
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.

Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
More insane idiocy from the petty huckster clown king whose idea of governance is threatening lawsuits, trade wars, buildings that won't put his name on them; bungling war and peace; flaunting Nazi loyalty queries and sadistic images of black men in chains; and distracting from it all with the dumbass geographic circlejerk of inventing “LAKe AMeRiCA.” The Internet was born for this: Cue Donald Ducks, the Straits of Our Moose, Lake Dead Pedo Bestie, Lake Superior President Obama, and Lake Stupid Fucking Moron.
Last week, after God killed the wrong 80-year-old in the 784th year of a presidency that feels like "being in middle school when there's a substitute teacher and a student has a medical emergency," yet more banal slop issued from a needy racist sociopath so stupid he once seemingly conflated the Very Hard words "transistor" and "transgender" to claim Biden's CHIPS Act offered billions to domestic tech companies but "if you weren't transgender, (you) didn't qualify." Jesus. No wonder, à propos of nothing, the widely deemed "worst president in U.S. history" took time out from his busy mob boss schedule to declare himself the bestest - take that Honest Abe - after his faithful Human Printer dug up a similar 1948 Life Magazine chart, which is "exactly the kind of thing a healthy, high-functioning person shares."
Other things he did, abetted by a confederacy of dunces, stooges, techno-fascists, warmongers, crypto dorks, "unfuckable hate nerds" and "an actual Jewish Nazi": Having hit the six-month mark of his Iran debacle, he giddily proclaimed, "Mission Accomplished!" despite a. the only thing achieved is handing a newly empowered Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. gas prices skyrocket and the economy implodes, b. he evidently missed the part where George W's 2003 banner aboard an aircraft carrier became a queasy punchline, c. he did so amidst reports his and Kegsbreath's said debacle has pushed the US military into a "beyond critical" shortage of money and missile interceptors in the case of an enemy attack, forcing them to shift funds around "in imaginative ways" - because everything he touches dies and we probably will too.
A fragile child, he demands fealty to even his ceaseless clusterfucks. Thus the latest inane authoritarian hokum from a Department of Homeland (sic) Security that alas hasn’t lost any of its fascist fervor since the brutal puppy-killing days of ICE Barbie. Its new, dystopian, “genuinely deranged” missive: A glowering image of Dear Dumb Leader with the dark challenge, “Did you remain loyal?”, which chillingly fails to consider just what atrocities they’re demanding allegiance to. The answer came in a post that swiftly followed: Sadistic footage of shackled Haitian immigrants, targeted after losing Temporary Protected Status for no reason but mindless, racist cruelty, being shuffled onto planes in pouring rain to the sneering tune of a Creole song about returning home - complete with fawning close-ups of the chains on their feet. Well done, sick fucks.
Meanwhile, the trail of destruction goes on apace. In D.C., after the East Wing and reflecting pool - we like the meme of him studying it with, "All I see is scum" and a lackey saying, "Well, it is a reflecting pool, sir" - we've reached the mobsters' "offer-they- can't-refuse" phase on the besieged Kennedy Center. Having repeatedly lost in court, the regime now threatens to demolish the not-long-ago-flourishing Center unless a tantrum-throwing 10-year-old gets his name "prominently added" to its exterior with "appropriate respect" of his efforts to "save” it from a fictional "death spiral" that's rendered it "dilapidated, outdated, decrepit and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital," which is some pot/kettle. If they can't plaster his ghastly name over it - inscription, plaza et al - they'll replace it with "an outdoor amphitheater," aka a lawn.
They're also pushing to sell off part of Yosemite National Park, like everything else, to the highest bidder, though the seller is such an imbecile he still cringingly says "Yo, Semites!" He's such a petty dolt he's also skipping this year's 9/11 remembrance at Ground Zero because he wasn't allowed to give a Nazi speech there, opting to give it at the Pentagon before rushing off to the Irish Open at his crappy golf course, 'cause priorities. Having trashed jobs, health insurance, food aid, the environment and most of our global alliances, he blew up trade talks with Canada, calling its endlessly nice residents "nasty people," and holding a clownish Oval Office event to sign an idiotic executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “LAKe AMeRiCA,” which he's "been thinking about for a long time" with what's left of his tiny brain. (Here he is on trade: The stupid, it burns.)
"All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said, only batting one for two in a pretend-name-changing event labeled, "Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.” Then - what a feckin’ playacting infant - he drew a line through the doomed lake and intoned, “We have notified various people who needed to be notified...This is official.” He said he’d instructed craven lickspittle and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to "take all appropriate actions." Burgum slavishly wrote, “We’re on it, Mr. President!”, thus becoming the only person on Planet Earth to take this puerile claptrap seriously, evidently unaware an executive order is not a law and every ship entering the Great Lakes has to go through Canada's Welland Canal, including $26 billion in U.S. trade, and it would be a shame if Canada up and supersized their tolls, and thank you for your attention to this matter.
Uncle Bernie and most of America promptly responded they'd rather have affordable health care, thanks, also housing, food, education and cancer research. Nova Scotia's Conservative premier Tim Houston, "not exactly a firebrand," opined, “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy." Canada's newly combative Prime Minister Mark Carney, out of fucks to give, noted that long before Europeans came the lake was named by Native Americans using the Huron word "Ontari’io," for, "The lake is beautiful, the lake is big." "The name is more than 400 years old," he said. "Canadians know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always." The Canadian Resistance Army, who earlier defended penguins, also chimed in, declaring, "We're going to trade war/Beavers and moose won't take it any more."
Above all, it was agreed, “LAKe AMeRiCA" is what God invented the Internet for. The names spooled out in a gleeful torrent.
Lake Release the Epstein Files. Lake Gulf of Mexico. Lake Are We Doing This Again. Lake Micropenis. Lake Natalie. Lake Huron Thin Ice with Melania. Lake Universal Healthcare. Lake Eerily Overweight Pres Dick J. McRectum. Lake Felon. Lake Not Eerie. Lake Oh Canada. Lake Small Dick Energy. Many chose Lake Obama. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers created the politically incorrect Lake Retard: "See, I can sign napkins that say things too." One decided to "just keep calling it Lake Epstein, like the Founders wanted." Mapquest, unlike cowering Google, not only declined to change the lake's name but invited viewers to "spread some geographic joy" and "name it whatever you want." One result: Lake Who Uses Mapquest Anymore.
