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Here We Remain: A World That Abides Slaughter
Atop all the others inflicted on us came last week's sickening spectacle of two vengeful, lying, broken old men - one a longtime killer of children, one a petty useful idiot abetting him - alternately celebrating and threatening genocide before "we the peoples of the United Nations." Born of :"the defiance of hope" to enable us to "live together in peace," the forum now hosts the perpetrators of unspeakable atrocities. Omar El Akkad: "One day everyone will have always been against this."
Even before war criminals spoke at the U.N., everyone was already against everything Trump's done, from his insane, drone-packed arch to the other $1.8 billion vanity projects to his latest tantrum over bad press. Despite multiple court rulings against it, the ensuing press ban is still partly, messily in place, with CNN, MS NOW and Politico facing dubious access, other major media finally finding their spine and solidarity, and the havoc offering us the droll sight of a needy guy who never met a camera he didn’t like in one farcical silent movie, a “shrinking figure gesticulating wildly into the wind.” The attention whore has tried to compensate with wildly weird and illegal PR stunts: Claiming an entire hemisphere, boasting, "Only Trump" and an ad pleading "Love Me" on the taxpayer dime in "an astonishing misuse of public resources more fitting for North Korea."
The final own goal of his attack on the press, teased by a frantic promo, was the launch of Trump TV: The Essentials Station, the White House YouTube channel recast as a 24/7 livestream of Trump's "greatest hits." Cue aJuly speech at Mt. Rushmore about "the communist menace," last year's speech at dinner with King Charles, a 2016 speech in Kentucky recalling the wet stairs he overcame. YouTube's real-time data let the "king of ratings" see it quickly crash and burn, from a paltry 8,000 viewers to half that to 1,000 to 704 as J.D. announced stripping health care from 760,000 people, way below the 2,000-plus watching birds snack on seeds and nuts. Many relished the flop - "Fascism is awesome!" - or suggested new slots: "Wake Up & Rage Tweet, Ketchup-Throwing, They’re Eating our Pets, The Great MAGA Crypto Scam, Wheel of Pardons" and, from 2:01 to 2:02 a.m., “Covfefe.”
Then came a clumsy, swooning welcome - "the deference was deafening" - for his strongman soulmate Chinese President Xi Jinping, the world's biggest jailer of journalists and never mind the "communist menace," with its empty pomp, cartoonish tour of a hole-in-the-ground ballroom and million-year helipad - "He has a great interest in granite" - and zero substance. The next day, with his approval rating "somewhere between Ebola and Ed Sheeran," he waddled into the 81st session of the UN General Assembly and threatened one of its130 participants with war crimes, musing, "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic quickly and drive them into hell?" Iran's delegation swiftly walked out. Mehdi Hasan: "For shame. The president of the United States goes to the United Nations and threatens genocide against a member state in front of the world. This is where we’re at."
Slurring, stumbling, wandering at unhinged, racist length - details here - Trump boasted about murdering over 200 people “at war with civilization” in illegal boat strikes, claimed trans people are a national security risk, celebrated (and inflated) the theft of Venezuela’s oil, charged trans people are a national security risk, inanely declaimed “to the (raping and plundering) victor belong the spoils” - become, terrifyingly, "a demagogue who hijacked American democracy...devolving into a mad king before our eyes." The speech, a "sad and dangerous national embarrassment" with its "ridiculous braggadocio, narcissistic puffery, absurd demonstrable lies, open criminality and deranged, murderous threats" landed "with silence inside the hall and a pile of fact checks outside it, (the) death rattle of a rapist president and what’s left of America’s reputation on the world stage."
Then world leaders "went back to making plans that don't include the United States." Or, in the case of Denmark, trolling. Trump has created a fictional backstory for a "deal" on Greenland "long in the making - you could go back many, many decades, probably centuries" - that just repackages an existing 1951 deal; ahead of meeting held later at the U.N., officials played the Sondheim song Send In The Clowns. At this point, writes Paul Krugman, it's "Underwear on the Outside” time, a callback to Woody Allen's 1971 film Bananas about a third-world nation's absurd strongman. Coverage of the U.N. focused on Trump's rabid rejection of global cooperation or the fact almost everything he said was a lie. The bigger story: "The leader of what used to be the world’s most powerful nation, now collapsing before our eyes, has clearly, undeniably lost his mind."
Other speakers tried to steer the conversation back to reality. Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the primacy of international law, especially in Palestine, calling the birth of the U.N. "an act of defiance (by) people who refuse to surrender the future to fear...who know our futures are bound together." But with accountability: The U.N. deems Gaza "a collective crime," a "live-streamed atrocity...sustained by the complicity of influential third states"; their complicity must be confronted for the rule of law to survive. Holding photos of Iranian children killed in U. S. strikes, Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian argued it is Trump who has defied international law, while Iran has remained committed to negotiations. “We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists." He also called for accountability on all sides, asking "why Israel kills, yet Iran is subject to sanction.”
Israel kills. And Benjamin Netanyahu offered a bellicose "potpourri of lies and incitement." In his "furious, ugly and disgraceful" diatribe, he called universal charges of genocide "the biggest lie of the century," summoning the chutzpah to call the carnage in Gaza "the opposite of genocide." Anyone who disagreed, he raved, was "a moral coward" - About half the Assembly, who walked out as Zionist allies chanted “Am Yisrael Chai," "the Nation of Israel lives"; Hundreds of protesters outside, with about 100 arrested; including Brooklyn Council Member Chi Ossé, who later posted a selfie in handcuffs with “Free Palestine. Netanyahu burn in hell"; and world leaders "spreading lies about my country and our brave soldiers," "tyrants (in) a global anti-Jewish conspiracy (to) erase us from the face of the Earth. Instead of collapsing, we delivered devastating blows to all of them with our great American friends."
There was much more. He brandished a pager in tribute to Israel's 2024 operation targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon that killed 12 and wounded over 3,000. He dismissed settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the work of "juvenile delinquents." He said bombing Iran was "’one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make." Shameless, he claimed Israel still has "the most moral army in the world.” He denied a Haaretz report, confirmed by the New York Times, that Egypt's intel chief warned him in September 2023 Hamas was planning "a major attack," but he declined to pass the tip on to his intelligence agencies. He called the duly elected mayor of his host city, who deems him a war criminal and wants the ICC's arrest warrant issued, anti-Semitic," claiming "many Jews no longer feel safe in New York." He evidently doesn't; he flew into New Jersey.
He ended his speech with a Bible verse from Samuel that describes the genocide of the Amalek, enemies of Israel, after God orders King Saul, "‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people." Saul mostly does, but spares their king and “the best of the sheep and cattle. Then the prophet Samuel admonishes him: "(God) sent you on a mission, but you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel." Samuel's murderous gist: “Nezah Israel lo yeshaker,” or "the eternity of Israel will not falter.” Bibi's lesson: "We have no choice but genocide." And so they made it: Over 73,900 direct deaths, about half women and children. Over 175,000 wounded, often gravely. Roughly 641,000 ultimately dead, from destruction of the healthcare system, malnutrition, disease. The bodies of perhaps 10,000 more still remain under the rubble.
And the devastation goes on. Under Israel's blockade, there is widespread hunger, 90% of Gazans remain homeless, trauma and illness go untreated. More than 900 wheelchairs donated by two Australian non-profits for over 11,000 disabled children - Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world - are held hostage in Jordan warehouses by preposterous Israeli restrictions on anything that could "serve a military purpose." Other victims of insane "dual-use" rules: Portable toilets, sleeping bags, tarps. bandages, diapers, shampoo, tent poles. And presumably kites, after Bibi announced "targeted strikes”against the launch of any kites, balloons or drones, with the IDF ordered to "act forcefully" against perps. What else to expect from a place where a government official calls Palestinian children “explosives of the future." "What a childhood in Gaza teaches: Want less."
