion," even when he failed them in an Iranian strike in Yemen: "They stood against the darkness of the world wearing the breastplate of righteousness (and) raced to the brink so we could walk in freedom and prosperity (and) may almighty God bless our warriors." Jesus weeps.
It remains unclear how many of the up to 22 million dead, both military and civilian, and over 20 million wounded, "the butcher's bill" of World War One, came to be blessed by almighty God, especially in its Western Front's godforsaken trenches teeming with sludge, rats, mud, blood, water and disease. The war's "inconceivable loss" and "purposeless waste of a generation" is perhaps best exemplified by the Battle of Verdun, where the French, set upon by German forces, adopted a "They Shall Not Pass” mantra that in the end saw over 700,000 dead on both sides - ultimately, vast "heaps of bones."
For many, the horrors of "the greatest conflagration the world had seen" live on through the searing literature, both prose and poetry, that emerged from them. Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est epitomizes the bitter, bloody tone that often prevailed amidst its "guttering, choking, drowning" victims - Hegseth's benighted "warriors." "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks/ Knock-kneed, coughing like hags," cursing, gargling, limping bootless through sludge, "blood-shod...deaf even to the hoots/Of gas-shells dropping softly behind," they reject, "The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori."
Siegfried Sassoon lived the privileged life of a British country gentleman, writing poetry and fox hunting, until the start of World War 1, when he served as an officer with the Royal Welch Fusiliers in France. He was awarded a Military Cross, was later wounded in action, and refused to fight any longer to protest "a senseless slaughter." On June 15, 1917, he wrote "A Soldier's Declaration" as "an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those how have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers."
"I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust," he wrote. He was protesting, he made clear, "against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed...against the deception which is being practiced on them. Also I believe that it may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise."
His letter was read before the House of Commons and printed in The London Times. He expected to be court-martialed; instead, he was declared "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital, where Dr. William Rivers was charged with restoring Sassoon’s “sanity” and sending him back to the trenches. The story of their real-life encounter, wherein Rivers came to diagnose war's "shell-shock" and share Sassoon's view, is powerfully told in Pat Barker's historical novel Regeneration, the first in a trilogy about the psychological carnage of war. "It (was) the Great White God de-throned. We assumed we were the measure of all things," Rivers says. "(But) nothing justifies this. Nothing nothing nothing."
Siegfried Sassoon's 1918 Suicide in the Trenches mourns "a simple soldier boy/Who grinned at life in empty joy" until he goes to war: "In winter trenches, cowed and glum/With crumps and lice and lack of rum/He put a bullet through his brain./No one spoke of him again./ You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye/Who cheer when soldier lads march by,/Sneak home and pray you'll never know/The hell where youth and laughter go." Too many of those young lie in a cemetery near Ypres, where one Inscription stands out in a sea of "For King and Country" headstones. It was written on the grave of Arthur Young by his father, a diplomat wiser than any vacuous Hegseth: "Sacrificed to the fallacy that war can end war."
May 26, 2026
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'Shame! Shame! Shame!': Local Residents Furious After Shark Tank Billionaire's Data Center Approved in Utah
County commissioners in Box Elder County, Utah, were deluged with chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" from a crowd of hundreds on Monday night as they voted unanimously to move forward with a sprawling "hyperscale" artificial intelligence data center project that many residents fear will cause energy prices to soar and imperil water access.
The project, known by state officials as "Stratos," was proposed by the celebrity venture capitalist Kevin O'Leary and has been rushed along by Utah's Military Installation Development Authority, which recently approved a gigantic energy tax break for the program to help "lure" the billionaire "Shark Tank" investor.
The development, dubbed "Wonder Valley" after O'Leary's "Mr. Wonderful" TV persona, would span more than 40,000 acres of northern Utah—more than two and a half times the size of Manhattan—and would consume more than twice the electricity currently used by the entire state if approved, according to Axios.
CBS 2 KUTV called it "the biggest thing in the region since the completion of the first transcontinental railroad." And yet Utahns say they've been given little information about the plan and few opportunities to voice their concerns.
Residents were given short notice before Box Elder commissioners gathered at the county fairgrounds on Monday for a "special" meeting to vote on the project, but an estimated 500 still showed up to voice their displeasure.
