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Hoo boy. With the approach of what bleakly promises to be "the super-Islamophobic midterms," the Bigot-In-Chief is letting his racist freak flag fly by attacking Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, whose smarts, strength, hotness, accomplished wife and Michigan win clearly terrify him. Cue charges of "communist," "man of hate," and, probs soon, AI slop featuring suicide vests. Meanwhile, El-Sayed, a far sharper tool in the shed, has embraced the charge they represent "(two) America’s": The ads write themselves.
Planet MAGA, of course, is already so delusional Trump just boasted of his "Great Poll Numbers," which now sit at rock-bottom lows of 38% to 33%. For a bunch of hacks led by a fragile narcissist who's never seen a scapegoat he didn't relish, the fantastical goes hand-in-stubby-hand with the fear-mongering: vandals in the Reflecting Pool, domestic terrorists at No Kings, migrant caravans, lunatic Bolsheviks, weird names or just brown-or-black skinned success, more terrifying to many of these losers than any threat of extremism. Enter, in peril, the high-achieving epidemiologist, health official, author and "Muslim boogeyman" El-Sayed. “Expect them to throw the whole bigoted kitchen sink at El-Sayed," says Mehdi Hasan. "This will be the anti-Zohran Mamdani campaign on anti-Muslim steroids."
Unsurprisingly, it began in earnest the minute the good doctor won Michigan's against-the-odds primary against establishment Dem Haley Stevens. He'll face off against GOP Rep. and racist ijiot Mike Rogers, who of course has rushed to call the U.S.-born-and-bred El-Sayed "anti-American" and - pulling the same juvenile "Barack Hussein Obama" crap to undermine his legitimacy - to use his full, scary, def-not-in-Kansas-anymore name Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. But Abdulrahman, who doesn't suffer fools gladly, has brutally pushed back. "With a name like mine, I never thought running for office would be possible," he said at a campaign event. But if "Mike" wants to focus on his 11-letter (a lot!) first name, he just wanted to remind him, "If you don’t know how to say it, keep the name out of your damn mouth.”
In moronic lockstep, MAGA's bigots, brown shirts and zealots have followed suit with "cartoonishly Islamophobic attacks." They use his full name and say he's a "socialist," which they can't define but anyway he isn't. Anti-trans goon Nancy Mace charges, “Every single Muslim holding public office (is) a Trojan Horse and a threat to national security and our republic," and woe is us when "our granddaughters are wearing burkas to school." Vapid scumbag JD calls him a "crazy" guy who doesn't want Trump's rip-off, oligarch-run "prosperous economy" and flings "personal insults" at Vance's family, though hours later Trump attacked El-Sayed's wife, who is U.S.-born and thus not an alleged Einstein Visa immigrant third wife who somehow after 30 years here can still barely speak English. Maybe it was an Epstein Visa?
As usual, Trump has eagerly led the racist, vulgar charge. Along with a communist man of hate, he's also called El-Sayed a "jihadist" from a rigged, "strictly Third World" state who's "full of shit." It turns out El-Sayed is also "the absolute best at casually burning Trump to the fucking ground": Asked about the barb, El-Sayed snapped back, “At least I don’t let mine go in the middle of the Oval Office." And as with another smart, quick, non-white guy who's way above his pay grade and lives rent-free in his wee puerile mind, he likes to sneeringly recite, often stumbling, the full, scary name of a guy who this time actually would be the first Muslim U.S. senator. Presumably, the ketchup really hit the White House walls last weekend when El-Sayed said he'd had "a really good conversation" with Obama about "what we need to do to win."
Above all, the bigot for all seasons pivots to the trope of anyone Arabic - El-Sayed's parents immigrated from Egypt - being anti-Semitic. "He doesn't love Jewish people," babbles Trump. "He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart." In fact, El-Sayed has plainly, repeatedly said he opposes not Jews but Israel's genocidal policies, AIPAC and the dark U.S. money that abets both: "I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for all people." That call for equality under the law has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, notes Peter Beinart; cognizant of history. he also warns that a political party or ideology willing to be "nakedly bigoted" toward any group of people, in this case Muslims, in order to maintain power would, if the politics were to shift, "do the same thing to Jews in a heartbeat."
Obviously, such subtlety is beyond the dim-witted likes of Trump and his MAGA zombies, who alone could look at Dr. El-Sayed and his (one) wife Dr. Sarah Jukaku, a psychiatrist whose parents emigrated here from India, and see a threat. Both are U.S.-born-and- raised doctors with undergrad degrees from University of Michigan, where they met, and advanced degrees from Columbia and Oxford. In his book Healing Politics, El-Sayed offers a rigorous framework for understanding systemic medical and political failure, and building conditions for lasting healing. He also calls Jukaku his “rock" and praises the "quiet confidence" that led her to work with people confronting pain. "I struggled to learn who I was,” he wrote of their earlier selves. “Sarah did not. She danced with her emotions. I wrestled with mine." The couple has two daughters.
No wonder, then, a needy, hollow rapist, con-man, bully and aspiring tinpot dictator, routinely raking in billions while kids go hungry and stuffed into a cheap tux for his fellow billionaire felons, posted a photo of himself with his tacky, mail-order, call-girl wife in a tight dress with "redacted Epstein files written all over it" - both smirking, "We're richer and be better than you and just ignore our vile name appearing in those pedo files thousands of times" - alongside the other couple, warmly smiling after a pancake breakfast in a diner, El Sayed in a t-shirt, Jukaku in a hijab so she must be a terrorist (though Trump, suspect, is wearing a cat.) The caption for the side-by-side pics, which only the spectacularly tone-deaf Trump could remotely imagine as a mic-drop: "Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s (sic).” Umm. Sure.
Kudos to El-Sayed, prince among men, who didn't even stoop to pick the low-hanging fruit of Trump's "grammatical shitbaggery" - one comment: "What a maroon" - emblematic of a proudly semi-literate GOP somehow come to power in our debased America without understanding how apostrophes work. Instead, El-Sayed went for the meat of the matter. "Yeah, he's right," he told CNN. Swiftly, he embraced the campaign-ready concept of two Americas: "Trump's vision, the one you're living in right now (in) which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other, but join in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you...Or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, and want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that family is going to have the good things."
Those "good things" - health care, good jobs, clean air and water, a relatively level playing field to replace gross inequality, a country where people can live peaceably together "with their sisters and brothers" - are what he and his wife want for their kids, and he wisely gauges most of the rest of us do too. And no, he says, rebutting GOP charges, it's not "radical" to believe people should be able to afford groceries, have health care, partake in free elections. Also, he and his wife actually "like each other," he adds; as to the couple in the "very different" America, "From what I've heard, it's a bit of a rocky road." As mid-terms loom. “They are going to try to paint me as a certain thing, (but) America is a lot bigger than (these) very small people make it out to be," he says. "They all think we won't step up and fight...We fight for each other."
@abdulelsayed They all think we won't step up and fight... They think they're the biggest, baddest bully on the playground... That they're going to show up and we're going to run away...
Despite climate concerns and high prices from President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran, his administration continued its assault on offshore wind this week, using another "taxpayer-funded bribe" to convince a company to instead invest in fossil fuels.
