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Hoo boy. The stupid and evil, somehow accelerating, burn. America's so-called leader, the "Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath," manifests ever more cognitive dissonance on steroids. Absurd, addled, vindictive, looming above "a circus of death and chaos," he commits war crimes, guts voting rights, plots devastation, abases decency, murders mercy, yet whines about mean jokes. But as America reels, Banksy, Bruce, Platner and others increasingly declare, "We are not fucking doing this anymore."
Amidst what the head of Amnesty International calls "the year of the predators," humanity itself is under attack, most notably by our ludicrous narcissist and his "casual, bewildering cruelty." Despite his foolishness, Nesrine Malik writes, "This is what evil looks like": See history's portrayals of Hitler - "the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog" - and Mussolini, "that funny man, that consummate buffoon." Trump's "farcical puniness," Malik notes, is "a projection onto the world, not of large intent, but of smallness and fear...The consequences of his violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it (to) erase his terror of humiliation (and) feed his sociopathic appetite for escalation." Thus can deeply silly still equal dangerous.
Daily, the large and small atrocities are both, albeit without the resonance of the label "fascist" only because he lacks the wit, intent and coherence it requires. The war in Iran is won, it's won but not by enough, it's not a war, we made a deal, we don't want a deal. The (imaginary) talks are going very well, we don't wanna talk. Iran struck a school full of young girls, killing hundreds, or if we did it's Obama's fault. Give me ballroom or give me death: The solution to gun violence that kills 12 children a day, wounds 32 more and has affected over 390,000 kids since Columbine - is to build one rich white guy who's never expressed any grief over any of them a gilded bunker of his own. The way to keep more people safe is to kill as many as possible, including by firing squad.
Also, Bill Maher, Hakeem Jeffries, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are low IQ losers, James Comey tried to kill and "inflict bodily harm on" him with "aggravated beachy seashell pictures," he's so "young, vital, vibrant" he could've joined the Artemis II astronauts easy like he aced his three screening tests for dementia - "A lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. Which one is the bear?" - which the Villages audience def couldn't do, ditto sketchy Harvard Law graduate Hussein Obama. America's response to his musing what we'd do if a con man moron turned up - "How do you get to be president and you're stupid?": "That would suck - we'd probably have unprovoked wars, high gas prices and all our allies would hate us," "He's so close to getting it," "The Irony Meter is dead after spontaneously combusting," and "You're a fucking moron." Also, so grotesquely weird.

Meanwhile, the Orwellian rules for what you can/can’t see/say keep spooling out, lies sold as half-truths to justify a brazen, racist, whitewashing of both present and past under the shameless moniker of content “inappropriately disparaging Americans past or living,” but always white. Among dozens of changes at our National Parks, gone are signs about the contributions of Native Americans and women, warnings about climate change "not grounded in real science," evidence of Founding Fathers owning slaves and explorers' atrocities against Native tribes. But you do get Trump's loathsome mug plastered on park passes, like on our money, buildings, passports ad nauseum. Happily, fighting back for years have been patriots like the Resistance Rangers, the Alt National Park Service and whatever genius slapped these "Sex Offender" flyers across D.C.'s parks.
Hence incrementally, far too slowly but feeding vital hope and our frayed spirits, the flip side of our grim absurdist timeline begins to emerge as Trump and his monstrous clowns flail, fail, dig their own dank holes. So many horrors should have sparked it -Gaza, ICE, USAID, the boundless greed, cruelty, stupidity. Instead, prices did it, a non-stop, staggering incompetence that saw people being screwed once too often and lied to about one too many senseless wars. Last week, Banksy registered his own anti-imperialist protest in a middle-of-the-night dropping into the heart of ceremonial London a large statue mocking such Blind Patriotism. Mirroring the classical style of surrounding monuments celebrating the British Empire's inglorious colonial past, he presents a suited man, his flag flying into his face, one foot poised to step off into his own demise. Much like, you know.

Kicking off his Land of Hope and Dreams American tour several weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen offered his own fiery rebuttal to "a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration," which drew roars from a huge first night crowd in Minneapolis. Equal parts celebration and call to action, The Boss insisted, "This is still America, and - shades of the Big Lebowski, "this will not stand." Summoning "the righteous power of art, music and rock and roll in dangerous times," he asked the crowd to "join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over....(lights come up to segue into) "WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!" complete with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello shredding a solo. A righteous, dynamic pair.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
In contrast, standing grotesque and slumped-shouldered in a dingy, empty corner, is the small, mad man-child who spent Monday bellowing to a weary world that Iran will be "blown off the face of the Earth" if it targets U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which his inane recklessness closed in the first place. Online, in "the most desperate shit" to ever make its demonic way from the White House, a juvenile lackey posted him saying, "Winning it" on a loop for over 60 minutes, which still didn't make it so. The text read, "Can't stop, won't stop." Please fucking do. A horrified America: "This is a real tweet from a real account about a real man who leads a real country." Kyle Kulinski, on "the war criminal of all war criminals" who makes genocidal threats and bleats about insults: “We are not fucking doing this anymore. You don't get to say shit."
