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Wowza, rare glimmer of good news. We take a moment to honor the stunning Michigan victory of Abdul El-Sayed, who was outspent 12-1 by his opponent's millions from establishment Dems, Zionist PACS and corporations and still managed to win even though he is a progressive Muslim who calls genocide genocide and wants Medicare for all in a Trump state that isn't communist New York. Ha. What millions in dark money buys you these days: "Sweet fuck all, as it turns out."
El-Sayed's inspiring win came against a candidate, Haley Stevens, who was bankrolled by over $60 million from party leaders and outside money from a murky nesting doll of super-PACS and shell corporations but whose campaign still had the audacity to bill her as “the grassroots choice of Michigan working families.” Total spending on the race in a key swing state was about $80 million, most from fat cats, making it "the fattest cat in the history of primaries." El-Sayed reportedly got about $4.6 million in outside money; Stevens and Netanyahu got about $60 million, the plurality of it from AIPAC's United Democracy Project (sic) super PAC - the most they've dumped into a single race, making it what observers call AIPAC's biggest defeat. From I Fucking Love Australia: AIPAC shoved 30 million dollars up Michigan's arse, and Michigan shat it straight back out."
Born in Detroit in 1984, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed was raised by his father Mohamed, an Egyptian immigrant, and his stepmother Jackie, whose Michigan roots go back to the 1800s. After graduating from the University of Michigan Phi Beta Kappa, he earned an MD from Columbia and a doctorate in public health from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, worked as an epidemiologist and became the youngest health official in a major American city when he was appointed Director of Detroit's Health Department, gutted rwhen it was privatized during the city’s bankruptcy, at age 30. Rebuilding it, he went after corporate polluters, stripped lead out of schools, starting offering free glasses to kids in need, expanded Narcan access, and spearheaded a program cancelling up to $700 million in medical debt for 300,000 state residents.
Faced with that resume, AIPAC spent their millions on an ad blitz that managed not to mention any of his policies, or even Israel, though he won the first-ever political endorsement from Jewish Voice For Peace. Instead, they focused on the issues that really matter: They attacked El-Sayed for criticizing the Obamas, allegedly helping Trump win, and sitting for an interview with a streamer they don’t like, Hasan Piker. If he wins the general election against the GOP's carpetbagging empty suit Mike Rogers, he'd become the first Muslim in the Senate. His longtime message to Dems: Stop compromising, ban ICE, end sending arms to Israel, Medicare for All, no more forever wars, get dark money out of politics. On election night, at a podium reading, "MIchigan Is Not For Sale," he celebrated "the movement we were able to inspire," and "the idea that we could take our government back."
El-Sayed's victory, while slimmer than predicted, was seen as pivotal; noted Bernie Sanders, "This is an election between Abdul and the billionaire class.” And the candidate the establishment called "unelectable" won with the endorsement of the United Auto Workers, "the beating heart of Michigan labor." His win was the biggest but not the only news out of Michigan: Sunrise Movement co-founder and data center opponent William Lawrence also took the primary for Michigan’s 7th Congressional district. They join progressive wins elsewhere: Zohran Mamdani in New York. Katie Wilson in Seattle. Three Mamdani-backed candidates in New York primaries, two against longtime incumbents. Melat Kiros in Colorado. Troy Jackson in Maine. It's still a long tough road ahead. But take heart from spineless ghoul Mike Johnson: “The insurgent left is on the rise."
A group of 39 Democratic senators on Thursday told the Trump White House to restore grants for their states that the administration itself admitted were canceled for purely political reasons.
In a court filing earlier this month, attorneys representing the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged that decisions about canceling grants for a series of renewable energy projects were based “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State."
The Democratic senators responded with a letter to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought demanding that the cancelations be reversed.
"You not only acted outside the bounds of the law," the senators wrote, "but cancelled projects that would have provided jobs, onshored manufacturing, and lowered skyrocketing energy prices. Congress authorized those projects and appropriated funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and annual appropriation bills."
Later in the letter, the senators argued that more was at stake beyond grants for green energy.
"Once an administration begins punishing Americans for how they vote, the threat extends far beyond these projects," the Democrats wrote. "No state, community, business, or worker can trust that the federal government will apply the law fairly."
"This is not only an attack on jobs, affordable energy, and America’s economic competitiveness," the Democrats added. "It is an attack on the rule of law and the basic democratic principle that the federal government serves the entire country—not merely those who support the president."
Last year, the DOE recommended canceling more than 600 grants awarded for energy projects under former President Joe Biden’s administration. However, the OMB subsequently intervened and canceled fewer than half of the recommended projects, while keeping grants for projects in states that voted for President Donald Trump.
After a group of California researchers challenged the terminated grants in a lawsuit, the DOE acknowledged that “with one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”
The DOE also admitted that there was no “programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor” to justify the cuts.
The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has expressed reservations about his state's antitrust lawsuit that aims to block the $110 billion megamerger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros.
According to the Journal's sources, Newsom, who is widely expected to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency in 2028, has expressed concern about the impact that blocking the merger would have on jobs in Hollywood, and his office has reportedly "encouraged" California Attorney General Rob Bonta to reach a settlement with Paramount.
