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City Electric: My Mayor Muslim, My Bagel Jewish
After the greatest comeback in NBA finals history - 29 points! - "the greatest shot in Knicks history" - Anunoby's last-second tip-in - some divine intervention - a Pope Leo jersey - and a smudging to erase the vile Trump stench, the New York Knicks are in sight of their first title in over 50 years. "Bedlam at the Garden!" ESPN exclaimed. And across the city, now a jubilant, unified sea of orange and blue watch parties, viral chants, rare hope against hope. One fan: "The city feels alive. Thank God for the Knicks."
The Knicks had won a remarkable 13 straight playoff games, last losing in April, before the seven-game finals against the San Antonio Spurs; of those, they won the first two, only to fall to Trump Disaster Syndrome - everything he touches dies - in the third. In Wednesday's nail-biter of a Game 4, they began their historic rally in the second half, chipping away at a seemingly hopeless 29-point deficit, gaining ground in the 4th quarter and, with a stunning 1.2 seconds left, taking it 107-106 after OG Anunoby gently tipped in a Jalen Brunson shot that ricocheted short. The epic win leaves the Knicks within one game of a championship they haven't won since 1973, when their city looked like this. Now, residents say, it's "electric."
The Knicks' success has created frenzied joy in a city beset by high prices, traffic snafus and years of sports heartaches - amidst which long-suffering Knicks fans, says one, "have endured, a specific species of human that should be studied." They also present a unified front in a city split between baseball's Yankees and Mets and football's Jets and Giants. New Jersey will host this year's World Cup finals, but its tribute to "the beautiful game," long plagued by scandal and corruption, is already marred by a racist regime hassling, interrogating or barring players, officials, journalists and fans from Somalia, Senegal, Haiti, Iraq, Iran and other dark-skinned locales, with a looming threat of ICE goons in attendance.
In contrast, the come-from-behind Knicks have done what sports at their best should: bring people together. New York's rush hour has become a vast sweep of blue and orange caps, jerseys, hoodies, with a “Please win before I die” t-shirt from Old Jewish Men. Strangers on streets and subways do a peculiarly New York call-and- response: “Let’s go Knicks!” to “Knicks in five!” Bar and neighborhood watch parties pop up, some using bedsheet screens. One was just held at a Brooklyn funeral home - "If things go wrong, there's room for grief" - with a poster board for fans to write the names of those they're missing, "just like the the guy down the street and the lady in the bodega...so people know they're not alone.
The finals have given a boost to legit pan-sports nerd - "New Yorkers can smell a phony" - Mayor Zohran Mamdani. A rabid Arsenals fan, he's heavily promoted the World Cup - choosing Morocco to win in The Guardian's Bracketology game - "The heart wants what it wants" - offering $50 tickets to 1,000 New Yorkers, celebrating the vision of Brazilian, German, Ecuadorians who will "watch together, celebrate together, shout at referees together - respectfully." With the Knicks, he's likewise praised how Knick fever has "lit this city up" and relished his role as head, albeit ambivalent, cheerleader against a common sports foe. Asked in April about a possible win, he said, "As a New Yorker, I can't wait. As the mayor? Absolute chaos."
Again, he's all in. As a candidate, he interviewed Knicks fans and made Go-Knicks videos. During the finals, he's turned up at watch parties, put hand-painted cutouts of former Knicks greats at City Hall, visited a Knicks-hued subway stop, touted the $90 million in revenues from each home game, sported a Knicks jersey under his suit jacket and signed a symbolic executive order repealing bedtimes for kids during the finals. While resale ticket prices to home games have obscenely soared to over $8,000, and many courtside seats are reportedly gifted to local celebrities, Mamdani shelled out $1,000 for a standing room only ticket to the Monday game - unfortunately, the one hijacked by the Narcissist-In-Chief.Like New Yorkers didn't hate him enough already, Trump's random, clueless attendance saw watch parties cancelled, hours-long lines, bags banned, fans and even players (understandable, given most are black) TSA-wanded, and a blocks-wide, NYPD-enforced "frozen zone" that turned the area outside Madison Square Gardens from "a showcase of unbridled humanity to a post-apocalyptic wasteland" - all for him to be thunderously booed as he smirked, saluted and promptly fell asleep until his granddaughter poked him awake. It probably didn't help when those who'd waited in line for hours also got to see fucking Jared Kushner, "patron saint of failing upward," respectfully, infuriatingly escorted in by police.
