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Lame: On Space Nazis, Swindlers, Poseurs and Liars
Apologies to those who just can't or won't hear more of it, but the foul mad child-king is running notably rampant, and the historic record beckons. The bilge somehow keeps surging, from a weekend deluge of deranged AI slop, slurs, rants, boasts to this week's "sick fantasy" of nobly working "long and hard" (sic) in the rubble of 9/11 to choosing to "celebrate" GOP "achievements" (double sic) at a tacky mid-term crap-a-palooza nearly dead in the brackish water. Have mercy.
Unsurprisingly, Labor Day prompted an attack on "Communists and Dumocrats" from a failed real-estate nepo-baby who never worked a day in his soft tawdry life and only ripped off those who did; got famous for sneeringly telling people on TV they were fired; and morphed into "the most anti-union president in history." All weekend he spewed a blizzard of puerile, insane AI posts, each more bonkers than the last. Some: He nuked earth from space, threatened takeovers of multiple countries, declared "the moon is ours," attacked Iran, Canada, and "third-rate loser Debbie Dingbat," bragged about his billions, posed as Hulk Hogan, Green Lantern, a bemedalled general, a dark overlord with robot bodyguards snarling, "THEY WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN,” posted new Space Force uniforms "inspired" by Nazis, and renamed New Mexico New America grotesquely "dancing" to YMCA.
On Tuesday, before First Responders and a steel beam from the ruins of the Twin Towers, he gave an obscene mess of a speech; unlike every living president, he's skipping 9/11 ceremonies at Ground Zero because they wouldn't let him speak and it conflicts with a golf tournament. Halting reading from a piece of paper, he mourned a day “etched forever into the memories of Americans" before launching into bullshit. He praised his war with Iran - "Nobody thought it could go so well" - and bragged, "We’ve punished them greatly." He told a story about former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, whose wife "would always be screaming at him" to take their son to school, so on 9/11 he unhappily did, thus surviving the attacks that killed almost 700 of the company's employees: "He got to see it, but they all died...Now it's bigger, stronger, better than ever."
Then he got to the important part of the 9/11 story: Himself. He was building nearby, he "had a lot of construction workers," he took 100, maybe 200 of them to Ground Zero the next day, "and we worked long and hard." Huh. Except there is no evidence or record of that happening, which there'd have to be in a massive recovery effort supervised by city officials; also, his nephew says he was building Trump Tower five miles away, he ran a real-estate office that contracted out construction, and the only people he had access to were secretaries and accountants. There is, though, a record of him calling a radio show rom his safe miles away to giddily boast he now had the tallest building in Manhattan, from which he could "see" thousands of jubilant Muslims dancing in the streets - an infamous lie from what was, and remains, a racist, rancid pile of subhuman crap.
There is also video of him, young, brash and creepy, arriving near Ground Zero a few days later with a German television crew. When they asked what he thought of the human tragedy, the 3,000 dead, the day's terror and loss and grief, he said, "I hope we attack fast." Also fast, it was reported years later: His taking of $150,000 from a post-9/11 recovery grant program meant to help small businesses near the site of the attack. That was then; now, he's whining that Welles Crowther, a young equities trader remembered as “the man in the red bandana” who saved multiple people before dying in the towers' collapse, has "become more famous than me. I don't like it." He also added the shiny new lie that on 9/11 two firefighters “lifted me up and started running with me” to save him from an imaginary collapsing building. We assume they had tears in their eyes.
Trump's hideous lies about 9/11 especially infuriated Dean Blundell - "A Canadian Dog Did More Than He Did" - who cited what thousands in Canada gave freely with no camera crews in sight: Their lives, homes, help when needed. In retrospect, the only worse douchebag in the horrifying saga of 9/11 is Rudy Giuliani, who hid vast evidence of the hazardous air around Ground Zero while telling residents it was safe. Jon Stewart, who long fought for First Responders' rights: "They didn't recognize the air everyone was breathing (was) toxic until October of 2001. So to be fair, they only buried that information for 25 years." Those lies came out thanks to this week's release of 170,000 documents by Mayor Mamdani - the (Muslim) guy Rudy didn't think should be at the 25th anniversary ceremony. Rudy also chose the Twin Towers for an emergency command center against all advice and gave firefighters radios he knew didn't work, so fuck him all the way to Four Seasons Landscaping.
