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Make It Shitty, Vengeful, Inept and Untrue
The devastation goes on apace at the teeny toxic hands of the clowns and hacks in power (maybe not much longer?). Topping the abuses: An assault by Homeland Security (sic) thugs on the home of a duly elected (albeit female, brown, Muslim) member of Congress for imaginary crimes as a child. Also: racist rallies, fake rumors, defying of court orders, calamitous fails on all sides. Their witless leader: "If Republicans get in power, you're going to (have) a depression. These people are incompetent."
In 2022, Cory Doctorow helpfully wrote Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It. At the time, it was an analysis of how the Internet went wrong, a sort of "Big Tech disassembly manual" aimed at curbing powerful people from making transactional, short-term, self-serving policy choices ultimately bad for everyone but themselves. Alas, since the return of Trump 2, many argue the same dismal process of enshittification has oozed and expanded outwards to become "the organizing principle of US statecraft" itself, rendering pretty much everything in the public sphere....shitty.
Trump and his cabal of low-lifes daily ensure we get ample evidence of that dark reality. Their latest target: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), the first Somali-American lawmaker, one of the first two Muslim women in Congress, the most visible refugee in American politics and Trump's worst nightmare who has long endured the most venomous of his abuses, which is going some. After four childhood years spent in a Kenya refugee camp, she came to the U.S. at 12, was reportedly 17 when her late father filed their immigration paperwork, was sworn into Congress at 36, and will now likely see easy re-election in the mid-terms.
For those crimes, she's been relentlessly bullied, threatened and assailed by a racist buffoon who has sneered she's "garbage," "totally crooked" and a "terrible person" who married her brother, came from "a non-country - all they have is crime and squalor," and should be sent back there, a notion his audience of bigots and cretins embraced this weekend at another Nazi rally where they mindlessly screamed, "Deport!" This, after Trump intoned "they are looking at her very carefully" after a judge signed a piece of paper allowing DHS goons to raid her home in the dubious name of unclear charges of vague unproven offenses.
The raid, which defies longtime DOJ policy banning major actions just before an election - "Another hard norm out the window" - was foreshadowed by racist story creator J.D. burbling it "seems like something's fishy there“ as he and Goebbels worked to decide, "How do you go after her (to) get some justice for the American people?” What a crock. A steely Omar responded to their clumsy "fascism in the extreme" by calling it "just the latest escalation" in ten years of Trump's "baseless lies and smear campaigns." “I will not be silenced,” she concluded, which reportedly "translates from Congressional-speak as 'Fuck You.'"
Trump, meanwhile, lumbers on, learning nothing. At a rally in Ohio that drew a paltry few thousand - with empty seats hidden by tarps and flags - he fittingly marked Columbus Day with more racist crap. He celebrated Haitians losing their legal status, insisted "I was right" about Springfield residents eating pets, called Somalis in Minnesota "low-IQ people," attacked Omar, from "the worst country," for claiming constitutional rights. (More "Deport!" chants. Jesus.) He also admired Jon Husted's ass - "I don't do this with men very often" - and urged on fans beating up a protester he called "fat," "paid," and "scum." (Pot/kettle.)
And he still keeps losing in court. Hungry to turn a public, affordable D.C. golf course where he dumped East Wing debris into a private fat cat resort, he tried to pull a fast one - filing a Friday 5 p.m. request, then razing 430 trees the next morning - on a judge who furiously blasted the “inexcusable," "preposterous" action, ripped him a new one - "In what universe did anyone in your office think this was acceptable?" - slapped him with a restraining order, and warned if they violated the order "by two seconds" they'd face contempt charges. "We did our best,” whined regime lawyers. "No," she snapped. "You did your absolute worst.”
So it goes. Another judge again blocked - past Election Day - the ludicrous, $20-million, taxpayer-funded, "educational and unapologetically patriotic" propaganda ads she banned once; in another end run, regime weasels moved them to YouTube. One ad portrays the desperate fragile snowflake as a lion who has to "show the jackals who he is." Another declares, "God made Trump...somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild...who goes into the den of vipers, cares for the flock (and) won't ever forsake them," especially if they accept his $5,000 bribe.
Implausibly, his lackeys are just as lame and awful. Despite facing a scarcity of agents and funds, FBI head (sic) Kash Patel has been boasting of his supposed crackdown on violent crime, claiming the arrest of over 54,000 violent criminals, or 90% more than in the Biden era. Less than shockingly, his numbers turn out to be wildly inflated by including arrests by state and local police and other federal agencies where an FBI agent may have happened to be present. In fact, actual numbers show FBI arrests are down at least 15% from previous years, though at least they're busy harassing Trump's personal enemies.
There's more macho bullshit from aspiring warrior Pete Kegsbreath, fresh from his Arsenal of Freedom Tour (really). Speaking at an annual Army meeting on a panel of warmongers eager to expand the use of unmanned drones to make death-dealing even easier, Pete was repeatedly interrupted by protesters calling him a "coward" and "Nazi.” "The world fucking hates you. You're a fucking war criminal," yelled one. "We’ll see you at the goddamn Hague." Pete grew increasingly irritated; maybe he'd read reports that, despite their brave boat strikes, record supplies of cocaine still arrive here, "cheaper and purer than they've been in decades."
Other MAGA flops abound. When James Talarico took a week off the campaign with the flu, conspiracy crackpots decided it was a cover for a mental health crisis. Spencer Platt's crude take: “This isn’t a case of the ‘flu’, it's 'one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” The "silly season" claim fell apart so fast even right-wingers were embarrassed. "This is such shit work, bro," wrote one, wondering if Talarico would sue. There was also the cringey fall of Kimberley 'The best is yet to come!' Guilfoyle, and Trump's brazen distancing - "She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago” - despite the surfacing of damning partying video on Jan. 6.
And the rise of new Press Barbie Katie Zacharia, former Pizzagate and QAnon fan, whose debut - so bad "a Zacharia may replace a Scaramucci as a time measurement" - was summed up by The Atlantic : "Hi, I'm Your New Press Secretary, and It's My First Time Reading Words Out Loud...I swear I have seen a sentence before, and I know where one stops and. Starts. And whether? To speak. With a rising inflection?" Now there are reports the self-described lawyer isn't one; a complaint has been filed with the California Bar for “the Unauthorized Practice of Law," and one account says she took the bar but failed it.
Fail fail fail: Thy name is MAGA. Perhaps we should be grateful; unimaginably, the current clusterfuck could be worse with competence. Take the Defending Main Street Super PAC, "the most effective independent expenditure organization for the GOP," which just spent tens of thousands of dollars to run a million 30-second ads arguing, “Maine can’t afford Troy Jackson and all his taxes" in the wrong Portland - Oregon, not Maine, over 3,000 miles off-base. One Maine operative: "At least now Portland, Oregon, can enjoy some of the crap we’ve been seeing every day.” MAGA's mantra: Make it shitty. Ours: Make it stop.