Many noted the traditional Great Lakes litany of "H.O.M.E.S" had entirely logically become "S.H.A.M.E." People renamed their toilet bowl to Lake Trump. The White House to Home of Diaper Butt. Mar-a-Lago to Poopy Pants Palace. The United States of America to the Epstein States of Pedophiles, or just South Canada. President Trump to President Dickhead. California to Amerifornia. Strait of Hormuz to Strait of Our Moose. People mocked his thieving choice of one of the smallest and dirtiest Great Lakes. They noted, "Nobody in Ontario gives a single solitary fuck what Assclown McCrappy-Pants says about anything." They griped the name change "really screws with the lyrics of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
"What are they trying to distract us from this time?" they asked. Response: "The previous distraction." Some coddled the needy child-king: "Good for you, li'l fella." Some railed: "Jesus Christ, can somebody just get him a coloring book already?" Some were still baffled by how low we've gone: "Wait, this is real?" Some refused to go there: "Nope." Some summoned the great Talking Heads: "As things fell apart/Nobody paid much attention." And some fought back against the incessant bullying. After the Center for American Progress released a report finding billions spent on ICE thugs and National Guard swarms had no real effect on reducing violent crime, Trump threatened a $5 billion lawsuit if they didn't retract it. The center stood firm against "a transparent attempt to silence us." "We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it," they said. And, still and all, we will snark away.
Update: Talk about "Do not obey in advance": After defying the petty madness, usage of Mapquest has surged to about 50 times its usual rate, leapfrogging past Google and Apple Maps to become the most-downloaded mapping app, and the fourth most popular of all apps excluding games in the US. Along with their "spread some geographic joy" invite, they posted a mocking, all-caps retort: "OUR MAPS ARE BIG AND BEAUTIFUL. PEOPLE COME UP TO US AND SAY WE'LL GET THEM PLACES. AND WE DO!!" Lol.

Environmental groups are celebrating on Tuesday after a federal panel halted construction of what would be the first artificial intelligence data center to be built on US public lands.
The Interior Board of Land Appeals, an appellate body within the US Department of the Interior, put a temporary stay on the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) approval of the proposed 80-acre Townsite Data Center near Boulder City, Nevada, which environmental groups warned would jack up electricity demand and water usage and threaten local species.
The board sided with the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), and the local government of Boulder City, which argued that the BLM had not conducted the legally required review of the plan's environmental impacts.
The BLM had approved the site based on a review of a proposed solar power plant, but had not reevaluated the impacts of a data center.
The board said that the environmental groups were "likely to prevail" in their case that the BLM had acted illegally "because the two projects are not ‘substantially the same.’” It also ruled that continuing the project without a proper review was likely to cause "irreparable harm" to the landscape—including soil disruption, habitat loss for species like the Mojave desert tortoise, and construction activities that pollute the air.
The temporary stay blocks the data center project from continuing while the board considers the environmental groups' appeal.
While it was not a final ruling on whether the project will be built at all, Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the CBD, said the group was "thrilled that this data center has been stopped dead in its tracks."
Townsite has been described as a test case as BLM considers approving other data center proposals on federal lands, including in Nevada, where 80% of the land is federally managed.
Building data centers on federal lands is a major priority of the Trump administration's "AI Action Plan," which was published by the White House in 2025 and directs US agencies to identify public lands “well-situated for large-scale data centers."
Under the plan, the US Department of Energy announced in July 2025 that it had identified at least four other sites around the country for potential development, including the Idaho National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Donnelly said Tuesday's ruling had shown BLM would not be able to approve these and other sites without conducting the appropriate environmental reviews.
"The Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to let tech companies build massive data centers on our public lands," he said. "This tremendous victory proves communities have the power to fight back and win.”
Boulder City is one of many locales around the country where plans for large data centers have received public backlash. For months, the project faced protests at City Hall from residents who raised concerns about energy and water use, light pollution, and impacts on the local desert habitat.
Public anger ultimately led the Boulder City Planning Commission to turn against the project, voting in May against adding data centers to the city's land management process. To bypass the city, BLM approved the same project on adjacent federal lands. Boulder City responded by joining environmental groups' appeal against the project.
“The BLM essentially, sweepingly, approved a new land use without following processes in federal law, which include a meaningful engagement process with the city," City Attorney Brittany Walker told the Nevada Current in July, after the City Council unanimously voted to appeal.
Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club Toiyabe chapter, called Tuesday's ruling "a victory for democracy, public participation, and the principle that our public lands should serve the public."
"The people of Boulder City have made clear that they do not want a data center on public lands, and this ruling gives their voices the weight they deserve," she said. "Data centers do not belong on public lands, and we will continue to fight unfettered data center development.”
Townsite is just one of several data center proposals being considered on federal lands in Nevada. In June, BLM officials told local leaders that it had received four applications for data centers on public lands around Silver Springs, a small community east of Reno in Lyon County, which has eight facilities planned in total, according to the US Data Center Map.
The sudden explosion of data center planning in the area has led many residents to push for a moratorium on new data center approvals.
Brynn deLorimier, a Boulder City resident who joined the appeal, said she hopes her city's victory will help to protect neighboring communities from unaccountable data center growth.
“We love our community and our desert, and we’re so grateful to our friends and neighbors for working hard to protect both,” she said. “We’re also grateful to the Interior Board of Land Appeals for recognizing that this case matters far beyond Boulder City and could set an important precedent for public lands in Nevada and across the country.”
President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran has achieved a significant milestone, but it's not one that many US voters will likely appreciate.
Data published by the American Automobile Association (AAA) on Monday show that the average price for gas in the US now stands at $4.08 per gallon, or $0.90 per gallon more than the average price one year ago.
Gas prices typically decline throughout summer months, but the spike in oil prices caused by the Iran War has kept prices elevated in August beyond anything seen in prior years.
"For the first time ever, the national average in August has been above $4 per gallon every day," explained AAA. "This month is poised to set a new record as the most expensive August at the pump, surpassing the previous August record set in 2022."
Kendall Witmer, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, slammed Trump in a Monday statement where she accused the president of making policy to benefit his fossil fuel industry donors while leaving working-class Americans holding the bag.
"Donald Trump started a deadly and costly war with Iran that has driven gas prices through the roof, and Americans are breaking the bank to fill up at the pump," said Witmer. "Meanwhile, Trump and Big Oil executives who donated to his campaign are profiting off his war, cashing in at the expense of hardworking Americans. In Trump’s world, the rich and powerful come first, while everyday Americans get left in the dust."
High gas prices have become a major political headache for Trump, as a recent analysis estimated that Americans have paid $71.5 billion more to fill up their cars thanks to the president's war.
Meanwhile, a mandated ethics filing released last week shows Trump made more than 1,000 stock transactions in June, including thousands of dollars invested in energy companies profiting off of his war.
CNBC reported on Monday that the president is scheduled to meet with US refiners and fuel distributors as part of an effort to lower gas prices ahead of the midterm elections in November.
Sen. Bernie Sanders warned Tuesday that President Donald Trump's attempt to leverage the US Postal Service to advance his assault on mail-in voting is part of a broader and intensifying "authoritarian power grab" that poses an existential threat to American democracy.
"The Trump administration is trying to use the United States Postal Service to decide who gets to vote in this year's election. Unacceptable," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote after an anonymous federal official said in a whistleblower disclosure that USPS systems being hastily implemented at the president's direction—and in possible violation of court orders—could threaten the delivery of millions of ballots in the fast-approaching midterm elections.
