LIVE COVERAGE
Our people-powered journalism cannot survive without you.
Our End-of-Year Campaign, our most important fundraiser of the year, is underway. Without your support, we simply won’t have the funding we need to maintain the level of reporting required to take on everything coming at us in 2026.
We cover stories and amplify voices that the corporate media never will. There’s only one reason we can do that: the financial support and stability provided by our readers. No ads. No paywall. No billionaires. We are beholden only to the common good. That’s what makes Common Dreams different.
Please make a tax-deductible year-end gift today and help us reach our make-or-break goal by December 31.
Wowza: Food Fight Clean-Up In Wingnut Aisle 47
In what was dubbed a "grievance Olympics," "conference of clowns" and "Wrestlemania with Podcasters," the noxious mucky-mucks of MAGA assembled for the first time since Charlie Kirk's death at an ostensibly celebratory AmericaFest that swiftly cratered into a toxic mess of orcs hating on each other. Despite the blinding glitz, savage barbs flew: Anti-Semite! Islam whore! Epstein flack! A coward! A cancer! And nonsense-vomiting. One viewer: "Holy shit, America." The Nazi kids are not all right.
Last weekend's public, ugly, inevitable fracturing of a once-lockstep right for all to see came at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference at Phoenix Convention Center. Billed as "a powerful celebration of faith, freedom, and the legacy of our founder" - though others called it "brownshirts in the desert" - it had Kirk plastered everywhere. Outside, banners urged "MAKE AMERICA CHARLIE KIRK"; inside, a huge portrait proclaimed, "WE ARE ALL CHARLIE KIRK"; nearby, weirdly, a Charlie Kirk murder re-enactment tent was set up for fans to take selfies in a spot just like where he was shot and killed. Wonkette: "Normal youth conference things!" About a third of the reported 30,000 in attendance, a "wretched hive of scum and villainy," were high school and college students who evidently have yet to find a life of non-malignant purpose.
Amidst the desperate, shrieking, best-is-yet-to-come! decor - omnipresent flashing red, white and blue, flashy pyrotechnics, gushing fountains, choking smoke bombs, glittering grifting widow in long blond locks and billowing gold and silver - the event quickly descended into a vicious gripefest where some of the world's most awful people - Carlson, Bannon, Don Jr., Megyn Kelly - furiously torched each other. Oddly, many focused their ire on a missing foil, podcaster Candace Owens, who'd been deemed too out there to even be invited for her lurid conspiracy theories about Kirk's death; she's charged it was choreographed by Israel and Turning Point bad actors, Egyptian airplanes have been following Erika Kirk for years, the public is being "gaslit," and police evidence to the contrary is "fake and gay." (LOL, sorta).
Leading off the squalid crack-up was Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro, who ripped pretty much everyone else as anti-Semitic "frauds," "grifters" and "charlatans" who have put the conservative movement "in serious danger." He called Steve Bannon "a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein,” blasted Tucker Carlson's recent interview with "Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse" Nick Fuentes - which over 7 million people watched - as an act of cowardice and "moral imbecility," and said Candace Owens "has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years."
Then Owens, online because unwelcome, called Shapiro "a miserable imp," whose remarks made her "more certain" that Israel was involved with Kirk's death.
Then Bannon trashed Shapiro for being "a cancer, and that cancer spreads. It metastasizes." Mocking Shapiro for trying to take over first Breitbart, now Turning Point, he snarled, "Stop playing patty-cake. Let's get down to it."
Then Carlson ripped Shapiro for being "pompous." Listening backstage, he said he laughed at Shapiro the way you would "when your dog starts doing your taxes." He also blasted former accomplices for "fake race wars" and "attacking millions of people because they're Muslims...It's disgusting. What the hell are you doing? You should not attack people." He added that calls to "de-platform" anyone at a Charlie Kirk event were "hilarious" when debate was (allegedly) "the whole point of Charlie's life."
Then Bosch Fawstin, creator of the anti-jihad cartoon superhero PIGMAN, assailed Tucker online: "Fresh from his most recent visit to his beloved Qatar, and after Muslims murdered Jews in Australia, Islam whore @TuckerCarlson yells at Americans to stop 'attacking Americans because they’re Muslim' to a silent crowd."
Then Rev. Jordan Wells castigated Shapiro, going full Nazi Kanye: “F**K YOU Ben Shapiro and the midget horse you rode in on. Ben IS the Synagogue of Satan...Jews aren’t chosen anymore."
