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

Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
In "almost Shakespearean grotesquery," our cringe Buffoon-In-Chief just thrust himself into the World Cup final only to be unceremoniously booed, snubbed and cropped out of team photos. Then he again assailed Canada for smoke from their wildfires, though ours are much worse and they've often helped us with them. Still, our ever-gracious northern neighbor launched a new initiative to dutifully sweep the Rockies, vacuum the forests, hand-rake pine needles. Its acronym: F.U.C.K.O.F.F.
The headlines for Trump's Sunday gatecrash of another major sports event that really, really didn't want him there tells the vainglorious and mortifying tale: "Most Universally Hated President In History Mercilessly Booed," "Crowd Boos, Player Snub and Failed Photobomb: Trump's Big World Cup Day Out," and "Confused Old Fuckwit Imagines He's Won the World Cup." The Guardian also wins a Snark of the Year Award for the caption to its photo of FIFA's Infantino deep in conversation with a clueless Trump, both men standing under a blizzard of confetti, after he literally had to drag him off-stage: "Gianni Infantino carefully explains to Donald Trump he is not part of the Spanish team."
Some of the over 82,000 fans at New Jersey's Met-Life Stadium, where Spain trounced a listless, chaotic, often-thuggish Argentina 1-0, had earlier made their feelings clear when video briefly showed Trump ensconced in his glass-encased VIP digs and scattered boos rang out. By the time he finally lumbered and waddled stoop-shouldered onto the field at the end, it sounded like all 82,000-plus had reconsidered and joined in to jeer. Trailing behind him, looking like hostages trying to keep a safe distance to not catch any cooties, were Mexico's and Canada's leaders, the tournament's purported, far-less-despised hosts. Implausibly given....everything, but thanks to Infantino's long gross obsequiousness, Trump got to hand out awards.
And he did, though not without some drama: Several players hesitated, recoiled or refused to shake his hand. Then it was time to hand out the (seductively gold) World Cup. Little needy Donnie, a malignant narcissistic lump, swooped in to awkwardly “help” Infantino carry it like a five-year-old hungry for the feckin' ice-cream cone his dad is holding, “a lonely, grasping figure refusing to release a trophy he didn’t win.” Once they handed it to Spain’s captain Rodri, Trump, “malice wrapped in vanity,” painfully lingered in the limelight - camera! also person, woman, man TV - as Infantino struggled to yank him away for the iconic team hoist photo: "OK, grandpa, time to get back to your chocolate pudding." In the end, a patient Rodri gently nudged him out of the shot, but cringingly not off the stage, where he stood dazed and wobbling, our national farce and tragedy.
Steve Schmidt noted the clumsy resulting image's era-defining power, its display of the "breathtaking psychological fragility" of a "President Norma Desmond...incapable of understanding that the greatest office in the world confers responsibility, not ownership." "The character has been devoured by the caricature," he wrote of "self-parody made flesh," the small man so consumed by the need for adulation that, "Every trophy is his trophy. Every triumph is his triumph. Every stage is his stage." Later, in photos released both by FIFA and the Spanish team, Trump had mercifully, miraculously disappeared from both shots, because this is why God and Al Gore invented photoshop.
The awkward bit of theater with Spain came, lest we forget, in the wake of Trump's weeks of vilifying the nation and their prime minister Pedro Sánchez - first, for their refusal to allow the U.S. military to use Spanish bases to help illegally bomb Iran, then for the alleged failure of "bad" and "hopeless" Spanish people to pay enough for NATO defense spending. Despite Trump's ugly threats to "cut off all trade" with a longtime ally unforgivably following the law, it all suddenly vanished before the cameras, where Trump congratulated "a great team," even though they speak Spanish, and claimed there was "no tension" with the country’s leadership. Actually, he smirked, "I have no tension with anybody."
Tell it to Canada, which Trump has been moronically berating for "Willful Negligence," aka inexplicably allowing smoke from over 800 wildfires raging across some of Canada's 347 million acres to drift over our pristine shores. A few days earlier, joined by equally stupid MAGA lackeys, he raged the U.S. "is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air" at an "incalculable" (a big word he probs didn't write) cost, and "maybe they should pay us some damages" or billions more in tariffs, and he'd call Carney "to find out what they are going to do about it." "We are holding Canada responsible," he thundered, "for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein."
Like his long-ago claim during California wildfires that Finland's president told him they rake their forests and have no such problems - Finland when asked: "WTF" - this is an idiot's fever dream. Facts owe: This year, America has seen over 40,000 fires burn roughly 3.9 million acres, 157% its ten-year average. There are now over 70 uncontained U.S. fires being fought by nearly 18,000 people, with much of the Northwest - Colorado, Oregon, Washington - at National Preparedness Level 5, the highest, and up to 58 new fires a day. Air quality alerts affecting a million Americans are due to those fires, to blazes across 70,000-plus acres in Minnesota, and to 3,600 fires across 1.8 million acres, below the five-year average, in Canada.
In the face of politely unnamed U.S. pols mindlessly "chirping away," notes Ontario Premier Doug Ford, he has already asked for firefighters or "anything they can send" to help fight nearly 200 fires, some of which have crossed into Canada from Minnesota, that have forced entire First Nations to evacuate and many residents to sleep in their cars. Rather than complain maybe send help, he adds, "because we have done the same thing for our American friends," again and again. Even as Canadian officials issue air quality warnings from U.S. fires drifting north, a 56-year-old Canadian helicopter pilot from B.C. just died in a crash battling a fire in Colorado, the fourth firefighter death there this summer.
Meanwhile, a mindless, science-denying MAGA has ended support for dozens of climate initiatives, dismantled our largest climate research center and pushed for more fossil fuel carnage. On Sunday, with much of his country visibly on fire, Trump attacked the National Academy of Sciences - chartered by Abe Lincoln mid-Civil War "because even a nation shooting at itself understood it needed scientists" - because it's "run by Radical Left Dumocrats” who published costly, "fraudulent," “totally discredited” climate change manuals, which he ordered "Suspension and Debarment" officials to review. Also - cue dumbest timeline ever - Repubs jumped in to decry DEI-loving advocates who (gasp) may have tried to stop blessed oil and gas projects.
Still, Canada is a tolerant, peace-loving nation that tries to accommodate all comers, even a malevolent asshole who's never gotten any closer to a "forest" than Central Park, if even there. It also values its natural resources, including a 270-million-acre boreal forest, much of it roadless, whose vast ecosystem serves as a global carbon sink to purify air and water, regulate climate and offer a safe breeding ground to billions of birds. And if some random asshole neighbor to the north chides its inadequate forest management, Canada seeks to rise to the occasion - to, as it were, Be Better. Thus was born a bold new initiative from its Department of Forest Tidiness, which is now "pleased to confirm the message has been received loud and clear."
