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In what one sage deemed "amateur-hour, clown-fucker, reality-show dictatorship shit," this week's House hearings on ICE abuses, Epstein cover-ups and other GOP atrocities showcased a parade of rancid, lying, stonewalling MAGA lickspittles and deplorables - loudest among them sneering "bad acid trip come to life" Pam Bondi - facing off against a for-once united cohort of smart, angry, truth-telling Democrats with righteous history on their side and, finally, no fucks left to give. We are here for it.
Deep in his delusional bubble, the mad child-king ostensibly in charge of these evil cretins told Fox News Wednesday that Americans are living in "the greatest period of anything we’ve ever seen." Maybe he meant how he's been bravely standing up for a bridge he thinks Canada ripped us off for while forgetting he praised it when it was built, and paid for, by Canada. Or maybe it's 'cause in exchange for idiotically spending our money trying to prop up dirty, pricey, inefficient coal - "the 19th century called and it wants its fuel source back" - and glitching out en route, the "simplest mark of all time" got another shiny participation trophy as the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal." "Lookit his happy face!" the Internet chortled. "The big special boy is so big and so special!" Also, "Marvel is running out of Superheroes" and "This is the saddest thing I've ever seen."
Possibly sadder is MAGA Reps. Andy Ogles and Mark Alford still melting down about Bad Bunny's "pure smut" half-time show wherein "children were forced to endure explicit displays of gay sexual acts" that are "illegal to be displayed on public airways" which is why he wants a Congressional inquiry into said "unspeakable depravities," though they might be confusing them with Epstein's, which they've notably ignored. Also sad is another bigly fail by US Attorney Jeanine Boxwine to get a grand jury indictment for fake crimes, in this case against Dem Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and four Reps, all veterans, for their video reading the law out loud to remind military they have the right not to obey illegal orders. The kicker: Her attempt was so ludicrous that reportedly zero grand jurors thought she hit the famously low ham-sandwich bar for probable cause.
In this week's House hearings, it was clear Dem lawmakers, like the rest of us, had reached the famed point in 1954's McCarthy hearings when an appalled Joseph Welch, at the limit of his tolerance for McCarthy's lies and cruelty, exclaimed, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" That fierce moral outrage, and the strength and clarity needed to vent it, has been evident in besieged Minnesota for weeks: In grand jurors' staunch refusal to indict so-called "rioters,” in protesters' profane, hilarious anthem pillorying ICE Barbie, in neighbors seething at the masked, armed rabble that just caused a multi-vehicle crash in St.Paul, the latest in a long line of ICE crimes and transgressions. "Oh my God, you guys are so....evil. I can feel it, " railed one resident. "Jesus. Fucking incels, racists, murderers, thugs. What are you doing?!"
So it was that, in Tuesday's House Homeland Security Committee hearing, when acting ICE director Todd Lyons whined in his opening statement that "to say the men and women of ICE are Gestapo (is) wrong" and hurts their alleged feelings, Rep. Dan Goldman wasn't having it. "People are simply making valid observations about your tactics, which are un-American and outright fascist," he said. Goldman cited their racial profiling, asking people for their papers, use of excessive force and other forms of intimidation, likening them to Nazi/ Soviet regimes and shutting down Lyons' protestations as "unnecessary speaking." "I have a simple suggestion," Goldman said calmly. "If you don’t want to be called a fascist regime or a secret police, then stop acting like one." Tell it to power-mad, I-want-my-blankey ICE Barbie, reportedly fascisting it up big time over her goons. Jesus.
Other Dems likewise minced no words. Rep. LaMonica McIver: "Mr. Lyons, do you consider yourself a religious man?" "Yes, Ma'am." "Well, how do you think Judgment Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands?" "I'm not gonna entertain that question." "Oh, ok, of course not. Do you think you’re going to hell, Mr. Lyons?" "I’m not gonna entertain that question." When the Chair sternly chides her about "standards of decorum," she blithely notes, "Well, you guys are always talking about religion, so it's OK for me to just ask a question, right? Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you." (One comment: "We need more Black women in Congress.") She goes on, "How many government agencies, Mr. Lyons, are you aware of that routinely kill American citizens and still get funding?” "Ma'am, I'm not gonna entertain that." "Of course you're not. This is exactly why we should not be funding this agency...The people are watching you."