His former loser mob boss, meanwhile, continues to wreak havoc. Ignoring an approval rating 40 points underwater 'cause nobody can afford food or gas, he waddled to Dallas Wednesday for "The Greatest RALLY of them all!”, a glitzy, pretend, ill-planned Nazi confab with a daunting $25,000 entry fee he's defiantly, desperately made all about himself though nobody wants it to be. "The Convention, is really ‘HOT!’”, one of his 8 words, he exclaimed. “It's totally sold out! Everybody wants to be there!" Except even with every GOP House member and a third of the Senate facing re-election and the RNC “pulling out all the stops” to fill 20,000 seats with what ultimately became free tickets on a night competing with the first regular season NFL game, video of the first night showed glaring vistas of empty seats - the fragile snowflake's worst, primal fear. LOL.
Furthering the indignity, many of the lawmakers turning down the invite offered hilarious reasons akin to, "I have to wash my hair." Some carefully, vaguely declared they had "prior commitments" or they needed to be "in my district." One was taking his daughter "on college visits," one had to go to his son's (weirdly mid-week) high school football game, one said with visible relief he was going to his son's "destination wedding." A Sean the Sheep-ish James Comer said he had "stuff already planned." Another said he was going "dove-hunting." Max Miller, credibly accused of putting a gun to his ex-wife's head and breaking his toddler daughter's collarbone, said he was staying home to "spend time with family." One anonymously declared it was "a waste of time" and he was not "going to some convention center and holding up a sign."
Asked en route to Dallas about the announced absences, Trump bristled. "Everybody wants to come," he snapped, before attacking the reporter - needless to say, a woman. "Who are you with?" he snarled to ABC News' Mary Bruce. "ABC Fake News - you are the worst," he said. "We don't have room for them all." Event organizers have promised "a clear vision for the future of our country," with "lots of Great Entertainment" and over 50 speakers a night; they will include, "Everyday Americans sharing how they have benefited from the president’s policies," which def sounds lively, also Don Jr., Press Barbie and Lying Todd Blanche. Sen. Tim Scott gave a taste of the mood with an over-the-top, "SNL cold open" speech about "dangerous, radical and frankly weird" Dems willing to "rip the heart our of our chests..They hate our culture. They hate what it means to be American," which wasn't frankly weird at all.
The Carnival-Barker-In-Chief kept up the hysteria. Dems just want to cheat: "They're really good at this stuff." There have been "zero" border crossings the last 16 months; it's 600,000, but close enough. Just "pretend that i'm on the ballot," which isn't weird at all. Also, pretend he didn't say in desperation that if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate, he'll send every citizen $5,000, which is a bribe, which is way illegal. In Texas, where Talarico is leading spectacularly corrupt Ken Paxton, he urged votes for Paxton. "Some may not like the way he dresses," he noted, or the way he talks or looks, but he's "the greatest attorney genera in Texas," and maybe the galaxy? "Vote Republican and we will leave the world in our dust for generations to come," he said. "There’ll be nothing like it.” Now that's something we can believe. Hang in, speak up, this too shall (presumably) pass.
Sep 10, 2026
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Trump EPA Takes 'Yet Another Sledgehammer' to Clean Water Act
President Donald Trump's administration sparked fresh fury on Friday when it proposed a supplemental rule to further gut Clean Water Act protections for streams and wetlands in the wake of a "catastrophic" US Supreme Court ruling three years ago.
The supplemental proposal from the Department of the Army and Environmental Protection Agency builds on their widely criticized proposed rule from November for defining "waters of the United States" (WOTUS)—both of which go further than the high court did with its 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA.
While the American Petroleum Institute and some Republicans in Congress joined Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in promoting the new proposal, environmental and public health advocates sounded the alarm.
"What the Supreme Court did in its Sackett decision was an inexcusable assault on clean water," Jon Devine, director of freshwater ecosystems at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a Friday statement. "Communities and wildlife will pay the price until Congress fixes it. The Trump administration's answer has been to make a bad situation worse."
"This proposal declares open season on the nation's waterways. It denies federal protection to virtually all wetlands and more than three-quarters of our streams, endangering drinking water supplies and flood-prone communities—and the agencies admit it themselves," he noted. "The proposal would virtually eliminate protection for freshwater wetlands. Their own analysis says most streams would lose protection, with the West hit hardest."