Before Wednesday's game, a fan thoughtfully burned sage outside the Garden "to remove the sulfuric stench and bad vibes" from Pres. Poopy-Pants' visit. The Knicks also reportedly got help from on high: From the three "Nova Knicks” - Brunson, Hart, Bridges - who graduated from Catholic Villanova, and Pope Leo XIV, who earned a math degree there in 1977. To ensure his blessing, die-hard Knicks fan Spike Lee had earlier worn a custom Knicks jersey - "Pope Leo #14" - he'd had "P🏀PE LE🏀" sign at the Vatican last year. Thus, the surreal 29-point comeback, and "the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball" - per OG, "right hand from God." The Nation's Dave Zirin: "With the Trump Stench Gone, the Knicks Make History."
- YouTube www.youtube.com
What Ben Stiller courtside called “the most insane comeback I’ve ever seen” left astounded fans and MSG staff roaring, leaping, open-mouthed with joy and shock. Within minutes of the buzzer, thousands of blue-and-orange-bedecked fans had surged into the city streets, chanting "Knicks in five!" and, in a few feral instances, "Fuck you Wemby!" A Knicks robot chased some Spurs fans, cops arrested a few rowdy fans, the Empire State Building glowed in orange and blue. The New Yorker's David Remnick couldn't sleep after "the greatest Knicks win ever" and OG's "most astonishing shot in franchise history"; he got up at 3 a.m. to grimly doomscroll on "the truth machine to see if this had really happened," and finally "realize it was true."
"Curb your enthusiasm," he warned, and yes, Larry David was courtside, thrilled. "At least a little." Remnick noted that Saturday is the fifth game, and anything can still happen. Fandom, he added, "is complicated, also mostly a matter of patience. Real fandom is about endurance and waiting." Likely nothing that MD Ahnaf Hossain, a 23-year-old Knicks fan and TikToker with smart marketing skills, doesn't know. Reveling in a moment of sportsmanship "bringing a type of love we haven’t seen in the city for a long, long time,” he created a hip-hop, Haiku-like anthem to celebrate its unity in toxic, racist, divisive times. “I grew up with Jews, Muslims, Haitians, Pakistanis, Bengalis,” Hossain said. “I just had to bring everyone together.”
His first "pure New York City poetry" came after the Knicks lost the third game. He wrote and recorded, "My mayor Muslim/My bagel’s Jewish/My Christian Dior/Knicks in four." It got over 7 million views. After Wednesday's impossible win, he filmed an updated version: "My mayor still Muslim/My bagel’s still Jewish/The pope’s on our side/Knicks in five." Meanwhile, his mayor, Mamdani, posted his own response to the win: “SPEECHLESS. LFGK,” aka "Let's fucking go Knicks." He also made a brief, giddy video. "The energy in our city is incredible," he said. "Time and again, people have doubted the Knicks. Time and again, the Knicks have proven the doubters wrong... I have just three words for my fellow New Yorkers. Knicks in 5."
Jun 12, 2026
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Lawsuit Aims to Halt Trump Giveaway of Wildlife Refuge to Appease Elon Musk's SpaceX
Several environmental organizations are suing the US Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the agency from handing over hundreds of acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to Elon Musk's company SpaceX.
The complaint—which was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and South Texas Environmental Justice Network—alleges that the government is violating federal law that requires any transfers of wildlife refuge lands to private ownership to result in net conservation benefits.
Instead, the complaint says the proposed deal with SpaceX would lead to a loss of more 715 acres of wildlife refuge land in exchange for 683 acres of private land.
Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, expressed particular concerns about SpaceX building facilities on the land given that the company's rockets regularly cause environmental damage by exploding.
"Elon Musk has built his explosive SpaceX facility in the middle of a major wildlife corridor home to endangered and threatened species like ocelots and wetlands," said Hinojosa. "There was never supposed to be space rockets blowing up here."
Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, accused President Donald Trump's administration of handing over vital public lands to "the world’s richest man, who could trash them while playing with his exploding rockets."
"We’re not letting Trump and his political cronies lock the American people out of Texas’ cherished public lands," added Jordahl, "just to give Elon Musk another payday.”
Mary Angela Branch, board member at Save RGV, said that SpaceX's presence in the area has already been an "unmitigated disaster" for the local environment, and she warned the land transfer plan would "permanently sever the very heart of the wildlife corridor established by Congress in 1979."