"It is unclear what impact, if any, Newsom’s urging will have on the California attorney general’s suit," the Journal reported. "Newsom doesn’t have a role in the litigation and doesn’t have authority over the state attorney general’s actions."
Bonta, along with several other Democratic state attorneys general who are co-plaintiffs in the antitrust suit, scored a major victory last week when a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order to pause the merger from going forward. In response, the companies have agreed not to close the deal until five days after a trial is held or next June 1, whichever is sooner.
The combination of Paramount and Warner Bros. has long been controversial because it would put control of CBS, CNN, HBO, TikTok, and other major media properties all under the control of David Ellison, the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, a major donor to President Donald Trump.
Newsom earlier this year told Semafor media reporter Maxwell Tani that he's known David Ellison for years, while emphasizing that California's probe of the proposed merger "isn't a personal attack" on the Paramount CEO.
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, expressed mock surprise at Newsom reportedly going to bat for the merger.
"You're not going to believe this but Gavin Newsom is taking the side of capital over workers," Dayen wrote. "In this case it's tricky because he's backing the very MAGA allies his cosplaying X account claims he's fighting."
Tech journalist Karl Bode described Newsom's reported efforts to push the merger through as a "nice sneak peak of the sort of media policies you can expect under his presidency."
Elections analyst Nick Field questioned Newsom's reported concern about Hollywood jobs being lost if the merger gets blocked, as corporate consolidation usually coincides with mass layoffs.
"Paramount will undoubtedly cut tons of jobs if they buy Warner Bros., as the Ellisons did when they bought Paramount in the first place," wrote Field. "To say nothing of allowing the Ellisons to own CNN and consolidate more power. Just disgusting supplication from Newsom."
Antitrust advocate Matt Stoller, however, expressed skepticism at the Journal's reporting on Newsom, if for no other reason than the California governor was unlikely to risk hurting his image among Democratic primary voters by pushing through an unpopular corporate merger.
"It would be an odd for Gavin Newsom to encourage the control of Hollywood by close allies of Donald Trump considering his 2028 ambitions," wrote Stoller. "He's not stupid."
A press freedom group says it plans to take the GOP-controlled Federal Communications Commission to court after it voted along party lines on Thursday to enact a rule that could allow a small number of media conglomerates to consolidate even more control over local news stations.
In a 2-1 vote, the FCC eliminated a 22-year-old rule that prohibited a single company from owning stations that reach more than 39% of American households, replacing it with a rule allowing the FCC to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
FCC chair Brendan Carr said the move was necessary to "restore balance to the broadcast airwaves" and "allow local broadcasters to remain competitive with national ones."
The FCC's lone Democrat and dissenting vote, Anna Gomez, argued that the move would not benefit local broadcasters so much as it would benefit the national conglomerates seeking to buy them up.
“The large station groups positioned to grow even larger under this decision are not local broadcasters; they are national companies that own local stations and increasingly dictate what airs on them," Gomez said. "Trading a squeeze from Big Tech for a squeeze from Big Media does nothing to protect the communities this cap was designed to serve.”
In a statement after the ruling, Reporters Without Borders said the FCC had "just abandoned one of the last significant safeguards against excessive concentration of media ownership."
The change is a big win for media conglomerates like Nexstar Media Group, which is seeking a merger with rival TV company Tegna to reach about 80% of households nationwide. The merger was approved earlier this year by the FCC, but blocked by a federal judge.
It would also allow the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conglomerate known for forcing "must-run" segments with right-wing talking points into local news coverage from its corporate headquarters, the ability to continue gobbling up local news stations around the country.
Free Press, a media and technology watchdog, said it planned to appeal the FCC's decision in court, arguing that Carr had exceeded his power by overriding the 39% threshold, which was enshrined in federal law by the 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act.
"His goal is to spur more media consolidation involving companies Donald Trump views as ideological allies and corporate cronies," said Matt Wood, the group's vice president of policy and general counsel.
Carr, a Trump appointee, has previously sought to use the FCC to crack down on the use of the airwaves by Trump's ideological enemies and consolidate control for his allies.
He has threatened the broadcast licenses of networks that criticize Trump, most infamously pressuring ABC to briefly pull late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air last year. He's also used the FCC's approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger to enforce ideological conformity at CBS News, which has dramatically altered its coverage and personnel to be more favorable to the administration.
Carr has argued that the FCC has the power to alter the consolidation cap because Congress technically directed the FCC to modify its own regulations to enact the 39% limit.
Gomez has disputed this, noting that when the FCC previously tried to move the cap, Congress "stepped in within months... and made clear the FCC did not have the authority to change it."
"Changing this limit requires congressional action, but Carr doesn’t care," Wood said. "He’ll do whatever it takes to clear the way for Trump-aligned billionaires to swallow up stations wherever and whenever they please."
John Bergmayer, legal director at the public interest group Public Knowledge, argued that removing the cap was not only illegal but "also bad policy."