Still, one Tom Wellborn says it best in, “A Eulogy for the Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath,” subtitled “Being a Complete and Unflinching Account of the Most Loathsome Specimen Ever to Consume Resources, Occupy Space, and Insult the Patience of a Universe That Deserved So Much Better." "There are villains, and then there are monsters, and then there are creatures so cosmically, transcendently... terrible that language itself recoils," he begins. "Grammar buckles. Syntax weeps...He is this thing. He is the thing past the thing past the thing. He is the sub-basement of the human condition, the moldy crawlspace beneath that sub-basement, and the writhing centipede beneath that."
"He has no morals. Not a single one. Not even the bad morals that at least imply a moral framework: the corrupt cop who loves his dog, the mob boss who goes to church. No. He exists in a morality vacuum so total that ethicists have proposed naming it after him...A being entirely without moral content. Not evil, because evil requires intention. Simply absent of the entire apparatus...A moral negative space shaped vaguely like a man...He has no empathy....like a raisin...He is incapable of the most basic social theater that even sociopaths manage....He takes without asking. He takes everything without asking. He takes things that aren’t takeable...The principle being: I can....He is stupid in a way that is almost majestic...His stupidity (is) total. Unified....He has been wrong about everything, always, without exception..."
"He is callous the way concrete is callous: not through malice, not through choice, but through an utter material inability to register (another) person’s pain...You could show him the face of grief, and he would wonder aloud if there was parking nearby...He is vicious the way a blunt instrument is vicious: through sheer, undirected force, through the momentum of his own awfulness...He is smelted fury with no purpose, unforged, unbent, uselessly molten....(He is) a statistical outlier so extreme that evolution seems to be embarrassed by him, a glitch in the long project of civilization...And the most horrifying part...He will never know any of this. He will never know what he is." Name it, damn it, take it down. Maine's Graham Platner hopes to help do that. We wish him well.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned on Tuesday that the current model of fossil fuel-driven capitalism was leading the world into "barbarism" and "fascism."
According to a Wednesday report from The Guardian, Petro told attendees of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels being held in Santa Marta, Colombia that capitalism's insistence on continued fossil fuel dependence was "suicidal" and driving the world toward more conflict.
"There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy—fossil fuels—that lead to death," said Petro. "Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life... The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”
Petro also warned that the consequences of sticking with a model of capitalism that centers fossil fuel energy won't be merely economic but also political.
"We are heading towards barbarism," he said. "And barbarism is the prelude to, or the very essence of, fascism."
As reported by Common Dreams last week, the conference in Colombia, which wraps up Wednesday, has featured more than 50 nations discussing strategies to phase out energy based on coal, oil, and gas.
Ralph Regenvanu, minister for climate change of the island nation of Vanuatu, told NPR on Wednesday that his country has been seeing the impacts of the climate crisis up close in the form of rising sea levels and spiraling energy costs.
Because of this, Regenvanu said his government has accelerated plans to begin solar energy and electric vehicle projects, telling NPR that "the decision on EVs was directly stimulated by the crisis."
France was also a major presence at the conference, reported The Guardian, as French climate envoy Benoit Faraco outlined an ambitious plan to make his country a major renewable energy producer.
"This process has made us realize we want to be an electro-superpower," said Faraco. "We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries."
But Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told The Guardian that the ability to transition away from fossil fuels will be much harder for many developing nations, even though these nations are the ones most adversely impacted by the climate emergency.
"There are many fossil-fuel producing countries in the Global South that are being pushed into expanding fossil fuel production just to feed their debt," Berman explained. "There is an expanding debt crisis in the Global South. It is impossible for countries to even imagine a fossil fuel transition with such limited fiscal space."
Advocates warned that the conference did not appear set to produce new commitments to fund climate action in the Global South, but discussions were taking place about tackling massive subsidies that have been granted annually to fossil fuel giants.
"It is a space where conversations can take place about, for instance, subsidy reform," Leo Roberts of the think tank E3G told The Guardian, "to take the $1.5 trillion in [annual] fossil fuel subsidies and repurpose them to somewhere else.”
Within just six months of President Donald Trump signing last year's Republican mega budget bill and enacting an unprecedented cut to federal food assistance, more than 3 million low-income Americans lost benefits.
According to data from the US Department of Agriculture, cataloged by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dropped by 8% nationwide in the six months following the bill's passage in July 2025.