Sanders said that Trump's assault on mail-in voting via the Postal Service is "blatantly unconstitutional," noting that the nation's founders empowered states to administer elections "precisely so that no authoritarian in Washington could ever seize that power for himself."
"Trump is trying to seize it anyway—in a blatant attempt to rig the election in his favor," the senator warned. "Trump knows this has nothing to do with the safety of mail-in ballots, because he himself has voted by mail in Florida twice this year. He knows mail-in voting is safe and secure."
"Voter fraud is not the problem," Sanders continued. "Trump's problem is that his agenda is deeply unpopular. He has waged illegal wars the American people did not ask for. He is throwing 15 million Americans off the healthcare they have and has made the largest cuts to education and nutrition assistance in history in order to pay for $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1% and his billionaire friends."
"He knows that when people vote, they will reject oligarchy and corporate greed. So instead of changing his policies, he is trying to decide which voters get to participate in elections this November," he added. "Too many Americans have fought and died to defend American democracy. We must stop Trump’s authoritarian power grab—before it is too late."
Trump Must Not Be Allowed to Prevent Millions of Americans from Voting
The Trump administration is trying to use the United States Postal Service to decide who gets to vote in this year's election. Unacceptable. We will not accept Trump’s authoritarianism.
Last month, the…
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 1, 2026
Following the USPS whistleblower disclosure, the investigative outlet ProPublica reported on Wednesday that top Postal Service officials have "expressed concerns" during recent internal meetings about how the new policies the agency is implementing in compliance with Trump's March executive order "could delay or block ballots from reaching large swaths of eligible voters for the upcoming midterms."
Days after the Postal Service published its final rule on new mail-in voting requirements, election clerks warned USPS officials that potentially millions of ballots could be impacted, according to ProPublica.
"An example was given of Maricopa County, Arizona, which often sends out more than 2 million ballots at a time in its initial mailing," the outlet reported. "USPS officials confirmed it was possible that one ballot with a bad barcode or wrong voter information within the more than 2 million ballots could delay the entire mailing, according to two people who attended the related committee meeting."
The USPS rule is currently blocked by a federal court, but the Trump administration is working to clear legal hurdles and implement the mail-in ballot restrictions ahead of the midterms.
In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner on Tuesday, every Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee called for an immediate end to "this irresponsible and illegal scheme to implement the Trump administration’s plan to control our federal elections."
"The right of all Americans to have their votes counted is sacrosanct," the lawmakers wrote. "The Postal Service's current actions are putting clear obstacles in the way of that right."
Since President Donald Trump was running for office two years ago, Springfield, Ohio has been a central target of Trump and Vice President JD Vance's racist attacks and violent mass deportation operation, with the White House threatening the city's Haitian population with forced removal back to their unstable home country.
On Monday, Springfield became the site of a new tragedy that immigrant rights advocates said was directly caused by the Trump administration's xenophobic agenda, particularly its termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Haitian migrants, when 20-year-old Pierre Damas Bel was killed by a tractor trailer on Interstate 70—apparently dying by suicide after the loss of the protections pushed him into despair.
As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, college student and aspiring doctor Bel parked on the highway's shoulder Monday morning, got out of his car, and walked into westbound traffic. He was pronounced dead at the scene after being struck.
Ohio authorities are investigating, but Bel's family believes his death to be a suicide.
His family told the Post that Bel had become distressed in recent weeks after the US Supreme Court allowed Trump's termination of TPS for Haitians and Syrians.
Although he had a pending asylum case and a hearing scheduled for October, Bel was required to report to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of terminating TPS. Officers placed an electronic monitoring device on his ankle.
In late July, Bel wrote in an Instagram post: “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”
The Post reported that classmates bullied Bel over the bracelet, and he was unable to continue playing soccer as he had for years.
“He felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierres Ronal Bel, told the Post.
Last Friday, it appeared that Bel would not be able to continue in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) due to the Trump administration's monitoring of him as it pursued deportation. As the Post reported:
His JROTC class instructor handed students their uniforms, which resemble those of the US armed forces, but did not give one to Bel. His father said the college student concluded it was because of the device strapped around his ankle.
“He came home that day feeling very bad,” Pierres Ronal Bel said through a translator.
Bel "killed himself because of the Trump administration’s obsession with hurting Haitians and the humiliating shame of an ICE ankle monitor," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "His blood is on their hands."
The White House had threatened to flood Springfield with ICE agents earlier this year when it first announced it was ending TPS, which for 16 years has provided Haitians with deportation protections. During the 2024 election, Springfield ended up in Trump and Vance's crosshairs as the two Republicans spread baseless, racist lies that Haitian community members there were eating their neighbors' pets.
TPS was initially granted to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 in Haiti—one of the worst disasters in modern history and one that the country has struggled to fully recover from, as it's also faced soaring violence and unrest following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The US State Department warns Americans not to travel to Haiti for any reason due to gang violence, kidnappings, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis there.
Despite that, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has gloated that "the T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY" and urged Haitians who have been legally living and working in the US for years to go back to "Home Sweet Haiti"—making such comments as at least 47 people were killed and 50 were kidnapped in a gang attack near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince late last month.
Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance told the Post that the Trump administration's policies "are what caused [Bel's] untimely death."
Bel came to the US in 2024 to reunite with his parents, who had left Haiti three years earlier. Reichlin-Melnick said that "he almost certainly flew here through the [Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans] parole program, entering legally after a background check and probably with his parents having sponsored him. He broke not a single law. Not one."
Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) said that "because of the blatant cruelty and racism of Trump’s immigration policies, Pierre Damas Bel was denied the chance to fulfill his dreams."
"This never should have happened," he said. "His blood, and the blood of all those who have died as a result of these policies, is in the hands of Trump and his top officials who have championed them."
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org.
At least five people are dead, and 68 more are reportedly injured after the US bombed a wedding party in Southern Iran on Tuesday, an act that Iranian officials called a "war crime."
The Iranian embassy posted a video from a hospital showing several people, including what appears to be a young child, being treated for severe wounds from the attack, which occurred at a private home in the city of Kuhestak, Hormozgan province.
At least two children—4-year-old Amir-Ali Karimi and 16-year-old Mohammad Mollahi—were killed, according to Iranian officials.
"Bombing wedding parties used to be a trademark of the US, while Trump was known for targeting schools and hospitals," the social media account for Iran's embassy in Austria said Wednesday morning. "Now, however, Trump’s obsession with war crimes has gone to another level."
The bombing of the wedding party was part of a barrage of strikes launched by US Central Command (CENTCOM) on Tuesday across Iran, which it said targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sites in response to Iranian attacks on ships and US personnel near the Strait of Hormuz.
CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told the Associated Press that the command was aware of reported civilian casualties, but noted that the reports “originated from Iranian state media.” He said, "The US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC." He did not specify what military purpose the attack on the wedding ceremony served.