They raised fears that they'd have to endure the same dramatic energy price spikes as other states with high concentrations of data centers. Residential utility costs have jumped 13-20% year over year in Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, and New Jersey, a trend attributed to the rollout of data centers in these states.
The developers of the Utah project have emphasized that it will be powered by an on-site natural gas plant, which they claim would limit the impact on utility bills.
However, that still leaves the massive environmental concern, especially since natural gas is almost entirely made of methane, one of the worst planet-heating pollutants.
Kevin Perry, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, has said that the estimated nine gigawatts of power the center would require, "would increase the carbon dioxide emissions for the state of Utah by more than 50%," meaning "there’s a huge climate footprint associated with that proposal.”
Environmental advocates also warn that the facility will further drain water from the Great Salt Lake amid an already severe drought.
The Salt Lake Tribune has found that Utah's dozens of other data centers consume wildly different amounts of water depending on the technology they use.
The developers of the Box Elder facility have claimed the project will use "zero water turbine" technology that allows it to recycle water, resulting in "net zero" consumption.
But Samantha Hawkins, the communications director for Grow the Flow Utah, a group dedicated to protecting the Great Salt Lake, said it's impossible to know if the developers are telling the truth when they say their facility is designed to limit water usage.
"So far, there’s no publicly available hydrologic analysis or independent review to support those claims," she said, "and there haven’t been any manufacturers, technologies, or contracts cited in relation to the 'zero water turbine' technology."
Even if the centers limit water use, they still need to remain cool, which the Tribune said often requires more energy.
Many of the Utahns who showed up to protest Monday's vote felt they were being kept in the dark about the facility's potential harms and that the plans for the facility, which were not made public until last week, were being kept from them.
“I’m outraged," said Colleen Flanagan, a resident of Sandy who spoke with Fox 13 Salt Lake. "I am absolutely angry that there was no studies done—it just came up out of the community. Nobody knew about it."
Mitchell Tousley, who drove more than an hour from Draper to protest the decision, said, "A project of this scale just absolutely requires public input, and there really hasn’t been."
Deals to build these facilities have often been made in secret, with contract details hidden from the public by nondisclosure agreements that stifle dissent until the project has already been approved. Despite this, these projects have often drawn fearsome backlash from the communities where they are planned. In some cases—like in Virginia late last month, where a 2,100-acre center was set to be built—it has led developers to pull out.
But the commissioners in Box Elder County, who said they'd reviewed more than 2,500 public comments on the proposal, appeared unmoved by the outpouring of public concern on Monday night. They said water and air quality issues were not factors in their vote and that the water rights were held by the private landowners.
As the crowd jeered, with chants of "cowards" and "people over profits," Commissioner Boyd Bingham, a Republican, shouted them down.
“For hell’s sakes, grow up,” he yelled. “This is beyond a joke.” The commissioners then left the room and addressed the crowd via a virtual meeting.
In a video response to Monday night's protest, O'Leary said: "I’m the only developer of data centers on Earth that graduated from environmental studies. I'm pretty aware of what these concerns are. They are around air, water use, heat, noise pollution. So sustainability is at the heart of what we do in terms of all these proposals."
He claimed without evidence that 90% of the opponents of the data center project were "being bused in" from out of state. He also claimed that the facility would be powered in part by "solar, wind, and batteries," when it is actually powered entirely by natural gas.
Opponents continue to characterize Stratos as a billionaire vanity project to loot Utah's vast natural resources with little consideration for how it will affect residents.
Utah State University physics professor Robert Davies told Fox 13 that the Great Salt Lake "is occupied by amazing living systems" and that "projects like this go into environments like this and scrape the living systems right off the face of the Earth.”
He said, “This is a private enterprise that is coming in to extract from our natural wealth and pipe it out of the state… and leave us with a few crumbs.”
May 05, 2026
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Tax Refunds From GOP’s Big Ugly Bill ‘Largely Erased’ Thanks to Illegal Iran War: Expert
Congressional Republicans had been hoping their political standing would improve this spring when American voters received larger refunds thanks to changes in US tax law made under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
However, The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that much of the projected fiscal stimulus from the larger refunds has already been swallowed up by the rise in gas and energy prices caused by President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, and the financial situation could grow even worse in the coming months.
Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY Parthenon, told The Financial Times that "the tax refunds have been largely erased by the increase in Middle East price pressures," and warned that "the longer the conflict lasts, the more we move to an adverse scenario where inflation proves more persistent and erodes consumer spending growth."
Nathan Sheets, global chief economist at Citigroup, told The Financial Times that the Iran war has only accelerated problems for US consumers who were already facing high pressures from the cost of living.
"By our reckoning, wage growth has steadily lost ground relative to the pace of inflation since the middle of last year," Sheets said. "First President Trump’s tariffs and, more recently, Iran-related pressures on oil and commodity prices have pushed up prices relative to wages."
US retailers have been expecting the positive impact of the tax refunds to dwindle, with Target CFO Jim Lee telling The Financial Times that they "will be fading over the rest of the year" as Americans are using larger shares of their incomes to pay for basics such as food and energy.
Lee's concerns were echoed by Walmart CFO John David Rainey, who told CNBC last week that while tax refunds have been helping Americans buffer the costs associated with the Iran war, that financial cushion is shrinking by the day.
“I think higher tax returns muted some of the pressure related to higher fuel prices," said Rainey, "and as we’re in a period of time right now where those tax refunds are largely not coming in, I think consumers are going to feel more of that pressure from higher fuel prices."
Walmart's stock price on has fallen sharply over the last week despite strong quarterly earnings, as investors express concerns that low-income consumers are feeling squeezed financially.
As reported by The New York Times, Walmart noted in its most recent earnings call that "sales continued to be driven by its low-price private label goods and higher-income households trading down to stretch their budgets," suggesting that consumers are under increasing distress.
May 26, 2026
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Platner Hits Back After Collins Shirks Responsibility for Votes That Sent Troops Like Him to War
Republican US Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was widely dragged Thursday after she responded to upstart Democratic challenger Graham Platner's criticism of her vote for the Iraq War by trying to make the issue about him.
Platner—a Marine Corps combat veteran turned staunch opponent of illegal wars of choice—told The New York Times earlier this month that "we destroyed Iraq and we destroyed Afghanistan, and all the suffering, all the killing, all the dying, all the displacement—we, the United States, did that."
"The anger that I feel is for the people that sent me, who are frankly still the same people who are sending people off right now to be in harm’s way so we can have this stupid war with Iran," the presumptive Democratic nominee continued. "Susan Collins voted to send me to Iraq, and she’s also there to help [President] Donald Trump continue this absolutely insane conflict in the Strait of Hormuz."
"If I have any anger, it is reserved for the political system itself and the people in it who view war not as a thing that has a human toll but as a political game," Platner added.
Collins, who is trailing Platner by nearly double-digits in head-to-head polling, told The Maine Wire on Thursday that the Democrat "not only enlisted twice after the war was started, but he also went to work for a security company, a controversial one, named Blackwater, after his term in the service was over."
"So I respect anyone who steps forward to serve their country," Collins added, "but the fact is, that was Platner's decision to serve. He was not drafted."
Collins has voted for US wars fought in countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. The Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimates that more than 940,000 people—including over 432,000 civilians—were killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001 and 2023.
More than 7,000 US service members died in the post-9/11 wars, which cost American taxpayers more than $8 trillion.
Collins has also backed the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran and supported the invasion of Venezuela and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The senator faced immediate backlash for her remarks.
"It was your decision as a senator to send Americans to fight in a dumb and pointless Iraq War," Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) said on social media. "You voted for it. Do you tell the kids and widows of the Iraq War dead that it was their fallen hero’s fault for enlisting?"
Independent journalist Nathan Bernard said on X that "voting to send thousands of soldiers to die and then blaming them for dying doesn't seem like a great way to win over voters, especially veterans."
David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, also took to X, writing: "While [Platner] was deployed in Iraq in 2007, Collins cast one of the deciding votes to block legislation to create a timetable for ending the war and bringing Platner and other troops home. She literally voted to *keep* Platner in Iraq."
Sam Seder, host of "The Majority Report With Sam Seder," accused Collins of "a stunning abdication."
"If she regrets her support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, she should say so instead of pretending the all-volunteer military owns all responsibility," he wrote.
Platner responded to Collins' attack by noting that the senator "voted to support starting the war in Iraq."