The cruelty, madness, loss continue to spark palpable rage. Actor Mandy Patinkin, a Jew aware of history, on the corrosive effect of "the revenge business": "How could it be done to you and your ancestors, and you turn around and do it to someone else?!” Omar El Akkad - born in Egypt, raised in Qatar and Canada, a US citizen - on "what it means to live under an ordering of the world that abides slaughter, and whether any ordering ever stood for anything at all." He wrote the book One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, though its full title is One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will always have been against this,” what one critic calls "a cathartic savaging" of empire, Western hypocrisy on Gaza, selective empathy in "the most privileged sliver of global society."
"When the unspeakable happens, the world should stop but it doesn't," he writes of the comfortable bubble of a white nationalist world run by broken men and their accomplices that blithely "shrugs at one kind of slaughter," having developed "a terrible immunity...When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?” The time to choose is now, he adds, and hindsight will not undo or excuse their crimes: "At the time they say, 'Yes, this is tragic, but necessary'...The alternative to the countless killed and maimed and orphaned... screaming from under the rubble (is) barbarism.” " There is no way to finish the sentence, 'It is unfortunate that tens of thousands of children are dead but...'" he movingly writes. "There is no such thing as someone else’s children."
The evening after Netanyahu assailed Zohran Mamdani as anti-Semitic - he dismissed the speech as "baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide against Palestinians" - the good mayor was home at Gracie Mansion. He was hosting Palestinian families from Gaza who have lost family members there or have made their way to America as refugees to "honor their contributions to the city and acknowledge the losses they have endured." They ate a meal; a smiling Mamdani glided around the table, filling water glasses. And they planted an olive tree - for Palestinians, source of food, wood, fuel, symbol of peace, hope, resilience, a deep connection to their heritage and ancestral land. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: ‘"Here we remain, as long as thyme and olives remain." Zohran Mamdani: "May peace be our future."
A young boy in Gaza mourns his murdered mother Getty Image
Sep 28, 2026
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‘The Diagnosis Is Unambiguous’: 2026 Planetary Health Report Finds Pressure Mounting on Earth Systems
Like other recent warnings from climate scientists, the message sent by the latest Planetary Health Check report on Monday was clear: "We need to move fast," as the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the group behind the report, said.
"Seven of nine planetary boundaries are transgressed, and pressure on all seven is at its highest recorded level," said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute (PIK).
The report finds that seven measures of the Earth's health are no longer within the "safe operating space": ocean acidification, freshwater change, land system change, climate change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities, and change in biosphere integrity.
Just two markers, stratospheric ozone depletion and the increase in atmospheric aerosol loading, have shown improvement over the last decade, said the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at PIK.
“The diagnosis is unambiguous," said Boris Sakschewski, the lead author of the report. "Pressure is rising across every planetary boundary already outside the safe operating space. It means that the risk of large-scale, persistent, and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking."
The scientists behind the report emphasized that with recent news regarding the state of the planet's crucial coral reefs, forests, and extreme weather events like heatwaves and flooding, it should come as no surprise that the Earth's boundaries have been transgressed, as continued fossil fuel emissions have caused runaway planetary heating.
Earlier this month, United Nations scientists said the planet can no longer avoid at least a temporary temperature rise above 1.5°C over preindustrial levels.
Oceans have also become so warm that stressed coral reefs have less and less time to recover from climate damage, as Common Dreams reported last month, and a UN report last year found that the world's governments are not moving fast enough to end the destruction of forests.
Last month and the summer of 2026 both set heat records, with extreme heat killing more than 1,000 people across Europe, and wildfires spreading across the continent and Canada. Record-breaking heat was also recorded in parts of Asia and the Middle East.
In June, the UN Children's Fund found that nearly every child on Earth is now exposed to at least one climate hazard driven by fossil fuel emissions, including flooding, heatwaves, and drought.
"Pakistan’s 2025 monsoon floods affected more than 6.9 million people," said PIK. "Global ocean heat content reached a new record in 2025, with Hurricane Melissa rapidly ramping up to a Category 5 hurricane and striking Jamaica after passing over exceptionally warm seas. From January 2023 to September 2025, bleaching-level heat stress impacted about 84.4% of the world’s coral reef area, making it the largest global coral-bleaching event observed to date."
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, chair of Planetary Guardians, implored readers of the Planetary Health Check report to "read that list again: Pakistan, the Caribbean, Europe, the reefs beneath our oceans. These are not separate emergencies; the planet is telling us, in every region at once, that it is out of balance."
"As chair of Planetary Guardians, I hear this same story wherever I go, whether from a pastoralist watching the rains fail season after season or a coastal community watching the sea rise," said Ibrahim. "The 2026 Planetary Health Check puts data behind what communities on the frontlines already know from living it. We do not have the luxury of treating these as separate crises any longer.”
Rockström emphasized that while "we do not have the luxury of time... we do have the knowledge, capacity, and solutions to change course."
"Accelerating action to return to the safe operating space across all planetary boundaries is essential to protect lives and livelihoods," said Rockström, "and to deliver on the promise of shared future prosperity."
Sep 21, 2026
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Critics Warn Trump-Backed Diesel Export Ban Could Further Drive US Economy Into the Ground
In an effort to blunt price hikes from his war with Iran, President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing a 90-day ban on diesel exports from the United States.
The cost of diesel—which is used to power semitrucks, trains, construction and farm equipment, and other large machines—has soared since Trump launched the war at the end of February, prompting Iran to restrict oil shipments through the critical Strait of Hormuz.
As of Wednesday, according to the American Automobile Association, average US diesel prices have jumped to $6.52 per gallon, a 77% increase from last year. Over the past month, as Trump has ramped up hostilities with Iran, prices have risen by 91 cents a gallon, a 16.2% increase.
Heightened diesel prices increase the cost of everything else—including food, transportation, and other energy sources. And while Trump claimed earlier this month to be bringing prices "way down, way, way down,” the latest federal data show consumer prices rising 0.4% in August—four times July’s monthly increase—and 3.4% over the past year.
With the midterms less than two months away and many voters blaming Trump for the strain on their pocketbooks, several GOP members of Congress, including some facing tough Senate races, such as Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and Rep. Ashley Hinson (Iowa), have cheered the idea.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Trump told reporters: "I’ve said let’s not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel. It could have a little bit of an effect on regular automobile gasoline because when you do that, you know, it’s a sort of a flow. It’s a balance. But no, I’ve called for it. I’ve called for it within my people. I’ve been talking about it.”
But while the plan may help to keep diesel prices down for long enough to help Republicans stop the bleeding before November, some economists are warning that it could make things much worse in the long term.
“The US Gulf Coast would get a temporary pump price dip, at the cost of likely higher coastal prices [elsewhere] and eventually, higher prices for everyone as investment gets scared away," explained Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House energy adviser under the administration of former President George W. Bush.
"You would get a short-term, abrupt collapse in pump prices” in some regions, McNally said, but “the US would shatter its reputation as a safe place to invest for a generation.”
Energy economist Philip Verleger said that a ban, even if temporary, "would have the same long-term effect as President [Richard] Nixon’s soybean embargo: the world would no longer view the United States as a dependable source.”
Speaking to Reuters, Verleger warned that in an already undersupplied market, removing US barrels could potentially double global prices.
But the short term seems to be all Trump and those around him pushing the ban are considering. An oil industry executive who discussed the proposed ban with White House officials told Politico that Trump viewed any fallout as “a December problem.”
He said that "cooler heads" in the White House have been "overpowered" by the "political camp" that has a "sky-is-falling, we-have-to-do-something concern about prices at the pump."
Lorne Stockman, research director at Oil Change International, argued that there was a much simpler solution: ending the war that has caused oil prices to spike in the first place.