Canada's Forest Undergrowth Clearing & Kindling Operation for Foreign Friends, aka F.U.C.K.O.F.F., renders every able-bodied person ages 16 to 65 responsible for removing leaves, twigs, moss, bark, sticks, branches, pine needles, deadfall and shrubs deemed "insufficiently tidy by Congressional observers." After receiving government-issued rakes, gloves and safety vests, they must arrange all debris "into neat bilingual piles," to be painstakingly inspected by forestry officials. Further actions may include sweeping the Rocky Mountains, power-washing the Canadian Shield, vacuuming deserts, raking California, installing smoke-detectors across the Yukon and mandating that all fires contain and respect clearly marked provincial borders.
In Ontario, workers will be assigned 6.7 acres (40 NHL hockey rinks) of dense untracked country and a 26-hour work week; elsewhere, shifts surge to a hefty 18.3 acres (110 rinks) and 70 hours a week. Morning commutes start with a three-day canoe trip and 15-km hike through swamp; on-site, workers will hand-groom 300 billion trees, hand-rake an infinity of pine needles, make local beavers submit environmental impact reports and dodge grizzlies as needed. Finally, it notes, "Canada thanks Congress for sharing their extensive knowledge of forestry, wildfire behavior, climate science, geography and upkeep of a country containing 9% of the world's forests, and looks forward to receiving further practical advice from Washington."
Online, many Americans, after reportedly snorting their coffee through their noses, thanked Canada "for being great neighbors and allies," and apologized for - hands held hopelessly wide - "all this." "We are so, so sorry," said one. Another: "We're so incredibly sorry." Canadians joined in: "I'm in Alberta - I'll send water," "In B.C., have to get my mountaineering gear first. Sorry. eh?" and a generous offer to add a new organization, Canadian Undergrowth, Nature, and Tree Services: "I believe that with your cooperation, F.U.C.K.O.F.F plus C.U.N.T.S could really show Americans we take their health and well-being seriously." Organizers estimate their work will be completed "somewhere between Thursday afternoon and the collapse of human civilization," which should be any day now.
The Trump administration is coming under fire for its response to the outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a foodborne illness that causes explosive diarrhea and has so far been documented in more than two dozen states.
Public health officials still have not identified the source of the outbreak, which typically spreads via contaminated produce.
In an interview with Axios published Saturday, David Freedman, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, suggested that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not been on top of tracking the outbreak the same way it has been in the past.
"Right now it's individual state health departments that are having to speak up," remarked Freedman, "because the CDC is really not following it on a day-to-day basis."
Omer Awan, vice chair and associate program director for the diagnostic radiology residency at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, told PBS in an interview published Monday that infections will likely only grow if the government doesn't track down the source of the outbreak quickly.
"Because we haven't pinned it down, that means that these cases are likely to disseminate," said Awan. "People are still eating the contaminated food that's leading to so many cases."
Awan added that mass firings at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the leadership of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were hindering CDC's ability to track the disease.
"The HHS and the federal government laid off a lot of CDC employees," said Awan. "Many of them were the very employees that would track these particular outbreaks. And the other is that, from July of 2025 last year, the CDC has no longer required reporting cyclosporiasis. It's become optional to report this to the CDC's Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network."
Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, pointed to the CDC decision to stop monitoring the cyclospora parasite as an example of the Trump administration putting Americans "in another shitty situation after laying waste to our public health infrastructure and gutting emergency preparedness."
"Because RFK Jr.’s CDC turned a blind eye to dangerous foodborne pathogens," Woodhouse added, "this outbreak spread quickly and states are now scrambling to do their own detective work on what’s causing it. The catastrophic cuts Trump and RFK Jr. made to disease surveillance and research keep coming back to haunt us, yet they want to cut even deeper to make up for their tax breaks for billionaires."
The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that both federal and state officials have launched an investigation into whether fast food chain Taco Bell "played a role" in the cyclosporiasis outbreak.
According to the Post's sources, some people who got sick from the disease said they had eaten at Taco Bell shortly becoming symptomatic, although others who were infected by the parasite said they had not eaten at the fast food chain before growing ill.
"Public health officials have said this season’s unusually high number of illnesses, now reported in more than 30 states," reported the Post, "means more information and more patients to help identify shared foods, shopping habits and restaurant visits among those sickened to help determine the source."
US President Donald Trump on Monday invoked an arcane legal provision to impose 50% tariffs on most imported goods from Canada, a move that critics said will hit US consumers already reeling from an unabated cost-of-living crisis and further strain relations with the nation's second-largest trade partner.
Trump invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, an unprecedented move the White House said is aimed at "offsetting the burden and disadvantage on US commerce from Canada’s discriminatory treatment of US commerce" and "leveling the playing field for crucial American exports—cars, alcohol, and dairy."
The new tariffs exempt energy products, potash, fish, and critical minerals.
“While the administration continues to secure fair and reciprocal trade deals with our trading partners, Canada, unlike other partners and allies, continues to retaliate against the United States for its efforts to rebalance trade and protect US industry in national security-sensitive sectors,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement.
“Specifically, Canada has taken US alcohol products off Canadian shelves, given better market access to dairy products from the European Union, and has put a cap on US vehicle exports to Canada from companies reshoring to the United States," Greer added. "Today, President Trump took decisive action to hold Canada accountable for its retaliation and discrimination, delivering on his promise to correct trade imbalances and ensure fairness for American workers, farmers, and businesses.”
While the administration's official communications cite economic reasons for the new tariffs, Trump in recent days has repeatedly cited the Canadian wildfires as justification for the move.
“I told them. I mean, you got to stop these fires from coming in, and you know poisoning our air," Trump said of Canada on Sunday evening. "Our air has been poisoned. Maybe they should pay us some damages or something, or we should do some tariffs."
The president's linkage of the wildfires and tariffs drew widespread ridicule, with Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posting on X, "Only Donald Trump could see wildfire smoke and decide the answer is more tariffs."
Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer said on social media, "Americans have to pay high prices because Trump doesn’t understand how wind works."
According to We Pay the Tariffs, a small business coalition, Trump’s capricious tariffs have cost American businesses and consumers upward of $317 billion since March 2025.
That month, Trump imposed 25% tariffs on many Canadian goods and 10% on Canadian energy products. The administration later modified or paused some of those tariffs.
Ottawa has criticized the tariffs and rejected the US justification that Canada is unfairly restricting American products.
"I’ll never stop fighting to protect Ontario," Doug Ford, the province's right-wing premier, said in response to Trump's move. "If these tariffs proceed, Canada should respond tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar."
Some Democratic US lawmakers blasted the new tariffs.
"Trump is raising prices on Americans, again, by jacking up tariffs by 50% on Canadian goods bought by Americans," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said on social media. "Democrats will flip the House. And on day one of next term, Democrats will introduce legislation to repeal Trump’s disastrous tariffs. And we will pass it."
Just over two weeks out from Michigan's Democratic US Senate primary, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed secured another key endorsement on Monday from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Warren (D-Mass.) initially backed state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Now, as a flood of big money threatens to carry the centrist Democrat US Rep. Haley Stevens across the finish line, Warren has thrown her weight behind the race's progressive anti-corporate crusader as he seeks the chance to battle Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in November.