"Consolidation does not serve local broadcast audiences or give them more local news and information," Bergmayer said. "It gives distant corporate headquarters more control of what is aired, and it creates pressure to cut local reporters and air the same programming across many markets."
Free Press' filing argues that Carr is not just violating the law but seeking to help Trump "use the commission’s licensing authority to exert total control over the media.”
"Media consolidation and deal approvals," the filing continues, "are now explicitly a way for President Trump to further consolidate his dictatorial power, through explicit loyalty tests and pledges to use the public airwaves as a propaganda tool against the American public."
Press freedom organizations are urging Congress to reject a proposal that they warn could allow the Pentagon to withhold massive amounts of unclassified information from the public.
As part of its recent budget package, the Department of Defense submitted a proposal to Congress in late June that would create a new exception to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), allowing the defense secretary to bar certain "controlled unclassified information" (CUI) from public disclosure if the military determines that the national security risk outweighs the public interest.
CUI is a broad category of information that is not classified but that the government considers sensitive enough to be distributed only to specific people. But under current law, the government can only refuse to release information requested through FOIA if it meets certain exemptions, such as properly classified national security material, protected personal information, privileged internal communications, or records whose release could compromise law enforcement.
The new law would change this, allowing the defense secretary to declare almost any unclassified Pentagon record as both CUI and “national security information" to prevent it from being released. This could affect access to countless documents of significant public importance—from reports on investigations into military action, to internal records about the military's rules of engagement, to audit and oversight records.
"The CUI standard is already so broad that were it to be incorporated as a FOIA exemption for the Defense Department, massive amounts of important information would be yanked from the public," wrote Adam A. Marshall, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "That would be disastrous, especially when the Defense Department is at the forefront of so many stories the public needs to know about, from the United States’ war with Iran to the targeted destruction of boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific."
Clayton Weimers, the executive director of Reporters Without Borders North America, argued that the proposed rule change was unnecessary.
"The Pentagon already has extensive authority to protect genuine national security secrets. What it is asking Congress for now is something entirely different: the power to hide unclassified information from the public," he said. "At a time when the Department of Defense controls nearly one trillion dollars in taxpayer funding and makes decisions that can shape war and peace, the public deserves more transparency, not more secrecy."
Under Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has attempted to dramatically clamp down on the flow of public information. It has held far fewer press briefings than previous administrations, issued requirements that reporters pledge not to release "unauthorized" information, and booted credentialed press from Pentagon offices in favor of administration-friendly outlets and influencers.
Secrecy has grown amid President Donald Trump's war against Iran, with the Pentagon withholding information about hundreds of US military injuries from the public and altering publicly available death counts to exclude the names of four US personnel recently slain in the region.
Last week, a coalition of more than 40 press freedom, civil rights, and watchdog organizations, led by Reporters Without Borders, sent a letter to members of the House Oversight Committee, arguing that giving the defense secretary final say over what information is made public would be especially dangerous and "will naturally favor politicization and avoiding embarrassment over public transparency."
Under the Trump administration, the Pentagon has already been much less willing to comply with FOIA requests than under the Biden administration. Pentagon data show that it took more than 30% longer, on average, to respond to complex FOIA requests in 2025 than in 2024, and that it granted only 17% of FOIA requests in full.
"The Pentagon is already too secretive, and the last thing it needs is a rubber stamp to hide unclassified records under the guise of national security," said Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “We don’t need the Pentagon hiding more information from FOIA. We need it to actually respond to public records requests, we need it to stop harassing journalists for doing their job, and we need it to be transparent and accountable to the public, service members, and their families.”
Sen. Tim Kaine on Monday accused the Trump administration of committing murder with its campaign of military strikes against purported drug trafficking vessels, which has killed at least 221 people since its launch in September 2025.
In a letter sent to President Donald Trump, Kaine (D-Va.) said that he reviewed classified notifications sent to Congress related to the boat strike campaign and concluded that the US "is engaged in violent and fatal attacks against people far beyond those" whom the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) said would be legitimate military targets.
Kaine didn't go into detail about the OLC's classified legal opinion justifying the strikes, but he said the evidence he has gathered suggests the US "has killed individuals who are not involved in narcotrafficking."
"They are murder victims," Kaine emphasized.
Kaine also pointed to a recent analysis conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration, first reported on by The Washington Post last month, which found that the boat strike campaign "has had no effect on the flow of illegal drugs into the United States."
Kaine concluded his letter by urging Trump to "closely examine the circumstances of these strikes, to ensure that you are personally aware of the extent to which the leadership of the Department of Defense has exceeded your July 2025 directive, incurring massive expense and operating with dubious legality, and with no progress towards your stated objective."
"And once you have done so," Kaine added, "I urge you to halt this illegal, costly, and ineffective operation."
Despite Kaine's warnings, there is little sign that the administration is rethinking its boat strike campaign.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) on Monday announced the formation of the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, a new command structure aimed specifically at combating international drug cartels.
Journalist Juan Esteban Silva described the announcement of the task force as "major shift" in US security strategy that is putting "Colombia and Venezuela... at the center of the conversation."