The Iranian Red Crescent, which released a video showing the destroyed house, called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the attack.
"Given the reported civilian character of the location as the venue of a family wedding ceremony, as well as the presence of civilians at the site, the incident raises serious concerns under international humanitarian law and warrants an independent, impartial, thorough, and effective investigation,” the Red Crescent said in a letter to the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor.
It added that if investigators determine there was no lawful military objective for the strike or that civilian harm was knowingly excessive, the attack could amount to a war crime by the individuals involved.
Yemen’s National Human Rights Commission likewise condemned the attack as "a full-fledged war crime and a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and the four Geneva Conventions," which forbid the targeting of civilians and safe residential areas.
Iranian media reported that the US had also hit several other civilian sites along the southern coast on Tuesday, including a civilian airport. In total, at least 18 people were killed on Tuesday, according to the state broadcaster IRIB.
Tuesday's attacks came after Trump issued more threats of civilizational destruction against Iran.
"If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!” he posted Tuesday on Truth Social.
Later on Tuesday night, he emphasized that if Iran retaliated, "they'll be no longer." He dismissed the idea of returning to negotiations with Iran, stating that "an agreement with them isn’t worth the paper it’s written on." Iran has said it wants to reopen talks with Trump if he agrees to abide by the terms of the memorandum of understanding he agreed to in June.
After attempting and largely failing to implement a global strategy of coordinated economic isolation, Trump returned to bombing Iran for the first time in a month this weekend.
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, remarked that the US had bombed the wedding "roughly ten days after the Trump administration claimed its new sanctions on Iran would make military action unnecessary."
Iran appears to have been undeterred by Trump's threats, with Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, vowing that Tehran would "respond to these savage crimes with firmness."
He called the attacks part of a "catalog of atrocities" against Iran, including the US bombing of an elementary school that killed 150 people, mostly children, during the war's opening salvo on February 28.
The IRGC claimed on Wednesday that in retaliation for the wedding bombing, its forces launched strikes that killed US personnel and destroyed drones and military facilities at the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Iran also said it launched ballistic missiles at US bases in Bahrain, Jordan, and Iraq.
As of Wednesday morning, the US has not commented on the claim that US personnel were killed. Kuwait reported intercepting the drones and missiles but did not report any casualties, according to Al Jazeera.
Baghaei said the attack on the wedding ceremony was a "war crime" that was part of an "unlawful war of choice" and that the wedding party was "brutally bombed as part of America’s desperate struggle to conceal its failure."
He separately condemned nations that have remained silent in the face of other US attacks against Iranian civilians. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reports that more than 1,700 civilians were killed during the war's initial stage, between the end of February and mid-April, at least 1,700 Iranian civilians were killed in US and Israeli attacks.
"More dangerous than the bomb itself is the normalization of bombing," Baghaei said. "And more dangerous than silence is the conversion of silence into legitimacy.”
"Donald Trump and his administration are rigging our markets to work for the wealthy and well-connected while working people pay the price."
The US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday proposed axing anti-corruption rules designed to prevent investment advisers from using political donations to obtain business from public pension funds.
Finance industry watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers warned the SEC's proposal would potentially harm Americans' retirement accounts and further boost corruption in the federal government, where graft has become increasingly common and overt under the leadership of billionaire President Donald Trump. Better Markets said the SEC's plan to rescind the agency's longstanding "pay to-play" regulations "makes buying politicians great again."
“SEC Chair Paul Atkins has yet to meet a rule he does not want to rescind," said Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets. "He has the SEC proposing to rescind a rule that prevents so-called ‘pay-to-play’ practices by investment advisers, where advisers make political contributions to government officials in the hopes that those officials will select them for the lucrative assignment of managing public pension funds and other government assets."
“Chair Atkins says the SEC is proposing to rescind the rule because it ‘has effectively resulted in the suppression of political speech.’ Not so," added Schiffrin. "It has resulted in the suppression of corruption. The rule was intended to, and does, ‘combat pay to play arrangements in which advisers are chosen based on their campaign contributions to political officials rather than on merit.’ Chair Atkins apparently believes that such arrangements should be promoted.”
The SEC's "pay-to-play" rules, enacted in 2010, barred investment advisers from providing paid services to government clients for at least two years after making a political contribution to an elected official or candidate.
The Trump SEC's proposal will face a 60-day public comment period once it is published in the Federal Register.
The Lever's Katya Schwenk and Freddy Brewster noted Friday that "after years of relatively weak enforcement, Biden’s SEC brought several charges against investment advisers for violating the pay-to-play rule in 2023 and 2024." For example, the Biden SEC charged Obra Capital Management for "continuing to provide investment advisory services for compensation from a government entity following a campaign contribution made by an associate to an elected official with influence over selecting investment advisers for the government entity."
"Since Trump came to office, the pay-to-play rule has been the subject of lobbying by financial powerhouses that are invested in public pension funds," Schwenk and Brewster reported. "BlackRock Funds Services Group, LLC, a subsidiary of the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock, Inc., spent more than $1.5 million in 2025 lobbying the SEC, Congress, the White House, and other regulators on the pay-to-play rule, among other matters, disclosures show."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement Thursday that the rules targeted by Trump's SEC prevent "elected officials from rewarding wealthy campaign donors with lucrative contracts to advise government investments."
The proposed rollback, said Warren, represents "another example of how Donald Trump and his administration are rigging our markets to work for the wealthy and well-connected while working people pay the price.”
"The American people do not want American military integration with a country responsible for war crimes, international law violations, and mass killings amounting to genocide."
A coalition of over 50 rights groups on Thursday wrote to leaders in Congress to "strongly urge" them to reject not only specific proposals in each chamber's version of the next Pentagon budget, but also "any legislation seeking to intertwine US and Israeli defense or intelligence capabilities."
The provision in the House-approved National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (HR 8800) is Section 219—previously titled Section 224—and the related but slightly different proposal in the pending Senate bill (S. 4784) is Section 1217. Congressional leadership is expected to negotiate a version of the full NDAA that can pass both GOP-controlled chambers.
"The provisions would establish a new US Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative aimed at accelerating joint research, development, and integration of Israeli-origin and jointly developed defense technologies into US military systems and programs of record," says the new letter to the chairs and ranking members of both Armed Services committees: Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-RI) and Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
"This would expand US-Israeli military integration across some of the most sensitive domains of emerging technology, including quantum computing, AI and autonomous systems, cyber and electronic warfare, directed energy, and defense industrial base co-production, while expediting pathways from R&D into procurement," notes the letter, first reported by Reuters.
Congressional consideration of the provision comes nearly three years into US-armed Israeli forces' campaign in the Gaza Strip—decried as genocide by many activists, experts, and governments around the world—in response to the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel. The violence has claimed over 73,000 Palestinian lives and continues, despite a nearly year-old ceasefire.