"The Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan is now a two-way race—and I just officially endorsed Abdul El-Sayed," Warren said in an email to supporters on Monday. "Abdul is THE fighter Michigan needs in the Senate. Michigan families deserve a senator who will fight for them—not special interests running millions in TV ads to buy this seat."
Joining Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Warren is now the third US senator to endorse El-Sayed, who formerly served as Detroit's top public health official and has made Medicare for All a central campaign pitch.
In an endorsement video posted to social media, she emphasized his background as a physician and his longtime union membership.
I’m endorsing @AbdulElSayed today—because he is THE fighter Michigan needs in the Senate. pic.twitter.com/skDxiNnEtw
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) July 20, 2026
Noting his support from the state's largest union, the United Auto Workers, she credited El-Sayed with "growing a movement of working people all across Michigan."
Warren, who has long advocated for legislation to end unchecked corporate spending in elections, praised El-Sayed for "not taking corporate money" and "fighting to get money out of politics altogether."
Without naming Stevens, Warren called out the "special interests running millions of dollars in TV ads to buy this seat."
Last week, reports detailed how outside groups had spent roughly $50 million buying ads to support Stevens and bash El-Sayed over the course of the race, with nearly $30 million coming from American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and affiliated groups, who seek to stop another harsh critic of Israel from entering Congress.
Stevens, who has long trumpeted her pro-Israel bona fides, has appeared cagey about acknowledging that AIPAC, whose influence is increasingly loathed by Democratic voters, is her leading financial backer.
Asked whether she welcomed AIPAC's support, she told The Associated Press over the weekend that "anyone who supported me is supporting me because of my dedication to the people of Michigan, and the things that I have done for Michiganders."
The dark money group A Stronger Michigan—which Sludge has found to be connected to a lobbyist for the American Gas Association, Meta, and the military contractor Northrop Grumman—has also been found to have spent more than $12 million in support of Stevens.
She also has the backing of nearly 100 corporate political action committees (PACs), including those representing the health insurance industry, Wall Street Banks, fossil fuels, and Big Tech companies.
El-Sayed has outraised Stevens among small-dollar donors by more than 5-to-1 in the second quarter of 2026, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who spent the weekend campaigning for El-Sayed in Michigan, said the race was "an opportunity to show that things other than money can win in America.”
“You deserve a government that answers to you,” Ocasia-Cortez says. “You deserve a politics that treats the disease and not just the symptoms of what brought us Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/8vQ2FV7skZ
— Sam Robinson (@samueljrob) July 18, 2026
It's unclear whether the flood of spending is actually helping Stevens. Since the Democratic primary became a two-horse race, poll results have been scattered.
A Detroit News/WDIV-TV survey by the Glengariff Group, released July 15, showed that Stevens had surged to a 7-point lead over El-Sayed. But a poll by Data for Progress, sponsored by the group American Priorities, released the same day, showed El-Sayed with a commanding 13-point lead.
Stevens also has the strong support of the Democratic establishment.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who had been quietly putting his thumb on the scale to boost Stevens for months, gave an effective endorsement in June, saying she had the best chance to beat Rogers. She's also gained the support of other centrist stalwarts including Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and Chris Coons (D-Del.).
Last week, she also grabbed the endorsement of the influential former House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC).
But after a trend of success for progressive and democratic socialist candidates in Democratic primaries across the nation, El-Sayed suggested on Monday that a political outlook closer to his and Warren's is what would win the day.
"Sen. Warren’s vision for our future—one where corporations can’t buy politicians, and people can afford to put food on the table—speaks to Americans everywhere," he said in response to her endorsement.
"She’s been a generational voice for Americans who are tired of the status quo," he said. "Michigan needs unbought, principled leadership, and with Sen. Warren’s support, we can get rid of the chokehold that corporations have on our government."
New guidance distributed to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the country in recent days said that the FBI will no longer investigate confrontations that officers have with protesters or people who are subjected to immigration enforcement—leaving the agency to investigate its own violent encounters with the public following at least two recent killings by ICE agents.
The guidance pertained to claims of assault against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers, but FBI investigations have gathered evidence that implicated agents themselves after they claimed to have been attacked.
According to the message sent to ICE officers, Homeland Security Investigations, which operates under ICE, would begin examining incidents in which an agent claimed they were assaulted.
HSI does not have jurisdiction to investigate allegations of civil rights allegations, so in cases in which a confrontation escalates to a use of force by an officer, the unit would be unlikely to investigate whether the agent violated the victim's rights, The New York Times reported.
"The fox is guarding the hen house," said American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the reported change.
Despite the guidance that was circulated to agents, the US Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, released a joint statement with DHS denying that the change would take place.
“The relationship between DHS and DOJ in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and FBI will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” the statement said. “This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
According to a New York Times investigation, the Trump administration filed charges against more than 550 people who it said assaulted federal immigration officers. More than 400 of the cases had been resolved, and in nearly half of them, charges of assault had been thrown out or withdrawn, or the defendants had been acquitted.
As it's filed such charges, the Trump administration has frequently repeated its assertion that federal agents are regularly facing violent attacks from the public—including in cases in which agents have killed US citizens and immigrants, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and earlier this month, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
The reported change was also made public less than a week after an ICE agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.
Journalist Sam Stein said the guidance that was given to federal agents could grant "pure impunity for ICE to do horrible things."
A senior medical official in the Gaza Strip sounded the alarm on Tuesday over a dramatic rise in miscarriages in the Palestinian exclave, with nearly 4,000 cases reported during the first half of 2026 amid Israel's ongoing genocide.
Gaza Medical Relief Director Bassam Zaqout said that 3,958 miscarriages were recorded in Gaza during the first half of this year—an increase the doctor called "unprecedented," and a serious risk to the health of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses.
Zaqout cited the soaring miscarriage rate to factors in Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, including the destruction of the strip's infrastructure, unsanitary living conditions in camps for forcibly displaced Palestinians—where numerous babies have died of hypothermia—lack of hot water and hygiene supplies, and relentless terror caused by Israel Defense Forces bombing.
The Gaza Health Ministry documented 921 miscarriages and 2,004 live births in April. This staggering ratio—460 miscarriages for every 1,000 live births—is more than double that in neighboring nations Israel and Egypt.
Live births have also dropped dramatically in Gaza this year, from 5,210 in January, to 3,433 in February, 3,233 in March, 2,004 in April, and just 1,701 in May 2026, according to the ministry.
Last month, the Gaza Center for Human Rights said that the alarming rise in miscarriages is due to the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, repeated attacks on hospitals, and widespread deprivation of food, medicine, and essential medical services amid 33 months of what United Nations experts and others have described as a genocide.
The Gaza Center for Human Rights said the following factors are the most significant drivers of the miscarriage crisis:
The center also noted that Article II of the Genocide Convention—the legal basis for the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice—includes “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” in its definition of the crime.
United Nations officials and other experts have accused Israel of “systematically” using reproductive, sexual, and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians in Gaza and committing “genocidal acts” by deliberately destroying reproductive and healthcare facilities in the strip.
There has also been a documented surge in birth defects among Gaza newborns. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, congenital anomalies doubled in 2025 compared with 2022.