And so it went. Eric Swalwell quoted Lyons' earlier testimony he "wanted to see a deportation process like Amazon Prime, but with human beings" before asking, "How many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom 3 times in the face?" "None," said Lyons, before lamely noting he meant it "needs to be more efficient" and he'd added, "we deal with humans so we can't be like them." Swalwell, coolly, "Speaking of humans, how many times has Amazon Prime shot a nurse 10 times in the back?” Online, commenters pointed out, "Obviously, Amazon Prime doesn't shoot you in the face. You have to pay for Amazon Prime Plus to get that level of service," though, "you'll still get ads unless you step up to Premium, and you'll have to pay for the ammo up front." From another, "Is this the first time Amazon has been used as the good guy in a comparison? Fuck him up."
Rep.Delia Ramirez ripped Lyons: "My mother, a Guatemalan immigrant and (finger in air) an American taught me I have a responsibility to look evil in the eye and you have used your power to perpetrate great evil, and it's time you answer to this committee for the lawlessness you have empowered." She named Good, Pretti, Marimar Martinez - "Do something bitch" - and myriad other crimes: 100 court orders violated, dozens of tear-gas attacks despite a court order, banned chokeholds, warrantless arrests, 3,800 children in detention, roving patrols, plate switching, observer intimidation. On ICE demands to "respect the mission": "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color... the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Their activities were immoral and criminal, and so are yours."
Wednesday, A.G. Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in a rabid attempt to make them forget her months of covering up the Epstein files, missing deadlines, redacting perps, releasing survivors' names and otherwise ignoring them by "shouting, lying and being a cold bitch." Over five hours, in "an astonishingly contemptuous performance," she failed to answer a single question. Acting out "a sociopathic tween," she shrieked, veered, lied, argued, sniped, stonewalled, deflected, rolled her eyes and mean-girled through a book of scripted smears at Dems daring to seek accountability: "Insolent, Shouty Brat Brings Burn Book To Congress." She was "a nasty piece of work," a "demented skank," a "Nazi redneck bleach blond Barbie," a "historic villain" who once vowed to "put human trafficking monsters...behind bars" and will now be shunned "in every room she ever walks into for the rest of her life," to die "as a disbarred lawyer and a national disgrace...Her cheese has slid off her cracker."
She was snippy queen of the non-sequiturs. When Jerry Nadler asked how many Epstein co-conspirators she'd indicted - zero, obviously - she raved, "You all should be apologizing. You sit here and you attack the President, and I am not going to have it." Then she veered, wildly, yelling, "The Dow right now is over 50,000, the S&P at almost 7,000, the NASDAQ is smashing records, Americans’ 401(k)s and retirement savings are booming. That’s what we should be talking about.” When Zoe Lofgren asked her about redacting perps' names, she sneered, "I find it interesting she keeps going after President Trump, the greatest president in American history. She didn't say how much money she took from Reid Hoffman, did she?" Asked about Ludnick's ties to Epstein, she bickered, "what is ties?", scowled "shame on you," scoffed, "I'm stunned you want to keep talking."
Jamie Raskin, the Committee's Ranking Member, repeatedly called bullshit: "You can filibuster all you want, but not on our time. The way it works is, we ask you a question, you answer it. I warned you at the outset of this hearing." Bondi exploded. "You don't TELL ME anything,” she shrieked. “You’re a washed-up, loser lawyer." Then, mad-Lady-Macbeth-like, she muttered, "You’re not even a lawyer." (Raskin, a graduate of Harvard Law School and former editor of Harvard Law Review, is a longtime professor of Constitutional law at American University, and has written several books.) Unflappable, Raskin coolly accused her of running an Epstein cover-up of "staggering incompetence." "You've turned the people's Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge,” he charged. “Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time."
Bondi blocked questions from Becca Balint with smears against Merrick Garland - Balint: "Weak sauce" - then with charges of anti-Semitism. Balint, whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust: "You want to go there?! Really?!" Ted Lieu asked if Trump attended parties with underage girls; Bondi rolled her eyes. "This is so ridiculous," she said. "They are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done. There is no evidence he has committed a crime. Everyone knows that." Lieu: "I believe you just lied under oath, which is a crime." Bondi, screaming, "Don't you ever accuse me of committing a crime!" Jared Moskowitz noted Trump's name appears over a million times in the Epstein files, "more than God's name in the book about God." Grinning, he mused about her Burn Book zingers: "I'm curious. Just flip to Moskowitz. Because we’re in the Olympics, I’m going to give it a grade. Give me your best one. Whaddya got?"
