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Make It Shitty, Vengeful, Inept and Untrue
The devastation goes on apace at the teeny toxic hands of the clowns and hacks in power (maybe not much longer?). Topping the abuses: An assault by Homeland Security (sic) thugs on the home of a duly elected (albeit female, brown, Muslim) member of Congress for imaginary crimes as a child. Also: racist rallies, fake rumors, defying of court orders, calamitous fails on all sides. Their witless leader: "If Republicans get in power, you're going to (have) a depression. These people are incompetent."
In 2022, Cory Doctorow helpfully wrote Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It. At the time, it was an analysis of how the Internet went wrong, a sort of "Big Tech disassembly manual" aimed at curbing powerful people from making transactional, short-term, self-serving policy choices ultimately bad for everyone but themselves. Alas, since the return of Trump 2, many argue the same dismal process of enshittification has oozed and expanded outwards to become "the organizing principle of US statecraft" itself, rendering pretty much everything in the public sphere....shitty.
Trump and his cabal of low-lifes daily ensure we get ample evidence of that dark reality. Their latest target: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), the first Somali-American lawmaker, one of the first two Muslim women in Congress, the most visible refugee in American politics and Trump's worst nightmare who has long endured the most venomous of his abuses, which is going some. After four childhood years spent in a Kenya refugee camp, she came to the U.S. at 12, was reportedly 17 when her late father filed their immigration paperwork, was sworn into Congress at 36, and will now likely see easy re-election in the mid-terms.
For those crimes, she's been relentlessly bullied, threatened and assailed by a racist buffoon who has sneered she's "garbage," "totally crooked" and a "terrible person" who married her brother, came from "a non-country - all they have is crime and squalor," and should be sent back there, a notion his audience of bigots and cretins embraced this weekend at another Nazi rally where they mindlessly screamed, "Deport!" This, after Trump intoned "they are looking at her very carefully" after a judge signed a piece of paper allowing DHS goons to raid her home in the dubious name of unclear charges of vague unproven offenses.
The raid, which defies longtime DOJ policy banning major actions just before an election - "Another hard norm out the window" - was foreshadowed by racist story creator J.D. burbling it "seems like something's fishy there“ as he and Goebbels worked to decide, "How do you go after her (to) get some justice for the American people?” What a crock. A steely Omar responded to their clumsy "fascism in the extreme" by calling it "just the latest escalation" in ten years of Trump's "baseless lies and smear campaigns." “I will not be silenced,” she concluded, which reportedly "translates from Congressional-speak as 'Fuck You.'"
Trump, meanwhile, lumbers on, learning nothing. At a rally in Ohio that drew a paltry few thousand - with empty seats hidden by tarps and flags - he fittingly marked Columbus Day with more racist crap. He celebrated Haitians losing their legal status, insisted "I was right" about Springfield residents eating pets, called Somalis in Minnesota "low-IQ people," attacked Omar, from "the worst country," for claiming constitutional rights. (More "Deport!" chants. Jesus.) He also admired Jon Husted's ass - "I don't do this with men very often" - and urged on fans beating up a protester he called "fat," "paid," and "scum." (Pot/kettle.)
And he still keeps losing in court. Hungry to turn a public, affordable D.C. golf course where he dumped East Wing debris into a private fat cat resort, he tried to pull a fast one - filing a Friday 5 p.m. request, then razing 430 trees the next morning - on a judge who furiously blasted the “inexcusable," "preposterous" action, ripped him a new one - "In what universe did anyone in your office think this was acceptable?" - slapped him with a restraining order, and warned if they violated the order "by two seconds" they'd face contempt charges. "We did our best,” whined regime lawyers. "No," she snapped. "You did your absolute worst.”
So it goes. Another judge again blocked - past Election Day - the ludicrous, $20-million, taxpayer-funded, "educational and unapologetically patriotic" propaganda ads she banned once; in another end run, regime weasels moved them to YouTube. One ad portrays the desperate fragile snowflake as a lion who has to "show the jackals who he is." Another declares, "God made Trump...somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild...who goes into the den of vipers, cares for the flock (and) won't ever forsake them," especially if they accept his $5,000 bribe.
Implausibly, his lackeys are just as lame and awful. Despite facing a scarcity of agents and funds, FBI head (sic) Kash Patel has been boasting of his supposed crackdown on violent crime, claiming the arrest of over 54,000 violent criminals, or 90% more than in the Biden era. Less than shockingly, his numbers turn out to be wildly inflated by including arrests by state and local police and other federal agencies where an FBI agent may have happened to be present. In fact, actual numbers show FBI arrests are down at least 15% from previous years, though at least they're busy harassing Trump's personal enemies.
There's more macho bullshit from aspiring warrior Pete Kegsbreath, fresh from his Arsenal of Freedom Tour (really). Speaking at an annual Army meeting on a panel of warmongers eager to expand the use of unmanned drones to make death-dealing even easier, Pete was repeatedly interrupted by protesters calling him a "coward" and "Nazi.” "The world fucking hates you. You're a fucking war criminal," yelled one. "We’ll see you at the goddamn Hague." Pete grew increasingly irritated; maybe he'd read reports that, despite their brave boat strikes, record supplies of cocaine still arrive here, "cheaper and purer than they've been in decades."
Other MAGA flops abound. When James Talarico took a week off the campaign with the flu, conspiracy crackpots decided it was a cover for a mental health crisis. Spencer Platt's crude take: “This isn’t a case of the ‘flu’, it's 'one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” The "silly season" claim fell apart so fast even right-wingers were embarrassed. "This is such shit work, bro," wrote one, wondering if Talarico would sue. There was also the cringey fall of Kimberley 'The best is yet to come!' Guilfoyle, and Trump's brazen distancing - "She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago” - despite the surfacing of damning partying video on Jan. 6.
And the rise of new Press Barbie Katie Zacharia, former Pizzagate and QAnon fan, whose debut - so bad "a Zacharia may replace a Scaramucci as a time measurement" - was summed up by The Atlantic : "Hi, I'm Your New Press Secretary, and It's My First Time Reading Words Out Loud...I swear I have seen a sentence before, and I know where one stops and. Starts. And whether? To speak. With a rising inflection?" Now there are reports the self-described lawyer isn't one; a complaint has been filed with the California Bar for “the Unauthorized Practice of Law," and one account says she took the bar but failed it.
Fail fail fail: Thy name is MAGA. Perhaps we should be grateful; unimaginably, the current clusterfuck could be worse with competence. Take the Defending Main Street Super PAC, "the most effective independent expenditure organization for the GOP," which just spent tens of thousands of dollars to run a million 30-second ads arguing, “Maine can’t afford Troy Jackson and all his taxes" in the wrong Portland - Oregon, not Maine, over 3,000 miles off-base. One Maine operative: "At least now Portland, Oregon, can enjoy some of the crap we’ve been seeing every day.” MAGA's mantra: Make it shitty. Ours: Make it stop.
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Oct 15, 2026
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Green Groups Fume as Trump Gives Big Oil 'Another Free Pass to Exploit' the Arctic
Just over a week after a leading US Senate Democrat described President Donald Trump's relationship with fossil fuel giants as "old-fashioned corruption, by a thuggish government and a desperate industry," his administration on Thursday announced yet another giveaway to climate polluters who want to exploit the Arctic.