It is the steepest drop recorded in more than three decades, even greater than that experienced amid the recovery from the Great Recession, when millions of Americans left the program as their economic conditions rebounded after a period of widespread unemployment and economic precarity.
Enrollment levels have fallen in every single state over the past year, with some drops particularly startling. In Arizona, where nearly 900,000 people received benefits in January 2025, just over 500,000 were on SNAP a year later—a 43% drop.
Levels of enrollment in SNAP, which provides monthly funds to Americans with incomes at or below 130% of the federal poverty line to pay for food, have often been a reliable indicator of poverty in America, with more people enrolling during hard times.
But unlike during that period of mass disenrollment from 2012-16, Joseph Llobrera, CBPP's senior director of research, said in a report on Wednesday that the dramatic fall in SNAP participation "cannot be explained by a rapid improvement in people’s economic well-being or reduced need for help affording food."
"Labor force data show that the unemployment rate was flat between July 2025 and March 2026, the most recent data available," Llobrera said. In Arizona, where nearly half of SNAP recipients lost their benefits, unemployment actually increased during the same period.
"A more likely explanation for why people are losing access to food assistance," he said, "is that states are now facing new challenges as they respond to the cuts in HR 1—the largest in the program’s history."
While funding more than $1 trillion worth of tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, HR 1—known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—mandated around $186 billion worth of cuts to SNAP over a decade, including through harsher work requirements for older adults, parents, veterans, and homeless people.
Katie Bergh, a senior food assistance policy analyst at CBPP, noted that "the harm will only grow as the full brunt of HR 1's SNAP cuts takes effect."
Beginning in 2027, the law will require states to cover 75% of SNAP administrative costs, up from the previous 50%. They will also have to cover a larger share of the benefit costs if they provide benefits to large numbers of ineligible people.
"States will soon be required to pay for part of SNAP benefits costs—totaling billions of dollars across all states—creating enormous fiscal challenges," explained Llobrera. "Many steps states are taking to lower error rates in response to this cost shift could make it harder for eligible people to access SNAP, driving down caseloads."
He noted that some states like Illinois and Georgia are now expending more resources on means testing, requiring households to recertify their eligibility for SNAP twice as often and "putting families at risk of losing SNAP if they can’t navigate the additional red tape."
Other states have made cuts preemptively. In the year leading up to the GOP bill's passage, Arizona cut staffing at its SNAP agency by more than a third, creating a major backlog of cases. While the state remains an outlier, Llobrera and research analyst Catlin Nchako said that "other states may not be far behind."
"In the face of massive new costs," Llobrera warned, "states may even withdraw from the program altogether, terminating food assistance for all low-income people, including children, seniors, people with disabilities, and veterans."
He said, "Congress must delay the cost shift before even more people lose the food assistance they need."
Addressing 1,360 Michigan voters who packed into a gymnasium at Detroit's Mumford High School on Sunday evening, Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed received raucous applause when he frankly addressed an issue that's loomed large in the primary race—the influence of the pro-Israel lobby and its aggressive efforts to conflate antisemitism with opposition to Israel's attacks on Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East.
"The single most dangerous thing that they’ve tried to tell us is somehow they can extend the definition of antisemitism to include a foreign government and its leaders," said El-Sayed of the pro-Israel lobby, especially the highly influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). "I call bullshit."
El-Sayed, a physician and former public health official, emphasized that "AIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people" and accused political leaders and the powerful lobbying group of "creating a dangerous circumstance" by conflating respect for a religion with support for a foreign government that's committed genocidal violence in Gaza over the last year-and-a-half, according to leading human rights groups and Holocaust scholars.
"We love Judaism and the Jewish people because we love people, and we love Palestinians and their rights because we love people," said El-Sayed to growing applause.
Abdul El-Sayed: “AIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people. I love Judaism and I love the Jewish people. The single most dangerous thing they’ve tried to tell us is somehow they can extend the definition of antisemitism to include a foreign government and… pic.twitter.com/NFwpljcomI
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 3, 2026
Democratic Party leaders and establishment organizers continue to treat criticism of Israel as a third-rail issue, but the positive response to El-Sayed's comments reflected numerous recent polls that have shown voters, particularly Democrats, are growing weary of the government's insistence that the US must continue to arm Israel.
A survey by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies in March found that after the Israel Defense Forces' US-backed slaughter of more than 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, and as the US joined the IDF in assaulting Iran in an unprovoked war, just 32% of registered US voters viewed Israel positively—a dramatic shift from three years ago, when close to half of voters expressed positive views of Israel.
A Pew Research poll last month found that 60% of respondents had a negative opinion of Israel, which receives roughly $4 billion in US military aid annually, while 37% expressed positive views.
And a survey by Upswing Strategies found last October, when it canvassed 850 Democratic voters in districts across swing states including Michigan, that nearly half said they "could never support" a candidate for Congress who received funding from AIPAC or the pro-Israel lobby more broadly. Over a quarter said they "strongly" felt they would not support a candidate who took AIPAC donations.