An analysis published by The Diplomatic Insight on Tuesday said the SOUTHCOM announcement "aligns with Trump administration’s anti-narcotics campaign under a permanent command structure with expanded geographic reach, part of what the administration has described as a 'maximum pressure' policy against transnational criminal networks in the hemisphere."
The analysis also noted that the new command structure replaces Joint Task Force Southern Spear, which has been responsible for carrying out boat strike operations in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
DOGE was a "slapdash and deceptive effort" that only succeeded in "putting Americans’ sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies," said US Sen. Gary Peters.
A report from the Government Accountability Office released Thursday details how Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency wildly exaggerated the savings it was able to deliver for the US federal government.
The report, requested by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), finds that DOGE used a number of tricks to inflate the value of its purported savings, including taking credit for ending leases that were already in the process of being terminated and falsely claiming to have canceled contracts that were left intact.
The report also finds that DOGE "did not provide sufficient information to verify the method used to calculate 96%" of savings purportedly achieved through grant cancellations.
And in cases where DOGE actually was responsible for terminating a contract or cancelling a lease, the report notes that it "did not consistently use its stated methodology for calculating savings or disclose limitations in a sufficient manner."
Even in instances where the department followed its stated methodology, the report adds, "it did not account for many complexities and nuances of federal contracting," such as obligations or settlement costs that may have come from ending a contract.
In touting the GAO report, Peters said it exposed DOGE as a "slapdash and deceptive effort" at streamlining government spending that only succeeded in "putting Americans’ sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies."
Blumenthal accused the Trump administration of using DOGE as cover to "recklessly slash government programs, ransacking critical services and resources and proudly displaying supposed 'savings.'"
Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at the George Washington University Law School, highlighted a number of DOGE flubs in a social media post breaking down the GAO report, including a "favorite example" of DOGE claiming $28 million in savings related to an Air Force contract that in reality only saved around $600,000.
Eric Boehm, writer for libertarian magazine Reason, said that the GAO report revealed that the savings Musk and his minions claimed from their work was "mostly just made up."
In his assessment, Blumenthal said the report only "underscores the need for increased transparency and accountability from the Trump administration so the American public can better understand DOGE’s activities as the organization guts vital government programs."
"The likes of Palantir need to stump up what's due," said one expert. "Tech giants raking off billions in profit can’t be free to pay what they please."
Palantir Technologies, one of the world's most influential—and controversial—surveillance tech companies, enjoyed an effective tax rate of just 1.4% globally last year while paying no US federal income tax despite recording substantial profits, an analysis released on Wednesday revealed.
The study, Who Pays for the Surveillance State?, was written by the Center for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) in partnership with the European Federation of Public Services Unions. The report "examines how Palantir is capturing ever-larger government contracts while paying no US federal corporate income tax and shifting much of its foreign profits back to the US, avoiding taxes in Europe."
"In 2025 the company reported $1.657 billion in pre-tax profit, booked $22.7 million [in] corporate tax paid globally, and paid $0 in US federal income tax, resulting in an effective tax rate of just 1.4% globally," CICTAR found.
"The report's core claim of profit-shifting is based on the gap between revenue and profit location: 26% of Palantir's revenue came from outside the US, but 96% of pre-tax profit was booked in the US," the analysis states.
"The Trump administration has not only been granting record amounts in new contracts to Palantir but is running a global protection racket to help it—along with larger US tech giants—avoid paying tax both in the US and globally," the report contends.
"In Europe, the report finds a pattern of subsidiaries providing services to the US parent on cost-plus terms, leaving low taxable margins locally while related-party payments move value back to the US," CICTAR added.
Palantir maintains that it complies with applicable tax laws in every jurisdiction where it operates. Company representatives have said that transfer pricing arrangements and other accounting practices cited by critics are standard among multinational corporations and comply with existing regulations.
The Palo Alto, California-based company's soaring revenues are partly driven by government contracts, with the US Department of Defense being the data analytics specialist's biggest client. Palantir is also integral to the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, selling technology used by Department of Homeland Security agencies—including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—to identify, track, and target people for arrest and deportation and manage their cases.
Palantir has also drawn scrutiny from Democratic US lawmakers, including Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who demanded answers following reporting last year that the company was "amassing troves of data on Americans to create a government-wide, searchable ‘mega-database’ containing the sensitive taxpayer data of American citizens.”
Palestine defenders have also denounced Palantir and other tech giants for selling technology to the Israeli government and military despite findings by rights groups, scholars, national governments, and a United Nations commission of inquiry that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Alex Karp, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Palantir, told CNBC last month: “I am the most publicly supportive CEO of Israel. I think Israel is on the side of good.”
In Europe, advocacy groups have raised concerns about Palantir's contracts involving sensitive medical records, immigration systems, and predictive analytics. Campaigners argue that centralized data platforms create attractive targets for misuse, unauthorized access, or mission creep beyond their original purposes.
CICTAR's report concludes that "European public authorities should be able to exclude companies that take public money while shifting profits away from the national tax base that funds public services, and provide the basis for national security that Palantir claims to defend."