The German company RWE announced Thursday that it had reached a settlement with the US Department of the Interior to relinquish offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, California, and Louisiana for $1.22 billion.
"After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the US for the foreseeable future," the firm said in a statement. "The company determined that this resolution best serves the interests of its stakeholders and allows it to direct resources toward energy projects that can be advanced with certainty."
RWE also disclosed that it would put $900 million toward an indirect 16% stake in a Louisiana liquefied natural gas project, and $300 million toward turbines for a pipeline of 15 natural gas peaking projects across target US markets.
Reuters reported that the deal is "the fifth, and largest, the administration has entered into this year as part of its wide-ranging effort to stop development of US offshore wind projects," which Trump has fought against since before becoming president. His current term has featured various moves collectively condemned as a "war against renewables."
The RWE deal was ripped by climate and labor advocates, as well as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who said that "everything the Trump administration does can be summed up in four words: CORRUPTION AT YOUR EXPENSE."
"Trump is again spending billions of taxpayer money to limit the US energy supply in favor of exporting more energy to countries like China," Schumer wrote on social media. "This will only make your utility bill MORE expensive."
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum fired back at Schumer, claiming that "your climate extremist energy 'transition' was actually energy SUBTRACTION," and "ZERO taxpayer money will be spent. It's a dollar-for-dollar repurposing of RWE's own money."
RWE explained that it had "invested more than $1 billion toward the leases and the development of these projects," and the new agreement resolves the company's "legal claims and provides $1.22 billion in settlement funds."
House Natural Resources Committee Democrats Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) joined Schumer and other critics in railing against the deal, saying Friday: "Trump just paid RWE over $1 BILLION in taxpayer money to walk away from offshore wind projects—including a project off Humboldt in my district—and invest in fossil fuels instead."
"This fake, illegal settlement kills good-paying jobs, raises electricity costs, and rewards Big Oil with taxpayer dollars," he continued. "When the accountability comes, and I promise you it's coming, everyone involved in these deals will answer for it."
This potential settlement has been feared for months. In May, over 50 US groups "alarmed to learn that RWE was contemplating a deal" sent a letter urging CEO Mark Krebber to resist the Trump administration's "bullying" and "vendetta against offshore wind."
Among those organizations was Friends of the Earth US, whose senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia declared Friday that "committing to reinvest over $1 billion in fossil fuels is a disastrous mistake."
"The Trump administration won't be around forever, and any company that cuts a deal like this should expect accountability eventually," Garcia added.
The BlueGreen Alliance, which brings together environmental groups and labor unions, has a webpage tracking the costs of the buyouts, which so far include $3.9 billion in taxpayer money, 21.15 gigawatts of anticipated energy, and over 57,000 projected jobs.
"The Trump administration is relentless in its war on offshore wind," alliance executive director Jason Walsh said of the latest deal. "Billions of taxpayers' dollars have gone to waste along with tens of thousands of lost potential jobs. At a time when energy demand and costs are rising, we are disheartened by this latest buyout. Now working people on three coasts will no longer get to reap the benefits of the clean and reliable energy that would have come from these projects."
The settlements still face legal hurdles. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced in June that she is leading a coalition that includes AGs from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont in a lawsuit seeking to block one of them. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sent a notice of intent to sue over another deal.
Despite Big Oil-backed Trump's attacks on renewables and support for climate-wrecking fossil fuels, new data shows that the United States is generating more power from the sun and wind than ever, as Common Dreams reported earlier Friday.
For example, in May, solar generation eclipsed every other source of electricity in Utah for the first time. Weber State University physics professor Dan Schroeder said that is "wonderful news for air quality, it's wonderful news for the climate, and it's wonderful news for jobs and the economy."
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday reintroduced legislation that he said would end the "international embarrassment" of the US being one of the few countries in the world to not offer guaranteed paid vacation time for workers.
Sanders (I-Vt.)—who is co-sponsoring the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act along with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.)—said guaranteed vacation was essential for all American families.
"We hear a lot of talk about family values in America, but let’s be clear," Sanders said. "When a husband, wife, and kids, during the course of an entire year, are unable to spend any time together on vacation, that is not a family value. That is an attack on everything that a family is supposed to stand for."
"It’s not a radical idea to require companies in America to provide at least two weeks of paid vacation to their workers," Sanders added. "What’s radical is that millions of Americans are not only working longer hours for lower wages, but that they do not receive a single paid vacation day. That should not be happening in the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the world."
The legislation proposes giving every worker in the US the right to accrue at least one hour of paid annual leave for every 25 hours worked, with full-time workers earning at least two weeks of paid annual leave per year.
The bill would also prohibit employers from discriminating against workers who exercise their right to vacation.
Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI), who introduced a companion guaranteed paid vacation bill in the US House of Representatives, said the legislation was needed because "every worker in America deserves the chance to rest, recharge, and spend time with the people they love without worrying about missing a paycheck."
The legislation comes one day after the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released a report finding that "US workers get an average of 10 days per year of paid vacation time, far less than the legal minimum required in almost all comparable world economies."
CEPR also found that nearly a quarter of US workers get no vacation time at all, including 57% of the lowest-paid 10% of the US workforce.
Amid an expanding assault on privacy by the federal government, Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has brought the issue of mass surveillance to the forefront of Michigan's Senate race, attacking his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, for his longtime defense of the PATRIOT Act.
"Mike Rogers out here fighting for the Peeping Tom vote," wrote El-Sayed, a former public health official, in a social media post on Monday. "Creepy stuff, Mike."
El-Sayed was responding to an unearthed comment from Rogers, then the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, made during a 2013 committee hearing in Congress just months after whistleblower Edward Snowden's explosive revelations about the extent of the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless surveillance of Americans.
At the time, Congress was debating whether to enact legislation reining in a provision in the PATRIOT Act, Section 215, which the government had used to secretly collect phone records and other information in bulk from Americans not accused of wrongdoing.
Rogers was pushing American University law professor Stephen Vladeck to agree that the government should be allowed to examine Americans' business records to determine if they were connected to a foreign terrorist organization. Vladeck said he believed it should, but that protecting Americans' privacy needed to be taken into account. "The way we do it matters," he said.
The chair responded that in the decade since the policy had been enacted, nobody had ever complained about it. Vladeck, noting that the program was a secret, responded: "But who would be complaining?”
"Somebody whose privacy was violated," Rogers retorted. "You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated."
The quote is highly representative of Rogers' record of support for extensive government surveillance over his decade-and-a-half in Congress. He was one of the PATRIOT Act's leading champions since its introduction in 2001 and led the charge to stop mass collection powers from being curtailed after the Snowden revelations.
“The charge that the program tramples on the privacy of citizens is simply wrong,” he said in a statement with Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), then the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.
Rogers and Ruppersberger also coauthored the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in 2012, which would have allowed companies to share cybersecurity-related information with the government, including the NSA, with protections from existing privacy restrictions. The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the bill, which failed in the Senate, would have allowed the government to obtain large amounts of sensitive personal data with few restrictions.
"You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated."
In 2026, as artificial intelligence becomes a new tool for even more powerful and pervasive spying, El-Sayed has said the government must be banned from using it to "conduct warrantless surveillance."