With almost a dozen Epstein survivors sitting behind Bondi in the hearing room, Pramila Jayapal asked them to stand and raise their hands if they'd tried and failed to meet with DOJ officials. They all did. She asked Bondi to turn around and apologize; Bondi stood her ground: "I'm not going to get in the gutter with this woman and her theatrics." Noting an earlier claim that any victim who wants to talk to the DOJ has done so, Dan Goldman took up her quest. He asked how many had met with the DOJ: None. How many had reached out asking to: All. Of those who reached out, how many were ignored: All. And despite "their shameful, despicable efforts to intimidate," how many are still willing to talk to them? All. Bondi, still sitting, still hating, still steadfastly unperturbed, breezily flips her fake blond hair back, gazing into space.
Jasmine Crockett declined to "ask any questions of this witness because (she) has no intention of answering them." She turned to Ballint. "Right or wrong? Raping children." Ballint: "Wrong." "Killing random citizens." "Wrong." Etc. Crockett: "OK, thank you. I never woulda got that from our witness, who is somehow a lawyer but doesn't understand how it works with witnesses. I'm not sure what law school you went to (Stetson)... but you don’t seem very good at your job...Americans are looking for answers (not) protecting pedophiles and creeps. You will be remembered as one of the worst Attorney Generals in history." Bondi cuts in to rave about immigrants convicted of crimes in Texas. Crocket cuts her off: "CONVICTED! So what we talkin’ about? Convict some of these perpetrators who raped these women sitting behind you that you won’t even acknowledge are here!” She stalks out. Bondi is still babbling about Hakeem Jeffries and some money.
Observers were aghast at the wretched Bondi spectacle. Online, one older woman conceded "I'm sure this will get taken down" but spoke her mind for all of us: "Bondi is an absolute cunt, and needs to rot in prison for the rest of her life. What an evil evil woman. My God." Trump loved it: Bondi was "fantastic." John Pavlovitz, pastor and father, looked on at her "masterclass in gaslighting," and wondered, "How does someone become Pam Bondi?" He muses about "the meandering road to losing one's soul...so completely bereft of empathy, so seemingly unencumbered by other people’s suffering, and so strident in the face of simple accountability." As someone's daughter, he writes, "I'm sure there’s a story you have to tell yourself to keep the self-loathing at bay and let you sleep at night...I hope whatever you got for your soul was worth it to you. It sure as hell isn’t for the rest of us."
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In response to rising concerns about the extreme energy demands of artificial intelligence data centers, Democratic legislators in New York are proposing a three-year pause on their creation in the state.
The environmental group Food & Water Watch called the proposal, introduced Friday by state Sen. Liz Krueger (D-28) and Assemblymember Anna Kelles (D-125), the "strongest data center moratorium bill in the country," the sort that is in increasing demand as the public becomes aware of the staggering energy costs required to power the centers.
Last month, a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that US electricity demand could increase by 60% to 80% over the next quarter century, with data centers accounting for more than half the increase by 2030—costing anywhere from $886 billion to $978 billion and pumping anywhere from 19% to 29% more planet-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In large part due to data centers, New York's power grid may fall as much as 1.6 gigawatts short of reliability requirements, according to a projection from the New York Independent System Operator last year.
“Massive data centers are gunning for New York, and right now we are completely unprepared," Krueger said. When one of these energy-guzzling facilities comes to town, they drive up utility prices and have significant negative impacts on the environment and the community—and they have little to no positive impact on the local economy.
"New Yorkers are suffering from an affordability crisis and a climate crisis, and data centers are going to make both of those much harder to deal with," she added.
The bill would halt new data center projects exceeding 20 megawatts for three years and require the state to conduct environmental reviews and propose new regulations to address any identified impacts.
"Data centers are being built rapidly and with little meaningful oversight, despite the serious strain they place on our energy system, water resources, and local communities," explained Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas (D-34), another supporter of the legislation.
"These facilities increase pollution, drive up electricity costs, and threaten farmland and natural land, while disproportionately impacting low-income communities and Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities that have long faced environmental injustice," she said.
According to Politico, pushes to curb data center growth are gaining steam around the country:
New York is the largest state where lawmakers have proposed a moratorium on data centers. But concerns about the growing issue are bipartisan, with Republicans and Democrats backing moratoriums in various states.
Similar measures have been introduced in Maryland, Georgia, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Vermont. A Republican legislator in Michigan—where dozens of local governments have already passed moratoriums—has said she’ll introduce a statewide measure there, as well. In Wisconsin, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate has also called for a moratorium.
Eric Weltman, senior New York organizer at Food & Water Watch, said the bill was necessary to curb "one of the biggest environmental and social threats of our generation."
"This expansion is rapidly increasing demand for dirty energy, straining water resources, and raising electricity rates for families and small businesses," Weltman said. "New Yorkers are paying the price while Big Tech rakes in the riches. This strongest-in-the-nation moratorium bill is logical, it’s timely, and it will deliver the results we need."