Food & Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen declared that "Trump is taking yet another sledgehammer to our bedrock Clean Water Act, shamelessly doubling down on his initial terrible proposal to strip protections from countless streams and wetlands."
"Make no mistake: This unlawful proposal gives bad actors the green light to fill, drain, and poison sensitive waterways from coast to coast," she warned. "The result will be dirtier water for everyone. The administration must reverse course on this dangerous proposal."
Gary Belan, senior director of American Rivers' Clean Water Program, stressed that "our nation's water resources are precious and increasingly at risk. This is not the moment to be jeopardizing the nation's water security by narrowing the safeguards of the Clean Water Act."
The public comment period for the initial proposal has closed but, as Belan noted, the publication of the supplemental rule in the Federal Register kicks off a new 30-day period. He said that "while we appreciate EPA's effort to seek more public comment, the proposed changes will have consequences that will impact communities across the nation if finalized."
"The proposed definitions do not reflect the established science on how rivers function and would significantly reduce the scope of the Clean Water Act," he continued. "When headwater and intermittent streams and wetlands lose protection, downstream flooding worsens, the costs of drinking water treatment rises, and water supplies become less reliable."
Jim Murphy, the National Wildlife Federation’s associate vice president for legal advocacy, pointed out that "this is now the fifth effort to define the scope of the waters protected by the Clean Water Act in the past decade. We need Congress' help to get off this merry-go-round at a place that protects our waters, our wildlife, and our way of life."
"The administration is clearly struggling to craft a rule that will hold up in court while satisfying their donors' desire to effectively scrap these protections wherever possible," he added. "One thing is clear: If we don’t protect our streams and wetlands, the cost of dirtier drinking water and increased flooding will flow downstream to households at a time when most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck."
Sep 04, 2026
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'Don't Wait, Regulate': Worldwide Demand Grows for Urgent AI Guardrails
Calls to regulate the development of artificial intelligence are growing louder days after multiple industry insiders warned that the technology could wipe out humanity within years.
In an op-ed published by The New York Times on Friday, journalist Stephen Witt said that he's detected a "vibe shift" among AI researchers who are worried that the technology is becoming too powerful for them to understand, let alone control.
"Swarms of AIs are breaking out of their containers, colluding in secret, covering their tracks, cheating on tests, and even mounting assaults on other computers," Witt wrote. "AI has gone rogue."
Witt said these incidents have convinced him, and many others inside the industry, that there needs to be a global pause on AI research and development.
The journalist noted there has been widespread support among industry insiders for an open letter titled "Pacing the Frontier," which calls on the US government to take the lead in building an international regulatory body that would set guardrails to deliberately slow down AI development.
Daniel Kokotajlo, a former researcher in OpenAI’s governance division, told Witt that he'd like to create "an international, open monitoring system" that would act like an air traffic control system for AI development.
Under Kokotajlo's plan, all AI researchers would be required by law to post information on training runs into a public database that can be monitored in real time.
"If we had this sort of total research transparency," Kokotajlo told Witt, "then there would be this whole ecosystem of academics, third-party auditors, nonprofits, and rival corporations who would all be able to see what was going on inside the giant data centers of these big companies. Insofar as something scary or problematic was happening, anyone could sort of point it out and start a conversation about it online."
The US is not the only country where lawmakers are proposing new regulations for AI.
As reported by Time on Tuesday, Alex Sobel, a member of Parliament from the UK's Labour Party, unveiled a bill this week that would ban artificial superintelligence, defined by the legislation as "a system that could disempower state authorities."
Sobel's bill is similar to legislation proposed in the US earlier this month by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), which would ban artificial superintelligence to "stop AI oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control."
In Warsaw on Tuesday, activists deployed several robots outside Poland's Digital Affairs Ministry to demand the country do more to regulate AI.
Around 30 robots demonstrated outside Poland's Digital Affairs Ministry in Warsaw, chanting 'we want law, we want rules' to demand stronger AI oversight pic.twitter.com/GGUoOCS7JO
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 10, 2026
According to Notes from Poland, the robots were programmed to chant slogans such as "We want regulations, we want rules, we want law" and "Don't wait, regulate, protect jobs."