As part of an AI policy platform rolled out in June, he said rules should be put in place to prevent its use for "domestic authoritarianism," including "mass political surveillance, protected-characteristic predictive policing, or AI targeting of dissent."
During President Donald Trump's second term, as he's used anti-"terrorism" rhetoric to justify a legal crackdown on domestic opposition, the government's expanding spy powers have become an increasing concern.
With the aid of private surveillance companies like Palantir, the administration has created an unprecedented surveillance dragnet that connects AI-powered facial recognition technology, license plate readers, and phone location tools to piles of data on Americans that have been used to supercharge its mass deportation campaign and aggressively monitor protesters and dissenters.
It has been met with some pushback in the Senate, where Republicans earlier this year narrowly failed to extend Trump's powers to surveil noncitizens under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without warrants. Though US citizens are not supposed to be targeted, civil liberties advocates argue that their information is often collected easily and the government has used it to prosecute them.
Rogers has attempted to back off some of his earlier defense of mass surveillance, though he has not meaningfully pushed to reduce the government's spying powers. During a losing Senate bid against Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in 2024, he said that it's "wrong" for the FBI to conduct warrantless searches against US citizens, but did not call for actually repealing or blocking Section 702.
Since serving in Congress, Rogers parlayed his time overseeing the intelligence community into a lucrative career advising and governing cybersecurity, intelligence, and government-contracting firms.
He served as a senior security adviser to AT&T while the company operated a little-known program that gave law enforcement access to searches of trillions of domestic phone records, though there is no record that he personally worked on the program.
Michigan Advance reported earlier this year that he also made almost $100,000 advising a company that helped the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro spy on dissidents.
Noting the Republican nominee's recent pivot to Trumpian election denialism, journalist Spencer Ackerman—who has extensively covered the expansion of government surveillance during the War on Terror—suggested in a post on social media that there is little reason to believe Rogers has changed much after over a decade out of Congress.
"I saw up close his efforts, post-Snowden, to protect the NSA and ensure it continues to nullify your constitutionally-protected privacy," Ackerman said. "He was for impunity then and wants the same thing for himself."
A right-wing talk show host on Tuesday pushed President Donald Trump to declare a "national security emergency" that would let him meddle in the 2026 midterm elections—and the president did not rule it out.
In an appearance on Real America's Voice, Trump listened as host Wayne Allyn Root rattled off actions he would like to see the president take ahead of the midterms.
"Let me put an idea in your head," Root told Trump. "Because it's so hard to get the Senate to do anything, now they're on recess, they never get anything done. If they never get the SAVE America Act done, you have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections."
🚨🚨🚨
WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. If you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a limit to mail ballots
TRUMP: Let me just say stranger things have happened. I'll leave it at… pic.twitter.com/SvXYoYI0lQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2026
Root then told the president that "if you do this in the next month" it would allow for the implementation of photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements, as well as restrictions on mail-in ballots.
"Let me just say that stranger things have happened," Trump said in response. "I'll leave it at that."
The US Constitution does not give the president power to declare a "national emergency" that would allow him to unilaterally rewrite states' election laws.
Regardless, ABC News reported in February that a group of pro-Trump attorneys were circulating a 17-page draft order that would use the purported threat of election interference from the Chinese government to declare a "national emergency" that would outright ban mail-in ballots and mandate that all ballots be hand-counted.
Trump has not yet signed such an order, but he has issued other election-related directives, including one that instructs the United States Postal Service (USPS) to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to their voter lists.
The USPS executive order and an order that required Americans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote have been blocked by courts.
Regardless, some observers expressed concern that the president wasn't yet finished in his efforts to meddle in the coming elections.
"There is zero reason," wrote CNN host Jake Tapper, "to not take Trump at his word that he and his team are planning something alarming to disrupt the midterms and beyond."
Criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield observed in response to the president's appearance on Real America's Voice that "Trump has no legal authority to do this," but warned "that doesn't mean he won't try."
Journalist Mike Rothschild questioned what the conversation between Trump and Root said about both men’s mental stability.
"Once again, Donald Trump is not a wizard," wrote Rothschild. "He can't just manifest things into existence by saying them or with a tweet. There is no 'right' to do this in US law, nor is there any mechanism that would enable any of this to happen. Both people in this conversation are deranged."
After losing the 2020 presidential election to former President Joe Biden, Trump refused to concede the race, lied about the election being "stolen" by nefarious actors, pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to overtake Biden in the Peach State, and pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject certifying the election despite lacking constitutional authority to do so.
When these efforts to overturn the election failed, Trump encouraged his followers to march to the US Capitol, where they broke into the building, assaulted law enforcement officers, and sent members of Congress running for their lives.
President Donald Trump is now quietly conceding that he's willing to walk away from his Iran war without meeting all of his demands if they agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran won't let him back out of the quagmire without a steep price.
Iran is in the process of negotiating a limited reopening of the critical waterway with Oman. But Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said on Saturday that "until America corrects its behavior, the Strait of Hormuz will not open.”
He outlined a list of demands on Saturday, even harsher than those Trump walked away from when he abandoned the "memorandum of understanding" negotiated in June.
Zolghadr said the US must permanently end its war and naval blockade against Iran, and withdraw military forces from the region. He also said the US must fully compensate Iran for damages from the war, lift sanctions, and unfreeze assets abroad.
This demand for an end to US "aggression" applies not just to Iran, but to its allies in the region: Zolghadr also demanded an end to Israel's attacks on Palestinians and a withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, as well as an end to US and Israeli attacks against the Houthis in Yemen.
The Trump administration, which is not known to be in direct talks with Iran, has not yet responded to the demands. Trump told Axios on Sunday that "We are low-keying it" and "only semi-negotiating with Iran," claiming that it was "in very bad shape" economically.
It's clear, however, that the Iranians believe they have enough of an upper hand to make Trump grovel, especially as news emerges that the US has burned through nearly all its available stocks of long-range precision weapons, making the war increasingly costly, though the administration has denied this.
Domestic concerns are also weighing on Trump. Over the past month, as the war heated up again, average gas prices in the US have shot back up above $4 a gallon, a major liability for Republicans heading into a midterm election cycle in which many voters say the cost of living is a top concern.
Approval of Trump among Americans has fallen to a new all-time low of 34% according to a YouGov poll late last month. And just 28% of Americans say they approve of his handling of the war, according to an Associated Press/NORC poll.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, Trump has privately signaled a willingness to declare victory if Iran opens the strait, even without getting any sort of nuclear agreement, which was purportedly the reason he launched the war in the first place.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Trump was "showing his desperation for a deal before it is completed, so Iran predictably demand[ed] major new concessions," adding that it was a "masterclass in how not to negotiate."
"As time passes, Tehran appears increasingly confident that the pressure is shifting onto Washington," said the Israeli national security analyst Danny Citrinowicz. "Iranian leaders seem to believe that the United States is now more eager than Iran to bring the confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz to an end, and, crucially, that Washington has few attractive military options for changing that equation."
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told CNN, "At this point, it is absolutely clear that there is no escalatory military path out of this war."