The US Department of the Interior is moving forward with a plan to allow oil and gas companies to conduct certain wintertime activities at the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska without reviews generally required by the National Environmental Policy Act—a landmark law long targeted by Trump's Republican Party.
"In issuing this categorical exclusion, this administration is seeking to fast-track large-scale oil drilling and seismic exploration without any further environmental analysis or public input," warned Earthjustice attorney Janet Bering. "It is cutting the public out of this decision and future decisions."
"The administration finalized this new approach with zero public input," Bering noted. "Combined with a similar proposal that rubber-stamps new oil production, this is a one-two punch. It's bad policy, and it is unlawful."
The 60-day public comment period is ongoing for the earlier proposal she cited, which is designed to streamline decision-making for construction and operation of oil and gas production sites in the same 23-million-acre Alaska reserve.
When the Interior Department unveiled that policy in early September, Earthjustice Attorney Erik Grafe declared that "what we're seeing here is a concerted attack by the Trump administration to greenlight oil and gas drilling in the Western Arctic while ignoring the harm it will cause to these irreplaceable public lands and also the government's obligation to protect these lands for wildlife and future generations."
"These are large-scale, industrial activities that cause permanent damage to sensitive Arctic ecosystems, nearby communities, and the climate," Grafe stressed. "The administration's proposal flaunts basic environmental laws meant to protect land, wildlife, and people and allow for fully informed decision-making."
Earthjustice is far from alone in blasting Trump's recent attacks on the Arctic. Dan Ritzman, director of Sierra Club's conservation campaign, condemned last month's proposal as "another piece of the administration’s relentless effort to expand drilling across Alaska's public lands."
"The Western Arctic is home to caribou, migratory birds, and countless other wildlife, and decisions about its future deserve careful scrutiny—not a permitting process designed around the demands of the oil and gas industry," Ritzman said at the time.
His colleague Mike Scott, Sierra Club's national oil and gas campaign manager, was similarly critical of Thursday's announcement.
"The Trump administration is handing Big Oil another free pass to exploit America’s public lands, this time by gutting environmental oversight in one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet," said Scott. "Oil companies have already shown the risks they pose to the Western Arctic, and now this administration wants to make it even easier for them to drill without scrutiny."
"This isn't about lowering energy costs or helping Alaskans," he continued—as the president drives up fuel costs with an illegal war on Iran. "It's about doing the fossil fuel industry's bidding at the expense of wildlife, Alaska Native communities, and our public lands. The Trump administration is putting corporate profits ahead of people and the planet, and the Western Arctic will pay the price."
Trump campaigned for a second term on a pledge to serve fossil fuel interests—even telling industry executives that he'd roll back climate policies if they poured $1 billion into his campaign. Last week, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Committee on Environment and Public Works Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) released a report detailing how the president has delivered on that promise since returning to power last year.
"The fossil fuel industry and their allies bought their way into the Trump White House with hundreds of millions of dollars in political donations, after Trump promised fossil fuel bigwigs at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that he'd do anything and everything they wanted, for the right price," Whitehouse said. "Now, their minions run the government from the inside, driving up energy bills to deliver payouts to the donors that put Trump back in office."
Oct 08, 2026
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Up to 12 Million Americans Have Lost Health Coverage During Trump’s Second Term: Analysis
Independent healthcare analyst Charles Gaba on Thursday published an updated analysis estimating that up to 12 million Americans have lost their insurance coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's second term.
Gaba based his new estimate on updated data he compiled from recent reports for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), as well as some state enrollment data for Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance exchanges.
In total, Gaba found that enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP has dropped by 6.2 million people since the start of Trump's second term, while enrollment in ACA exchanges is down by anywhere from 4.6 million to 6.1 million people, and enrollment in Basic Health Plans (BHP) is down by nearly 275,000 people over the same period.
While there are around 1.8 million more people enrolled in Medicare now than there were at the start of Trump's term, Gaba noted that this isn't nearly enough to make up for the loss of enrollment in other programs.
Adding everything up, Gaba estimated that "between 10.88 million and 12.40 million fewer Americans enrolled in a public healthcare coverage program as of June 2026 than in were as of January 2025."
As in prior analyses, Gaba examined the possibility that some of the people who lost coverage through these programs transitioned to employer-sponsored insurance, but deemed it "extremely unlikely... since unemployment is higher than it was in January 2025."
Over the last two years, Trump and congressional Republicans have taken a number of actions that have made healthcare less affordable and pushed people off coverage.
First, they cut spending on Medicaid by an estimated $900 billion over a 10-year period when they enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office projects these cuts will leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.
GOP lawmakers last year also refused to extend enhanced subsidies for insurance plans purchased through the ACA, even as insurers raised premiums on those plans by an average of 26% this year, according to an analysis published by KFF.
In a Thursday article published by Time, scholars Neale Mahoney and Abigail Sanchez of the Stanford Institute for Economic Research warned that the costs of private health insurance are set to spike even further in 2027.
"Employer health plan costs are projected to rise 8 to 10% next year," Mahoney and Sanchez explained, "the largest increase in more than 20 years and double the average increase of the 2010s."
The two researchers said there are three major reasons for the surge in insurance costs: The expiration of the enhanced ACA subsidies, an increase in premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employer-based insurance plans, and the upcoming Medicaid work requirements projected to push millions of people off the program.
Oct 09, 2026
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Ire Over Trump Profiteering as 60% of Voters ‘Extremely Concerned’ About Government Corruption
A poll released by Fox News on Wednesday reveals that voters' biggest concern heading into the 2026 midterm elections isn't gas prices, but government corruption.
In total, the Fox poll shows that 60% of voters say they are "extremely concerned" about government corruption, which is higher than the 58% who are extremely concerned about inflation and the 50% who are extremely concerned about gas prices.
This concern with corruption appears likely to benefit Democratic candidates, as respondents say they trust Democrats to handle corruption better than Republicans by a 10-point margin.
Overall, the poll finds Democrats hold a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot.
Trump's personal net worth has increased by billions of dollars since the 2024 election, driven in large part by his family's cryptcurrency venture, which is nearly half owned by a fund backed by the United Arab Emirates.
Many legal experts also believe that Trump brazenly violated the US Constitution's emoluments clause when he accepted a $400 million luxury jet as a gift from the Qatari government.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, said that widespread concerns about corruption were not surprising given how President Donald Trump and his family have shamelessly enriched themselves since returning to power.
"The public is furious about the corruption they see from the government," said Gilbert. "Even Fox News polling says as much."
Gilbert emphasized that Democrats must hit the ground running to further uncover Trump corruption if they win the upcoming 2026 elections, as voters will be demanding accountability.
"If we see a shift in power in the next Congress," Gilbert said, "the American people will expect the new holders of the gavels to deliver oversight and accountability in a strategic and disciplined way that zeroes in on the real harms that the current regime, in cahoots with corporate power, have carried out at the expense of everyday Americans."
Drop Site reporter Ryan Grim similarly argued that the Fox poll shows a hunger on the part of voters for accountability.
"The last time Democrats took congress they barely investigated Trump administration corruption," Grim wrote. "Voters are very clear they don’t want that same mistake made again."
