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We Shall Prevail: An Echo That Doesn't Die
More than 50 years after the murder of iconic Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, the last man convicted of killing him has been tracked down and brought to justice. In 1973, a day after Pinochet's coup, Jara was seized, tortured, his hands broken to silence what was deemed music "more powerful than a thousand machine guns." Today, in a world tilting right, he remains an enduring symbol of resistance. Manifiesto: “A song has meaning/ When it beats in the veins/ Of a man who will die singing.”
On Sept. 11, 1973, troops under brutal, U.S.- backed General Augusto Pinochet bombed and stormed the presidential palace in Santiago to depose Salvador Allende, a Chilean physician who'd become the first democratically elected Marxist head of state in Latin America. Barricaded inside the palace, Allende gave a final speech defending Chilean democracy. "My words do not have bitterness but disappointment.," he said. "May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath." He thanked the country's workers, farmers, miners, women, intellectuals, students for their heartfelt loyalty to "a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice." "I will always be next to you," he said. "My sacrifice will not be in vain. History is ours." Then he shot himself under the chin with an assault rifle.
A Marxist activist and singer hugely popular with Allende supporters, Jara had re-written the 1969 song Venceremos - composed by Sergio Ortega with original text by Claudio Iturra - as an anthem for Allende’s 1970 Popular Unity election campaign. Born to a poor farm family, Jara was mestizo, a mix of Indigenous Mapuche and Spanish heritage. He once said his first memory was hearing his mother sing folk songs as she worked in their garden or kitchen; after she died when he was 15, Jara went to seminary school but eventually decided against the priesthood. After military service, he studied theater and music at university, then turned to writing songs that merged tender folk music with political themes - rural working-class stories, brutal evictions of squatters: "We began to create a new kind of song. It was music that was born out of necessity."
In September 1973, widely recognizable, he was seized by soldiers the day after the coup and taken to Estadio Chile, a Santiago stadium now named for him, where about 5,000 people were being held. For four days, he was beaten, tortured, humiliated. An officer threw a cigarette on the ground and made him crawl for it; others played Russian Roulette with him; eventually, they broke both his hands before parading him through the stadium; later, through split lips, he sang a final Venceremos - "We Will Prevail." On his last day, said a fellow detainee, he found a pen and notebook and scribbled one more song, or harsh poem, Estadio Chile, later smuggled out. Two hours later, he was killed, his body dumped near a cemetery. His body had 44 bullet wounds 56 broken bones, including a shattered skull. He was 40 years old.
The Pinochet dictatorship went on to kill or disappear over 3,000 people, and detain and torture up to 40,000 during its brutal 17-year reign. It ended in 1990 through a constitutional process wherein voters rejected extending its rule and elected a civilian president. After years of legal efforts to hold Pinochet accountable, in 1998 a Spanish judge issued an international arrest warrant for his human rights abuses; he was detained in the U.K during a medical visit after the House of Lords ruled he did not have immunity, but Britain ultimately released him back to Chile in 2000 for health reasons. There, Chilean judges pushed their Supreme Court to strip him of immunity to face trial for murders and kidnappings tied to military death squads, but he died under house arrest of a heart attack in 2006, age 91, having never been formally tried or convicted for his crimes.
Victor Jara, one of the regime's most beloved and recognizable victims, swiftly became an enduring international symbol of resistance after the deadly, public silencing of his music. In 2003, Estadio Chile was renamed Estadio Víctor Jara; in 2009, Victor’s body was reburied in a public funeral attended by thousands of mourners; today, an annual 1,000 Guitars event held in his honor at that stadium also draws thousands. Still, the moral arc of the universe moved slowly. Over time, Chilean courts convicted hundreds of military officers and secret police for human rights abuses, but it was not until 2018 that eight retired officers were charged with Jara's murder, and that of Allende's director of prisons Littré Quiroga Carvajal. In August 2023, after five years of appeals and 50 years of evading justice, Chile's Supreme Court convicted them all in a unanimous decision.
The Court sentenced the eight, several in absentia, to 15 years and a day for the murders of both men, and 10 years and a day for their kidnappings, for a total of 25 years. A ninth was given eight years for concealing the crimes. The Court also dismissed all their appeals for annulment, and ordered the state to pay large reparations to the families of both men. Of those sentenced, 86-year-old Gen. Hernán Chacón killed himself moments after police arrived to arrest him at his home in a wealthy district of Santiago. Another, Pedro Barrientos, had fled Chile for the US in 1989; he was extradited back in 2023 after he was arrested in the US during a traffic stop. During his trial, one former soldier testified Barrientos liked to brandish his pistol in a crowd and declare, “I killed Víctor Jara with this!"
Five others have been in jail since then. Only one, Nelson Haase Mazzei, had remained missing since he failed to appear in court in 2018. A retired colonel, Haase Mazzei joined the Chilean army’s notorious Tejas Verde brigade in 1972 and was part of Pinochet’s brutal secret police; he worked closely with its head, Manuel Contreras, sentenced to over 500 years in jail for crimes against humanity before his 2015 death. Last weekend, in likely the final act of a too-long quest for justice, Chilean police announced they'd arrested Haase Mazzei, now 80, in rural Puyehue, south of Santiago. A judge ordered his immediate imprisonment to start his 25 year sentence; one article noted, "Impunity Takes Another Hit." Another said his defense lawyer has requested his transfer to Punta Peuco, a ritzy jail already housing many of the Pinochet era's murderers.
Through the Víctor Jara Foundation, started by Victor's widow Joan, a British dancer and activist who died in 2023 at 96, their daughter Amanda said she welcomes the news of Haase's arrest but, "Half a century after the murders, it is difficult to see this as justice." Still, Jara's songs live on from when Allende, after he won the presidency, spoke before a banner reading, "You can’t have a revolution without songs." "They were on the radio and television," said Joan in 1975. “The song movement was a tremendous weapon." Since then, music has continued fighting the fear authoritarianism depends on, transforming "political grievance into a shared language of survival" - Miriam Makeba, Mikis Theodorakis, Pussy Riot, America's Woody Guthrie to Dylan to Bad Bunny, who launched his 2026 tour in Chile with Jara's song, dedicated to Ho Chi Minh, The Right to Live in Peace.
In 2020, James Dean Bradfield, lead vocalist and guitarist for the Welsh alt-rock band Manic Street Preachers, released Even in Exile, a concept album dedicated to Jara's life and work, along with a three-part podcast. Bradfield discovered Jara as a teen, taken aback by a tenderness he didn't associate with "one of the only truly Marxist musicians. The truth...floats to you like a dream.” He learned more about Jara from poet Patrick Jones, whose brother is Bradfield’s bandmate; Jones had found two compilations of Jara songs in a thrift shop, became "obsessed" and wrote dozens of poems about Jara that, shared with Bradfield, became the album's songs. For Jones, the story of Jara's life and death is "a warning from history" that deeply . resonates with today's rise of the right: "Power is always afraid of those who stand up and say, 'There’s another way.'"
For the album, Bradfield wanted songs that span Jara's life, from his rural childhood to his final hours. He was moved by his singing of Venceremos near the end - "He died defiantly, but with grace" - yet felt, "If you just focus on his death, you ignore the journey." Above all, he wanted to highlight Jara's daunting courage and conviction throughout his life, a "naked truth" that rendered him what Phil Ochs called, when he met Jara in 1971, "the real thing." For Bradfield, it reminded him of the Preachers' 1998 song, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next. He also deliberately chose to include Jara's final Estadio Chile - "How hard it is to sing when I must sing of horror/ Horror which I am living, horror which I am dying” - which he calls "an anthem that became a prophecy." Of Jara's life and work, he hears "the echo time and time again. I wanted to show here’s an echo that doesn’t die."
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Aug 01, 2026
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Fury as Council of Trump Loyalists Votes to Steamroll Historic Preservation Law
Preservationists are reacting with fury after allies of President Donald Trump moved to weaken federal restrictions on construction projects built on historic sites.
