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Michigan/America Is Not For Sale
Wowza, rare glimmer of good news. We take a moment to honor the stunning Michigan victory of Abdul El-Sayed, who was outspent 12-1 by his opponent's millions from establishment Dems, Zionist PACS and corporations and still managed to win even though he is a progressive Muslim who calls genocide genocide and wants Medicare for all in a Trump state that isn't communist New York. Ha. What millions in dark money buys you these days: "Sweet fuck all, as it turns out."
El-Sayed's inspiring win came against a candidate, Haley Stevens, who was bankrolled by over $60 million from party leaders and outside money from a murky nesting doll of super-PACS and shell corporations but whose campaign still had the audacity to bill her as “the grassroots choice of Michigan working families.” Total spending on the race in a key swing state was about $80 million, most from fat cats, making it "the fattest cat in the history of primaries." El-Sayed reportedly got about $4.6 million in outside money; Stevens and Netanyahu got about $60 million, the plurality of it from AIPAC's United Democracy Project (sic) super PAC - the most they've dumped into a single race, making it what observers call AIPAC's biggest defeat. From I Fucking Love Australia: AIPAC shoved 30 million dollars up Michigan's arse, and Michigan shat it straight back out."
Born in Detroit in 1984, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed was raised by his father Mohamed, an Egyptian immigrant, and his stepmother Jackie, whose Michigan roots go back to the 1800s. After graduating from the University of Michigan Phi Beta Kappa, he earned an MD from Columbia and a doctorate in public health from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, worked as an epidemiologist and became the youngest health official in a major American city when he was appointed Director of Detroit's Health Department, gutted rwhen it was privatized during the city’s bankruptcy, at age 30. Rebuilding it, he went after corporate polluters, stripped lead out of schools, starting offering free glasses to kids in need, expanded Narcan access, and spearheaded a program cancelling up to $700 million in medical debt for 300,000 state residents.
Faced with that resume, AIPAC spent their millions on an ad blitz that managed not to mention any of his policies, or even Israel, though he won the first-ever political endorsement from Jewish Voice For Peace. Instead, they focused on the issues that really matter: They attacked El-Sayed for criticizing the Obamas, allegedly helping Trump win, and sitting for an interview with a streamer they don’t like, Hasan Piker. If he wins the general election against the GOP's carpetbagging empty suit Mike Rogers, he'd become the first Muslim in the Senate. His longtime message to Dems: Stop compromising, ban ICE, end sending arms to Israel, Medicare for All, no more forever wars, get dark money out of politics. On election night, at a podium reading, "MIchigan Is Not For Sale," he celebrated "the movement we were able to inspire," and "the idea that we could take our government back."
El-Sayed's victory, while slimmer than predicted, was seen as pivotal; noted Bernie Sanders, "This is an election between Abdul and the billionaire class.” And the candidate the establishment called "unelectable" won with the endorsement of the United Auto Workers, "the beating heart of Michigan labor." His win was the biggest but not the only news out of Michigan: Sunrise Movement co-founder and data center opponent William Lawrence also took the primary for Michigan’s 7th Congressional district. They join progressive wins elsewhere: Zohran Mamdani in New York. Katie Wilson in Seattle. Three Mamdani-backed candidates in New York primaries, two against longtime incumbents. Melat Kiros in Colorado. Troy Jackson in Maine. It's still a long tough road ahead. But take heart from spineless ghoul Mike Johnson: “The insurgent left is on the rise."
Aug 06, 2026
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Senate Dems Push Trump to Restore Blue-State Grants Canceled for Partisan Reasons
A group of 39 Democratic senators on Thursday told the Trump White House to restore grants for their states that the administration itself admitted were canceled for purely political reasons.
In a court filing earlier this month, attorneys representing the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged that decisions about canceling grants for a series of renewable energy projects were based “solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State."
The Democratic senators responded with a letter to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought demanding that the cancelations be reversed.
"You not only acted outside the bounds of the law," the senators wrote, "but cancelled projects that would have provided jobs, onshored manufacturing, and lowered skyrocketing energy prices. Congress authorized those projects and appropriated funding under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and annual appropriation bills."
Later in the letter, the senators argued that more was at stake beyond grants for green energy.
"Once an administration begins punishing Americans for how they vote, the threat extends far beyond these projects," the Democrats wrote. "No state, community, business, or worker can trust that the federal government will apply the law fairly."
"This is not only an attack on jobs, affordable energy, and America’s economic competitiveness," the Democrats added. "It is an attack on the rule of law and the basic democratic principle that the federal government serves the entire country—not merely those who support the president."
Last year, the DOE recommended canceling more than 600 grants awarded for energy projects under former President Joe Biden’s administration. However, the OMB subsequently intervened and canceled fewer than half of the recommended projects, while keeping grants for projects in states that voted for President Donald Trump.
After a group of California researchers challenged the terminated grants in a lawsuit, the DOE acknowledged that “with one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”
The DOE also admitted that there was no “programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor” to justify the cuts.
Jul 30, 2026
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Progressives Rip Newsom Over Reported Meddling in Suit Against Paramount-Warner Merger
The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has expressed reservations about his state's antitrust lawsuit that aims to block the $110 billion megamerger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros.
According to the Journal's sources, Newsom, who is widely expected to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency in 2028, has expressed concern about the impact that blocking the merger would have on jobs in Hollywood, and his office has reportedly "encouraged" California Attorney General Rob Bonta to reach a settlement with Paramount.
"It is unclear what impact, if any, Newsom’s urging will have on the California attorney general’s suit," the Journal reported. "Newsom doesn’t have a role in the litigation and doesn’t have authority over the state attorney general’s actions."