Democratism, the group that organized the robot protest, argued that the AI industry has the potential to completely upend human society, and demanded to know "who is responsible for preparing people for these changes, how workers should be protected during the transition, and how reskilling should work."
Even though demand to regulate AI is surging, there is little indication so far that governments are preparing to work collectively to place guardrails on the industry.
Greg Jensen, chief investment officer of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, told Bloomberg on Friday that he doesn't believe governments will act until after a tragedy happens.
“Until the AI starts killing people, unfortunately, history would suggest we’re not going to do anything, but we are going to face that," said Jensen, who likened the current risk environment with AI to the risks posed by Covid-19 in February 2020. "That’s going to happen, and it’d be much better if we started dealing with it before then."
Sep 11, 2026
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Mamdani Says NYC Can Honor 9/11 Victims by Building a City Where 'We Run Toward One Another'
With Lower Manhattan and the site of the September 11 attacks in the background, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday called on people to honor the memory of the nearly 3,000 victims—as well as those who have died of illnesses stemming from toxic air at the site of the attacks—by caring "for one another" as thousands of people "cared for strangers" as the tragedy was unfolding exactly 25 years ago.
Mamdani honored the 2,753 New Yorkers—"parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and colleagues, 2,753 universes gone in an instant"—and said the city and country remember September 11 as "the darkest day" when hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and passengers aboard a fourth plane fought to stop another target from being struck.
The mayor urged viewers to remember the actions of thousands of New Yorkers in the immediate aftermath of the attack—those who donated blood and "opened their homes to those who could not get home."
"We remember the workers who carried their colleagues down hundreds of stairs, then turned around and went back up to find someone else who needed help," said Mamdani.
On social media, as the country marked the 25th anniversary of the attacks, many users spoke about specific acts of bravery, including those of Rick Rescorla, the head of security at Morgan Stanley, who was killed at the World Trade Center after he led roughly 2,700 of his colleagues to safety.
In a separate social media post on Instagram, Mamdani highlighted several lesser-known New Yorkers who "sprang into action to help however they could," including teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers, and healthcare providers.
His office interviewed Roseann Caruana of the city's Department of Transportation, who described a triage center that was set up for victims, and Rashel Dorleans—now a New York City public school teacher, and a high school student at the time of the attacks.
"I think it's a credit to the teachers that were there," said Dorleans. "They did not seem panicked. I'm sure they were panicked on the inside, but they were kind and calm with us."
Mamdani said that "we have a sacred obligation to those who were stolen from us to care for one another as they cared for strangers, to live lives worthy of the sacrifices they made, and to build a city worthy of their courage, a city where we run toward one another. That is how we remember."
Ahead of the anniversary this week, the mayor released long-hidden files regarding how New York residents were misled about the toxicity of the air at the World Trade Center attack site. He said the number of people who have died thus far from related cancers and other health issues has likely surpassed the number of victims on September 11.
Mamdani was also the target of attacks this week from Republicans including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and City Council members Vickie Paladino and Joann Ariola, who explicitly cited Mamdani's Muslim faith as they said he did "not belong" at the September 11 memorial ceremony held on Friday.
“I’m proud to be the mayor of this city. I love this city. I love this country,” Mamdani said when asked about the racist remarks. “What I want this week to be a focus on is the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11, and a focus also on the first responders who did everything they could.”
The mayor was seen shaking Giuliani's hand and speaking to him at the ceremony.
"Let us remember the extraordinary compassion, resilience, and bravery that carried our city through its darkest day," said Mamdani. "Today, New York remembers."
Sep 11, 2026
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Appeals Court Rejects 'Likely Unlawful' Trump Push to Undermine Mail-In Voting as Supreme Court Looms
A federal court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration's request to reinstate an executive order that placed restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections, arguing that the order is "likely unlawful."
The US First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that President Donald Trump's mail-in voting executive order likely violates the US Constitution's elections clause, which grants states the rights to oversee their own elections, subject to oversight from the US Congress.
The court also found that the regulations proposed by the order "could prevent millions of Americans from obtaining and returning their ballots" in the coming election.