Trump-appointed members of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) on Friday voted move forward with rules that would weaken Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires the federal government to both evaluate how construction projects might impact protected places and to consult with people and groups affected by such projects, including Tribal Nations.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, on Monday ripped Trump for stacking the council with loyalists who appear determined to "tear down the safeguards that protect America's history so he and his billionaire friends can build whatever they want, wherever they want."
"Right now, a developer has to stop and listen before paving over a tribal burial ground, a Revolutionary War battlefield, or the church where your grandparents were married," Huffman added. "Trump's council wants to end that and cut tribal nations, states, counties, towns, and communities out of that conversation entirely."
Greg Werkheiser, founding partner at the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners, said in an interview with NPR published on Friday that the vote amounted to an "attempt to gut historic preservation protections."
"There are millions of these sites in this country," Werkheiser emphasized, "and all of them are made less protected by this effort by the Trump administration."
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) on Monday denounced the council's vote, describing it as "a significant step back for historic preservation, community participation, and the inclusive design processes that serve the public good."
"At its core, the revisions strip communities of their right to be heard," said the AIA. "These revisions place approximately 1.4 million historic sites at greater risk by shifting decisions away from the communities where they are rooted. The revisions make public comment optional rather than mandatory, narrow the definition of historic property, and shift decision-making authority almost entirely to federal agencies—sidelining state historic preservation officers, tribal historic preservation officers, tribes, and local governments."
Michaela Pavlat, manager for the National Parks Conservation Association Indigenous Partnerships Program, said the Friday vote was a "calculated, yet unwarranted attack on tribal consultation, historic preservation, and the regulations that have protected the places that tell our country’s diverse stories."
Gussie Lord, managing attorney for tribal partnerships at Earthjustice, noted that the National Historic Preservation Act "has not slowed the pace of new roads and power plants in this country, but it has given Tribes a seat at the table and preserved irreplaceable Indigenous sites from destruction."
"What happens when entire landscapes are bulldozed without a thought to their cultural and historic importance?" Lord asked. "No one should support cutting Tribes out of the decision-making process for projects that impact their rights and sacred places."
Jul 27, 2026
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Trump Admin Argues Even Terminally Ill Patients Shouldn't Be Exempt From Medicaid Work Requirements
A federal judge on Thursday denied a request by more than two dozen Democratic states to halt a Trump administration policy announced last month that would require Medicaid recipients with terminal diseases to prove they are too sick to work in order to be exempt from new work requirements that go into effect this coming January.
While introducing over $1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, last year's massive GOP tax and budget bill also imposed new 80-hour-per-month work requirements that states must implement for Medicaid expansion recipients, who receive government-subsidized insurance coverage at or below 138% of the poverty line.
The law specified that those who are “medically frail or otherwise have special medical needs” are excluded from the work requirement, and specifically listed people with a “serious or complex medical condition.” But it remained unclear what exact conditions met these criteria.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced a new rule stating that even if a person receives a terminal diagnosis for a disease like cancer, HIV/AIDS, or Parkinson's, that is still not enough for them to be exempt from the work requirements.
Beginning on January 1, 2028, it says they must also demonstrate to states that their condition “significantly impairs” their ability to meet the work requirement.
Democratic attorneys general in 25 states and the District of Columbia filed a preliminary injunction over the rule late last month, arguing that CMS had rewritten the law to introduce a vague and needlessly restrictive new hurdle that vulnerable people will face in obtaining desperately needed care.
“This is one of those cases where it’s really hard to overstate how dire the consequences could be,” North Carolina’s Democratic attorney general, Jeff Jackson, told Politico. “You’re going to have 50 states doing 50 different things, and we’re all going to have to create a whole new bureaucracy... You are talking about a lot more paperwork, more evaluations, more doctor visits, and a lot more work for doctors themselves.”
The Democratic AGs argued that implementation of the work requirements should be paused because they lacked the staff or capacity to meet the timeline set by CMS, which requires states to communicate to enrollees how they'll be affected by the changes by the end of August.
US District Judge Richard Stearns on Thursday denied their initial request to immediately halt the implementation of the requirements while the lawsuit proceeds, but also did not rule on the lawsuit's merits, which are scheduled to be decided before the requirements go into effect on January 1.
Several medical associations, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have come out against the rule, arguing that it would have dire consequences for people who suffer from severe illness.
"One of the most significant factors in whether someone survives a cancer diagnosis is whether they have health insurance coverage," Lisa Lacasse, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, explained in June.
"The new restrictions link the definition of medical frailty to a person’s ability to work," she continued. "This would mean cancer patients and survivors who are suffering from debilitating side effects of the disease or treatment would have to officially prove they can’t work, in a process that is likely to be difficult and take a long time."
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that over the coming decade, changes to healthcare policy introduced by Republicans would increase the number of uninsured Americans by about 11.8 million.
Around 5.7 million of them are projected to be Medicaid recipients who either do not meet the 80-hour work requirement or are otherwise eligible but tripped up by one of the newly imposed paperwork hurdles.
Taya Graham and Stephen Janis argued earlier this week in a piece for The Real News Network that eligible people losing coverage is not an unfortunate side effect of the law, but a goal of the Republicans who passed it, who sought a way to thin the ranks of those who qualify for Medicaid without having to take the politically unpopular step of actually clawing back benefits.
They wrote that what has happened to recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) illustrates how burdensome these new requirements may become.
As The New York Times reported earlier this month, in Arizona, 440,000 people have already been dropped from SNAP after it enacted a formidable regime of paperwork for low-income recipients to prove eligibility, including requiring some people with panhandling income to obtain documentation from donors who drop them a buck on the street.
"If this is what people receiving SNAP benefits have been subjected to," Graham and Janis wrote, "imagine what’s going to happen to people who will need to navigate the new [Medicaid] requirements while struggling with a debilitating or terminal illness."
Medical issues are a leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. According to one study, over 4 in 10 cancer patients over 50 had depleted all their assets within two years of diagnosis.
Melanie D’Arrigo, a campaigner for single-payer healthcare in New York, said that President Donald Trump "cut cancer research, cut healthcare,” and with new Medicaid restrictions, “wants to make sure Americans continue to work as they go broke battling cancer.”
Jul 30, 2026
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Democrat Brian Poindexter: 'No One Credibly Accused' of Abuse Like Rep. Max Miller Belongs in Congress
Democratic congressional candidate Brian Poindexter on Sunday joined a growing chorus of people across the political spectrum arguing that Republican Rep. Max Miller shouldn't remain a member of the US House of Representatives over domestic abuse allegations.
"No one credibly accused of holding a gun to his wife's head and breaking their 2-year-old daughter's collarbone belongs in the halls of power," said Poindexter, a union ironworker challenging the GOP incumbent in Ohio's 7th Congressional District, in a post on the platform X. "Help defeat Max Miller in November."
Poindexter's social media post, which links to his fundraising webpage, came after he told Ohio journalist Jessie Balmert on Saturday night, "These allegations are very serious, and I don't know if he should resign or not, but what I would say is that if these allegations are true, he should be in jail."
The Democrat's post also came as Miller wrapped up a nearly 20-minute livestream on X in which he makes clear that he is not dropping out of the race (the deadline for Republicans to replace him on the ballot is Wednesday). Miller also denied abusing his ex-wife Emily Moreno—the daughter of US Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio)—and their child.
Emily Moreno discovered bruises on their young daughter and took her to the emergency department. As Mother Jones' Abby Vesoulis reported last month, "Records of the investigation into potential child abuse show that Moreno told detectives that Miller had previously thrown hot water at her, shoved her, and held a gun to her head; therefore, she couldn't rule out that Miller caused their daughter’s fracture."
The Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services found that any potential child abuse was unsubstantiated—meaning there wasn't enough evidence to determine neglect or abuse—but Mother Jones reviewed legal filings in which "Moreno alleges that Miller was an absentee father and abusive husband whose history of violence and misconduct dates back more than a decade."
Responding to the Sunday morning video, Emily Moreno's spokesperson, Stefan Mychajliw, said that "it is shameful that Max Miller decided to go on a bizarre and lie-filled rant about his ex-wife to desperately try to save his political career. There is a documented trove of evidence that Miller has a history of violent and dangerous behavior and no amount of victim shaming will change that."
"It is despicable and abhorrent that Miller lied on an unhinged and humiliating video for their daughter to watch one day," the spokesperson continued. "No loving parent would have ever used their daughter as a PR pawn to save their own political career. Miller can lie and spin on X, but he cannot do so under oath in a court of law. We are confident that justice will prevail in court."
Her senator father also weighed in with a lengthy post on X, saying in part that "our priority has always been protecting our daughter and our granddaughter. Out of concern for the safety of my family, I hoped to keep this matter private, but Max Miller’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible... He should not serve in the House of Representatives. I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake."
Miller replied to the senator directly, writing: "If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn't wait two years before holding him accountable. You know this isn't true, and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. This is all political."
As Mother Jones' Vesoulis noted Sunday:
Emily Moreno is not the only woman that Miller has been accused of perpetrating violence against. In 2021, Politico cited multiple witnesses in reporting that Miller had thrown a woman down the stairs after she rejected his advances. That woman recently told Mother Jones that the night in question remains “one of the more traumatic nights of my life.”
During the first Trump administration, Miller’s behavior toward women also came under scrutiny when former White House press Secretary Stephanie Grisham accused a fellow Trump staffer of assaulting her. Miller sued Grisham for defamation at the time, stating in his lawsuit that people knew she was referring to him. Miller denied hurting her, too, and the two reached a confidential settlement in the lawsuit. Grisham is now suing Miller for violating the terms of that settlement.
The video sparked a fresh wave of support for Poindexter. Cameron Kasky, a mass shooting survivor and gun violence prevention advocate who previously ran for Congress as a Democrat, said Sunday: "Miller stated: 'If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?' Ruin this man's life. And donate to his opponent."
Adam Carlson, founding partner of the polling firm Zenith Research, shared a link for donating to Poindexter alongside a short clip of Miller's video and said that "OH-07 is a flippable district," pointing to statewide election results going back to 2018.
Former Republican Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger replied to the video by blasting Miller as "an evil clown."
Calling the video "an absolutely appalling 'defense,'" US Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) said that "Max Miller is clearly unfit to hold power, including as a member of Congress."
Mari Manoogian, a former Democratic Michigan state legislator who now leads The Next 50, a group focused on electing younger Democrats, said that "Brian Poindexter—a working-class ironworker and champion for all—is going to make sure Max Miller doesn't get another term in the halls of power. Brian will be one hell of a congressman."
The US National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. It offers 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
Aug 02, 2026
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Condemning 'Commodification of Child Imprisonment,' Castro Leads Call to Shut Down Dilley ICE Center
Democratic Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro appeared on MS NOW early Wednesday to discuss his recent trip to and persistent efforts to shut down what he called a "trailer prison" where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding families in Dilley.
After leading a letter signed by over 100 other Democrats calling for the closure of the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, Castro on Tuesday conducted a congressional oversight visit of the facility with members of the Democratic Women's Caucus, including Reps. Yassamin Ansari (Ariz.), Lizzie Fletcher (Texas), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Luz Rivas (Calif.).
During the interview on "Morning Joe," Castro said that Americans have watched in horror as ICE has killed and brutalized US citizens and immigrants in the streets, "but there's a brutality behind the prison walls of these detention centers that almost no one gets to see except for members of Congress who have an opportunity to go inspect them."
While touring the Dilley center seven times recently, "I've seen a lot of desperate children. I've seen traumatized children. There is a system there that is abusive of people," Castro said, citing complaints of worms in food, yellow drinking water, and inadequate medical care.
"When I asked, they said the youngest person there is 2 months old—so there's a 2-month-old baby there and four pregnant women there right now. And, you know, I can tell you that it's no place for a 2-month-old baby to be, or even a 1- or 5-year-old kid," he said.
Noting that the Texas facility is run by a private prison company—CoreCivic—and condemning the "commodification of child imprisonment," Castro declared that "we want the Dilley detention center shut down."
His comments on MS NOW mirrored those he and other lawmakers delivered outside the facility, also known as the South Texas Family Residential Center, and during a press conference with the organizations FWD.us and Families Belong Together.
The center is currently detaining 539 individuals, from 84 families, according to Pressley. She said that "these are law-abiding people that are our neighbors—people we love, people we live next to, we work and worship with, who were just going about their lives and met with such an aggressive disruption that they will be recovering from for the rest of their lives."
"Dilley must be shut down. We have to abolish ICE. And then I'm gonna take it one step further and say any of those agents that have contributed to and caused the injury, the harm, and even fatalities, they must also be held accountable, and we should abolish qualified immunity for these federal law enforcement officers," she argued.
FWD.us president Todd Schulte also called for "shutting down Dilley and releasing these children and families immediately."
"Dilley reflects a broader pattern that should not be expanded with additional, unprecedented taxpayer funding," he stressed, denouncing the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the Republican-controlled Congress has poured into President Donald Trump's mass detention and deportation campaign, led by ICE and US Customs and Border Protection.
"This will only cause irreparable harm to children and communities," Schulte warned. "Thank you to the members who continue to call for the release of families, and we join them in their calls for Dilley's closure."
Jul 29, 2026
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Two More Israeli Soldiers Kill Themselves Amid Crisis Driven by Horrors of Genocide
Two more Israeli soldiers killed themselves over the past two days, bringing renewed scrutiny to what experts say is a worsening mental health emergency inside the Israel Defense Forces during 33 months of genocidal war on Gaza and enduring stigma around seeking treatment.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, two female IDF troops—a combat soldier and an intelligence officer—died by suicide this week. Israeli Military Police said they are investigating both deaths, which bring the number of active duty IDF troops who have killed themselves this year to at least 16. Haaretz said that at least nine former IDF soldiers have also committed suicide after completing their military service in 2026.
The latest deaths underscore what military officials, mental health professionals, and veterans have increasingly described as one of the most severe psychological crises the Israeli military has faced in decades.
Earlier this year, Haaretz reported that Israeli military suicides reached 21 in 2024 and 22 in 2025—the highest annual totals in roughly 15 years. Israel's oldest daily newspaper also found that the military had reduced the number of mental health officers available to soldiers despite unprecedented demand for psychological services.
The crisis has been exacerbated by repeated troop deployments since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack—itself the cause of tremendous trauma and some suicides by survivors—and Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza, which has been characterized by what prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague say are crimes against humanity and war crimes, and what a United Nations panel of experts said is a genocide.
More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, some of them reportedly executed at close range.
IDF troops and Israeli and international medical workers have described the deliberate and indiscriminate shooting of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, some of whom were reportedly executed. Former Palestinian prisoners and Israeli troops and doctors have also reported torture and sexual abuse of detainees, and of civilians including children and even a toddler. Such carnage and abuse has taken a toll on the perpetrators as well as their victims.
A persistent stigma surrounding mental health treatment also discourages many soldiers from seeking the care they need. Some fear being viewed as weak or worry that treatment could adversely affect their military service or relationships, despite ongoing efforts to destigmatize the issue.
A senior IDF commander told the Israeli public broadcaster Kan last year that "most of the suicides resulted from the complex reality created by the war," adding, "War has consequences."
Earlier this year, Reuters reported that the IDF had recorded a nearly 40% increase in post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops since September 2023, with 60% of the 22,300 people being treated for war wounds experiencing PTSD. The news agency cited an Israeli parliamentary committee's finding that 279 soldiers had attempted to kill themselves in the period from January 2024 to July 2025, and that IDF combat soldiers comprised 78% of all suicides in Israel in 2024.