As he has condemned Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza and demanded an end to US military funding for Israel, El-Sayed has spoken out against antisemitic acts like a shooting at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan in March, saying Jewish people "have a right to worship in peace" and to "know that your religious identity and faith practice are respected."
"There is no room for antisemitism in America," said El-Sayed at the time. He added in a video posted on social media that the attack was part of a "cycle" of violence, noting that the suspect has lost family members in Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which intensified in March as the war on Iran widened.
Reflecting on the attack at Temple Israel. pic.twitter.com/u9p4BwdzoA
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) March 13, 2026
Writer and researcher Matt Stoller said Sunday that—as the crowd in Detroit appeared to concur—El-Sayed "is a far better friend to Jews than AIPAC."
The issue of Israel has previously played a role in El-Sayed's three-way primary race against US Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who has received more than $5 million in funding from pro-Israel groups, and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8), who wrote a position paper for AIPAC.
El-Sayed's opponents attacked him for campaigning with the popular commentator and live-streamer Hasan Piker, who has also spoken out against antisemitism and has strongly criticized Israel, saying that Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack was a “direct consequence” of actions by the IDF and the US in Gaza.
A Data for Progress poll taken last month found that Michigan voters were far more concerned about AIPAC influence in the election than they were about El-Sayed's decision to campaign with a commentator who harbors negative views about the increasingly unpopular Israeli government.
The race is close according to recent polls, with Stevens backed by 24.9% of voters, according to the latest Detroit Regional Chamber survey, and El-Sayed supported by 22.9% of respondents. Thirty-six percent of voters said they were undecided.
Sunday's rally served as both an event promoting El-Sayed's campaign ahead of the August 4 primary and the latest stop on US Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) Fighting Oligarchy tour, with the progressive leader also urging Detroit voters to support state Rep. Donavan McKinney (D-11) in the primary in Michigan's 13th Congressional District, now represented by Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.).
"I want to give you some good news,” Sanders said. “As Rashida Tlaib will tell you, over the last six to eight years, we have elected dozens of great members of Congress; strong progressives who are standing up and fighting for the working class. And I certainly hope Donavan McKinney will join that group.”
While El-Sayed and McKinney—who are both supporters of Medicare for All and raising taxes on billionaires—have three months to go until primary voters go to the polls, and are campaigning without the support of party leaders, Sanders reminded voters in Detroit that other progressive leaders like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have recently emerged victorious in races after being denounced as too critical of Israel or too far to the left.
“Think about what’s happened in the last six months,” said Sanders. “Zohran Mamdani started his campaign for mayor of New York City at 1% in the polls. Got it? He was opposed by the entire Democratic establishment, he was obviously opposed by the Republican establishment, he was opposed by the president of the United States, he was opposed by every oligarch in New York City.”
“I don’t care how much money the other folks have, when you have 100,000 people knocking on doors, whether it’s New York, or Michigan for Abdul, there ain’t nobody gonna beat you,” Sanders said. “They’ve got the money. We’re never going to compete with that. And they don’t like Abdul, by the way, in case you haven’t noticed, for a lot of reasons. … But if we mobilize the people, we win.”
Rights advocates swiftly sounded the alarm on Friday after the infamously far-right US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit temporarily blocked a federal rule allowing mifepristone to be dispensed by mail, dramatically curtailing access to the medication—commonly used for abortion and early miscarriage care—nationwide, particularly in states with policies hostile to reproductive freedom.
Just months after the US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversed Roe v. Wade, the Food and Drug Administration permanently lifted mifepristone's in-person dispensing requirement in early 2023, under then-President Joe Biden. Louisiana—which has among the nation's most restrictive abortion policies—challenged the FDA's move.
A federal judge in Louisiana paused that lawsuit last month while President Donald Trump's administration conducts an FDA review that seems "designed to manufacture an excuse for further restricting medication abortion across the country," as Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, warned at the time.
After a panel from the appellate court overturned that decision and revived the in-person dispensing rule on Friday, Kaye declared that "anti-abortion politicians have just made it much harder for people everywhere in the country to get a medication that abortion and miscarriage patients have been safely using for more than 25 years."
"Louisiana's legal attack on mifepristone shamelessly packaged lies and propaganda as an excuse to restrict abortion—and the 5th Circuit rubber-stamped it," she continued. "This decision defies clear science and settled law and advances an anti-abortion agenda that is deeply unpopular with the American people. For countless people, especially those who live in rural areas, face intimate partner violence, or live with disabilities, losing a telemedicine option will mean losing access to this vital medication altogether."
Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), similarly stressed that "this ruling is a sweeping and dangerous rollback that disregards the well-established safety and efficacy of the use of mifepristone via telehealth, and will create immediate, medically unnecessary barriers to care for patients across the country."
