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Lame: On Space Nazis, Swindlers, Poseurs and Liars
Apologies to those who just can't or won't hear more of it, but the foul mad child-king is running notably rampant, and the historic record beckons. The bilge somehow keeps surging, from a weekend deluge of deranged AI slop, slurs, rants, boasts to this week's "sick fantasy" of nobly working "long and hard" (sic) in the rubble of 9/11 to choosing to "celebrate" GOP "achievements" (double sic) at a tacky mid-term crap-a-palooza nearly dead in the brackish water. Have mercy.
Unsurprisingly, Labor Day prompted an attack on "Communists and Dumocrats" from a failed real-estate nepo-baby who never worked a day in his soft tawdry life and only ripped off those who did; got famous for sneeringly telling people on TV they were fired; and morphed into "the most anti-union president in history." All weekend he spewed a blizzard of puerile, insane AI posts, each more bonkers than the last. Some: He nuked earth from space, threatened takeovers of multiple countries, declared "the moon is ours," attacked Iran, Canada, and "third-rate loser Debbie Dingbat," bragged about his billions, posed as Hulk Hogan, Green Lantern, a bemedalled general, a dark overlord with robot bodyguards snarling, "THEY WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN,” posted new Space Force uniforms "inspired" by Nazis, and renamed New Mexico New America grotesquely "dancing" to YMCA.
On Tuesday, before First Responders and a steel beam from the ruins of the Twin Towers, he gave an obscene mess of a speech; unlike every living president, he's skipping 9/11 ceremonies at Ground Zero because they wouldn't let him speak and it conflicts with a golf tournament. Halting reading from a piece of paper, he mourned a day “etched forever into the memories of Americans" before launching into bullshit. He praised his war with Iran - "Nobody thought it could go so well" - and bragged, "We’ve punished them greatly." He told a story about former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, whose wife "would always be screaming at him" to take their son to school, so on 9/11 he unhappily did, thus surviving the attacks that killed almost 700 of the company's employees: "He got to see it, but they all died...Now it's bigger, stronger, better than ever."
Then he got to the important part of the 9/11 story: Himself. He was building nearby, he "had a lot of construction workers," he took 100, maybe 200 of them to Ground Zero the next day, "and we worked long and hard." Huh. Except there is no evidence or record of that happening, which there'd have to be in a massive recovery effort supervised by city officials; also, his nephew says he was building Trump Tower five miles away, he ran a real-estate office that contracted out construction, and the only people he had access to were secretaries and accountants. There is, though, a record of him calling a radio show rom his safe miles away to giddily boast he now had the tallest building in Manhattan, from which he could "see" thousands of jubilant Muslims dancing in the streets - an infamous lie from what was, and remains, a racist, rancid pile of subhuman crap.
There is also video of him, young, brash and creepy, arriving near Ground Zero a few days later with a German television crew. When they asked what he thought of the human tragedy, the 3,000 dead, the day's terror and loss and grief, he said, "I hope we attack fast." Also fast, it was reported years later: His taking of $150,000 from a post-9/11 recovery grant program meant to help small businesses near the site of the attack. That was then; now, he's whining that Welles Crowther, a young equities trader remembered as “the man in the red bandana” who saved multiple people before dying in the towers' collapse, has "become more famous than me. I don't like it." He also added the shiny new lie that on 9/11 two firefighters “lifted me up and started running with me” to save him from an imaginary collapsing building. We assume they had tears in their eyes.
Trump's hideous lies about 9/11 especially infuriated Dean Blundell - "A Canadian Dog Did More Than He Did" - who cited what thousands in Canada gave freely with no camera crews in sight: Their lives, homes, help when needed. In retrospect, the only worse douchebag in the horrifying saga of 9/11 is Rudy Giuliani, who hid vast evidence of the hazardous air around Ground Zero while telling residents it was safe. Jon Stewart, who long fought for First Responders' rights: "They didn't recognize the air everyone was breathing (was) toxic until October of 2001. So to be fair, they only buried that information for 25 years." Those lies came out thanks to this week's release of 170,000 documents by Mayor Mamdani - the (Muslim) guy Rudy didn't think should be at the 25th anniversary ceremony. Rudy also chose the Twin Towers for an emergency command center against all advice and gave firefighters radios he knew didn't work, so fuck him all the way to Four Seasons Landscaping.
His former loser mob boss, meanwhile, continues to wreak havoc. Ignoring an approval rating 40 points underwater 'cause nobody can afford food or gas, he waddled to Dallas Wednesday for "The Greatest RALLY of them all!”, a glitzy, pretend, ill-planned Nazi confab with a daunting $25,000 entry fee he's defiantly, desperately made all about himself though nobody wants it to be. "The Convention, is really ‘HOT!’”, one of his 8 words, he exclaimed. “It's totally sold out! Everybody wants to be there!" Except even with every GOP House member and a third of the Senate facing re-election and the RNC “pulling out all the stops” to fill 20,000 seats with what ultimately became free tickets on a night competing with the first regular season NFL game, video of the first night showed glaring vistas of empty seats - the fragile snowflake's worst, primal fear. LOL.
Furthering the indignity, many of the lawmakers turning down the invite offered hilarious reasons akin to, "I have to wash my hair." Some carefully, vaguely declared they had "prior commitments" or they needed to be "in my district." One was taking his daughter "on college visits," one had to go to his son's (weirdly mid-week) high school football game, one said with visible relief he was going to his son's "destination wedding." A Sean the Sheep-ish James Comer said he had "stuff already planned." Another said he was going "dove-hunting." Max Miller, credibly accused of putting a gun to his ex-wife's head and breaking his toddler daughter's collarbone, said he was staying home to "spend time with family." One anonymously declared it was "a waste of time" and he was not "going to some convention center and holding up a sign."
Asked en route to Dallas about the announced absences, Trump bristled. "Everybody wants to come," he snapped, before attacking the reporter - needless to say, a woman. "Who are you with?" he snarled to ABC News' Mary Bruce. "ABC Fake News - you are the worst," he said. "We don't have room for them all." Event organizers have promised "a clear vision for the future of our country," with "lots of Great Entertainment" and over 50 speakers a night; they will include, "Everyday Americans sharing how they have benefited from the president’s policies," which def sounds lively, also Don Jr., Press Barbie and Lying Todd Blanche. Sen. Tim Scott gave a taste of the mood with an over-the-top, "SNL cold open" speech about "dangerous, radical and frankly weird" Dems willing to "rip the heart our of our chests..They hate our culture. They hate what it means to be American," which wasn't frankly weird at all.
The Carnival-Barker-In-Chief kept up the hysteria. Dems just want to cheat: "They're really good at this stuff." There have been "zero" border crossings the last 16 months; it's 600,000, but close enough. Just "pretend that i'm on the ballot," which isn't weird at all. Also, pretend he didn't say in desperation that if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate, he'll send every citizen $5,000, which is a bribe, which is way illegal. In Texas, where Talarico is leading spectacularly corrupt Ken Paxton, he urged votes for Paxton. "Some may not like the way he dresses," he noted, or the way he talks or looks, but he's "the greatest attorney genera in Texas," and maybe the galaxy? "Vote Republican and we will leave the world in our dust for generations to come," he said. "There’ll be nothing like it.” Now that's something we can believe. Hang in, speak up, this too shall (presumably) pass.