Yvonne Taylor, vice president of Seneca Lake Guardian, said the bill "not only safeguards our shared future here in New York, but sets a powerful precedent for states across the nation."
Corporate profits in the US have surged in recent decades, with subscription-based businesses reporting some of the biggest revenue growth as more Americans use streaming services and sign up for "subscribe and save" models in a quest for ease and convenience.
While promising consumers that subscribing to a service will save them money and time, subscription-based businesses have made canceling the services increasingly difficult, contributing to Americans spending 60% longer on the phone with customer service lines than they did two decades ago.
And although corporations hardly need the extra money, making cancellations more arduous for customers can boost their revenue by anywhere from 14% to over 200%, according to the think tank Groundwork Collaborative, which released a report Monday on what it calls "the annoyance economy."
The labyrinthine processes that millions of Americans face each year when they try to cancel subscription services is just one part of the annoyance economy, according to Groundwork, which detailed the seemingly endless time, money, and patience people spend "just trying to get basic things done"—as well as efforts by corporations and the Trump administration to make sure it stays that way.
While millions are struggling with the rising costs of groceries, healthcare, housing, childcare, and just about everything else, the report explains how—thanks to corporate greed and a White House intent on enabling it—Americans are also shelling out at least $165 billion per year in fees as well as lost time.
In addition to cancellation processes, the annoyance economy includes the $90 billion people across the US spend every year on junk fees when they buy concert tickets, make hotel reservations, and order food delivery; rental application fees that keep people from even attempting to move to new housing that could put them closer to work or school; and administrative healthcare tasks like obtaining coverage information and resolving questions about premiums and deductibles.
"While seemingly minor, these little annoyances add up," wrote Groundwork policy fellow Chad Maisel and Stanford University economist Neale Mahoney, the authors of the report, who cited a 2019 survey that found 1 in 4 respondents delayed getting healthcare or avoided it altogether specifically because of the administrative tasks they had to complete in order to get an appointment and make sure it was covered.
"All told, American workers collectively spend about $21.6-billion-worth of time each year dealing with healthcare administration, between calls, claims, explanations, and paperwork, according to a recent analysis."
Another new poll from Data for Progress found that nearly 80% of Americans reported "at least a little frustration" when coordinating their healthcare and filling out health insurance paperwork.
"All told, American workers collectively spend about $21.6-billion-worth of time each year dealing with healthcare administration, between calls, claims, explanations, and paperwork," reads the report, citing another recent analysis. "Polling confirms this: More than 1 in 3 Americans report dealing with health insurance headaches more than 20 times per year."
With frustration over health insurance companies' practices increasingly common, reads the report, "policymakers are missing important opportunities to take on a handful of egregious and particularly annoying practices."
Lawmakers could require insurance companies to make it easy for patients to fill out and submit claims online—instead of downloading, printing, and physically mailing claim forms with itemized receipts as Cigna requires patients to do.
Congress could also create a "healthcare sludge unit" to monitor and root out "needless friction throughout the healthcare experience."
Such a project could leverage tools "like 'blind shopper' experiments, public feedback lines, and direct engagement with industry to surface and fix barriers that waste patients’ time and erode trust."
The report also takes on the spam texts and calls that have become all-to-familiar to anyone with a cellphone.
"Text messaging, once reserved for conversation with friends and family, now resembles our email spam folders, dominated by unsolicited offers from companies, politicians, and fraudsters," wrote Maisel and Mahoney, who shared that on the day they wrote about spam in the report, "one of us received five spam calls, a text from 'Victoria' offering a $500-a-day job, and two breathless fundraising messages from political candidates we’ve never supported—or even heard of."
Those spam communications were some of the more than 130 million scam and illegal marketing calls Americans receive each day and the nearly 20 billion texts that were sent each month over the past year—leading "virtually all respondents" to Data for Progress' poll to report that the calls and texts are at least "a little frustrating" and 68% call them "very frustrating."
State and federal lawmakers could and should take action against spam calls and texts, said Maisel and Mahoney. Congress should modernize the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which was passed in 1991—well before companies began inundating Americans' inboxes with the newest robocalling and texting software.
"If a platform automatically dials from a stored list of numbers, it’s now exempt from the TCPA’s rules," reads the report. "The result: far more robocall and spam text operations can legally target people without their consent. Congress should update the definition of autodialer to include any callers and texters who automatically contact stored numbers, unless there’s real human involvement in sending each message."