"Make no mistake: This ruling is not grounded in science or patient safety," she said. "It is a politically driven decision that overrides medical expertise and years of research, and threatens to upend how abortion care is delivered nationwide. Through this litigation, Louisiana seeks to impose its cruel abortion ban across the nation—including in states with legal protections for abortion—and today the court has taken an extreme step toward that end."
While pledging that "NAF and our allies will continue to advocate to restore full access to medication abortion," Fonteno reminded patients that mifepristone "remains available in doctors' offices, clinics, and hospitals."
Terrific thread. I’ll just add:1. I think there’s a good chance the Supreme Court will stay this decision, allowing providers to keep mailing mifepristone for the time being.2. The Trump administration didn’t want this! Its plan was to wait until after the midterms to crack down on mifepristone.
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) May 1, 2026 at 6:52 PM
After Roe's reversal, the anti-choice movement and its allies in elected offices ramped up efforts to impose state-level restrictions on reproductive healthcare. A significant majority of abortions in the United States involve a two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, and a quarter of those patients receive care via telemedicine.
"Telehealth has been the last bridge to care for many seeking abortion, which is precisely why Louisiana officials want it banned," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which joined over 100 other reproductive health, justice, and rights groups, including the ACLU and NAF, that filed an amicus brief in this case.
"This isn't about science—it's about making abortion as difficult, expensive, and unreachable as possible," Northup added. "Telehealth has transformed healthcare. Selectively stripping that away from abortion patients is a political blockade."
The drug companies Danco Laboratories, which makes the brand-name version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, and GenBioPro, which makes the generic, have intervened in Louisiana v. FDA. GenBioPro is represented by the law firm Arnold & Porter and Democracy Forward, whose president and CEO, Skye Perryman, declared Friday that "this is the anti-abortion extremists' playbook in action once again: Weaponize the courts to serve their political interests, ignore decades of scientific evidence proving mifepristone’s safety, and put women directly in harm's way."
"Even as this assault defies the will of the overwhelming majority of the American public, these ideologically extreme politicians and organizations are determined to impose a narrow, autocratic agenda—no matter the cost," she continued, emphasizing that "our fight is not over."
This is a ruling purporting to halt telehealth prescriptions of mifepristone NATIONWIDE. Louisiana asked the Fifth Circuit for a decision by Monday, May 11. That they dropped it on a Friday afternoon feels intentional to keep it in effect for longer. Expect emergency appeal to SCOTUS shadow docket
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— Susan Rinkunas (@susanrinkunas.com) May 1, 2026 at 5:35 PM
The effects of the 5th Circuit's decision are expected to be immediate absent a quick intervention from the Supreme Court, and Nourbese Flint, president of All* Above All, warned that "as always, the people most impacted will be Black and brown communities and those already navigating systemic barriers to care."
Serra Sippel, executive director of the Brigid Alliance, a national abortion support group that helps coordinate and fund travel, said that "we expect to see an immediate increase in patients forced to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles for care. That includes many who are later in pregnancy—when care is more complex and more expensive."
"Over the past several years, we've seen a dramatic rise in abortion travel and a growing reliance on practical support networks like ours, particularly in states where patients already travel long distances for care," Sippel noted. "We will continue to monitor the impact of this ruling and are committed to ensuring abortion patients who need to travel can safely get to the care they need, regardless of where they live."
Iranian officials on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration's account of events in the Strait of Hormuz over the preceding 24 hours, saying that the US military attacked two cargo boats and killed at least five civilians amid President Donald Trump's ploy to force open the critical waterway.
Iran's state-affiliated media carried comments from an unnamed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who said that American forces "attacked two small boats carrying people on their way from Khasab on the coast of Oman to the coast of Iran on Monday," killing five people on board, and that no IRGC vessels were hit. US forces, said the commander, "must be held accountable for their crime."
The IRGC commander's version of events was reported hours after the head of the US Central Command told the press that two US-flagged commercial vessels successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz with the help of American forces, which purportedly shot down drones and destroyed six Iranian speedboats that were said to be targeting the ships.
Monday's exchanges came amid Trump's newly announced scheme—titled Project Freedom—to "guide" vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed in response to the US-Israeli war and the Trump administration's subsequent blockade of Iran.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a top Iranian negotiator and speaker of the country's parliament, said in a statement posted online early Tuesday that "the new equation of the Strait of Hormuz is in the process of being solidified."
"The security of shipping and energy transit has been jeopardized by the United States and its allies through the violation of the ceasefire and the imposition of a blockade; of course, their evil will diminish," he wrote. "We know full well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America; while we have not even begun yet."