"It's been tried in several different variations, and it has not ended up particularly well," Parsi said. "In fact, the US's position has been weakened, in my view, by additional military action. And as a result, I think there needs to be a full dedication to the diplomatic pathway."
He added that for the Iranians, "the promise and the credibility of sanctions relief will carry far more weight than threats of further bombings."
“They had already bulldozed the whole village," said one mayor of a southern Lebanese town. "Then they set fire to the trees."
Environmental and rights advocates are condemning what one academic called "the latest in a neverending series of international crimes" by the Israel Defense Forces as firefighters and residents in southern Lebanon report that the IDF has purposely started destructive wildfires by continuing to bomb the region.
The blazes are an attempt, one town mayor said Wednesday, to make it appear "as though nobody had ever lived here.”
Israel renewed attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon in March, as the US-Israeli war on Iran widened across the Middle East. Following a "ceasefire" agreement in June, Israeli forces have continued occupying about 20% of Lebanese territory after forcibly displacing over 1 million people from the southern part of the country.
Israeli officials have said they aim to apply the "Gaza model" to Lebanon, deploying the kinds of attacks that have destroyed 90% of civilian infrastructure in Gaza since the IDF began attacking the exclave in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz recently boasted that the IDF had destroyed 24 villages “that had existed for hundreds of years."
Now, Hafez Ghasham, mayor of the southern town of Yaroun, told The Guardian, “they are trying to make the land uninhabitable."
“They had already bulldozed the whole village. Then they set fire to the trees. What remained in this particular area were the olive trees—large groves, with very old olive trees," Ghasham told the newspaper. “Many of these trees, most of them, in fact, were inherited from our grandparents and parents. They have enormous sentimental value. The trees were also an important source of income for the people of the village."
Residents who had been forced out of Yaroun said they learned from people in nearby Christian towns that their olive and fruit groves as well as many homes had been set on fire by Israeli soldiers.
The head of Civil Defense in the Nabatieh region said about 30-40% of the land in the area had been affected by the fires, and firefighters have been forced to withdraw as they've tried to extinguish the flames as the IDF has launched drone strikes after the initial attacks that sparked the fires.
"There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned," Hussein Fakih told The Guardian.
Kelley B. Vlahos, editor-in-chief of Responsible Statecraft, noted that "while the rest of the world is trying to put out forest fires this summer, Israel reportedly started them as a military tactic," even following the Lebanon ceasefire.
Last Friday, large wildfires were caused by Israeli munitions and drones that struck woodlands in Kfarchouba and in the area between Jezzine and the western Bekaa valley.
The Israeli military has accused Hezbollah of using woodland areas as cover for its military outposts and tunnels. The IDF has similarly defended extensive bombing of Gaza's schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure by claiming Hamas operates in tunnels beneath the buildings.
In a statement, Hezbollah's media relations officials said the fires represent "a continuation of urban destruction, the bulldozing of infrastructure, and the theft of ancient olive trees."
"The party called on the government, the Ministry of Environment, and all relevant authorities to speak out and act immediately to halt Israeli savagery against the environment, human life, and infrastructure," reported Al Mayadeen.
Hisham Younes, the founder of Lebanese conservation group Green Southerners, told The Guardian that Israel's bombing of forested areas amounts to "ecocide."
“These are long-established woodlands," said Younes. "They perform critical functions. The wider area is also an important passage and resting ground for migratory birds."
“It is not about any single fire or attack, but a pattern of destruction that progressively erodes the ability of ecosystems to function, regenerate, and sustain life," Younes added. "When those cascading effects also undermine livelihoods and people’s ability to return to and remain on their land, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from the wider transformation of the territory itself.”
"I'm not going to give up on this race until the votes are counted. That's nonsense!"
Mike Lindell, the conspiracy-mongering founder of MyPillow, is refusing to concede defeat after being soundly defeated on Tuesday in the Minnesota Republican Party gubernatorial primary.
Although official results show Lindell losing to Minnesota state House Speaker Lisa Demuth by more than 10 percentage points, the President Donald Trump-endorsed pillow magnate on Tuesday night bristled when asked if he would accept defeat if the Associated Press called the race.
"Why would I listen to the AP?" Lindell asked incredulously. "There's 265,000 votes left to count. I'm down by 18,000 now. We just gained 5,000... I'm not going to give up on this race until the votes are counted. That's nonsense!"
The AP would go on to project Demuth as the winner at 11:30 pm ET on Tuesday.
Manic Mike Lindell is ranting and raving that he won’t concede. pic.twitter.com/A67RewLDa3
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 12, 2026
Lindell also told KSTP investigative reporter Kirsten Swanson that there are unspecified "anomalies" in the vote tallies that "his teams will be looking into."
Lindell has a long history of spreading lies about elections.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Lindell falsely accused Dominion Voting Systems, the company whose voting machines were used in 27 states, of stealing the election for former President Joe Biden.
MS NOW host Joe Scarborough on Wednesday noted that Lindell was deploying the same script in his own race that he used for Trump in 2020.
"He is talking about 'irregularities'... in a Republican primary, just like he talked about 'irregularities' in the 2020 campaign," Scarborough said. "Again, it was in a Republican primary! And he got the stuffing knocked out of him!"
LMAO!
Mika: Lindell is not conceding.
Joe: He is talking about irregularities. Irregularities in a Republican primary. Just like he talked about irregularities in the 2020 election. The only irregularity here is maybe in his bowel movements.
Mika: Oh my God Joe. Stop! pic.twitter.com/ey9L2bKWyn
— Reggie B. (@reggiebblue) August 12, 2026
Trump pointed to Lindell's history of pushing election conspiracy theories as a strength in his July endorsement.
"Nobody has sacrificed more than Mike Lindell in fighting for our country, especially when it comes to Election Integrity," the president wrote in a Truth Social post. "He truly deserves everything he gets. He will MAKE MINNESOTA GREAT AGAIN!!! MIKE LINDELL HAS MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT—HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN."
"For months now, I have been telling you that this campaign was about the many vs. the money," said Minnesota's lieutenant governor. "The many just won."
Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota's lieutenant governor, won her state's Democratic primary for the US Senate on Tuesday by an overwhelming margin, defeating US Rep. Angie Craig and outside groups that spent tens of millions of dollars trying to influence the race.
"For months now, I have been telling you that this campaign was about the many vs. the money," Flanagan said in her victory speech. "Well, guess what? The many just won."
Flanagan's platform includes Medicare for All, expanding Social Security, and dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after federal agents unleashed by the Trump administration killed two people in Minnesota earlier this year. Flanagan was endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), whose seat the Minnesota lieutenant governor is running to fill.
Outside organizations poured more than $20 million into the race to support Craig, a centrist Democrat and crypto industry champion. A large chunk of Craig's financial support in the US Senate primary came from North Star Dawn PAC, a shadowy organization funded by the Civic Progress Fund Inc., a group that does not disclose its donors.
"This happened because of you," Flanagan said of her primary win. "This happened because you said Minnesota is not for sale."
Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, celebrated Flanagan's victory in a statement late Tuesday, saying the results "once again reinforced what we’ve seen all across the country this election cycle: Voters want candidates to reject corporate PAC money and not be beholden to special interests."