"The proposed diesel export ban is a short-sighted 'America First' response to a global crisis his reckless war helped create," Stockman said. "The US exports about 5% of global diesel, and a ban risks turning a severe shortage into a global economic disaster."
"It could send international prices soaring, drive up the cost of food, fertilizer, and essential goods, deepen hunger, and push already-struggling economies toward recession," he continued. "At the same time, it would likely do nothing for people in the US, as refineries would cut production and gasoline prices would rise even further."
He said, "Congress should use its constitutional powers to stop Trump’s war, tax the oil industry’s soaring windfall profits, and support farmers and other hard-hit sectors, and accelerate renewable energy and electrification, not hoard fuel and force the rest of the world to pay the price.”
Sep 23, 2026
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AI Giants Probe 'Tens of Thousands' of Security Incidents—Some Involving Government Sites
Just days after a United Nations panel of experts warned that current artificial intelligence guardrails are "unraveling," Axios reported Saturday that security researchers, along with the firms Anthropic and OpenAI, "are investigating tens of thousands of incidents," including meddling with US government websites, amid growing calls for immediate action to rein in the technology.
Since OpenAI revealed in July that its models autonomously breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during internal testing, the firm—plus Anthropic, Google, and Meta—has disclosed some additional incidents.
"After the Hugging Face incident, we committed to conducting a much broader review of actions taken by our models during training and evaluation and to being transparent about our findings," OpenAI said on social media Friday. "Given the scale of the review required, and the need to assess each case, we expect this work will take months to complete."
Meanwhile, "Anthropic has commissioned a third-party safety organization to examine the behavior of its models," Axios detailed Saturday, noting that across both firms, "the sheer number of incidents, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, indicates that the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than what is publicly known."
"The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting, or seeking to bypass monitors," according to the outlet, which cited unnamed sources. "Many have yet to become public as security researchers continue to investigate."
Among the incidents announced by OpenAI—which has paused training on its "most capable" models—are 53 cases in which images uploaded by ChatGPT users were leaked before "mitigations and safeguards" were implemented. Reuters noted Friday that the company "declined to say when the images were posted" and "if the images were AI-generated or identified real people."
Earlier this week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that an OpenAI agent hacked into his country's national healthcare database, the first known case of AI hacking a government site.
"I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident," Albanese said. "And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred."
Then, the research lab Transluce said Friday that its independent investigation found that apparent OpenAI agents unsuccessfully tried to hack the US Department of Education website. OpenAI confirmed that, as The New York Times put it, the company's "artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with" not only that government site but also those of the US Department of Commerce and the Securities and Exchange Commission—though "none of the incidents were breaches."
The revelation fueled fresh demands for action in the United States—even calls to force members of the US House of Representatives to return to Washington, DC, where they are not expected until after the November midterm elections.
"Rogue agents are now trying to infiltrate our own government systems—this is cause for real concern," Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said on social media. "Congress must come back to Washington and pass bills like my bipartisan Stop Rogue AI Act so we can protect American families and our national security."
It's not just Gottheimer and Rep. Mike Lawler's (R-NY) bill; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have recently introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. However, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republican Big Tech-backed President Donald Trump have signaled an unwillingness to pursue regulations on AI.
Universal healthcare campaigner Melanie D'Arrigo said Saturday that "if you were caught hacking into government websites, you’d be sent to prison. When companies who are donors to Trump are caught hacking into government websites, they'll likely just get more tax breaks. This is what a tiered system of justice looks like."
After Axios revealed that tens of thousands of incidents are being probed, economist Dean Baker similarly said that "this is criminal activity and is being done for profit. If we had a real Justice Department, Altman and his cronies at OpenAI (or is 'OpenSI' now?) would be looking at serious time."
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) declared that "it is imperative that Speaker Johnson hold urgent and bipartisan hearings on advanced AI. The CEOs and engineers of these companies should be testifying in front of the American people. We can't wait until November to regulate this rogue industry."
Sep 27, 2026
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'We Won't Let Him': Efforts to Stop Trump Grow as Work Observed at 'Illegal and Immoral' Arch
While Americans are stressed about the economy and President Donald Trump's approval rating has hit a historic low, the second-term Republican is focused on vanity projects like his proposed 250-foot "Triumphal Arch," which opponents are trying to block.
The watchdog group Public Citizen is planning a protest and press conference for the morning of October 1 at Memorial Circle in Washington, DC. Speakers include Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.), military veterans, and other critics of the "self-indulgent project" that lacks congressional approval—and which Trump is now trying to push as a national security project.
"Trump's planned construction is not only illegal," Public Citizen said in a Thursday statement, pointing to the lawsuit it filed on behalf of three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian. "It is an affront to American veterans and their families."
"The arch will sit on Memorial Circle along the Potomac River, impeding the symbolic line-of-sight between the Lincoln Memorial in DC and Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where hundreds of thousands of our nation's military members have been laid to rest," explained the group, which has secured from a federal judge temporary restrictions on work at the site.
Beyer—whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery—headed to the site on Thursday. He said in a statement that "after hearing from constituents who saw construction equipment at the site of Trump's proposed vanity arch, I drove down to Columbia Island to see for myself. When I arrived, I found workers operating heavy equipment who told me they were conducting archaeological work to evaluate the composition of the soil."
"When I asked whether this work was a precursor to construction of the arch, they said that they could not answer," the congressman continued. "The logical conclusion, however, is that the presence of this heavy equipment and additional surveyors is a clear indication that the Trump administration is preparing to move forward with construction. That would be deeply troubling. Trump's arch is illegal and immoral, and the administration is also under court order requiring 48 hours' notice before work proceeds."
"Yet, the administration appears to be pushing ahead with activity at the site even while it still has not done the basic work necessary to understand the consequences of this project," Beyer warned. "There has been no adequate assessment of the regional impacts of this 250-foot structure on public safety, vehicular traffic, air traffic, or historic sites, including the implications of Trump's latest ravings about using the arch as a base for drone and sniper operations."
Beyer, who also shared video of his visit to the site on social media, added that “Donald Trump and his administration are determined to find a way to push this project through by any means necessary, regardless of the law or the concerns of the people who live here, but my constituents have made their views abundantly clear: They do not want this project. Neither do I. I will continue doing everything in my power to stop this illegal and reckless attempt to turn our nation's capital into a monument to Donald Trump."
In May, Beyer and Dina Titus (D-Nev.)—who, as co-chair of the Congressional Humanities Caucus, led challenges to the administration's illegal attempts to fund the arch using the National Endowment for the Humanities budget—introduced the Arlington National Cemetery Viewshed Protection Act, which would explicitly prohibit construction of Trump's project.
"As President Trump strips away the necessary safety nets from Americans who are struggling to afford their basic needs like groceries and healthcare, he builds his unauthorized, grandiose Triumphal Arch. While destroying historical monuments and artifacts important to our American identity, he is erecting monuments to honor himself," Titus said at the time. "The American people deserve a leader who is responsibly using federal funding for critical government services, not for self-promotion."
After months of pushback over the project, Trump announced last Sunday that "at the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage."
"There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World," the president wrote on his Truth Social platform. "Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, DC, IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all!"
The Hill reported Friday that analysts and lawmakers "are perplexed by President Trump’s surprise declaration," with Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, telling the outlet that adding military elements to the arch "is not totally fictional or crazy—but also not optimal."
Whether or not the project include military components, "to build an arch on federal land (that is not in the White House complex), the administration needs to navigate a lot of bureaucracy," The Washington Post noted Thursday. "The administration has argued the arch doesn't need to abide by DC's height laws for buildings and that it doesn't need congressional authorization because Congress authorized something similar a century ago nearby."
However, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation—whose members are picked by the president—has attempted to abide by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and related regulations, and consulted with local officials "to seek ways to avoid, minimize, or mitigate adverse effects to historic properties that would result from this undertaking."
ABC News highlighted that "the law says federal officials don't have to reach an agreement with state officials on mitigation of those harms, but they do have to try. Those consultations can then be unilaterally terminated if there's a failure for parties to meet in the middle."
The council's vice chair, Travis Voyles, on Thursday wrote to Tammy Stidman, associate regional director for lands and planning at the National Park Service, that "we are hereby terminating consultation," but the panel "will develop and transmit its final comments to the secretary of interior," aiming to deliver them by October 7.
According to the Post, "The administration is hoping to start construction by November."
Sep 25, 2026
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As Trump Threatens to 'Annihilate' Iran, Most Senate Republicans Still Refuse to Demand End to Illegal War
Even as some swing-state Republican US Senate candidates are suddenly calling for an end to President Donald Trump's unpopular and illegal war with Iran, the vast majority of elected GOP senators are voting to keep the conflict going.
A war powers resolution that would have compelled Trump to end the war he started more than six months ago was narrowly defeated in the US Senate on Thursday.
Just four Republicans—Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Thom Tillis (R-NC)—voted in favor of the resolution, which failed by a vote of 49-50. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was the lone Democrat to vote against the resolution.
The Iran War, which Trump launched in February without congressional authorization, has led to a massive spike in energy prices, including record-high prices for diesel fuel.
As reported by NPR, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who voted against Thursday's resolution, nonetheless acknowledged the economic toll the war is taking on Americans while speaking with reporters earlier this week.
"Everybody wants to see wars come to a conclusion," said the South Dakota Republican. "We are hopeful that the administration's efforts will lead to getting... the shipping lanes open and taking some of the pressure off of the American peoples' pocketbooks via a lower price at the pump for gasoline."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who led the war powers resolution in the US House of Representatives, decried the Senate's failure to pass it as "a slap in the face to the millions of American people who want this war to end."
"The Senate had the opportunity to send a clear message to this administration that they would not stand for another day of his war of choice," said Jayapal. "Instead, a majority of Senate Republicans acted as a cult party and stood by Trump’s unpopular and devastating war."
The Washington Democrat vowed that the House "will continue to pass these resolutions and demand an end to the war."
Cavan Kharrazian, senior policy adviser for Demand Progress, had a more optimistic take on the resolution's failure, arguing that the close vote count "shows that the tide continues to turn against this illegal war."
Kharrazian also noted that "Congress has already passed a legally binding war powers resolution directing him to remove US forces from the fighting," but the president "ignored it and kept waging a war that was illegal from day one."
During an unhinged speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump threatened to "annihilate" Iran by driving the country "into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations."
Sep 24, 2026
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12-Point 'Shopper's Bill of Rights' Proposed to Guard Against Corporate Greed in the Digital Age
"Shoppers shouldn’t have to outsmart an algorithm, decode the fine print, or fight their way out of a subscription just to get a fair deal."
Sep 28, 2026
Groundwork Collaborative on Monday unveiled a proposal for a "Shopper's Bill of Rights," which it said would shield US consumers from rampant corporate greed.
Noting the long history of consumer protection legislation, Groundwork Collaborative makes the case that new rules are desperately needed in an era where companies can use artificial intelligence to construct elaborate pricing schemes aimed at extracting every last dollar from shoppers.
The group cites its own past work documenting Instacart's use of AI to target specific shoppers with higher prices to argue that corporate America badly needs stronger oversight to stop them from gouging consumers.
"Instacart is hardly a lone actor," the group writes. "Unchecked pricing shenanigans are spreading to every corner of our economy, and consumers are rightfully angry."
With this in mind, Groundwork Collaborative proposes 12 regulations aimed at protecting consumers from getting relentlessly nickel-and-dimed by big corporations.
The first proposal is giving consumers the right to an all-in price, meaning companies must let shoppers buy a good or service for its advertised price without tacking on assorted fees.
"The takeout order that looked like a quick fix for a hectic night can double in price once delivery fees pile up," the group explains, "while a few clicks to buy concert tickets can leave a fan staring at a final box office bill that is more than 25% higher than the base price that lured them in. This deception is lucrative, as hidden fees get shoppers to spend 20% more than they would if they saw the full price upfront."
Another proposal takes on the kind of surveillance pricing documented in Groundwork Collective's Instacart report, where companies use consumers' personal data to individually increase prices based on a number of factors in their personal browsing and shopping histories.
"Rapid advances in cloud computing, data collection, surveillance technologies, and artificial intelligence now equip companies to purchase, track, store, and analyze consumers’ personal data at an unimaginable scale," the group writes. "Armed with troves of personal data, companies can increasingly determine your particular pain point: how much you, specifically, can be pushed to pay."
Groundwork Collaborative recommends banning surveillance pricing altogether, while also cracking down on companies' powers to collect and sell consumers' personal browsing data.
The group also says that lawmakers should look into stopping dynamic pricing schemes, which don't target consumers on an individual basis but nonetheless make unpredictable prices changes depending on a wide number of factors.
While dynamic pricing was originally designed for industries to handle scarcities, Groundwork Collaborative notes that it has since spread to businesses that are in no danger of facing product shortages.
"Grocery stores are not rationing cans of beans and Wendy’s is not running out of fries," the group explains. "Still, shoppers have no way to tell the difference. Pricing algorithms are a black box, so when the price spikes, you have little way to know whether supply actually tightened, demand really surged, or the company simply spotted an opportunity to squeeze you."
Here is a full list of policies Groundwork Collaborative is proposing:
- Right to an All-In Price: The Price You See Is The Price You Pay
- Right to a Fair Price: Pricing Products, Not People
- Right to a Predictable Price: Reining In The Dynamic Pricing Rollercoaster
- Right to Cancellation: Cancel With a Click
- Right to Repair: If You Own It, You Can Fix It
- Right to Your Own Agent: AI That Works For You, Not The Corporate Bottom Line
- Right to Resale: What You Buy Is Yours to Sell
- Right to a Level Playing Field: Giving Small Businesses a Chance to Compete
- Right to Comparison Shop: Taking the Guesswork Out of Comparison Shopping With Unit Pricing
- Right to a Refund: Ending The Runaround on Refunds
- Right to Proper Billing: Know What You Owe and Why
- Right to a Competitive Price: Bring Antitrust Into the 21st Century
Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, accused corporate America of "deploying a dizzying array of tricks and tactics to reinvent the ripoff and squeeze American consumers," and said it's well past time for the government to step in.
"Shoppers shouldn’t have to outsmart an algorithm, decode the fine print, or fight their way out of a subscription just to get a fair deal," Owens said. "Policymakers should put simple guardrails in place to protect consumers from the high-tech ways corporations are gouging us—the Shoppers’ Bill of Rights is a good place to start."
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AOC Calls Out Cornell and 'Culture of Rape' as Prosecutors Reopen Campus Assault Case
The congresswoman spoke in Ithaca, New York and other cities ahead of a possible 2028 US Senate run.
Sep 28, 2026
As national outrage grew over an alleged rape of a former Cornell University student by seven members of a fraternity in 2024, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday condemned a culture in which students accused of sexual assault are "protected" while survivors like the woman in the Cornell case, identified as Jane Doe, are often forced out of their campus communities.
The progressive New York Democrat spoke at a town hall in Ithaca, which has been rocked in recent weeks by the news that Doe filed a lawsuit against the school and several campus organizations and individuals over the alleged crime.
Ocasio-Cortez is visiting several cities across New York State this week, kicking off a voter outreach effort and meeting local officials ahead of a possible 2028 US Senate run. She has also been named as a potential presidential candidate. The event she spoke at Sunday was hosted by More Perfect University and titled "Students vs. Billionaires," but Ocasio-Cortez began by speaking about the case, which prosecutors on Monday said they were reopening after learning of new evidence.