The US military has not yet responded to Iran's statements on developments in the Strait of Hormuz. Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine are set to hold a press conference on Tuesday morning.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, said Tuesday that "events in Hormuz make clear that there's no military solution to a political crisis."
"As talks are making progress with Pakistan's gracious effort, the US should be wary of being dragged back into quagmire by ill-wishers," Araghchi added. "So should the UAE. Project Freedom is Project Deadlock."
"This is a clear attempt to seize and hold power over our elections by sending a message that any county or state that doesn't vote in favor of the president or his preferred candidates may be subjected to a harassment campaign."
Democracy defenders sounded the alarm just over three months ago, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at a Georgia election hub. They expressed concerns again after a court filing revealed late Monday that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is demanding the names of Fulton County's 2020 election workers.
For years, the Republican president has "obsessively propagated the debunked conspiracy theory that Fulton County 'stole' the 2020 election from him. And he has made it clear that he seeks retribution against those who refuse to indulge his baseless claims," notes the county's Monday filing aimed at blocking the April 20 grand jury subpoena for election workers' personal data.
The largely Democratic county—which includes most of Atlanta—argued that it should not have to turn over workers' names, home addresses, emails, and telephone numbers due to federal overreach and First Amendment concerns, according to CBS News. It also suggested the subpoena is politically motivated and highlighted the statute of limitations for 2020 election crimes.
"After illegally seizing our election records in January, the federal government once again is attempting to misuse criminal process," Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said in a statement announcing the motion.
"This is yet another act of outrageous federal overreach designed to intimidate and to chill participation in elections. This harassment should not be allowed, so we have asked the court to act," he continued. "I will always stand up for our elections workers and for the truth. Let me be crystal clear. Fulton County will not be intimidated."
Voting rights advocates echoed the concerns noted by the filing and Pitts. Lauren Groh-Wargo, who leads Fair Fight Action, told The New York Times that election workers across the United States now face heightened threats and harassment.
"Roughly a third of election officials are threatened on the job, and more than half worry it's making it harder to hire and keep election workers," Groh-Wargo said. "They're trying to break our democracy by attacking the infrastructure, but we are fighting back hard."
Trump's DOJ is losing in Fulton County – so they've resorted to harassing election workers. In 2020, workers saw death threats due to false claims.This case was initially rejected by ATL's FBI Chief. It's built on false claims that were investigated and rejected, including by Republican officials.
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— Max Flugrath🗳️ (@maxflugrath.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 8:31 AM
All Voting Is Local Georgia state director Kristin Nabers stressed in a statement that "the conspiracy theories and lies that dictate White House policy have real-world consequences beyond appeasing the president's fragile ego—they are being weaponized to target the people from our communities who run our elections and ensure our votes are counted."
"This is a clear attempt to seize and hold power over our elections by sending a message that any county or state that doesn't vote in favor of the president or his preferred candidates may be subjected to a harassment campaign like that of Fulton County," she continued. "This intimidation tactic is a slap in the face to the millions of county election workers and volunteers around the country who work tirelessly to make sure our elections run smoothly."
Nabers added that "the all-out assault on Fulton County and its poll workers creates a blueprint for the administration to see what it can get away with during the midterm elections when results in key counties and states don't go its way. Election workers in Fulton County and beyond will not be intimidated by this desperate bullying."
The fight in Fulton County—where Trump and others initially faced criminal charges for their effort to overturn his 2020 loss—comes as some primary elections are underway across the country, and amid mounting concerns about what the president may try in November, particularly if the GOP-controlled Congress passes the attack on voting rights that the White House is pushing.
Michael McNulty, policy director of the group Issue One, said Tuesday that "Americans should be furious" about Trump's demands in Georgia, which "are based solely on debunked conspiracy theories from 2020 that courts and post-election audits have repeatedly rejected."
"Targeting these heroic election workers does nothing to strengthen our democracy—it puts ordinary public servants at risk in an attempt to erode trust in elections," he warned. “The Trump administration's goal is to make Americans feel distrust and cynicism about the election process. While the administration is framing its actions using the 2020 elections, it is proceeding with this year's midterms in mind."
As McNulty detailed, Trump's "election takeover playbook" includes:
"If this playbook is left unchecked, the Trump administration will continue to abuse its power and attempt to meddle in elections like authoritarian leaders in other countries," he said. "Congress must stop this."
"It should use oversight and funding authority to halt the executive branch from weaponizing federal power against the heroes who run our elections," McNulty argued. "Members of Congress swore an oath to the Constitution when they agreed to serve, and now is a test of whether they are willing to live up to that oath and protect the American people."
Some members of Congress joined voting rights advocates in speaking out against the subpoena this week. Sharing the Times report on social media Tuesday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) declared that "Trump's attacks on our free and fair elections won't stop."
"You represent the majority of people not only in the United States who overwhelmingly in the public opinion polls, say they're against the war, but of course the majority of people in the world," said peace activist Medea Benjamin.