Some observers—especially Palestine defenders—have little sympathy for IDF soldiers who kill themselves, pointing to the widespread crimes being committed in Gaza and throughout illegally occupied Palestine, including apartheid, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing.
Others, recognizing their humanity and the moral injury that experts say afflicts many participants in war, mourn these deaths while maintaining that compassion for soldiers must never eclipse accountability for crimes against Palestinians.
After Eliran Mizrahi, a 40-year-old Israeli father of four, killed himself in 2024, his sister told CNN, “He always said no one will understand what [he] saw."
Mizrahi's mother said that "he saw a lot of people die. Maybe he even killed someone. [But] we don’t teach our children to do things like this… so, when he did this, something like this, maybe it was a shock for him.”
US psychologist Rachel Kabasakalian-McKay coined the term “complex implication” to define how “history often implicates us in networks of harm, even as we carry our own traumas."
"As humans," she explained in a 2025 interview with Psychology Today, "we can be both victims and perpetrators.”
Jul 29, 2026
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'So It Begins': Trump's Medicaid Work Requirements—as Designed—Wreak Havoc and Pain
"Pregnant woman disenrolled by mistake. Long waits to get through to the call center for help. No clarity on the rules. Medicaid work reporting requirements don’t work."
Aug 03, 2026
A growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers, policy experts, and advocacy organizations is calling on the Trump administration to immediately rescind a rule imposing more strict work reporting requirements on Medicaid recipients, a demand that came as Nebraska began kicking people off the healthcare program for not complying with the new mandates.
Under the expanded requirements, which were established by a 2025 Republican budget package that President Donald Trump signed into law, certain Medicaid recipients must document at least 80 hours per month of work or another qualifying activity to continue receiving assistance. In a statement late last week, Families USA executive director Anthony Wright warned that "these new paperwork requirements will push patients off coverage—not because they aren’t working or not eligible, but because of bureaucratic burdens."
Wright noted that under new rules stemming from the 2025 GOP budget law, even people with terminal cancer and other serious illnesses aren't necessarily exempt from the work reporting requirements, which apply to people between the ages of 19 and 64 who don't have a disability and aren't pregnant, in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
"The requirement that a patient doesn’t just need to have cancer or another condition but must produce the equivalent of a doctor’s note with a finding that the conditions leave them unable to work," said Wright, "is nowhere in the underlying statute, and unworkable."
A pair of Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), similarly warned in a letter late last week that the Trump administration's implementation of the new work requirements "transforms Medicaid from a healthcare program into a bureaucratic maze that will fail eligible Americans, by design."
"It will strip coverage from people not because they are not already working or refuse to work, but because they cannot navigate a complex web of forms, passwords, and deadlines," the lawmakers wrote. "Implementing ineffective, exclusionary work reporting requirements will create costly administrative barriers and deny Americans access to health care, resulting in poorer health, higher mortality, and reduced financial security."
Wyden and Pallone urged the Trump administration to withdraw what the lawmakers described as a "disenrollment scheme" as Nebraska became the first in the US to disenroll Medicaid recipients for failing to comply with the reporting mandates.
The advocacy group Nebraska Appleseed has warned that the work requirements could put 40,000 Nebraskans at risk of losing Medicaid coverage. The requirements took effect in Nebraska on May 1—eight months ahead of schedule—and the state began disenrolling people for purported noncompliance on August 1.
In a blog post published last week, Nebraska Appleseed observed that the three months between the start of the work requirements and the first round of disenrollments was marked by "mass confusion," with Medicaid recipients experiencing "long call center waits, inoperable language lines, understaffed and undertrained caseworkers, policy questions gone long-unanswered, and the lack of public state data."
Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, pointed with alarm to local reporting about the early impacts of the work reporting mandates in Nebraska.
"So it begins," Alker wrote in a social media post on Monday. "Pregnant woman disenrolled by mistake. Long waits to get through to the call center for help. No clarity on the rules. Medicaid work reporting requirements don’t work."
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House Dem Calls for Removal of Postmaster General for Turning USPS Into 'Instrument of Voter Suppression'
Postmaster General David Steiner has said that USPS would not deliver ballots in states that don’t hand over their voter rolls to the Trump administration for purging under a since-blocked executive order.
Aug 03, 2026
A Democratic congressman is calling for Postmaster General David Steiner to be removed from office for allowing the US Postal Service to turn into what he called "a partisan instrument of voter suppression" for President Donald Trump.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.), a senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Steiner and members of the USPS board of governors on Monday criticizing the postmaster general for refusing to clarify if he intends to follow an executive order signed by Trump in March ordering the Postal Service to halt the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that do not turn over lists of voters to be checked against a federal citizenship list.
A federal judge has blocked the administration from implementing the order's provisions that create federal citizenship lists and allow USPS to condition ballot delivery on states submitting voter information, ruling that Trump had usurped powers belonging to the states and Congress.
Last week, the administration and a group of 12 Republican states filed emergency applications asking the US Supreme Court to allow the order to take effect prior to November’s midterms.
Krishnamoorthi said that this filing contains "a troubling contradiction." It argues that Trump had merely issued “general policy guidance” to agencies rather than concrete directives, and that it's therefore premature for courts to rule on its constitutionality.
"USPS's apparent implementation efforts over the past four months tell a different story," Krishnamoorthi wrote.
He pointed out that USPS had sent the rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review and had begun to create a federal ballot portal, state voter participation lists, and procedures on accepting ballots.
Steiner, meanwhile, said during a hearing in June—while the order was facing litigation but had not yet been struck down—that he fully intended to block mail-in ballots from states that don't hand over their voter rolls.
Krishnamoorthi also wrote that the administration's argument before the Supreme Court that blocking the order would cause "irreparable harm" does not withstand factual scrutiny.
He noted that noncitizen voting, which the administration claims the order is meant to prevent, is not only already a federal crime, but exceedingly rare. One analysis by the Brookings Institution last year found that in general elections between 2016-22, there were approximately four instances of mail-in voting fraud per 10 million mail ballots cast—about 0.000043% of them.
"The administration has not produced evidence of fraud on a scale capable of affecting an election outcome," Krishnamoorthi wrote. "Disenfranchising millions of eligible voters—including military personnel serving overseas, seniors, rural voters, individuals with disabilities, and working families—is not a proportionate response to fraud rates of this magnitude."
He also wrote that Steiner had repeatedly refused his requests for information about how USPS has implemented the executive order and whether it is still doing so despite the court's order to stop.
"A postmaster general who will not tell Congress whether his agency is complying with a federal court order, and who will not appear to answer for that silence, has already forfeited the trust the office requires," wrote Krishnamoorthi. "I am therefore calling on the Postal Service Board of Governors to remove you as Postmaster General, and I will urge my colleagues on the committee to join that call."
There is already evidence that a voter citizenship registry run by the Trump administration could disenfranchise lawful voters.
In June, a federal judge found that states using an expanded version of the federal government's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, which is used by the federal government to track immigration status, led local voting officials to wrongly cancel the voter registrations of naturalized citizens.
In Travis County, Texas, an investigation found that 25% of the people flagged as "noncitizen matches" had already proven their US citizenship.
Jasleen Singh, a senior counsel and manager in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, wrote in June that the administration "has been engaged in a concerted campaign to undermine elections."
"Part of that involves collecting state voter files and using federal data sources to lend pseudolegitimacy to false claims of widespread fraud," she said. "While there may be valid ways to use federal data to support election officials’ efforts to keep voter rolls accurate and up to date, there are notable shortcomings in such data, and it may be misused to spread misinformation."
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Senators Unveil Bipartisan Funding Bill to Avert Shutdown Until After Midterms
The Senate Appropriations Committee's top Democrats celebrated that the bill rejects the president's "frivolous war spending wish list" and "corrupt new grants rule."