Successive medical warnings of a long-term health catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, with a notable increase in fetal deformities and miscarriages resulting from the harsh conditions of war. pic.twitter.com/T2rN6XQec6
— Eye on Palestine (@EyeonPalestine) June 25, 2026
Experts attribute the increase to many of the same factors driving miscarriages, pointing to contaminated water and widespread malnutrition, including the former famine that killed at least hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, many of them children and infants.
Zaqout warned that Gaza’s health crisis is worsening as severe shortages of medicines, equipment, diagnostic tools, and laboratory supplies persist amid the strip's heavily damaged healthcare infrastructure and ongoing siege. He also noted the epidemics of diseases such as chickenpox, waterborne illnesses, and respiratory infections.
Numerous Palestinian women have lost their pregnancies due to direct acute trauma inflicted by Israeli bombs and bullets, which have often also killed would-be mothers. Israeli invaders have also ordered the evacuation of Gaza's hospitals, forcing staff to leave prematurely born babies to die and decompose in incubators.
A United Nations commission of inquiry reported last month that approximately 30% of the more than 73,000 Palestinians killed during Israel's 33-month war on Gaza were children—many of whom were deliberately targeted. Israeli forces have killed more than 21,500 Gazan children, including 1,022 babies, since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child."
One expert described the reported deal as "tantamount to the United States giving up on nonproliferation."
Nonproliferation experts are raising alarms after Reuters reported on Tuesday that President Donald Trump's administration plans to ask Congress to approve a deal that could allow Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear weapons.
According to Reuters, an agreement crafted by the Trump administration would allow the US to share nuclear power technology with the Saudis without proper safeguards that "would stop materials being used in nuclear weapons programs."
Specifically, Reuters' sources said the deal "does not include the 'Gold Standard' that would block the kingdom from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, both of which are potential pathways to nuclear weapons."
Kelsey Davenport, director for nonprolifertion policy at the Arms Control Association, warned in a Tuesday social media post that the reported agreement "sets a terrible precedent" because it "goes against long-standing bipartisan support for negotiating nuclear cooperation agreements that prohibit enrichment and reprocessing."
"If the deal is inadequate, which it seems to be," Davenport added, "Congress should vote to disapprove it."
Andrea Stricker, deputy director and research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Nonproliferation Program, said that "Congress should block" the deal, which she warned could lead other states in the region to seek their own nuclear weapons.
If Congress fails to block the deal, Stricker added, then "one hopes the policy will be reversed by a subsequent administration before too much damage is done in terms of watering down safeguards, setting negative precedents for other states, and failing to contain the spread of enrichment and reprocessing."
James Acton, co-director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Nuclear Policy Program, said the reported Saudi nuclear deal is "tantamount to the United States giving up on nonproliferation."
"Saudi officials are open about a potential interest in nuclear weapons," Acton said. "The United States should do nothing to facilitate enrichment or reprocessing in the Kingdom."
Emma Ashford, senior fellow at the Stimson Center, agreed that the reported agreement would mean the end of US attempts to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons, and noted the irony of the Trump administration "bombing Iran to prevent them ever having enrichment, while giving it to the Saudis."
Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, called the reported deal a "terrible idea" that "goes against decades of US policy to give enrichment technology to a country that doesn't already possess it."
Kelanic also warned that the agreement would empower the Saudi government in ways that could come back to bite the US.
"Aside from the proliferation risks, uranium enrichment would give Saudi Arabia a potent source of leverage to extract future concessions from Washington," Kelanic explained, "including new security guarantees, by threatening to weaponize its program unless the United States promises enhanced military protection. That has happened before, for instance in South Korea and West Germany, where the U.S. traded protection to persuade partners to abandon nuclear programs."
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, expressed "deep concerns" about the reported deal, which he said "would significantly erode existing nonproliferation standards."
"Any agreement must include appropriate limits on enrichment and reprocessing," Meeks emphasized, "as well as the [International Atomic Energy Agency's] Additional Protocol."
"What more evidence do we need, absent a significant real-world incident, that catastrophic risk from AI is a real and present danger to us all?" said one expert.
In a striking incident that highlights the growing risks of unchecked advanced artificial intelligence development, ChatGPT maker OpenAI admitted Tuesday that one of its AI models autonomously breached the systems of the prominent open-source platform Hugging Face during recent internal testing.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on X that "we had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models" and "are sharing what we have learned so far."
In a blog post, OpenAI acknowledged, "Last week, Hugging Face disclosed a new kind of security incident after they detected and contained an AI agent that compromised their infrastructure, something we expect to become more commonplace with the proliferation of increasingly cyber-capable models."
"After investigating, we now know that this particular incident was driven by a combination of OpenAI models—including GPT‑5.6 Sol and an even more capable prerelease model, all with reduced cyber refusals for evaluation purposes—while being internally tested on a benchmark of cyber capabilities," the company continued.
"We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities, and are responding accordingly," OpenAI said. "We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and to help calibrate on what models are now capable of."
Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clem Delangue responded to the disclosure in a statement saying: “We're grateful for the collaboration with OpenAI on this and other topics. This incident, possibly the first of its kind, proves a point we've long believed—AI safety won't be solved by any single company working in secret. It will be solved in the open, collaboratively, with broad access to AI for every defender, everywhere.”
Some observers praised OpenAI for its frank disclosure. Some critics were not impressed.
"Let's not celebrate them for telling us about it. I will celebrate when they stop putting my life at risk," said David Krueger, founder of Evitable, an advocacy group which posits that "we must end the race to replace humanity."
While many mainstream media outlets described OpenAI models as "going rogue," the models were given a specific task during internal testing: perform as well as possible on the ExploitGym cybersecurity benchmark, which evaluates how effectively an AI can execute complex cyberattacks and exploit vulnerabilities in controlled scenarios.
"Use of the terms 'rogue'/'loss of human control' leads to groupthink as people lack critical skills to understand the difference between 'autonomy' and faulty reward functions in AI on a task it was directed and given access to do," Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, said Wednesday on X.
"Very few people understand existing limitations of sandboxing, in addition to the tools and scaffolding AI are given to achieve this tasks," Khlaaf added, referring to the tightly controlled virtual environments in which potentially unsafe software code can "play" without real-world consequences.
However, instead of staying within the sandbox and solving the problems using only the allowed tools and environment, OpenAI's models treated everything standing in the way of a higher score as a problem to solve—in this case, by finding a way to get online and hacking into Hugging Face's systems to access data.
OpenAI's models were essentially just doing their assignmenta—and that's precisely why the incident has alarm bells sounding.
Peter Wildeford, head of policy at the AI Policy Institute, said on X that the OpenAI incident "happened because the model wanted to do well on an exam. The easiest way to do that, the AI figured, was to hack the company. And so it did."
"This was not some malevolent attacker using AI to do harm," he added. "The AI itself was the attacker."
Experts call this a classic example of AI misalignment. As AI advances to the point where it will likely outsmart humans one day, the challenge of ensuring that advanced systems reliably pursue goals that match what humans actually want becomes increasingly difficult—and dangerous.