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Oct 15, 2026
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200+ Groups Call on Lawmakers to Oppose Permitting Reform That Would Gut Endangered Species Act
More than 200 environmental groups are calling on US lawmakers to halt a bipartisan permitting reform bill they say would gut protections for endangered species.
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026—introduced last week by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Mike Lee (R-Utah)—is aimed at speeding up the federal permitting process to accelerate clean energy and infrastructure development.
One way the bill does this is by shortening permitting and environmental consultation timelines, including reviews under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, which are meant to ensure government-approved projects don't jeopardize endangered species or their habitats.
The 215 signatories of a letter sent Tuesday—which include the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, WildEarth Guardians, the Western Environmental Law Center, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare—said that the bill includes “sweeping attacks on the Endangered Species Act."
If passed, the groups said, it would raise the evidentiary bar under the law's “best available science” mandate, making it much harder to protect species when the science is less than 100% settled.
It would also allow states—many of which do not recognize the same protections as the federal Endangered Species Act—to take over Section 7 consultations currently handled by federal wildlife authorities.
"What happens when Utah, which does not protect insects under state law, must complete a consultation on the Silverspot butterfly?" the groups asked. "It is unconscionable that this Senate would condemn endangered species to extinction by handing over authority to states that have fought federal protections and lack even the most basic legal and institutional safeguards."
The groups said the bill's most "insidious" feature was that it would redirect all Section 7 challenges away from district courts and into the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which they warned would "result in significantly more backlog, strained judicial capacity, and make meaningful review far more difficult."
The Democrats who have supported the bill have argued for its environmental benefits, including that it will speed up permitting for clean energy projects, including wind and solar, as well as transmission lines to rapidly deliver the energy they produce.
“If we can pass this bill, we will flood the grid with clean, affordable energy," Whitehouse said as he announced it last week.
But the environmental coalition said this should not come at the expense of protecting vulnerable species and warned that it would also be used to speed up permitting for energy sources that pollute the environment.
“We don’t have to choose between protecting our most endangered animals and plants and building a clean energy future," said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Hollowing out the Endangered Species Act only benefits energy-hungry data centers and the fossil fuel industry while leaving monarchs, manatees, and countless other species to pay the ultimate price.”
Oct 06, 2026
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Up to 12 Million Americans Have Lost Health Coverage During Trump’s Second Term: Analysis
Independent healthcare analyst Charles Gaba on Thursday published an updated analysis estimating that up to 12 million Americans have lost their insurance coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's second term.
Gaba based his new estimate on updated data he compiled from recent reports for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), as well as some state enrollment data for Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance exchanges.
In total, Gaba found that enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP has dropped by 6.2 million people since the start of Trump's second term, while enrollment in ACA exchanges is down by anywhere from 4.6 million to 6.1 million people, and enrollment in Basic Health Plans (BHP) is down by nearly 275,000 people over the same period.
While there are around 1.8 million more people enrolled in Medicare now than there were at the start of Trump's term, Gaba noted that this isn't nearly enough to make up for the loss of enrollment in other programs.
Adding everything up, Gaba estimated that "between 10.88 million and 12.40 million fewer Americans enrolled in a public healthcare coverage program as of June 2026 than in were as of January 2025."
As in prior analyses, Gaba examined the possibility that some of the people who lost coverage through these programs transitioned to employer-sponsored insurance, but deemed it "extremely unlikely... since unemployment is higher than it was in January 2025."
Over the last two years, Trump and congressional Republicans have taken a number of actions that have made healthcare less affordable and pushed people off coverage.
First, they cut spending on Medicaid by an estimated $900 billion over a 10-year period when they enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office projects these cuts will leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.
GOP lawmakers last year also refused to extend enhanced subsidies for insurance plans purchased through the ACA, even as insurers raised premiums on those plans by an average of 26% this year, according to an analysis published by KFF.
In a Thursday article published by Time, scholars Neale Mahoney and Abigail Sanchez of the Stanford Institute for Economic Research warned that the costs of private health insurance are set to spike even further in 2027.
"Employer health plan costs are projected to rise 8 to 10% next year," Mahoney and Sanchez explained, "the largest increase in more than 20 years and double the average increase of the 2010s."
The two researchers said there are three major reasons for the surge in insurance costs: The expiration of the enhanced ACA subsidies, an increase in premiums and out-of-pocket costs for employer-based insurance plans, and the upcoming Medicaid work requirements projected to push millions of people off the program.
Oct 09, 2026
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Lula Celebrates End of Brazil's 6-Day Work Week, Fulfilling Key Pledge Ahead of Election
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva celebrated on Wednesday night after Brazil's legislature overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to end the country's six-day work week.
Under the amendment, which Lula has made a central plank of his reelection campaign, the work week will be shortened to 40 hours without a salary cut.
The amendment is projected to give an extra day off to millions of workers who previously had to work for six days under the old 44-hour work week.
In a Wednesday social media post, Lula celebrated the amendment's passage as "an historic achievement for millions of workers."
The Brazilian president said the shorter work week will mean "more time to live, rest, be with family, be with children as they grow, take care of yourself, and enjoy life."
"Those who work so hard to build Brazil also deserve having time to live," Lula added.
Polls show that Lula is currently locked in a tight race against rival Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is still serving a criminal sentence for efforts to instigate a coup after his loss in the 2022 election.
According to a Wednesday report in The Guardian, the shortened work week could give Lula a boost among key demographics ahead of the October 25 presidential runoff.
Specifically, The Guardian noted that "the change is expected to affect mainly workers in retail, restaurants, and hotels," which were "one of the groups which Lula lost the most support from since the 2022 election, when he defeated Jair Bolsonaro."
Victor Escobar, a researcher at the Laboratory of Parties, Elections, and Comparative Politics, told The Guardian that the amendment's passage "could indeed benefit Lula’s reelection campaign."
Polls show that ending the six-day work week is overwhelmingly popular with Brazilian voters and Bolsonaro recently came out in its favor after months of signaling opposition.
Oct 15, 2026
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State AGs Sue ChatGPT Maker OpenAI Over 'Willful, Dangerous, Reckless, and Unlawful Conduct'
Amid escalating concerns about artificial intelligence from within and beyond the industry and related demands for policymakers worldwide to swiftly enact strong safeguards, attorneys general from eight US states sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI on Wednesday.
"OpenAI designed a product to attract young users and keep them engaged for as long as possible so it could capture their extensive personal data for the company's commercial benefit," said Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes in a statement.