"Israel's grievous violations of US and international law and its other human rights violations include the use of US-supplied weapons in killing Palestinian civilians, extrajudicial killings by Israeli soldiers, the systemic use of torture and sexual abuse by Israeli security forces, and policies such as the withholding of humanitarian assistance, other forms of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide," the coalition highlighted in its letter to lawmakers.
"These facts alone should prevent even the discussion of deepening military ties, especially given the complete inability of the United States to apply existing laws, such as the Foreign Assistance Act or the Arms Export Control Act, that would require the suspension of US military aid and arms transfers to Israel," the groups argued. "The American people do not want American military integration with a country responsible for war crimes, international law violations, and mass killings amounting to genocide."
Pointing to polling that has shown growing opposition to US military aid to Israel "across the political spectrum," the coalition wrote that "Section 219/1217 works to hide continuing US military support to Israel from public scrutiny and congressional oversight and involvement. Far from working to shift the US-Israel relationship in line with American public opinion, this section encourages the direct use of Israeli-manufactured technology into the US' systems, which may render the United States dependent on Israel’s provision of such technologies, and make disentangling the relationship in the future ever more difficult."
"At a time in which American interests are increasingly diverging from those of Israel, and American public opinion is turning increasingly against unconditional support to Israel, creating new points of influence for Israel in the U.S. defense-technology ecosystem is exceptionally dangerous," stresses the letter.
It also sounds the alarm about Section 622 of the 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act, which was introduced in May by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and "would limit the president's ability to restrict America's intelligence-sharing and military collaboration with Israel by requiring the president to identify and document a specific national security concern that necessitates any changes, and expand intelligence sharing and cooperation with countries that have normalized relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords."
"Governments have an obligation to ensure the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms when advancing their national security interests, including countering threats to their populations' right to privacy or other freedoms," the letter declares. "Intertwining US and Israeli information-gathering and defense raises significant concerns given the recent evidence of Israeli espionage against people in the US, including government officials."
Signatories include A New Policy, Amnesty International USA, Demand Progress, IfNotNow Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, Just Foreign Policy, National Lawyers Guild, National Nurses United, Peace Action, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, RootsAction, Win Without War, and dozens of other organizations.
During the war's first 40 days, 77% of US attacks involved damage to civilian infrastructure or harm to civilians.
Following the US bombing of a wedding party in Iran earlier this week that killed at least five people—including two children—and left dozens more wounded, Trump administration officials repeated the mantra that the US military "never targets civilians."
In the days since the strike in the small southern town of Kuhestak, an analysis by Reuters found that the bombing was likely a direct hit by a US munition.
During a White House press briefing on Thursday following the report, Vice President JD Vance said the US was investigating the attack: “We’re investigating it because obviously we care," he said. "We want to know."
But, questioned about US responsibility, he reiterated: "What I can say with 100% confidence is that unlike the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], the United States never targets civilians in combat. We never will do that. We never have done that. And unfortunately, obviously, sometimes things happen."
He added: "And if we do make mistakes, again, this is a big difference between us and Iran. When our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them. So we’re investigating it very fully.”
The comments raised eyebrows immediately: The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has documented that between February 28, when President Donald Trump launched the war, and April 7, when a ceasefire agreement was reached, at least 1,701 civilians were killed, including at least 307 children, and 714 more people have been killed who could not be classified as either military or civilians.
The first phase of the war brought several examples of mass civilian casualty events, including the double-tap bombing of an elementary school in Minab on the war's first day, which killed at least 150 children and teachers, and precision missile strikes on a sports hall and surrounding residential areas in Lamerd, which killed at least 21 civilians, including at least seven children.
Trump administration officials have brushed these attacks off as unfortunate mistakes and denied allegations that civilians were being targeted.
In the case of Minab, the administration has still never formally accepted responsibility, although an internal Pentagon assessment concluded that US forces were "likely" responsible, and several independent investigations have presented evidence demonstrating US responsibility.
But while intent remains an open question about these specific incidents, data from the first phase of the war show that the overwhelming bulk of incidents involved the targeting of nonmilitary infrastructure.
A May investigation by HRANA found that over the war's first 40 days, 77% of the 6,324 verified incidents it documented involved either civilian harm or damage to civilian objects. This included:
The group pointed to "several patterns that raise serious concerns under international humanitarian law," including "apparent failures in target verification, use of artificial intelligence with minimal human oversight, inadequate and inaccessible warnings, the use of large explosive weapons in populated areas, repeated or 'double-tap' strikes, [and] attacks targeting widespread civilian infrastructure."
During that same period, Iranian attacks across Israel and US-allied nations in the Middle East killed at least 36 civilians, according to a country-by-country tally from Reuters on April 7, with additional fatalities in Gulf countries whose civilian or military status is not always specified.
Trump has regularly made threats to rain down mass destruction upon Iran, including threatening that "a whole civilization will die" while promising to destroy "every" bridge and power plant in the country.
Wes J. Bryant, who served as the Pentagon’s chief of civilian harm assessments and now works as a war crimes analyst, rejected the Trump administration's contention that civilian casualties in the war have been the result of mere mistakes, saying they were instead the result of US forces "recklessly and negligently endangering and killing civilians."
"Is the US intentionally targeting civilians in Iran?" Bryant told Al Jazeera. "It is."
"I can tell you from experience, every single target location is recorded at multiple levels throughout the chain of command," he said, adding that in this week's wedding attack and others like the attack on the Minab school, the military would have been able “to report within hours” if a school or wedding was struck.
The anti-war activist group CodePink noted that the bombing of weddings by US forces long predates this week's attack, citing at least 10 other cases since 2001 in which wedding parties have been bombed, leading to dozens of casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
Pointing out that the wedding attack used three Boeing-produced missiles that the company markets as the "most accurate" in the US Navy's arsenal, Danaka Katovich, the national codirector of CodePink, said, "The Trump administration did not do this by accident."
"Even if they say they're 'investigating that'... like they did with the Minab school bombing, they are in a desperate situation," she said. "They are not winning the war, and they are running out of munitions, and they have no public support. They are resorting to tactics that attempt to inflict mass civilian harm."
"Donald Trump boasted aloud that his sole intent for building this arch is to honor himself," said Congressman Don Beyer, calling for ramped-up opposition to the project.
Government watchdogs and opposition lawmakers in Congress are calling foul once again on President Donald Trump's plans for another "vanity project" in Washington, DC, after his Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, announced Thursday that—despite the lack of legal authority—excavation would soon begin on a white and gold arch built to honor Trump in the heart of the nation's capital.
“The administration has no legal authority to begin work on its monumental arch," said Nicolas Sansone, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group—currently representing plaintiffs in a suit to block the project—following Burgum's announcement, made via social media.
"By law, the administration cannot proceed with this project unless and until Congress authorizes construction," added Sansone. "And even the administration appears to recognize that the arch requires authorization from the National Capital Planning Commission, which it has not received. Even under the administration’s own view of the law, then, the preparatory work that Secretary Burgum has announced has no legal basis.”