Then Megyn Kelly slammed Shapiro (or maybe also Owens) with, "Only cowards take to the national stage to attack their 'friends' without so much as a phone call," like when the girl who was the head of our middle-school chorus told me she was going to take all my friends away...I helped make him a star."
In a rare, startling break from the rancorous fray, the equally startlingly brown Vivek Ramaswamy then decried all the raging racism, arguing the idea of a “heritage American” is ridiculous, and immigrants who just received citizenship are as American as anyone else: "We believe in ideals." The audience, silent and dubious, largely ignored him.
Then whew, Don Jr. clumsily lumbered back into the mud by arguing the "real enemy" wasn't any of these creeps but "the radical left that murdered Charlie," though of course they didn't. Ever cringey, he called up his dad, shouting out to “Mr. President,” so Trump could, ever abusive, praise Charlie and menace his idiot first-born: "I hope my son’s doing a good job representing me. Otherwise, I’ll have to say ‘You’re fired, Don.' So thank you very much."
Other odd ducks popped up to offer their malevolent insights. Laura Loomer stormed she would not support any candidate "who brings Tucker Qatarlson on the campaign trail. If you aren’t willing to publicly call Islam a death cult, I can’t vote for you." Russell Brand - what happened to him? - attacked vaccines and sorta commended Fuentes and Owens: "They’re Christians like you and me. They’re broken human beings like you and me." The few merciful in the crowd applauded.
Online, also (mostly) unwelcome, Nick Fuentes lambasted the sinking, "do-nothing" Trump, his latest bonkers speech, the Epstein files, the Reiner baseness, the relentless "SCAM": "He’s not delivering. All he’s doing is talking. Everyone hates this administration. The whole thing is a bait and switch. A never-ending advertisement...The magic is gone." Also largely gone, MTG echoed him, blasting Shapiro attacking Tucker and Bondi redacting Epstein: "People are raging and walking away."
Still, into the vitriolic mayhem, dreamily, spookily smiling, with God on her side and Charlie on her shoulder, wafted the gold-festooned widow Erika Kirk, aka "Princess Griftsalot." Between the group's assets, Charlie's estate, and sympathy donations, the former Liberty U "Christo mouthpiece" and Arizona beauty queen and glossy new head of Turning Point is now worth about $100 million dollars. After Charlie's death, media reports suggested she'd bring more young women into the MAGA fold - "Conservative women see the future" - but most still voted for Kamala, evidently unmoved by Kirk's call and perfect make-up to leave careers behind and "submit" to their husbands. But MAGA remains entranced. Onstage, Shapiro burbled that "to judge the goodness of a man is to see the goodness of his wife and children," and Erika is "unsurpassed."
But, like many of us, not great with tech issues. Gliding onstage in a glam gold lamé suit amidst erupting fireworks and wild applause, her hair looped in a blonde crown of thorns, she fumbled witeFesth her iPad, couldn't turn it on and wryly announced, "You know, the enemy has thrown a lot of curve balls at us, and now one of them is my entire speech has been wiped." (Antifa Hacks 'R Us!) After lamenting its lost "stats (and) things we have going on," she decided "we're just gonna wing it," awkwardly roamed the stage, and happily declared that, speech or no, "Charlie is sitting in one of those back seats." Later, she managed to laugh off both "the greatest Freudian slip of all time" - presenting a Charlie Kirk Courage Award to a student, she praised him for "persisting with the same grift" - and the flub of Nicki Minaj calling J.D. "an assassin. Trilled Erika, "God is good!"
Kirk notably ended her appearance by proclaiming, "We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected," though God knows why anyone would choose to lift up the racist, unprincipled "mutton-loaf," "professional embarrassment" and "greatest example in our nation’s history of ignorant, unqualified and incompetent people being rewarded for their pigmentation." Speaking of: Appearing late in HateFest, JD went from dog-whistle to bullhorn by proudly boasting of a new America where, "You don't have to apologize for being white (supremacist) anymore." The rabid crowd roared, grateful to be free - Thank God almighty we are free at last - of the longtime shackles of white oppression. Online, a gazillion people reported they'd never felt the need to apologize for being white, though some conceded JD may have been asked to apologize for being an awful human being.