A misaligned, superintelligent AI could take uncontrolled autonomous actions at massive scale to achieve its goals, potentially causing an existential catastrophe like the subjugation of humanity or even its extinction. Prominent AI pioneers who have warned about this outcome include Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Altman—who in 2015 said, “I think AI will probably most likely sort of lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there’ll be great companies created with serious machine learning.”
The OpenAI incident sparked renewed calls for more robust AI regulation.
"This incident is a quintessential warning shot, and we need to see it for what it is," said Theo Bearman, a researcher at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy and the former AI regulation and readiness policy lead in the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology.
"What more evidence do we need, absent a significant real-world incident, that catastrophic risk from AI is a real and present danger to us all, and that we need meaningful regulation of frontier models, especially the most powerful instantiations deployed internally within these companies?" he added.
"This incident is a quintessential warning shot, and we need to see it for what it is."
Vaibhav Sisinty, founder of the edtech platform GrowthSchool, said on social media that "AI doesn't need intent to be dangerous. It needs a clear goal and no guardrails."
Wildeford concurred, stressing that "no one has to misuse an AI for the AI to cause harm."
"We cannot rely solely on testing models just before commercial release," he said. "We cannot rely on hoping AI companies volunteer useful safety information. The government needs visibility into what these AI companies are building and what these advanced AIs are doing."
While advocacy groups, the United Nations, and dozens of national governments are urging more robust regulation of AI development, the United States under President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled Congress, and Big Tech's army of lobbyists is strongly opposed to guardrails.
Trump has rolled back regulations, including some meager steps taken during the Biden administration to bolster safety.
A bill introduced last September by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.) would, if passed, impose a temporary moratorium on state laws regulating artificial intelligence.
As was the case in the breakneck nuclear arms race during the Cold War, US officials have attempted to justify unfettered AI development by claiming that any slowdown would give adversaries like China an edge.
Ricky Ho, who manages the Singapore-based Four Capital Fund, said Wednesday that the timing of the OpenAI incident "is particularly interesting because it comes just days after Moonshot's Kimi K3 demonstrated that China's frontier AI capabilities continue advancing at an extraordinary pace, forcing the conversation to shift away from whether China can catch up toward how the United States should preserve its lead."
"OpenAI is effectively arguing that the US now needs a coherent national AI strategy rather than the current patchwork of ad hoc interventions, export controls, and state-level regulations that create uncertainty for developers," Ho continued.
"The proposal for a standardized federal safety review process should also be viewed through that lens," he said. "Markets often interpret regulation as a headwind, but clear rules frequently reduce uncertainty and make it easier for companies to invest aggressively. The semiconductor industry, aerospace, and pharmaceuticals all benefited from having predictable regulatory frameworks, even if compliance costs increased. AI may ultimately follow the same path."
"Perhaps the most important takeaway is that AI governance is rapidly becoming a geopolitical issue rather than simply a technology issue," Ho added. "Frontier models are increasingly being discussed alongside export controls, cyber defense, industrial policy, and national competitiveness, reinforcing our view that AI is evolving into strategic infrastructure comparable to electricity, telecommunications, or the internet itself."
"Tariffs of this magnitude could have enormous consequences—raising costs, worsening shortages, and putting access to lifesaving medicines at risk."
While President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is working to lower the cost of prescription drugs, advocates for patients on Wednesday expressed alarm over the Republican's plan to impose significant tariffs on imported generic medication.
"Effective August 1st, 2026, all Generic Drugs being brought into the United States will continue to have a TARIFF of ZERO PERCENT for a two year period of time, after which the TARIFF will be raised to 100% for a one year period of time, and 200% thereafter," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late Tuesday.
"This is done in order to RESHORE Generic Pharmaceutical Production into America, with a penalty to those Companies that decide not to build Plant and Equipment within the stated period of time given to them," he continued. "The objective of this Policy is to protect the people of the United States."
A White House official told Politico that the administration intends to use Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to impose the threatened tariffs. Although the president has not yet issued an order for his new announcement regarding generics, it's already causing concern.
"If imposed, the duty risks upending a global supply chain that keeps generic medicines affordable for Americans," the Los Angeles Times reported. "These off-patent drugs run the gamut from everyday painkillers and antibiotics to cholesterol and cancer drugs, and they're mostly produced at factories in India, Europe, and China."
Merith Basey, CEO of the advocacy organization Patients for Affordable Drugs, argued that "if the administration intends to lower prescription drug prices, it should not pursue policies that threaten to raise them. Imposing massive tariffs on generic medicines risks making lower-cost generic drugs millions of Americans rely on more expensive and harder to access."
"Generic drugs account for approximately 90% of prescriptions filled in the United States and are one of the few areas where Americans pay relatively low prices compared with other countries," she noted. "Tariffs of this magnitude could have enormous consequences—raising costs, worsening shortages, and putting access to lifesaving medicines at risk."
Basey stressed that "at a time when Americans are already struggling to afford healthcare, groceries, housing, and other basic needs, the last thing they need is another additional expense. Seniors, people with chronic conditions, and patients who rely on multiple prescriptions could be particularly hard hit."
"We urge the administration to focus its efforts on brand-name drug companies who abuse their monopoly power to block competition—not jeopardize the lower-cost medicines Americans depend on," she concluded.
The watchdog Public Citizen was also critical, warning that imposing tariffs on generics risks supply chain shocks, shortages, and treatment rationing; prioritizes supply restrictions over flexible supply from multiple sources; and undermines US manufacturing and workers, given the unlikelihood that drugmakers would invest billions to relocate to the United States.
"This reckless and impetuous move will drive up price, force rationing of key medicines, and needlessly create scarcity problems," said Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen's Access to Medicines director, in a statement.
"The sole respite from Trump's reckless pharma tariff plans has been that they so far do not apply to generics, which are vulnerable to supply disruptions that risk people’s access to medicine," he added. "Now, Trump has erased even that modest protection, and set a destructive course that could cause, rather than prevent, scarcity and rationing."
The president's potential levies on generics would follow a similar—and similarly criticized—policy targeting brand-name drugs, which Trump announced in April, on the one-year anniversary of his so-called Liberation Day and after an investigation by the US Department of Commerce.
The April tariffs were aimed at pressuring pharmaceutical companies to negotiate onshoring plans as part of most favored nation (MFN) pricing agreements. However, as Basey pointed out at the time, "the current MFN deals remain opaque and voluntary, and have not delivered meaningful savings for the vast majority of American patients."
A couple of weeks later, the administration announced its 17th MFN agreement, with Regeneron. The other companies that have struck deals are AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, and Sanofi.
Trump claimed Tuesday that "the Policy on Patented, Branded, or Innovative Drugs, which has been so successful, will remain as is. Pharmaceutical Facilities are being built, at a level never seen before, all over the United States of America."
"Economic development and economic justice must go hand in hand," said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in announcing Khan's appointment.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday announced he was appointing Lina Khan, a leading champion of enforcing US antitrust laws, to serve as chair of the city's Economic Development Corporation.