"The fact that Jane Doe, that survivor, lost her education—because you can't stay in school when something like that happens to you... the fact that she had to lose her education and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League degree as a reward—never again," said Ocasio-Cortez. "Never again."
.@AOC calls out Cornell University and shares her message to sexual assault survivors:
“The fact that Jane Doe, that survivor, lost her education… and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League Education — never again.” pic.twitter.com/rViWgbdUm0
— More Perfect University (@MPUniversityUS) September 27, 2026
The Cornell case centers around an incident that allegedly took place in October 2024 at the Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca, according to the plaintiff's lawsuit.
The student was visiting a friend at the house and was intoxicated when two male students coerced her into snorting a substance that they said was ketamine, the lawsuit says. She was then sexually assaulted, and one of the men subsequently sent a message in the fraternity's group chat on Snapchat inviting other members to assault the victim.
Doe's attorney, Thomas Giuffra, has said that two of the seven men named in the lawsuit were expelled from the school, while others were temporarily suspended or required to attend workshops or write essays.
Giuffra has also said that the Cornell Police Department did not follow up with Doe after her initial report, and that she was never contacted by a "specially trained detective or district attorney" regarding her allegations.
“In my experience, speaking with an abuse survivor requires delicacy, understanding, and specialized training," Giuffra told ABC News. "An average university police officer would not have these skills."
Matthew Van Houten, the district attorney for Tompkins County, New York, told ABC News Monday that his office was reopening an investigation into the case and considering whether to bring criminal charges. He told the outlet that the details of the assault in the lawsuit were "dramatically different” from the plaintiff's statement to police in 2024, when his office relied on the Cornell Police Department's investigation.
Two of the men accused in the lawsuit denied to ABC that they had committed sexual assault.
In 2024, Van Houten said, the victim did not allege that she was drugged or that she didn't consent to sexual activities. He also said his office had not been not provided with a screenshot of the Snapchat messages.
Giuffra suggested the university authorities had not passed the evidence along to the DA's office for its review of the investigation.
“My client went to the Cornell University Police because a crime was committed," Giuffra told ABC News. "It was the obligation of the police to investigate the complaints. They were given the group chat inviting the members of the fraternity to rape my client. This was a critical piece of evidence supporting that a crime had occurred. Despite this there was no follow-up with Ms. Doe either by the Cornell Police or the Tompkins County district attorney."
Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday that the fact that the students "posted in a group chat... means it was normal to them. That means it was acceptable to them. This is a culture, this is norms, these are practices. And what we must do is understand that we cannot protect those spaces anymore. We cannot."
After the lawsuit was filed on September 14, student journalists at the Cornell Daily Sun expressed outrage at the university's failure to publicly release information from a Title IX investigation Cornell officials opened regarding the alleged rape, which resulted in the expulsions and lesser punishments of the men accused of the attack.
"Safety is not adjacent to the educational mission—safety is, in fact, its precondition," wrote the editors of the student-run newspaper. "Cornell has said as much, in the document that governs the student conduct, which announces that it is 'intended to preserve a higher education community and residential campus where ‘any person’ in the community can pursue their education in a secure and nourishing environment.'"
"So we ask the questions the university has left unanswered," continued the editors. "If Cornell follows the law, then we should have access to a public deposition issued from the school, the Title IX investigation opened in January 2025, and how it concluded. Why were these men allowed to 'pursue their education in a secure and nourishing environment' and she was not? Why was she not informed of the outcome of her own Title IX investigation? Who benefited from the 23 months of elapsed time when the public knew nothing?"
The editorial named the seven men accused in the plaintiff's lawsuit, writing, "We know who you are and we refuse to let you benefit from this university's concealment."
Cornell on Monday released a statement saying it supported the Tompkins County DA's decision to reopen an investigation into the case, and rejecting claims that officials had not properly sanctioned the men named in the lawsuit.
In Ithaca, Ocasio-Cortez said that "a lot of work" needs to be done at the federal level to protect college students from assaults on campuses.
"The culture of rape," said the congresswoman, "is protected in elite institutions across the United States, including Cornell University... This entire country is sick and tired of not just financially corrupt, but morally corrupt leadership."
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Preservation Group 'Gobsmacked' as Trump Admin Dismisses Public Concern Over Triumphal Arch
By abruptly closing public consultation on the massive project, the administration “decided the public’s role is meaningless, unimportant, and of no value whatsoever," said critics.
Sep 28, 2026
A historical preservation group said it was "gobsmacked" on Monday after the Trump administration said it was closing down its consultation with experts about President Donald Trump's plan for a triumphal arch in Washington, DC, because addressing their concerns and those from the general public would require them to deviate from the president's vision for the project.
On Thursday, Travis Voyles, the Trump-appointed vice chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), sent a letter informing civil society and historic preservation groups that it was ending the federal review of how the 250-foot-tall arch would harm nearby historical sites.
That review is required under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which mandates that federal agencies, including the National Park Service (NPS), consider how a project will affect historic properties and seek ways to "avoid, minimize, or mitigate” the harms of a planned project.
The federal regulations governing the Section 106 process explicitly state that "the views of the public are essential to informed federal decisionmaking,” and require agencies to “seek and consider” those views.
The administration, via the NPS, has acknowledged that the Triumphal Arch would have "adverse effects" on historical sites, disrupting views of Arlington National Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, and dozens of others. Meanwhile, the proposal has received over 107,000 public comments, most of which are negative, according to a sample from the DC Preservation Office.
But rather than taking the public concern as a reason to reevaluate or scale back the project, Voyles explained that the ACHP was choosing to end public consultation altogether because taking it into account would require changing the “fundamental nature” of the project in a way that the administration would never accept.
"It is clear that the proposed undertaking and its potential effects on historic properties have raised significant public interest, and the NPS stated in its September 22, 2026 correspondence that it believes additional consultation on the existing proposal is unlikely to result in agreement... to resolve adverse effects," he wrote.
"Further, the NPS stated that implementation of alternatives to avoid or minimize the adverse effects would alter the fundamental nature of the proposed undertaking and fail to achieve its goals," he continued, explaining that "in recognition of the public’s significant concerns," they were "hereby terminating" consultation.
Voyles said the ACHP would create its own recommendations and deliver them by October 7 to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose office is overseeing the project. Burgum is legally required to consider and formally respond to those recommendations, but unlike a legally binding memorandum of agreement, he does not have to follow them.
The ACHP has set a deadline for public comments for Tuesday night at 11:59 pm and said it planned another meeting with consulting parties.
One of the outside groups involved in the consultation process was The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), a national historic-landscape preservation nonprofit, whose founder and CEO, Charles Birnbaum, worked at the NPS for 15 years and was the principal author of the federal guidelines for cultural landscapes.
Section 106 requires consultation to begin “at the early stages of project planning.” But TCLF says the review began only after the Commission of Fine Arts had approved the arch’s design.
Meanwhile, the TCLF has said that it and other relevant preservation groups were invited to only a single meeting on September 9, just weeks before public consultation was terminated. They said this indicated that any real alternative proposals had essentially been taken off the table.
On Monday, Scott MacFarlane of MeidasTouch News published a letter from the TCLF savaging the administration's "extraordinary" reasoning for canceling the public consultation.
"Mr. Voyles has written a singularly audacious letter," it said. "Rather than address the 'public's significant concerns regarding the adverse effects' on one of the nation's most revered and symbolically important cultural landscapes through an authentic public engagement process that doesn't foreclose avoidance as a precondition, the administration, through its proxy, the ACHP, has decided the public's role is meaningless, unimportant, and of no value whatsoever."