Bonta, along with several other Democratic state attorneys general who are co-plaintiffs in the antitrust suit, scored a major victory last week when a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order to pause the merger from going forward. In response, the companies have agreed not to close the deal until five days after a trial is held or next June 1, whichever is sooner.
The combination of Paramount and Warner Bros. has long been controversial because it would put control of CBS, CNN, HBO, TikTok, and other major media properties all under the control of David Ellison, the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, a major donor to President Donald Trump.
Newsom earlier this year told Semafor media reporter Maxwell Tani that he's known David Ellison for years, while emphasizing that California's probe of the proposed merger "isn't a personal attack" on the Paramount CEO.
David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, expressed mock surprise at Newsom reportedly going to bat for the merger.
"You're not going to believe this but Gavin Newsom is taking the side of capital over workers," Dayen wrote. "In this case it's tricky because he's backing the very MAGA allies his cosplaying X account claims he's fighting."
Tech journalist Karl Bode described Newsom's reported efforts to push the merger through as a "nice sneak peak of the sort of media policies you can expect under his presidency."
Elections analyst Nick Field questioned Newsom's reported concern about Hollywood jobs being lost if the merger gets blocked, as corporate consolidation usually coincides with mass layoffs.
"Paramount will undoubtedly cut tons of jobs if they buy Warner Bros., as the Ellisons did when they bought Paramount in the first place," wrote Field. "To say nothing of allowing the Ellisons to own CNN and consolidate more power. Just disgusting supplication from Newsom."
Antitrust advocate Matt Stoller, however, expressed skepticism at the Journal's reporting on Newsom, if for no other reason than the California governor was unlikely to risk hurting his image among Democratic primary voters by pushing through an unpopular corporate merger.
"It would be an odd for Gavin Newsom to encourage the control of Hollywood by close allies of Donald Trump considering his 2028 ambitions," wrote Stoller. "He's not stupid."
Jul 31, 2026
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'See You in November': Progressives Welcome the Fight as AIPAC Plots Round Two Against El-Sayed
After setting over $30 million on fire in Michigan's Democratic US Senate primary, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is reportedly plotting round two against progressive epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed—this time seeking to boost his Republican general election opponent, Mike Rogers.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the pro-Israel lobbying organization, known as AIPAC, "has told allies that it is considering a major financial campaign to support the Republican Senate nominee in the Michigan general election this fall." AIPAC said publicly following El-Sayed's victory over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in Tuesday's primary that "our members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr. El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda in November."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who endorsed and campaigned for El-Sayed, wrote in response to AIPAC's post-election statement that she appreciates the group "proving it doesn't belong in the Dem Party and especially in our primaries."
"From endorsing Jan. 6th members to ensuring Congress remains in the hands of a 34-count felon, AIPAC is an org committed to undermining democracy at home and abroad," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media. "See you in November."
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) noted that "a big majority of Americans want the US government to stop sending American dollars to Israel's reckless regime and to end the war in Iran."
"Yet AIPAC is threatening to spend to deliver the Republicans a critical Senate seat in Michigan, helping a Trump stooge like Mike Rogers who will keep funding Netanyahu's wars and do nothing to stop Trump's Iran war," said Deluzio. "This is exactly why so many Democrats like me have rejected AIPAC."
AIPAC cash accounted for around half of all outside spending in the contest between El-Sayed and Stevens—the most expensive Democratic primary in American history.
But the organization and its affiliated groups appear to have plenty more resources to devote to the general election, the results of which could decide control of the US Senate next year.
The United Democracy Project (UDP), AIPAC's super PAC, had over $80 million in cash in hand at the end of June, according to federal filings.
AIPAC is UDP's primary funder, but the group has also received cash from right-wing billionaires such as hedge fund manager Paul Singer and businessman Haim Saban.
During a virtual town hall days before Tuesday's election, El-Sayed—a vocal opponent of US support for Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza—dared AIPAC to keep pouring its financial resources into Michigan's Senate race.
“AIPAC, if you’re listening, burn your money. Come back and burn it again in the general,” said El-Sayed. “I’m happy to burn your money for you, and then we can get on to the business of governing and asking whether or not our foreign policy ought to be dictated to us by the interests of a foreign government.”
Aug 06, 2026
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Warren Decries $1.4 Billion Cost of Trump's National Guard Deployment in DC
Information provided to Sen. Elizabeth Warren's office revealed that the deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC is projected to cost taxpayers an extra $1.4 billion through the end of President Donald Trump's term.
As The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, Warren (D-Mass.) obtained the cost estimate for the National Guard deployment from Jules Hurst III, who is Trump’s nominee to become the comptroller for the US Department of Defense.
Hurst's estimate assumes there will be roughly 2,500 National Guard personnel deployed in the city through January 2029, when Trump is constitutionally mandated to leave office.
The estimate imagines a drawdown from the current 4,600 National Guard members deployed in the nation's capital, many of whom were sent to the city to oversee security at the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
In a social media post, Warren slammed the Trump administration for continuing to spend money on deploying the National Guard in the capital while ignoring the economic pain being felt across the country.
"While American families are getting flattened by skyrocketing costs, Donald Trump is spending $1.4 billion to keep troops on the streets in Washington for years on end," wrote Warren. "The National Guard are not pawns, and taxpayer dollars are not a piggy bank for Trump’s political stunts."
Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) also pointed to the opportunity cost of the service members' deployment.
"Trump says there's no money for healthcare or childcare," wrote Brown, "but he wants to spend billions to have the National Guard roaming around DC."
The Free DC campaign, which was founded last year to oppose the National Guard deployment in the city, warned that the continued presence of military forces was an ominous sign for Trump's future intentions.