"Even Doug Burgum, in his heart, knows that this is immoral and disrespectful to America’s fallen heroes. All of us who oppose it must stand up and redouble our efforts to stop this monstrosity.”
In his post, Burgum said the arch would "be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture" ever constructed, one “befitting the most powerful Capital in the World." But critics have said from the outset that a statue of this size in this area of DC would negatively impact other memorials and that any project of this magnitude would have to go through the proper process, including approval from Congress and permits from various federal authorities.
According to the Associated Press:
The proposed arch is one of several projects the Republican president is pursuing to leave his lasting imprint on Washington, including renaming and renovating the Kennedy Center, building a huge new White House ballroom, refurbishing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and rebuilding a golf course in East Potomac Park that could significantly reduce the public’s access to running and biking paths.
While a National Park Service report released last week backed the project, it acknowledged, AP noted, that "there would be adverse effects to the sightlines between a host of iconic landmarks, disrupting the historical significance of dozens of nearby sites."
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents the district just outside DC that includes Arlington National Cemetery, decried the proposed arch as an "illegal, gridlock-increasing, narcissistic" project that the National Park Service has stated would disrupt the cemetery and impede local traffic.
“This project is not even close to being ready for prime time. The administration has not won the legal battle over the proposal, which is plainly illegal without congressional authorization. They have not responded to or addressed my warnings about how construction would significantly increase traffic problems across the region," Beyer said in a statement on Thursday.
"Trump boasted aloud that his sole intent for building this arch is to honor himself," Beyer added. "Even Doug Burgum, in his heart, knows that this is immoral and disrespectful to America’s fallen heroes. All of us who oppose it must stand up and redouble our efforts to stop this monstrosity.”
“We deeply regret that Sampurna could not be saved," said officials after the animal was found struggling to breath from smoke inhalation near a palm oil plantation.
Conservationists worldwide are mourning Friday following news that a rescued orangutan on the Indonesian island of Borneo has died—a singular though heartbreaking symbol of humanity's rapacious destruction of fragile ecosystems, in this case the ravages of the palm oil industry on the rainforests where the critically endangered primates once thrived but now struggle "dangerously close to the point of extinction."
The death of the orangutan named Sampurna was confirmed Thursday by the West Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) in Borneo, who said the adult male primate died over the weekend after being found, struggling to stand or take in oxygen, by villagers near Ketapang, West Kalimantan earlier in the day.
"It was very weak, then I gave it water," said Jais, the local farmer who first found Sampurna in a roadside ditch and only goes by one name.
According to the Sarawak Tribune:
Sampurna was first reported by villagers at about 7am after he was found lying inside a dry drainage ditch in a community-owned oil palm plantation.
When rescuers from BKSDA and the Foundation for International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI) arrived, Sampurna was unable to stand, could only move with difficulty and was suffering from severe breathing problems.
Emergency treatment, including oxygen therapy and intravenous fluids, was administered before he was transported to YIARI’s rehabilitation centre at about 11.30am for further medical care.
However, his condition continued to deteriorate.
With wildfires raging in the area in and around the palm tree plantation—a source of frustration for those who have for decades tried to curb the palm oil industry's destruction of fragile rainforest habitat across Indonesia—BKSDA said "lung abnormalities" found during a post-mortem of Sampura were thought to be caused by prolonged exposure to wildfire smoke, impairing lung function and leading to "acute hypoxia," or oxygen deprivation.
“We deeply regret that Sampurna could not be saved,” said BKSDA's natural conservation chief Murlan Dameria Pane in a statement.

"Sampurna the orangutan has died," said Dr. Tom Montgomery, a marine biologist and conservationist, in a social media post. "He collapsed on a palm-oil plantation in West Kalimantan province, Indonesia—his lungs destroyed by the smoke of his burning forest."
As the German Press Agency reported:
Sampurna had been monitored by YIARI’s Orangutan Protection Unit on August 16 and was still moving actively at the time. About two weeks later, he was found collapsed in a plantation near areas affected by fires.
His death highlights the threat that forest fires pose to orangutans, which depend on increasingly fragmented forests across Borneo.
Fires can destroy food sources and habitats, forcing the critically endangered animals into plantations and other areas where they are exposed to smoke and potential conflict with people.
Karmele Llano Sanchez, CEO of YIARI, told Reuters that the "orangutan got hypoxia because of the very thick smoke in the area," and while it showed no outward signs of being burned by the fires it could not properly breath and was vomiting.
In a statement last month, the Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation warned that "for wild orangutan, one fire can mean losing everything." With climate change a constant threat to crucial habit, new warnings of a "supersized" El Nino event forming is only elevating concerns about the impact on threatened species in the coming years.
- YouTube youtu.be
"The forest they call home, the food they depend on, and their chance of survival," BOS said, is all under threat. "These forests are also home to countless other species and include some of the world’s most important tropical peatland ecosystems and carbon stores."
With the fire season on the island already raging in August, the group said danger of wildfires for orangutans and others species "is not a future threat."
"These funds were provided for lifesaving medical research, not as extra money for the Department of Defense," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro.
US President Donald Trump's Department of Defense is reportedly working to divert billions of dollars in federal funding from the National Institutes of Health to bolster the Pentagon's budget as the administration wages a costly, destructive, and open-ended war on Iran.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top House Democratic appropriator, revealed late Thursday that the Pentagon—without notifying lawmakers or the public—signed an interagency agreement that could give the Defense Department "access to billions of dollars that Congress provided to NIH for critical biomedical research."
Under the deal, which the Trump administration disclosed to Congress under pressure from Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, the Pentagon would pull funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whose annual budget is around $7 billion. It is unclear whether NIH has signed the agreement.
"This secretive attempt to siphon research funds away from NIH is outrageous. The interagency agreement needs to be terminated immediately,” DeLauro said in a statement. “These funds were provided for lifesaving medical research, not as extra money for the Department of Defense. It is no secret that the Department of Defense is facing enormous financial pressure because of President Trump’s war of choice with Iran. But the Trump administration cannot make American patients, families, and scientists pay the price."
"Circumventing Congress to divert money intended to help Americans who are exposed to HIV, influenza, tuberculosis, and other deadly diseases—and directing those funds to the Department of Defense—is beyond the pale," DeLauro added. "DoD already has programs, funded by Congress, to research and develop medical countermeasures to chemical, biological, and nuclear threats, and does not need NIH funding to do so. The administration must provide Congress with a full accounting of how this interagency agreement was developed and exactly how much taxpayer money it is trying to transfer to DoD.”
Military spending accounts for roughly half of the federal discretionary budget, but the Pentagon in recent months has said it is facing a cash shortfall in large part due to the illegal war on Iran. The Pentagon has said publicly that the Iran war has cost the US around $37.5 billion so far, though the agency—which has never passed an independent audit—has not released a full accounting of the conflict, and experts say the figure is likely a gross undercount.