Sep 10, 2026
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Urgent Global Response Needed to Prepare for 'Literally Off the Charts' Supersized El Niño, Says UN
Officials at the United Nations are warning that governments around the world must urgently prepare for the impacts of an El Niño climate pattern that is being "supersized before our eyes."
The UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Thursday provided an update on El Niño, projecting with near certainty that it would persist at least through Februrary 2027.
El Niño is a phenomenon that produces above-average temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which then disrupt weather patterns elsewhere in the world. In its update, WMO said that this year's El Niño projects to be historically intense.
"Forecasts indicate further strengthening of El Niño in the coming months, with the event forecast to reach very strong intensity before peaking towards the end of the year," WMO said. "A very strong El Niño increases the likelihood of significant shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns in many parts of the world."
The organization emphasized, however, that El Niño's impacts are not predictable and vary widely by region.
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said the latest projections show that El Niño "has the potential to deliver a massive blow to communities and economies across the world" in the form of droughts, floods, and other climate-related disasters made more intense by the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels.
"This exceptional El Niño demands exceptional preparation and response," Saulo said. "Never before in the 50-year history of the World Meteorological Organization have we launched such a major mobilization with National Meteorological and Hydrological Services who are on the frontline of delivering the forecasts and services to save lives and livelihoods."
While speaking with reporters in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday, Saulo noted that the current El Niño "may be stronger than anything since our monitoring began," making it "literally off the charts we have used for the past four decades."
UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that "El Niño is being supersized before our eyes," and said the ramifications could be severe.
"The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up," said Guterres. "Sea surface temperatures are rising, temperatures keep climbing, and the world is in the danger zone of extreme weather."
Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, echoed UN officials' warning about El Niño in an interview with Wired published Thursday.
“This is probably one of the larger, if not the largest, climate events... that anybody alive is potentially ever experiencing,” said Swain. "That's a very big deal. And I think there’s certainly going to be dramatic outcomes from this.”
Sep 03, 2026
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Trump's Top Oil Stocks Have Made Him Up to $4.4 Million Richer During Iran War: Analysis
An analysis published by CNBC on Wednesday estimates that President Donald Trump has grown millions of dollars richer thanks to the illegal war with Iran he launched more than six months ago.
CNBC calculated its estimate by examining the nine largest fossil fuel company holdings listed in the president's annual financial disclosure, and found that their value increased by between $1.5 million and $4.4 million since the start of the war.
"Trump’s accounts reported purchases and at least 23 sales involving the nine companies through June 29, which is the most recent date Trump has disclosed any trades," reported CNBC. "Because the filings do not disclose exact share counts, execution prices, or which shares were sold, the estimates do not represent realized profits or Trump’s precise current holdings."
CNBC also found no evidence that Trump was making trades based on advanced knowledge of his own decisions.
Even so, the findings show that Trump has benefited financially from a war he started without any authorization from the US Congress.
Donald Sherman, president and CEO of government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CNBC that Trump growing richer off his own war leaves many Americans "wondering where national policy ends and private financial interest begins."
Scott Greytak, deputy executive director of Transparency International US, told CNBC that shouldn't be let off the hook even if he is not personally executing fossil fuel stock trades.
"[Trump] knows he is heavily invested in energy,” Greytak said. "Trump likely knows where his money is parked and would still see the upside when his administration’s actions send those [energy] stocks climbing."
CNBC's analysis of Trump's gains due to the war might be overly conservative.
A report released last month by Democrats on the US Congressional Joint Economic Committee estimated the president's wealth has increased by as much as $15.5 million since January thanks to his investments in oil and gas stocks.
While the war has driven up the values of fossil fuel companies, it has also hit US consumers directly in their wallets by raising the price of oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline.
The price of Brent crude surged back over $100 per barrel for the first time in weeks during Wednesday trading. Data published by the American Automobile Association on Wednesday shows that the average price of diesel fuel in the US hit another record high of $5.94 per gallon, while the price of gas increased to $4.22 per gallon.
According to the most recent estimate from Brown University's Watson School for International Public Affairs, the Iran War has now cost Americans more than $101 billion in additional fuel expenses, averaging more than $776 per US household.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump vowed that he would "cut the price of energy and electricity in half" over the span of just a year.
Sep 09, 2026
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Warning AI 'Could Mean the Demise of Humanity,' El-Sayed Backs Development Pause
Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan on Wednesday called for a pause in advanced artificial intelligence development, warning that the technology is progressing faster than governments and researchers can establish meaningful safeguards against potentially catastrophic consequences.
"You might have woken up like me to this tweet from a guy you probably never heard of until today. His name is Jacob Coxon," El-Sayed said in a video posted to social media. "Up until yesterday, he worked for an AI lab called Anthropic, one of the leading-edge AI research organizations in the world. He quit yesterday. He quit because he's worried that the technology that he was building could end humanity."
"That's something we should be paying attention to," the 41-year-old epidemiologist stressed.
Coxon said on social media that neither OpenAI—whose rogue machine agents recently hacked outside systems on multiple reported occasions—nor Anthropic "is acting responsibly" as they race against competitors at home and abroad to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), an advanced AI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge of any subject as well as or better than a typical human.
"They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives," he emphasized. "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt."
El-Sayed said that the AI Under Democracy plan his campaign released in July—which called for a new federal regulatory agency akin to the Food and Drug Administration to oversee development of artificial intelligence technology—doesn't go far enough. Instead, he is now backing a pause in AI development, as urged by US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last month.
Earlier this month, Sanders and Congressman Greg Casar (D-Texas) introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, with the Vermont senator arguing that "the future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs."
Many of those oligarchs and other AI pioneers also believe their products could one day wipe out humanity, but are rushing to build them anyway so that their competitors don't reap the rewards of being the first to achieve AGI.
Sanders is also reportedly preparing to convene a bipartisan Senate hearing next week on the dangers of AI, with special guests set to include Geoffrey Hinton, who quit Google in 2023 so he could sound the alarm on what he estimates is a 10–20% chance that AI could cause human extinction within three decades.
"Enough is enough," El-Sayed said Wednesday. "We need to make sure that the pace of development isn't outpacing the pace of risk. We cannot, in a race against China or a race for these corporations to be the dominant AI manufacturer, inadvertently create products that slip human control, that could fall into the wrong hands, that could mean the demise of humanity."
"That is a risk none of us ought to be able to bear, and it certainly shouldn't sit with the richest, most powerful corporations in the world on incentives that are driven by their greed rather than our well-being," he added. "So the time for action is now."
Sep 10, 2026
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'Collective Punishment': Mother of Jailed Palestine Action Activist in UK Was Denied Mortgage Over Daughter's Case
One of the UK's largest financial institutions, Lloyds Bank, reportedly targeted a jailed Palestine Action protester and her family for financial punishment before she was ever convicted of a crime, according to a report out Wednesday from Novara Media.
The outlet reported that activist Leona "Ellie" Kamio had her account shuttered by Lloyds, a process known as "debanking," while she was being held on remand for her role in destroying Israeli military equipment at a factory owned by the technology firm Elbit Systems.
Ellie and four other activists were convicted of criminal damage earlier this year. But although a jury never convicted them of terrorism, they were sentenced as terrorists after a judge made an unprecedented ruling that their actions had a “terrorist connection," due to their political motivation. She and other members of the so-called "Filton Four" have appealed their sentences.