Responding to the report, Andrea Egan, general secretary of UNISON, the largest trade union in the United Kingdom, said that "a big multinational aggressively avoiding tax and dodging its responsibility to pay a fair share is probably no surprise. But the fact the UK and other countries are rewarding Palantir with massive government contracts is what beggars belief."
“Systems that enable tax to be shirked on an industrial scale clearly have to change," she added. "The likes of Palantir need to stump up what's due. Tech giants raking off billions in profit can’t be free to pay what they please. Ministers shouldn’t award contracts to run public services to firms that are starving them of cash.”
"They’re selling the safety of the traveling public for corporate greed," said one critic.
The nation's largest public employees union filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Trump administration accusing it of trying to conceal a scheme aimed at privatizing the federally controlled airport screening process.
In its complaint, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) asked a federal court to force the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for TSA Gold+, which the union described as a "secretive push to expand the privatization of airport security screening functions."
The union originally filed its FOIA request in May, but has since received none of the records requested, although the TSA last month did acknowledge the program's existence and said that there are plans to launch it at three airports next year.
AFGE's complaint alleges that the program "would jeopardize the employment conditions of tens of thousands of TSA employees and the safety of the traveling public," while noting that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last year tried to "eliminate the collective bargaining rights of approximately 47,000 employees" before being enjoined by a court order.
AFGE also pointed to a proposal contained in the Heritage Foundation's notorious Project 2025 blueprint to "privatize the screening function" at US airports.
The union said it was demanding more information from the TSA because "of its interest in the TSA GoldPlus program, the lack of public information about the program, and the potential threat to its membership."
Everett Kelley, national president of AFGE, said that the administration appeared to be headed back toward the kind of system used before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in which airports relied on private contractors with less stringent standards for screening passengers.
"TSA has been keeping everyone in the dark about its privatization plans–TSA employees, members of Congress, airport authorities, and the flying public,” said Kelley. "Changes of this magnitude must not be made in the dark."
Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said in an interview with The American Prospect published Monday that "nobody should be surprised" by the administration's efforts given how they were foreshadowed by Project 2025.
"This is about dismantling government everywhere, dismantling worker rights everywhere," said Nelson, who described the privatization initiative as "an insane proposal" by the Trump administration.
Chris Finlay, a TSA worker in Tampa and president of AFGE local 556, told The Guardian in an interview published Wednesday that having for-profit firms in charge of security would inevitably lead to a decay in safety standards.
"As a business, their primary goal is to be profitable," said Finlay, "and staffing is the most expensive part of that contract, so if they can reduce how much they have to pay staff, they’re going to... They’re selling the safety of the traveling public for corporate greed. That’s what is happening."
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said one United Nations official.
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
That was one United Nations spokesperson's assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Thursday, which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported.
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised."
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with "painfully simple" and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.
Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: "When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?"
300 children gone in 300 days.
300 days of the ceasefire in #Gaza has seen at least 300 children killed.
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
- @UNICEF's Louise Wateridge pic.twitter.com/1rmJz3YExW
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) August 6, 2026
Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump's Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel's withdrawal from the exclave.
UN officials on Thursday expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.
"Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action," said Beigbeder.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Thursday that continued airstrikes have damaged civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and medical supplies.
UNICEF warned that children are continue to face acute malnutrition almost a year after Israel agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as suffering from disease and a lack of sanitation.
An attack on a medical storage facility next to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah last week destroyed supplies that had been delivered by the UN, said the World Health Organization.
The UN is working to help "exhausted and hungry mothers" arriving at health centers with their malnourished children, and are fighting to save newborns born prematurely or with health issues, with extremely limited resources.
“There’s not enough incubators and in some cases [health workers are] saying they see two or even three babies sharing a single machine,” said Wateridge. “In Gaza, children only days old are already fighting to stay alive, born into partially functioning hospitals lacking equipment and medicine. This is what the world has chosen to tolerate. The killing must stop, aid has to enter at scale and children must be protected.”
According to OCHA, at least 1,209 people have been killed and 3,943 have been injured since the ceasefire deal was reached last October.
"Media consolidation and deal approvals are now explicitly a way for President Trump to further consolidate his dictatorial power," said a filing by Free Press, which is suing the FCC.
A press freedom group says it plans to take the GOP-controlled Federal Communications Commission to court after it voted along party lines on Thursday to enact a rule that could allow a small number of media conglomerates to consolidate even more control over local news stations.
In a 2-1 vote, the FCC eliminated a 22-year-old rule that prohibited a single company from owning stations that reach more than 39% of American households, replacing it with a rule allowing the FCC to make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
FCC chair Brendan Carr said the move was necessary to "restore balance to the broadcast airwaves" and "allow local broadcasters to remain competitive with national ones."
The FCC's lone Democrat and dissenting vote, Anna Gomez, argued that the move would not benefit local broadcasters so much as it would benefit the national conglomerates seeking to buy them up.
“The large station groups positioned to grow even larger under this decision are not local broadcasters; they are national companies that own local stations and increasingly dictate what airs on them," Gomez said. "Trading a squeeze from Big Tech for a squeeze from Big Media does nothing to protect the communities this cap was designed to serve.”