He continued:
On three occasions after that, she voted against withdrawing troops. On at least two occasions, she voted to fund the war. Now, all these years later, instead of acknowledging that she was wrong, she's decided that she's going to blame those of us, who in our late teens and early 20s, signed up to serve our country. That somehow it's our fault that she and establishment politicians like her wanted to abuse our willingness to serve, to go send us off to fight in stupid wars that did nothing but make some people very, very rich at the expense of American taxpayer dollars.
"It's no surprise to me, because even today, she continues to not stand up against the stupid war in Iran," Platner said. "She continues to not stand up against any of the abuses or the idiocy coming out of the Trump administration."
"This is very, very expected from establishment Republican politicians who love to talk about supporting the troops, but in the end, will always desert us," he added.
May 28, 2026
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'Craven and Corrupt': DOJ Launches Criminal Probe Into E. Jean Carroll, Who Won Civil Cases Against Trump
President Donald Trump appeared to be out for what one human rights advocate called "outrageous revenge" late Wednesday as it was reported that the Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, who won two civil judgments against the president after accusing him of sexual abuse and defamation.
CNN first reported that, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation, the DOJ is investigating whether Carroll committed perjury in her civil lawsuits against Trump.
The probe reportedly centers on a 2022 deposition Carroll gave in which she said she received no outside funding for her lawsuit. It was later revealed that Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn who has been critical of the president, paid some legal fees and expenses.
Before Carroll's sexual abuse case went to trial in 2022, Trump's lawyers told the court that the disclosure of Hoffman's funding raised "significant questions" about Carroll's credibility and accused her of trying to "conceal the truth."
Carroll's lawyers countered that the plaintiff had nothing to do with obtaining the outside funding and that Hoffman's decision to provide financial support was irrelevant to Carroll's accusation that Trump had sexually abused her in a New York City department store dressing room in the 1990s.
A jury awarded her a $5 million judgment in the case, and in 2024 Carroll won $83.3 million in damages in a separate civil case in which she accused Trump of repeatedly defaming her when he said she had filed her first case against him in an effort to sell books and was perpetrating a "hoax."
A three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously rejected Trump's request for a new trial in the sexual abuse case, saying the president had “not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings.”
An appeals court panel also upheld the $83.3 million defamation judgment, but this month Trump was permitted to delay his payment for now, as he has appealed to the US Supreme Court, asserting that he has "absolute immunity" for disparaging comments about Carroll that he made while he was president.
The right-wing majority on the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that Trump has "absolute immunity" for "official acts" taken while he is in office.
The investigation into Carroll is being conducted by US Attorney Andrew Boutros in the Northern District of Illinois; a nonprofit associated with Hoffman is based in Chicago.
The probe appeared to be Trump's latest effort to use the DOJ to enact revenge on his political enemies, a number of observers said late Wednesday.
"He’s using the power of the DOJ to go after his own victims," said US Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). "It’s a vile attack on the rule of law and a disgusting insult to victims everywhere."
Last month, acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced an indictment of former FBI chief James Comey, a longtime opponent of Trump. They accused him of “knowingly and willfully [making] a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon” the president; a year earlier, Comey had posted a photo on Instagram of seashells grouped together in a pattern, reading, "86 47." The indictment garnered criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Federal prosecutors also indicted Comey as well as New York Attorney General Letitia James last year, in cases that were thrown out by a judge. James won a $450 million judgment against Trump, plus interest, in a civil fraud case against Trump and his business in 2022.
At the news of the investigation into Carroll, journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News wrote on social media, "Sheesh, it never ends with Trump and his revenge tour and actual weaponization of the DOJ."
Elisa Batista, campaign director at the women's rights group UltraViolet, said, "We believe E. Jean Carroll, just as a jury of her peers did."
“Donald Trump has been caught bragging about assaulting women, and was found liable for sexual abuse,” said Batista. "The DOJ’s investigation is nothing more than another craven and corrupt attempt by Trump to silence survivors and his personal opponents.”
May 28, 2026
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'No War With Cuba': As Pentagon Mobilizes US Forces, Dems Move to Block Illegal Trump Attack
With US military forces prepared to launch an unprovoked attack on Cuba, a group of congressional Democrats on Wednesday introduced a new war powers resolution in a bid to block President Donald Trump from launching yet another illegal war of choice.
Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Gregory Meeks, both of New York, introduced the resolution, which would bar US forces from hostilities within or against Cuba without congressional authorization, as required under the 1973 War Powers Act. The measure is cosponsored by Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Joaquin Castro of Texas.
“Donald Trump's belligerent foreign policy is creating new wars and conflicts across the world. As our country is already embroiled in a new war with Iran, the president has now set his sights on regime change in Cuba,” Velázquez said in a statement. “This administration is rushing toward another disastrous war, putting countless American and foreign lives at risk. Congress must reassert its constitutional authority if the president continues down this illegal path.”
Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that “the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are hellbent on starting another war, this time with Cuba, to distract from the president’s failure in Iran, weak economy, and mass deportation of 500,000 Cubans legally in the United States."
It is the second Cuba war powers resolution introduced by lawmakers since Trump began threatening to attack and "take" the island earlier this year. Last month, senators voted 51-47—with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman joining all but two of his Republican colleagues, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky—to block a war powers resolution introduced in March by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).
The new resolution's introduction follows months of escalating aggression against Cuba by the Trump administration, including preparation and threats to attack, an oil blockade that critics say is causing the deaths of infants and sick people, and last week's Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment of former President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by a hostile US-based counterrevolutionary group following repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who has falsely claimed that his parents fled communism in Cuba when they actually emigrated during an earlier US-backed dictatorship—said that the island is "in a lot of trouble."
“Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States," Rubio added.
An article published Wednesday by Politico highlighted US military preparations for various war scenarios for Cuba, including bombing, an invasion, or a mission to enforce the DOJ indictmebnt by kidnapping Castro in a manner similar to January's illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
According to Politico's Paul McLeary:
The armada in the region is slightly smaller than it was in January when the US captured Maduro. But the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group entered the Caribbean in May, along with several guided missile destroyers and cruisers that can launch precision missiles at targets onshore. An array of advanced American drones and surveillance aircraft have also circled Cuba for months, according to flight tracking sites. The USS Kearsarge amphibious ships and escorts, which carry 2,500 Marines, are off the coast of Virginia preparing for a new deployment, and could replace some ships heading home.
The surge provides a variety of military options, although the Pentagon would need additional troops for a massive ground invasion.
The Politico piece drew fierce rebuke from Havana.
"There are politicians in the United States pushing the drumbeat of war against Cuba, trying to fabricate excuses, trying to portray Cuba as a threat, and trying to push the US president to take military action, even with the understanding that military action would lead to bloodshed, mostly of Cubans, but also of Americans," Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío told The Los Angeles Times.
"The question is: How does a government convince American citizens that it is in their interest to cause death, cause destruction and suffering to a neighboring nation simply to satisfy the ambitions of a small cabal of wealthy, influential people who enjoy the ear of politicians and powerful people in Washington?" Fernández added.
Cuba has been shoring up international support amid the growing threat of US attack. On Tuesday, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez met with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who said earlier this month that “there is no military solution to be sought for Cuba."
On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a meeting with Rodríguez at United Nations headquarters in New York that "China will continue to uphold justice and speak up for Cuba, support the Cuban people’s just cause, and contribute to Cuba’s economic development and people’s livelihood."
Also on Wednesday, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Council for Foreign and Community Relations issued a statement affirming "Cuba’s sovereign right to import and receive fuel" and condemning "the obstruction of energy supplies to Cuba, which has precipitated a grave humanitarian crisis."
"Cuba poses no threat to any nation... it stands as a peaceful and cooperative member of the international community... [and] the continued application of these unilateral coercive measures constitutes an unjustifiable violation of human rights, the principles of free trade, and the fundamental norms governing relations among sovereign states," the council stated.
If the US launches military action against Cuba, it will be the 12th country attacked during Trump’s two terms in office. The president—who has repeatedly said that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize—has ordered attacks on Afghanistan, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen, and has bombed dozens of boats accused without evidence of transporting drugs in international waters in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
Last week, tens of thousands of Cubans rallied in Havana to denounce the indictment of Castro and US aggression against their homeland, which dates back to the revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista, one in a series of dictators backed by the United States after it granted Cuba conditional independence after conquering the island along with Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam during an 1898 war against Spain waged on a dubious pretext.
Since then, the United States has tried to assassinate former Cuban President Fidel Castro, backed the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, served as a base for perpetrators of some of the hemisphere’s worst terror attacks, and even hatched a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb high above the island to convince its people that the return of Jesus Christ was nigh and the only thing standing in the way of the long-awaited “Second Coming” was Castro.