Ellie was held in prison on "remand" for more than 18 months before her first trial concluded in February 2026 although she was never charged with terrorism.
In February 2025, a year before her trial for criminal damage, Novara reports that Kamio was sent a letter by Lloyds informing her that it was closing her bank account because it was “unable to maintain a banking relationship." It did not give an explanation for the decision.
In June 2026, after Ellie had been convicted of criminal damage but before she was slapped with a terrorism sentence, her mother, Emma Kamio, learned that Lloyds had denied her request for a new mortgage on the commercial properties for her small business.
Lloyds made it clear that it was because of her daughter's case.
"We’ve now assessed the deal and consulted with our credit sanction team," a business development manager for the bank told Emma's mortgage broker. "Unfortunately, due to the adverse media, it’s not something they’re comfortable supporting at this time.”
When the broker offered an alternative plan to transfer the properties into her sister's ownership, Lloyds also rejected it.
Emma told Novara that she lost her properties as a result of Lloyds' decision. Her businesses, she said, "had to slip down the list of priorities as for the past two years, she's "spent every waking moment dealing with the trauma of my wrongful arrest or fighting for my daughter’s campaign and her release."
Emma was herself arrested in July 2025 after she locked herself to a suitcase outside Parliament to protest as members voted to enact the ban on Palestine Action. She was acquitted in April 2026.
"Thankfully, my drive for justice is more important to me than money," Emma said.
In the UK, banks are not allowed to cancel customers' accounts based on religion or belief. But they can be closed if the bank suspects a user is engaged in money laundering, terrorism financing, fraud, or other criminal activities that could pose a risk to the financial institution.
Emma contends that Lloyds "debanked my daughter Ellie with no reason at all, and while she was on remand and therefore innocent until proven guilty."
A spokesperson for Lloyds told Novara that the bank does not "close customer accounts or make lending decisions based on political or personal beliefs."
"Our decisions are based on relevant laws, regulations, account conditions, or lending requirements," the spokesperson said. "We’re unable to comment on individual cases.”
Anas Mustapha, the head of public advocacy at CAGE International, a UK-based organization focused on state abuses under terrorism laws, described the actions committed against Emma as “collective punishment."
"Emma Kamio has nothing to appeal against—just a bank’s discriminatory risk assessment, applied because her daughter took action to stop the supply chain of deadly weapons used in a genocide," Mustapha told Novara.
The highly controversial sentencing of Ellie and the rest of the "Filton Four" as terrorists was widely condemned by civil liberties and human rights activists, who described it as a dramatic escalation of the British government's effort to punish pro-Palestinian speech.
Last July, the Labour government of then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer used the Terrorism Act to ban Palestine Action, which has engaged in "direct action," including property destruction against entities activists believe are complicit in Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Not only is membership in the group now considered a terrorist offense, but nonviolent expressions of support for the group have also been criminalized.
Since the ban came into effect, 3,500 arrests of peaceful protesters have taken place across the country, according to Amnesty International, including more than 1,200 who've been charged with terrorism-related offenses.
Separately, official Home Office figures show that as of March, 92% of terrorism-related arrests in the UK over the previous year were linked to suspected support for Palestine Action.
Ellie and the other members of the Filton Four have defended their acts of sabotage against Israeli military equipment—including dozens of drones—as a justifiable response to Israel's destructive military campaign in Gaza.
That campaign, which many human rights organizations have described as a "genocide," has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children, according to official tallies from the Gaza Ministry of Health, while independent analysts have argued the true death toll since October 2023 is much higher.
Elbit is one of the companies that provides much of Israel's drone fleet, which has been involved in attacks that have killed Palestinian civilians.
"Ellie was sentenced as a terrorist after she was convicted of criminal damage for destroying 40 Israeli weapons, including quadcopter drones," said Huda Ammori, one of the co-founders of Palestine Action, in a post on X. "For saving lives, she was deemed a terrorist, and her family is also being targeted."
Sep 09, 2026
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Amnesty Says US-Israeli Attacks With Indiscriminate Weapons in Tehran May Have Been War Crimes
The recent resumption of US airstrikes in Iran, including on a wedding party where at least 25 civilians were killed last week, made Amnesty International's Tuesday report on previous suspected US-Israeli attacks in Tehran in the early days of the war all the more urgent, said the organization as it pointed to new evidence of potential war crimes by the American and Israeli militaries in the densely populated Iranian capital.
Amnesty analyzed US-Israeli airstrikes on three residential neighborhoods—Resalat, Niloufar, and Javadieh—between March 1-13, in which the coalition used "explosive weapons with wide-area effects," killing at least 41 civilians and damaging multiple homes, a school, businesses, and other civilian infrastructure.
“Amid the resumption of US strikes in Iran and renewed threats by US President Donald Trump to target civilian infrastructure, it is imperative that the US and Israel end all unlawful attacks and strictly comply with international humanitarian law, including by taking all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects during the planning and execution of military operations," said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.
The group noted that military infrastructure and police stations—which could be considered legitimate military targets in Iran, as the police forces are part of the broader armed forces there—were struck in the attacks in question. Israel and the US have not publicly claimed responsibility for the three specific attacks, but they announced strikes against Iranian "regime" targets in Tehran at the time of the airstrikes.
Amnesty emphasized that even if military and police buildings were the primary targets, "a large presence of civilians was clearly foreseeable" when the US and Israel evidently carried out the attacks in the three neighborhoods, which "resulted in devastating and yet entirely predictable consequences for civilians."
International law demands that warring parties do not carry out "indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks" that could harm civilians across the surrounding area, said the group.
Military leaders, said Amnesty, are also obligated to "choose weapon types and attack methods that reduce the risk of harming civilians and destroying civilian objects."
"The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in the vicinity of concentrations of civilians has foreseeably indiscriminate effects and as such is prohibited under international humanitarian law," the group stated. "Additionally, an attacking party remains at all times bound by the principle of proportionality, weighing the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from an attack against the expected harm to civilians and civilian objects, including the reverberating humanitarian consequences resulting from the attack."
"Launching indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians and disproportionate attacks are war crimes," said Amnesty.
The group analyzed satellite imagery and verified 60 videos of the three attacks, as well as reviewing public statements from officials in the US, Israel, and Iran to reach the determination that US and Israeli forces had potentially committed war crimes in the Tehran neighborhoods—a possibility the group said must be independently investigation.
In Niloufar, where at least 20 civilians were killed on March 1, eyewitness accounts described two explosions at around 9:00 pm local time, when restaurants and other businesses were open in the bustling neighborhood.
The attack directly struck a police station, but residential buildings and businesses were also struck.
A shop owner told Etemad Online that "before the attack… dozens of people were sitting in front of the cafés in the square. All the shops were open... When the police station was struck, those who were sitting on the pavement in front of the cafés were killed."
"The whole street was full of blood," they added. "I saw one person whose chest had been pierced by broken glass. Many children, women, and young people were killed here that night."
Callamard said that "the civilian death toll, the scale of destruction, the timing of the attacks, the impact on nearby civilian structures, and the lack of effective advance warnings point to alarming failures by the US-Israeli coalition to abide by the obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm and spare civilian objects."