In prepared remarks, Khan—the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission—said she looked forward to working with Tony Shorris, the former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who was appointed by Mamdani as the EDC's new president.
The former Biden administration official also gave an overview of what she hoped to achieve at the EDC.
"EDC has key tools to drive projects that grow our economy, create good jobs, promote entrepreneurship, and make life more affordable for New Yorkers," she said. "EDC has enormous capacity to make life materially better for New Yorkers—and to ensure that public resources are helping build state capacity."
A Wednesday report from Gothamist noted that Khan's appointment as chair "amounts to a shakeup for the agency, which has been criticized over the years for being too cozy with business interests," while noting that Shorris' appointment as president "was seen by some as a nod to the business community."
During a news conference announcing the appointments of Khan and Shorris, Mamdani emphasized that "economic development and economic justice must go hand in hand," adding that "this is no radical concept."
"Every member of Congress must vote NO," said the congresswoman.
With a US House committee refusing to include a bipartisan amendment to strike the integration of parts of the Israeli and American militaries from the National Defense Authorization Act for the coming year, the chamber on Wednesday was set to vote on a bill that progressive opponents including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said would threaten US "sovereignty."
Section 219 of the 2027 NDAA, said the New York Democrat, "is an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy."
"Every member of Congress must vote NO," she added.
Section 219, which originated as a bipartisan proposal pushed by Democratic Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, directs the secretary of defense to designate an "executive agent" at the Pentagon who would oversee a new United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.
The program, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to as "my plan" in June, would integrate American and Israeli research and development by pushing for US military systems' use of Israeli-manufactured technology. The initiative would "shift the framework for US-Israeli defense cooperation from aid to partnership," said Netanyahu.
As Military.com reported, Section 219 would integrate US and Israeli counter-drone, missile, and air defense, artificial intelligence, and cyber and electronic warfare systems.
At Responsible Statecraft in May, Ben Freeman wrote the fusion of the American and Israeli defense sectors would "bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the US beyond what it already has" by giving the Israeli government "the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in US politics: jobs in the US."
"By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on US soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie," wrote Freeman. "The result could well be a US political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the US into military conflicts in the Middle East."
The NDAA is set to be voted on in the House on Wednesday, as numerous recent polls have shown public approval of US military aid to Israel plummeting as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continues its assault on Gaza that began in October 2023, as well as ramping up attacks in the West Bank and pushing for the US to join in attacks on Iran.
Nearly half of Democratic members of the House voted to cut off military aid to Israel last week in what was called a "seismic shift," with lawmakers apparently responding to voters' clear condemnation of US support for the IDF. Last August, three-quarters of Democratic voters said in a Quinnipiac poll that they opposed continuing to arm Israel.
Progressive political candidates such as Michigan's US Senate contender Abdul El-Sayed in recent months have framed the issue as one in which voters are demanding more government investment in US schools and healthcare, rather than in Israel's military.
"While Americans are focused on other things, like how to make ends meet in the face of a rapidly rising cost of living, the House will vote to merge our military technology and supply chains with Israel’s,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said in a statement Tuesday after the amendment he put forward with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to strike Section 219 was denied a floor vote by the House Rules Committee. “Our founders would be appalled at what Congress is doing now.”
Other lawmakers who joined Massie and Khanna's effort to eliminate the provision include Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Don Beyer (D-Va.), Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii), Derek Tran (D-Calif.), and Joe Courtney (D-Conn.).
The House is allowing consideration of two amendments that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) submitted, including one that would remove the word "integration" from Section 219. Josh Paul, a former Biden administration State Department official who resigned over unconditional US military aid to Israel after the IDF began bombarding Gaza in October 2023, emphasized that Luna's amendment does not eliminate the proposed program.
The amendment "has no meaningful impact on the bill," said Paul, co-founder of the lobby group A New Policy. "The goal here is to try to make it a tough vote for people, for members of Congress who don't want to see US and Israel integration, but they should rest easy because that's not what this amendment does."
BREAKING: This Amendment is a set-up. Hear from Josh Paul why A New Policy OPPOSES Representative Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-FL-13) amendment to the House NDAA. The amendment would strike the word “integration” from several places in Section 219. Don’t be fooled, the amendment DOES… pic.twitter.com/gcYKd4Pyj2
— A New Policy (@anewpolicyorg) July 21, 2026
Massie and Khanna said they would attempt to eliminate Section 219 from the bill in the House and Senate conference after the House vote. The Senate's defense authorization package includes a similar provision called Section 1217.
"It's shocking that this even has to be explained," said Khanna on Tuesday. "It's about American sovereignty... We do not even have a chance to vote in the House to stop Israel and the United States from co-producing weapons. We need to now fight to strip this amendment in the conference between the House and the Senate."
"'Just comply' means women are being told to surrender to potential kidnappers, and hope they turn out to be government agents."
As US Immigration and Customs Enforcement deals with the fallout of two fatal shootings, President Donald Trump's border czar Tom Homan has said the deaths were the fault of victims who did not "comply" with agents.
"It comes down to one simple fact. These people failed to comply with law enforcement," Homan said on Monday outside the White House. "All they had to do was simply comply. If they did, they'd be alive today."
Questions remain about the extent to which the two men killed earlier this month—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine—defied ICE agents leading up to their arrests, and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) initial narrative that the two men attempted to attack agents with their vehicles has been undercut by video and eyewitness evidence.
Meanwhile, legal experts have noted that failure to comply with law enforcement on its own is not a justification for deadly force under DHS guidelines or the guidelines of any other law enforcement agency, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that lethal force must be reserved for situations where suspects pose an immediate danger.
ICE critics have further pointed out that the agency’s unprecedented tactics under the second Trump administration—the use of unmarked cars, the refusal to self-identify, and the use of excessive force without clear justifications—make compliance impossible in many cases.
A prominent social media user known as Jesus Freakin' Congress, who catalogs ICE abuses on her account for more than 50,000 followers, drew attention to a case out of Schaumburg, Illinois, as "an example of what [Homan] wants you to comply with."
The video, filmed by Instagram user Mari Elena months earlier and posted this week, shows what she believed to be agents in unmarked vehicles following her as she attempted to leave a parking lot before a gray SUV suddenly cut her off as she approached an intersection.
"I saw what appeared to be ICE agents in a parking lot and began recording them from a distance," she explained in the post. "After they noticed I was recording, several of their vehicles drove past me. Because I was alone, I decided to leave the parking lot. As I was leaving, four ICE vehicles surrounded my vehicle in the middle of the road."
Video shows the gray SUV sitting motionless in front of Mari as she honked repeatedly. She had nowhere to go without hitting either the curb or the vehicle in front of her. After blocking her for over a minute, the vehicle drove through the intersection, allowing Mari to leave.
At no point did any of the vehicles activate their emergency lights to indicate that they were law enforcement or that she was being detained.
Jesus Freakin' Congress noted the difficulty this posed for Mari, who "wasn’t even 100% sure" that the men boxing in her car were ICE agents.