Journalist Isaac Saul found it "refreshing" to see voters taking corruption seriously, and he said the issue would likely be Trump's downfall.
"I've been saying for a while that Trump's fate will be like Orban's," wrote Saul. "His nationalist rhetoric is resonant, but his comical corruption will cost him. It's been unlike anything we've ever seen, and it gets worse daily."
Adam Carlson, founding partner of Zenith Polls, predicted that voters' concerns about government corruption would endure beyond the 2026 midterms.
"Corruption is going to be one of the biggest issues of the 2028 election," Carlson wrote. "And candidates who can speak about it in a compelling way—and can effectively draw a direct line from corruption to other top issues, like how it affects the cost of living—will be rewarded by voters."
Oct 15, 2026
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Trump Cancels Livestreamed Execution of Fort Hood Mass Shooter After Nationwide Outcry
As poll numbers showed the vast majority of Americans were repulsed by the idea of livestreaming the execution of Nidal Hasan, the former military psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, President Donald Trump backed away from the plan Thursday.
On Truth Social, Trump wrote that he still believed that "streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan."
But the president suggested the White House had received word that "many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device," and said the execution by firing squad, scheduled for December 3, will not be publicly displayed.
Trump announced the decision hours after a nationwide poll by The Washington Post, ABC News, and Ipsos found that 8 in 10 Americans opposed the plan to livestream Hasan's state killing, regardless of their views on the death penalty in general or on executing the convicted murderer.
Nearly 70% of people who supported the execution said it should not be livestreamed. The plan was strongly opposed across the political spectrum, with 91% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 64% of Republicans disapproving of the proposal—aggressively pushed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—to make the killing viewable to anyone.
Among Republicans who identified themselves as part of Trump's far-right MAGA movement, 55% said they opposed the livestream plan.
Men who were identified as MAGA were the only group in which a majority supported the livestream; 57% said they approved of it.
Hegseth said last week that the execution would be streamed “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” Trump expressed strong approval of the plan, while Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, tepidly attempted to distance himself from it, saying he would not personally watch the execution. A number of Republicans in Congress spoke out against the plan.
While Hegseth defended the plan as one that was aimed at deterring violent crimes like the Fort Hood killing, fascism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat said a livestreamed execution could only be "an attempt to normalize extreme violence, ritualize violence, militarize the country, and make violence entertaining so when they ask you to commit violence in their name, you will be ready."
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed horror at the proposal, saying it "would breach the absolute prohibition of torture," and Amnesty International called it "barbaric and deeply shocking."
In the Post/ABC/Ipsos poll released Thursday, one independent in Minnesota, Lawrence Sagstetter, said the livestream would be "going too far."
“It’s just going to cause more of an uproar, not only nationally but internationally," he said.
A Republican from New York, Bruce Gonka, said Hegseth's plan was "all for shock, and we don’t need that. We’re better than that."
Oct 15, 2026
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70+ House Democrats Demand Pentagon Answer for Iran Wedding Massacre
More than 70 House Democrats on Tuesday sought answers and accountability from the Pentagon regarding a likely US strike on a September wedding gathering in southern Iran that killed five civilians—all women and children—and wounded over 70 others.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Reps. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) led 74 lawmakers in demanding an explanation for the September 1 bombing in Kuhestak and details of what the Trump administration is doing to protect Iranian civilians.
“We demand urgent answers regarding the United States’ role in this strike, why the strike proceeded given the clear risk of significant civilian harm, and what steps the [US Department of Defense] is taking to prevent further civilian casualties in Iran,” the lawmakers wrote.
The strike occurred at approximately 9:30 pm local time while preparations were underway for the wedding of the daughter of a local fisher.
According to witnesses interviewed by The Associated Press, around 150 women and children were gathered at the Mallahi family compound. The celebration was following a regional tradition in which women and men gather separately. The bride and groom had not yet arrived, and the main celebration had not begun. A bomb struck the room where dinner would have been served.
Four initial fatalities—two women and two children—were identified by Iranian authorities and human rights groups: 50-year-old Zarkhatoun Taheri, 43-year-old Kolsoum Malahi Najandnia, 16-year-old Mohammad Mallahi, and 4-year-old Amir Mohammad Karimi. A fifth victim, 22-year-old woman Asiyeh Molainejad, died in a hospital on September 3.
Weapons experts concluded the blast was likely caused by a direct hit from a US munition. The Pentagon has not publicly accepted responsibility for the strike, which remains under investigation.
"This incident is regrettably among the latest in a string of civilian casualty incidents arising from the US-led war in Iran," the lawmakers wrote in their letter. "This includes a strike at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran, on the first day of the war that killed a reported 175 civilians, including 120 children."
The United Nations' Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said it found “reasonable grounds" to believe that the Minab school strike constituted a war crime.
"While it has been reported that a preliminary investigation by the department found that the US military was responsible for the strike, over six months later the department has still not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the strike nor released the findings of its investigation," the lawmakers' letter notes.
"Similarly, reporting and independent analysis indicate that US forces were responsible for a strike at a youth sports hall in Lamerd, Iran, that killed 21 civilians, including 7 children, on February 28. While the department has denied responsibility, analysis by weapons experts found that the damage pattern is consistent with that of an American Precision Strike Missile," the lawmakers continued, referring to Lockheed Martin's next-generation surface-to-surface ballistic missile.
Hegseth, who advocates “maximum lethality” for US forces, has expressed disdain for what he called “stupid rules of engagement” designed to minimize civilian harm. He has overseen the dismantling of efforts meant to mitigate wartime harm to civilians—hundreds of thousands of whom have been killed in US-led wars during this century, according to experts.
“Maximum lethality," combined with AI-powered systems allowing for exponentially faster and more numerous target selection, has raised concerns that have been underscored by actions including US-backed Israeli massacres in Gaza and Lebanon, and US airstrikes in Iran, where tens of thousands of people have been killed or wounded during more than seven months of President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice, according to Iranian government figures.
The Washington, DC-based National Iranian American Council (NIAC) welcomed the lawmakers’ intervention, arguing that Iranian civilians must not be treated as expendable casualties of war.
“The lives of Iranian civilians cannot be treated as an acceptable cost of war,” NIAC president Jamal Abdi said in a statement. “These are families, children, and entire communities whose lives have been irreversibly altered by a military campaign that Congress never authorized."
“Credible allegations of unlawful attacks on civilians demand independent investigations, full public disclosure of the findings, and accountability for any violations of international humanitarian law,” Abdi added. “The Trump administration cannot be permitted to wage an unauthorized war in defiance of US and international law while evading responsibility for its devastating human consequences.”
Oct 14, 2026
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‘Deadly Serious’: Half of World’s Reef-Building Coral Face Extinction Threat as Oceans Warm, Study Warns
"Every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid gives corals a better chance," said one of the researchers. "So action now really does count.”
Oct 16, 2026
Nearly half the world's reef-building coral species are at risk of extinction according to a global assessment released Thursday. Researchers warn that the accelerating climate crisis is making the danger even worse than the most recent data shows.
Coral reefs are among the most important ecosystems on Earth, providing food and shelter for around a quarter of all marine species. Their destruction jeopardizes not only entire marine food webs, but also the millions of people who rely on those species for food.
The study, published in the journal Nature, found that as of 2020, about 44% of coral species were threatened, compared with about one-third in 2008.