“Lt. Gov. Flanagan ran on independence, accountability, and putting working families first—and beat nearly $20 million in outside spending against her," said Muller. "She understands that a government captured by special interests can’t deliver for everyday people. Her campaign demonstrated the power of standing firmly on principle, building trust with voters, and putting people at the center of every decision, and Minnesotans rewarded that vision."
I'm running for U.S. Senate to:
Get Big Money out of our politics.
End prior authorization.
Pass Medicare for All.
Rip ICE apart.
Raise the wage.
Deliver universal childcare.
Secure the right to repair.
Block the bombs.
Save Social Security.
Deliver for the people of Minnesota.
— Peggy Flanagan (@peggyflanagan) August 11, 2026
Flanagan will face sports reporter Michele Tafoya in November. Richard Carlbom, chair of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, mocked Republicans' choice of "Michele ‘take one less trip to Starbucks’ Tafoya as their candidate for the US Senate," referring to the GOP candidate's call for Americans to "just try to be patriots" and endure economic pain from President Donald Trump's Iran war with "a stiff upper lip."
"Tafoya is out of touch with the people of Minnesota and has aligned herself with Donald Trump on everything from abortion bans to tariffs," said Carlbom. "Michele Tafoya’s agenda consists only of saying yes to Donald Trump and yes to higher costs for working people. Minnesotans will reject her in November."
Flanagan's win in the key battleground state came as democratic socialist Francesca Hong suffered an upset loss in neighboring Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary, falling narrowly to establishment favorite David Crowley in a contest that drew national attention.
"Despite what warmongers want you to believe, the Monroe Doctrine undermines the partnerships needed to confront our complex challenges," said Rep. Delia Ramirez. "We must change course."
A congresswoman whose parents immigrated to the United States during US-backed genocidal dictatorships in Guatemala on Tuesday excoriated a State Department video hailing the Monroe Doctrine, an imperialist policy used by Washington to declare the Western Hemisphere its exclusive sphere of influence while masking aggression as protection from outside powers.
The roughly five-minute State Department video presents the Monroe Doctrine as a continuous thread in US foreign policy from 1823 to today, culminating in January's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. It starts with President James Monroe's warning that the Americas were no longer open to European colonization, then moves through the Spanish-American War—launched by President William McKinley on false pretenses—the Roosevelt Corollary, the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis, and finally to the Trump administration.
"American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again," the State Department said in a social media post promoting the video.
Responding to the clip, Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said: "What a cheap piece of imperialist propaganda. The Monroe Doctrine's legacy is political instability, deep poverty, extreme migration, and colonialism throughout Latin America and the Caribbean."
Declared in December 1823 by Monroe as Spanish colonies in the Americas won their independence, the doctrine states that European powers should not establish new colonies or interfere politically in the independent states of the Western Hemisphere. While it was partly a response to European attempts to restore colonial rule in Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine also asserted US hegemony over the Americas.
Over time, the Monroe Doctrine was transformed from a warning against European imperialism into a rationale for US imperial interventions and conquest, beginning with waging war on Mexico—again, under false pretenses, this time challenged by opponents including a young congressman named Abraham Lincoln—that resulted in the seizure of more than half of Mexican territory.
The US attempted to use the Monroe Doctrine to justify acquisition of a 10-mile zone around the Panama Canal via "gunboat diplomacy" and, after the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary, the right to intervene in Latin American and Caribbean countries when it judged their governments unstable, indebted, hostile, or vulnerable to foreign influence. Invasions and occupations of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua followed.
During the Cold War, successive US administrations used the largely imagined communist "threat" as pretext for CIA overthrows of democratically elected governments in Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, and other countries outside the Americas, including Iran and Congo—none of which were actually run by communists. The US also backed the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and terrorism targeting his regime and the Cuban people. Right-wing, pro-US military dictatorships were installed and lavished with financial, armed, and security aid, including torture training by operatives from the CIA, USAID, and other agencies.
The State Department video was not well received throughout Latin America. One Brazilian news site resented its "threatening tone," while Cuban media underscored the socialist island's sovereignty amid fears of a takeover repeatedly teased by US President Donald Trump.
In addition to illegal airstrikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and bombing and invasion of Venezuela to kidnap Maduro and his wife, the US under Trump has deployed troops to Ecuador as part of a joint campaign against alleged drug gangs dubbed Operation Total Extermination. Trump has also ordered the military to plan an invasion to seize the Panama Canal, attack Mexico and Colombia, invade and annex Greenland, and somehow make Canada the “51st state.”
Critics and supporters alike have called Trump's aggressive policies in the Americas the "Donroe Doctrine."
All told, Trump has bombed seven countries around the world since returning to the White House and 10 nations over the course of his two terms—including Iran, where he launched an illegal war with Israel.
Respondents to international public opinion surveys have repeatedly named the United States as the biggest threat to world peace. The late former US President Jimmy Carter even called his own country the "most warlike nation in the history of the world."
The US has attacked, invaded, or bombed dozens of countries and supported most right-wing dictatorships in the world since the end of World War II. It has overthrown or attempted to overthrow numerous foreign governments and has actively sought to crush many people’s liberation movements over that same period. It has also meddled in elections in countries that are allies and adversaries alike.
"Despite what warmongers want you to believe, the Monroe Doctrine undermines the partnerships needed to confront our complex challenges," Ramirez said on Tuesday. "We must change course. We must pass the New Good Neighbor Act."
Named after the short-lived period when the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration pursued policies of nonintervention and improved diplomatic relations with Latin America in the 1930s, the New Good Neighbor Act—a resolution introduced in February by Ramirez and Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)—calls on the US to adopt a new approach to the region based on cooperation, not confrontation.
“For more than 200 years, the United States has used the Monroe Doctrine to justify a paternalistic, damaging approach to relations with Latin America and the Caribbean," Ramirez said at the time. "As a result, the legacy of our nation’s foreign policy in those regions is political instability, deep poverty, extreme migration, and colonialism. It is well past time we change our approach."
“We must recognize our interconnectedness and admit that the Monroe Doctrine undermines the partnership needed to confront the complex challenges of this century," she added. "We must become better neighbors."
"This opinion is about protecting Trump and his allies from any real accountability, no matter where the questions come from—Congress, the courts, or investigators of any kind."
Just days after Senate Republicans confirmed US Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department of Justice this week issued a legal opinion on executive privilege that was swiftly condemned as an attempt to unfairly protect some of President Donald Trump's top advisers from any accountability.
Historically, the president has been allowed to assert executive privilege over communications with executive branch staff, protecting them from disclosure.
However, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) said in a Monday memo that "presidential communications with private advisers can fall within the scope of executive privilege so long as they relate to official presidential decisionmaking, involve or reflect communications with the president or his direct advisers, and are confidential."
The memo is signed by Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser. HuffPost reported that a DOJ official "argued its veracity by comparing it to a similar one made by President George W. Bush's attorney general in 2007."
"While the issue has not been litigated frequently, the opinion reaffirms the long-standing position of the office going back at least as far as Paul Clement in 2007 and arguably as far back as 1972," the unnamed official said.
Jonathan Shaub, a University of Kentucky School of Law professor who served in the Obama administration’s OLC, told CNN: "I would say it's not inconsistent with past positions... But it's never been stated publicly."