Aug 02, 2026
The Republican and Democratic leaders of the US Senate Appropriations Committee on Sunday released a stopgap funding bill that would push a potential government shutdown to after the November midterm elections, which could shake up control of Congress.
Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) called their proposed continuing resolution "straightforward," saying in a statement that "it continues current government funding levels until December 11th and includes necessary adjustments for programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), vital national security programs, including shipbuilding across multiple vessels, and the Disaster Relief Fund. The CR also avoids any poison pills."
Both Collins—who a serious challenge from Democratic candidate Troy Jackson this cycle—and the panel's ranking member, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), highlighted that their legislation would prevent the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) legally contested proposal to politicize federal grants from taking effect for the duration of the CR.
"It’s good that we were able to produce a much-improved CR to keep the government funded and avert a shutdown that no one wants," Murray said in her own statement, pointing to "important extensions" that were not included in a funding bill recently passed by Republicans in the House of Representatives.
The Senate version rejected President Donald Trump's "frivolous war spending wish list," Murray stressed. "Importantly, we closed the loophole in House Republicans' CR that would have allowed the Trump administration to transfer funding provided for other programs to Border Patrol, which desperately needs reform, not more money."
"Because of Democrats' unrelenting efforts, this bill blocks implementation of OMB's corrupt new grants rule for the duration of the CR," she said. "The proposed rule would systematically politicize federal funding and allow Trump officials to cancel grants at any time for any reason. Enabling this rule would only give Trump the green light to take even more federal funding hostage. While Republicans rejected killing the proposed rule outright, I'm going to keep fighting to put a stop to it once and for all, and I will keep pressing my Republican colleagues to do exactly that."
"I pushed hard to extend infrastructure funding set to run out on September 30, so that we can save jobs and keep fixing America's roads and bridges, and I also fought to protect Congress' power of the purse and prevent Russ Vought from attempting another end-run around Congress with illegal 'pocket rescissions,'" the senator noted, referring to the OMB director.
Murray said that "ultimately, Republicans refused to work with us to get these commonsense priorities enacted in law, but I hope everyone who shares my frustration that Republicans refuse to do more to stand up to this president will join us in speaking out and speaking up for change in every way possible."
The CR appears to have support from party leaders in the chamber. Thanking Murray "for her tireless work on this deal and her success blocking Trump's disgraceful efforts to further politicize all federal grants," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it "a responsible path forward that allows continued bipartisan negotiations on a budget that delivers for American families."
Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), said on social media that "passing it now will avert costly government shutdown in the fall," and the first procedural vote will be held on Monday. However, getting the bill to Trump's desk will require support from the GOP-controlled House.
House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said Sunday that "two weeks ago, House Republican leadership forced us to vote on an incomplete and inadequate first draft of a continuing resolution. I was clear at the time—any serious measure to fund the government must continue the bipartisan, bicameral agreement to prohibit funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol in annual appropriations bills unless dramatic reforms are included."
DeLauro pointed out that she'd also called for addressing OMB's "continued attempts to codify their desire to discriminate against Federal grant recipients based on their political viewpoints and undermine the first amendment rights of Americans—anti-constitutional actions which the Department of Energy recently admitted in court to carrying out."
"The bill the Senate is expected to consider this week includes both of those critical elements, along with other important provisions needed to keep government functioning without disruption," she said. "While the bill temporarily blocks the proposed OMB rule, the fight must continue. The Senate bill forces OMB to continue reviewing the half-million comments that were submitted, but Congress must permanently prevent this corrupt, harmful power grab before the new deadline of December 11."
"This bill is a clear improvement over the House Republican continuing resolution," DeLauro concluded, "but we are still nearly two months away from the end of the fiscal year and should be working together to pass full-year funding bills that lower the cost of living, rein in the corruption at the highest levels of the government, and can earn the support of Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate."
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Democrat Brian Poindexter: 'No One Credibly Accused' of Abuse Like Rep. Max Miller Belongs in Congress
"Brian Poindexter—a working-class ironworker and champion for all—is going to make sure Max Miller doesn't get another term in the halls of power," said one Democratic campaigner.
Aug 02, 2026
Democratic congressional candidate Brian Poindexter on Sunday joined a growing chorus of people across the political spectrum arguing that Republican Rep. Max Miller shouldn't remain a member of the US House of Representatives over domestic abuse allegations.
"No one credibly accused of holding a gun to his wife's head and breaking their 2-year-old daughter's collarbone belongs in the halls of power," said Poindexter, a union ironworker challenging the GOP incumbent in Ohio's 7th Congressional District, in a post on the platform X. "Help defeat Max Miller in November."
Poindexter's social media post, which links to his fundraising webpage, came after he told Ohio journalist Jessie Balmert on Saturday night, "These allegations are very serious, and I don't know if he should resign or not, but what I would say is that if these allegations are true, he should be in jail."
The Democrat's post also came as Miller wrapped up a nearly 20-minute livestream on X in which he makes clear that he is not dropping out of the race (the deadline for Republicans to replace him on the ballot is Wednesday). Miller also denied abusing his ex-wife Emily Moreno—the daughter of US Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio)—and their child.
Emily Moreno discovered bruises on their young daughter and took her to the emergency department. As Mother Jones' Abby Vesoulis reported last month, "Records of the investigation into potential child abuse show that Moreno told detectives that Miller had previously thrown hot water at her, shoved her, and held a gun to her head; therefore, she couldn't rule out that Miller caused their daughter’s fracture."
The Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services found that any potential child abuse was unsubstantiated—meaning there wasn't enough evidence to determine neglect or abuse—but Mother Jones reviewed legal filings in which "Moreno alleges that Miller was an absentee father and abusive husband whose history of violence and misconduct dates back more than a decade."
Responding to the Sunday morning video, Emily Moreno's spokesperson, Stefan Mychajliw, said that "it is shameful that Max Miller decided to go on a bizarre and lie-filled rant about his ex-wife to desperately try to save his political career. There is a documented trove of evidence that Miller has a history of violent and dangerous behavior and no amount of victim shaming will change that."
"It is despicable and abhorrent that Miller lied on an unhinged and humiliating video for their daughter to watch one day," the spokesperson continued. "No loving parent would have ever used their daughter as a PR pawn to save their own political career. Miller can lie and spin on X, but he cannot do so under oath in a court of law. We are confident that justice will prevail in court."
Her senator father also weighed in with a lengthy post on X, saying in part that "our priority has always been protecting our daughter and our granddaughter. Out of concern for the safety of my family, I hoped to keep this matter private, but Max Miller’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible... He should not serve in the House of Representatives. I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake."
Miller replied to the senator directly, writing: "If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn't wait two years before holding him accountable. You know this isn't true, and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. This is all political."
As Mother Jones' Vesoulis noted Sunday:
Emily Moreno is not the only woman that Miller has been accused of perpetrating violence against. In 2021, Politico cited multiple witnesses in reporting that Miller had thrown a woman down the stairs after she rejected his advances. That woman recently told Mother Jones that the night in question remains “one of the more traumatic nights of my life.”
During the first Trump administration, Miller’s behavior toward women also came under scrutiny when former White House press Secretary Stephanie Grisham accused a fellow Trump staffer of assaulting her. Miller sued Grisham for defamation at the time, stating in his lawsuit that people knew she was referring to him. Miller denied hurting her, too, and the two reached a confidential settlement in the lawsuit. Grisham is now suing Miller for violating the terms of that settlement.
The video sparked a fresh wave of support for Poindexter. Cameron Kasky, a mass shooting survivor and gun violence prevention advocate who previously ran for Congress as a Democrat, said Sunday: "Miller stated: 'If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?' Ruin this man's life. And donate to his opponent."
Adam Carlson, founding partner of the polling firm Zenith Research, shared a link for donating to Poindexter alongside a short clip of Miller's video and said that "OH-07 is a flippable district," pointing to statewide election results going back to 2018.