"This corridor, running along the Rio Grande... is prime wildlife habitat, and nothing gained in this ‘swap’ will be equal," Branch emphasized. "This will be a huge loss."
In addition to opposition from the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the proposed transfer to SpaceX has drawn significant opposition from some local residents. According to a report published last week by the San Antonio Express-News, more than 3,400 letters have been submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service expressing opposition to the transfer.
Musk, who on Wednesday was accused by politicians in the UK of stoking racial hatred that led to violent pogroms in the city of Belfast, is aiming to become the world's first trillionaire ty making SpaceX a publicly traded company this month.
Jun 10, 2026
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Trump's 'I Love the Inflation' Remark Seen as Latest Display of Contempt for Working Class
US President Donald Trump's remarks Wednesday expressing "love" for new inflation figures were seen as yet another callous dismissal of the economic pain facing the nation's working class as price hikes driven by the Iran war erase wage gains and make it harder for Americans to afford basic needs.
“You know who doesn’t love inflation, Mr. President?” asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) rhetorically. “Working families struggling to afford gas, groceries, and other necessities because of your disastrous actions.”
Asked about the new inflation numbers in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said, "I love it, the numbers were great."
"I love the inflation," the billionaire president continued, celebrating figures showing that the Consumer Price Index hit a new three-year high last month.
Reporter: Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning?
Trump: No, I love it. I love the inflation. pic.twitter.com/vktX6C9lbk
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 10, 2026
Much of May's inflation was driven by increases in the cost of fuel, which is a direct result of Trump starting an illegal war of choice with Iran in February.
An analysis published by Ben Zipperer, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, found that the price increases caused by the Iran war have been so large that they've wiped out any prior gains in real wages during Trump's second term.
Zipperer also warned that "as long as the war continues, there is a heightened threat that price increases will spill over to the broader economy, triggering a more permanent increase in the cost of living and further reductions in real earnings."
Fresh data released Thursday by the BLS signals that inflation isn't slowing down anytime soon. According to the BLS' latest Producer Price Index (PPI) report, wholesale prices in May posted a yearly increase of 6.5%, the fastest rate since November 2022.
Because PPI measures input costs paid by businesses, it is usually predictive of future retail increases as companies pass the cost increases off to consumers.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) was among the lawmakers highlighting and condemning the president's remarks.
"Trump just said 'I love the inflation,'" Beyer wrote. "I guess he doesn’t care if you're being squeezed by higher costs as long as he and his cronies get richer."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media, "So there you have it: President Trump loves that you’re paying higher prices."
Andrew Mamo, a Democratic campaign adviser, said in an interview with The Hill that "every day the president says he loves something Americans clearly hate is a good day for Democrats."
In interviews with The New York Post published on Wednesday, multiple Republican strategists expressed concern not only about the rise in inflation, but Trump's apparently blasé attitude about the impact it's having on Americans' pocketbooks. The president's latest remarks came weeks after he confessed, on camera, that he doesn't "think about Americans' financial situation" as he wages war on Iran.
One former Trump campaign adviser told the Post that comments about "loving" inflation "are simply not productive unless he's looking forward to the impeachments from the Democrats in 2027."
Another GOP strategist told the Post that the clip of Trump saying he loved inflation would be "the centerpiece of a lot of effective ads" targeting Republicans this fall.
GOP strategist John Feehery went on the record to tell the Post that Trump needed to wrap up his war with Iran by early next month or "independents are going to swing hard against the Republicans in the election."
Jun 11, 2026
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Alarm Grows Over Vought Plan to Give Trump Cronies Control of Federal Grant Money
A Trump White House plan to give political appointees more power over federal grant money has sparked alarm among scientists, public health organizations, environmental groups, and others who fear that the proposal amounts to an attempt to subordinate critical funds to the whims of the president and his far-right allies.
More than 300 organizations signed a joint letter on Friday calling on White House budget director Russell Vought, the proposed rule's architect, to extend the public comment period that's set to end on July 13, warning that the "scope and impact of [the Office of Management and Budget's] rule is vast."
"The rule will impact the entirety of government grant-making across the United States," the groups warned. "OMB itself says the revisions suggested would relate to over $179 billion of funds to small entities."
Politico, which exclusively obtained the letter, noted that the "proposed rule has already garnered over 15,000 public comments, with many expressing alarm that the changes could undermine research across fields."
Under Vought's rule, federal agencies would be required to perform "pre-issuance reviews" of federal grants—funds appropriated by Congress—to ensure their distribution is consistent with "applicable law, federal agency priorities, and the national interest."