At least 16 people were killed in Resalat on March 9, in an attack that heavily damaged a building belonging to the Basij battalion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as three buildings adjacent to the facility. Amnesty International confirmed that at least one of the buildings, known as Number 12, was a residence.
Satellite imagery from March 6, 2026 (left) shows the Basij facility and nearby buildings in the Resalat neighborhood. On March 21, 2026 (right), imagery shows four distinct buildings with heavy damage and destruction. (Photo by ©Planet Labs PBC)
Twelve members of the same family were killed when Number 12 was struck, and an informed source identified as Payam told Amnesty that "there were no military people, no special individuals, no one connected to the government, no important person" in the building.
"Everyone living [in Number 12] was ordinary civilians," he said. "The whole building was families.”
The husband of a 26-year-old woman who was killed in the attack told Etemad Online that the scene of the bombing was "so horrific that they will never leave my mind. Body parts were found separately... A hand had been thrown to the entrance of the road or onto the roof of a house."
The attack in Javadieh, a densely populated low-income neighborhood in Tehran, took place on March 13 and killed at least five civilians, with a police station on Ghorbani Street a possible target.
"The destruction and damage extended well beyond the police station, and affected homes, businesses, and other civilian structures across the surrounding neighborhood," said Amnesty. "State media reported that several nearby residential buildings were also destroyed and many others severely damaged."
Videos verified by Amnesty show the impact of the blast extending up to more than 50 meters (164 feet) away from the police station. A restaurant, bakery, and motorcycle shop were all damaged, as well as a number of residential buildings.
Amnesty called on the US, Israel, and Iran to coordinate inquiries by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission regarding allegations of "serious violations of international humanitarian law by all parties."
Tens of thousands of US and Israeli attacks on Iran have killed at least 1,469 civilians, including hundreds of children. Israel has also killed at least 4,333 people in Lebanon since early March, in retaliation for Hezbollah's strikes in response to the assault on Iran. In retaliatory strikes across the region, Iran has killed at least 50 people civilians, according to Amnesty.
“The US/Israeli strikes in Tehran investigated by Amnesty International may constitute indiscriminate attacks and amount to war crimes," said Callamard. "They must be the object of independent, impartial, effective, and transparent investigations."
Sep 08, 2026
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Advocates Say Benefit Cuts by Medicare Advantage Giants Highlight 'Dysfunction' of For-Profit System
"It is well past time that the United States joins the rest of the industrialized world and treats healthcare as a right, not a privilege, by improving traditional Medicare and expanding it to everyone."
Sep 11, 2026
News that top Medicare Advantage insurers are moving to cut benefits and drop some plans entirely in a bid to boost their profitability came as no surprise to critics of the for-profit US health insurance system, which enriches giant companies and their executives while leaving tens of millions of people in the lurch.
In recent public remarks, executives at Humana and UnitedHealthcare—two of the largest Medicare Advantage insurers in the US—have indicated that the companies plan to exit certain geographic markets and implement other changes deemed necessary to drive "margin expansion," corporate-speak for profits. The changes by the two companies are expected to impact more than a million seniors who receive coverage through the insurers' Medicare Advantage plans, which are privately run but funded by taxpayer dollars.
Wendell Potter, president of the Center for Health and Democracy and a former Cigna executive, told Common Dreams that companies like Humana and UnitedHealthcare "have long made clear they answer to their shareholders, not those they insure."
"These companies are not really in the healthcare business, they are in the business of making money for their shareholders and their executives," said Potter, who now advocates for a Medicare for All system. "They will cut any corner, deny any care, and cut any patient if it helps increase their bottom line."
UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare's parent company, reported $5.5 billion in profit during the second quarter of 2026, up from $3.4 billion the same time last year. Humana reported $694 million in second-quarter profits.
Recent research led by Mark Meiselbach, a healthcare economist at Johns Hopkins University estimates that "approximately one in 10 beneficiaries in HMO or PPO Medicare Advantage plans will be forced to disenroll from their current plan due to their plan exiting the market" this year. That amounts to around 3 million seniors who will be forced to find a different plan or switch to traditional Medicare during the open enrollment period, which begins next month.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works and author of The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action, told Common Dreams that "misleadingly-named Medicare 'Advantage,' together with all private health insurance, is why our nation’s healthcare system is so dysfunctional."
"It mixes healthcare with the motive to make a profit, resulting in the most expensive system in the industrialized world with the worst health outcomes," said Altman. "The recent announcements by UnitedHealthcare and Humana that they plan to exit markets and cut benefits is just one symptom of the dysfunction."
"It is well past time that the United States joins the rest of the industrialized world and treats healthcare as a right, not a privilege, by improving traditional Medicare and expanding it to everyone," said Altman.
A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis published in July found that federal spending per Medicare Advantage enrollee "is projected to be 7% higher, on average," than spending on traditional Medicare over the next 10 years.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted that the CBO's analysis "suggests the federal government will spend about $1 trillion on MA overpayments over the next decade." Medicare Advantage plans are notorious for making patients appear sicker than they actually are, reaping larger federal payments.
President Donald Trump pledged during remarks earlier this week to the Republican midterm convention that his administration would "end all payments to big health insurance companies."
But Potter noted that Trump's administration is set to shell out over $13 billion in payments to Medicare Advantage plans this year along.
"If Trump were serious about lowering healthcare costs," Potter told Common Dreams, "he'd break up the monopolies and the for-profit healthcare system."
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Inflation Could Soon ‘Get a Lot More Painful’ as Trump’s Iran War Drives Diesel Over $6 a Gallon
"Diesel touches almost everything Americans buy," said one expert.
Sep 11, 2026
The price of diesel fuel hit another record high on Friday, thanks in large part to President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran.
New data released by the American Automobile Association showed the average price of diesel in the US increasing to $6.06, a 14% increase over the average price one month ago and a 64% increase from the average price one year ago.
In a Friday social media post, petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan reported that the price of diesel "is not slowing down," hitting an average of $6.07 as of 10:34 am ET.
De Haan also projected that Americans will collectively spend $711 million more on gasoline and diesel on Friday than they did a year ago, and warned "this number will continue to grow and could soon be $1 billion per day."
Rising diesel prices often portend higher inflation because it is the fuel used by trucks to ship goods across the country.
In an interview with The Associated Press published Friday, David Ortega, professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University, warned that US consumers are likely in for another painful round of cost increases if the price of diesel stays at record highs.
“Early on, much of the cost increase gets absorbed along the supply chain through existing freight contracts and retailer margins,” said Ortega. “But as contracts reprice and fuel surcharges take hold, more of that cost makes its way to the grocery store.”
Ortega's analysis was echoed by Mark Tepper, CEO of Strategic Wealth Partners, who wrote in a social media post that "inflation could be about to get a lot more painful" if the price of diesel doesn't come down soon.
"Diesel touches almost everything Americans buy," Tepper explained. "Coming out of the pandemic, rising diesel prices were a leading indicator for the inflation that followed."
Diane Swonk, chief economist at audit services firm KPMG, said rising diesel costs, combined with the latest Consumer Price Index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing continued elevated inflation, made it likely that the US Federal Reserve will hike interest rates.
"The Fed will begin hiking in September, removing what it gave us in rate cuts in late 2025," Swonk predicted. "We now expect three rate hikes by early 2026. The probability that the vote will be unanimous just rose."