Because he's evidently never heard of the First Amendment or George Washington's vow of a country that "gives to bigotry no sanction,” Vance also made the outrageous claim, "The only thing that has truly served as an anchor (of) America is that we have been, and by the grace of God always will be, a Christian nation." Adding to his Christofascism, he slammed progressive Senate candidates Graham Platner in Maine and Jasmine Crockett in Texas - "We're gonna kick their ass" - declined to condemn MAGA extremists as long as they "love America" - ie: Nazis welcome - touted the regime's deportation, vaccine and anti-trans atrocities, blamed "far left" Dems for Kirk's death (again, not) and, the next day, lashed out at both Nick Fuentes and Jen Psaki for "attacking" Usha, sneering, "They can eat shit. That's my official policy as vice-president of the United States." He sounds nice.
On Sunday, unholy Mike Johnson declared the vituperative event "a defining moment" and an "epic battle (to) determine the future of our great republic." He also said he's going to work to put up a Charlie Kirk statue in D.C., because that's really what America needs right now. This, then, is what came of the latest, meanest fascist food fight: A promised statue of a bigot, a consensus Nazis are OK by us, the lingering fumes of many feuds among execrable humans. And the mystifying drop of Erika Kirk's "worldwide exclusive" "Debut Music Video" - though she made one in 2012 where she maybe lied a bit - "and it is straight fire!" It is also deeply, incomprehensibly bizarre, an AI, badly dubbed, make-up-slathered, insensate non-look-alike dabbing her eyes with dollar bills and a fake handkerchief, pushing a wheelbarrow of money, coyly babbling, "Where's my spotlight? Buy my book. This mascara don't run. Give me privacy or I will cry. Boss babes always lie." Say what? This timeline is killin' us.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Trump 'Taking a Sledgehammer' to One of World's Most Vital Climate Research Center, Scientists Warn
One US House Democrat pledged Tuesday night that Colorado officials will fight the Trump administration's latest attack on science "with every legal tool that we have" after top White House budget adviser Russell Vought announced a decision to break up a crucial climate research center in Boulder.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) called the decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) "a deeply dangerous" action.
"NCAR is one of the most renowned scientific facilities in the WORLD—where scientists perform cutting-edge research every day," said Neguse. "We will fight this reckless directive."
Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the National Science Foundation (NSF), which contracts the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to run NCAR, "will be breaking up" the center and has begun a "comprehensive review," with "vital activities such as weather research" being moved to another entity.
He added that NCAR is "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
But scientists pointed to the center's 65-year history of making major advances in climate research and developing systems that scientists use regularly.
NCAR developed GPS dropsondes, which are dropped from the center's aircraft into the eye of hurricanes to gather crucial data and improve forecasts, as well as severe weather warnings and analyses of the economic impacts that weather can bring, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, told USA Today, which first reported on the plan to dismantle the facility.
Neguse also called the decision to shutter NCAR "blatantly retaliatory." The breakup of the center was announced days after President Donald Trump announced his plan to pardon Tina Peters, despite uncertainty over his authority to do so. The former county clerk was convicted in Colorado court on felony charges of allowing someone to access secure voting system data—part of an effort to prove the baseless conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Trump attacked Colorado's Democratic governor, Jared Polis, over the Peters case last week, calling him "incompetent" and "pathetic."
Also on Tuesday, the administration announced it was canceling $109 million in environmental transportation grants for Colorado that were aimed at boosting investment in electric vehicles, rail improvements, and other research.
Writer Benjamin Kunkel said the dismantling of NCAR is evidently "what happens to a state whose leading officials do accept climate science... and don't accept that Trump won the 2020 election."
Polis said Tuesday that his government had not received any communication from the White House about the NCAR review and dismantling, but "if true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked."
"Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science," he said. "NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The White House Tuesday said it objected to UCAR's "woke direction," including its efforts to "make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered" via the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences and wind turbine research that aims to "better understand and predict the impact of weather conditions and changing climate on offshore wind production.”
The administration also said the review of NCAR will eliminate "green new scam research activities"—green energy research completed by many of the center's 830 employees.
Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe warned that the dismantling of NCAR was an attack on "quite literally our global mothership."
"NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes—the largest community climate model in the world," said Hayhoe. "Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."
Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry said the center is "crucial to cutting-edge meteorology and improvements in weather forecasting."
"It's far, far bigger than a 'climate' research lab," he said. "This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face."
The president this year has also pushed massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where major climate and weather research takes place. The cuts have come as 2024 has been named the hottest year on record and scientists have warned that planetary heating has contributed to recent weather disasters.