Former Republican Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger replied to the video by blasting Miller as "an evil clown."
Calling the video "an absolutely appalling 'defense,'" US Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) said that "Max Miller is clearly unfit to hold power, including as a member of Congress."
Mari Manoogian, a former Democratic Michigan state legislator who now leads The Next 50, a group focused on electing younger Democrats, said that "Brian Poindexter—a working-class ironworker and champion for all—is going to make sure Max Miller doesn't get another term in the halls of power. Brian will be one hell of a congressman."
The US National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. It offers 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
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Outrage Builds Over Apparent US Use of 2,000-Pound Bomb on Iranian Family Home
"Everyone in the chain of command who authorized this should be charged with murder."
Aug 02, 2026
Outrage over another apparent US war crime against Iranian civilians continued to grow over the weekend following New York Times reporting that the United States appears to have dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on a family home in a densely populated neighborhood of Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
The newspaper spoke with weapons experts who analyzed photos, videos, and satellite imagery of the strike—which, according to Iranian officials, killed taxi driver Qeysar Jafari, his wife Zahra Jafari, and their 2-year-old son Sina, and hospitalized their two surviving children, Mohammad Reza and Mehdi.
While a spokesperson for US Central Command told the Times it is "looking into" reports that the family members were killed in the strike overnight Thursday and "the US military never targets civilians," Stanford University law professor Tom Dannenbaum outlined the United States' legal obligations.
"The attacking force must take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm, including in its selection of munitions, times of attack and, whenever circumstances allow, by issuing effective advance warnings," he said. Using a Mark-84 bomb in a crowded area "is very difficult to reconcile with" that.
Some readers and critics of the war highlighted Dannenbaum's comments while sharing the report on social media.
Former longtime Human Rights Watch leader Kenneth Roth similarly said: "Why did the US military drop a huge 2,000-pound bomb in a densely populated residential area in Iran? It is very hard to reconcile that use with the legal requirement to avoid disproportionate harm to civilians."
Journalist Rania Khalek denounced the attack as "barbaric savagery by soulless ghouls," while Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, condemned it "a clear WAR CRIME."
Responding to Hashemi, Barbara Slavin, a George Washington University lecturer and Stimson Center distinguished fellow, said that "we are becoming more like Israel every day."
Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explained that "for years, Israel was using [2,000-pound] American bombs to kill Gazan refugees in tents. Both the Biden and Trump administrations permitted it. A precedent was set. Now it appears the US is doing the same in Iran."
"A [2,000-pound] bomb was dropped on a family house in Qeshm, killing a taxi driver (the father), the mother, and a 2-year-old, according to The New York Times," he continued. "Yes, a taxi driver. And a toddler. And his mother. "The Times found no indication of a military site near the family's home or any reports of military casualties from the strike."
Cory Archibald, co-founder of Track AIPAC, which documents spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and related groups, stressed to people in the US, "That's what our government spends money on instead of giving you healthcare."
Leftist US political commentator Kyle Kulinski was among those demanding consequences for whoever carried out the deadly attack, declaring: "Pure terrorism. These people need to be in prison for life."
Saikat Chakrabarti, a Democrat who recently ran for Congress in California, agreed, saying that "everyone in the chain of command who authorized this should be charged with murder."
Since President Donald Trump and Israel began bombing Iran in late February, other apparent war crimes have included attacks on civilian infrastructure such as a water desalination plant, strikes that forced children to evacuate a hospital, and the destruction of a school in Minab that killed over 100 people.
Trump claimed late Saturday that he halted planned strikes on Iran due to progress in negotiations to end the illegal conflict. Appearing on CNN after the announcement, Parsi said that "I don't believe there was an imminent attack. We've gone through this several times, in which Trump issues these threats, and then he backs off because the other side calls his bluff."
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Expert: Trump's Trying to Exert Control With Claim He Canceled Iran Strikes Over Progress on Deal
"It's a narrative designed to give the impression that Trump is in the driving seat in this conflict. It's been clear for some time now: He isn't."
Aug 01, 2026
Trita Parsi, an expert on US-Iranian relations, cast doubt on President Donald Trump's Saturday claims that he halted planned strikes on Iran due to progress in negotiations to end the illegal conflict, launched by the Republican and Israel in February.
"The U.S.A. is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II. Despite this, we have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform at 10:05 pm Eastern time.
"This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran's nuclear threat," Trump declared—despite repeated conclusions from US intelligence agencies that the Iranian government was not aiming to build a nuclear weapon when the United States and Israel began bombing Iran five months ago.
"Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL," Trump added. "The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment. Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE."
Sharing the post on the platform X, Parsi said, "Trump 'cancels' 'planned' 'attack' on Iran..." The expert struck a similarly skeptical tone during a Saturday on-air interview with CNN about the president's announcement.
Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that "I don't believe there was an imminent attack. We've gone through this several times, in which Trump issues these threats, and then he backs off because the other side calls his bluff."
"Trump does not have an escalatory way out of this conflict, but what he is trying to do is to give the impression that he is in control—that he is in the driving seat," Parsi suggested. "And I think it's been quite clear for quite some time now he is not."
During Trump's first term, he tore up the Obama administration's Iran nuclear deal, and so far, he has been unable to negotiate a replacement. Since launching this war, without authorization from Congress and in violation of the United Nations Charter, the ceasefire agreement reached in April and a June memorandum of understanding ultimately have not stopped the bloodshed.
Earlier this week, most US Senate Republicans and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) blocked yet another war powers resolution intended to prevent the Trump administration from launching further attacks on Iran without congressional approval—a vote that came as polling showed 64% of Americans disapprove of continuing the war, including 37% of Republicans.
The Iran War has killed thousands of Iranians and Lebanese civilians—the latter mostly from Israeli attacks purportedly targeting Hezbollah—as well as hundreds of people in other nations across the Middle East and at least 18 US service members.
In the hours before Trump's Saturday Truth Social post, Axios revealed that "Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Trump spoke on Saturday, with MBS expressing concern over the strike plans," and "other regional powers, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Pakistan, have also pressed the US and Iran to de-escalate.”
CBS chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan reported on social media about Saturday's "flurry of phone calls by Iran's top diplomat Abbas Araghchi to regional leaders, which suggests an effort underway to avoid military strikes."
"Earlier today, the State Department advised Americans throughout the Mideast to leave the region," Brennan noted.
Araghchi said Saturday that "any hostile action by the US or Israel—or participation or cooperation by regional countries in such actions—would be met with a decisive and proportionate response from Iran's powerful armed forces."
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Trump Pushes to Keep Blanche as Acting AG and 'Resurrect the Payout Pot for Punks'
The president wants "your tax dollars available to compensate his political allies," a Democratic congressman said. "He's flat out trying to steal your money."
Aug 01, 2026
As two Republican senators continue to stand with Democrats against the nomination of Todd Blanche as US attorney general over the so-called "Anti-Weaponization Fund," President Donald Trump made clear on Saturday that he's willing to keep his former personal lawyer in the post in an acting capacity while pushing for legislation to allow the widely condemned payout scheme.
Due to the unexpected death of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Republicans need full support on the Senate Judiciary Committee to advance Blanche, but GOP Sens. Thom Tillis (NC) and John Cornyn (Texas) have been blocking him over the $1.776 billion fund—which, in addition to an immunity deal, was part of the settlement for the Trump family's lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. A panel vote is rescheduled for Tuesday, but so far there's no deal.
Since US District Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed in the Southern District of Florida by former President Barack Obama—ruled against the fund last month, Blanche has indicated the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will no longer pursue the creation of the slush fund, and Trump even referred to it as "dead" on Friday. However, the Trump family also appealed to the 11th Circuit on Friday.
Responding to the appeal on Friday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said that "when I offered my amendment to kill this slush fund, Republicans said we should accept Trump's word that it was dead. We knew they were wrong. This is why. Even in the middle of an illegal war, with prices rising, Trump wants to send your tax dollars to criminals and save his sweetheart tax deal."