"Trump is entrenching his power," the group wrote. "This is what that looks like in real time. It's tempting to call this money 'a waste,' but Trump has a clear reason he wants to spend this money on the National Guard's presence in DC. When January 6 comes around again, this time he'll have an army on call."
Unite for Veterans, an advocacy organization focused on defending the US Department of Veterans Affairs, also condemned Trump's use of the National Guard as a domestic law enforcement group.
"Spending $1.4 billion on a deployment that shouldn't be is not spending taxpayer money wisely or is it serving the military well," the group wrote. "The National Guard should not be policing the streets of America's cities. That is not their purpose. Let's send them home."
Aug 04, 2026
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‘They Are Murder Victims,’ Sen. Tim Kaine Says of People Killed by Trump Boat Strikes
Sen. Tim Kaine on Monday accused the Trump administration of committing murder with its campaign of military strikes against purported drug trafficking vessels, which has killed at least 221 people since its launch in September 2025.
In a letter sent to President Donald Trump, Kaine (D-Va.) said that he reviewed classified notifications sent to Congress related to the boat strike campaign and concluded that the US "is engaged in violent and fatal attacks against people far beyond those" whom the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) said would be legitimate military targets.
Kaine didn't go into detail about the OLC's classified legal opinion justifying the strikes, but he said the evidence he has gathered suggests the US "has killed individuals who are not involved in narcotrafficking."
"They are murder victims," Kaine emphasized.
Kaine also pointed to a recent analysis conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration, first reported on by The Washington Post last month, which found that the boat strike campaign "has had no effect on the flow of illegal drugs into the United States."
Kaine concluded his letter by urging Trump to "closely examine the circumstances of these strikes, to ensure that you are personally aware of the extent to which the leadership of the Department of Defense has exceeded your July 2025 directive, incurring massive expense and operating with dubious legality, and with no progress towards your stated objective."
"And once you have done so," Kaine added, "I urge you to halt this illegal, costly, and ineffective operation."
Despite Kaine's warnings, there is little sign that the administration is rethinking its boat strike campaign.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) on Monday announced the formation of the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, a new command structure aimed specifically at combating international drug cartels.
Journalist Juan Esteban Silva described the announcement of the task force as "major shift" in US security strategy that is putting "Colombia and Venezuela... at the center of the conversation."
An analysis published by The Diplomatic Insight on Tuesday said the SOUTHCOM announcement "aligns with Trump administration’s anti-narcotics campaign under a permanent command structure with expanded geographic reach, part of what the administration has described as a 'maximum pressure' policy against transnational criminal networks in the hemisphere."
The analysis also noted that the new command structure replaces Joint Task Force Southern Spear, which has been responsible for carrying out boat strike operations in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Aug 04, 2026
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What Kind of Ceasefire Is This? UNICEF Says 300 Children Killed in Gaza Over 300 Days
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said one United Nations official.
Aug 06, 2026
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
That was one United Nations spokesperson's assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Thursday, which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported.
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised."
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with "painfully simple" and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.
Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: "When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?"
300 children gone in 300 days.
300 days of the ceasefire in #Gaza has seen at least 300 children killed.
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
- @UNICEF's Louise Wateridge pic.twitter.com/1rmJz3YExW
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) August 6, 2026
Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump's Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel's withdrawal from the exclave.
UN officials on Thursday expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.
"Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action," said Beigbeder.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Thursday that continued airstrikes have damaged civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and medical supplies.
UNICEF warned that children are continue to face acute malnutrition almost a year after Israel agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as suffering from disease and a lack of sanitation.
An attack on a medical storage facility next to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah last week destroyed supplies that had been delivered by the UN, said the World Health Organization.
The UN is working to help "exhausted and hungry mothers" arriving at health centers with their malnourished children, and are fighting to save newborns born prematurely or with health issues, with extremely limited resources.
“There’s not enough incubators and in some cases [health workers are] saying they see two or even three babies sharing a single machine,” said Wateridge. “In Gaza, children only days old are already fighting to stay alive, born into partially functioning hospitals lacking equipment and medicine. This is what the world has chosen to tolerate. The killing must stop, aid has to enter at scale and children must be protected.”
According to OCHA, at least 1,209 people have been killed and 3,943 have been injured since the ceasefire deal was reached last October.
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Sanders Proposal Would Mandate at Least Two Weeks of Paid Vacation for All Full-Time Workers
"Every worker in America deserves the chance to rest, recharge, and spend time with the people they love without worrying about missing a paycheck," said Rep. Seth Magaziner, a co-sponsor of the measure in the House.
Aug 06, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday reintroduced legislation that he said would end the "international embarrassment" of the US being one of the few countries in the world to not offer guaranteed paid vacation time for workers.
Sanders (I-Vt.)—who is co-sponsoring the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act along with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.)—said guaranteed vacation was essential for all American families.
"We hear a lot of talk about family values in America, but let’s be clear," Sanders said. "When a husband, wife, and kids, during the course of an entire year, are unable to spend any time together on vacation, that is not a family value. That is an attack on everything that a family is supposed to stand for."
"It’s not a radical idea to require companies in America to provide at least two weeks of paid vacation to their workers," Sanders added. "What’s radical is that millions of Americans are not only working longer hours for lower wages, but that they do not receive a single paid vacation day. That should not be happening in the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the world."
The legislation proposes giving every worker in the US the right to accrue at least one hour of paid annual leave for every 25 hours worked, with full-time workers earning at least two weeks of paid annual leave per year.
The bill would also prohibit employers from discriminating against workers who exercise their right to vacation.
Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI), who introduced a companion guaranteed paid vacation bill in the US House of Representatives, said the legislation was needed because "every worker in America deserves the chance to rest, recharge, and spend time with the people they love without worrying about missing a paycheck."
The legislation comes one day after the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released a report finding that "US workers get an average of 10 days per year of paid vacation time, far less than the legal minimum required in almost all comparable world economies."
CEPR also found that nearly a quarter of US workers get no vacation time at all, including 57% of the lowest-paid 10% of the US workforce.
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Rights Groups: Israel’s Killing of Journalist Amal Khalil ‘Must Be Investigated as a War Crime’
“Amal’s killing can’t be allowed to become yet another unresolved case of a journalist killed by Israeli forces with complete impunity,” said one campaigner demanding a probe into the Lebanese reporter's death.
Aug 06, 2026
An Amnesty International investigation published Thursday led human rights defenders in Lebanon and around the world to renew their calls for a war crimes probe into an Israeli attack that killed Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil and wounded a colleague earlier this year.
Khalil, a 42-year-old veteran correspondent for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and 21-year-old freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj were reporting in the southern Lebanese village of al-Tiri on April 22 when an IDF drone bombed what Amnesty said was a civilian vehicle traveling in front of them. A second strike then hit the journalists' car, wounding them.
As Khalil and Faraj sheltered in a nearby building, IDF drones hovered overhead for two hours before the structure was bombed, collapsing it. Lebanese Red Cross personnel coordinated access to the site with Israeli authorities, and once granted permission, rushed to the scene and pulled Faraj—who suffered a fractured skull, severe leg and eye injuries, and a crushed hand—from the rubble. But due to what they called threats of further attack while trying to save the mortally wounded Khalil, the Red Cross workers said they had to withdraw. Recovery operations were delayed for hours.
A medical examiner's report said that Khalil died of cardiac arrest due to head trauma and severe bleeding hours after rescuers were forced to leave her.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam at the time condemned that attack as "a clear-cut war crime."
The IDF contends that it declared the area where Khalil was killed off-limits and that it was targeting Hezbollah militants.
"The IDF does not target journalists in any way and works as much as possible to minimize harm that may befall them while maintaining the security of our forces," a spokesperson said.
However, dozens of journalists have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Lebanon, while the figure is in the hundreds in Gaza, where Israel is waging what Amnesty and many others say is a genocide in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. The IDF also attacked and invaded Lebanon—which it has repeatedly done before—to stop Hezbollah from firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Gaza.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Israel was the world's leading killer of journalists last year, while the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in February that Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all journalist deaths worldwide in 2025.
“The Israeli military says it does not target journalists, but the facts and evidence show that it has repeatedly done so. Amal Khalil and Zainab Faraj are the latest victims in a long series of such attacks,” Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Lebanon, said Thursday. “The evidence is clear that the Israeli military knew or should have known that Faraj and Khalil were civilians, but attacked them anyway, and then prevented paramedics from rescuing them for hours."
“Israeli forces’ continued killing of journalists shows a brazen willingness to commit atrocities without any fear of consequences," Kaiss added.
Amnesty argues that the IDF strike on the building where the journalists were sheltering, and the subsequent delay in allowing first responders to rescue them, should be investigated as a war crime.
“Amnesty International’s investigation paints a harrowing picture of a direct attack on two civilians while they had sought refuge from Israeli attacks," Amnesty Middle East and North Africa regional director Heba Morayef said Thursday in a statement.
"After the first strike had eliminated the military-stated target, and with two drones flying low overhead, the Israeli military knew or should have known that two civilian women were sheltering in that building," she continued. "Despite this, they proceeded with what we have reasonable grounds to believe amounted to a direct attack on civilians, demonstrating a shocking disregard for international humanitarian law (IHL)."
“The fact that the two journalists were in what Israel has designated a no-return zone does not make them lawful targets," Morayef added. "All parties to a conflict have a clear obligation to distinguish between civilians and military targets at all times and to direct their attacks only at military objectives. There can be no justification for targeting civilians who sought shelter in search of safety. This attack must be promptly, independently, and impartially investigated as a war crime.”
CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said Thursday that “Amnesty International’s findings paint, yet again, a deeply disturbing picture of a systemic failure of legal mechanisms designed precisely to protect civilians—including journalists.”
“Amal’s killing can’t be allowed to become yet another unresolved case of a journalist killed by Israeli forces with complete impunity,” Qudah stressed. "This repeated failure to conduct transparent investigations into attacks on journalists has reinforced a climate of impunity and hollowed out the protections granted to the press under IHL."
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Corporate-Funded Third Way Plans to Spend $15 Million Waging 'War' on Progressives
"Instead of going to war against the left, why not attract votes by going to war against insurance companies gouging patients, against employers busting unions, or against polluters?" said one critic.
Aug 06, 2026
Abdul El-Sayed's victory in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan this week was just the latest example of an insurgent progressive challenger defeating candidates backed by the Democratic establishment.
The establishment, however, is vowing to not go down without a fight.
In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Jonathan Cowan, the president of the corporate-funded group Third Way, revealed plans for a $15 million campaign to counter the influence of organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which he described as a "mortal danger" to the Democratic Party.
"We are preparing for the next war that is coming," said Cowan, who added that "it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states."
The Times report noted, however, that big moneyed interests, most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), spent tens of millions of dollars attacking El-Sayed, who nonetheless emerged triumphant in the race.
Some critics fired back at Third Way, noting that the group only appeared interested in attacking progressives rather than promoting a positive agenda to improve people's lives.