Shaub also told Axios that "it really could be a pretty significant weapon" for the second Trump administration "to deflect a lot of that congressional investigation of private parties."
Republicans are at risk of losing control of both chambers of Congress in the November midterm elections, and if they do, Democratic majorities could move to impeach Trump a historic third time—for everything from the Trump family's profiteering off of the presidency to his illegal war on Iran.
The Not Above the Law coalition's co-chairs—Brett Edkins of Stand Up America, Praveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, and Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn—said Tuesday that "Todd Blanche's Justice Department is doing what it always does: attempting to shield Donald Trump and the people around him before anyone can hold them accountable."
"This opinion is about protecting Trump and his allies from any real accountability, no matter where the questions come from—Congress, the courts, or investigators of any kind," they argued. "Every senator who voted to confirm Blanche knew exactly what kind of Justice Department they were signing off on. They own it now."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—who may not have enough support to lead Democrats even if they reclaim the upper chamber in November—was similarly critical, concluding: "Donald Trump is scared. He knows accountability is coming."
"He’s using his newly installed attorney general/personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, to cover up his communications with private advisers and special interest cronies," Schumer said on Facebook. "These are the actions of someone with something to hide. And it shows he is petrified of the questions a Democratic Congress will demand answers to. We will not let Trump escape the accountability he deserves."
"New research confirms: AI, on sum, is a loser for global climate."
As people across the United States protest against artificial intelligence data centers and their impact on utility bills, the local environment, and the climate, a new study highlights an overlooked way AI is increasing emissions that heat the planet.
Holly Alpine co-founded the nonprofit Enabled Emissions Campaign with her husband, fellow Microsoft alum Will Alpine. For the study, published last week in the journal npj Climate Action, the couple partnered with Purdue University associate professor Maksym Chepeliev and independent researcher Nathan Geldner.
"Most assessments of AI's climate impact are framed as a trade-off between data center energy use and the emissions AI might help avoid," Holly Alpine said in a Tuesday statement. "What's missing entirely is the other side of the ledger for AI's applications: the emissions enabled from the additional fossil fuel production being made commercially viable."
"Our modeling quantifies both, and finds a significant net global emissions increase," she explained. "Until enabled emissions are recognized, measured, and governed, we're only addressing a fraction of AI's climate impact."
In the fossil fuel sector, AI's "applications predominantly expand the pool of economically viable supply by increasing extraction productivity, lowering production costs, and reducing operational risk, thus extending the industry’s economic viability," the study states. It notes that "these applications predominantly" increase emissions, but can also avoid some, such as "through methane leak detection or efficiency gains in power generation."
"Applied to renewables (and other low-carbon generation), AI's applications predominantly avoid emissions," the paper details. "They offer potential to accelerate deployment and optimize generation efficiency, for example, through forecasting, predictive maintenance, and power generation optimization, while also extending the productive life of installed capacity and improving grid integration."
Examining dozens of scenarios, the study's authors found that if AI is used by both the fossil fuel and renewable sectors to boost productivity, global emissions rise by 0.47-1.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide annually. They also found that when fossil fuel productivity gains are considered in isolation, the increase for climate-heating pollution is 3.3-13.3 times larger than current data center emissions, and up to eight times larger than those projected for such facilities by 2035.
New research confirms: AI, on sum, is a loser for global climateShort of significant policy to curb fossil fuel interests (ha!), AI will amplify CO2 emissions, not mitigate them, even when considering the prospects of any renewable gains AI buildout could motivatewww.nature.com/articles/s44...
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— Philip Loring (@philiploring.com) August 11, 2026 at 4:44 PM
Putting the study's figures into context, Wired pointed out that "at the low end, the research finds that the additional yearly emissions could be equal to Mexico's; at the high end, AI boosting the fossil fuel industry could add as much greenhouse gas emissions as Russia, the world’s fourth-largest emitter."
Will Alpine, the lead author, said that "I spent years building AI platform tools and have seen firsthand how they're used."
"Like any tool, AI can accelerate whatever it's applied to," he continued. "Yes, it can advance renewable energy, strengthen the grid, and improve efficiency. But it has also been boosting the productivity of the fossil fuel industry for years, and our research shows that effect is asymmetric: It acts as an economic lever that reinforces the viability and dominance of fossil fuels."
As The Guardian reported Tuesday:
Saudi Aramco said last year that it had embedded AI "in everything," increasing productivity and the number of wells, while earlier this summer Equinor attributed 27 discoveries on the Norwegian continental shelf to new seismic technologies and AI. The findings include the Lofn and Langermann oil wells, which the company said was the largest discovery it operated in 2025. "AI was key, from automated data interpretation to efficient well planning," it said in a video at its capital markets day in June.
Rystad Energy, an independent research and energy intelligence company based in Oslo, estimated in May that digitalization and AI would create close to $500 billion (£370 billion) in cumulative value for fossil fuel exploration and production companies between 2026 and 2030—the result of more efficient operations, increased production, and shorter development timelines. "The returns are already visible in the industry," its analysts wrote, citing hundreds of millions of dollars in reported AI-related savings from Equinor and Abu Dhabi's Adnoc.
Welcoming the study, Clara Vondrich, senior policy counsel for the Climate Program at the watchdog group Public Citizen, said that "this research exposes Big Tech as a lead accomplice to the fossil fuel industry in ways we never imagined. It's bad enough that communities are being hammered by rising energy bills as data centers gobble up insane amounts of fossil fuel power, but now we see that those emissions are just a fraction of the climate harms Big Tech is responsible for."
"To be clear, oil companies are not simply using publicly available AI tools: Big Tech is entering into bilateral contracts with oil companies, and selling them proprietary tools specifically designed for the purpose of accelerating oil production," Vondrich stressed. "You can't make this up: Big Tech companies, self-avowed climate champs for decades, are working hand-in-glove with Big Oil to find, dig, and burn more fossil fuels to make a buck."
"AI’s promise as a tool for advancing solutions to the climate crisis is fading as a cruel reality takes shape: Big tech companies are selling AI to the fossil fuel industry to accelerate our demise so they can turn a profit," she added. "These are the perverse outcomes resulting from our rigged market economy: access to cutting-edge AI goes to the highest bidder and Big Oil has some of the deepest pockets in the world. Meanwhile the externalities—runaway climate change manifesting this summer as historic heat domes and fires—are never counted, except as body counts. Today, Big Tech is Big Oil's number one accomplice."
The head of one affiliated organization called Trump's sanctions "a slap in the face to victims and survivors of grave crimes everywhere who depend on the ICC as a court of last resort.”
A quartet of US human rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the Trump administration’s sanctions targeting members of the International Criminal Court for their roles in seeking to hold Israeli leaders accountable for alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Human Rights Watch (HRW), and the Open Society Institute (OSI) filed suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York challenging the Trump administration’s sanctions against ICC prosecutors and judges, a United Nations human rights expert, and three Palestinian human rights groups.
The groups argue that US President Donald Trump's February 2025 executive order that imposed sanctions on the ICC are a “blatantly illegal attack on international justice and should be struck down."
James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, called the sanctions "a slap in the face to victims and survivors of grave crimes everywhere who depend on the ICC as a court of last resort.”