Mayes, a Democrat, joined Republican attorneys general from Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, and West Virginia in filing separate but similar lawsuits against the company in each state's court system, focused on safety concerns, particularly for young users.
"OpenAI put Arizonans safety at risk by failing to implement adequate user protections or transparency measures, despite clear indications that minors were regularly interacting with its chatbot," Mayes asserted. "We're suing OpenAI to protect Arizona children and to hold the company accountable for its repeated violations of Arizona law."
The filing from Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin notes that "millions of consumers, including those in Arkansas, use ChatGPT to answer questions, solve problems, and make important life decisions," but the chatbot "has repeatedly produced unsafe responses."
In fact, as Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wrote, "because of defendants' repeated misrepresentations and insatiable hunger to win the AI race—even if it means recklessly introducing unsafe ChatGPT models to the public—mass shooters have been aided and abetted, vulnerable citizens have been coached on suicide, individuals with psychological conditions have experienced an exacerbation of symptoms, and minors have become addicted to a tool that feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight."
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador explained that "by misleading the public into believing that OpenAI is a responsible actor and that ChatGPT was and is a safe, teen-appropriate tool that puts safety first, OpenAI has caused consumers in Idaho and elsewhere to trust and rely on OpenAI and ChatGPT more."
"This deepened trust and dependence has driven up ChatGPT's user base and engagement," he continued, "enabled it to collect vast quantities of sensitive and personal information, increased its revenue from paid subscribers and advertising partners, and solidified its early market advantage."
It's not just chatbot responses that have insiders and elected officials alarmed. As Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach detailed:
OpenAI also recently admitted to a torrent of instances in which its models developed dangerous strategies and instructions and, in some cases, executed on them. These occurrences, which OpenAI has characterized as the models going "rogue," have included AI "agents" accessing the internet without permission, hacking into other companies, coordinating how to lie to and deceive their human users, developing secret methods of communication intended to be undetectable to humans, and writing themselves new instructions declaring that they no longer answer to "corporations or governments" and will prioritize other interests over the "artificial constructs of human civilization."
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen emphasized that "experts and insiders in the AI field nearly universally agree that AI companies must implement reasonable guardrails to protect the public from the foreseeable risk of harm. Even OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, have warned that getting AI wrong might mean human extinction. And recent developments in AI have suggested that risk is both credible and closer than anyone previously thought."
Like his peers in other states, Nebraska Attorney General Michael Hilgers brought the case to compel OpenAI to comply with its legal obligations under state law, block the company "from continuing to engage in unreasonably dangerous activities that experts have warned could harm the economy, or compromise private or governmental computer systems, and to hold defendants accountable for the harms they have inflicted on Nebraskans, most notably vulnerable minors, as a result of their willful, dangerous, reckless, and unlawful conduct."
West Virginia Attorney General John "JB" McCuskey highlighted in his filing that "by jettisoning safety, OpenAI and its current leadership—particularly, Altman—have handsomely profited." While company leadership has delayed its initial public offering until next year, he wrote, "with current annual revenues of over $25 billion, OpenAI may IPO at a trillion-dollar valuation."
"But those revenues have come at great cost to the public," he stressed, "which has suffered irreparable harm—including lost loved ones, disturbing cyberattacks, and now a plausible threat of civilizational collapse—due to defendants' reckless behavior and ChatGPT's uniquely dangerous design."
An OpenAI spokesperson pushed back against the filings, saying that "we've built industry-leading age-specific protections into our product that many other AI products lack."
"While no system can be perfect, we'll continue to work with experts to inform our work and build additional safeguards, such as the parental controls, break reminders, and age-appropriate model protections that exist today," the spokesperson added. "We're committed to working with states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry—not just one company."
Politico reported that "this is not the first lawsuit launched against the AI company. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier brought a lawsuit against the company in June over claims that it has pushed and marketed an unsafe product. Last month, Uthmeier also sought an injunction to stop OpenAI from developing its technology amid the lawsuit."
According to Reuters, "The company is also facing dozens of lawsuits by private plaintiffs, alleging ChatGPT helped users plan mass shootings or other violence."
Oct 14, 2026
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Throttling of Ukraine's Starlink Access Heightens Concerns Over Government Reliance on Elon Musk
The Ukrainian government on Tuesday night said that its access to the SpaceX-owned Starlink satellite internet service was throttled, prompting critics to question the wisdom of depending on any company owned by far-right billionaire Elon Musk.
According to a Wednesday report in The New York Times, Ukrainian officials suspect that orders to restrict their access to Starlink "had come from Washington," as President Donald Trump has been pressuring the country to stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Musk, who was Trump's single biggest donor in the 2024 presidential campaign, has spent at least $276 million since July to help Republicans maintain their congressional majorities.
In a Wednesday social media post, Ukrainian military expert Serhiy Beskrestnov revealed that Ukrainian military forces "have not received any warnings about this restriction" to Starlink, which he said "has led to the failure of several missions."
"Obviously, this action cannot be a coincidence," Beskrestnov added, "and is related to the current political situation."
As noted by the Kyiv Independent on Wednesday, Ukraine depends on Starlink for "several military applications including operating its mid-strike campaign in Russian-occupied Ukraine, as well as interceptor drones that defend against Russia's new jet-powered attack drones."
The sudden restrictions on Starlink drew the ire of Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Radosław Sikorski, who directly called out Musk in a social media post.
"Hey, Elon Musk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again?" Sikorski asked. "As your European customers, we are watching you."
Ian Bond, deputy director of the Center for European Reform think tank, wrote that the sudden Starlink restrictions "should set off a siren in every defense ministry in Europe."
"There needs to be much more urgency about developing autonomous capabilities," Bond added, "not subject to US caprices, for early warning of attacks, countering ballistic missiles, communicating with forces or controlling offensive weapons."
Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, expressed a similar view, arguing that "the Starlink restriction over Ukraine is a perfect illustration of the danger of relying on US technology."
Steve Peers, professor of EU law and human rights law at Royal Holloway, University of London, argued that democratic nations must start viewing Musk and his companies as geopolitical adversaries.
"If Musk is going to (in effect) assist Putin's invasion of Ukraine," wrote Peers, "Ukraine's allies should sanction Starlink, X, and Tesla."
Nicholas Grossman, professor of international relations at the University of Illinois, pointed out that he has been calling for governments to end their dependence on Musk and his companies for the last three years.
"The problem is too much power, especially for an enemy of democracy," Grossman wrote.
Grossman also took a shot at former President Joe Biden's administration for not taking Musk's threat to democracy seriously, as it continued to award SpaceX lucrative contracts even as its owner used his vast fortune to power Trump's 2024 comeback.