In a statement after the ruling, Reporters Without Borders said the FCC had "just abandoned one of the last significant safeguards against excessive concentration of media ownership."
The change is a big win for media conglomerates like Nexstar Media Group, which is seeking a merger with rival TV company Tegna to reach about 80% of households nationwide. The merger was approved earlier this year by the FCC, but blocked by a federal judge.
It would also allow the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conglomerate known for forcing "must-run" segments with right-wing talking points into local news coverage from its corporate headquarters, the ability to continue gobbling up local news stations around the country.
Free Press, a media and technology watchdog, said it planned to appeal the FCC's decision in court, arguing that Carr had exceeded his power by overriding the 39% threshold, which was enshrined in federal law by the 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act.
"His goal is to spur more media consolidation involving companies Donald Trump views as ideological allies and corporate cronies," said Matt Wood, the group's vice president of policy and general counsel.
Carr, a Trump appointee, has previously sought to use the FCC to crack down on the use of the airwaves by Trump's ideological enemies and consolidate control for his allies.
He has threatened the broadcast licenses of networks that criticize Trump, most infamously pressuring ABC to briefly pull late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air last year. He's also used the FCC's approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger to enforce ideological conformity at CBS News, which has dramatically altered its coverage and personnel to be more favorable to the administration.
Carr has argued that the FCC has the power to alter the consolidation cap because Congress technically directed the FCC to modify its own regulations to enact the 39% limit.
Gomez has disputed this, noting that when the FCC previously tried to move the cap, Congress "stepped in within months... and made clear the FCC did not have the authority to change it."
"Changing this limit requires congressional action, but Carr doesn’t care," Wood said. "He’ll do whatever it takes to clear the way for Trump-aligned billionaires to swallow up stations wherever and whenever they please."
John Bergmayer, legal director at the public interest group Public Knowledge, argued that removing the cap was not only illegal but "also bad policy."
"Consolidation does not serve local broadcast audiences or give them more local news and information," Bergmayer said. "It gives distant corporate headquarters more control of what is aired, and it creates pressure to cut local reporters and air the same programming across many markets."
Free Press' filing argues that Carr is not just violating the law but seeking to help Trump "use the commission’s licensing authority to exert total control over the media.”
"Media consolidation and deal approvals," the filing continues, "are now explicitly a way for President Trump to further consolidate his dictatorial power, through explicit loyalty tests and pledges to use the public airwaves as a propaganda tool against the American public."
"Every worker in America deserves the chance to rest, recharge, and spend time with the people they love without worrying about missing a paycheck," said Rep. Seth Magaziner, a co-sponsor of the measure in the House.
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.
“Amal’s killing can’t be allowed to become yet another unresolved case of a journalist killed by Israeli forces with complete impunity,” said one campaigner demanding a probe into the Lebanese reporter's death.
An Amnesty International investigation published Thursday led human rights defenders in Lebanon and around the world to renew their calls for a war crimes probe into an Israeli attack that killed Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil and wounded a colleague earlier this year.
Khalil, a 42-year-old veteran correspondent for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and 21-year-old freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj were reporting in the southern Lebanese village of al-Tiri on April 22 when an IDF drone bombed what Amnesty said was a civilian vehicle traveling in front of them. A second strike then hit the journalists' car, wounding them.
As Khalil and Faraj sheltered in a nearby building, IDF drones hovered overhead for two hours before the structure was bombed, collapsing it. Lebanese Red Cross personnel coordinated access to the site with Israeli authorities, and once granted permission, rushed to the scene and pulled Faraj—who suffered a fractured skull, severe leg and eye injuries, and a crushed hand—from the rubble. But due to what they called threats of further attack while trying to save the mortally wounded Khalil, the Red Cross workers said they had to withdraw. Recovery operations were delayed for hours.
A medical examiner's report said that Khalil died of cardiac arrest due to head trauma and severe bleeding hours after rescuers were forced to leave her.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam at the time condemned that attack as "a clear-cut war crime."
The IDF contends that it declared the area where Khalil was killed off-limits and that it was targeting Hezbollah militants.
"The IDF does not target journalists in any way and works as much as possible to minimize harm that may befall them while maintaining the security of our forces," a spokesperson said.
However, dozens of journalists have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Lebanon, while the figure is in the hundreds in Gaza, where Israel is waging what Amnesty and many others say is a genocide in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. The IDF also attacked and invaded Lebanon—which it has repeatedly done before—to stop Hezbollah from firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Gaza.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Israel was the world's leading killer of journalists last year, while the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in February that Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all journalist deaths worldwide in 2025.
“The Israeli military says it does not target journalists, but the facts and evidence show that it has repeatedly done so. Amal Khalil and Zainab Faraj are the latest victims in a long series of such attacks,” Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Lebanon, said Thursday. “The evidence is clear that the Israeli military knew or should have known that Faraj and Khalil were civilians, but attacked them anyway, and then prevented paramedics from rescuing them for hours."
“Israeli forces’ continued killing of journalists shows a brazen willingness to commit atrocities without any fear of consequences," Kaiss added.