“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR," UCAR president Antonio Busalacchi told the Washington Post, "would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters."
'An Abject Failure': Economists Trash Trump's Disastrous Job Creation Record in Year-End Reviews
President Donald Trump has justified his historically high tariffs on foreign goods by promising that they would lead to a boom in domestic manufacturing jobs in the US.
However, in year-end reviews of the US job market, three economists make the case that Trump's record on creating manufacturing jobs has been a massive bust.
Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and a former member of President Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, argued in his personal newsletter on Friday that the Trump administration's efforts to reorganize the US labor market away from service sector jobs have completely failed.
In particular, he found that jobs in manufacturing, mining, and logging have all declined throughout the first year of Trump's second term, while jobs in construction have remained mostly flat after years of steady growth during former President Joe Biden's administration.
What's more, the administration's stated goal of opening up more jobs for native-born US workers by conducting mass deportations of immigrant workers has also flopped, as native-born unemployment has been higher in 2025 than in either of the last two years.
"The bleak irony is that even after sacrificing real prosperity to chase this 4chan-level political economy, they still won’t achieve their goal," Konczal concluded. "The jobs aren’t coming back, the wages aren’t rising, and family formation won’t be rescued by trying to rewind the labor market to a world that never existed in the first place."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman concurred with Konczal's assessment of the US labor market in an analysis published Monday in which he described Trump's record on jobs as "an abject failure."
Krugman argued that Trump's war on clean energy projects is almost certainly making the situation even worse by killing blue-collar manufacturing and construction jobs in the wind and solar industries.
"Trump has scrapped Biden’s green energy policies in favor of tariffs and fossil fuels," Krugman noted. "But it isn’t working. Instead, employment in 'manly' sectors has fallen since Trump took office."
Additionally, said Krugman, Trump's plan to use tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs to the US was always destined to fail given the realities of how modern economies work.
"In the modern world nations mostly don’t sell each other completed consumer goods," he explained. "Instead, the majority of trade involves sales of goods that are used to produce other goods... What this means in practice is that tariffs, which raise the prices of those capital goods and inputs, raise the production costs of US manufacturers, in many cases making them less competitive with foreign producers."
Ball State University economist Michael J. Hicks, in a column published Monday by the Indianapolis Star, also pointed the finger at Trump's tariffs when explaining his failure to revive US manufacturing.
Hicks argued that the damage the president's policies have done to manufacturing won't be undone any time soon.
"The US is in the early days of a manufacturing contraction that will run through most of 2026, even if the tariffs are lifted today," he warned. "We should call it the deindustrialization of America. All of this flies in the face of the nonsensical claims of a manufacturing renaissance or onshoring that would bring factory jobs back to the US."
University of Oklahoma Removes Teacher Over Failing Grade for Student's Bible-Based Gender Essay
A decision from the University of Oklahoma on Monday left some asking whether the research university can still be seen as having "academic standards" after an instructor was removed from teaching duties for giving a failing grade to a student who focused on her own religious beliefs about gender in a paper for a psychology course.
The university released a statement saying the graduate teaching assistant in the course, Mel Curth, had been "arbitrary" in the grading of a paper by student Samantha Fulnecky, who wrote an assigned essay about an article the class read about gender, peer relations, sterotyping, and mental health for the course.
Fulnecky's paper cited the Bible and focused heavily on her beliefs that "God made male and female and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose."
"Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men," she wrote in the essay, adding that "society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth."
Curth, who is transgender, gave Fulnecky a zero for the essay and emphasized in her response that she was "not deducting points because you have certain beliefs," but because the paper "does not answer the questions for the assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive."
"Using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice," Curth wrote.
Another instructor concurred with Curth on the grade, telling Fulnecky that "everyone has different ways in which they see the world, but in an academic course such as this you are being asked to support your ideas with empirical evidence and higher-level reasoning."
On Monday, the university suggested Curth's explanation for the grade was not satisfactory.
"What is there to say other than that the University of Oklahoma has no academic standards?" asked journalist Peter Sterne in response to the university's statement.
One civil rights advocate, Brian Tashman, added that the school's decision opens up numerous questions about how academic papers that focus on a student's religious beliefs will be graded in the future.
"So if a geology student at the University of Oklahoma says in class the earth is 6,000 years young because that’s what they believe, a geology teacher can’t say squat?" asked Tashman. "What if their religion teaches the earth is flat? Or that all of mankind’s problems can be traced back to Xenu?"