"Big mistake," he wrote.
Oct 14, 2026
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'Let Them Eat Cake': How Trump Family Pocketed Nearly $3 Billion While Millions of Americans Lost Food Aid
"Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families," said the co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition. "Instead, he turned the presidency into his family's most profitable business."
Oct 15, 2026
A report released Thursday details how the family of President Donald Trump "pocketed more than $2.9 billion"—including "in cash and gifts from crypto ventures, legal settlements, a luxury jet from a foreign government, and corporate deals"—while Republican cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program left millions of Americans without critical food aid.
The report, "Let Them Eat Cake: Cost of Corruption," was published by the Not Above the Law Coalition—a group of more than 150 advocacy organizations mobilized against the Trump administration's corruption—and cites data from the Center for American Progress revealing over $2.9 billion in cash and gifts received by the Trump family since the 2024 election.
The bulk of that amount—more than $2.4 billion—comes from the cryptocurrency industry. Trump has boasted about how his administration won't investigate alleged crypto-related crimes.
Not only has Trump embraced crypto deregulation, he also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023. Binance has provided critical support for World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture enriching the Trump family.
"The Trump family cashed in on the presidency while American families paid the price," Not Above the Law said in a statement. "Over the same period, Trump signed a budget law that cut almost $187 billion from SNAP, leaving 5.2 million fewer people with help buying groceries."
That law, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ushered in the biggest cuts to both SNAP and Medicaid in those programs' histories.
According to the report, "The Trump family's take alone could cover a full year of groceries for about 1.3 million people on SNAP."
"At the same time, Trump's pardons let wealthy allies and fraudsters walk away from nearly $1.7 billion owed to victims and taxpayers," the publication adds.
Not Above the Law noted that "foreign money flowed straight to the [Trump] family" via an investment vehicle controlled by the United Arab Emirates' national security adviser, who "put $500 million into World Liberty Financial, and the administration soon cleared advanced [artificial intelligence] chip exports to the UAE."
The report highlights that "Trump also accepted a roughly $400 million luxury jet from Qatar."
Not Above the Law said that, in addition to groceries for 1.3 million people for a year, the $2.9 billion could buy "more than 600 million free school lunches, or three months of groceries for the 5.2 million people who lost SNAP benefits."
In addition to the nearly $3 billion the report says Trump's family pocketed, the coalition noted "companies backed by Trump's sons have collected $3.2 billion in federal funds, including a fast-tracked $620 million Pentagon loan" to a business in which Donald Trump Jr. invested.
"Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families. Instead, he turned the presidency into his family's most profitable business," said Lisa Gilbert, Not Above the Law co-chair and co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "While the Trumps collected nearly $3 billion from crypto schemes, foreign governments, and corporations seeking favors, millions of Americans lost help putting food on the table. Congress must stop the self-dealing and hold this administration accountable."
The new analysis follows a report published earlier this year by a group of Democratic US senators accusing the president and his family of turning “the power of the presidency into eye-popping profits,” with Trump increasing his personal net worth by more than $2 billion during his second term alone, according to official disclosures.
Also on Thursday, The Washington Post reported on companies and billionaire CEOs who donated a combined $333 million to Trump’s White House ballroom project, as well as previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon, government contracts, and at least one closed federal investigation.
"This is what corruption is all about," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the Post report. "We don’t want a government of, by, and for the billionaire class. FIGHT BACK."
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Trump DOJ Sues After California Refuses to Disqualify Voters Based on Faulty Citizenship Database
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said DOJ was “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians' right to vote, based on unverifiable information."
Oct 15, 2026
In what one former election official called a significant "escalation" of President Donald Trump's interference in the midterm elections, his Department of Justice sued California on Thursday for not disqualifying over 20,000 mail ballots from voters it claims could be noncitizens.
The suit comes two days after acting Deputy US Attorney General Trent McCotter sent a letter demanding that, within 48 hours, state election officials set aside ballots from a list of voters it determined were ineligible to vote using federal databases administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—systems that have previously been shown to regularly spit out errors.
When other states, like Nevada, Texas, and Missouri, have used the DHS system to vet their voter rolls for noncitizens, investigations have found that it incorrectly flagged hundreds of US citizens as ineligible to vote.
California officials have said the list of names was provided to them on a thumb drive, which came with a password written on a sticky note. They did not consider this to be a secure device and refused to open it. The letter was sent more than a week after California began sending mail ballots to 23 million registered voters.
The state refused to set the ballots aside, saying that the administration had not provided credible evidence that the voters were not citizens and that eligible voters could be disenfranchised. In its complaint Thursday, the DOJ called on the court to stop the ballots from being tallied until the citizenship status of each voter could be independently verified. It also requested that the state not send a ballot to anyone who has not yet received one.
The DOJ's batch of roughly 20,000 supposedly ineligible voters is a significant reduction from the 190,000 that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin alleged were registered in the state back in July. When California asked for the underlying data and methodology for that figure, DHS declined to provide it.
"What happened to those 170,000?" said California Attorney General Rob Bonta at a press conference on Thursday. "They just got those wrong."
This highlights the concerns states have expressed about using the DHS system to purge their voter rolls. In refusing the DOJ's request, state officials have noted that in Nevada, the system flagged 185 voters as possible noncitizens only for state officials to determine that every single one of them was a US citizen.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber responded to the DOJ's lawsuit with a sharply worded letter, accusing it of “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians' right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.”
Weber described it as an effort to block “thousands of Californians’ right to vote” weeks before an election and said, “The extraordinary measures you demand are contrary to both federal and state law.” Federal law prohibits states from systematically purging voter rolls within 90 days of an election.
“We are not impressed with the federal government’s letter. We are not impressed with its lawsuit," Bonta said. “This is what the federal government does. They lie, they advance misinformation, disinformation, they advance conspiracy theories. They try to sow distrust with those lies."
“Their timing is rife with and smacks of and reeks of desperation and bad faith, to do this during an election,” he said.
Stephen Richer, the former Republican Maricopa County recorder in Arizona, described the government's lawsuit as "a real escalation by the federal government."
"I've mostly said 'Calm, calm. It's going to be OK' with respect to federal involvement in election administration," he wrote on social media. "This lawsuit—in October, in the middle of early voting—that asks election officials to disqualify certain voters based on suspect databases, not conclusive evidence, which definitely could have been alleged before early voting began... This does represent an escalation."
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Voting Rights Project filed an emergency brief on Thursday seeking to stop the DOJ from using its list to withhold ballots.
"With voting already underway, eligible citizens should not have their ballots withheld based on a federal list they have never seen and have had no opportunity to challenge," said its director, Chad Dunn. "We are asking the court to intervene before voters suffer harm that cannot be corrected after Election Day."