David Obura, a marine biologist and lead author of the study, said the new assessment "provides the most comprehensive evaluation to date of global extinction risk among reef-building corals, and a stark warning of the accelerating increase in global threats to coral reefs."
But he said it also "highlights the challenges we face in addressing major data and knowledge gaps on the status of species at global scales, at the same time as having to take urgent decisions to reduce the drivers of global declines in critical species and ecosystems.”
The researchers stressed that the data they analyzed understates the danger. The assessment does not take into account the damage from the devastating bleaching event that began in 2023 and lasted until mid-2025. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it was the largest such event ever recorded, exposing about 84% of the world's coral reef area to bleaching-level heat stress and causing widespread coral deaths.
It also doesn't take into account what meteorologists have projected could be the strongest El Niño ever, which could break ocean temperature records in the coming months, likely leading to another massive die-off of corals.
"It is entirely possible that reassessing the status of corals just after this coming El Niño may show them to have crossed the 50% mark of the proportion of species at elevated risk of extinction," Obura told AFP.
He noted that a previous "super" El Niño, in 1997-98, also caused tremendous damage to reefs.
"That this coming event is worse than that, after three intervening global bleaching events, is a terrifying reality," he said.
Researchers extract a fossil coral core sample from a massive coral colony in the Galápagos Islands to reconstruct historical climate and El Niño cycles as part of a study published in Science on August 27, 2026. (Photo by Julia Cole/Science)
In the new assessment, researchers found that human-caused climate change is the primary threat to reef-building coral, determining the fate of about 90% of the species at greatest risk.
They emphasized that coral reef health is more complex than simply "survival" versus "disappearance," and that every reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions matters.
“Coral reefs can feel a world away..." said Françoise Cabada-Blanco, a marine ecologist at the University of Portsmouth and co-author of the study. "But they cover a tiny fraction of the ocean floor, while supporting an enormous share of marine life and the food, coastal protection and livelihoods of millions of people."
"What happens to them affects all of us," she said. "The message from this assessment is that every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid gives corals a better chance—so action now really does count.”
A report published last year concluded that the globe had already passed the 1.2°C warming threshold for widespread coral reef dieback and found that unless global temperatures drop substantially, reefs could largely disappear.
“The crisis facing corals is deadly serious,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If we don’t take swift action to curb climate pollution, we could lose half of them forever.”
“We’ve already seen a lot of disruptions to sea life from the much warmer waters El Niño has brought this year, and I’m really worried about what that will do to threatened coral species," she added. "Coral reefs are the backbone of the ocean, and we can’t have a healthy marine ecosystem without them.”
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Amid GOP Midterm Woes, Trump Allies—Including Convicted Election Denier—Push for Martial Law
The president hasn't exactly assuaged the worries of those who fear he could go to extreme measures to maintain his party's grip on power.
Oct 16, 2026
As President Donald Trump's broken promises to end the affordability crisis and not wage new wars drag Republicans down in the polls ahead of next month's midterm elections, people close to the president are reportedly urging him to declare martial law in the name of preventing voter fraud, an issue that's exceedingly rare and statistically negligible.
Axios' Brittany Gibson reported Friday that Republican activists with Trump's ear are advocating extraordinary measures to prevent what they insist, without evidence, could be a rigged midterm election.
Among them is attorney Peter Ticktin, who has been Trump's friend since high school and who said during a September 30 video call for MAGA election activists that "there would have to be martial law" in the event of "another rigged election."
Ticktin was referring to the 2020 contest, which the Trump administration's own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) called "the most secure in American history."
Trump's "Big Lie" that Democrats stole the election fueled the deadly January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.
Pressed on the matter by Axios, Ticktin doubled down on endorsing extreme measures, saying there will "probably need to be commandeering of ballots and election equipment to make sure that we can get to the bottom of it before anything further occurs."
Ticktin represented former Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted in 2024 of seven felony and misdemeanor counts arising from a plot to illegally access her county's election system in an effort to investigate unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Peters—whose 9-year prison sentence was commuted in May by Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis—was also on the September 30 call. She has been pushing for the replacement of electronic voting systems with hand-marked paper ballots tallied by manual recounts.
This, despite the Trump-era CISA saying after the 2020 election that "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."
Trump fired CISA Director Christopher Krebs after he repeatedly defended the integrity of the election in the face of mounting MAGA misinformation in the weeks before the Capitol attack.
According to a report published Tuesday by Votebeat, Peters has said she traveled to Washington seven times and met with senior officials at the Justice and Commerce departments. She and Ticktin also visited Trump at the White House in June, and Peters met with the president again this month.
Also on the September 20 video call was Cleta Mitchell, who participated in Trump's infamous January 2021 phone call in which the president pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Mitchell now heads the right-wing Election Integrity Network and is pushing the administration to use federal authority to force changes to election procedures.
“I can call the president anytime I want to—and I have,” said Mitchell, who declined to say when she last spoke to Trump. “I told the president this: I wish that the people in your administration knew or cared as much about election integrity as you do.”
Other election deniers, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, have called on Trump to issue a national emergency declaration to ban voting machines or even suspend the election—something most legal experts say he cannot do.
"Emergency powers are not just a blank check for the president to go do whatever they want," Derek Tisler, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice's elections and government program, told Axios. "The president still has to act within the Constitution and within statutes set by Congress."
Election fraud is an exceptionally rare occurrence. A Brennan Center study of voter fraud research found that studies put the incidence of voter impersonation fraud at between 0.0003% and 0.0025%, while a Washington Post analysis cited by the center found just 31 credible instances of voter impersonation fraud out of more than 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014.
While isolated instances of election fraud do occur, researchers have repeatedly found that they are nowhere near the scale required to alter the outcome of a national election. Many allegations turn out to be administrative errors, mistaken records, or unsubstantiated claims.
There is also no credible evidence that foreign-manufactured voting machine components have been used to orchestrate the sort of nationwide electoral conspiracy described by Ticktin and other MAGA allies.
Calls for extraordinary election interventions come as Trump and Republicans face deep voter dissatisfaction. A Financial Times–Focaldata poll published earlier this week found Trump's overall approval rating at 34%, with only 25% of registered voters approving of his handling of the economy and roughly 20% approving of his management of inflation.
The president's economic woes have been compounded by the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran, which has driven up consumer costs—especially for fuel—amid an ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
According to Reuters, consumer prices rose 3.7% this year through September, while gasoline prices jumped 9.1% in a single month. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 78% of Americans blamed Trump's policies for inflation.
All of this has Republicans increasingly concerned about losing control of Congress.
Citing its own polling, Fox News reported Wednesday that "if the election were today, 54% of voters say they would back the Democratic candidate in their House district and 45% would support the Republican. That is outside the margin of error and is a wider lead than last month, when Democrats were ahead by 51%-44%."
All of this has left numerous election experts worried that the president could resort to extreme measures. He hasn't exactly assuaged their concerns.
In an August interview, conservative broadcaster Wayne Allyn Root on Real America's Voice asked Trump about declaring a national security emergency ahead of the midterms.
"Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?" Trump replied. "I'll leave it at that."
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'What Meta's Money Is Buying': DOJ Halts Probe of Facebook Owner That Has Given Trump Millions
Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's company was facing a criminal investigation for allegedly enabling and profiting from the sale of illegal drugs on its platforms.