Trump's sanctions follow the ICC's November 2024 issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. The tribunal simultaneously issued warrants for the arrest of three Hamas leaders for the same categories of crimes allegedly committed on and after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. However, Israel extrajudicially assassinated all three of the men.
The groups' complaint argues that the Trump administration has effectively transformed human rights advocacy into a potential criminal offense. Organizations can face severe civil and criminal penalties for providing what the government may determine are “services” to sanctioned individuals or groups.
That threat, they contend, has already had tangible consequences. The plaintiffs say the sanctions have disrupted their ability to represent victims of war crimes, submit evidence and legal arguments to the ICC, and collaborate with sanctioned Palestinian organizations on research, litigation, advocacy, and humanitarian work.
Targeted groups and individuals have experienced "frozen or closed bank accounts, rejection of financial transactions, denial of access to digital services, and travel bans," CCR notes. "US organizations, including the plaintiffs, can face punishment of up to 20 years of imprisonment and exorbitant fines for providing services to sanctioned persons or entities."
CCR called the sanctions "one of many" actions taken by the Trump administration "against free speech, protest, and advocacy in support of the human rights of Palestinians."
“For many years, I have represented victims in pressing for justice for crimes committed by the powerful, and finally saw much-needed, even if overdue, investigations opened at the ICC," said CCR senior staff attorney Katherine Gallagher. "In response, the Trump administration took the extraordinary step to not only deny Palestinians and victims of US torture equal access to justice, but to criminalize and punish them, their lawyers and advocates, and their partners."
Israeli officials and their supporters argue that the ICC and the International Court of Justice—where Israel is facing a genocide case filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations—have unfairly singled out Israel. However, the ICC has launched 18 investigations involving conflicts in countries including Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, the Philippines, Sudan (Darfur), and Ukraine.
Trump’s order asserts that ICC efforts involving US or allied nationals constitute a threat to American national security. But the new complaint argues that there is no genuine “national emergency” that can lawfully justify invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act against the court’s routine judicial work.
"The US government’s efforts to dismantle the ICC and punish people seeking justice for grave human rights violations harm far more than the individuals and groups facing sanctions," AFSC general secretary Joyce Ajlouny said in a statement Tuesday. “It is an affront to all victims and survivors of war crimes and genocide."
Ajlouny asserted that the Trump administration "seeks to intimidate human rights defenders and deter people of conscience from advocating for the rights and dignity of others."
"We are joining this lawsuit because we refuse to stay silent when the pursuit of justice is criminalized," she added.
Tuesday's complaint is the latest in a string of lawsuits challenging Trump's sanctions.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, earlier this year sued Trump and three of his senior Cabinet officials over sanctions imposed on her and her family. Although a federal district judge temporarily blocked the move on First Amendment grounds, an appeals court quickly reinstated the sanctions via an administrative stay.
In April 2025, two human rights advocates sued over sanctions against then-ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, arguing that the restrictions violated their First Amendment rights. A federal judge subsequently found the advocates were likely to succeed on their constitutional claims and issued a preliminary injunction protecting their communications with the court.
In June, three sanctioned ICC judges—Judges Kimberly Prost of Canada, Solomy Bossa of Uganda, and Reine Alapini-Gansou of Benin—filed suit against the Trump administration, arguing that the president's order directly violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which prohibits the government from making arbitrary and capricious policy changes.
Last month, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide also sued Trump and senior administration officials over the ICC sanctions.
“The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders but to police the political expression of millions of Americans,” DAWN executive director Omar Shakir said at the time. “The government is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens in order to shield officials of a foreign government who have committed a genocide.”
The gaudy gift came just weeks before Trump exempted Belgium’s diamond industry from his sweeping tariff regime, which the senators said “fit seamlessly” into a pattern of relief for those who give him gifts.
A pair of Democratic US senators has some questions for Belgium's diamond industry after it gave President Donald Trump what they said appears to be a "cartoonish bribe."
On Monday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter inquiring about a "watch-sized, 18-karat gold ring encrusted with 321 diamonds and 75 gemstones" that the president had been gifted in late June by the Antwerp World Diamond Center (AWDC), a lobbying group for Belgian diamondmakers.
The custom ring, emblazoned with a gem-encrusted presidential seal, diamond emblems with the initial "T," and an interior engraving that reads "Crafted in Antwerp for Donald John Trump," is estimated to be worth $25,000-35,000.
“A very special thank you to my friends from Antwerp for the magnificent Freedom 250 ring,” Trump said in a video message during an event in Brussels upon receiving the gift at an event commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States.
Just weeks later, the administration announced it was exempting European diamonds from Trump's sweeping tariff regime, which he was attempting to reinstate after the US Supreme Court had struck it down earlier this year.
After the diamond tariffs had been lifted, a press release from AWDC celebrated the decision, calling it a “significant boost” for Antwerp's diamond industry and “its international competitive position.”
According to the company, Antwerp exports about $2 billion worth of diamonds to the US each year. At 10%, that means importers would avoid paying about $200 million in tariffs annually under the exemption.
The senators noted that Isidore Mörsel, the president of the World Diamond Center, "explicitly linked the gift to trade issues" when presenting it to the US Ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, for delivery to Trump.
Mörsel said that AWDC commissioned the ring to "celebrate that enduring relationship" with the Antwerp diamond sector’s "most important trading partner for generations."
The senators said AWDC's public-private partnership with the Belgian government meant that Trump might be required to give up the ring under the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which forbids federal officers from receiving gifts from foreign states without Congress' consent.
However, they said "presenting a gift of this magnitude could still play directly into President Trump’s well-established affinity for shiny gifts."
White House spokesperson Kush Desai has denied that the gift had any influence over Trump's decision, telling MS NOW that the administration "agreed to provide preferential tariff treatment for diamonds as part of our historic trade deal with the European Union that was signed last summer."
He added that “the only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”
But the senators said the gift to Trump "fit seamlessly into [the] pattern" of executives appearing to use gifts and flattery to obtain lucrative tariff exemptions.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, who donated $1 million to the president’s inauguration committee, appeared to leverage his “very good relationship” with the President and a well-timed “24-karat” gold gift to secure exemptions from tariffs for various Apple products imported from China.
After Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang purchased a seat at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago table for $1 million, the administration reversed course on implementing rules that would have prevented Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips to China.
And the administration slashed tariffs on Swiss imports from 39% to 15% just days after Swiss executives—including Rolex CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour—presented President Trump with a personalized gold bar worth more than $130,000 and a luxury Rolex desk clock.
The senators said Antwerp's gift "raise[d] serious legal questions" under federal bribery law. They asked Mörsel and the jeweler who made the ring, David Gotlib, to provide details about the gift, including who funded it. They also requested information about any contact between the diamond lobbyists and White or other administration officials.
"I’ve been calling on the Trump administration to secure Sama's immediate release, continued access to medical care, and end all unjust and arbitrary detentions."
US Rep. Ayanna Pressley on Tuesday demanded that the Israeli government release Sama Safi, a 20-year-old US citizen who was taken into custody by Israeli military forces two months ago while staying with family in the occupied West Bank.