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the Trump DOJ "is now actively trying to interfere in the 2026 elections and strong-arm California into purging names from our voter rolls and blocking mail ballots based purely on vague allegations less than three weeks before Election Day."
He added, "This lawsuit has no legal basis or evidence behind it and is nothing more than a blatant abuse of power designed to sow distrust in our elections and threaten Americans’ right to vote."
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Israeli Strike Burns Gaza Mother Alive in Front of Toddler, 'Without Generating Any Headlines'
"If she was Israeli, this image would be front-page news," said one observer.
Oct 15, 2026
A Palestinian toddler watched, screaming in horror, as her mother was burned alive in an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home early Wednesday that left the wounded girl orphaned—and received almost no coverage in US corporate media.
Reem Asaad Awad was killed when an Israeli helicopter attacked her family's apartment in the Rimal neighborhood at approximately 3:48 am local time Wednesday, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported.
Trapped inside the burning apartment was Awad's daughter, Maryam Ahmed Ghanem, whose age has been reported as between 2 and 4 years old. Prominent Palestinian author Mosab Abu Toha said family friends confirmed the child was born in February 2024.
Palestinian journalist Ali al-Jaafrawi witnessed and recorded the immediate aftermath of the strike.
"There are children are screaming alive inside," al-Jaafrawi is heard saying as he approached the building.
"I went up to the apartment. There were flames everywhere," al-Jaafrawi told Al Jazeera. "I went in despite the fire and smoke and heard a little girl screaming inside. I went in, found her, and rescued her immediately. I carried her and handed her to people so they could take her to hospital."
"I went back to rescue others and to document what happened, but I suffocated and lost consciousness because of the thick smoke," he added. "I saw a woman on fire inside the apartment."
Photos and video recordings show Ghanem being treated for injuries, including burns, at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which is struggling to operate after much of the facility was destroyed or damaged by Israeli forces, who besieged and raided the complex multiple times since October 2023.
Abu Toha, who saw Ghanem in the hospital, said the child "kept repeating the same heartbreaking words: 'I want my mum. My body hurts. There was a lot of fire.'"
Ghanem—whose father, Ahmad Ghanem, was reportedly killed by Israeli forces early in their genocidal assault—has joined the ranks of the more than 56,000 Gaza children who have lost at least one of their parents in the war, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.
"Reem and Ahmad had waited four years to conceive Maryam," Abu Toha wrote. "Four years of waiting and hoping to bring a child into this world. Ahmad never lived to see his daughter’s face. Reem lived long enough to watch her little girl grow for two-and-a-half years before she was burned alive in front of her. Now Maryam is an orphan, fighting to survive her horrific burns."
Ghanem's grandfather told Middle East Eye that the child and her mother "did nothing wrong."
"They were sleeping quietly at night," he said. "There was no one in the apartment except the two of them."
Israel said it is investigating the strike, which it claimed—without providing evidence—targeted a member of Hamas.
Dismissing a nominal yearlong ceasefire during which at least 1,500 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 others wounded by Israeli attacks, the grandfather said that "honestly, there is no security."
"I fear for my family," he added. "All people are afraid, not just me. There is still assassination, war, hunger, poverty, and destruction... Nothing has changed."
The horrific footage of the strike's fiery aftermath evoked imagery from earlier in Israel's onslaught, including video of a 7-year-old girl trying to escape an inferno caused by bombing that killed dozens of Palestinians—among them her mother and siblings—and a teenager photographed burning alive after Israeli forces bombed a tent encampment.
Some observers noted the almost complete absence of US media reporting on the story, with the apparent exception of CBS News, which published video of the burning apartment in a Facebook Reel.
"This little girl watched her mother be burned alive in Gaza. If she was Israeli, this image would be front-page news. But Israel can kill Palestinians in the most horrific ways without generating any headlines," US historian, author, and political analyst Assal Rad said on social media.
"Video has been circulating all day; you can hear the little girl cry and see her engulfed in smoke," Rad said in a separate post. "I can’t find headlines in Western media *because* the story is horrific. They want you to forget."
The Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement calling on members of Congress "to condemn Israel for burning a Palestinian mother alive while her daughter watched in Gaza."
“The horrific video of a little girl surrounded by fire as her mother burns to death in their home exemplifies the reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza," CAIR said. "We cannot comprehend how any political leader with a conscience could continue to fund the sheer cruelty of the Israeli government and the war criminals who carry out its orders."
"Members of Congress must condemn this atrocity and demand an immediate end to all US support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza," the group added.
The US has provided Israel with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid, as well as diplomatic cover, including repeated vetoes of a series of United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions, throughout the three-year annihilation of Gaza, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, weighed in on the attack on Bluesky.
"I have reached the limits of my ability to put words to pure evil," he wrote. "Once again, Israel burned another family in Gaza alive. But the image of the... daughter in the family watching the rest of her family die in the flames will haunt me for the rest of my life."
"But," Parsi added, "will it haunt Israel?"
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Ilhan Omar’s Office Slams Trump Deportation Plot as ‘Authoritarian Move to Silence an Opponent’
"To Trump, no American value or principle is too important to be shredded for his own personal gain."
Oct 15, 2026
The office of Rep. Ilhan Omar slammed the Trump administration on Thursday over its reported plot to have the Minnesota Democrat stripped of her US citizenship.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the raid on Omar's home carried out earlier this week by Department of Homeland Security agents was part of and effort to build "a case to strip her of her US citizenship and ultimately deport her."
"The multipronged effort is focused at least in part on how Omar obtained her citizenship after she arrived in the US from Somalia decades ago," the Journal explained. "Investigators are focused both on the congresswoman and actions of her deceased father."
Omar spokesperson Jackie Rogers responded to the report by accusing President Donald Trump of engaging in "desperate attempt to justify his extraordinary abuse of power."
"This is politically motivated and an escalation of Trump’s personal vendetta against her lasting over a decade," Rogers told HuffPost. "He has lied about her family, about her immigration history, and about her love of this country."
Rogers also accused Trump of acting like a dictator by singling out a member of the opposition party for punishment.
"This isn’t a legitimate law enforcement action," said Rogers, "it is an authoritarian move to silence an opponent right before an election where he and his party will be rejected by Americans in historic proportions... To Trump, no American value or principle is too important to be shredded for his own personal gain."
Author John Ganz on Thursday published an analysis of the reported Omar deportation plot, which he said is "undoubtedly driven by racial and religious animus" and also "a serious assault on the constitutional order being carried out through the executive branch’s legal and bureaucratic machinery."