Cuba has endured this aggression and more without retaliating against the United States. Despite this, the Trump administration has responded by inflicting more and more pain upon people it claims it is trying to liberate from oppression.
“If Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are serious about a new relationship with the Cuban people," Meeks said Wednesday, "they would reverse 65 years of failed US policy toward Cuba, end the oil blockade and the humanitarian crisis it caused, and work with Congress to modify the draconian and outdated US sanctions that disproportionately harm the Cuban people.”
May 28, 2026
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3 Months of Trump's Disastrous Iran War Has Cost US Consumers $60 Billion in Extra Energy Costs
The average US household, according to Moody's, has shouldered nearly $450 in extra fuel costs due to the Republican president's unprovoked Middle East war.
May 29, 2026
Americans have made clear since President Donald Trump joined Israel in beginning an unprovoked war on Iran that they view the conflict-of-choice as damaging to their financial well-being—and that they blame the president for the higher cost of fuel since the war started in February.
On Friday, Moody's Analytics put an exact number on the heightened financial anxiety families across the country have been feeling over the past three months as Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent fuel prices soaring: $447.19.
That's how much the average US household has had to additionally spend on fuel-related expenses since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyanu launched their attack on February 28, Moody's told CNBC.
Altogether, Americans have spent a total of nearly $60 billion on gas, airline fares, and other related costs as the strait, a key shipping route for oil, has remained effectively closed.
According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of regular gas stands at $4.39—up close to 50% since early March. Diesel now costs $5.52 per gallon, forcing consumers to pay $20 billion more in additional expenses on groceries and other goods.
"The economy isn’t just soft, it’s struggling," Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist, said Thursday. "The Iran war needs to end, and the Strait of Hormuz needs to be reopened soon, or recession will become more likely than not."
"Unless the war ends soon, financially pressed consumers will have no option but to turn more cautious in their spending."
As CNBC reported Friday, "higher energy costs can force consumers to raid their savings and lean more on debt to cover expenses."
Trump flatly said earlier this month that he doesn't consider Americans' financial situation "even a little bit" when it comes to the war on Iran, while National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett posited earlier this week that Americans are "spending more money" not because higher prices are forcing them to but because they're "very, very optimistic about the state of the economy." He also bragged recently that "credit card spending is through the roof"—a sign several observers took not as a positive omen for the economy but as a sign that families are being forced to take on debt to pay for gas and other essentials.
Zandi provided a reality check Friday.
"Unless the war ends soon, financially pressed consumers will have no option but to turn more cautious in their spending, threatening the already soft economy,” he told CNBC, warning that families could end up spending nearly $2,000 extra on fuel-related costs if the war continues reaches the one-year mark.
Republicans emphasized last year that Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act would give bigger tax returns to families across the country. Any benefit, said Zandi, has now been canceled out by the president's war.
On Thursday, US Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said the White House is in denial about the fact that Americans are struggling with the impact of Trump's foreign policy decisions as the Pentagon vastly underestimates how much the conflict has cost in public statements.
The acting comptroller of the Pentagon told Congress in April that the war had cost $25 billion, increasing the estimate to $29 billion two weeks later.
The senators told the Congressional Budget Office Friday that independent analyses had put the real cost of the war at $40 billion-$50 billion.
“It is essential," said the lawmakers, "that Congress and the American public receive accurate, comprehensive estimates of the costs of the war in Iran."
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'By This Logic, Any Protest Could Be a Conspiracy': Conviction of Spokane ICE Protesters Raises Free Speech Concerns
"We were guinea pigs," said the father of one of the convicted protesters. "They brought the swamp of Washington, DC, into our area to stop American citizens from exercising our rights that are guaranteed."
May 29, 2026
With the conviction of three anti-ICE protesters in Spokane, Washington on federal "conspiracy" charges Thursday, civil rights advocates and legal experts fear that the Trump administration may have just been handed a powerful tool to criminalize dissent.
Jac Archer, Justice Forral, and Bajun Mavalwalla II, nicknamed the "Spokane 3," were indicted last year for their actions at a protest in June 2025, where they attempted to physically obstruct ICE agents from transporting two Venezuelan immigrants to an ICE processing facility in Tacoma.