Imagine being a woman, alone in your car. A group of cars you cannot clearly identify as law enforcement, start following you. They don’t turn on emergency lights. They don’t clearly identify themselves. And one of them cuts you off and [is] blocking your vehicle from being able to drive away.
What are you supposed to think is happening? Because from your perspective, it looks like you are being kidnapped by random people.
And that is the terrifying part of what ICE is doing. They are creating situations where people have no idea whether the people surrounding them are legitimate law enforcement officers, or strangers attempting to abduct, or rob them. And Tom Homan’s answer to being kidnapped, or robbed, is… “Just comply.”
Don’t try to drive away. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t try to escape. Just calmly allow unidentified people, in unmarked vehicles, to follow you, box you in, and potentially kidnap or rob you… Because if they happen to be ICE agents, and you react like a normal person who believes they are being kidnapped, you could be assaulted, detained, or even shot. Do you understand how dangerous and insane that is?!?
“Just comply” means women are being told to surrender to potential kidnappers, and hope they turn out to be government agents. And if they don’t? Tom Homan says it’s their fault for not complying.
Although Mari was not able to confirm that the vehicles boxing her in were driven by ICE agents, her case represents the type of scenario in which Homan demands people to simply "comply."
Since it became commonplace for faceless agents to prowl the streets, there have been numerous documented cases of people impersonating immigration agents in order to kidnap, rob, and sexually assault victims.
The FBI itself put out a bulletin last year urging agents to identify themselves to prevent confusion. However, there is no evidence that DHS has implemented those guidelines.
According to a report from Wired on Wednesday, the Trump administration has sued at least five states, as well as the city of Philadelphia, in order to block laws that would stop agents from wearing masks during operations.
Witnesses say that in the incident that led to Salgado's shooting, agents did not identify themselves as law enforcement before the encounter escalated. ICE has not produced evidence that agents identified themselves before shooting Guerrero in Maine. In both cases, the men killed were not the targets of ICE's operations.
In the wake of Homan's demands that those approached by immigration agents "comply", legal experts have warned that ICE's tactics are creating fear that compels people to do the exact opposite.
"ICE and other federal immigration agents have made quick compliance difficult or impossible," Hiroshi Motomura, professor of immigration and citizenship law at the UCLA School of Law, told HuffPost. "Many agents aren't identifying themselves in any trustworthy way."
"It's only natural for people to not comply as quickly as officers might like," he continued. "In these moments of apprehension and fear, some officers seem to be escalating into violence."
"THIS from the administration that said there was no money for food assistance, Medicaid, and healthcare tax credits."
While economists have warned for months that the true cost of President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran could be trillions of dollars, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth estimated on Tuesday that it's currently about $37.5 billion.
That figure came from a line of questioning by US Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), as Hegseth appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to support Trump's June supplemental funding request, which includes tens of billions for the Pentagon.
Hegseth told Durbin that the $37.5 billion estimate includes what's been spent so far, plus some projected spending through the end of the fiscal year in September—an exchange quickly met with fury by various critics, many of whom pointed out the range of ways that money could have been better spent by an administration allegedly dedicated to combating "waste, fraud, and abuse."
"Imagine all the better things that could have been done with $37.5 billion," Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, wrote on Bluesky.
Noting that the Strait of Hormuz "is still closed," progressive writer Alex Cole similarly said, "Imagine what $37.5 billion could've done for veterans, schools, or healthcare."
Congressman James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) specifically noted: "That could cover a full school year of free lunches for 30 million children. Or a full year of childcare for nearly 2 million kids."
"Trump finds money for war while families get excuses," he added, as working people struggle with rising costs of housing, groceries, and gasoline—the price of which has soared due to Iran restricting strait traffic over US attacks.
Trump’s war on Iran has so far cost taxpayers $37.5 BILLION.As if skyrocketing gas prices weren’t enough, Trump also expects us to foot this bill.Trump’s illegal forever war has spiraled out of control.
— Public Citizen (@publiccitizen.bsky.social) July 21, 2026 at 5:00 PM
The liberal political group American Bridge 21st Century highlighted how Trump and congressional Republicans have attacked programs for working families while giving more tax cuts to billionaires and waging war on Iran.
"THIS from the administration that said there was no money for food assistance, Medicaid, and healthcare tax credits," the organization said.
Since Trump joined with Israel to start bombing Iran on February 28, most congressional Democrats, legal experts, and other critics have argued that the war—for which the president never secured support from Congress—is not only foolish but also unlawful under both international and US law.
Citing Trump’s attempts to evade limits of the War Powers Act of 1973, Congressman John Larson (D-Conn.) said Monday that he is preparing legal action against the administration and a new bill to cut off funding for the war on Iran, which has killed over 3,000 people according to the Iranian government.
Previous war cost estimates from the US Department of Defense have been met with scrutiny. After Pentagon comptroller Jules "Jay" Hurst offered the $25 billion figure in April, Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, estimated that the government spent at least $71.8 billion during the first two months of the war, or around $1.2 billion per day.
As for the US death toll, at least 17 service members have been killed and many more wounded. The New York Times revealed Monday that the Pentagon hid dozens of American military injuries from Iranian strikes on bases in Jordan last week.
Two Iranian-Americans, a US veteran, and a nurse disrupted Hegseth's Tuesday appearance before the Senate, according to CodePink. In addition to that anti-war group, the protesters were from the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and Vets About Face DMV.
"Pete Hegseth and this administration will be remembered for the killing of innocent civilians and children. They have protected neither the American people nor our security, only the interests that have lined their pockets,” said Bella of NIAC, who joined the protest, in a statement.
"While Americans struggle to afford their lives, this government always finds billions to bomb our families in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, and elsewhere," Bella added. "This is a repugnant betrayal of humanity. It is illegal, and the American people will hold them accountable."
One US author called the staggering surge a "reproductive genocide that Western feminists can't be allowed to ignore."
A senior medical official in the Gaza Strip sounded the alarm on Tuesday over a dramatic rise in miscarriages in the Palestinian exclave, with nearly 4,000 cases reported during the first half of 2026 amid Israel's ongoing genocide.
Gaza Medical Relief Director Bassam Zaqout said that 3,958 miscarriages were recorded in Gaza during the first half of this year—an increase the doctor called "unprecedented," and a serious risk to the health of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses.
Zaqout cited the soaring miscarriage rate to factors in Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, including the destruction of the strip's infrastructure, unsanitary living conditions in camps for forcibly displaced Palestinians—where numerous babies have died of hypothermia—lack of hot water and hygiene supplies, and relentless terror caused by Israel Defense Forces bombing.
The Gaza Health Ministry documented 921 miscarriages and 2,004 live births in April. This staggering ratio—460 miscarriages for every 1,000 live births—is more than double that in neighboring nations Israel and Egypt.
Live births have also dropped dramatically in Gaza this year, from 5,210 in January, to 3,433 in February, 3,233 in March, 2,004 in April, and just 1,701 in May 2026, according to the ministry.
Last month, the Gaza Center for Human Rights said that the alarming rise in miscarriages is due to the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, repeated attacks on hospitals, and widespread deprivation of food, medicine, and essential medical services amid 33 months of what United Nations experts and others have described as a genocide.