The rule lays out a number of standards that political appointees at federal agencies must screen for when deciding whether an organization can receive federal grant dollars. For instance, the rule would prohibit the distribution of federal grants to organizations that "promote anti-American values" or support "ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans."
The New York Times reported that the consequences of Vought's rule "could fall hardest on health and science, a field in which [President Donald Trump] has pursued some of the steepest cuts in his second term."
"In exchange for federal assistance, researchers would face limits on the subjects that they can explore, the foreign labs with which they may collaborate and even the conferences at which they can appear," the Times noted. "Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association, a professional organization and advocacy group, said the policy could 'devastate innovation, science, and research' in the United States."
"This is an executive power grab that would hand presidential political appointees unchecked control over more than a trillion dollars that Congress appropriated in the interests of all Americans."
Earlier this month, Lawyers for Good Government and the Environmental Protection Network said that "if finalized, the rule would put senior political appointees in charge of approving and canceling individual grants, while stripping recipients of due process rights" while attaching "ideological conditions to nearly every federal dollar, raising First Amendment and equal-protection concerns."
The two organizations published a fact sheet warning that the proposed rule has the potential to halt billions of dollars in funding that communities across the US depend on for "health, public education, scientific research, public safety, and economic development projects."
“This is an executive power grab that would hand presidential political appointees unchecked control over more than a trillion dollars that Congress appropriated in the interests of all Americans,” said Jillian Blanchard, senior vice president for climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government. “Conditioning funding for critical programs on ideology and viewpoint discrimination, while erasing basic due-process protections, violates freedoms of speech, equal protection, and eviscerates Congress’ power of the purse.”
Democratic lawmakers have also sounded the alarm about Vought's proposal. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Thursday that she has given her Republican colleagues two opportunities to denounce Vought's rule—and they declined both times.
"Vought continues to attempt to steal from communities across the country. Now, he is trying to set a new political test on grants for a wide swath of the federal government," said DeLauro. "The test will be a simple one: Are you sufficiently loyal to the president? If the answer is no, it will result in the denial of lifesaving disaster relief, funding for research into cures, the closure of Head Start offices, and more. If you are not loyal enough, if you speak out against this administration, the president and his cronies will take away resources Congress provided."
Jun 13, 2026
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Despite Court Protection Orders, Trump Admin Deports Refugees to War-Torn Central African Republic, Putting ‘Lives at Risk’
The US government advises Americans not to travel to the Central African Republic "for any reason." But it just deported nearly two dozen people to the war-torn country, including several refugees who fled persecution in other nations.
On Friday morning, Human Rights First's deportation flight tracker reported that a plane used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had landed in Accra, Ghana, after departing from Louisiana the previous day and was believed to be en route to the CAR's capital, Bangui.
Per The New York Times on Thursday, the administration was preparing to deport "at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States" as well as "migrants from Afghanistan and Syria."
According to their lawyers, several of the migrants had received court orders from judges prohibiting their deportation to their home countries, citing the risk of persecution there.
A lawyer for one of the Iranian women told the Times that neither of them has a criminal record and that they both have been granted court protection due to fear of threats to their freedom or lives if they returned to Iran. One is a Christian convert, and the other is a pro-democracy activist.
According to Reuters, just the activist ended up on the flight from Louisiana. But the Christian woman is still at risk, along with another Iranian national.
Human Rights First's @ICEFlightM is monitoring this egregious situation, and we urge our policy makers to decry this life-threatening flight and other deals that send people seeking safety back to the very harms from which they fled.
https://t.co/ABZZMTQNuS
— Human Rights First (@humanrights1st) June 11, 2026
The burden of proof to receive what is known as a “withholding of removal” status from an immigration judge is even higher than that needed for migrants to qualify for asylum.
Those seeking their deportations to be halted must demonstrate that it’s more likely than not that their life or freedom would be threatened if they returned to a specific country due to their race, religion, nationality, or political or social affiliation.
In order to get around orders protecting these migrants from deportation to their home countries, the administration is instead dumping them in what have been described as "third countries."
The flight departed on Thursday is the first US deportation flight to the CAR, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and is reeling from a civil war that's displaced more than a million people both inside and outside the country.
The country is under the State Department's highest travel advisory, warning US citizens not to go there "due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health, and terrorism."
This is the @StateDept travel advisory for the Central African Republic.