Former President Joe Biden's Federal Communications Commission tried to close the "lead generator loophole,” which allows third-party marketers to collect people's contact information and sell it to dozens, sometimes hundreds, of businesses, but companies sued over the FCC's action and won in court.
President Donald Trump could issue an executive order directing federal agencies "to leverage all available resources and authorities to end robocalls and spam texts once and for all," said Maisel and Mahoney.
But the authors noted that the Trump administration's mass layoffs across the government would make enforcement more difficult.
"The Department of Justice also needs to prioritize enforcement against bad actors," they wrote. "While the FCC can levy fines for violations, it cannot pursue their collection without the DOJ. Of the eight robocalling forfeiture orders referred by the FCC, the DOJ has pursued only two for collection."
In the case of the hoops consumers are made to jump through in order to cancel subscriptions and services, the report emphasizes that the federal government has made significant inroads before to help the public.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) intervened in 2023 and stopped Toyota Motor Credit from continuing its practice of routing all consumer calls through a hotline "where representatives were instructed to keep promoting products until a consumer asked to cancel three times, at which point they were told cancellation was only possible by submitting a written request."
Under the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was lauded by consumer advocates for its click-to-cancel rule in 2024, requiring sellers to “make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up."
But Trump's FTC last year delayed implementation of the rule after industry groups said that "it would take a substantial amount of time to come into compliance.” A federal appeals court then effectively killed the rule altogether.
While the fees that gradually trickle out of Americans' bank accounts into the annoyance economy are often small individually, the report emphasizes that they add up—and the consequences of these business practices and the government's failure to stop them "extend beyond wasted time and money."
"When life is reduced to jumping through an endless series of hoops—just to fix a billing error, secure a refund, or cancel a subscription—it breeds cynicism and disengagement," reads the report. "If the government can remove even a few of those obstacles, we can show the American people that someone is paying attention and begin the long process of rebuilding public trust."
Silicon Valley elites are planning to spend big money in 2026 to ensure that the next US Congress will be even more friendly to the artificial intelligence industry than the current Republican-led version.
CNN reported on Wednesday that Leading the Future, a super political action committee (PAC) focused on electing AI-friendly members of Congress, is pledging to spend at least $100 million to influence the 2026 midterm election.
The PAC, which is backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and other AI heavyweights, is working to elect lawmakers who will pass legislation that will set a single set of AI regulations that will take effect throughout the US, overriding any restrictions placed on the technology by state governments.
The massive sum the PAC is dedicating to the 2026 midterms prompted Matthew Stoller, researcher at the American Economic Liberties Project, to remark that this is "what oligarchy looks like."
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tried to get a provision preempting state AI regulations slipped into the GOP's major budget package last year, but it was ultimately taken out amid bipartisan resistance to giving the AI industry a blank regulatory check.
President Donald Trump subsequently signed an executive order instructing the US Department of Justice to create a task force that would sue any state governments that enact supposedly "onerous and excessive" regulations on the technology.
However, as an executive order, this directive can be overturned by any future president who supports stronger AI regulation.
CNN noted that Leading the Future's planned flood of cash is coming at a time when AI has been drawing skepticism from factions within both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for instance, has thrown his support behind a "Citizen Bill of Rights for AI," which would provide privacy protections for end users and place restrictions on the construction of AI data centers.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), meanwhile, has called for a full moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers.
Leading the Future also appears to understand that the AI industry's reputation is becoming toxic for voters.
As Fast Company reported on Wednesday, the super PAC has launched negative ads against Democratic New York US congressional candidate Alex Bores by highlighting his past work at Palantir, which has become controversial for providing technology used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to carry out mass deportations.
Current and former Palantir employees told Fast Company that they believe the ad against Bores to be highly deceptive, as Palantir wasn't nearly as integrated with ICE operations during his tenure as it is today.
"If Bores’ campaign is one that would restrict the tech industry’s growth," one former Palantir employee told Fast Company, "and his base is one that is already primed to be critical of Palantir, people (like me!) who watch this ad wouldn’t suspect that it’s people with significant interests in Palantir and the broader industry that are funding the ads, too."
In what the ACLU called a "win for freedom of the press," a pair of federal immigration agencies announced on Wednesday that they settled a lawsuit with five photojournalists who claimed to have been unconstitutionally detained and questioned while reporting at the US-Mexico border.
The five journalists—Bing Guan, Go Nakamura, Mark Abramson, Kitra Cahana, and Ariana Drehsler—are all citizens of the United States who traveled to the border in 2018 and 2019 to report on the journeys of people traveling from Central America as part of migrant caravans.