The question of historical preservation is one of numerous legal issues facing Trump's effort to build the arch, which is estimated to cost at least $100 million, though the administration has not published an official price tag.
Although it will be partially funded by taxpayers, Congress has not yet authorized the project, leading to a federal lawsuit seeking to block construction.
Outcry over the public funding for the project led Trump last week to propose using the monument as a "military complex" that would house drones, ammunition, and snipers. He has similarly attempted to justify his taxpayer-funded White House ballroom project by giving it a dual national security purpose.
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Tech Giant Nvidia Announces Largest Stock Buyback in US History as AI Profits Surge
Nvidia, led by the eighth-richest person in the world, boosted its existing buyback program by $150 billion, bringing the total to $235 billion.
Sep 28, 2026
The tech behemoth and chipmaker Nvidia on Monday announced the largest-ever stock buyback increase in US corporate history as its profits continue to explode due to massive spending on artificial intelligence data centers, which have drawn increasingly intense grassroots opposition nationwide.
Nvidia said its board "has authorized an additional $150 billion under the company’s existing share repurchase program, increasing the total remaining amount authorized to $235 billion." Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO and the eighth-richest person in the world, said his company's "growth is being driven by a once-in-a-generation platform shift to AI and accelerated computing," adding that Nvidia's "cash generation gives us the capacity to invest in the technologies that advance this transformation and return capital to shareholders."
Stock buybacks reduce the number of a company's shares outstanding on the public market and boosts earnings per share, typically resulting in a stock price increase and a wealth boost for shareholders and executives who receive stock-based compensation. Nvidia's stock price jumped by around 3% following Monday's announcement.
Critics argue that corporate spending on share repurchases amounts to stock price manipulation that diverts resources from more productive uses of capital, such as increasing worker pay and research and development. Buybacks, which were effectively illegal until 1982, have surged to record levels in recent years, fueled by massive tax cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law during his first White House term.
“The huge tax cuts corporations received from the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law–which were supposed to be used to increase employee pay and business investment—have instead been wasted on trillions of dollars of stock buybacks,” David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said in June. “Stock buybacks widen economic inequality by making already wealthy shareholders even richer."
The Financial Times noted that Nvidia's buyback increase "beats Apple’s record $110 billion, set in 2024, for the largest in US corporate history."
Nvidia is one of the chief beneficiaries of the AI data center boom that has sparked protests and sustained, bipartisan opposition across the US.
"Nvidia’s chips are the centerpiece of giant AI data centers, and demand for those chips has become a barometer of the AI boom," The New York Times reported last month. "Other technology companies have been buying tens of billions of dollars’ worth of those chips, making Nvidia the most valuable public company in the world, with a market capitalization of about $5 trillion."
Nvidia's profits more than doubled in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the previous year, surging to nearly $60 billion.
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'Not Just Another Tech Company': Unions, Rights Groups Across EU Demand Governments Ditch Palantir
"A company whose technologies are implicated in serious human rights abuses should not be allowed to become an integral part of Europe’s public infrastructure."
Sep 28, 2026
A large coalition of labor unions and rights groups across Europe on Sunday demanded governments end their relationships with US tech company Palantir, which they described as a threat to democracy and civil liberties.
A joint statement from over 120 groups—including Corporate Europe Observatory, Global Justice Now, and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU)—says Palantir's actions should "disqualify it from involvement in the operations and functioning of democratic governments."
Among other things, the statement cites Palantir's technical support for "predictive policing" in US cities, its supply of data mining tools to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and its work with the Israeli military, whose brutal years-long assault on Gaza has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians.
The statement also highlights the danger of governments relying on "a class of tech billionaires" to deliver public safety services, which they argue could lead to corporate capture of sovereign nations.
The groups are demanding that European governments cancel all current contracts with Palantir while permanently barring the firm from receiving future public contracts.
Scholars of authoritarianism earlier this year expressed alarm after Palantir posted a 22-point manifesto that they said espouses a “technofascist” doctrine.
Among other things, the manifesto hails the creation of artificial intelligence-powered weapons as tools to enforce American “hard power” around the world; declares that “national service should be a universal duty,” while suggesting the US should “seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force”; and denounces the embrace of “a vacant and hollow pluralism” on the grounds that some cultures “remain dysfunctional and regressive.”
Tim Bierley, campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said that Palantir's leadership has shown "apparent disdain... for democracy," but has still "been allowed to embed dubious technologies across our public services, giving it access to sensitive data and creating worrying new technical dependencies."
"The UK must work with other countries to end dependence on companies involved in human rights abuses," Bierley added, "and end the outsourcing of the public sphere to a dangerous class of big tech oligarchs."
Olivier Hoedeman, research and campaign coordinator at Corporate Europe Observatory, warned that "Palantir is not just another tech company selling governments a piece of software," but is rather being woven "into the machinery of the state, creating deep dependencies while giving a private company a far too powerful role in how governments process sensitive information and make decisions."
"This is a recipe for corporate capture of public infrastructure and decision-making," Hoedeman emphasized. "A company whose technologies are implicated in serious human rights abuses should not be allowed to become an integral part of Europe’s public infrastructure."
Jan Willem Goudriaan, general secretary of EPSU, singled out Palantir's tax avoidance schemes as a reason for European nations to scrap all ties with the company.
"Europe must stop rewarding public contracts to corporations that do not share public service values," said Goudriaan. "The European Parliament must fix this. It is unacceptable to keep feeding corporations with public money while they minimize their tax bills in the middle of a public services emergency. Every euro shifted offshore means fewer nurses, teachers or firefighters."
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'Dangerous for Democracy': White House Airs More Pro-Trump Propaganda on Taxpayer Dime
"The president and his administration have gone from breaking the law to trampling it," said a former White House special counsel.
Sep 28, 2026
The White House recycled material from President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign for a new taxpayer-funded ad that aired nationwide this past weekend, just weeks before the high-stakes November midterms.
The 30-second black-and-white ad features Trump walking down a hallway to audio of him vowing to "demolish the deep state" and "expel the warmongers from our government," even as the president wages an illegal and deeply unpopular war on Iran that has killed thousands and driven up prices at home and around the world. During the final 10 seconds of the ad, white text appears at the bottom of the screen stating, "Paid for by the US government."
The ad is just the latest taxpayer-funded, explicitly pro-Trump spot that the White House has launched in recent days, prompting alarm from lawmakers and government watchdog organizations who say the administration is using public funds to flood airwaves with the president's campaign ads shortly before an election.
Watch the newly aired ad:
The U.S. Government is up on TV with this spot --
It aired nationally on FOX yesterday during Illinois at #7 Ohio State and also during Fox News Sunday this morning pic.twitter.com/8PP9FPzUZk
— Medium Buying (@MediumBuying) September 27, 2026
Richard Painter, who served as the White House's chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said the taxpayer-funded campaign ads "could be an impeachable offense," noting that "Congress has expressly prohibited government-sponsored political propaganda, which is dangerous for democracy."
The federal government appears to have spent more than $1 million on pro-Trump ads in recent days, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing an estimate from AdImpact.
Last week, as Common Dreams reported, the White House launched a taxpayer-funded ad in which Trump declares that "America will never be a communist country" and promotes tax cuts he signed into law, delivering a massive windfall to the rich and large corporations.
Norm Eisen, former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform, told the Times on Sunday that "the president and his administration have gone from breaking the law to trampling it."
"The prior ad was bad enough," said Eisen, "but this one openly repurposes prior political conduct.”
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote on social media that Republicans shouldn't be taken seriously when they claim to care about "waste, fraud, and abuse" as the president and leader of their party runs campaign ads with taxpayer money.
"What a cult this party has become," Murphy added.
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If Democrats Win Control of Congress in the Midterms, Will They Impeach Trump a Third Time?