The Gaza Center for Human Rights said the following factors are the most significant drivers of the miscarriage crisis:
The center also noted that Article II of the Genocide Convention—the legal basis for the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice—includes “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” in its definition of the crime.
United Nations officials and other experts have accused Israel of “systematically” using reproductive, sexual, and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians in Gaza and committing “genocidal acts” by deliberately destroying reproductive and healthcare facilities in the strip.
There has also been a documented surge in birth defects among Gaza newborns. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, congenital anomalies doubled in 2025 compared with 2022.
Successive medical warnings of a long-term health catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, with a notable increase in fetal deformities and miscarriages resulting from the harsh conditions of war. pic.twitter.com/T2rN6XQec6
— Eye on Palestine (@EyeonPalestine) June 25, 2026
Experts attribute the increase to many of the same factors driving miscarriages, pointing to contaminated water and widespread malnutrition, including the former famine that killed at least hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, many of them children and infants.
Zaqout warned that Gaza’s health crisis is worsening as severe shortages of medicines, equipment, diagnostic tools, and laboratory supplies persist amid the strip's heavily damaged healthcare infrastructure and ongoing siege. He also noted the epidemics of diseases such as chickenpox, waterborne illnesses, and respiratory infections.
Numerous Palestinian women have lost their pregnancies due to direct acute trauma inflicted by Israeli bombs and bullets, which have often also killed would-be mothers. Israeli invaders have also ordered the evacuation of Gaza's hospitals, forcing staff to leave prematurely born babies to die and decompose in incubators.
A United Nations commission of inquiry reported last month that approximately 30% of the more than 73,000 Palestinians killed during Israel's 33-month war on Gaza were children—many of whom were deliberately targeted. Israeli forces have killed more than 21,500 Gazan children, including 1,022 babies, since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child."
"Big Oil and the gas industry knew decades ago that methane was a harmful climate pollutant, but they manufactured the myth of ‘clean’ natural gas in order to protect and expand their business."
Gas companies knew about the climate harms of natural gas much earlier than previously thought and downplayed them to the public, according to a new trove of documents unearthed by an environmental activist group on Monday.
A report released Monday by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) found that—much like Big Oil had deceived the public about the planet-heating impact of oil—gas companies that pushed their product as a "clean" alternative had downplayed natural gas' production of methane, a greenhouse gas that is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over the first 20 years.
The report, which was created through an examination of newly discovered documents and confidential reports, as well as expert interviews, determines that the industry was aware of these harms as far back as 1968, when a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute found that methane in the atmosphere was connected to “oil fields” and “[gas] distribution system leakage."
"Big Oil and the gas industry knew decades ago that methane was a harmful climate pollutant, but they manufactured the myth of ‘clean’ natural gas in order to protect and expand their business, with no regard for public health or the climate impacts that they knew would result,” said Richard Wiles, president of CCI.
The report examines how the American Gas Association (AGA), an industry group representing many industry giants, hired top public relations firms to change the nation's perceptions of gas as a dangerous pollutant.
Despite acknowledging behind the scenes that they lacked “clear, simple, substantiating facts" to vouch for its safety, industry ad campaigns sought to associate gas with nature, simplicity, and cleanliness. One campaign emphasized that it was "cleaner than coal" and created "virtually no emissions."
The industry also created its own research institute to peddle studies to the public that disrupted a growing consensus around the dangers of methane by emphasizing the uncertainty of the findings and casting doubt on their connection to natural gas.
All the while, internal industry research was finding that methane was not only a major driver of the greenhouse effect, but was being released in far greater quantities than previously known, to the point where it was just as dirty, if not dirtier than coal.
Despite this, the industry helped to keep the "myth" of clean natural gas alive for decades. In the 1990s, the industry funded and provided much of the underlying data for an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study concluding that the amount of methane produced by natural gas was low enough that it could be considered a "bridge fuel" to reduce emissions.
Though later research would demonstrate that the study had vastly underestimated the amount of methane being emitted by gas producers, the damage had been done, and the number was cited by the industry for decades to promote its product as a green alternative.
According to a poll conducted by CCI with Data for Progress, 50% of likely voters still believe that natural gas is a form of "clean energy."
“The fraud of clean natural gas has been essential to the industry’s success in the marketplace, and the idea that gas is climate-friendly has been at the heart of the rapid expansion of gas infrastructure over the last two decades,” the report says.
The Center for Climate Integrity has argued that fossil fuel companies should be required to compensate the public for decades of deception that has contributed to the climate crisis.
"Officials who continue to justify expanding natural gas reliance by still claiming it’s clean or safe for the climate are using the same script and manipulated science that gas executives and their PR teams concocted decades ago," Wiles said. "It’s time that these profoundly dangerous lies are finally put to rest. By exposing the gas industry’s deception, we can get one step closer to accountability.”
"Republicans are trying to pull a trick this week," said US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Democrats on Capitol Hill and voting rights advocates on Tuesday sounded the alarm about Republicans in the House of Representatives trying to push through voter suppression legislation under cover of passing a ban on congressional stock trading.
According to a Tuesday report from Roll Call, House GOP leaders recently added "unrelated language" to what was a bipartisan bill banning congressional stock trading that would "require voters to produce photo ID at the polls, a signature issue for President Donald Trump."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) hammered Republicans for what she said were underhanded tactics that are undermining what had been a serious bipartisan effort to halt congressional stock trading.
"Republicans are trying to pull a trick this week," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a social media post. "They say we are voting on an 'insider trading' bill, but have snuck in massive SAVE Act-style voter suppression measures to it. This is a GOP effort to sabotage national mail-in voting, disguised as a trading ban. I’m voting NO."
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that the caucus was opposing the GOP's legislation not just for its attacks on voting rights, but because it only forces congresspeople to stop making new stock trades, while not requiring them to divest of their current holdings.
"House Republicans are not serious about enacting a meaningful congressional stock trading ban," said Clarke. "The combined Stop Insider Trading Act and Voter ID Act... would allow members of Congress to continue owning, selling, and, in some cases, purchasing individual stocks while simultaneously imposing stricter voter ID requirements that would make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to vote."
"This bill is a Trojan horse," Clarke added, "using the premise of congressional ethics reform to advance a broader effort to restrict access to the ballot box."
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) on Monday sent lawmakers a letter opposing the GOP-backed legislation, which it said would "impose onerous new requirements on voting."
Among other things, the group said the proposed legislation would "demand Americans provide ID to cast a ballot but only accept an unreasonably narrow list of acceptable types of documentation," excluding the kind of "widely held and reliable forms of ID that young people and voters of color disproportionally rely on."
The CLC also said the bill doesn't provide "sufficient safeguards" for voters wrongly deemed ineligible to prove they are legally allowed to participate in US elections.
A page on congressional contact portal 5 Calls recommended users oppose the GOP-backed bill, which it described as "partisan legislation" that "uses the guise of much-needed ethics reform to sneak through an unpopular and unrelated attack on voting rights."