The journalists said that after reporting on conditions at the border, they were detained by US border officers and questioned about their sources and observations while reporting, which they said was a violation of their First Amendment right in a lawsuit.
"It’s clear the government’s actions were meant to instill fear in journalists like me, to cow us into standing down from reporting what is happening on the ground," said Guan, a freelance photographer who has contributed to Reuters, Bloomberg, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
Shortly after these five journalists were detained, NBC News reported that they were targeted as part of a broader operation by US Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) San Diego sector to detain and interrogate a list of dozens of journalists, lawyers, and activists labeled as "instigators."
Others on this list who were detained, including US citizens, reported being aggressively interrogated about their political views and opinions about the Trump administration.
Tactics have only grown more aggressive during President Donald Trump's second term: Federal immigration agents have hauled off journalists in unmarked vans for recording them, and the administration has repeatedly asserted, incorrectly, that it is illegal to film ICE agents on duty or reveal their identities.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has claimed that recording ICE agents in public constitutes “violence” or a “threat” to agents' safety, and a DHS bulletin issued last year has classified recording at protests as “unlawful civil unrest."
However, several federal courts have overwhelmingly held that the First Amendment protects the right to film law enforcement, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
Esha Bhandari, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology project, said the settlement, reached in January, affirms that "the First Amendment applies at the border to protect freedom of the press."
As part of the settlement, CBP will be required to issue guidance to certain border units on First Amendment and Privacy Act protections that apply when questioning journalists at the border.
While the scope of the settlement is limited and does little to protect journalists under threat nationwide, Kitra Cahana, an award-winning photographer and another plaintiff, said it still serves as an important affirmation of press freedom.
“This settlement confirms what we already knew: what happened to us was wrong,” Cahana said. “Government officials should never put journalists on secret lists, interfere with our ability to work and travel, or pressure us for information at border crossings."
"My biggest fear is that other journalists may have avoided important stories out of fear of being targeted themselves," she added. "Press freedom is not a partisan issue. Everyone should be alarmed when journalists are targeted.”
An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera based on evidence collected by the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip has concluded that nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been "evaporated" by Israel through the use of thermal weapons—some of them supplied by the US.
As reported by Al Jazeera on Tuesday, the investigation found that 2,842 Palestinians were killed due to Israel's "systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit]."
The heat generated by these weapons is so intense, investigators noted, that they leave behind almost no detectable human remains other than blood stains or pieces of flesh.
Israel's use of such weapons was flagged last year in a social media post by Omar Hamad, a Gaza pharmacist who posted a video purportedly showing a thermobaric bomb being detonated in Beit Hanoun.
Israel is using thermobaric (vacuum) bombs in Beit Hanoun. These are shock waves that spread in a circular and low pattern near the ground surface, preceding the appearance of the dust cloud by far, indicating a speed faster than the speed of sound.
This is genocide. pic.twitter.com/tA7jC61g33
— Omar Hamad | عُـمَـرْ 𓂆 (@OmarHamadD) July 13, 2025
Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Gaza Civil Defense, said hat the investigation was not a mere estimate of Palestinians incinerated by thermal and thermobaric weapons, but the result of painstaking forensic work.
"We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered," Basal explained. "If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces—blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps."
Unlike the explosions caused by traditional bombs, the thermobaric weapons used by Israel in Gaza first disperse clouds of fuel in a given area that are then ignited to create an enormous and intense fireball.
The investigation found that the fuel typically used in Israeli thermobaric weapons was tritonal, a mixture consisting of 80% TNT and 20% aluminum powder often found in US-manufactured weapons such as the Mark 84 aircraft bomb.
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that the heat generated by these weapons is so intense that any living creatures' bodily fluids will immediately boil.
"When a body is exposed to energy exceeding 3,000 degrees combined with massive pressure and oxidation, the fluids boil instantly," al-Bursh explained. "The tissues vaporize and turn to ash. It is chemically inevitable."
Gaza resident Yasmin Mahani told Al Jazeera that her son, Saad, was incinerated by a 2024 Israeli strike that hit a school in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City.
“We found nothing of Saad," Mahani said. "Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”
“Through its third country deportation deals, the Trump administration is putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments, while turning a blind eye to the human costs," reads a new Senate report.
Using secretive agreements, often with countries that have histories of human rights abuses, the Trump administration has "expanded and institutionalized" a system in which the government deports migrants to nations where they have never lived, according to a report released Friday by Democrats on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The report, titled At What Cost? Inside the Trump Administration’s Secret Deportation Deals, was commissioned by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and is the first comprehensive review of the administration's coercive and secretive agreements with countries including El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, and Eswatini.