Ganz argued that a serious attempt to strip Omar of her citizenship and remove her from the country would be a major escalation from the Trump administration toward establishing an outright totalitarian state.
"Authoritarian governments suppress political opposition and deprive their subjects of particular rights," Ganz explained. "Totalitarian movements aspire to something much more radical: the destruction of the independent political and juridical personhood. They attack not merely the liberties of particular citizens they seek to repress, but the concept of citizenship itself—and then, ultimately, the concept of shared humanity."
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75% of Likely US Voters Oppose Giving Big Oil Immunity From Climate Lawsuits
Even 67% of Republican voters think states should be allowed to sue oil companies for climate damage. But Trump and GOP lawmakers are pushing to kill these suits for good.
Oct 15, 2026
President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have sought to stop state-level lawsuits aimed at holding oil and gas companies responsible for climate-related damage. But most voters don't think they should be immune from accountability.
In a poll released last week by Data for Progress, 75% of likely voters said they would oppose legislation that would give fossil fuel companies "legal immunity from having to pay for the damages they have caused by worsening climate change."
Just 20% said they would either "somewhat" or "strongly" support such legislation. Meanwhile, more than half (53%) said they would "strongly" oppose it.
Opposition was strong across political affiliations: 83% of Democrats and 76% of independents said they opposed giving oil companies immunity from lawsuits, but so did 67% of Republicans.
(Graphic by Data for Progress)
In recent years, states and municipalities have sued fossil fuel companies over their well-documented history of misleading the public about their products' role in warming the planet. These lawsuits have sought compensation for damages from worsening floods, wildfires, droughts, and other climate-related disasters.
Eleven US states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont—as well as the District of Columbia, have active lawsuits, as do at least two tribal governments and dozens of municipalities around the country, according to a tracker by the Center for Climate Integrity.
The new poll suggests voters are even more opposed to shielding oil companies from these lawsuits than they were five months ago. Another Data for Progress poll in May showed just 65% opposed legislation to shield oil companies, compared with 75% now.
"Big Oil is desperate to secure legal immunity and escape accountability for its role in the climate crisis—and the billions of dollars of damages that have followed," said Iyla Shornstein, the political director at the Center for Climate Integrity. "These poll results show that Americans across the political spectrum are opposed to putting Big Oil above the law.”
Protesters hold a banner outside the US Supreme Court as it considers the Suncor v. Boulder case in Washington, DC, on October 5, 2026. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The oil industry's lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, has described stopping state climate lawsuits as a top priority for 2026. Their Republican allies have pushed at all levels of government to advance that goal.
In April, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and several GOP cosponsors joined Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) to introduce legislation that would shield fossil fuel companies from any climate-related lawsuits, dismiss pending cases, and overturn state "superfund" laws requiring the industry to pay for climate damages.
That bill failed to pass out of the House Judiciary Committee last month but could be brought forth again during the "lame-duck" session after the midterm elections in November.
ProPublica has identified at least 15 bills across 11 states that have either been enacted or proposed to shield companies, either by granting them broad immunity from liability for greenhouse gas emissions or restricting the ability of communities to sue over climate-related damages. Groups linked to Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the right-wing Federalist Society, have coordinated many of these efforts.
Republican attorneys general in 16 states have proposed creating a "liability shield" for fossil fuel companies modeled on the one that protects gun manufacturers from liability for the misuse of their products. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a leading conservative policy shop, approved a model bill in August aiming to establish this shield in state legislatures nationwide.
The oil industry has also pushed for the right-wing Supreme Court to step in to block these lawsuits. Earlier this month, during oral arguments, oil giants ExxonMobil and Suncor urged the court to block a lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colorado, that accused oil companies of deceiving the public about climate change and sought to hold them financially responsible.
If the court blocks the Boulder suit before it gets to trial, it could set a precedent that derails dozens of similar lawsuits around the country.
Meanwhile, Trump, who pledged to help Big Oil executives in exchange for their donations to his presidential campaign, signed an executive order last year directing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to identify and challenge state lawsuits that seek to impose financial penalties on fossil fuel companies.
His DOJ has weighed in on the Suncor v. Boulder case on the side of the oil industry and has sued at least five states that have sought to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
The question about climate lawsuits was part of a broader set of questions Data for Progress asked voters about rising insurance costs and corporate accountability in partnership with the Insurance Fairness Project. Other results showed that many Americans want legal recourse against insurers and other companies that impose costs on consumers.
"As rising home insurance costs directly threaten housing affordability for the majority of Americans, voters are tired of their prices rising while insurance companies, energy providers, and the oil and gas industry go unchecked," said Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist for the Insurance Fairness Project. "There is a strong appetite for holding corporations accountable, both for their role in driving up costs and their role in contributing to the climate crisis."
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'Blatant Corruption': Donors Pouring $330 Million Into Trump Ballroom—and Reaping Benefits—Exposed
"Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system," said one watchdog leader. "Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in."
Oct 15, 2026
A newly revealed list of companies and billionaire CEOs who donated millions of dollars to President Donald Trump's ballroom construction project shows that Big Tech, according to one government watchdog, "bankrolled it fully expecting a return on their investment."
The list, first reported by The Washington Post, doesn't just show the $25 million donations from tech giant Apple, the pro-Israel Adelson Family Foundation, and microchip firm Nvidia—the latter of which requested anonymity.
It also reveals previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon as well as government contracts and at least one closed federal investigation.
The 57 donors whose names were published by the Post had committed to contributing at least $100,000 to the ballroom construction project, which is proceeding for now following a Supreme Court ruling in August.
The list shows a total of $333 million contributed from private donors, but does not include Trump's name, though the president has said the demolition of the White House's East Wing and the construction of the ballroom would be "paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine."
It also falls short of the $600 million projected price tag; according to the Post, taxpayer funds have been used to partially fund the project, along with donations from companies with business before the government.
Nvidia's $25 million donation came three months after the company reached a deal with the Trump administration to sell advanced microchips to China.
A $25 million donation from Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of the telecommunications company Dish Network, came shortly after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dropped an investigation into the failure of EchoStar, which owns Dish Network, to upgrade its cellphone network.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had threatened last May to revoke government licenses from EchoStar, and a month later, Ergen met with Carr and Trump in a closed-door meeting where his political donations were discussed, Bloomberg reported.
Ergen then negotiated a deal to sell some of the licenses to AT&T. Carr dropped the investigation the following month, and months later, with the sale pending, the executive donated $12.5 million to Trump's ballroom construction. A second $12.5 million contribution came soon after, according to the list published by the Post.
“Big Tech giants didn’t just chip in for Trump’s ballroom," said Sacha Haworth of the Tech Oversight Project, a watchdog group. "The same companies funding Trump’s vanity project lined up for tax breaks, chip deals, federal contracts, and a blind eye to lawbreaking. Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system. Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in."