Curth had initially been placed on administrative leave earlier this month when Fulnecky filed a religious discrimination complaint with the school.
Fulnecky's allegations drew the attention of the school's chapter of Turning Point USA, the right-wing group that advocates for conservative political views on college and high school campuses. The group is closely aligned with the Trump administration. Vice President JD Vance spoke at Turning Point's AmericaFest last weekend—and used the appearance to tell young conservatives that their movement should not root out antisemitism with "purity tests"—and the assassination of its founder, Charlie Kirk, earlier this year, was followed by the White House's efforts to crack down on what it called left-wing extremism, with President Donald Trump directly blaming the "radical left" for Kirk's killing before a suspect was identified.
While Fulnecky garnered support from the Turning Point chapter, hundreds of her fellow students rallied in support of Curth in recent weeks, chanting, "Protect Our Professors!" at a recent protest.
A lawyer for Curth said Monday that she is "considering all of her legal remedies, including appealing this decision by the university."
“Ms. Curth continues to deny that she engaged in any arbitrary behavior regarding the student’s work," Brittany M. Stewart told the Washington Post.
The university did not release its findings of the religious discrimination investigation it opened into Fulnecky's case.
The school's decision to remove Curth from teaching duties, said author Hemant Mehta, "is what academic cowardice looks like."
Progressive Jews Decry ADL 'Mamdani Monitor' for Conflating Israel Criticism With Antisemitism
The heads of three left-leaning US Jewish groups on Monday admonished the Anti-Defamation League after the controversial watchdog once again conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism in its latest report on New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and his transition team.
The Anti-Defamation League noted approvingly in its updated "Mamdani Monitor" that "at least 25 individuals" in the democratic socialist's transition team "have a past relationship with the ADL or partner organizations, or a history of supporting the Jewish community."
The group also appreciated that "Mamdani's team can and will respond appropriately" to actual incidents of antisemitism, pointing to last week's resignation of Catherine Almonte Da Costa, Mamdani's former director of appointments, following the revelation of antisemitic social media posts she published in the early 2010s.
However, the ADL said it remains "deeply concerned" by Mamdani's statements and actions, highlighting what the group claimed were "many examples of individuals who have engaged in some type of antisemitic, anti-Zionist, or anti-Israel activities and/or have ties to groups that engage in such activities" among the mayor-elect's transition team appointees.
"These activities include spreading classic antisemitic tropes, vilifying those who support Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland, seeking to undermine the legitimacy and security of the Jewish state, and more," the ADL said, adding that "at least a dozen transition committee appointees expressed support for the anti-Israel campus encampments in the spring of 2024."
The Mamdani Monitor also noted that "at least 20% of the 400-plus appointees have ties to anti-Zionist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which openly glorifies Hamas’ October 7 attack... Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a fringe group that advocates for the eradication of Zionism and demonizes Zionists; Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a New York-based radical anti-Zionist organization... and others."
Asked about the report during a Monday press conference, Mamdani said, "We must distinguish between antisemitism and criticism of the Israeli government."
“The ADL’s report oftentimes ignores this distinction, and in doing so it draws attention away from the very real crisis of antisemitism we see not only just in our city but in the country at large,” he continued. “When we’re thinking about critiques of Zionism and different forms of political expression, as much of what this report focuses on, there’s a wide variety of political opinion, even within our own 400-plus transition committee.”
Critics say the ADL's claim in the update that it "has long distinguished between legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies and antisemitism" is belied by not only the Mamdani Monitor's language, but also its own significantly expanded definition of antisemitism and antisemitic incidents, which include protests against Israel’s US-backed genocidal war on Gaza.
Jamie Beran, CEO of the progressive group Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, said in an X thread that "we were disappointed but not surprised to see today’s ADL report continue their conflation of criticism of the Israeli government’s actions with antisemitism" and the group's "favoring of Trumpian tactics over bridge building and its prioritization of fearmongering over the safety of American Jews and our neighbors."
Beran continued:
The ADL of today seems to have three interests: keeping their right wing megadonors happy, protecting the current Israeli government’s violent far-right agenda by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and cozying up to [US President Donald] Trump to stay close to power.
None of this fights antisemitism. Their McCarthyist Mamdani Monitor is the first of its kind because the ADL chose not to deploy a similar tactic when their bedfellows offered Nazi salutes, hired and pardoned neo-Nazis, and continued to openly spread dangerous antisemitic conspiracy myths.