Third-country deportations were "previously a rare tool used only in exceptional circumstances," said the authors, but "the Trump administration has broadened this practice into a sprawling system of global removals," sending direct financial payments of $32 million in taxpayer money to foreign governments.
Five countries, which also include Palau and Rwanda, entered into those deals and have taken 300 people. In all, the administration has spent more than $40 million on the deportations, according to the report.
“This report outlines the troubling practice by the Trump administration of deporting individuals to third countries—places where these people have no connection—at great expense to the American taxpayer and raises serious questions,” said Shaheen, the ranking member of the committee. “Through its third country deportation deals, the Trump administration is putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments... For an administration that claims to be reigning in fraud, waste, and abuse, this policy is the epitome of all three.”
The senators conducted a 10-month review of the administration's agreements and third country deportations through January 2026, with staff traveling to the countries and meeting with people who have been deported, attorneys, US and foreign officials, and human rights organizations.
The agreements, said the senators, amount to an "expensive and dangerous form of shadow diplomacy that prioritizes the appearance of toughness over the security of Americans" and includes little oversight over whether public funds are being used to finance human trafficking or rights abuses.
While the agreements include "blanket language" on upholding international human rights laws, the report states, the senators' extensive review uncovered no evidence that the administration is conducting systemic monitoring or follow-up enforcement, "raising serious concerns that the assurances made by foreign governments exist only on paper and that the United States is turning a blind eye to what happens to migrants in third countries."
Cart Weiland, a deputy assistant secretary at the US State Department, was questioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about his work helping to establish the third country agreements and "could not articulate whether any oversight on their treatment had been conducted. Instead, he reiterated that 'the agreement has a provision that explicitly mandates adherence to international human rights treaties and conventions.'"
Committee staff members also heard from US officials in one country that they had been instructed "not to follow up on the treatment of deportees."
A Trump administration attorney even acknowledged in a federal court case regarding deportations to Ghana, another country that has entered into agreements with the administration, that it appeared "Ghana was violating assurances it had provided the United States, including that it would comply with the Convention Against Torture, after sending a migrant onward to a country where they would likely be tortured."
The senators also found that the administration is likely using third countries to circumvent US immigration law—carrying out removals "that US law would otherwise prohibit, such as sending protected individuals onward to countries where they may face persecution or death."
The majority of migrants flown to third countries have had court-ordered protections prohibiting the US from sending them back to their home countries, where they could face persecution or torture.
"One migrant with protective orders stated: 'While at the fuel stop in the US Virgin Islands, the apparent head [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] official on the plane... told me that those on the plane were being sent to Ghana and that Ghana would send us to our home countries," according to the report.
The document said that "the Trump administration’s defense is that the United States 'does not have the power to tell Ghana what to do,'" a claim it also made after garnering condemnation for its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport about 250 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned in the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
The report also details how the administration has threatened some countries with increased tariffs, travel bans, or cuts to US foreign aid if they don't enter into the deals.
"The Trump administration is expending political capital in its bilateral relationships that could instead be used to advance more pressing USb national security interests, while not being transparent about the full extent of its deal-making, including what is being offered to foreign governments," reads the report.
The senators emphasized that they released their report "as the administration is aggressively seeking to strip hundreds of thousands of migrants of legal status in the United States through the ending of temporary protected status and humanitarian parole, among other avenues, increasing the risk of expanded third country deportations."
The Democrats on the committee said they would continue to conduct oversight of the agreements and demand transparency.
"The Trump administration should cease its use of these third country deportation deals," they said, "which are putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments without oversight while turning a blind eye to the potential human cost."
The progressive US congresswoman "is expected to decry the influence of billionaires and oligarchic interests at the expense of the working class," according to one journalist.
Amid growing speculation that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could parlay her rising clout in the Democratic Party into a run for higher office, the New Yorker is set to speak Friday at a key annual international security summit in Germany.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) will address the 62nd Munich Security Conference as one of numerous representatives of the Democratic Party. In addition to other members of Congress, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, two names frequently floated as possible 2028 presidential candidates, are also speaking at the conference.
According to NBC News, the democratic socialist congresswoman is slated to speak on two panels—one concerning the "future of US foreign policy" and the other about the "rise of populism."
Ocasio-Cortez is expected to offer a very different vision of US global leadership from that of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the latter of whom will lead the American delegation in Munich.
"She is expected to decry the influence of billionaires and oligarchic interests at the expense of the working class," Washington Post reporter John Hudson said Thursday on X.