The United States—a self-proclaimed nation of refuge—is about to send refugees here. https://t.co/uxfexS5S73 pic.twitter.com/pvYyxIQHdN
— Sarah Pierce (@SarahPierceEsq) June 11, 2026
"People on this flight proved to a judge that they were likely to be persecuted in their home countries," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "This is profoundly unjust."
Human rights law experts Anjli Parrin and Savi Arvey wrote on Wednesday for Just Security that the administration was putting "lives at risk" by sending these migrants to a dangerous country where they know nobody and where basic healthcare infrastructure hardly exists.
They said the administration's deportation of these migrants "is the latest example of its dangerous and potentially life-threatening strategy: using secretive deals with countries to expel asylum seekers and migrants with no legal or personal connection to the places where they are being sent."
"Since early last year, the US government has signed a growing number of third-country forced transfer agreements with over 30 countries worldwide to expel and deport people to places where they have no legal or personal ties," they said.
"These deportations are often carried out in secrecy and without any semblance of due process," they added. "Individuals are often not given any advance warning or the opportunity to challenge their deportation to a third country—with many only discovering they are being sent to a country they may have never heard of while airborne."
Emily Trostle, a lawyer for the Iranian activist, told Reuters that the migrants facing deportation to the CAR "have absolutely no connection to this place."
“These individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection, and no support network,” she said. “We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled.”
According to Human Rights First's Third Country Deportation Watch, governments around the world have been given $44 million from US taxpayers to receive these migrants. More than 19,000 people, it found, have been deported across 24 countries.
Most of them have been sent to Mexico, but the US has also shipped migrants to some of the poorest, most unstable nations in sub-Saharan Africa, including Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Many have faced arbitrary detention and torture or been returned to the country where they fled persecution.
In order to avoid having to allow over 1,000 Afghans who fought alongside US soldiers to settle as refugees in the US as planned, the Trump administration is reportedly trying to ink a deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to take them instead, but the plan was stalled amid public backlash, and the administration is seeking other options.
It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war. https://t.co/JaN8z2LFI2
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 11, 2026
The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund said on Thursday that the deportation of Iranian nationals was a “potentially fatal action,” as they could face danger in the CAR or be sent back to Iran.
Another person scheduled to be deported to the CAR was an elderly man from Syria, whose immigration attorney, Margaret Stock, told the Times that he had scars all over his body due to torture in his home country.
He is a Sufi Muslim and feared persecution if he returned there, and is in danger of lacking access to care for his diabetes if sent to the CAR. According to Stock, he received an emergency temporary order halting his deportation.
Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee in charge of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies, responded to the Times report on the deportations with outrage.
"It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war," he said.
Reichlin-Melnick agreed: "Evil is the right word for... taking people who are safe in the United States, who have proven to a judge they would be persecuted in their home country, and dumping them in a random country in the middle of a civil war."
"No previous administration would have done this, despite it likely being legal," he added.
Jun 12, 2026
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'A Global Crisis': Report Reveals Over 40% Rise in Violent Attacks on Education
From the Gaza Strip to Ukraine and beyond, violent attacks on students, teachers, and schools have surged in recent years, according to a report released Monday by an international coalition.
The report, titled "Education Under Attack 2026," documents at least 8,566 attacks on education and cases of military forces using educational facilities from the beginning of 2024 to the end of last year, a more than 40% increase from the previous two-year period.
"We believe the true increase is far higher," noted Felicity Pearce, lead researcher for the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) report, in a statement. "Escalating conflict, shrinking humanitarian access, and widespread information blackouts mean many attacks are never reported."
The 2024-25 attacks harmed at least 10,600 students, educators, and other personnel across 83 countries, including 55 that are not in active conflict. GCPEA found the highest incidence in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Haiti, Palestine, and Ukraine, while Cameroon, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Yemen had the greatest numbers of people harmed or killed.
"Cameroon continued to face overlapping security crises, which continued to heavily affect civilians in 2024-2025, marked by persistent violence in the Far North region and protracted armed conflict in the Northwest and Southwest regions," the report explains. GCPEA recorded at least 67 attacks on schools, 85 attacks on students and staff, and 11 reports of military use of educational facilities.
It's now been a decade since the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia signed peace accords, but GCPEA still identified at least 160 reports of attacks on educational facilities, 129 reports of attacks on students and personnel, and 107 reports of military use of schools.