Oct 16, 2026
Top officials at the US Department of Justice have reportedly halted a years-long criminal investigation into Facebook parent company Meta for allegedly facilitating—and profiting from—the illegal sale of drugs on its platforms, including to children.
Bloomberg Law reported Thursday that "senior leaders" at the Justice Department "ordered career prosecutors in the Western District of Virginia to cease the criminal investigation following advocacy from Meta‘s legal team." Meta is headed by Mark Zuckerberg, a billionaire who has worked to ingratiate himself with President Donald Trump by helping to bankroll his inauguration and ballroom project.
"This is what Meta's money is buying," Kyle Jacobs-Morse, deputy executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, wrote in response to reports of the halted probe.
The existence of the Meta investigation was first revealed in March 2024 by The Wall Street Journal, which reported at the time that US prosecutors were "sending subpoenas and asking questions as part of a criminal grand jury probe looking into whether the company’s social-media platforms are facilitating and profiting from the illegal sale of drugs."
According to Bloomberg Law, DOJ leaders' decision to sideline the probe came "just after company executives were subpoenaed to testify."
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh "are considering a civil resolution with a fine or a non-prosecution agreement," Bloomberg Law reported.
"Such a deal would allow the social media giant to avoid charges for its role in creating a market for youth to purchase deadly fentanyl pills and other addictive drugs," the outlet added.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the investigation but boasted in a statement to Bloomberg Law that the Trump DOJ has "ended the Biden-era days of aggressively and indiscriminately targeting corporations and businesses."
"Instead, we are focused on following the facts and the law to surgically address corporate wrongdoing," the spokesperson said.
Shelby Knox, tech campaign director with the advocacy group ParentsTogether Action, said in a statement Friday that "when the Justice Department says it wants to ‘surgically address corporate wrongdoing,’ a grand jury investigation into potential drug sales to children should be exactly the kind of case it pursues."
"A criminal investigation does not automatically establish guilt, but prosecutors must be allowed to follow the evidence without political interference," Knox added. "Meta is worth more than a trillion dollars; a fine alone is not meaningful accountability. If the evidence supports charges, file them. If it doesn’t, explain why. Children and families deserve more than apologies or a financial settlement. They deserve the truth, meaningful protections, and accountability under the law."
The Justice Department's reported decision to halt the Meta probe fits a broader pattern of lax corporate enforcement during Trump's second White House term.
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen released a report earlier this month showing that the administration has cancelled hundreds of enforcement actions involving more than 200 corporations—many of which have donated to Trump's projects.
Rick Claypool, a research director at Public Citizen, wrote on Friday that Meta is "just one of the 200+ corporations benefiting from Trump's enforcement retreat."
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Ahead of Biodiversity Summit, UN Chief Warns Countries Are 'Subsidizing Suicide' by Backing Fossil Fuels
"I urge governments everywhere to end these handouts once and for all, and to use the savings for people and planet instead," said António Guterres.
Oct 16, 2026
"The food we eat, the water we drink, the very air we breathe—all are the gifts of biodiversity. Yet every day, humankind saws another branch off the tree of life," outgoing United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declared Friday, before a key global summit in Armenia.
"Climate chaos. Invasive species. Overgrazing and overfishing. Excessive fertilizers, pesticides, plastics, and heavy metals. All these and more are driving the triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate chaos," he warned. "Over 1 million species now face the risk of extinction, edging us ever closer towards an uninhabitable world."
Guterres advocated for both government and financial leadership, calling out funding for "agribusiness that strips the land" as well as the leading driver of the worsening climate emergency: fossil fuels. According to him, "Subsidizing fossil fuels is subsidizing suicide."
"They are boiling our planet, and are the scourge of biodiversity," said the secretary-general—who has often argued for not only phasing out fossil fuels but also making polluters pay for their damage. "I urge governments everywhere to end these handouts once and for all, and to use the savings for people and planet instead."
Four years ago, at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, world leaders agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—which critics called "weak" and "an open invitation to greenwash." With COP17 kicking off in the Armenian capital on Monday, the UN chief said that "Yerevan is our moment of accountability."
The "good news" is that the framework "has inspired action across the globe," with nearly 90% of parties to the convention establishing national biodiversity targets, Guterres said. The "bad news" is that "progress is uneven, and far too slow. Even if current national commitments are met, only 26% of terrestrial, and 12% of marine ecosystems would be protected by 2030."
"That is well short of the promise made in Montreal to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030. Major gaps also remain in targets linked to economic systems, including those focused on reducing harmful incentives," he noted. "And many of the critical elements of progress—including finance, capacity, cooperation and data—are still largely missing in action."
The figures come from the United Nations Environment Program's "State of Biodiversity Action" report, released in preparation for next week's conference. That followed the September publication of the UNEP's "Limiting Overshoot" report, which warns that the world will at least temporarily surpass the Paris Agreement's temperature target for this century: 1.5°C beyond preindustrial levels.
In response to the overshoot report, Stephanie Roe, global climate and energy lead scientist at the international nonprofit WWF, said last month that "overshooting 1.5°C is not a cliff edge, but neither is it harmless. Every fraction of a degree of warming increases risks for people and nature, while every fraction avoided reduces harm."
"What matters now is how far temperatures rise above 1.5°C and how long they stay there," Roe continued. "The science shows that lower and shorter overshoot means fewer impacts on ecosystems, communities, and economies. Limiting peak warming and returning temperatures to safer levels as quickly as possible can help reduce risks, avoid irreversible losses, and improve resilience for the future."
Roe's organization has also released a series of relevant reports in the weeks before the summit, including a Wednesday analysis it commissioned from the Global Cooperation Institute that lays out "major barriers countries face in delivering the Global Biodiversity Framework and what could help unblock it," and urges "decisive action in Yerevan."
WWF International director general Kirsten Schuijt said that that "COP17 must move countries towards action and implementation. The benefits of collective action for nature are clear: stronger ecological resilience, more secure food and water systems, and reduced economic vulnerability. WWF's latest 'Living Planet Report' shows that nature can recover when the right actions are taken."
Released last month, that report found a 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations over a 52-year period—with an 85% decline in freshwater ecosystems, followed by 69% in terrestrial, and 59% in marine.
"Lasting progress," said Schuijt, "depends on transforming the systems driving nature loss and shifting decision-making from short-term fixes to long-term solutions. For COP17, this requires governments, businesses, Indigenous peoples, local communities, women, youth, and wider society to all participate actively in decision-making that moves agreements into urgent implementation, to shape and deliver nature-positive solutions."
The political declaration released Friday by heads of state in Yerevan for a leaders' summit preceding the conference already has some advocates, like WWF International president Adil Najam, issuing warnings. Najam explained from the Armenian capital that "leaders came together to discuss the promise made in Montreal in 2022 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The declaration acknowledges that progress is insufficient and that implementation must accelerate. It also recognizes that our economies, communities, and peace depend on nature. But recognition alone will not fulfill that promise."
"The declaration lacks explicit commitments to align economic and financial decisions with nature goals, including reforming subsidies that harm nature," he said. "Governments must make these choices if they are serious about delivering on their commitments. At COP17, they must turn the global review into clear implementation pathways backed by finance on the scale needed. The declaration signals a commitment to action across government; the real test is whether it changes decisions back home."