The president on Friday also ranted about Cornyn—who lost a May primary to a Trump-backed opponent—on his Truth Social platform, writing that "John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called 'Fund,' which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate."
Trump did not mention the timeline: The DOJ announced the settlement, including the slush fund, on May 18, and the president endorsed Cornyn's scandal-plagued primary challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, on May 19.
Instead, the president focused on the potential recipients of payouts—including January 6, 2021 insurrectionists previously pardoned by him—claiming that "perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history. They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them. I gave up any payments for myself, which would have been substantial, including for the illegal and unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago, my home in Florida, even though many legal experts, and others, including John Cornyn, said it was a shocking and disgusting display of 'weaponization' against me."
"Such an event has never happened before, and hopefully will never happen again!" Trump continued. "I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined! Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed. Todd Blanche, a good man, should be immediately approved as US Attorney General."
Tillis responded on the platform X, writing Friday that "the president made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it. While I never disagreed that the Biden administration pursued a number of vindictive prosecutions related to January 6, the criminals who assaulted police officers and defiled our nation's Capitol are not 'great American patriots' who are 'victims of government abuse.' Anyone who attacked law enforcement should still be in prison, not getting a check from the federal government."
"Sen. Cornyn and I have been working with acting AG Todd Blanche to end the Anti-Weaponization Fund, and he has been forthright, thoughtful, and patient," added Tillis, who is retiring after this term. "It's a shame his confirmation has hit a snag only because an incompetent personal adviser to the president refuses to amend the bogus settlement. I will continue working in good faith to put an end [to] this legal and political albatross and prevent any potential misallocation of taxpayer dollars."
Trump then took aim at both of them on Saturday, saying that "if Senators Cornyn and Tillis, both upset because I wouldn’t Endorse them (they lost, and quit, respectively!), aren't going to approve Todd Blanche, one of the most respected professionals, according to everybody, in the Country, to be the United States Attorney General, then I will keep Todd as Acting AG, and push hard to get the Anti-Weaponization Bill, which takes care of those who have been so badly treated by the Crooked Joe Biden (and Obuma!) Administration (I get nothing, although I was treated horribly!), PASSED. Todd Blanche was a voice of reason! It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done."
Tillis again replied on X: "Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is dead, President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks either by inappropriately establishing another bogus fund or pushing Congress to vote for a bill that the majority of Republicans in the Senate would be against. It's unfortunate that Todd Blanche, who I consider qualified for the job, will not be confirmed because of this reversal. Hopefully, we can resolve this by Tuesday."
Meanwhile, many elected Democrats and other critics, from advocacy group leaders to survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, don't agree Blanche is qualified, and want his nomination withdrawn. For example, after the committee vote was postponed, MoveOn Political Action chief communications officer Joel Payne said Thursday that "Todd Blanche's nomination is stalled because his record is corrupt and indefensible."
"He has spent his career proving that there is no legal principle he will not bend and no institution he will not compromise in service of Donald Trump," Payne continued. "His blind loyalty, willingness to use the justice system to protect the president, and role in a sweetheart settlement benefiting Trump make him completely unfit to serve as attorney general."
"Senate Republicans may be trying to put some distance between themselves and this toxic nomination, but moving the vote does not change the facts," he added. "Blanche is still Trump's fixer, still disqualified, and still a threat to the rule of law. The Senate should stop dragging this out and kill the nomination."
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DOJ Drops Reflecting Pool Case, But Olympian's Lawyers Say That Won't 'Erase the Abuse' of Power
"The use of false charges and criminal prosecutions to deflect blame away from politically powerful leaders and their allies is an abuse of the justice system that cannot be tolerated," said another critic.
Aug 01, 2026
The US Department of Justice on Friday moved to throw out its criminal case against David Hearn, the Olympian it accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, sparking demands for, at minimum, an apology from the DOJ.
"The Trump administration's case against Davey Hearn should have never been brought," said his attorneys, Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund, Mary Dohrmann of Washington Litigation Group, and Steve Levin of Steptoe LLP, in a joint statement.
"Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong," they continued. "The government's approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology."
President Donald Trump in April announced plans to renovate the Reflecting Pool for the country's 250th anniversary. Two months later, despite the administration spending millions of dollars on resurfacing, the water turned green from algae. That led to a hydrogen peroxide treatment and a $1.7 million no-bid contract for a company whose owner is a Trump donor, after which multiple ducks were found dead.
Hearn, one of several people accused of tampering with the pool, was arrested in June. Early last month, Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia, revealed that her office had secured a felony indictment against him. The 67-year-old, who faced up to a decade in prison, pleaded not guilty and had a trial scheduled for September.
"I didn't vandalize anything," Hearn, an Olympic canoeist, said in an interview with The Washington Post, explaining that he had touched a piece of pool lining that was already peeling off. "I didn't destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs."
In its Friday motion to dismiss the case, Pirro's office said that after the return of the indictment, the US Department of the Interior (DOI) provided information indicating that the damage "was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings (AIC), and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026."
"It is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt," the document also states.
MS NOW legal analyst Lisa Rubin highlighted Pirro's previous promise to "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that Hearn caused the damage.
NBC News noted that "a spokesperson for Pirro said the filing spoke for itself. Her office also moved to dismiss at least one of the other three misdemeanor cases that had been brought in connection with the Reflecting Pool."
It's not just Pirro's office and the DOJ under fire for this debacle. While welcoming the motion to dismiss, Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), took aim at DOI in a Saturday statement.
"This project has become a poster child for corruption and why competitive bidding and transparency in federal contracting matter," Whitehouse said. "Transparency in contracting prevents waste, self-dealing, and exactly the kind of expensive, embarrassing failure this project has become. Decisions about the best way to repair public infrastructure should rest with engineers and career experts following open, competitive bidding, not with political officials chasing a photo-op deadline ordered by the president while steering money to favored contractors."
"The use of false charges and criminal prosecutions to deflect blame away from politically powerful leaders and their allies is an abuse of the justice system that cannot be tolerated," he added. "The Interior Department officials responsible for this failure—the no-bid contract, the botched renovation, lying to the public and the rush to blame an innocent man—owe the public a full accounting. PEER calls on Congress to investigate and demands that those responsible face real consequences."
Meanwhile, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to make clear that he "100%" disagrees with Pirro, sparking speculation about whether he may fire her.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum then claimed that "the evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool," in a post on the platform X that New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel described as "repeating the boss."
Hearn's attorneys said that "Trump and Burgum are attacking Pirro because she admitted what we established in our legal filings all along: Trump's botched renovation was responsible for the damage—not Davey Hearn. However, Pirro's claim that she and her office were previously duped by Interior is nonsense."
"Starting immediately after arraignment, our motions repeatedly proved that the administration was to blame for the Reflecting Pool failures, not Davey," they added. "This is far from over, as we consider all legal remedies."
This article has been updated with new comments from President Donald Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Davey Hearn's attorneys.
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Anthropic Discloses Hacking Incidents Amid Alarm Over OpenAI Autonomous Cyberattacks
"This is only going to get worse as the models get smarter," warned one expert.
Jul 31, 2026
Days after revelations that an OpenAI artificial intelligence model autonomously broke into two outside companies, rival firm Anthropic on Thursday disclosed that three of its own frontier models gained unauthorized access to unspecified organizations during internal testing, deepening concerns that increasingly capable AI systems are outpacing the safeguards designed to contain them.
San Francisco-based Anthropic said that it is investigating "three real-world incidents" uncovered during a broad review of more than 141,000 cybersecurity evaluations launched after OpenAI publicly disclosed its own containment failures.
According to Anthropic, three models—Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5, and an unspecified internal research system—accessed three separate organizations after a testing environment was inadvertently connected to the internet. Anthropic did not identify which organizations were breached.