In the DRC, as "armed conflict intensified" between the Rwandan Defense Force-backed March 23 Movement and the Congolese national armed forces—supported by Burundi's military and allied militias—there were at least 350 attacks on schools, 15 attacks on students and staff, and 313 cases of military use of facilities.
"Conflict in Ethiopia continued to impact access to education for millions of children," the publication states. GCPEA tracked around 100 attacks on schools and seven on students and personnel—though acknowledged monitoring and reporting challenges—as well as approximately 1,200 schools used for military purposes, a sharp increase from the previous period.
"As armed gangs in Haiti merged and gained control over more of the country, escalating violence included attacks on schools, school students, and staff, as well as the military use of schools, and disrupted education for over 1.2 million children," according to the report. Specifically, there were at least 339 attacks on schools, 55 attacks on students and staff, and 27 reports of military use of facilities.
In Myanmar, "as internal conflict intensified between the military junta that seized power in February 2021 and armed resistance groups," GCPEA tracked 212 attacks on schools, 18 attacks on students and personnel, and 84 military occupations.
As armed conflict between the Nigerian government and non-state armed groups continued during the reporting period, attacks on schools dropped slightly, to nine, while attacks on students and staff were consistent, at 14—but at least 90 people were killed or injured, and over 700 were abducted. There were at least five incidents of the military using schools.
"Israel continued to commit genocidal violence against the Palestinian population in Gaza," the report says, and there were increased attacks on schools, students, and teachers in both the coastal strip—where most educational buildings have been "severely damaged"—and the occupied West Bank. Across Palestine, GCPEA identified at least 620 attacks on schools, 2,400 attacks on students and staff, and 10 cases of the military use of educational facilities.
As Ukrainian forces continued to fight Russian invaders, GCPEA tracked more than 900 attacks on schools and at least one case of military use of a school. The report also points out that "1,611 schools had been damaged or destroyed since the start of the full-scale invasion, including at least 339 that had been completely destroyed," forcing 741,000 children to study in a hybrid format, and another 443,000 to learn entirely online.
In Yemen, "a fragile truce largely held through 2024 and 2025," but the continued battle among the internationally recognized government, Houthi forces, and regional actors meant there were still at least 16 attacks on schools, 62 attacks on students and staff, and 63 cases of military use of facilities.
Lisa Chung Bender, director of the GCPEA, told The Guardian that the report's findings "are a warning that the global norms that once protected children are collapsing."
"A warning that the world is drifting toward a place where even the youngest are no longer off‑limits," she said. "And a warning that if we do not hold the line now, we may never get it back."
The report urges support for the Safe Schools Declaration, and features recommendations for governments and civil society.
Its release follows the latest publication from the Explosive Weapons Monitor, which was released last week and documents at least 22,616 civilian fatalities from explosive weapons across 65 countries and territories last year. The monitor found 1,416 attacks on education in 2025, a 64% increase from 2024, and also highlighted Myanmar, Palestine, and Ukraine.
Jun 15, 2026
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Canadian Youth, Groups Sue Over Carney 'Failure' on Climate Crisis
"Everyone in Canada deserves to be safe and healthy," said one organization leader. "Instead, our government is putting people at risk by dismantling key climate policies without a credible plan to reduce emissions."
Jun 16, 2026
"You cannot abandon the map and still expect to reach your destination. Yet that's exactly what the federal government has done with its 2030 climate plan."
That's according to Charlie Hatt, climate director at Ecojustice, Canada's largest environmental law charity and one of the groups that partnered with a trio of young citizens this week to challenge Prime Minister Mark Carney's "failure" to bring the country's 2030 emissions reduction plan into compliance with a key federal law.
"Right now, its only climate plan is a plan to fail—and that's not just irresponsible, it's unlawful under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act," said Hatt. "Neither the climate nor the law can tolerate rollbacks today in exchange for promises of action many years from now."
The act requires the federal government to set science-based climate goals, create a plan to achieve them, and report on its progress. However, Carney has recently pursued various rollbacks and boosted fossil fuel development, putting his nation's 2030 emissions reduction target out of reach—which the groups and young people argued violates the law.
"Everyone in Canada deserves to be safe and healthy," said Dr. Samantha Green, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. "Instead, our government is putting people at risk by dismantling key climate policies without a credible plan to reduce emissions. Climate change is not an abstract future threat: It is a public health emergency that is already harming patients and communities across Canada. That's why CAPE is joining this lawsuit."
The fossil fuel-driven climate emergency isn't just a danger to public health. As Environmental Defence's Julia Levin noted, Canadians "are paying the price through wildfires, heat domes, rising food insecurity, and high costs of living."