On top of pursuing an annual military budget exceeding $1.1 trillion, the Trump administration is pushing lawmakers to approve a $67 billion supplemental funding package to cover some of the Iran war's costs.
"Trump chose to start a costly war with Iran after giving billionaires and big corporations trillions of dollars in tax breaks—and now wants American patients to unknowingly foot the Defense Department’s bills," Leslie Dach, chair of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, said in a statement Thursday. "Not a single dollar Congress appropriated for life-saving disease research should go into the bumbling hands of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for any claimed purpose."
A Trump administration spokesperson told The Hill that the Pentagon-NIH deal would "enable nimble multi-agency resources to collaboratively respond to public health emergencies, such as the recent Ebola outbreak."
Dach argued that no one should take the Trump administration "at its word about the military research they supposedly plan to fund with taxpayer money that was meant to find cures for diseases here at home."
"Given Secretary Hegseth’s history of lying through his teeth about our national security and the fact this budgetary sleight of hand was reluctantly revealed to Congress, would anyone be surprised if these raided NIH funds were actually intended to buy more bombs?" Dach asked. "This backroom deal at the expense of public health needs to be revoked immediately, followed by a serious congressional investigation into the extent of and motives behind the Trump administration’s taxpayer money shell game.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Senate Democrats' top appropriator, also called for the immediate termination of the agreement.
“As if canceling lifesaving medical research and clinical trials and firing cancer researchers en masse were not bad enough, the Trump administration is now trying to rob NIH of billions of dollars that Congress provided for medical research so that it can pad the Pentagon’s budget," said Murray. "We cannot allow this administration to shred patients’ hopes of new, lifesaving cures and treatments so that President Trump and Secretary Hegseth can secretively fund their own priorities in defiance of Congress."
"Your administration just killed a 6-year-old boy and at least 4 other people at a family wedding in Iran. Sounds like war to me."
Asked Thursday by a reporter in Washington, DC if he thought the war started by President Donald Trump on February 28—over six months ago—would be concluded by the time American voters go to the polls in November, Vice President JD Vance responded by denying the idea that a war is even what's going on.
"I wouldn't call it a war," Vance said.
Despite fresh US airstrikes on Iranian military targets this week acknowledged by Trump and the Pentagon and the US bombing of a wedding Tuesday night—an attack that killed at least five Iranian civilians, including a 6-year-old child, and wounded nearly 70 others—Vance told reporters, "Right now, there's no active shooting."
In the very next breath, Vance said, "I recognize there have been places where this has flared up," but contended that "major combat operations only lasted about six weeks," as a way to make a case that "war" is not taking place.
COLLINS: Will this war be over by the midterm elections?
JD VANCE: I wouldn't call it a war pic.twitter.com/CH2wot7pW1
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 3, 2026
Critics, however, pushed back against the vice president's characterization.
"Your administration just killed a 6-year-old boy and at least 4 other people at a family wedding in Iran," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) in response to Vance's remarks. "Sounds like war to me."
Earlier on Thursday, Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was forced to apologize after falsely claiming that no US servicemembers have died since the US President took the nation to war on February 28.
“I misspoke," Lutnick said in a social media post. "Eighteen members of our military have died, and to those families my heart breaks and I am so very sorry for their loss." Lutnick claimed he was thinking about the US military's attack on Venezuela, ordered by Trump last year and during which the nation's president and first lady were abducted by US soldiers and who remain imprisoned in New York.
Trump's war of choice against Iran, according to independent monitors, has resulted in the death of upwards of 2,100 civilians, though precise estimates vary, including hundreds of children.
On the economic side, the war has unleashed a global energy and food crisis, with gasoline and grocery prices soaring in the US and deeper regional instability unleashed across the Middle East.
During his remarks to reporters on Thursday, Vance tried to argue that "the reason gas prices are so higher right now, is because the Iranians are shooting at commercial shipping" in the Strait of Hormuz, all while refusing to acknowledge it was the Trump administration that started the war in the first place, prior to which the Strait was open to free-flowing shipping traffic.
On the public opinion front, a new poll released by Navigator research company on Thursday found that one-in-five supporters who voted for Trump in 2024 now regret their decision. Among those with buyer's remorse, the survey found that the most cited reasons were broken promises, foreign policy decisions, and the cost of living crisis they are now experiencing.

But the number one reason among those voters (45%) who regretted their vote was due to Trump's war on Iran. And yes, according to the poll, they knew enough to call it a "war."
"Over half the provisions of the Big Ugly Bill have already gone into effect, and the negative results are already devastating."
Independent healthcare analyst Charles Gaba on Thursday published a detailed report estimating that up to 10 million people living in the US have lost their healthcare coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's second term.
In his analysis, Gaba brought together the most recent enrollment data for Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Breaking things down by program, Gaba estimated there are 5.9 million fewer people enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, as well as at least 4.5 million fewer people enrolled in the ACA, since Trump returned to power in January 2025.
These losses in coverage are somewhat mitigated by Medicare, whose enrollment has increased by around 1.6 million people during Trump's second term.
Losing access to these programs doesn't mean that the people were on them have gotten well paying jobs and are receiving insurance from their employer, Gaba wrote. Given that the unemployment rate has risen during Trump's second term, Gaba suggested it is highly unlikely that there are now more people who get employer-sponsored coverage now than in January 2025.
Depending on a number of variables, Gaba concluded, somewhere between 8.8 million to 10.3 million fewer people now have healthcare coverage.
Adjusting for population growth, Gaba added, "you get a grand total of between 10.27 million and 11.75 million more Americans not enrolled in a public healthcare coverage program as of May 2026 than in were as of January 2025."
The healthcare analyst noted that "this isn't quite the same thing as counting how many lost coverage, but not having healthcare sucks regardless of how you slice it."
He also pointed out that the lost in healthcare coverage all came before the Medicaid work requirements from the GOP's 2025 budget law are put into effect.
"Over half the provisions of the Big Ugly Bill have already gone into effect," wrote Gaba, "and the negative results are already devastating."
Gaba's analysis was published just days after the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families released a report estimating that nearly 2.5 million children in the US have lost access to Medicaid or CHIP during Trump's second term.
Trump and congressional Republicans have taken a number of actions that have made healthcare less affordable.
First, they cut spending on Medicaid by an estimated $900 billion over a 10-year period when they enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office projects these cuts will leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.
GOP lawmakers last year also refused to extend enhanced subsidies for insurance plans purchased through the ACA, even as insurers raised premiums on those plans by an average of 26% this year, according to an analysis published by KFF.
According to Wednesday reporting by Politico, hospitals are sounding the alarm about new regulations being proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that they say would cost hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue.
"If the rules are finalized and they lose hundreds of billions on top of Congress’ funding cuts," Politico reported, "hospitals say they’ll be forced to reduce services, lay off workers, consolidate operations or shutter entirely."
"The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel,” said one analyst.