The record diesel prices, and their subsequent impact on inflation, come less than two months before the midterm elections.
The social media account for Democrats in the US House of Representatives pounced on news of higher diesel prices, which they said would mean "higher delivery prices, more expensive groceries, and surging electric bills."
"Trump's war with Iran did this," the House Democrats added.
Alex Jacquez, senior vice president of policy, advocacy, and research at Groundwork Collaborative, also took a shot at the president's policies, noting that in recent weeks he has "imposed further tariffs on one of our closest trading partners and continues escalation in Iran."
"Trump promised to lower costs and improve daily life for Americans," Jacquez added. "He’s not only failed to deliver on that promise, he’s driven our economy over a cliff."
Willamette University historian Seth Cotlar argued that the spike in diesel fuel could have significant impact on the US Senate race in Maine, where Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins is vying for a sixth term in office.
"Home heating oil season is about to start up," Cotlar observed. "In Maine, about 50% of homes use heating oil which is almost identical to diesel. How’s that GOP affordability agenda coming Senator Collins?"
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Israeli Documentary ‘NAZA’ Exposes 'System of Killing' in Gaza From Eyes of Secret Intelligence Unit
The directors of the film—which premiered at the Venice Film Festival—said they "felt the responsibility" to expose insider testimony about Israel's systematic mass killing of Palestinians.
Sep 10, 2026
A documentary film that premiered Thursday at the Venice Film Festival offers a rare inside account of Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, with former members of a secret Israeli intelligence unit describing how they helped transform the mass killing of Palestinian civilians into a routine, bureaucratized affair.
NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is based on interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders, several of whom served in a secret unit that reported directly to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"We really are looking at... a system of killing, which is mass killing [and] relies on mass surveillance," Abraham told reporters in Venice on Thursday. "We felt the responsibility as Israelis to use our position... to bring insider testimony into how the system looks like from the inside... And this is the film that we made."
Szor said that "a lot of these things are also, it's important to say... known because they've been documented by journalists, Palestinian journalists, in Gaza. It's footage that has been out there."
"But I think that we felt that there is still some sort of an importance to take those testimonies and put it in a film in a way that, of course, first of all, it's different to hear," she added. "The people who designed and operated those systems talk about it in front of a camera."
According to the film, one former member bluntly said that the unit's mission was to “thwart peace.”
However, Abraham and Szor said their purpose was not to expose a handful of rogue soldiers, but to examine the machinery and policies behind the violence.
The documentary’s title refers to an Israeli military acronym used to quantify the civilians expected to be killed in an attack—a chilling bureaucratic shorthand for people often referred to as collateral damage, or, in the so-called "War on Terror" still being waged by the United States 25 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, "bugsplat."
The film’s sources describe artificial intelligence-assisted targeting, mass surveillance, and the hacking of mobile phones to identify alleged Hamas operatives, sometimes despite the known presence of family members and other civilians.
Israeli forces have operated under loosened rules of engagement that effectively permit the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member. The Israel Defense Forces utilizes cutting-edge AI technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, and destroys them with weapons including 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs—many supplied by the US.
The result has been the killing and wounding of more than 250,000 Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Most of the victims have been civilians, including more than 21,500 children killed and tens of thousands more disabled or wounded.
Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice—also in The Hague—and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
Abraham and Szor are best known internationally for co-directing with two others the film No Other Land, which chronicled ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The film won the 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature.
NAZA—which reportedly received a 25-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere—is the sole documentary among the films competing for the festival's famed Golden Lion. It joins a growing body of recent films about the Gaza genocide.
American Doctor, directed by Poh Si Teng, follows US physicians working inside Gaza hospitals amid Israel's deliberate destruction of the strip's medical and healthcare systems.
Last year's The Voice of Hind Rajab offered a harrowing mix of acted scenes and the actual 70-minute audio recording of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl's desperate final phone call to Palestine Red Crescent Society personnel amid an Israeli massacre of her family as they were trapped in a car under tank fire.
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Trump EPA Accused of Endangering Public as Study Highlights 'Hidden Health Costs' of Data Centers
The Environmental Protection Network listed actions "that could increase pollution-related health risks, weaken protections that would otherwise reduce those risks, or shift more costs onto families and communities."
Sep 10, 2026
As President Donald Trump claims that US communities fighting against artificial intelligence data centers are promoting "poverty, crime, and squalor," a Thursday report details how his administration "is weakening or proposing to weaken pollution and permitting safeguards" for such facilities, to the detriment of public health.
The Environmental Protection Agency's "mission is to protect human health and the environment," notes the new report. "Yet Administrator Lee Zeldin has made turning the United States into the 'AI capital of the world' a pillar of EPA's work."
"The Hidden Health Costs of AI Data Centers"—from the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), which is made up of hundreds of former EPA staffers—documents "at least 30 federal actions since January 2025 that could increase pollution-related health risks, weaken protections that would otherwise reduce those risks, or shift more costs onto families and communities."
As the document details: "17 of the 30 explicitly cite or target AI or data centers in the action itself or in an agency statement specifically describing or justifying that action. The remaining 13 affect how data centers are powered, what pollution safeguards apply, how projects are approved, or how federal requirements are enforced."
The report points to the EPA policy that "made it easier for some long-idled facilities to restart without triggering the major air-permitting requirements," as well as its proposed elimination of federal carbon pollution standards for fossil-fueled power plants and some outstanding state clean-air requirements for areas that failed to meet ozone standards.
The publication also notes the EPA's extended deadlines for several coal-plant wastewater requirements, newly regulated coal-ash units, the 2024 oil and gas standards, and for states to submit plans to reduce visibility-impairing pollution. The agency further interpreted a policy on nonemergency backup generator use that it framed as a move supporting AI and data centers.
It's not just the EPA. The US Department of Energy "authorized grid use of backup generation at data centers and other major facilities during emergencies," the report explains, while the Army Corps of Engineers "expressly named data centers as examples of commercial development covered by" a streamlined water permit.
The race for AI data center growth shouldn’t mean weaker safeguards on pollution. Former EPA official Walter Mugdan explains why strong enforcement matters when families’ health is at risk.What’s being weakened? Read the full report at the link in the comments.
[image or embed]
— Environmental Protection Network (@enviroprotnet.bsky.social) September 10, 2026 at 4:39 PM
"No study has yet calculated the combined health effects of these actions, but the direction is clear," the report says. It cites a study from this year that estimates air pollution related to data centers "could impose roughly $11.7 billion to $20.9 billion in annual public health costs by 2028," and "contribute to roughly 600,000 asthma symptom cases and 1,300 premature deaths."
Dan Costa, who spent about 35 years at EPA studying the impact of air pollution on human health and led its national research program on air quality, climate, and energy, said that "the existing health study gives us a picture of the potential health burden under particular data-center growth and emissions scenarios."
"But it does not estimate the additional health effects of the 30 federal policy actions EPN documents," he stressed. "That is the analysis EPA should be doing now: Measuring what these sources actually emit, modeling both local and regional air-quality effects, and translating those changes into health impacts."