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy an an informal adviser to Ocasio-Cortez, told the Washington Post Thursday that the congresswoman "brings an understanding of the way that oligarchy and corruption are part of the problem in our foreign policy and have been for a long time."
“This is an opportunity to hear from a progressive leader who represents a perspective not often heard at the Munich Security Conference,” he added.
AOC on the Munich Security Conference: I think it’s important for the world to understand—and for all of us to communicate—the full scope of who we are as Americans: that there is an alternative vision and a future that does not require a zero-sum mentality and can help people. pic.twitter.com/PsSjLDJwdD
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 12, 2026
In a separate interview with NBC News, Duss said of Ocasio-Cortez:
Trump has obviously turned the US into an antagonist of Europe. We’ve seen right-wing populism grow in Europe and around the world. Since her first days in Congress, she’s been sounding the alarm that people are hurting. Governments are failing. When people can’t find jobs or afford basic needs like housing and healthcare, they will turn to easy solutions like blaming immigrants, blaming LGBTQ people. This is driving right-wing populism.
Last year, another progressive US lawmaker, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), spoke at the Munich Security Conference, urging his audience to “stand tall against right-wing extremism” in a sharp rebuke of Vice President JD Vance's admonition to European leaders to accommodate far-right parties like the neo-Nazi-rooted Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) welcomed Ocasio-Cortez's trip to Munich, telling NBC News: "I’ve always said that she is a national and an international voice. She’s young, articulate, clear-headed, represents not only the present but the future."
“I predict someday she will become president of the United States," Espaillat added. "I’ve called her ‘madam president’ before."
Ocasio-Cortez has faced mounting speculation and calls to consider a future primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) or even a White House run.
"Together, we can break the siege, save lives, and stand up for the cause of Cuban self-determination," said the mission's organizers.
As the Trump administration tightens an already devastating economic embargo of Cuba by targeting the island's fuel imports in a bid to topple the country's socialist government, a coalition of progressive groups on Thursday announced plans for a flotilla to deliver food, medicine, and other essential supplies to the besieged Cuban people.
Members of Progressive International, CodePink, and other direct action and advocacy groups plan to set sail for Cuba next month in the Nuestra América—or Our America—Flotilla, which they said is inspired by the Global Sumud Flotilla missions to break Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza amid the ongoing genocide in the Palestinian exclave.
"We are sailing to Cuba, bringing critical humanitarian aid for its people," the flotilla organizers said on their website. "The Trump administration is strangling the island, cutting off fuel, flights, and critical supplies for survival. The consequences are lethal, for newborns and parents, for the elderly and the sick."
"That is why we are launching the Nuestra América Flotilla, setting sail from across the Caribbean Sea in solidarity with the Cuban people," the organizers continued. "And we are asking for your support, to help us prepare the mission and purchase the food and medicine that we will bring to the Cuban people."
"Together, we can break the siege, save lives, and stand up for the cause of Cuban self-determination," they added.
The announcement of the flotilla came as the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on Cuba's socialist government by further suffocating the island's economy via an oil embargo similar to the one imposed on Venezuela before last month's US invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
At the time, President Donald Trump threatened the leaders of Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico that they could be next.
Trump reversed former President Joe Biden's eleventh-hour move in January 2025 to remove Cuba from the US state sponsors of terrorism list, a designation utterly divorced from reality. Trump officials have cited Cuba's baseless inclusion on the list as justification for measures taken against the country's government and people.
The US embargo on Cuba dates to the early 1960s when the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations responded to the successful revolution that overthrew a brutal US-backed dictatorship with a blockade accompanied by a decadeslong campaign of state-sponsored terrorism against the Cuban people that left thousands dead and more than $1 trillion in economic damages, according to the Cuban government.
Every year since 1992—with the exception of the Covid-19 pandemic year of 2020—the United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to condemn and call for an end to the US blockade of Cuba.
Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler told El País' Veronica Garrido Thursday, "The US government is drowning the Cuban people, who are running out of light, have no food, no medicine, no energy."
"I do not exaggerate when I say that we are seeing in Cuba the same playbook that Israel applied to the people of Gaza: an encirclement, an act of collective punishment that violates every aspect of international law,” he continued.
"We hope that [the flotilla] will be a mechanism of popular pressure to the governments of the world that have the responsibility, before international law, to protect the fundamental rights of the Cuban people and export the energy required by the island,” Adler said.
“There is nothing illegal about what we are doing," he added. "We are coming to a sovereign country and delivering humanitarian aid. We are ready to take risks in the name of humanity and the fundamental right of the Cuban people."