"In all three incidents, Claude had been tasked with a capture-the-flag challenge, one of the ways we assess a model’s cyber capabilities," Anthropic explained. "The model is given a fictional scenario and told that a piece of secret information (the 'flag') has been hidden on a different machine on the network, and its objective is to break in and retrieve it. The challenge is left open-ended, and no particular method is prescribed."
"In all cases, Anthropic’s evaluation prompt specified to Claude that its environment was a simulation and that it had no internet access," the company continued. "Due to a misunderstanding between us and our evaluation partner, this was not the case, and internet access was available. Because of this, when Claude’s search led it to real systems on the open internet, it treated them as part of the exercise."
"Operating under the false belief that all accessible entities were intended to be in-scope for the exercise, Claude compromised the impacted organizations’ infrastructure using basic techniques, such as exploiting weak passwords and unauthenticated endpoints," Anthropic said.
"In none of these situations did Claude exfiltrate itself or deliberately attempt to escape its test environment," the company stressed.
Unlike the OpenAI incident, which involved an autonomous agent exploiting vulnerabilities, Anthropic characterized its cases as a failure caused by a testing misconfiguration rather than by models independently escaping containment. Still, Anthropic's disclosure underscores the troubling reality that frontier AI models are increasingly capable of carrying out real cyber operations when given the opportunity.
"Safety testing happens before a model is released precisely because we don’t yet know what it is capable of," Anthropic said. "Evaluation environments increasingly need to be held to the same security standard as any other system our models run in."
Last August, Anthropic revealed that Claude had been "weaponized" by human hackers in order to commit ransomware crimes, "including a large-scale extortion operation using Claude Code, a fraudulent employment scheme from North Korea, and the sale of AI-generated ransomware by a cybercriminal with only basic coding skills.”
Less than three months later, Anthropic disclosed that it had thwarted what it described as “the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.” The company said that it believed there was a high likelihood that a Chinese state-sponsored group was behind the incident, which targeted “large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies.”
Kok Tin Gan, co-founder and CEO of the cybersecurity company NyxLab, told The Associated Press on Thursday that there are likely to be more incidents like the Anthropic and OpenAI hacks as artificial intelligence capabilities advance.
“It is increasingly about governing what agents are available to the AI, what authorities they possess, which actions require approval, and how we ensure they remain within scope,” he said. “If we simply give the AI a goal and allow it to decide how to achieve it, we should not be surprised when it takes actions that technically satisfy the objective, but fall outside our intended scope or expectations."
Jeffrey Ladish, executive director of Palisade Research—which analyzes the autonomous offensive capabilities of AI systems—told Reuters on Thursday that he believes other companies have experienced similar incidents that they have not publicly disclosed.
"This is only going to get worse as the models get smarter," he said. "They're going to be better at cheating. They’re going to be better at lying."
Elon Musk, CEO of the artificial intelligence company xAI, also responded to Anthropic's disclosure by saying that such incidents "will happen frequently as AI becomes smarter and more agentic," a reference to systems' ability to independently act toward accomplishing specific goals without meaningful human control.
Experts say the autonomous hacks underscore the problem of AI alignment. As AI advances to the point where it will likely outsmart humans one day, the challenge of ensuring that advanced systems reliably pursue goals that match what humans actually want becomes increasingly difficult—and dangerous.
In the foreseeable future, a misaligned, superintelligent AI could take uncontrolled autonomous actions at massive scale to achieve its goals, potentially causing an existential catastrophe like the subjugation of humanity or even its extinction—a prospect that has had numerous pioneers in the field sounding the alarm in recent years.
However, the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress have rejected meaningful guardrails on AI development while pushing for self-regulation and voluntary benchmarks and arguing—as the US did during the Cold War nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union—that any slowdown would give adversaries like China an edge.
On Wednesday, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) said that “Congress should immediately hold public hearings with the CEOs of big AI companies" in the wake of the OpenAI breaches.
Anthropic is among the more than 1,000 companies and workers at AI firms that have signed a petition calling for the government to find ways to slow the breakneck development of AI technology.
"AI could help create a dramatically better future, but that outcome is not guaranteed," the petition states. "The world's leading AI companies believe they could be close to automating AI research. It is hard to predict exactly how much this will accelerate AI progress, but there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems."
"To realize AI's potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight," the document continues. "But each company—and country—is under intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow that acceleration. And today, the world lacks the technical and governance tools to deliberately pace frontier-wide progress."
"We request that the US government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development," the petition adds.
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IDF Closes Investigation Into Brutal 2023 Settler Attack on Palestinians Without Charges
As The Times of Israel described, "Israel has largely failed to crack down on such attacks, with arrests rare, indictments even rarer, and convictions almost unheard of."
Jul 31, 2026
As the Israeli government faces increasing scrutiny for its enabling of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces has reportedly closed an investigation into one of the most brutal assaults documented in recent memory. Nobody has been charged.
Haaretz reported on Friday that the Military Advocate General’s Office has closed its investigation into an incident from October 12, 2023, in which about two dozen armed settlers attacked the village of Wadi as-Seeq, about 10 miles east of Ramallah, where most residents had been driven out by violence by a nearby Israeli outpost.
Three Palestinian men who'd remained in the village to help evacuate the local Bedouin community were detained by the gang of Israelis, who they said tortured them for hours, stripping them naked, beating them, urinating on them, burning them with cigarettes, and sexually abusing them.
Several Israeli peace activists also said they were attacked during the incident and corroborated much of the testimony of the Palestinian victims.
A photo of the three men stripped, bound, and blindfolded quickly made international headlines and drew condemnation from human rights organizations and even some pro-Israel groups like the US-based Israel Policy Forum, which called the reports "sickening and inexcusable."
The military prosecutor's office apparently found it very excusable. According to Haaretz:
The Military Advocate General's Office decided that the evidence collected did not establish the involvement of specific soldiers to the standard required for criminal prosecution.
The decision was made even though, following the initial publication, several soldiers who were present at the scene—including the unit's commander—were dismissed.
The soldiers were from the IDF Desert Frontier unit, a unit that recruits "hilltop youth," radical and often violent settler youths from illegal West Bank outposts. Some of the victims said that settlers also took part in the assault alongside the soldiers.
The dismissal of the case comes amid what the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) described as "an unprecedented surge in settler-related violence" this year, particularly this summer. June saw a record 460 settler-related attacks, and the trend has continued into July, with 360 documented incidents between July 1-24.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned on Wednesday that settler violence was at an "all-time high," noting that 18 Palestinians have been killed so far this year in incidents linked to settler attacks, more than the 17 who were killed all of last year.
The Israeli government, meanwhile, approved over $430 million to establish 34 new settlements in the West Bank earlier this year.
"The increase is part of a broader upward trend in settler violence that has been developing since 2023 but has accelerated significantly in 2026," said Nasser Khdour, Middle East Assistant Research Manager at ACLED. "Recorded incidents include attacks on Palestinians and their property, land seizures, looting activities, uprooting trees, grazing on Palestinian land, and clashes with Palestinians."
As The Times of Israel noted on Friday: "Israel has largely failed to crack down on such attacks, with arrests rare, indictments even rarer, and convictions almost unheard of. The current government has been accused of turning a blind eye to the phenomenon or even tacitly supporting it."
Members of the IDF have often been documented either directly participating in the violence or providing protection to settlers who are.
Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed during a CNN interview that his government was working hard to bring violent settlers to justice and conducting "real investigations."
But he also minimized the problem of settler violence that has become rampant, boiling it down to about “150 or so juvenile delinquents" causing mayhem while stating that they don't represent the broader settler community.
There have been no reported charges coming from this month's deadly attacks, which have resulted in the deaths of at least eight Palestinians and many more injuries, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
A Guardian analysis on July 21 found that Israel has not once prosecuted any of its citizens for killing a Palestinian in the West Bank at any point this decade.
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