In addition to laying out the Trump policies and their risks, the publication highlights how his agenda on AI data centers conflicts with voters' wishes. An April poll conducted by YouGov for EPN found that:
- Just 16% of US voters support making the United States the "AI capital of the world" an EPA priority;
- 69% of voters are highly concerned about fast-tracking data centers without usual safeguards;
- 85% of voters say Trump should be tougher on corporations that violate environmental laws; and
- by an 8-1 margin, voters say the EPA should prioritize people's health over reducing pollution regulations.
"You would think a build-out of this magnitude would mean more vigilance from EPA: stronger safeguards to make sure companies control their pollution, more science to understand what this scale will bring, and more monitoring," said Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and former EPA assistant administrator. "Instead, EPA and other federal agencies are doing the opposite."
The EPN report was published amid mounting calls for Congress to rein in artificial intelligence development in the wake of Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic who previously worked at OpenAI, quitting, and spotlighting fears within the industry that the rapidly advancing technology "could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have introduced legislation that would permanently ban the development of "superintelligent" AI until a federal body is created to regulate it—and, according to polling results published on Wednesday by Data for Progress, 68% of likely voters in the United States support that proposal.
Sanders has also partnered with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY) for the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act, which would pause construction on the facilities "until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment."
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Anger Grows Over 'Pathological Liar-in-Chief' Donald Trump's $5,000 Midterm Bribes
"Even for the notoriously corrupt and lawless Trump, this explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes in the November election is a new low," said one watchdog leader.
Sep 10, 2026
Many Democrats in Congress are on the growing list of critics calling out President Donald Trump for his Wednesday night vow to give US voters $5,000 each if they help Republicans win control of the Senate and House of Representatives—where they already have majorities—in the November midterm elections.
"Nothing says confidence like trying to bribe people for votes," Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) quipped Thursday.
When Fox News' Laura Ingraham later asked, "Why not just give the money now?" Trump attempted to blame Democrats.
Noting the president's jumbled response to that question, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said: "I don't know what this even means, but I do know the reason Trump won't give a straight answer is that he doesn't really mean to send these checks to anyone. He has lied about this over and over again, and he's lying now. Just like he lied when he said he would lower costs."
Some critics highlighted other cases of Trump pledging to give Americans money, including alleged savings from the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said: "So now it's $5,000 bribes that Trump will never deliver to attempt to make voters forget what they are paying for gas and food. What ever happened to those promised DOGE checks? Americans are not fools, we know he lies daily."
Blasting the president as "our pathological liar-in-chief," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also pointed to previous instances of Trump promising money, from a 10% cap on credit card interest rates to $2 for a gallon of gasoline.
"The Trump administration is not about helping working families," the former presidential candidate stressed. "It's about giving a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1% and throwing 15 million Americans off the healthcare they have."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has also sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, shared on social media Groundwork Collaborative's roundup of 15 times Trump has promised a check, dividend, or rebate—and not delivered.
Some Democratic governors also took aim at Trump. California's Gavin Newsom, who is expected to run for president in 2028, said: "After making you sicker and poorer with his war, Donald Trump now wants to buy your vote with $5,000 in taxpayer-funded blood money. The most corrupt man ever to occupy the Oval Office."
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul emphasized that "Trump owes New Yorkers $13.5 billion for his illegal tariffs and hasn't paid up."
"Now he's dangling $5,000 checks if Republicans win Congress. A trillion-dollar campaign bribe from a guy who doesn't pay his bills," she added. "Fool me once…"
It's not just elected Democrats ripping Trump's new pledge. Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a Thursday statement that "even for the notoriously corrupt and lawless Trump, this explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes in the November election is a new low."
"Trump knows he can't do this, and yet he's attempting to bribe voters with the false promise of cash to help his party win an election, which is antithetical to every principle of American democracy," she continued. "Every Republican at the convention and across the country should loudly and vehemently denounce Trump for proposing this dangerous and transparently illegal scheme. The fact that no one has done that yet is cause for deep alarm about the future of American elections."
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Appeals Court Rejects 'Likely Unlawful' Trump Push to Undermine Mail-In Voting as Supreme Court Looms
The First Circuit Court of Appeals found implementing Trump's order would cause "chaos and widespread disenfranchisement... between now and November 3."
Sep 10, 2026
A federal court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration's request to reinstate an executive order that placed restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections, arguing that the order is "likely unlawful."
The US First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that President Donald Trump's mail-in voting executive order likely violates the US Constitution's elections clause, which grants states the rights to oversee their own elections, subject to oversight from the US Congress.
The court also found that the regulations proposed by the order "could prevent millions of Americans from obtaining and returning their ballots" in the coming election.
The ruling noted that the Trump executive order places a number of onerous restrictions on mail-in voting, such as requiring states to print "a voter-specific Intelligent Mail barcode ('IMb')" on all outgoing ballots as a precondition for their delivery by the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Additionally, the court wrote, the order would compel states "to obtain USPS approval for new ballot-envelope designs; to purchase new envelopes to replace those already ordered; to assure that there are technological systems in place adequate to generate IMbs; and to upload voter-specific information to a USPS online portal that is still not operational."
The court said these restrictions are so severe that they validate an earlier ruling from a federal district court, which found that implementing Trump's executive order would lead to "chaos and widespread disenfranchisement... between now and November 3."
Among other things, the court found these Trump-ordered rules would make it "impossible for some states to reprint compliant envelopes," while also creating a "herculean task" of "scanning tens of millions of ballot envelopes and reviewing for a match with information in the presently non-operative portal."
The court also took a shot at Trump administration lawyers, whom it alleged "have not even seriously challenged" the district court's finding about the chaos the president's executive order would cause.
The injunction against Trump's mail-in voting order came as a result of a complaint filed by a number of civil society groups, including the League of Women Voters and the Association of Americans Resident Overseas.
In a joint statement released after the ruling, the plaintiffs and their counsel said that the court affirmed that "the US Postal Service is not the gatekeeper for mail ballots."
"This decision rightly keeps in place an order blocking USPS from enforcing its disruptive and disenfranchising rule through the November election," they added, "and preserves the current system, which has worked safely, securely, and reliably for decades."
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom took the opportunity to taunt the Trump administration for suffering yet another loss in its crusade to clamp down on mail-in voting.
"The rule of law continues to slap down Donald Trump's dangerous and un-American attacks on our free and fair elections," Newsom wrote. "California will never stop fighting for our democracy and the people's ability to exercise their constitutional right to vote."
The Trump administration has asked to the US Supreme Court to reinstate the president's voting order. With mail-in ballots for the upcoming midterms already being sent out in some states, a ruling from the nation's highest court is expected in the coming days.
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Anthropic Report Says Company Blocked Possible Use of AI Model to Build Biological Weapons
"Right now, we're counting on AI corporations to voluntarily block weapons of mass destruction," said Rep. Greg Casar, who is pushing for a ban on "superintelligent" AI.
Sep 10, 2026
As industry insiders issue louder warnings about the catastrophic danger of unchecked artificial intelligence, Anthropic has revealed in a report out Thursday that it had to "disrupt" several attempts by scientists to use its AI models for research that could contribute to the creation of biological weapons.
In the report, titled “Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI,” Anthropic said that over the past eight months, it banned several accounts that had used its chatbot Claude for research into highly contagious diseases.
As NBC News reported:
In each of the five cases Anthropic cited, the company suspected that the researchers behind them were affiliated in some way with a government or military in a country it had banned or took deliberate steps to hide their location and identity, or both. The company declined to say where any of the researchers were based, but its terms of service allow all use from all but a few regions, including China, Iran, and Russia.