Amnesty argues that the IDF strike on the building where the journalists were sheltering, and the subsequent delay in allowing first responders to rescue them, should be investigated as a war crime.
“Amnesty International’s investigation paints a harrowing picture of a direct attack on two civilians while they had sought refuge from Israeli attacks," Amnesty Middle East and North Africa regional director Heba Morayef said Thursday in a statement.
"After the first strike had eliminated the military-stated target, and with two drones flying low overhead, the Israeli military knew or should have known that two civilian women were sheltering in that building," she continued. "Despite this, they proceeded with what we have reasonable grounds to believe amounted to a direct attack on civilians, demonstrating a shocking disregard for international humanitarian law (IHL)."
“The fact that the two journalists were in what Israel has designated a no-return zone does not make them lawful targets," Morayef added. "All parties to a conflict have a clear obligation to distinguish between civilians and military targets at all times and to direct their attacks only at military objectives. There can be no justification for targeting civilians who sought shelter in search of safety. This attack must be promptly, independently, and impartially investigated as a war crime.”
CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said Thursday that “Amnesty International’s findings paint, yet again, a deeply disturbing picture of a systemic failure of legal mechanisms designed precisely to protect civilians—including journalists.”
“Amal’s killing can’t be allowed to become yet another unresolved case of a journalist killed by Israeli forces with complete impunity,” Qudah stressed. "This repeated failure to conduct transparent investigations into attacks on journalists has reinforced a climate of impunity and hollowed out the protections granted to the press under IHL."
"The top 1% put the American Dream behind a paywall," said the Texas Democrat as he unveiled a framework for his economic vision.
Politicians from both sides of the aisle have come to realize in recent years that "affordability" and "cost of living" are key issues voters want to hear about on the campaign trail, with nearly all respondents to a Harris Poll last month reporting they believe the US is currently in an affordability crisis.
But on Wednesday, before 1,300 Texans in the city of Arlington, state Rep. James Talarico (D-50), the Democratic US Senate candidate, contextualized the crisis for voters.
Talarico provided a history lesson that explained how—while his opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has blamed the Biden administration for rising costs and the struggles of working Texans—"this affordability crisis isn't something that happened over the last five years. This affordability crisis has been 50 years in the making."
While introducing his economic platform, "The New American Dream," Talarico held the audience's attention as he explained the Powell Memo—a document formally titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” which Virginia-based corporate lawyer Lewis Powell wrote in 1971 for his client, the US Chamber of Commerce.
The memo, said Talarico, provided "a blueprint for how corporations could amass political power, reverse the gains of the Great Society and the New Deal, and rig the system for themselves."
"The Powell memo outlined a strategy. Unite corporate special interests, privilege corporate perspectives in the media, appoint sympathetic judges to the court, and buy politicians in both political parties," continued Talarico. "And it worked. Republicans and some Democrats sold the false gospel of trickle-down economics."
.@JamesTalarico: 50 years ago, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell circulated a memo around DC — a blueprint for how corporations could amass political power, reverse the gains of the Great Society and the New Deal, and rig the system for themselves.
The Powell memo outlined a… pic.twitter.com/ne7f23iXP3
— Team Talarico (@TeamTalaricoHQ) August 6, 2026
In the memo, Powell—who was appointed to the US Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon just months after he delivered the blueprint to the powerful Chamber of Commerce—outlined how the interests of corporate America should be framed as "individual freedom" that the country must protect.
Private companies should use political influence "aggressively and with determination" to stop "the stampedes by politicians to support any legislation related to 'consumerism' or to the 'environment,'" wrote Powell, and should show no "reluctance to penalize politically those who oppose” the corporate effort.
“Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations," the memo argued.
"Trickle-down economics is not a theory, it is theft."
The result of that "long-range planning" and "consistency of action over an indefinite period of years," said Talarico, is the current political system—in which corporate interests pour billions of dollars into elections to support favorable candidates, Congress passes massive tax breaks for billionaires, and working families are left struggling to afford healthcare, childcare, and other essentials.
"Trickle-down economics is not a theory, it is theft," he said. "Since the late 1970s, megadonors and corporate special interests have been buying politicians in both political parties. And then those politicians turned around and rigged the economy to benefit their wealthy donors at our expense. We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis."
He added that five decades after the Powell Memo, "the top 1% put the American Dream behind a paywall"—pointing to the extreme wealth of tech CEOs like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, while "one in five Texas children live in poverty."
The American Dream has become an American Nightmare.
It’s too expensive to buy a home.
It’s too expensive to get married and have kids.
It’s too expensive to retire comfortably.
The top 1% put the American Dream behind a paywall. pic.twitter.com/gfhM2weVY0
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) August 6, 2026
David Sirota of The Lever, whose team produced the award-winning 2024 podcast "Master Plan," which details the history and influence of the Powell Memo, applauded Talarico for speaking directly to voters about the long history behind today's "affordability crisis."
"Talarico is recounting—and promising to fight—the master plan that we exposed. And he’s making that promise in one of America’s most high-profile Senate races," said Sirota.