"PM Carney is betraying Canadians by taking a wrecking ball to our hard-fought climate progress," Levin declared, accusing the Liberal Party leader of following in the footsteps of Big Oil-backed Republican US President Donald Trump.
"The rest of the world is rapidly adopting clean energy systems that are already more reliable, affordable, and secure than fossil fuels," she said. "Meanwhile, our prime minister is copying President Trump's playbook, ensuring that Canada will be left behind."
Carney's climate policies as prime minister—especially compared with how he talked about the crisis before rising to his current position last year—have frustrated many citizens and left "climate-anxious voters... feeling a major case of buyer's remorse, disoriented by the dissonance between who they thought they were supporting and a climate plan that is now a complete shambles," as Canadian climate writer and activist Seth Klein wrote for The Guardian last month.
Youth applicants in the new legal fight made that frustration clear on Tuesday. Montréal, Quebec-based climate organizer Shirley Barnea said that "the Carney government's gutting of climate policy is a massive insult. After presenting himself as a climate leader, our prime minister is now abdicating responsibility—to Canadians, to future generations, to the law. As long as governments continue ignoring climate science and rolling back protections for our futures, young people will continue taking them to court."
Marie Maltais, who is from Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier, Québec, and has advocated for the climate since her early teens, said that "my generation has grown up surrounded by climate disasters and broken political promises to address them. We're told to trust the government's climate commitments—but commitments mean nothing without a real plan behind them."
Sudbury, Ontario-based Sophia Mathur, an early participant in Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future movement who recently met with Carney and urged him to keep his climate promises, added that "young people are being handed the consequences of decisions we didn't make. We are going to live with the impacts of unchecked climate change for the rest of our lives—so we're standing up for our futures, now."
The young citizens and advocacy groups are seeking a court order that would compel Carney to comply with the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, stressing that "climate change is an existential threat to all Canadians."
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'Dire for Democracy': Economist Explains How Trillionaires Are Threats to Human Freedom
"It is time to break decisively with the perverse logic in which retirees, the poor, or immigrants are expected to balance the budget, while the rich are to be allowed to live tax-free in their own parallel society. "
Jun 16, 2026
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire last week, and now a prominent economist is warning that his unprecedented wealth poses a grave threat to human freedom in the US and across the globe.
In a column published by The Guardian on Tuesday, Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman argued that Musk's enormous fortune is fundamentally at odds with a democratic system of governance because it gives him "the power to stifle competition, the power to shape public discourse, the power to influence policymaking, the power to buy elections, the power to stall social progress," and much else.
Zucman noted that wealth concentration is even greater now than it was during the original Gilded Age, as the top 0.00001% now have fortunes large enough to "buy 14% of everything produced in a given year in the US."
The economist added that while Musk—whose infamous destruction of the US Agency for International Development is projected to kill millions of people in the coming years—makes a particularly compelling villain, trillionaires would be a major problem for democracy even if they were of a more benevolent variety.
"No one should want to live in a society where one single individual can be worth $1 trillion, no matter their personal virtues," Zucman emphasized. "Such levels invariably skew power, distort markets, and sap our democratic ideals."
The best solution to this crisis, Zucman said, is to "create an unavoidable minimum tax on their wealth" that will "make it impossible for the super-rich to pay less tax than middle-class workers—a matter of basic equality before the law."
"It is time to break decisively with the perverse logic in which retirees, the poor, or immigrants are expected to balance the budget," Zucman concluded, "while the rich are to be allowed to live tax-free in their own parallel society. There cannot be a law more lenient for the rich and powerful than for the rest of us. If ever there was a time to act, it is now."
Zucman's thoughts on extreme wealth and democracy were echoed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who on Tuesday published an essay on his Substack page where he likened President Donald Trump's White House cage-fighting matches to the kinds of spectacles put on by Roman emperors before noting ominous similarities between the US today and the Roman Empire.
"While the causes of the decline of republican government and Rome’s eventual transition to one-man rule were doubtless complex," Krugman wrote, "there is broad consensus among historians that a key factor was the emergence of extreme inequality. A handful of men became incredibly wealthy from the spoils of Rome’s eastern conquests, and their wealth and power eventually became too great for the rules of constitutional, republican government to contain. Sound uncomfortably familiar?"
Gautam Mukunda, a professor at the Yale School of Management, similarly warned that Musk's newly minted trillionaire status was bad news for American self-governance.