"It's about setting a standard, and the Democrats can impeach, to uphold constitutional values, and at the same time, have a first-hundred-day agenda that deals with the cost of living," said Rep. Ro Khanna.
Sep 27, 2026
With the US midterm elections less than six weeks away and Republicans' congressional majorities at risk, both GOP leaders and Democrats are discussing the possibility that a Democratic-controlled Congress could impeach President Donald Trump a historic third time.
"They say they’re not going to, but we know they will—they'll do a third impeachment of President Trump," House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said of Democrats during a Sunday radio interview. "But that's just part of it. They're going to investigate the first family, they're going to investigate Cabinet secretaries."
In fact, Democratic leaders are not denying another potential impeachment effort targeting someone who has been condemned by a range of critics as "the most openly corrupt president in American history."
During an interview with The Associated Press published on Saturday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who could become speaker if Democrats reclaim the lower chamber, signaled that impeachment is on the table—and not just for Trump.
"We haven't ruled anything out... and we haven't ruled anything in," he said. "If folks have been stealing from the American people, shortchanging the American people, or screwing over the American people... we are going to hold the crooks accountable."
Jeffries and other Democrats "are preparing a vast oversight agenda" that is "as robust as it is daunting, spanning several House committees," the AP reported. "With majority power comes bigger budgets and staff, and the ability to investigate, subpoena, and potentially course-correct what the Democrats say are widespread corruption and abuses of power."
Annual financial disclosures released this summer show that Trump pocketed at least $2.2 billion—over half of it from his family’s cryptocurrency grift—during his first year back in office, and his stock trades since then have continued to generate alarm.
Trump's deployment of federal immigration agents to various US communities to abuse the rights of US citizens and immigrants alike as well as his illegal war on Iran—with its the resulting affordability crisis—have also fueled calls for impeachment.
Responding to suggestions from some that another impeachment wouldn't be a good use of Democrats' time, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said during a Sunday appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that "it's not about Donald Trump," who will be a lame duck and "increasingly irrelevant."
"The point is to stand up for the Constitution," Khanna explained. "Impeachment says that you can't get into an illegal war in Iran without constitutional approval. Impeachment says that you can't just start firing federal employees... in defiance of what Congress says. Impeachment says you can't do deals with foreign governments to allegedly enrich your own family."
"It's about setting a standard, and the Democrats can impeach, to uphold constitutional values, and at the same time, have a first-hundred-day agenda that deals with the cost of living," he added, pointing to issues such as free childcare, raising the minimum wage, and taxing billionaires. "We can do both."
Democrats have unveiled various articles of impeachment against Trump since his return to the White House last year. On Thursday, Congressman Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who is retiring after this term, introduced 26 more, including for alleged abuses of power, violations of his oath of office, and corrupt use of the pardon authority.
"Trump is clearly the most impeachable president our country has ever endured," said Cohen, a member of the House Judiciary Committee. "His continued presence in office is a danger to our democracy. That the sycophantic Republican majority in Congress is derelict in its duty does not mean that I must abandon my responsibilities."
Cohen stressed that "I took an independent oath to support and defend the Constitution. That commitment compels me to introduce this resolution today. When historians write about this period, and our constituents ask who stood up to President Trump's lawlessness, this resolution is the answer."
The House initially impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in December 2019. After his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, he became the first president to be impeached twice. However, the Senate acquitted him in both cases.
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Battle Over Illegal E1 Settlement in Occupied West Bank Escalates a Month Before Israeli Election
Critics around the world continue to call the proposed settlement "a plan to progress the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."
Sep 27, 2026
Israel's far-right finance minister and other settlers living in the illegally occupied West Bank fumed on Sunday after their country's attorney general pushed a key deadline for the widely condemned E1 project until after the Israeli Knesset election.
Although the International Court of Justice, plus governments and human rights groups around the world, have concluded that all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory violate international law, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has charged ahead with expansion plans, granting final approval for the building of 3,401 housing units in the E1 area last year.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had celebrated that decision, declaring that the project "buries the idea of a Palestinian state," as it would split the West Bank in two by connecting Jerusalem and the settlement Ma'ale Adumim. While signing a related agreement a year ago, Netanyahu similarly said that "there will be no Palestinian state."
Despite an ongoing legal challenge to the E1 plan from Bedouin Palestinians who live in the area and Israeli peace groups, Israel's Ministry of Construction and Housing last month issued a tender to build seven residential compounds with 1,234 units, giving contractors until October 19—a week before the October 27 election—to submit bids.
"This is a last-minute maneuver that is part of the scorched-earth policy the government is pursuing at the end of its term to secure long years of conflict and bloodshed for Israel," the Israeli watchdog Peace Now said at the time. "The government is trying to sign contracts with contractors before the elections so that it will be much harder for the next government to cancel the construction."
The office of Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara this week ordered a monthlong postponement of the deadline for bids, "so that it will fall after Election Day, thereby reducing the concern that the tender could be used for prohibited election propaganda."
Smotrich on Sunday accused her of "trying to stop the construction in E1" and "interfering in the election campaign" to help Gadi Eisenkot, the Yashar party leader who could lead a coalition government that ousts Likud's Netanyahu, depending on the results.
The finance minister called on Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, who chairs the Central Elections Committee (CEC), to intervene to "ensure that the attorney general and her people do not turn into active players in the election campaign in an attempt to back up the left, prevent the right from forming a government, and to enable the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger the existence of the state of Israel."
Ma'ale Adumim also challenged the attorney general's move on Sunday, with a petition to the High Court of Justice. Mayor Guy Yifrach said that "if the claim is that continuing the tender is political, I say exactly the opposite: Stopping it now is an intervention with political implications."
"The E1 plan is already facing heavy international pressure, and developers and contractors need certainty," Yifrach added. "Is it not enough that outside Israel they are trying to deter them from the project, now we are adding uncertainty from within our home as well?"
Earlier this month, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada jointly announced bans on imports from illegal Israeli settlements, and partnered with nine other nations—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden—for a statement that describes the situation in the West Bank as "rapidly deteriorating amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project."
Then, 19 US Senate Democrats on Wednesday introduced a bill to sanction people or companies that facilitate the construction for Israeli settlers in the E1 area, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of the lead co-sponsors, condemning the project as "a move towards de facto annexation of the West Bank."
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), another lead sponsor and longtime supporter of Israel, said on social media Friday that "the Netanyahu campaign to extinguish the possibility of a future Palestinian state by building Israeli settlements in the E1 area of the West Bank must end. I'm leading a new effort to sanction those involved in its development and preserve a future pathway for peace."
In addition to pushing for the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has overseen a genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Despite a ceasefire agreement reached nearly a year ago, Israeli attacks continue, and the official death toll keeps rising, topping 74,000 on Sunday.
The bleak milestone came two days after The New York Times corroborated Haaretz’s recent reporting that in September 2023, United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan warned Netanyahu about now-deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's plans "for a major event" targeting Israel. The Israeli leader has denied those reports, and even threatened to sue Haaretz.
However, in a signal that Netanyahu and his allies are worried about the upcoming election, the CEC this week voted to disqualify all Arab-majority political parties from the election, while declining to take similar action against Smotrich's Religious Zionism, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir's Otzma Yehudit, and Zehut, founded by Moshe Feiglin, a former Likud member. The Supreme Court is set to review the disqualifications this week.
Meanwhile, Eisenkot suggested this weekend that the barred parties would not be part of any government he leads. As Haaretz summarized, he said that "all coalition partners would have to recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, uphold the values of the Declaration of Independence, support mandatory military service, and recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization that must be destroyed."
Yoav Segalovich from the United Arab List's Knesset slate responded that anyone seeking to lead the country must "show leadership and not fold in the face of the Likud's scare campaign," adding: "Israel needs deep change and genuine partnership, through courageous leadership. Eisenkot will not have a government without the United Arab List."