In one example, Anthropic said researchers used a third-party platform that attempted to use Claude to complete a grant application for work that would look into how to repeatedly mutate chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus that causes severe pain and fever in humans. Anthropic said it blocked all attempts by the researchers. The research, which would be conducted at a military institute, would seek to repeatedly mutate the virus in live animals to become increasingly more infectious, Anthropic said.
Another had used Anthropic’s Claude to assist in research into how to make bird flu, which historically has a global fatality rate of around 50% in confirmed human cases, more virulent and damaging to mammals. Anthropic said the researcher only received assistance from Claude’s weakest class of models, which provided clerical help.
Anthropic clarified that it did not find any concrete instance of a scientist attempting to use its technology for nefarious purposes, and that these use cases may well have been part of beneficial scientific inquiry, like research into vaccines or other cures for disease. Nevertheless, it said it erred on the side of caution and shut down the accounts.
"Biological misuse is one of the most serious risks of frontier AI models," the report explains. "It has long been a concern that AI models might one day reach the level of capability where they can help to make existing pathogens more dangerous—or create entirely new ones. Without the correct safeguards, such capabilities could have catastrophic consequences."
The report acknowledges that even as safeguards are implemented, those with the intent to do harm are getting more savvy about how to evade them and using the appearance of legitimate science to do it.
"Sophisticated threat actors are aware that we (and other AI providers) are attempting to detect dangerous uses of our models, and they use the dual-use nature of biology to maintain a kind of 'plausible deniability' about their research," the report says. "More sophisticated actors can hide their intent, extracting assistance from an AI model in interactions that look plausibly beneficial, but when put in context and analyzed holistically, can provide clear warning signs of misuse."
The report details other ways in which actors have used its technology for malicious purposes. It found that governments like China, Iran, and Mali had used Claude to collect information about journalists and dissidents. Others used it to conduct hacking campaigns, automate identity theft operations, and create malware.
Anthropic said it hoped that by publishing the report, it would "help other developers recognize similar patterns on their own platforms, give governments and civil society a clearer view of how emerging threats take shape, and strengthen collective defenses."
The report comes amid a torrent of scrutiny directed at Anthropic and its competitor OpenAI following reports in recent months of severe security breaches involving their technology, which has been documented acting autonomously to hack into other websites and evade human detection.
Earlier this week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, resigned from his post and sounded the alarm about fears within the industry that the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade" and that the companies are prioritizing the race toward superintelligence without regard for the potential risks.
In the wake of Coxon's resignation, several other researchers from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have shared similar warnings that the technology could result in an extinction-level disaster or otherwise cause severe harm to human society.
A poll published on Wednesday by Data for Progress showed that 68% of likely voters in the US support a proposal announced last week by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) for legislation that would permanently ban the development of "superintelligent" AI that can surpass human cognition and would put a pause on "advanced" AI development until a federal body is put in place to regulate the industry.
Casar said the fact that Anthropic was being relied upon to stop its own users from using its tech to potentially create bioweapons illustrated the urgent need for regulation.
"Right now, we're counting on AI corporations to voluntarily block weapons of mass destruction. Voluntarily," Casar emphasized in a post to social media on Thursday. "Congress must do the obvious thing: BAN catastrophic AI uses like creating biological or nuclear weapons."
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Report Details 500+ Yemeni Civilian Casualties From 2023-25 US Airstrikes
"The so-called 'War on Terror' never ended in Yemen," said Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell. "This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused."
Sep 10, 2026
A report released Thursday examines the more than 500 Yemeni civilians its authors said were killed or wounded by US airstrikes in the Middle East nation during a recent 17-month period amid the open-ended so-called "War on Terror" that has left nearly one million people dead in around half a dozen nations over the past 25 years.
The report—authored by the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights and published by the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs—documents 46 US airstrikes that took place between December 2023 and May 2025 that caused at least 576 civilian casualties, including 213 deaths and 363 injuries. Among the casualties were at least 50 children and 25 women.
"The so-called 'War on Terror' never ended in Yemen," Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell contended.
"It's important that we continue to account for the civilian lives lost, harmed, and disrupted in Yemen and other US war zones," she added. "This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused in Yemen in support of the Israeli government's wars since 2023."
The overwhelming majority of the casualties covered by the publication occurred during President Donald Trump’s 2025 "Operation Rough Rider" campaign. Mwatana estimates that the operation killed 208 civilians and wounded 341, while the Pentagon has acknowledged a smaller toll of 153 killed and 243 wounded.
Seven of the 46 strikes took place between December of 2023 and January of 2025 during former President Joe Biden's "Operation Prosperity Guardian," a military campaign that came amid Houthi rebel attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait during Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
Among the deadliest attacks covered by the report was the April 2025 bombardment of Ras Isa oil port ordered by Trump, in which US strikes killed scores of people and wounded more than 150 others. Human Rights Watch called the bombing an “apparent war crime,” saying the destruction of the civilian oil facility also threatened vital fuel supplies in a country already devastated by years of war and humanitarian crisis.
The campaign also included the April 28 bombing of a detention center in Saada while jailed African migrants were sleeping. Amnesty International has called for a war crimes investigation into that attack, in which scores of migrants were killed.
Mwatana researchers conducted site visits and 59 interviews with survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses, first responders, and other sources for the new report.
"The first strike hit while we were in deep sleep. I could not believe what I saw—30 of my fellow detainees died; their bodies were charred, and the smell of burned flesh filled the air," one 25-year-old Ethiopian survivor of the Saada attack recounted. "The place was crowded with bodies, while others were screaming and calling for help and rescue... we could do nothing for them."
In addition to physical harm, survivors described the deep psychological trauma suffered by victims. One mother said her 8-year-old son Taha "saw his father after he was hit by shrapnel—how he was bleeding, and how his intestines were coming out."
"His father was screaming: ‘Run… leave me and run before the American aircraft strikes again and finishes me off,'" she continued. "Taha still cannot sleep; when he does, he wakes up terrified. Whenever he hears thunder or any loud noise, he runs in fear, his whole body trembling."
Overall, US strikes covered by the report "hit civilian structures such as homes, shops, farms, residential neighborhoods, and infrastructure," the publication notes, adding that airstrikes "also caused severe damage to infrastructure and critical facilities, compounding the humanitarian suffering of local populations by striking essential service facilities, particularly in rural areas that already face acute shortages of clean water, electricity, and health services."
"Given Yemen’s economic deterioration and the catastrophic humanitarian situation produced by the armed conflict that has been ongoing since September 2014, it is likely that the US strikes expanded the cycle of poverty in Yemen by increasing unemployment and multiplying the number of households that lost breadwinners and sources of income," the report adds.
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to a US-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade. According to the UK-based casualty monitor Airwars, an estimated 445-643 Yemeni civilians have been killed by US forces during the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
The Costs of War Project says that in the first two decades following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, "between 363,939 and 387,072 civilians were killed by multiple warring parties in post-9/11 war zones, including 12,690 civilians in Yemen."
Mwatana for Human Rights chair Radhya Al-Mutawakel said Thursday that "the losses caused by US airstrikes against civilians cannot be regarded as temporary harm that ends when military operations cease. Civilians who have lost loved ones, homes, or sources of income continue to bear the consequences of these attacks, amid economic and humanitarian conditions that do not provide them with even the minimum capacity to recover.”