Both of the men reportedly entered the US legally under a humanitarian parole program that had been terminated by the Trump administration, leading advocates to protest their detention.
As Spokesman-Review, a Spokane newspaper, described:
Protesters that day eventually began linking arms around vans and in front of agents’ cars. The event grew chaotic. ICE agents entered a crowd of people standing outside the facility’s parking lot gate and began grabbing people by the necks and arms, pushing them to the ground. Protesters also slashed tires of vans meant to transport the detainees.
But where such activity would usually lead to charges against specific protesters for discrete illegal actions like trespassing, property damage, or other public order offenses, the Department of Justice (DOJ)—as part of a nationwide effort to crack down on protests against ICE—charged nine protesters with "conspiracy to impede or injure officers," even though no officers were actually injured during the protest.
Legal experts described it as a novel approach that wrapped many people involved in the protest into a single "conspiracy" regardless of whether they committed specific criminal acts.
“Usually if a protest gets out of hand and people are hurt or property is hurt, you see charges based on that,” Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor and a University of Washington law professor, told The New York Times earlier this month. “They’re not going after people based on specific harm done. They’re stretching conspiracy charges to target protesters and people who organize protests.”
Facing pressure from the federal government to bring the case following a national memo sent from the DOJ to prioritize and publicize cases against ICE agents, then-acting US Attorney for Eastern Washington Richard Barker resigned last year rather than bring charges against the protesters.
He said at the time he was grateful he “never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that [he] didn’t believe in." His successor, Stephanie Van Marter, however, did sign the order.
Six of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charges to avoid federal prison time. But Archer, Forral, and Mavalwalla chose to fight them, believing the case was part of an unjust attempt to criminalize their right to protest.
After a trial that lasted seven days, a jury found the three defendants guilty of conspiracy. But the defense has argued that the trial was marred by problems that rendered the verdict faulty.
As the Guardian explained:
In February, a federal judge ordered the release of a Venezuelan migrant whose transportation for deportation the protesters sought to block, ruling his arrest violated the constitution.
But the jury, drawn from conservative eastern Washington state, did not hear those facts at trial, thanks to rulings by Judge [Rebecca] Pennell. Pennell, a former federal public defender and appointee of the Democratic president Joe Biden, also ruled the protesters on trial could not use the First Amendment as a defense, though they were allowed to state their reasons for demonstrating.
Instead, the jury watched hours of law enforcement body camera video and heard from a parade of ICE agents... Jeremy Burlingame, an ICE agent who testified, had authored social media posts that called Black politicians “lying ghetto garbage” and transgender people “mentally ill.” He boosted a post showing ICE arresting a pregnant woman at gunpoint that called her a “pregnant invader.”
Federal prosecutors deemed the posts troubling enough to recall Burlingame to impeach him, despite the fact that he was their witness...
But Burlingame’s online posts, the lack of injury to ICE officers, and the absence of evidence showing communication between the three defendants prior to the protest were not enough to sway the jury.
The defendants now face potential sentences of up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. However, they are expected to appeal the verdict and have filed a rarely used motion allowing their attorneys to argue that no rational juror could find their clients guilty.
"I question whether justice truly was served by today’s verdict,” Barker told the Spokesman-Review. "This was the first conspiracy prosecution in Eastern Washington history under... a Civil War-era law dusted off to punish members of the Spokane community who stood up for two young men who were unlawfully detained by ICE."
Video by KREM 2 News/Youtube
Looking beyond the details of the trial itself, many observers questioned the very premise of the DOJ's prosecution.
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said from the start of the trial she believed it was "politically motivated."
"It was meant to make an example out of people who disagreed with federal immigration policy," she said.
City council member Sarah Dixit, who said she took part in the protest, said: "Based on the evidence that was shown, I personally didn’t see evidence of what they were accused of. Conspiracy is a charge that feels complicated to prove, and I don’t believe that the government made a strong case for that.”
Others expressed fear for the precedent that had been set. La Rond Baker, the legal director of the Washington ACLU, said the Trump administration "has a demonstrable history of using the Department of Justice to silence and punish its critics."
The administration has pursued similar sweeping conspiracy charges against other groups of anti-ICE protesters around the country—including in Los Angeles, Broadview, Illinois, and North Texas.