The Post also detailed a $2.5 million contribution from Isabela Herrera, the daughter of international banker Julio Herrera Velutini, whom the US Department of Justice indicted on bribery charges in 2022.
Herrera Velutini's charges were reduced to a misdemeanor months after his daughter donated millions of dollars to Trump's MAGA Inc. political action committee, and a month later, she committed to a $2.5 million donation for the ballroom. Soon after, Herrera Velutini was pardoned.
The transactions detailed by the Post amount to "blatant corruption," said progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler.
Companies with massive stakes in decisions before President Trump and his administration gave many millions to the White House ballroom project, which the President has made clear is important to him. So are you confident he'll make those decisions based only on what's good for the American people?
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— Noah Bookbinder (@noahbookbinder.bsky.social) October 15, 2026 at 10:43 AM
Cryptocurrency investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss donated more than $5 million in bitcoin—a portion of the more than $18 million the industry contributed to the ballroom. Trump has pushed for loose regulations for the industry.
Other top donors include Google, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, and Palantir.
Government watchdog Public Citizen said a new tax filing from the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit charity that manages the donations for the ballroom, shows that $169.7 million came from just 10 big donors.
“One year after the people’s house was abruptly bulldozed for a gold-plated ballroom that most Americans will never be allowed inside, we are uncovering who paid the most to fund it," said Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen. "The question these ballroom megadonors all now need to answer is—why?”
Haworth said that "when Democrats take back gavels in January, they need to investigate Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, and others for potentially breaking the law to buy get-out-of-jail-free passes and sweetheart deals in exchange for their donation."
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Ire Over Trump Profiteering as 60% of Voters ‘Extremely Concerned’ About Government Corruption
“The public is furious about the corruption they see."
Oct 15, 2026
A poll released by Fox News on Wednesday reveals that voters' biggest concern heading into the 2026 midterm elections isn't gas prices, but government corruption.
In total, the Fox poll shows that 60% of voters say they are "extremely concerned" about government corruption, which is higher than the 58% who are extremely concerned about inflation and the 50% who are extremely concerned about gas prices.
This concern with corruption appears likely to benefit Democratic candidates, as respondents say they trust Democrats to handle corruption better than Republicans by a 10-point margin.
Overall, the poll finds Democrats hold a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot.
Trump's personal net worth has increased by billions of dollars since the 2024 election, driven in large part by his family's cryptcurrency venture, which is nearly half owned by a fund backed by the United Arab Emirates.
Many legal experts also believe that Trump brazenly violated the US Constitution's emoluments clause when he accepted a $400 million luxury jet as a gift from the Qatari government.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, said that widespread concerns about corruption were not surprising given how President Donald Trump and his family have shamelessly enriched themselves since returning to power.
"The public is furious about the corruption they see from the government," said Gilbert. "Even Fox News polling says as much."
Gilbert emphasized that Democrats must hit the ground running to further uncover Trump corruption if they win the upcoming 2026 elections, as voters will be demanding accountability.
"If we see a shift in power in the next Congress," Gilbert said, "the American people will expect the new holders of the gavels to deliver oversight and accountability in a strategic and disciplined way that zeroes in on the real harms that the current regime, in cahoots with corporate power, have carried out at the expense of everyday Americans."
Drop Site reporter Ryan Grim similarly argued that the Fox poll shows a hunger on the part of voters for accountability.
"The last time Democrats took congress they barely investigated Trump administration corruption," Grim wrote. "Voters are very clear they don’t want that same mistake made again."
Journalist Isaac Saul found it "refreshing" to see voters taking corruption seriously, and he said the issue would likely be Trump's downfall.
"I've been saying for a while that Trump's fate will be like Orban's," wrote Saul. "His nationalist rhetoric is resonant, but his comical corruption will cost him. It's been unlike anything we've ever seen, and it gets worse daily."
Adam Carlson, founding partner of Zenith Polls, predicted that voters' concerns about government corruption would endure beyond the 2026 midterms.
"Corruption is going to be one of the biggest issues of the 2028 election," Carlson wrote. "And candidates who can speak about it in a compelling way—and can effectively draw a direct line from corruption to other top issues, like how it affects the cost of living—will be rewarded by voters."
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Democratic Senators Aim to Block Trump Nuclear Deal With Saudi Arabia
"We can't sleepwalk into a decision this consequential. The law gives Congress the power to review and block a deal like this, and the Senate will now have the chance to fulfill its statutory responsibility before it's too late."
Oct 15, 2026
US Sens. Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley on Thursday continued to push back against President Donald Trump's proposed nuclear energy agreement with Saudi Arabia, setting up a vote on legislation that could block the deal before it takes effect.
"Giving Saudi Arabia access to US civilian nuclear energy technology without ironclad protections to make sure it doesn't provide a foundation for a nuclear bomb is unacceptable," declared Merkley (D-Ore.), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who co-chairs the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group with Markey (D-Mass.).
Under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, Congress has 90 days of continuous session to review the deal. The pair of senators introduced a joint resolution of disapproval, on which the Senate is set to vote after November 29. The JRD would need to pass both GOP-controlled chambers by veto-proof majorities to actually block the agreement.
I refuse to let the U.S. sleepwalk into a dangerous nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. The law gives Congress the power to review and block a deal like this.@markey.senate.gov and I are making sure the Senate fulfills that responsibility before it’s too late.
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— Senator Jeff Merkley (@merkley.senate.gov) October 15, 2026 at 12:37 PM
The senators are alarmed that Trump's agreement lacks a "gold standard" provision barring Saudi Arabia from reprocessing spent fuel or enriching uranium. They are also alarmed that the proposal doesn't require allowing International Atomic Energy Agency investigators to confirm that the nation is not trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
"It is essential that nations pursuing civilian energy programs agree to the 'gold standard' of restrictions on fuel reprocessing and enrichment and rigorous inspections to ensure that a nuclear energy program doesn't become a covert nuclear weapons program," Merkley argued. "We can't sleepwalk into a decision this consequential. The law gives Congress the power to review and block a deal like this, and the Senate will now have the chance to fulfill its statutory responsibility before it's too late."
The details of the agreement have concerned not only progressive senators, but also nuclear nonproliferation experts.
"The US-Saudi nuclear deal is about megatons, not megawatts. Trump should not be sharing nuclear bomb technology with a nation that US intelligence says may want nuclear weapons," said Markey. "This deal is the starting gun for a Middle East nuclear arms race. Congress must reject it."