As the one-man protest of activist Guido Reichstadter reached its fifth day, 168 feet above the Anacostia River on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC, the anti-war activist is receiving praise both at home and worldwide as he said Tuesday he would go another day even though he has run out of both food and water.
"We are profoundly touched," said CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin during a visit Monday, standing below Reichstadter's perch at the top of one of the bridge's arches, which he has been occupying since last Friday in protest of President Donald Trump's war on Iran and the rapid proliferation of unregulated artificial intelligence.
"It's such a beautiful act of profound civil disobedience that is making waves all over the world," said Benjamin in a video clip posted on social media by documentary filmmaker Ford Fischer.
2) Guido Reichstadter spoke by phone with Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, saying he's "touched" by their support.
"We are just amazed that you did this!" Benjamin told him. "Just something beyond our belief."
Police over a loudspeaker continued to implore Reichstadter to accept… pic.twitter.com/cnBXv0mNTy
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) May 4, 2026
Reichstadter climbed up to the arch on Friday and unfurled a long black banner that he says represents the "shame and grief" of those who have been forced to be complicit in the US-Israeli war on Iran.
He released a statement saying he was demanding "an immediate end to the Trump regime’s illegal war on Iran and the removal of the regime’s power through mass nonviolent direct action and non-cooperation.”
The 45-year-old activist and father of two has staged other high-profile acts of civil disobedience in the past, but this one garnered the attention of Explosive Media, an independent media group that has released several viral videos skewering the Trump administration's deeply unpopular war. Reichstadter appeared in a video released by the group over the weekend, portrayed as a heroic LEGO figure.
As Benjamin spoke to Reichstadter, police continued trying to convince him to climb down from the arch, which he said he planned to leave Tuesday afternoon.
Now: Police get some exercise as they monitor Guido Reichstadter, now on his fifth day of occupying the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in a one-man protest against the Iran War and AI proliferation. https://t.co/DFkhA6zABG pic.twitter.com/0dumNmXk20
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) May 5, 2026
He survived on Chex Mix and dried cranberries for the first day of his occupation, before running out on Saturday. He ran out of water Monday afternoon and was almost out of phone battery, but Fischer reported that he "managed to get something working."
Reichstadter said that he would stay for "possibly another day or two."
With reporters assembled nearby, Benjamin asked him if he wanted to share any message about the war in Iran, in which hostilities were continuing this week in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's insistence that a ceasefire that was reached last month is holding.
"We have to end it," said Reichstadter.
"We're so worried that the bombing is going to start once again," said Benjamin, "and that's why you being up there is so important at this moment, because you represent the majority of people not only in the United States who overwhelmingly in the public opinion polls, say they're against the war, but of course the majority of people in the world... So what you're doing is on behalf of people all over the world, who are saying, 'This war was unprovoked, it's illegal, it's reckless, and it has to end."
More than 60% of Americans view Trump's war on Iran as a "mistake," according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll released the day Reichstadter climbed on top of the bridge.
Brazil's president called Israel's continued detention of Brazilian Thiago Ávila and Spanish-Swedish national Saif Abu Keshek "a serious affront to international law."
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday condemned Israel's twice-extended detention of two Global Sumud Flotilla members abducted last week off the coast of Greece while attempting to break the decadeslong Israeli blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to its people amid an ongoing genocide.
"Maintaining the imprisonment of Brazilian citizen Thiago Ávila, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla, is an unjustifiable action by the Israeli government, causes great concern, and must be condemned by all," Lula said on X.
"The detention of the flotilla activists in international waters had already represented a serious affront to international law," he added. "For this reason, our government, together with that of Spain, which also had a citizen detained, demands that they receive full guarantees of safety and be immediately released."
Spain's government has also condemned Israel’s capture of Abu Keshek and demanded his immediate release, and like Lula, called the detention illegal because it occurred in international waters. Abu Keshek is also a citizen of Sweden, which has not condemned his detention—or even mentioned him by name—but has asked that "the rights of any Swedish citizens will be respected."
Adalah Legal Center, the Palestinian group in Israel representing Ávila and Abu Keshek, said Tuesday that the Ashkelon Magistrates’ Court approved Israel's request to extend the pair's detention through May 10. This, after the court on Sunday prolonged their detention by two days.
“The court’s decision to extend the detention of humanitarian activists abducted in international waters amounts to judicial validation of the state’s lawlessness,” Adalah assertedad, vowing to appeal the decision, which the group said was based on "secret evidence."
Adalah noted that “because the activists were abducted over 1,000 kilometers away from Gaza and are not Israeli citizens, Israeli domestic law does not apply to them."
Israel contends that it is enforcing a lawful naval blockade of Gaza Strip, and that under the laws of naval warfare, that blockade can be enforced not only in its territorial waters, but also on the high seas.