"If the ADL truly wanted to fight antisemitism—like we do every day—they would actually confront it at its roots and how it works alongside all forms of bigotry, not instrumentalize it for an unpopular political agenda that has nothing to do with Jewish safety," Beran added.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Jewish group J Street, also rejected the ADL's "continued conflation."
“J Street continues to be deeply concerned by the ADL’s ongoing use of its so-called ‘Mamdani Monitor,’ which goes well beyond combating antisemitism and too often conflates legitimate political speech with hate," Ben-Ami said in a statement Monday.
Ben-Ami asserted that there is "something deeply wrong when major Jewish leaders and institutions focus disproportionate attention on left-of-center activists’ views on Israel while failing to apply the same scrutiny to the Trump administration and MAGA leaders, whose blatant antisemitism and ties to white nationalist movements pose a clear and dangerous threat to American Jews."
"Our communal institutions should fight antisemitism consistently and credibly, wherever it appears—not selectively, and not in ways that inflame fear or deepen division," he added.
Another liberal Jewish antisemitism watchdog, Nexus Project, also decried the ADL update, which it said "repeatedly blurs the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism."
J Street among the groups supporting the Antisemitism Response and Prevention Act (ARPA), legislation introduced last week by US Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Becca Balint (D-Vt.), and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) in the wake of the Sydney Hanukkah massacre.
According to Nadler's office, the bill "clearly states that it is against the policy of the United States to use antisemitism as grounds to pursue ulterior political agendas, including attacks on educational institutions, suppressing constitutionally protected speech, or any other enforcement of ideological conformity."
ARPA stands in stark contrast with the Antisemitism Awareness Act (ARA), which was introduced in 2023 by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ, Max Miller (R-Ohio), and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in the House of Representatives and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) in the Senate.
The bill would require the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism when determining whether alleged harassment is motivated by anti-Jewish animus.
The ADL has pushed a wide range of governments, institutions, and organizations to adopt the IRHA definition, which conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial apartheid state engaged in illegal occupation and colonization, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
House lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the legislation last year; however, the bill remains stalled in the Senate.
Zionism—the settler-colonial movement for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—is being rejected by a growing number of Jewish Americans due to the racism, settler-colonialism, illegal occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide perpetrated by Israel and rooted in claims of divine right and favor.
Jewish-led groups like JVP, IfNotNow, and Jews for Economic and Racial Justice (JERJ) have been at the forefront of pro-Palestine demonstrations since the start of Israel's war and siege on Gaza, which have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing; 2 million others displaced, starved, and sickened; and most of the coastal strip in ruins.
'Exactly What We Don't Need': Trump Bashed for Naming New Class of Warships After Himself
The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that President Donald Trump will announce that the US Navy is building a new class of warship that will be named after him.
According to the Journal, the president is expected to reveal that the Navy is building "a new 'Trump-class' battleship, which will become the centerpiece of the president’s vision for a new 'Golden Fleet.'"
The Journal noted that Trump in the past has complained about the aesthetic look of US warships, which he has described as "terrible-looking." Sources told the Journal that the new ship will "be an upgrade to the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which are the workhorse of the current fleet and which Trump has compared unfavorably to rival navies."
Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral who currently serves as a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, dumped on Trump's "Golden Fleet" plans in an interview with the Journal, describing the ships as "exactly what we don’t need" and accusing Trump's underlings of being "focused on the president’s visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship."
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie echoed Montgomery's criticisms of the project, which he speculated was being done for entirely frivolous reasons.
"This just has me thinking about how so much of this government and the movement around it is purely a matter of aesthetics," he wrote on Bluesky. "Is there a strategic reason for produce a new warship? Maybe. But my hunch is that this is happening because the president thinks it will look cool."
CNBC's Carl Quintanilla observed that the Trump-branded warships were just the latest thing that the president has slapped his name on, as in recent months he has also announced the creation of the "TrumpRx" prescription drug website and the "Trump Gold Card," while also adding his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Democratic political strategist Jim Manley reacted with horror to Trump naming American military equipment after himself.
"My God," he wrote on Bluesky. "Well, that seals the deal. If House and Senate appropriators agree to this—burn it all down."