“The verdict was painfully disappointing,” said Archer’s attorney, Carl Oreskovich. “I think it was an extraordinarily aggressive approach to prosecution of protests. And it certainly is going to chill people who want to utilize their First Amendment right to dissent against government actions that they don’t agree with."
In a comment to The Guardian, Robert Chang, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and executive director of its Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, said the verdict was "frightening."
“By this logic, any protest could be a conspiracy,” he said. “The goal posts keep moving.”
Bajun Mavalwalla Sr., a retired US Army intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, said his son—also a veteran of the same war—and the other two defendants were standing for "the freedoms that separate this country from the dictatorships.”
“People in Spokane and people in Eastern Washington need to understand that we were guinea pigs. That they brought the swamp of Washington, DC, into our area to stop American citizens from exercising our rights that are guaranteed,” the elder Mavalwalla said after his son was convicted.
“It was the whole point of the Constitution, the right to protest, the right to dissent, the right to assemble, all of those things are now in question because of this case," he said. "My son has taken the brunt of the entire weight of the United States government onto their shoulders.”
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France Asks Top Prosecutor to Probe Alleged Israeli Abuse of Gaza Flotilla Members
French nationals and people from dozens of countries who were abducted from the Global Sumud Flotilla say they were beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted by their Israeli captors.
May 29, 2026
France's government on Friday asked prosecutors to investigate Israel's alleged mistreatment of French nationals aboard the last Global Sumud Flotilla, which was intercepted earlier this month in international waters while trying to break the illegal decadeslong Israeli blockade of Gaza.
“Based on a report I requested from our Consul General in Turkey—who informed me of sexual violence, exposure to the cold, beatings, and repeated humiliation of French nationals—all of these acts are likely to constitute criminal offenses," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said during an interview with France Inter, adding, "I decided yesterday to refer the matter to the public prosecutor."
The move follows France's indefinite ban from its territory of far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who posted a video on social media showing him joyfully humiliating detained activists, journalists, and others who were mostly kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs and their foreheads forced to the ground following the May 18 interception of flotilla vessels off the coast of Cyprus and the abduction of all aboard.
“We cannot tolerate that French nationals can be threatened, intimidated, or brutalized in this way—all the more so by a public official," Barrot said last week.
People from around 40 countries—including 37 French nationals—were seized from dozens of flotilla vessels and held in harsh conditions on what many of them called a "torture boat."
According to Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF): "Detained humanitarians, doctors, and journalists were processed one by one through a darkened shipping container. Inside, groups of three to five soldiers systematically brutalized each person who came through the door while those waiting outside listened to the screams.”
French medical professional Meriem Hadjal said she was "subjected to torture" in the container, where at least one Israeli soldier allegedly sexually assaulted her.
"We were treated like animals," Hadjal added, accusing her Israeli captors of "sadism."
GSF said Tuesday that "legal proceedings are now active in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, with Italian prosecutors opening an investigation into kidnapping and sexual assault" of flotilla members.
Numerous national governments condemned Israel's treatment of the flotilla abductees, including the United States. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said that Ben-Gvir "betrayed the dignity" of his nation, which receives billions of dollars in annual armed aid and diplomatic cover from the United States to carry out what many experts say is a genocidal war on Gaza.
Malaysia is reportedly preparing to initiate proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice over the abduction and alleged torture of its citizens, 29 of whom were aboard the flotilla. The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
“We will not remain silent, we will not stop. While the legal team gathers all documentation on violations of international law; they were kidnapped more than once, they were tortured,” Amirudin Shari, chief minister of the Malaysian state of Selangor, said during a homecoming ceremony for the flotilla members at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Israeli troops have physically and psychologically tortured past flotilla abductees. Dozens of members of the previous Global Sumud mission required medical attention for broken ribs, noses, and other injuries inflicted by Israeli forces. In 2010, Israeli troops killed nine activists aboard one of the first-ever Gaza flotillas, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
As some countries pursue justice for flotilla members, others have declined to act. In the United Kingdom, Zarah Sultana, who represents Coventry South for the socialist Your Party in Parliament, is demanding "urgent action" in the wake of abuse allegations made by British flotilla abductees.
"France is acting. Spain is showing leadership. Where is the UK government?" Sultana said Friday on X. "Nothing but a simp for Israel, a genocidal apartheid state."
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