The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed what critics say could be one of the most severe infringements on free expression in recent memory—a bill that could effectively require colleges and universities to do business with Israel or risk losing federal funds.
As Israel's genocide in Gaza and accelerating ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank continue to fuel protests, the bill is the latest piece of legislation aimed at punishing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which uses nonviolent economic tactics to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and human rights abuses.
HR 4795, introduced in July 2025 by Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), is known as the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act. But Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, described it as an "Orwellian" turn of phrase for what the legislation actually does.
"The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel,” she told Responsible Statecraft. “And if they're not doing that, they're pro-BDS and anti-Israel.”
As the outlet described:
[The bill] would bar colleges that receive federal funds from engaging in what it defines as a “nonexpressive commercial boycott” of Israel, including “refusals to deal” or terminating business relationships in order to limit commercial ties without a “valid business reason.” The law would require these institutions to submit annual certification that they were giving students and faculty access to academic programs in Israel on the same terms as programs in other countries.
In a brief opposing the bill, Friedman argued that it was not just forcing universities to do business with Israel, but with its settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. With backing from the Israeli state, violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has exploded to never-before-seen highs this year, according to the United Nations.
"This legislation," Friedman wrote, "sets up a situation in which the alleged absence of engagement with any Israeli partner/party, including in settlements, will become the basis for an accusation of boycott, putting universities in the position where, if they universities want to avoid being accused of boycotting Israel/settlements, they will need to adopt an affirmative policy of prioritizing maximal engagement/partnership with Israeli entities (including in settlements)."
The bill passed by a 237-169 vote, with support from all but two Republicans—Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). And although the vast majority of Democratic voters now hold negative views of Israel, 33 Democrats also voted in favor of the bill.
The legislation now heads to the narrowly Republican-controlled US Senate, where it would need 60 votes to advance.
Introducing the bill last year, Gottheimer said it was necessary because BDS was an "antisemitic, hate-fueled... movement" that "seeks to destroy Israel—and has no place on our college campuses."
But even critics of the BDS movement, like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chafed at its potential chilling effect on protected speech.
"No matter how strongly I oppose the BDS movement, I also believe that those who engage in BDS have a First Amendment right to do so," Nadler said before voting against the bill. "The First Amendment right to free speech does not apply only to agreeable speech."
He cited a letter sent to Congress by the ACLU opposing the bill's contention that schools should need a "valid business reason" to cut ties with Israel.
"Many of those engaged in boycotts of Israel do so not for commercial reasons, but because they wish to express their political opposition to the policies of the Israeli government—matters of overwhelming public concern and debate in the present moment. HR 4795’s labeling such boycotts as ‘non-expressive’ does nothing to change this reality," the letter said.
The bill comes as members of Congress, especially Democrats, are under increasing scrutiny for their support from pro-Israel lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose political spending arm has poured more than $104 million into supporting its preferred candidates this election cycle.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has spent more than six months embroiled in a costly war with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played a key role in persuading him to launch.
"We just got dragged into a war by Benjamin Netanyahu. He's bragging about it," Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) told Julian Andreone of Drop Site News. "That's about as embarrassing as you can get... So let's leave universities alone."
Aaron Regunberg, a contributing editor at The New Republic, described it as outrageous that Democrats who supported the bill were "actively joining the far-right's war on higher education in order to shield a genocidal ethnostate that most Americans increasingly want nothing to do with."
Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said the bill was "another effort to single out Israel for special treatment and erode Americans’ rights on its behalf."
"Will it be your child who can’t afford to go to college after 33 Democrats voted with Republicans to help Trump defund US universities? Because it certainly won’t be any of theirs," he said. "Shame on them for joining the attack on our schools and constitutional rights on behalf of Israel."
"Organizations should never face IRS scrutiny because political officials disapprove of their views."
A pair of Senate Democrats on Thursday launched an investigation into reports that the Trump administration is planning to weaponize the Internal Revenue Service against left-leaning nonprofits, targeting the tax-exempt status of groups seen as political enemies of the White House and potentially burying the organizations with huge penalties without adequate due process.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) announced their inquiry in response to recent reporting by the right-wing New York Post, which reported late last month that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the IRS "could revoke the tax-free status of left-wing nonprofits such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations."
Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and Warnock called the story "disturbing" and argued it suggests "political considerations—including the timing of the 2026 midterm elections—are influencing" the administration's targeting of left-leaning nonprofits. The NY Post, which cited three unnamed sources familiar with the matter, reported that "Bessent’s inner circle is drafting a blueprint that could ultimately strip non-compliant organizations of their 501(c)(3) status."
"The reviews could result in massive back payments and civil penalties," the outlet added.
The Democratic senators noted in a letter to Bessent and Frank Bisignano, the chief executive of the IRS, that Section 7217 of the Internal Revenue Code prohibits senior executive branch officials from "directly or indirectly" requesting that the IRS conduct or terminate an investigation into any particular taxpayer.
"The New York Post’s reporting fits a wider pattern of the Trump administration actively using national security directives to weaponize the IRS against protected First Amendment speech," Wyden and Warnock wrote, citing the presidential memorandum known as NSPM-7. "Rather than targeting actual violence, these directives explicitly conflate terrorism with subjective political viewpoints—such as 'anti-capitalism,' 'anti-Christianity,' and views on race, migration, and gender."
Wyden and Warnock demanded that the Treasury Department and IRS turn over the reported "blueprint" crafted by Bessent's inner circle as well as "all policies, directives, guidance, criteria, and other documents concerning Treasury and IRS implementation of NSPM-7 as it relates to tax-exempt organizations, including criteria for selecting organizations for examination or possible revocation."
The senators also demanded to know whether any executive branch officials in the Trump administration have "identified or recommended" particular organizations—including any of those named in the Post report—for IRS investigation.
"Americans of every political persuasion must be able to trust that the IRS applies the tax code objectively under one set of rules," Wyden and Warnock wrote. "Organizations that violate section 501(c)(3) should face appropriate enforcement regardless of their politics—and organizations should never face IRS scrutiny because political officials disapprove of their views."
The senators launched their probe as two Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced legislation aimed at guaranteeing that the IRS can't strip nonprofit organizations of their tax-exempt status "without evidence and without a fair process."
Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), the lead sponsors of the Protecting the Rights of Organizations Fairly (PROOF) Act, note that "under current law, many due process protections that are supposed to apply when the IRS examines most nonprofits exist only in the agency's own internal manual—guidance the IRS can rewrite or suspend on its own authority through an internal memo with no public comment, no rulemaking, and no vote, and that carries no force of law."
"The IRS should never be a weapon to punish a president's political enemies," Doggett said in a statement on Thursday. "No organization—left, right, or center—should lose its tax-exempt status on an accusation, without evidence, and without a fair chance to be heard."
"The PROOF Act is simple," he added. "If the government wants to take away a nonprofit's status, it has to show its proof and follow the law. Today, it may be an organization to which the Trump regime objects. Tomorrow, it could be any of us."