"Protecting civilians is not limited to avoiding killing or injuring them; it also includes respecting civilian objects and livelihoods," Al-Mutawakel added. "The United States must assume its legal and moral responsibility to recognize the civilian victims of its military operations in Yemen, provide them with redress and reparation, and hold accountable those responsible for the violations inflicted upon them.”
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68% of US Voters Back Sanders/Casar Bill for AI Pause, Ban on Superintelligence: Poll
The new survey results come as whistleblowers from leading AI firms speak out about the potential catastrophic dangers if their technology is allowed to develop unchecked.
Sep 10, 2026
As whistleblowers in the artificial intelligence industry speak out about the extraordinary risk posed by their technology if it remains unchecked, a new poll out Wednesday reveals that more than two-thirds of US voters agree with a new proposal in Congress to pause artificial intelligence development until guardrails are set up and ban AI superintelligence completely.
The proposed legislation, announced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) last week, and soon to be introduced in Congress, would ban developers from creating “superintelligent” AI programs capable of surpassing human cognition and resisting human attempts to shut them down. It would also halt "advanced" AI development until a new federal regulatory body was established to set clear rules and processes for AI safety.
The polling firm Data for Progress asked more than 1,300 likely voters about the bill. According to survey results released on Wednesday, 68% of them said they would support the proposal to temporarily pause advanced AI development and permanently prohibit the development of superintelligent programs, while just 25% said they'd oppose it.
Though the bill was proposed by a pair of progressive lawmakers, its appeal spans the political spectrum: 72% of Democrats and 70% of independent and third-party voters said they supported it. But so did 63% of Republican voters.
The poll results come just one day after AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, saying that the company and one of its top competitors, OpenAI, where he previously worked, were more concerned with winning the AI race than with protecting the public against out-of-control “superhuman systems” that many of his industry colleagues privately fear could “kill us all by the end of the decade.”
"Neither company is acting responsibly," Coxon said. "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
With reports piling up of AI agents escaping human control, hacking into external computer systems, and deceiving users, several other researchers at leading AI firms have cosigned Coxon's warning, saying that AI could have catastrophic results if it surpasses human capabilities.
Evan Hubinger, an alignment science lead at Anthropic, said that while "the risk from present models is low," he and other researchers "earnestly believe AI could kill all humans" if it continues to develop and put the likelihood of it happening within the next decade at above 10%.
Alex Turner, who left his job as a research scientist at Google's DeepMind in June, concurred that Coxon was "right" and that "many researchers believe they are building something that could kill everyone on the planet. It was literally my day job to think about how to stop that."
Even if AI doesn't lead to the extinction of humanity, other researchers have said they are gravely worried about its impacts on society.
"I think there are a number of ways AI could go poorly for humanity, and at the current, frankly terrifying pace, humanity will be quite lucky if we manage to find and stay on the narrow path between all the bad outcomes," wrote Jason Wolfe, a researcher at OpenAI. "Regardless of what you think of OpenAI, this is not a problem that can be solved by any one company (or country) in isolation."
Jonathan Richard Schwarz, former Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, noted that he left the company after seven years and rejected offers from other AI companies "due to severe concerns about the concentration of power these labs represent."
"What is currently happening in this field is deeply unhealthy for society," Schwarz said.
In a Wednesday social media post, Sanders pointed to these and other warnings from industry experts as evidence that federal intervention is urgently needed.
"The very people building this technology admit that it could threaten the future of humanity," the senator wrote.
He added on Thursday that "Unless we reverse course, there is a very real possibility that once advanced AI surpasses human intelligence, it could escape our control with catastrophic consequences."
Wednesday's poll results are consistent with other recent surveys showing that solid majorities of voters across all parties object to the construction of AI data centers near them, an issue that has come to dominate the 2026 election season.
William Lawrence, a cofounder of the Sunrise Movement, became the Democratic nominee for the US House in Michigan's 7th Congressional District last month, in part by tapping into constituents' fears about data centers. He said recent whistleblower warnings were evidence that AI companies were "gambling with our lives" and needed to be reined in.
"I can't see the future," Lawrence said in a video posted online Thursday. "But if there is even a 5% chance of a bioweapon being set loose, authoritarians using AI to entrench their own power, or a rogue AI hacker taking down the economy, that risk is too great."
"We need a pause on the development of AI models and data center construction," he said. "I do believe that AI is very powerful and could potentially be of tremendous benefit to humanity. But if we stay trapped in this arms race, if OpenAI and Anthropic have to keep competing for market share, we know that they will not slow down."
"The only entity that has the power to intervene here," Lawrence said, "is the federal government."
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Guess What Happened After New York Raised Taxes on the Rich? More Millionaires Moved In
"Tax flight is nothing more than a myth, and should be given as much credence as flat-earthers.”
Sep 10, 2026
The threats came in a steady stream last year from Fox News, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and Gristedes grocery chain CEO John Catsimatidis, who insisted that wealthy New York City residents were "panicking" at the possibility that then-state Rep. Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, could become the mayor and ensure rich locals pay more in taxes to help fund crucial services.
"It only takes a handful of successful people to leave to decimate the city’s tax base," cautioned Ackman, while Catsimatidis suggested many rich New Yorkers would likely join him in fleeing to "the promised land": Florida, which has no state income tax.
But the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative said Thursday that new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data should be "the final nail in the coffin" of the evidence-free, perennial claim that higher taxes cause wealthy residents to leave their cities and states.
The agency released its 2023 Statistics of Income (SOI) data, covering the period before Mamdani became mayor and introduced a tax on second homes, ranging from 0.8% to 1.3% for properties valued at $5 million or more, which he estimated will raise $500 million annually.
The data shows how the tax base was impacted after the state imposed a separate tax policy in 2022, raising its top tax rate on the highest earners.
Poking a giant hole in the persistent theory that wealthy people won't want to live in states that require more from them in taxes, the number of New Yorkers reporting more than $1 million in income grew by about 3% after the tax rate was raised, the SOI data shows.
"If there was any merit to the myth that tax increases on New York’s wealthy drive them away, the new IRS data should show it. It doesn’t."
The number of millionaires nationwide went down in 2023, but New York counted 2,000 more than it had the previous year. The number of tax filers earning between $500,000 and $1 million also grew by over 8,500—more than 7%.
The average adjusted gross income of New Yorkers who left the state from 2022-23 fell 15%, from over $125,000 to $106,900.
"If the past is prologue, the SOI data suggest few, if any, of the city’s wealthiest residents will leave as a result of a modest tax. Instead they are likely to remain rooted in the social, business, and economic networks that make New York uniquely valuable to them," said Groundwork Collaborative. "The New Yorkers actually at risk of leaving the city are the lower-income workers who power the economy."
Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork Collaborative, said the new data makes clear that "tax flight is nothing more than a myth, and should be given as much credence as flat-earthers.”
"If there was any merit to the myth that tax increases on New York’s wealthy drive them away, the new IRS data should show it," said Owens. "It doesn’t—New York’s millionaire population kept climbing years after the state raised taxes on top earners."
Wealthy New Yorkers, said Groundwork, are shown by the data to be "a settled population that may squawk about a tax increase, but not pack up and leave."
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