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Trump Rule Change Allows for ‘Unintentional’ Killing of Polar Bears by Fossil Fuel Companies
The US Fish and Wildlife Service finalized the polar bear-killing rule despite a near universal negative reception from more than 85,000 public comments.
Oct 16, 2026
Oil and gas companies will now be permitted to kill polar bears and Pacific walruses off the northern coast of Alaska so long as such killings are "unintentional," according to a new Trump administration rule.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on Friday finalized a rule change that would shield fossil fuel companies from legal liability if they engage in the "incidental, unintentional" killing of the animals "during year-round oil and gas industry activities in the Beaufort Sea... and adjacent northern coast of Alaska."
Under the rule change, which is scheduled to last through 2031, the FWS "will issue letters of authorization" that sign off on the incidental killing of wildlife upon request by oil and gas companies.
As noted by a report in Bloomberg Law, the proposed rule change "drew more than 85,500 public comments, nearly all in opposition," before the FWS ultimately signed off on it.
The rule change was a major priority for the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, which represents fossil fuel giants and requested the revision in September 2025.
Allowing for the incidental killing of polar bears isn't the only controversial rollback of environmental regulations made by the Trump administration in recent weeks.
In September, The New York Times reported that FWS had gutted a key provision in the Endangered Species Act by arguing that only the intentional killing or wounding of protected species counts as illegal "harm."
Last week, it was revealed that the US Department of the Interior is moving ahead with a plan to let fossil fuel companies conduct specific wintertime operations at the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska without undergoing reviews mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act.
Even though the Trump administration has prioritized the development of domestic fossil fuel production by gutting environmental standards, these policies have not translated into the promised cheaper oil and gas prices, which have spiked over the last half year thanks to the president's illegal war with Iran.
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Brewers Playoff Hero Jake Bauers Makes Accidental Case for Medicare for All
"If even a professional athlete is saying this, maybe healthcare should just be universal and free."
Oct 16, 2026
First baseman Jake Bauers of the Milwaukee Brewers helped his team end a 44-year drought Thursday night as they won the National League Championship Series to place them in the World Series, but in the process he kicked off a discussion—whether intentionally or not—about the role of employer-based health insurance that undergirds the for-profit system in the US.
While generating headlines throughout the pennant race due to his outstanding hitting and field play, Bauers journey to the top of Major League Baseball has Cinderella elements. Just two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Bauers was ready to retire from the sport's highest level.
"He had been playing professional baseball since he was just 17, spending more than a decade bouncing across seven different organizations with little success," the paper reported. "After batting .199 for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2024, he was frustrated, burned out, and ready to move on.”
Life outside baseball intervened, but in a way familiar to millions of American families, not just pro athletes who can earn millions in lucrative contracts and endorsement deals.
“Bauers’ wife, Lauren, learned she was pregnant with the couple’s second child," the WSJ explained. "Suddenly, Jake’s plan to become a stay-at-home dad while Lauren returned to her teaching job no longer seemed viable. They needed health insurance—so Bauers begrudgingly decided to give his floundering athletic career one last chance."
After beating the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday and taking a 3-0 series lead that his team would ultimately clean-sweep the following night, Bauers brought up that decision about his second child and his family's healthcare needs in a post-game interview.
Hahaha! What an awesome country! https://t.co/IYJmu5ZP0y
— Darkwoke Duck (@DylanTweetin) October 15, 2026
While the group of sportscasters conducting the interview laughed at the explanation, others who witnessed it recognized something more profound in what he described.
"If even a professional athlete is saying this, maybe healthcare should just be universal and free," said Luke Savage, a columnist for the left-wing magazine Jacobin.
In a subsequent Substack post published Thursday, Savage expanded on his thoughts about Bauer's situation, writing:
This obviously doesn’t rank anywhere near the top when it comes to horror stories about America’s healthcare system, but I still can’t get over how completely insane it is to hear. This is an elite professional athlete talking! And it’s the guaranteed outcome of a system that links health insurance so tightly to employment. In this case, that meant that a young couple’s desire to start a family was conditional on [squints] the ability of one partner to secure a contract with a professional baseball team (and, to a lesser extent, be good enough at the sport to work his way back up from the minors).
There are only so many ways to repeat the obvious here, but tying health insurance to employment is a Dickensian horror show. It gives employers tremendous power over their workers and forces people to stay in jobs they hate or want to leave. The same is true of private health care in general. It devastates families, burdens them with crippling medical debt, and limits their ability to have children. It stops them from seeking treatment when they’re sick and makes going to the hospital an economic decision. Even among those who can afford insurance, it creates different tiers of care and inevitably means that rich people get it faster and at higher quality — which is just another way of saying the American healthcare system ascribes your life greater or lesser moral weight depending on your bank balance.
Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive turned whistleblower who now leads the nonprofit Center for Health & Democracy, agreed that Bauers, though his status as a professional athlete makes his situation seem exceptional, is incredibly normal within the nation's broken healthcare system.
"Sometimes it takes a high-profile sports figure or celebrity to help Americans understand how absurd and unfair our healthcare system is," Potter explained to Common Dreams. "If Jake Bauers did everything he could to stay in baseball primarily because he and his wife were terrified of losing health insurance that was tied to his job, imagine how many other Americans stay in jobs they would leave if it weren’t for their employer-sponsored coverage."
While Bauers may have been lucky to stay in the major leagues, said Potter, and even luckier to help his team make it to the World Series, the reality is that he—like millions of American workers—could have potentially been cut at any time, losing his job and his access to the health coverage he received through his employer.
"Millions of Americans are not so lucky. Many get laid off or have their jobs eliminated," Potter continued. "They lose not only their jobs but their family’s health insurance. No other developed country has a system that locks citizens into a job they’d like to leave or are scared to lose. I wish more prominent people in sports and entertainment would speak up as Bauer did about how vulnerable so many of us are to losing both our jobs and our health insurance."
"The reality," said Potter on Friday, "is that almost all Americans who are not covered by traditional Medicare are in danger of losing our health benefits and access to care because of a layoff or cuts to Medicaid that force millions into the ranks of the uninsured."
In 2019, a Business Insider poll showed that most Americans with employer-sponsored health coverage support switching to Medicare for All, undermining the often-repeated right-wing narrative that US workers are wedded to the for-profit insurance plans they receive.
As Common Dreams reported at the time, the survey found that 59% of respondents with employer-provided insurance “said they would support switching their employer-based health insurance to a government plan under Medicare for All” as long as coverage quality was maintained or improved.
In a post on his Health Care Un-Covered blog last month, Potter detailed how nearly 40% of Americans admit they’ve stayed in a job longer than they wanted because they or a family member needed the health coverage that came with it. The term for this dynamic is called "job lock," he notes. And nothing about this "is new to anyone who’s been paying attention," he writes. "What’s changed is how much sharper and more current the evidence has gotten" in recent years.
While Bauer's story about healthcare isn't political or partisan, the scale of the employer-based system in the US is deeply tied to the anxieties individuals and families experience. With Republicans actively undermining and attacking the floundering system that already exists, Savage in his column bemoans leaders from both parties who fail to embrace what has long been recognized by experts and progressives as the only viable solution to the crises: a universal, single-payer model best expressed by the Medicare for All legislation put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the US Senate and Rep. Pramila Jayapal and others in the US House.