Latest GDP Figures Show Rich Reaping Rewards as Working Class Continues to Suffer Under Trump
"People at the top are doing fine, people in the middle and lower income brackets are struggling a bit, to say the least."
President Donald Trump's allies this week hyped up newly released data showing that the US economy grew by more than 4% in the third quarter of 2025, but economists and journalists who dove into the report's finer details found some troubling signs.
Ron Insana, a finance reporter and a former hedge fund manager, told MS Now's Stephanie Ruhle on Tuesday night that there is a "split economy" in which growth is being driven primarily by spending from the top 20% of income earners, whom he noted accounted for 63% of all spending in the economy.
On the other side, Insana pointed to retail sales data that painted a very different picture for those on the lower end of the income scale.
"When you look at lower income individuals, nearly half of them are using 'buy-now-pay-later' for their holiday shopping," he said. "So we have this real split... People at the top are doing fine, people in the middle and lower income brackets are struggling a bit, to say the least."
Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, also took note of this split in the US economy, and he cited the latest data showing that real gross domestic income, which more directly measures worker compensation over total economic output, grew at just 2.4% during the third quarter.
Baker also said that most of the gains in gross domestic income showed up at the top of the income ladder, while workers' income growth remained stagnant.
The theme of a split economy also showed up in an analysis from Politico financial services reporter Sam Sutton published on Wednesday, which cited recent data from Bank of America showing that the bank's "top account holders saw take-home pay climb 4% over the last year, while income growth for poorer households grew just 1.4%."
Sutton said that this divergence in fortunes between America's wealthy and everyone else was showing up in polling that shows US voters sour on the state of the economy.
"In survey after survey, a majority of Americans say they’re straining under the pressure of rising living expenses and a softening job market," Sutton said. "The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says low-income consumers have 'substantially' higher levels of credit card debt than they did before the pandemic. Even as growth and asset prices soar, Trump’s approval ratings are sagging."
Economist Paul Krugman on Tuesday argued in his Substack newsletter that one reason for this large disparity in economic outcomes has to do with the US labor market, which has ground to a halt in recent months, lowering workers' options for employment and thus lowering their ability to push prospective employers for higher wages.
"Trump may claim that we are economically 'the hottest country in the world,' but the truth is that we last had a hot labor market back in 2023-4," Krugman explained. "At this point, by contrast, we have a 'frozen' job market in which workers who aren’t already employed are having a very hard time finding new jobs, a sharp contrast with the Biden years during which workers said it was very easy to find a new job."
None of these caveats about the latest gross domestic product (GDP) data stopped US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick from going on Fox News on Tuesday night and falsely claiming that a 4.3% rise in GDP meant that "Americans overall—all of us—are going to earn 4.3% more money."
Lutnick: The US economy grew 4.3%. What that means is that Americans overall—all of us—are going to earn 4.3% more money. pic.twitter.com/SIFi99NRBX
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 24, 2025
In reality, GDP is a sum of a nation's consumer spending, government spending, net exports, and total investments, and is not directly correlated with individuals' personal income.
Trump Ban on European Disinformation Opponents Decried as 'Authoritarian Attack on Free Speech'
"Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?" asked Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner now barred from entering the US.
European Union leaders and others around the world this week condemned President Donald Trump's administration for imposing a travel ban on a former EU commissioner and leaders of nongovernmental groups that fight against disinformation and hate speech—or, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called them, "agents of the global censorship-industrial complex."
Rubio said in a Tuesday statement that his department "is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose. These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies."
The five people barred from the United States are Imran Ahmed, the British CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate; Clare Melford, another Brit from the Global Disinformation Index; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg of the German group HateAid; and Thierry Breton, a French leader who helped craft the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) as a commissioner.
"Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?" Breton wrote on X—a social media platform that belongs to erstwhile Trump ally Elon Musk and was recently fined €120 million, or $140 million, for violating DSA's transparency obligations.
"As a reminder: 90% of the European Parliament—our democratically elected body—and all 27 member states unanimously voted the DSA," Breton noted. "To our American friends: 'Censorship isn't where you think it is.'"
As Anda Bologa, a senior researcher with the Tech Policy Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, explained earlier this year, "the DSA tackles illegal or demonstrably harmful activity—terrorist propaganda, child sexual abuse material, and foreign-backed election meddling." The 2022 law also "mandates that platforms publish transparency reports on takedown requests, justify their decisions, and offer users appeal mechanisms."