In a social media post, Pressley (D-Mass.) revealed she recently met with Safi's parents, who said their daughter has been subjected to "inhumane conditions" during her two-month detention, while also citing concerns about an unspecified chronic health condition that they said has been gradually worsening.
Pressley cited a statement from an attorney representing Safi that "there is little credible evidence" that warrants Safi's continued detention. Israel has so far not leveled any criminal charges against Safi.
"I’ve been calling on the Trump administration to secure Sama's immediate release, continued access to medical care, and end all unjust and arbitrary detentions," wrote Pressley. "And I’ll keep fighting for Sama's release and demanding accountability from the Israeli government and the Trump administration."
The Guardian reported in June that Safi, a psychology student at the West Bank's Birzeit University, was arrested along with three other women around the same time. An Israeli military spokesperson told The Guardian that they were all arrested "after promoting hostile terrorist activity and additional terrorist-related activities."
Safi's case on Monday was cited by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) in his call for US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to resign from his position.
Van Hollen accused Huckabee of remaining silent about Safi and other Americans unlawfully detained or otherwise mistreated by Israel, and said the former Republican Arkansas governor had become "a complete apologist for the most extreme Israeli government in history."
Researchers found prior authorization—which allows insurers to overrule physicians and deny coverage—acts as a “corporate care veto” that drains tens of billions of dollars each year that could go toward patients.
A new report is making the case for ending a widely-hated and sometimes deadly tactic used by for-profit health insurers to deny needed care.
It's called "prior authorization," and it allows health insurance companies to override physicians and decide whether certain care is medically necessary before it is covered.
The policy brief, published Monday by the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), an anti-monopoly think tank, argues that the system is a massive drag on the US healthcare system, draining doctors of their time, fueling hiring shortages, and—most importantly—worsening treatable health problems for millions of Americans.
"This practice has massive financial and human costs, as I know personally from my family’s own tragic experience,” said the report's author, Hannah Garden-Monheit—a senior fellow at the AELP, whose late father was denied rehab by UnitedHealthcare after cancer forced his leg to be amputated.
"Prior authorization may have started as a narrow cost-control tool," she explained. "But it’s mushroomed into private insurers’ strategy for diverting resources from care toward their own profits. It’s time to ban prior authorization as we know it.”
The report examines how prior authorization went from a tool used sparingly to prevent payment for unnecessary treatments to what Garden-Monheit and co-author, AELP senior healthcare fellow Emma Freer, described as a "corporate care veto."
Around 1 in 5 adults with private insurance report that they or a family member had experienced a coverage denial in the past year, with 28% reporting that it worsened their health problem, according to a June survey from the Commonwealth Fund.
While insurers claim that their decisions to deny care are "evidence-based," the authors say that "in reality, the practice empowers distant corporate entities with a financial conflict of interest to override the professional judgment of physicians with firsthand knowledge of patients’ medical needs."
"There is generally little to no transparency or accountability for these decisions," the authors wrote.
While insurers claim that denials are reviewed by qualified clinicians, one survey from the American Medical Association (AMA) found that only 16% of physicians participating in peer-to-peer reviews reported that the “peer” was often or always qualified.
Garden-Monheit said United denied her father's claim multiple times, first citing his cancer diagnosis—the reason his leg was amputated in the first place—then by claiming that he had made significant enough "progress" that paying for rehab was unnecessary. The "progress" was that he "had figured out how to hop on one leg from his hospital bed to a chair."
Garden-Monheit describes how she, her father, and their care team were forced to navigate a "bureaucratic maze" by United, which ultimately led them to give up.
"At least twice, I learned of a denial only after calling United to check on the status of their request. They hadn’t even bothered with a letter," she said. "While the lines of communication felt frustratingly unpredictable, the answers always led to the same place: 'no.'"
As she explained in a recent op-ed for MS NOW: "My family’s experience wasn’t a one-off glitch. For United, the system was working as designed."
Former United chief medical officer Dr.Archelle Georgiou estimated that across just two Medicare Advantage plans from United and Humana, the companies save an estimated $100 million per year by denying claims that never get appealed. She said that's a "conservative estimate." Across the two plans, 1.75 million people were denied care, even after appeal.
While insurers pad their profits, patients suffer, the researchers found. Among people reporting a prior authorization denial, 41% said it delayed their care and 28% said their health problem worsened, according to the Commonwealth survey.
"My family’s experience wasn’t a one-off glitch. For United, the system was working as designed."
Meanwhile, the AMA survey found that 95% of physicians said that prior authorization delays care, 79% said it causes patients to abandon recommended treatments, and more than 1 in 4 doctors said it has caused a serious adverse event, including hospitalization, permanent impairment, or death.
Denied timely treatments, many patients end up paying for costly and ineffective alternatives that only make their situations worse and cause the costs to increase down the line.
"It was extremely difficult to obtain authorizations for substance abuse treatment when I covered the emergency department as a practicing psychologist," one healthcare professional, identified in the report as Nancy, said. "Other times, in my private practice, I would get authorizations and later experience ‘clawbacks’ where Blue Cross, for example, would decide the treatment was not medically necessary and take back the money already paid."
"It is impossible at times to provide sound ethical treatment and extremely hard to make a living," she said, "when reimbursement rates kept going down, and the insurance companies could take back the money they had already paid for no obvious reason.”
Prior authorization doesn't just deny care to patients. It also creates piles of paperwork for their doctors, taking away precious time that could be dedicated to their care.
The report found that physicians and their teams now spend so much on prior authorization paperwork that it consumes the equivalent of nearly 100,000 full-time physician and advanced practice clinician workloads, plus more than 213,000 clinic staff, costing as much as $32.7 billion each year. If prior authorization were eliminated, they found, it would free up enough capacity to turn a national physician shortage into a surplus.

A YouGov poll for AELP found that more than two-thirds of voters in both parties want legislation banning prior authorization outright. But the researchers said both the Trump and Biden administrations have enacted only minor reforms that "fail to address the structural conflict of interest that underpins the corporate care veto strategy."
Meanwhile, the industry is making the denial process even more ruthlessly efficient, increasingly deploying artificial intelligence to deny requests en masse.
According to a 2023 class action lawsuit, United's NaviHealth system used a predictive AI model to determine whether Medicare Advantage patients should receive rehabilitation care despite knowing that the model had a 90% error rate.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has expanded prior authorization for traditional Medicare through a pilot program that allows AI models to adjudicate claims in some states. In July, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats' attempt to end the pilot program.
As part of a national pro-AI strategy, Trump has also sought to preempt state laws banning the use of AI to deny care.
The AELP researchers called for a series of reforms to end prior authorization as it currently exists. Among other changes, they said decisions to authorize treatments should be made by independent third parties without the incentive to deny care, that denials must be evidence-based, that the use of AI tools to deny claims should be banned, and that physicians should review patients in person before denying their claims.
“For too long, prior authorization has allowed insurance companies to put profits ahead of patients by overruling doctors and delaying and denying essential care,” Freer said. “This status quo is failing patients, ratcheting up costs, and undermining the basis of effective, expert-informed care. It’s time to end this ‘corporate care veto’ and put medical decisions back where they belong: with patients and their doctors.”