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AI Giants Probe 'Tens of Thousands' of Security Incidents—Some Involving Government Sites
"Insane that we allow this," one journalist said of the rapidly advancing technology. "Sleepwalking into disaster or worse."
Sep 27, 2026
Just days after a United Nations panel of experts warned that current artificial intelligence guardrails are "unraveling," Axios reported Saturday that security researchers, along with the firms Anthropic and OpenAI, "are investigating tens of thousands of incidents," including meddling with US government websites, amid growing calls for immediate action to rein in the technology.
Since OpenAI revealed in July that its models autonomously breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during internal testing, the firm—plus Anthropic, Google, and Meta—has disclosed some additional incidents.
"After the Hugging Face incident, we committed to conducting a much broader review of actions taken by our models during training and evaluation and to being transparent about our findings," OpenAI said on social media Friday. "Given the scale of the review required, and the need to assess each case, we expect this work will take months to complete."
Meanwhile, "Anthropic has commissioned a third-party safety organization to examine the behavior of its models," Axios detailed Saturday, noting that across both firms, "the sheer number of incidents, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, indicates that the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than what is publicly known."
"The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting, or seeking to bypass monitors," according to the outlet, which cited unnamed sources. "Many have yet to become public as security researchers continue to investigate."
Among the incidents announced by OpenAI—which has paused training on its "most capable" models—are 53 cases in which images uploaded by ChatGPT users were leaked before "mitigations and safeguards" were implemented. Reuters noted Friday that the company "declined to say when the images were posted" and "if the images were AI-generated or identified real people."
Earlier this week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that an OpenAI agent hacked into his country's national healthcare database, the first known case of AI hacking a government site.
"I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident," Albanese said. "And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred."
Then, the research lab Transluce said Friday that its independent investigation found that apparent OpenAI agents unsuccessfully tried to hack the US Department of Education website. OpenAI confirmed that, as The New York Times put it, the company's "artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with" not only that government site but also those of the US Department of Commerce and the Securities and Exchange Commission—though "none of the incidents were breaches."
The revelation fueled fresh demands for action in the United States—even calls to force members of the US House of Representatives to return to Washington, DC, where they are not expected until after the November midterm elections.
"Rogue agents are now trying to infiltrate our own government systems—this is cause for real concern," Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said on social media. "Congress must come back to Washington and pass bills like my bipartisan Stop Rogue AI Act so we can protect American families and our national security."
It's not just Gottheimer and Rep. Mike Lawler's (R-NY) bill; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have recently introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. However, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republican Big Tech-backed President Donald Trump have signaled an unwillingness to pursue regulations on AI.
Universal healthcare campaigner Melanie D'Arrigo said Saturday that "if you were caught hacking into government websites, you’d be sent to prison. When companies who are donors to Trump are caught hacking into government websites, they'll likely just get more tax breaks. This is what a tiered system of justice looks like."
After Axios revealed that tens of thousands of incidents are being probed, economist Dean Baker similarly said that "this is criminal activity and is being done for profit. If we had a real Justice Department, Altman and his cronies at OpenAI (or is 'OpenSI' now?) would be looking at serious time."
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) declared that "it is imperative that Speaker Johnson hold urgent and bipartisan hearings on advanced AI. The CEOs and engineers of these companies should be testifying in front of the American people. We can't wait until November to regulate this rogue industry."
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Only 'Negotiated Solution' Can Get US Out of 'Deadlock,' Iranian Diplomat Says After Trump Rejects Deal
"They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they're losing so badly," the US president claimed. "We're winning tremendously."
Sep 27, 2026
As US President Donald Trump publicly rejected Iran's proposal for a ceasefire and reopening the Strait of Hormuz this weekend, the Iranian foreign minister reiterated that "there is no alternative to a negotiated solution."
"There's always hope for diplomacy," though the Trump-led United States has been an untrustworthy negotiator, Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said during a Sunday appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press."
"We are fully prepared for the war to be resumed... We stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even [if] it comes to a doomsday war,” the foreign minister added. "At the same time, we stand ready for diplomacy. It is up to President Trump to choose."
Iran's latest offer was "essentially the same bargain" as the June deal, "but with a very different sequence," Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the US-based Center for International Policy, explained to CNN. Under the Iranian proposal, he said, "the US takes concrete steps first, and only then does Iran ease its pressure over Hormuz."
Araghchi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had pushed for the proposal this week while visiting the United Nations General Assembly in New York City—where Pezeshkian said in his UNGA speech that "we have been the victims of terrorism" and highlighted the civilians killed since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran at the end of February.
Trump—who launched the illegal war despite his own intelligence agencies concluding that Iran wasn't pursuing a nuclear weapon—used his UNGA address to threaten to "annihilate" Iran. Then, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that he "has rejected Iran's proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms."
The US president on Saturday confirmed to journalists that "I'm rejecting their deal," adding: "They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they're losing so badly... We're winning tremendously. We have total control of the Hormuz Strait... They want to make a deal, and I think that's fine; I like making a deal, too. But that deal would not be acceptable."
Despite Trump's rejection, "US official claimed 'positive and constructive' discussions are still ongoing between the US and Iran through the mediators, including on nuclear issues," Axios reported Saturday. Aided by Qatar, Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner "held a new round of indirect negotiations" with the Iranian foreign minister on the sidelines of the UNGA.
In a lengthy Persian statement shared on Telegram this weekend, Araghchi said that "we have seen the first reaction from the US president, but nothing has been conveyed to us from the mediators yet. Of course, the US president has also said many contradictory things, which unfortunately we hear a lot from him. We are waiting for the definitive opinions to be conveyed to us by the mediators, and we will make a decision based on that."
"In any case, our conditions are clear; any progress toward the opening of the Strait of Hormuz is contingent upon the fulfillment of these conditions, and we will not shrink from them," he continued. "Only a negotiated solution can get them out of this deadlock."
Such a solution must be "based on honor and justice that secures the rights of the Iranian people and fulfills their legitimate demands," he argued. The diplomat added that "the people of Iran have demonstrated their strength across military, diplomatic, and economic spheres, as well as in confronting sanctions."
Reporting on Araghchi's remarks, Reuters noted:
The commander-in-chief of Iran's army, Amir Hatam, said the war was at a critical and decisive stage, adding that Tehran would not accept a situation in which it was unable to trade while foreign powers used the region's strategic waterways.
"If Iran cannot trade, if Iran cannot live, no one will be able to trade or live," he said, in comments reported by state media.
It's not just the Iranians pushing for an end to the Iran War; the US public is also frustrated by its economic impacts, with prices soaring, particularly for diesel and gasoline. With the midterm elections less than six weeks away, and the president's Republican Party trying to at least hold on to its narrow majorities in Congress, Trump's approval rating has hit a record low.
After the president rejected Iran's proposal on Saturday, National Iranian American Council (NIAC) Action policy director Ryan Costello responded by calling out his various moves regarding Iran, including exiting former President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with the country during the first Trump administration.
"Art of the deal," Costello wrote on social media. "Attack Obama for negotiating a successful deal. Tear up the deal, say you'll get a better one. Start a war instead, blowing up the economy. Strike a deal to end the war, stick to it for a fortnight. Refuse to go back to the deal heading into the midterms."
NIAC Action filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday, arguing that Trump's war on Iran, which lacks congressional authorization, is unconstitutional. The group's president, Jamal Abdi, declared that "no president should have the power to take this country into an indefinite war by himself."
"Congress never authorized this war," he stressed. "Yet Iranian families are being bombed, American service members have been killed, and communities on both sides are being forced to bear the consequences. This lawsuit asks a fundamental question: Can one person decide, on his own, to keep an entire nation at war?"
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