In a Tuesday statement, the European Commission said it "strongly condemns" the US travel ban, adding: "Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Europe and a shared core value with the United States across the democratic world. The EU is an open, rules-based single market, with the sovereign right to regulate economic activity in line with our democratic values and international commitments."
"Our digital rules ensure a safe, fair, and level playing field for all companies, applied fairly and without discrimination," the commission continued. "We have requested clarifications from the US authorities and remain engaged. If needed, we will respond swiftly and decisively to defend our regulatory autonomy against unjustified measures."
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted the statement on X, and various other EU leaders shared similar messages.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that "the entry bans imposed by the USA, including those against the chairpersons of HateAid, are not acceptable. The Digital Services Act ensures that everything that is illegal offline is also illegal online."
"The DSA was democratically adopted by the EU for the EU—it does not have extraterritorial effect," he continued. "We intend to address other interpretations fundamentally with the USA in the transatlantic dialogue, in order to strengthen our partnership."
The German campaigners, Ballon and von Hodenberg, said in a statement that "we will not be intimidated by a government that uses accusations of censorship to silence those who stand up for human rights and freedom of expression."
French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that "I have just spoken with Thierry Breton and thanked him for his significant contributions in the service of Europe. We will stand firm against pressure and will protect Europeans."
Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International—which supports the DSA—wrote on X: "Now the US is sanctioning a former EU official and several heads of NGOs monitoring hate speech and disinformation—on the ground that they are censoring American speech! Laughable. Social media platforms must be regulated. Better and more. Not less."
Due to Brexit, the DSA notably does not apply to the United Kingdom, but that didn't spare the two UK campaigners targeted by the Trump administration. A spokesperson from Melford's group told the BBC that "the visa sanctions announced today are an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship."
"The Trump administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with," the spokeperson added. "Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American."
Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey running to return to the House of Reprentatives, called out the State Deparment he previously served in under the Obama administration for sanctioning leaders of groups "that flag instances of antisemitism, harm to children, deep fakes, and vaccine disinformation online."
"Most Americans want online platforms that are safer for our kids, with less hateful and harmful content," he added. "It is not censorship to urge social media and AI companies to enforce their own rules against these things! The State Department's action is a blatant attack on free speech."
Earlier this month, the US advocacy group Free Press released a report detailing Trump's "war on free speech" based on "more than 500 reports of verbal threats, executive orders, presidential memoranda, statements from the White House, actions by regulators and agencies, military and law enforcement deployment and activities, litigation, removal of website language on .gov websites, removal of official history and information at national parks and museums, and discontinued data collection by the federal government."
The report says that "while the US government has made efforts throughout this nation's history to censor people's expression and association—be it the exercise of freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress—the Trump administration's incessant attacks on even the most tentatively oppositional speech are uniquely aggressive, pervasive, and escalating."
YouTube, TikTok Deleted ‘60 Minutes’ CECOT Clips Amid Paramount Takedown Push
The segment on the notorious torture prison—where the Trump administration has been unlawfully deporting Venezuelans—went viral on social media after being inadvertently aired in Canada.
Websites including YouTube and TikTok this week removed posts of a CBS News "60 Minutes" segment on a notorious prison in El Salvador, where Trump the administration has been illegally deporting Venezuelan immigrants, after being notified that publishing the clip violated parent company's copyright.
The segment on the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT)—which was intended to air on Sunday's episode of "60 Minutes"—was pulled by right-wing CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who claimed that the story "was not ready" for broadcast, despite thorough editing and clearance by key company officials.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices," said "60 Minutes" correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who reported the segment. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
The segment—which can still be viewed on sites including X—was shared by social media users after a Canadian network received and broadcast an original version of the "60 Minutes" episode containing the CECOT piece prior to CBS pulling the story. The social media posts containing the segment were reportedly removed after CBS parent company Paramount Skydance filed copyright claims.
A CBS News representative said that “Paramount’s content protection team is in the process of routine take down orders for the unaired and unauthorized segment.”
Weiss—who also founded and still edits the Paramount Skydance-owned Free Press—has faced criticism for other moves, including presiding over the removal of parts of a previous "60 Minutes" interview with President Donald Trump regarding potential corruption stemming from his family’s massive cryptocurrency profits.
On Tuesday, Axios reported that Weiss is planning a broad overhaul of standards and procedures at the network, where she was hired by Paramount Skydance CEO and Trump supporter David Ellison in October, despite a lack of broadcasting experience.