Adalah said, "Crucially, the court granted the full six-day extension requested by the state without imposing any limitations or judicial constraints on the interrogation period,” adding that the stated purpose of their continued detention is further interrogation.
"Ávila reported being subjected to repeated interrogations lasting up to eight hours,” the group reported. “Interrogators have explicitly threatened him, stating he would either be ‘killed’ or ‘spend 100 years in jail.'”
“Both activists remain in total isolation, subjected to 24/7 high-intensity lighting in their cells, and kept blindfolded whenever they are moved, including during medical examinations,” Adalah said, accusing interrogators of "trying all the time to connect the humanitarian aid with Hamas to present it as a service to Hamas."
Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that both men were affiliated with the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, which the US government accuses of "clandestinely acting on behalf of" Hamas, the militant Palestinian resistance group that led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Still, no charges have been filed against the pair, who Adalah said have been on hunger strike since April 30 in protest of their detention.
Abu Keshek and Ávila were among the more than 170 Global Sumud Flotilla members intercepted and seized last week in international waters 45 nautical miles west of the Greek island Kythira and 600 nautical miles from Gaza in what many critics have called an act of piracy.
All of the other flotilla members have been released. Many said they brutally abused by their Israeli captors, who threatened to kill them. The Washington Post reported 34 people—including citizens of Australia, Colombia, Italy, Ukraine, and the United States—required medical attention for broken ribs, noses, and other injuries. Detained activists also said they were denied food and water, and were forced to sleep on deliberately flooded floors. Both Abu Keshek and Ávila had visible facial injuries during their first court appearances.
In a statement issued on Monday, Global Sumud Flotilla said Abu Keshek and Ávila "are being subjected to systemic psychological torture and explicit threats to the lives of their families."
The statement also noted the growing calls for their release from advocacy organizations and governments.
"We urge the international community and their representatives to immediately take action for the safety and freedom of Saif and Thiago, the freedom of all Palestinian hostages, and the end of Israel's illegal siege of Gaza and its genocide," Global Sumud added.
American journalist Alex Colston, who was aboard the flotilla on assignment for Zeteo, said he was beaten by his captors, and corroborated accounts of broken bones, concussion symptoms, and other signs of abuse inflicted by Israeli forces on flotilla members, as well as death threats, property theft, and other mistreatment.
Hannah Smith, a representative of the flotilla's public affairs team who was also aboard one of the vessels, told Democracy Now! on Monday that, after intercepting the boats, Israeli forces "pointed guns at us. They had lasers pointed at us. We had our hands in the air. They threatened lethal force."
"Many people were subject to aggressive physical force," she said. "We were denied access to adequate water. We were denied access to sanitary supplies."
Smith continued:
The nights were extremely cold. People’s jackets were stolen. When I advocated for one of the participants, who’s a doctor, who was pacing for two hours trying to stay warm—she had a short-sleeve shirt in like 50-degree weather that was cold and damp. When I advocated for blankets, they flooded the sleeping area. And then we had a dozen people pacing, trying to stay warm, trying not to get hypothermia.
When we nonviolently resisted, many people were beat. Many people were dragged. I was held in a stress position for many hours... I heard people screaming. I heard people being dragged around. And it was absolutely horrifying.
The reports of torture and other abuse are consistent with Israeli forces' brutal treatment of members of past Gaza flotillas, including Ávila, who has taken part in at least three such missions. Victims have included Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, who was allegedly dragged, beaten, and made to kiss an Israeli flag in which she was allegedly wrapped after Israeli forces intercepted last October's Global Sumud mission.
It's not just activists who reported Israeli brutality. Journalist Noa Avishag Schnal—who was covering last October's flotilla—described rape threats and being “hung from the metal shackles on my wrists and ankles and beaten in the stomach, back, face, ear, and skull by a group of men and women guards, one of whom sat on my neck and face, blocking my airways.”
In 2010, Israeli forces raided one of the first Freedom Flotilla Coalition convoys carrying humanitarian aid intended for Gaza, which Israel blockaded three years earlier. The Israeli attackers killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
In a letter to his daughter dictated to his lawyer from prison, Ávila said, "I’m sorry for not being home with you right now."
"Today over a million children are suffering a genocide, being starved to death, being amputated without anesthesia, and suffering from horrific, hateful ideas, despite not knowing what Zionism and Imperialism is," he continued.
More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023. Around 2 million others have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, and Israel is facing an International Court of Justice genocide case filed by South Africa and formally supported by numerous nations, including Brazil and Spain.
"Your world will be safer because many parents decided to give everything to build this better world for you," Ávila added. "I hope someday you understand that because I love you so much there was nothing more dangerous for you and for other children than living in a world that accepts genocide."