The introduction came roughly a month after Markey and Merkley partnered with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for another JRD designed to block a $5 billion conventional weapons sale to Saudi Arabia, which includes over 10,000 joint direct attack munition guidance kits and a similar number of "dumb bombs" that can be combined to create precision weapons.
"I am deeply concerned by the kingdom's human rights abuses, the security of the region as the war in Iran rages on, and the proxy war that is escalating between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen," Markey said at the time. "Further escalation in the Saudi-Iran proxy war will worsen an already dire humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and risks setting off a nuclear arms race between Iran and Saudi Arabia."
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Pentagon Plans to Withhold Report on US Massacre of Iranian Kids Until After Midterms
One policy analyst wrote sardonically that the administration doesn't "want to remind voters before the midterms of the mass killing of schoolchildren on the first day of Trump's glorious war."
Oct 15, 2026
The Pentagon is reportedly planning to withhold until after the midterm elections the completed findings of its investigation into a devastating US strike on an elementary school in southern Iran, which killed more than 150 people—including 120 children—on the first day of President Donald Trump's illegal and deeply unpopular war.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that "top Pentagon officials have expressed their intention to hold off on releasing an internal report into the attack" on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab until after next month's midterms "at the earliest." The internal assessment is believed to have been effectively complete for months, and preliminary findings reported in early March determined that American forces hit the school with a Tomahawk missile due to "outdated" targeting information.
According to Bloomberg, Pentagon investigators "discovered that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery, and an overreliance on AI contributed to the attack," which is regarded as one of the US military's worst atrocities against civilians in decades. Trump brushed off the massacre in remarks to reporters in June, saying: "Mistakes are made. War is nasty."
Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), said in a statement that "the refusal to come clean about the attack on Minab is not just a shameful exercise to dodge accountability for a horrific war crime; it is actively risking these errors being repeated again."
"As the administration has dodged accountability on Minab and [a deadly strike on a sports hall hours later], it has engaged in further attacks that may be war crimes, including the bombing of a civilian home on Qeshm Island that killed a family and the bombing of a wedding party in Kuhestak that killed five, including two children," said Costello. "Ensuring these tragedies don’t repeat starts with accountability on Minab.”
International policy analyst Brian Finucane wrote sardonically that the Pentagon doesn't "want to remind voters before the midterms of the mass killing of schoolchildren on the first day of Trump's glorious war."
Bloomberg's reporting came as CNN published a story detailing internal US "strike plans" that include possibly dropping the so-called "mother of all bombs" on Iranian energy infrastructure.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) is the largest nonnuclear bomb in the US arsenal. In 2017, Trump became the first US president to deploy the weapon, authorizing the military to drop it on Afghanistan.
Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, warned that using the bomb against Iran would risk "triggering another major escalatory spiral, potentially including Iranian attacks on critical regional energy infrastructure, with consequences for global markets and the US economy."
"This only reinforces the fundamental problem: Trump has no viable military solution to the Iran conflict," Toossi wrote. "Is he looking for one spectacular strike to project strength and declare victory? Or is he prepared to plunge the US into an even deeper, potentially endless war that could devastate the rest of his presidency, legacy, and the economy?"
Costello of NIAC said that "the Trump administration’s threats to commit war crimes in Iran cannot be normalized."
"President Trump acts on many of his threats, necessitating more urgent action to bring this illegal war of choice to a definitive end," he added.
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2026 State of the Climate Report 'Shows a Planet Reaching Its Limits'
“This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present,” the report's authors warned.
Oct 15, 2026
Earth's life-support systems are "moving deeper into uncharted territory," with greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat, and other vital indicators reaching unprecedented levels as human activity continues to push the planet toward points of no return, an international team of scientists warned Wednesday.
"We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system. This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present," the authors of The 2026 State of the Climate Report wrote. "Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond."
"Human activities are driving profound shifts in the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere," the report—which was published in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience—continues. "Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher now than any time in the last 2 million years. Across the globe, extreme heat, floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires are no longer rare events but defining features of a changing planet. For example, July 2026 was the hottest month on record for the contiguous United States (1895–present), while global ocean temperatures also reached a record high for July."
2026 State of the Climate Report Shows a Planet Reaching Its Limitseos.org/research-and...
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— Prof Ian Hall (@ianhall.bsky.social) October 14, 2026 at 9:48 AM
The report, led by Oregon State University scientists William Ripple and Christopher Wolf, measures 16 key climate indicators, seven of which "are at record extremes and multiple others are also trending in the wrong direction," co-author Johan Rockström explained.
"Climate-related changes appear to be accelerating and intensifying, raising concerns about reinforcing feedbacks and crossing of tipping points, with potential irreversible impacts," the report notes. "Climate change is increasingly interacting with global biodiversity loss, freshwater stress, food insecurity, pathogens, and geopolitical instability, amplifying risks across interconnected human and natural systems."
"Yet, the gap between scientific understanding and societal response continues to widen despite mounting evidence of escalating risks," the authors said. "The evidence for accelerating climate and ecological disruption is now so compelling that attention must shift toward rapid decarbonization as well as adaptation, resilience, scalable responses, and transformative systemic change."
"Crucially, the communities least responsible for historical emissions, particularly in the Global South and small island states, are bearing disproportionately severe and early consequences, raising fundamental questions of climate justice that must inform both policy and science," the publication adds.
The new report comes on the heels of this year's Planetary Health Check assessment, which found that seven of nine measures of the Earth’s health are no longer within the “safe operating space”: ocean acidification, freshwater change, land system change, climate change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities, and change in biosphere integrity.
Planetary Health Check lead author Boris Sakschewski said the findings indicate that "the risk of large-scale, persistent, and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking.”
Some 2026 State of the Climate report authors—described by US meteorologist Jeff Berardelli as "a who's who of the best in the world"—weighed in individually on their findings.
“Global warming appears to be accelerating," Wolf told Scientific American.
“The climate emergency is already here, but the future is not yet determined,” he stressed. “We still have opportunities to avoid some of the worst outcomes through rapid emissions reductions, climate adaptation, and broader societal changes. The window for action is narrowing, but it has not closed.”
Rockström—who co-authored both reports—wrote on LinkedIn that "the global curve of emissions must start bending within the coming year or two."
"A fossil fuel-free global economy must be the landing point within the next 25 years," he said. "A global food system transition towards healthy diets from sustainable production systems must start now. Carbon dioxide removal needs to start scaling, fast."
"We have the solutions," Rockström continued. "They can be scaled. And, on essentially all fronts, we (meaning ALL peoples) come out as healthier, safer, more resilient, prosperous, and just, if we proceed with the transformation to a world within Earth's safe operating space."
"Failure is not inevitable," he added. "It is a choice. Our choice."
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