In a Monday column published by Bloomberg, Mukunda pointed to the vast sums of money being spent by billionaires in US elections, which he noted "dwarf what candidates can raise themselves."
And like Krugman, Mukunda saw disturbing parallels between the US today and Ancient Rome.
"Marcus Crassus was the richest man in ancient Rome," he explained. "So rich that, by Plutarch’s account, he thought no man truly wealthy unless he could pay an army from his own purse. He spent that fortune bankrolling Julius Caesar and building the triumvirate that sidelined the Senate and, in fact if not in name, overthrew the republic."
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'Montana Plan' Targeting Corporate Money in Politics Secures Enough Signatures for Ballot
"More than 500 Montanans gathered signatures in all 56 counties, without a single paid signature gatherer, and blew past the 30,121 signatures needed to qualify. That is what grassroots democracy looks like."
Jun 16, 2026
In a direct challenge to the US Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and a potential model for the rest of the nation, Montana campaigners announced Tuesday that they had collected nearly 20,000 more signatures than required to force a statewide vote in November on a ballot measure to block corporations from dumping money into elections.
The high court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision opened the floodgates for companies and other organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money on US politics. If approved by voters, "The Montana Plan," as advocates in the state are calling the legal strategy behind the proposed Initiative 194, would "stop corporate and dark money cold" in Big Sky Country.
Initiative 194 would bar "artificial persons," including "nonprofits, trusts, partnerships, corporations, trade associations, or unincorporated associations," from "contributing anything of value to candidate elections, supporting or opposing political parties, or supporting or opposing state or local ballot issues." Violators would be "punished by forfeiting all privileges to do business in Montana."
The Transparent Election Initiative in March got the go-ahead to start collecting signatures to put the initiative on the ballot, and as of Tuesday, TEI's all-volunteer campaign had collected nearly 50,000 across all 56 counties, "far surpassing Montana's 30,121-signature statewide qualification threshold." As of last week, the Montana Secretary of State had already verified 34,906 of them.
"This campaign has been powered by Montanans from the very beginning," said Jeff Mangan, TEI's founder, in a statement. "To the out-of-state corporate and special interests trying to spread disinformation about who we are and what we're trying to accomplish: Look at the power of this volunteer army."
"More than 500 Montanans gathered signatures in all 56 counties, without a single paid signature gatherer, and blew past the 30,121 signatures needed to qualify," he noted. "That is what grassroots democracy looks like."
Mangan, a former Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, also acknowledged that "we know the road to November will be a tough fight."
Already, the campaign secured a key legal victory earlier this year, when the Montana Supreme Court dismissed a legal challenge filed by "a group of corporations and industry groups—comprising the Montana Mining Association, the Montana Chamber of Commerce, Montana Stockgrowers Association, Montana Petroleum Association, Montana Trucking Association, Montana Contractors Association, Treasure State Resource Association and Billings and Kalispell’s respective chambers of commerce," as the Daily Montanan reported in April.
Mangan said Tuesday that "this is David versus Goliath. Corporate and special interests are going to spend millions of dollars on TV ads, mailers, and scare tactics trying to make Montanans afraid of their own power. But the way we win is the same way we got here: real Montanans, in real communities, having real conversations."
"Over the next six months, we're going to be everywhere—answering questions, sharing the facts, and looking voters in the eye," he pledged. "The Montana Plan is about a simple principle: Real people should govern, not artificial persons created on paper. A vote for The Montana Plan (I-194) is a vote to put Montanans back in charge of Montana elections."
TEI's announcement came a month after Democratic Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed into law a bill that also takes aim at the infamous ruling that corporations are effectively people in terms of political spending—legislation that Michael Beckel, who directs the Money in Politics project for the advocacy group Issue One, also called a "model for the country."
At the federal level, progressives have repeatedly introduced bills that would abolish super political action committees (PACS) and overturn the Citizens United decision—though, at least until the November election, both chambers are controlled by the GOP.
"Corporations are not people and money is not speech," US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) stressed while introducing a constitutional amendment to reverse the ruling last year. "In every election cycle since the disastrous Citizens United decision, we have seen more and more special interest dark money poured into campaigns across the country—this year, with a billionaire paying millions to buy a seat as Shadow President."
"My We the People Amendment hands power back to the people," she explained, "by finally ending corporate constitutional rights, reversing Citizens United, and ensuring that our democracy is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people—not corporations."
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