Exasperated by a political system that has denied US workers and families better healthcare, Savage asks, "What does one even say at this point?"
He said the so-called "debate" over the healthcare system in the US "is nothing of the kind."
"The leadership of both major parties oppose healthcare that’s free, universal, and public because they’re as addicted to dead market dogmas as they are to donations from a powerful industry," he writes. "The dumbest people alive will tell you that healthcare is best delivered by the marketplace and that the ability to purchase it as a commodity like any other is, in fact, the essence of freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth."
In his column from last month, Potter notes that critics of the employer-based system have long existed on the ideological right and left and argues that as long as health coverage remains "tethered to a single employer, job lock isn’t a glitch in the system," but rather "the system working as designed."
"The fact that people across the political spectrum have recognized that for decades," he concludes, "is exactly why it’s worth pressing the case again now."
Go Brewers!
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Israeli Settlers Brutally Beat Washington Post Journalist Heidi Levine While Attacking Palestinian Olive Farmers
“Unfortunately, I know very well that none of them will be prosecuted for what they have done and continue to do,” she said.
Oct 16, 2026
A gang of masked Israeli settlers brutalized a Washington Post journalist on Friday while they attacked Palestinian olive farmers and set fire to their grove in the occupied West Bank—the latest in an escalating series of state-backed terrorist attacks amid the Palestinian olive-growing season.
Roughly 80 masked men from a nearby hilltop settlement descended upon an olive grove near the village of Abu Falah, north of Ramallah. Video shows them hurling rocks and torching olive trees as Palestinian families fled downhill.
Gunfire could be heard, and at least two Palestinian men were reportedly wounded in the attack. Four more were reportedly hurt in separate attacks nearby.
Documenting the attack was 63-year-old Heidi Levine, an award-winning American photojournalist with the Post who has more than four decades of experience covering wars around the world.
Amid the rampage, Levine—clad in a helmet and a vest with a bright blue "PRESS" marker—was knocked to the dirt by a group of masked settlers, according to video posted by the American journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who was on the scene.
Another video shared by Israeli activist and journalist Andrey Khrzhanovskiy shows one of the settlers repeatedly beating Levine with a long stick while she lies on the ground defenseless. Levine later said she was kicked approximately 50 times and that the attackers took all of her recording equipment and other electronic devices.
Palestinian men reportedly threw stones to ward off the attackers, allowing other journalists to reach Levine.
A video shows Nathaniel, Khrzhanovskiy, and others rushing to a bloodied Levine and helping her to her feet. "They took everything," she said. "They took all my stuff." More Israeli settlers hurled rocks at them as they fled the scene.
Levine was taken to a hospital in Ramallah after Palestinian colleagues helped her get an ambulance. From her hospital bed, she spoke about the attack.
"My son Michael has always told me that his biggest fear would be that his mother would be killed by the settlers," Levine said, noting that she'd covered the Israel-Palestine conflict for more than three decades and also been attacked 15 years ago.
"I was attacked, pushed to the ground," she said. "Luckily I had my flak jacket and helmet; otherwise I probably wouldn’t even be here, because they just kept kicking me and kicking me."
Levine, who is Jewish by birth, described the attackers as "Jewish terrorists" who "are giving everyone in the country a horrible reputation."
"I don't know how a parent could raise such monsters," she said.
"While we are relieved that Heidi has received medical care and is safe," said Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray in a statement Friday morning, "we are outraged by this unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job and urge a thorough investigation and follow-through from authorities.”
Levine, however, said she was confident that her attackers would never face justice. "Sadly, none of them will be prosecuted," she told reporters. "I am sure of it.”
Particularly in recent years, under a far-right government that has accelerated the expansion of illegal settlements, settlers almost never face legal consequences for violent attacks.
A Guardian investigation found that from 2020 to 2025, more than 96% of police investigations into settler violence concluded without indictments, and only 2% resulted in convictions. Since 2020, despite dozens of fatal attacks, only one Israeli has been charged with killing a Palestinian in the West Bank.
"This violence does not happen in a vacuum. Israel enables it."
Lt. Col. Ariella Mazor, chief international spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, told the Post that the incident is under investigation by the IDF and claimed the military had sent battalions to the West Bank to contain the outbreak of violence.
However, according to eyewitnesses, the Israeli military itself was reportedly involved in the attack on the village, firing tear gas at the Palestinians. Soldiers reportedly drove military jeeps through the olive groves and stood beside settlers rather than dispersing them.
Israeli activist Oren Ziv told the Post, “The army did nothing to stop the settlers."
This has been the case in many of the more than 1,600 documented attacks that have occurred over the first eight months of the year—during which at least 23 Palestinians were killed and over 1,100 injured, according to the United Nations.
Israeli army soldiers stand behind a masked man swinging a slingshot while hurling stones at Palestinians who had gathered for the annual olive harvest season, during an attack by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian village of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on October 10, 2025. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)
Investigations by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented soldiers standing by as settlers attack Palestinians and destroy their property, shielding settlers from Palestinians attempting to defend themselves, and sometimes directly participating in attacks. Israeli authorities have also armed thousands of settlers and incorporated many into military units.
Israel's Foreign Press Association, which independently provided video of settlers brutalizing Levine, said it had repeatedly warned Israeli authorities about threats to foreign journalists working in the West Bank. "Our repeated calls for action to confront this lawlessness have been ignored," the group said.
"You can see the settlers who attacked Heidi Levine," said Breaking the Silence, a human rights group led by Israeli veterans. "But what you can’t see is the state behind them: a state that funds them, arms them, and, above all, grants them near-total impunity for their actions. This violence does not happen in a vacuum. Israel enables it."
At least nine Americans have been killed by Israeli settlers or security forces in the West Bank since January 2022, while numerous others have been injured—including journalists, human rights activists, and Palestinian Americans visiting family.
Members of Congress have requested information from the State Department about Israeli settler attacks on Americans, but have found themselves stonewalled by Trump administration officials.
Neri Zilber, a journalist and adviser to the US-based Israel Policy Forum, noted the lack of response from American institutions to the surge of settler terrorism.
"This happens every day in the West Bank. Every single day," he wrote on social media. "Palestinians attacked, journalists attacked, Israeli and foreign observers attacked. When is the IDF going to start taking this seriously? And where is the US Embassy and Trump administration?"
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'Outrageous': Trump Loaded Up on Big Pharma Stocks While Jacking Up Drug Costs
"Trump and congressional Republicans intentionally force seniors to pay more for cancer treatment so that Big Pharma can rake in more money that Trump can personally profit from."
Oct 16, 2026
An analysis released Friday by Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee details how US President Donald Trump loaded up on shares of major pharmaceutical companies last year as his administration and Republican allies enacted policies that benefited the industry—at the expense seniors and other patients.
The JEC analysis estimates that Trump increased his stock holdings in the pharmaceutical sector from $1.7 million in 2024 to as much as $56.2 million last year. The committee notes that Trump, who has repeatedly promised to cut drug prices while implementing policies that raised them, "held as much as $39.1 million in stock in the same Big Pharma companies that directly benefited" from a budget package that the president signed into law last summer.