Maurice Mitchell, the director of the Working Families Party, told the Times that groups such as Third Way are "missing a point of view" and are not seeing the "populist insurgency taking place in this country."
Mitchell was far from alone in criticizing the group's plans.
Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America, remarked in a social media post that Third Way's $15 million investment would be better spent "building a movement and coming up with a vision that actually excites voters."
Favreau's comments were echoed by journalist Nathan Newman.
"Have moderates thought about presenting compelling policies more appealing to voters?" Newman asked. "Instead of going to war against the left, why not attract votes by going to war against insurance companies gouging patients, against employers busting unions, or against polluters?"
Even some critics more in line with Third Way's politics expressed skepticism of its proposed campaign.
Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance, a book that critiqued progressive governance, argued that Third Way's efforts would only reinforce progressives' narratives about big moneyed interests trying to squash a grassroots rebellion against the status quo.
"People should do what they want with their money but moderate Democrats' deficits relate to candidates, messaging, organizing, and enthusiasm... not money," said Thompson. "Plus, I hope people see the risk in a headline about moderates raising millions of dollars to attack a popular left insurgency that attracts support in part... by representing themselves as a bulwark against moneyed interests."
New York University School of Law professor Chris Sprigman was similarly dismissive of the Third Way campaign, predicting that "centrists [are] likely to be no more effective against their own democratic left than they’ve been against the authoritarian right."
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, argued that Third Way and other neoliberal organizations needed to look in the mirror when it comes to placing blame for the current state of US politics.
"The reason we are in this mess is because the biggest risk we face is market fundamentalism," Owens wrote. "That's what broke the country and voters know it. That's why they are turning against Third Way corporate Dem-style candidates. That’s the thing to fix."
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Khanna Introduces 'Data Center Bill of Rights' For Communities Seeking to Oppose Them
The congressman from Silicon Valley said his resolution aims to give communities "the right to oppose data centers instead of having them shoved down their throats by state governments."
Aug 06, 2026
The congressman from Silicon Valley, Rep. Ro Khanna, is introducing one of the first comprehensive federal frameworks to give seething communities the right to fight back against Big Tech and its breakneck expansion of artificial intelligence data centers.
Khanna (D-Calif.), who announced the plan on Thursday, referred to it as a "Data Center Bill of Rights" and said it will aim to give communities "the right to oppose data centers instead of having them shoved down their throats by state governments."
Opposition to data centers has become a central plank in some progressive campaigns that have seen success in recent months, most recently the Democratic primary victories of Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and House candidate William Lawrence in Michigan.
They and other candidates have called for moratoriums on the construction of these facilities, which have come with soaring utility costs, dwindling water supplies, and pollution.
A nonbinding resolution introduced by Khanna earlier this week emphasized that developers have often made deals with state and local governments under a shroud of secrecy, with nondisclosure agreements that hide information about the ownership and potential costs of data centers until it's too late for the public to fight back.
Among other provisions, the resolution calls for Congress to give communities the right to:
- Ban the construction of data centers within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, childcare facilities, hospitals, or nursing homes;
- Reject any proposed data center through a transparent community process;
- Prohibit or regulate data centers without being overridden by the state government;
- Receive independent assessments on a center’s electricity and water demands, pollution dangers, and potential effects on utility bills, rents, and housing availability;
- Demand that centers do not raise electricity rates for households and businesses; and
- Require that data center owners pay their fair share of taxes and that any exemptions come with strong labor standards and transparency.
Khanna's proposal comes as he says the developers seeking to hyperscale data center development are "losing the country."
A Gallup poll from May found that more than 7 in 10 Americans would either somewhat or strongly oppose the construction of a data center near them.
And while the Trump administration has pushed hard for rapid development, opposition is bipartisan. Three-quarters of Democrats say they don't want the facilities in their communities, but so do nearly two-thirds of Republicans.
Khanna's resolution is one of many legislative pushes by Democrats on Capitol Hill to regulate data centers, an issue on which they are eager to build credibility ahead of this November's midterms.
Also on Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, proposed an excise tax on data centers and to stop them from benefiting from tax-advantaged "opportunity zones," which Republicans extended last year.
Other proposals have gone further than Khanna's. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced legislation earlier this year for a nationwide moratorium on new data centers until national safeguards can be put in place.
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Human-Caused Climate Emergency Made Canada's Summer Wildfires Twice as Likely: Study
"Time and again we see the same results: Climate change is a key driver behind uncontrollably large and unprecedented fires."
Aug 06, 2026
Committed to climate denial, President Donald Trump has insisted in recent weeks that hundreds of wildfires currently burning across Canada are the result of the country's mismanagement of its vast boreal forests—but scientists confirmed in a study out Thursday that "human-induced climate change" made the fires twice as likely.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA), a consortium of scientists who study how planetary heating and the climate emergency fuel extreme weather, examined the weather conditions connected to fast-spreading fires, including extreme heat, drought conditions, humidity, and wind.
They measured the Canadian index for those conditions and then compared the country's current weather patterns to a world without the 1.4°C of warming that has occurred since humans began burning fossil fuels.
"The weeklong weather conditions that led to the fires in Ontario are now the type that can happen every six years or so," WWA reported.
In the Northwest Territories, where more than 5,000 square miles of forest burned, sending smoke drifting thousands of miles into the continental United States, WWA noted that lightning initially caused the fire, "but it was the climate conditions that took that initial ignition and made the fire burn intensely and spread too fast to control."
Theodore Keeping, a member of WWA and a weather expert at Imperial College London, told The Guardian that "adaptation alone is not enough. We need to rapidly move away from fossil fuels to avoid events like this becoming even more of a reality.”