Talarico's event in Arlington marked the beginning of a monthlong tour across Texas in which he plans to roll out his plans to begin reversing the decades of damage done by the Powell Memo and politicians from both major parties who have prioritized corporate interests over working Americans.
The candidate's agenda includes raising the minimum wage; closing billionaire tax loopholes and ending tax breaks for the top 1% of earners in President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act; passing universal childcare; permanently expanding the child tax credit; passing an anti-corruption package to ban super political action committees; and providing down payment assistance for first-time home buyers.
"People are working hard every day," said Talarico. "They're playing by the rules. But those rules of today weren't written for us. They were written for billionaires."
"Instead of going to war against the left, why not attract votes by going to war against insurance companies gouging patients, against employers busting unions, or against polluters?" said one critic.
Abdul El-Sayed's victory in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan this week was just the latest example of an insurgent progressive challenger defeating candidates backed by the Democratic establishment.
The establishment, however, is vowing to not go down without a fight.
In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Jonathan Cowan, the president of the corporate-funded group Third Way, revealed plans for a $15 million campaign to counter the influence of organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which he described as a "mortal danger" to the Democratic Party.
"We are preparing for the next war that is coming," said Cowan, who added that "it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states."
The Times report noted, however, that big moneyed interests, most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), spent tens of millions of dollars attacking El-Sayed, who nonetheless emerged triumphant in the race.
Some critics fired back at Third Way, noting that the group only appeared interested in attacking progressives rather than promoting a positive agenda to improve people's lives.
Maurice Mitchell, the director of the Working Families Party, told the Times that groups such as Third Way are "missing a point of view" and are not seeing the "populist insurgency taking place in this country."
Mitchell was far from alone in criticizing the group's plans.
Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America, remarked in a social media post that Third Way's $15 million investment would be better spent "building a movement and coming up with a vision that actually excites voters."
Favreau's comments were echoed by journalist Nathan Newman.
"Have moderates thought about presenting compelling policies more appealing to voters?" Newman asked. "Instead of going to war against the left, why not attract votes by going to war against insurance companies gouging patients, against employers busting unions, or against polluters?"
Even some critics more in line with Third Way's politics expressed skepticism of its proposed campaign.
Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance, a book that critiqued progressive governance, argued that Third Way's efforts would only reinforce progressives' narratives about big moneyed interests trying to squash a grassroots rebellion against the status quo.
"People should do what they want with their money but moderate Democrats' deficits relate to candidates, messaging, organizing, and enthusiasm... not money," said Thompson. "Plus, I hope people see the risk in a headline about moderates raising millions of dollars to attack a popular left insurgency that attracts support in part... by representing themselves as a bulwark against moneyed interests."
New York University School of Law professor Chris Sprigman was similarly dismissive of the Third Way campaign, predicting that "centrists [are] likely to be no more effective against their own democratic left than they’ve been against the authoritarian right."
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, argued that Third Way and other neoliberal organizations needed to look in the mirror when it comes to placing blame for the current state of US politics.
"The reason we are in this mess is because the biggest risk we face is market fundamentalism," Owens wrote. "That's what broke the country and voters know it. That's why they are turning against Third Way corporate Dem-style candidates. That’s the thing to fix."
The congressman from Silicon Valley said his resolution aims to give communities "the right to oppose data centers instead of having them shoved down their throats by state governments."
The congressman from Silicon Valley, Rep. Ro Khanna, is introducing one of the first comprehensive federal frameworks to give seething communities the right to fight back against Big Tech and its breakneck expansion of artificial intelligence data centers.
Khanna (D-Calif.), who announced the plan on Thursday, referred to it as a "Data Center Bill of Rights" and said it will aim to give communities "the right to oppose data centers instead of having them shoved down their throats by state governments."
Opposition to data centers has become a central plank in some progressive campaigns that have seen success in recent months, most recently the Democratic primary victories of Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and House candidate William Lawrence in Michigan.
They and other candidates have called for moratoriums on the construction of these facilities, which have come with soaring utility costs, dwindling water supplies, and pollution.
A nonbinding resolution introduced by Khanna earlier this week emphasized that developers have often made deals with state and local governments under a shroud of secrecy, with nondisclosure agreements that hide information about the ownership and potential costs of data centers until it's too late for the public to fight back.
Among other provisions, the resolution calls for Congress to give communities the right to:
Khanna's proposal comes as he says the developers seeking to hyperscale data center development are "losing the country."
A Gallup poll from May found that more than 7 in 10 Americans would either somewhat or strongly oppose the construction of a data center near them.
And while the Trump administration has pushed hard for rapid development, opposition is bipartisan. Three-quarters of Democrats say they don't want the facilities in their communities, but so do nearly two-thirds of Republicans.
Khanna's resolution is one of many legislative pushes by Democrats on Capitol Hill to regulate data centers, an issue on which they are eager to build credibility ahead of this November's midterms.
Also on Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, proposed an excise tax on data centers and to stop them from benefiting from tax-advantaged "opportunity zones," which Republicans extended last year.
Other proposals have gone further than Khanna's. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced legislation earlier this year for a nationwide moratorium on new data centers until national safeguards can be put in place.