“Trump and congressional Republicans intentionally force seniors to pay more for cancer treatment so that Big Pharma can rake in more money that Trump can personally profit from," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC's ranking member. "It’s outrageous and yet typical from this president, who makes the American people foot the bill again and again for his own gains."
Tucked in the Trump-GOP budget law was a provision exempting some widely used, high-priced prescription drugs from Medicare price negotiations. Merck's cancer medication Keytruda was one of the drugs temporarily shielded by the provision; Merck appears more than 60 times in the president's 2025 financial disclosure.
The JEC analysis notes that "in 2025, Merck reported $18.8 billion in US revenues for Keytruda, which helped the company net $22.5 billion in profits that year, a 16% increase compared to 2024."
The president also made big purchases of stock in Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, Pfizer, and Amgen last year. The JEC found that each of those companies "had at least one drug that benefited from the carveouts" in the Trump-GOP budget law.
Additionally, the Trump administration has entered friendly agreements with pharmaceutical companies in which the president is invested, including Pfizer and Eli Lilly.
“Trump’s drug pricing deals are a mirage, designed to convince Americans that he’s taken significant action on drug pricing while creating minimal if any downside for Big Pharma,” Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said last month after his organization obtained heavily redacted texts of the agreements.
"The texts show Trump handing out favors to Big Pharma, undercutting his own models to lower prices, and throwing the support of the US government behind corporate decisions to deny medicines entirely to other countries," said Maybarduk.
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‘Billionaires Aren’t Compatible With Democracy’: Elon Musk Tries to Boost Ken Paxton With $158 Million Donation
"How does democracy function when one person can donate $150 million for one Senate race?" said one observer.
Oct 16, 2026
The world's richest man is spending an unprecedented sum of money to help Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton win a crucial US Senate race, according to Federal Election Commission filings disclosed Thursday.
As reported by the Texas Tribune, the filings show SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in September gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the largest super PAC dedicated to defending Republicans' majority in the US Senate.
While the donation to SLF theoretically could have been directed toward any GOP Senate candidate, filings show the super PAC immediately plugged the Musk money into an entity called Texas PAC, which took to the air with advertisements praising Paxton and attacking Democratic rival James Talarico.
"Musk’s donations armed Senate Republicans to take over the airwaves in Texas," the Texas Tribune noted. "Using Texas PAC as the vessel to book airtime, SLF has thus far spent over $159 million on TV, radio, and digital advertising, double the outlay from Talarico’s campaign, according to media tracking firm AdImpact."
Polls have consistently shown Paxton trailing Talarico, whose campaign has raised an estimated $134.3 million from 1.3 million individual donors, 97% of whom donated $100 or less to the Texas Democrat.
This means that, in just one month, Musk singlehandedly gave Paxton more money than Talarico's campaign has raised since its inception in September 2025.
The sheer scale of Musk's contributions stunned Punchbowl News co-founder John Bresnahan.
"How does democracy function when one person can donate $150 million for one Senate race?" Bresnahan asked in a Thursday social media post. "In a state where one of his companies has major facilities?"
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, indirectly answered Bresnahan's question by opining that Musk's attempt to buy an election shows "billionaires aren’t compatible with democracy."
Author EW Niedermeyer, a longtime critic of Musk, speculated that the billionaire moved his companies' operations from California to Texas so that he could "buy people like Ken Paxton wholesale."
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse argued that Talarico's campaign could turn Musk's massive intervention in the Senate race into an advantage.
"I'm begging James Talarico to run against Musk," Kruse wrote. "He's an unpopular and creepy white nationalist asshole billionaire whose approval rating in most polls is 20 points underwater. You can mock Paxton for needing to be bailed out and mock the puppet master pulling his strings."
Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, pointed to the stark contrast in how the Talarico and Paxton campaigns are being funded.
"It’s corrupt Ken Paxton and his sugar daddy oligarch Elon Musk versus Talarico and tens of thousands of people giving $10 to $100," Filipkowski wrote. "Choose your brand of democracy."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, said the Musk donation shows a desperate need to completely overhaul the US campaign finance system.
"The current state of our campaign finance system allows one billionaire to supply the overwhelming share of a major party’s political funding," Gilbert said. "This is undemocratic and flat-out wrong. America should be a nation where the voices of regular people are heard just as loudly as the ultrawealthy."
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Secret and 'Illegal' Trump Plan to Spin Off Federal Student Aid Office Sparks Outrage
"This intentional sabotage only threatens to create true financial chaos in people’s lives," said Sen. Patty Murray.
Oct 16, 2026
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to remove the Federal Student Aid office from the Department of Education and establish a new independent agency tasked with managing roughly $1.6 trillion in debt owed by more than 40 million borrowers.
The plan, first reported by The Washington Sun on Thursday, comes as President Donald Trump works to illegally dismantle the Education Department without congressional authorization and assails student aid programs. Legally spinning off the Federal Student Aid office—the largest segment of the Education Department—would require an act of Congress, something that administration officials have "acknowledged internally," according to the Sun.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, expressed outrage over the administration's reported plan, noting that the Trump administration has already gutted the student aid office's staff.
"Tens of millions of Americans are depending on government to actually work here," Murray said in a statement. "This intentional sabotage only threatens to create true financial chaos in people’s lives."
“Every family filling out the FAFSA, every student counting on a Pell Grant, and every borrower trying to make a student loan payment will pay for Trump’s idiotic obsession with abolishing the Department of Education," Murray added. "Americans do not support abolishing the Department of Education—they just want a financial aid system that works. I will keep fighting to block this illegal move every way I can, and it is past time for Republicans to join Democrats and put an end to this nonsense.”
The Sun's reporting marks the latest evidence that the Trump administration is working to follow through on the president's campaign promise to abolish the Department of Education, which is currently led by billionaire Linda McMahon. Over the summer, as Common Dreams reported, the Trump administration placed the department's work defending civil rights and students with disabilities under the authority of other federal agencies.
According to the Sun, Education Department officials are privately "concerned that the Trump administration is rushing" the Federal Student Aid spinoff "without considering the consequences to families and colleges around the country."
"The department’s senior leaders have told staff that student financial aid can be managed more effectively as an independent agency, but current and former officials said the department is taking a chaotic approach that is setting it up for failure," the Sun reported. "Details of the latest potential offloading remain scant, said one official involved in the planning."
The unnamed official told the outlet that the office "does not know how to be independent" because it depends on the Education Department for many of its functions.
Mike Pierce, executive director of the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Thursday that "the secret plan to eject FSA from the Education Department shows, yet again, that McMahon and Trump care more about pandering to their anti-government base than keeping their promise to tens of millions of Americans who cannot keep up with their bills."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that "millions of teachers, nurses, and other public service workers are being buried by rising costs, including out-of-control student loan payments that are a direct result of President Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and Secretary McMahon’s callous mismanagement of the student debt portfolio."
“We had to sue McMahon once to force her to follow the law and respect borrowers’ rights to lower student loan payments, and this reorganization won't solve the issue—it will only make things worse," said Weingarten. "As voters head to the polls, they should remember that Trump and McMahon pretending to shrink the Department of Education—while in practice throttling its core functions in reams of red tape—is not doing anything to shrink working families’ bills.”
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