“Smoke does not carry a passport, but carbon pollution does have a history. President Trump is pointing at the smoke while ignoring America's fingerprints on the climate conditions behind it.”
The weather conditions that dry out vegetation and make them more prone to catching fire are now expected to occur every 2-6 years in the Northwest Territories.
"If humanity hadn’t overheated the planet by burning coal, oil, and gas, the scientists determined, such extreme fire conditions would occur less than once every 40 years," said WWA.
The study was released as a new wildfire in the Vancouver area broke out, prompting air quality warnings and evacuations.
Wildfire smoke contains significant amounts of particulate matter (PM2.5), which can lodge itself in human lung cells and enter the bloodstream.
Trump asserted last month regarding Canada, "If they managed their forests, they wouldn’t have the fires.”
But Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, who was not part of the WWA study, told ABC News that forest management and prevention efforts can only go so far in a country where much of the boreal forest is remote and hard to access.
“In Canada, when things are extreme, you have about a 30-minute window to put that fire out,” Flannigan said. "If you don't get there in 30 minutes, you're out of luck. And many of the fires that start in Canada are northern remote areas that are more than 30 minutes away from an airport. So even with perfect detection systems, we would get there too late and these fires are going to burn.''
By continuing to burn fossil fuels, Flannigan added, “we're putting nails in our coffins."
The study comes days after Trump's Interior Department moved to further expand offshore drilling by proposing weakened protections for drilling in the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf, and as his push for artificial intelligence data centers has sent the demand for natural gas soaring. He has also accelerated approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals.
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at University of Victoria in British Columbia, noted that in addition to Trump's push for more fossil fuel extraction, the US has caused more carbon pollution than any other country in history.
“Smoke does not carry a passport, but carbon pollution does have a history," Weaver told ABC News. “President Trump is pointing at the smoke while ignoring America's fingerprints on the climate conditions behind it.”
WWA also found recently that wildfires in Spain this summer were made 20 times more likely by the climate emergency.
“What is going to be next?” Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and a co-author of the study, said to The Guardian. “Time and again we see the same results: Climate change is a key driver behind uncontrollably large and unprecedented fires. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The science has been clear for decades: Burning fossil fuels is making these wildfires more frequent, more intense, and more difficult to contain.”
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'A Fake and Fraudulent Watchdog': Trump Installs Project 2025 Author at Interior IG Office
"He fired the real watchdogs, tried to gut their budgets, and now he's stuffing his own political operatives into the offices built to investigate his administration’s wrongdoing."
Aug 06, 2026
The Trump administration has reportedly installed an author of the far-right Project 2025 agenda inside the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General as the watchdog is facing growing calls to investigate alleged corruption by top agency officials.
Dennis Kirk worked in the White House budget office during Trump's first term and co-authored a Project 2025 chapter that recommended sweeping action to "decentralize and privatize" the federal government "as much as possible." Last year, Kirk was placed inside the office of the inspector general of the US intelligence community, drawing alarm.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement on Wednesday that Kirk's reported appointment to a role inside the Interior Department IG office "is a fraud on the office and a fraud on the American people."
“Dennis Kirk is a fake and fraudulent watchdog," said Huffman. "Everyone should have their eyes wide open. Each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump. This man helped write the Project 2025 playbook for seizing control of the federal workforce. Now he sits inside the office charged with rooting out corruption at Interior, the department that manages our national parks, public lands, Tribal programs, and now, under Trump, gold-slathered statues and a botched Reflecting Pool renovation."
The current acting head of the Interior Department's IG office is Caryl Brzymialkiewicz, who ascended to the role after Trump fired the previous watchdog, Mark Greenblatt, in January 2025 as part of a broader purge.
Greenblatt said in a statement posted to his website earlier this week that reports of Kirk's installation at the Interior IG office "should concern anyone who values independent government oversight."
"Placing someone with that background inside an inspector general's office raises serious questions about the independence of one of the federal government's most important accountability institutions," said Greenblatt. "Unfortunately, this development does not stand alone. It follows a series of actions—including the dismissal of inspectors general, proposed budget reductions, and efforts to redefine the role of inspectors general themselves—that have steadily eroded confidence in independent oversight across the federal government."
In a statement to the investigative outlet Public Domain, a spokesperson for the Interior Department Office of Inspector General said that "we do not have a comment on this matter, which relates to personnel issues."
The IG office is currently under pressure from Democratic lawmakers and outside advocacy organizations to investigate various issues at the department headed by Doug Burgum, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry. Earlier this year, Huffman called for an IG probe of Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen "for potential conflicts of interest, ethics violations, and self-dealing related to her family's multi-million-dollar financial stake in a Nevada lithium mine."
In late June, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington alleged that the Interior Department "may have run afoul of federal contracting and ethics laws when it awarded contracts for renovations of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and maintenance on Lafayette Park fountains to Trump associates, without seeking bids through the typical full and open competition requirements for government contracts."
Huffman said Wednesday that "it’s no surprise the White House suddenly wants its own man inside the one place that Trump's cronies still have reason to fear."
“Trump is running the most corrupt presidency in American history, and he's working overtime to make sure no one is left to hold him accountable," said Huffman. "He fired the real watchdogs, tried to gut their budgets, and now he's stuffing his own political operatives into the offices built to investigate his administration’s wrongdoing."
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'Bay of Pigs Reloaded': New CIA Task Force to Further Destabilize Cuba Revealed
The revelation comes as the State Department "has been on a full-throttle media blitz," noted one writer, "painting Cuba as an espionage superpower and a threat to US national security."
Aug 05, 2026
After months of President Donald Trump threatening a US takeover of Cuba and ramping up a decadeslong economic assault of the island, The New York Times revealed Wednesday that the Central Intelligence Agency created a related task force, "setting in motion plans for a more concerted campaign to pressure the Cuban government to make the economic, political, and leadership changes."
"In 1960, the CIA established an earlier Cuba task force, whose members oversaw the failed, agency-backed invasion of Cuba the next year known as the Bay of Pigs," the newspaper noted. "The people briefed on the new task force said its mandate is more limited: to create fissures among the Cuban political elite, in hope of pressuring the Cubans to replace perceived anti-American hard-liners with more practical leaders more amenable to Mr. Trump's demands."
Despite the anonymous sources' claims about the differences from over a half-century ago, Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who wrote multiple books about former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, simply responded, "Bay of Pigs reloaded."
The Times article—on which the CIA declined to comment—came a day after Politico reported that "the US has increased its intelligence assets in Cuba in recent months as it pushes the country's communist regime to reform or fall from power, according to two people familiar with the Trump administration's plans for the island."
The agency also declined to comment on Politico's piece, which pointed out that "US military operations are often preceded by increased American intelligence activity. CIA efforts to track the whereabouts of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro reportedly played a critical role this January in the successful US operation to capture him."
Sharing Politico's coverage on social media, Andrés Pertierra, a Cuba historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that it is "hard to say at this point to what degree this is theater aimed at rattling the cage in Havana or performing strength to Miami, on the one hand, or some kind of prelude to an actual escalation, on the other, given recent months of warnings of escalation that went nowhere."
Enrique "Ric" Prado, a Cuban exile who served in various posts at the CIA, "is convinced that Washington is preparing a definitive blow against the island regime," El País reported early Wednesday. He predicted, "Cuba is the next apple to fall from the tree."
This week's reporting followed the July release of a "McCarthyite" US Department of State document that was widely decried as an "attack on Americans' constitutional rights to free speech and assembly," as well as an attempt to justify an invasion of Cuba, where the Trump administration has fueled a humanitarian crisis.
"For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States," the department's report begins, "that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history."
Promoting the publication on social media, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island—claimed his department was "exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country."
During a Sunday interview with Fox News host Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, Rubio repeated claims from the report and called the island nation, about 90 miles south of Florida and home to roughly 10 million people, "an influence and espionage superpower." His comments drew criticism from Democrats in Congress, the Cuban foreign minister, and other experts.
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Trump's $275 Billion Battleship Fleet Set to Be 'Most Expensive US Warships Ever'
"At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, gas, healthcare, and childcare, Congress cannot throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet,’" said one Democratic senator.
Aug 05, 2026
The Trump administration's controversial plan to build a new "Golden Fleet" of guided-missile battleships is drawing mounting criticism from budget watchdogs, defense analysts, and Democratic lawmakers, who warn the proposal would put taxpayers on the hook for what could be the costliest naval procurement in US history.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Wednesday said the cost to build 15 Trump-class nuclear-powered battleships is approximately $275 billion in current dollars through 2056—roughly 50% more than a previous estimate.
"Under the 2027 shipbuilding plan, compared with the 2025 plan, the Navy would purchase substantially more large surface combatants," the CBO said. "The average annual amount of funding needed to buy surface combatants would rise by slightly more than two-thirds, from about $11 billion to $19 billion."
"By 2035, the Navy's 2027 plan would more than double the tonnage of large surface combatants that shipbuilders would need to produce," the office added. "Overall, the tonnage of large surface combatants to be constructed would need to increase by 60%, while the tonnage of small surface combatants would decrease by about 40%. Accommodating such a sizable increase in the production of large surface combatants could be a challenge for the shipbuilding industry."
One journalist noted that the Trump-class battleships' cost would make them "the most expensive US warships ever produced."
President Donald Trump claimed in December that his proposed Golden Fleet would "help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry, and inspire fear in America’s enemies all over the world."
The president explicitly linked his desire to revive battleships—which were last built in the US in 1944 and were all decommissioned by the early 1990s—to his affinity for the 1950s television documentary series "Victory at Sea."
Critics say the program will inflate already historically high military budgets while diverting hundreds of billions of dollars that would be better spent on underfunded social programs.
"At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, gas, healthcare, and childcare, Congress cannot throw hundreds of billions of dollars at Trump’s ‘Golden Fleet,’ including plastering his name across a new battleship," Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said Wednesday in response to the CBO analysis.
"Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex."
"Just like Trump’s ‘Golden Dome,’ the ‘Golden Fleet’ is expected to cost much more than previously estimated," he continued, referring to the president's proposed missile defense system that Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) derided as a "dangerous $1.2 trillion boondoggle."
“While we continue to see too many Pentagon programs burdened by cost overruns, delays, and unrealistic promises that fail to meet reality, Congress cannot afford to commit to another massive military boondoggle that will only succeed in filling the coffers of the military-industrial complex," Merkley added. "I will work with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to reject moving forward with this wasteful project, and instead invest in programs that help families thrive."
In addition to cost, military experts and others noted the obsolescence of battleships—which are now all scrapped or museum pieces—and the fact that they make great big targets.
Among the most outspoken critics of the Golden Fleet is Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who has argued that the ships represent a throwback to outdated naval warfare doctrine.
Rather than concentrating enormous combat power in a handful of exceptionally expensive vessels, Cancian has said the Navy's own operational concepts increasingly emphasize "distributed maritime operations," the spreading of offensive capabilities across larger numbers of smaller, networked ships that are harder for adversaries to target.
Bernard Loo, a senior fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, was even more blunt in a December CBNC interview, calling the proposed Trump-class ships "bomb magnets."
“The size and the prestige value of it all make it an even more tempting target," Loo added.
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Senate Panel Advances Kids Online Safety Package Despite Civil Liberties Concerns
Critics like Fight for the Future fear that "these bills would allow Trump's FTC to wipe abortion, sex ed, and LGBTQ resources off the internet while instating nationwide age verification requirements."
Aug 05, 2026
The US Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday advanced a package of bills intended to protect children online, despite free speech and privacy concerns long raised by civil liberties groups about such proposals, particularly those that require or urge websites to implement age verification systems.
The panel moved forward the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)—versions of which have been considered in Congress for years—as well as the Children's Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act; the Children's Health, Advancement, Trust, Boundaries, and Oversight in Technology (CHATBOT) Act; and the Youth AI Privacy Act
Some advocacy groups welcomed the development, with Fairplay executive director Josh Golin saying that "the Senate version of KOSA is the most protective, popular, and bipartisan of all children's online safety legislation under consideration. It would be the most important new law to protect kids online in nearly 30 years."
"We are also pleased to see the committee advance both the Youth AI Privacy Act and the CHATBOT Act," Golin continued. "The danger AI chatbots pose to children and teens is a growing crisis. These bills would add deeply needed protections to help mitigate chatbot harms, including strong default settings for long-term memory use, a ban on advertising to minors through a chatbot, a ban on using the data of minors to train AI models, and prohibitions on features that cause compulsive use."
The committee did not advance the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act, which would require pornography websites to verify users' ages so they can block minors, because low attendance led to a failure to meet quorum.
Ahead of the bill markup, the Center for Democracy & Technology wrote to committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to raise alarm about KOSA, the CHATBOT Act, and the SCREEN Act, while acknowledging that the Youth AI Privacy Act "would create important safeguards for the use of minors' data by generative AI services."
The group also stressed that "enacting comprehensive consumer privacy legislation that meaningfully realigns consumer expectations and incentives for online business models is the best path forward to protecting children and everyone online and to addressing root causes of harms related to minors’ activities on social media, generative AI models, and other internet-enabled services."
CDT supports tackling the data practices that put young people at risk. But proposals that encourage age verification or restrict access to lawful content risk undermining privacy and constitutional rights. Read our letter:
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— Center for Democracy & Technology (@cdt.org) August 5, 2026 at 12:09 PM
The Senate action came after a bipartisan vote by the House of Representatives in June to pass the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, which "took portions from 14 digital safety bills—including the SCREEN Act," as The Hill reported Wednesday. "The House's version of KOSA eliminated a 'duty of care' provision that is a redline for the Senate's co-authors, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who called the package 'dead on arrival' in the Senate last month."
"The provision would have legally required platforms to 'exercise reasonable care' to prevent harms to minors. Harms include eating disorders, suicide, substance use disorders, and sexual exploitation," the outlet detailed. "The KIDS Act faces long odds in the Senate as a result, making Cruz's decision to take up some of the bills individually instead not surprising."
Earlier this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that "the Senate should reject KOSA's privacy risks," emphasizing that the duty of care obligations included in the upper chamber's version "only work if online services know which users are minors. That means more platforms will be pressured to implement age verification or age estimation systems."
Ahead of the House vote earlier this year, the ACLU's Jenna Leventoff and Christopher Anders similarly noted that "KOSA, although purporting not to require age verification, would nevertheless strongly incentivize it."
The ACLU experts warned that age verification will "severely jeopardize user privacy by turning droves of information over to platforms" and "threatens the First Amendment rights of adults," who may not be able "to verify their ages (because they lack valid identification, face technological difficulties, or lack digital skills), or can but "might still be reluctant to access information online over a fear that a data breach could lead to the disclosure of sensitive information contained within their browsing history."
After the Senate votes on Wednesday, Leventoff reiterated: "Bills that incentivize or require age verification promise safety, but all they deliver is a future where everyone has to undergo invasive identity verification measures that will almost certainly put their sensitive data at risk. We shouldn't need to fork over our IDs, biometrics, or personal information to access the internet, but that's exactly what will happen if these bills become law."
"When the data used to verify a users' age is combined with other commercially available data," she warned, "it can enable adversarial nations to track and attack troops, allow stalkers to locate their victims, and allow scammers to target those who will be most susceptible to their schemes."
Together, these bills would allow Trump’s FTC to wipe abortion, sex ed, & LGBTQ resources off the Internet while instating nationwide age verification requirements. This could mean scanning your face or sending in your government ID just to post on Bluesky! ❌Take action: fftf.link/bib
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— Fight for the Future (@fightforthefuture.org) August 4, 2026 at 12:09 PM
Fight for the Future also called out the Senate panel on Wednesday, with campaign director Sarah Philips saying that "Congress is once again doing political theater instead of actually meaningfully regulating the business model of Big Tech companies."
"The Senate Commerce Committee is rushing out bad internet bills so they can go out and campaign on them even knowing they are doomed to failure, either because they will be rejected by the House or overturned by the courts for being unconstitutional," Philips said. "Young people have been calling and emailing Congress on this issue for years, and have been rallying around the world against proposals to fence them off from the internet for a reason. They can see through these efforts. They know more censorship and surveillance, more data collection for companies, and all of us having to turn over ID in order to interact online is not safety."
"We've had hearing after hearing on this issue for the last few years instead of actually moving against the tide of tech corporate power that is making our future unlivable and exploiting our data for profit," Philips added. "We want to protect kids, but we want those proposals to actually do the work, instead of just making an easy headline for congressional leadership. Anyone in Congress still pushing censorship and surveillance bills under the facade of kids safety has failed us, especially members that claim to support trans kids and every community currently being attacked by the Trump administration."
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