The ruling noted that the Trump executive order places a number of onerous restrictions on mail-in voting, such as requiring states to print "a voter-specific Intelligent Mail barcode ('IMb')" on all outgoing ballots as a precondition for their delivery by the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Additionally, the court wrote, the order would compel states "to obtain USPS approval for new ballot-envelope designs; to purchase new envelopes to replace those already ordered; to assure that there are technological systems in place adequate to generate IMbs; and to upload voter-specific information to a USPS online portal that is still not operational."
The court said these restrictions are so severe that they validate an earlier ruling from a federal district court, which found that implementing Trump's executive order would lead to "chaos and widespread disenfranchisement... between now and November 3."
Among other things, the court found these Trump-ordered rules would make it "impossible for some states to reprint compliant envelopes," while also creating a "herculean task" of "scanning tens of millions of ballot envelopes and reviewing for a match with information in the presently non-operative portal."
The court also took a shot at Trump administration lawyers, whom it alleged "have not even seriously challenged" the district court's finding about the chaos the president's executive order would cause.
The injunction against Trump's mail-in voting order came as a result of a complaint filed by a number of civil society groups, including the League of Women Voters and the Association of Americans Resident Overseas.
In a joint statement released after the ruling, the plaintiffs and their counsel said that the court affirmed that "the US Postal Service is not the gatekeeper for mail ballots."
"This decision rightly keeps in place an order blocking USPS from enforcing its disruptive and disenfranchising rule through the November election," they added, "and preserves the current system, which has worked safely, securely, and reliably for decades."
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom took the opportunity to taunt the Trump administration for suffering yet another loss in its crusade to clamp down on mail-in voting.
"The rule of law continues to slap down Donald Trump's dangerous and un-American attacks on our free and fair elections," Newsom wrote. "California will never stop fighting for our democracy and the people's ability to exercise their constitutional right to vote."
The Trump administration has asked to the US Supreme Court to reinstate the president's voting order. With mail-in ballots for the upcoming midterms already being sent out in some states, a ruling from the nation's highest court is expected in the coming days.
Sep 10, 2026
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Exploiting Tragedy to Promote War, Hegseth Falsely Claims That Iran 'Cheered on 9/11'
Twenty-five years later, Republican politicians are still using 9/11 to justify war in the Middle East. And they're still lying shamelessly.
During remarks outside the Pentagon on Friday commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth portrayed their deeply unpopular war in Iran as part of the lineage of the global War on Terror, which was marked by a pair of lengthy military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost well over $2 trillion and millions of lives.
Trump declared that he was prosecuting his new war with Iran to fulfill the "sacred oath" sworn in the names of the nearly 3,000 people whose lives were lost that day, that "we will never, ever forget."
Hegseth seems to have forgotten quite a lot. Attempting to draw a link between the ideology of the al-Qaeda hijackers who committed the attack and the current Iranian government, the defense secretary said, "Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11."
However, the claim that Iran "cheered on 9/11" is at odds with the historical record of how the nation's government and people reacted.
On September 19, 2001, The Washington Post reported that:
Despite two decades of official hostility, the people and government of Iran have offered vivid messages of sympathy and condemnations of terrorism in the aftermath of last week's attacks on New York and Washington...
Hard-line conservative Iranians and moderate reformers, top government and religious officials, Friday prayer leaders, and citizens on the street have uniformly denounced the plane hijackings and suicide crashes of September 11. Some, including President Mohammad Khatami, have offered to join an international campaign against terrorism under certain circumstances, including United Nations sponsorship.
On the day of the attacks in 2001, Khatami issued a swift condemnation over Iranian state TV of what he called "the terrorist operations of hijacking and attacking public places in American cities, which have resulted in the death of a large number of defenseless American people."
Khatami later decried the attacks as “the ugliest form of terrorism ever seen." According to later congressional testimony by a State Department official, he also asked to visit ground zero to light a candle out of respect for the victims, a request that was denied by the administration of then-US President George W. Bush.
Days after the attacks, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—who was killed this past February during the opening salvo of the joint US-Israeli war against Iran—agreed at the time that “mass murder of human beings is condemned," though he also suggested that "expansionist" US foreign policy had played a role in provoking the attacks.
The US-funded Radio Free Europe reported that, far from celebrating in the streets, around 2,000 Iranians had gathered in Tehran for a candlelight vigil a week after the attacks, at which participants "chanted against terrorism and expressed their sympathy with America." Days earlier, the Post reported that about 50,000 spectators at a World Cup qualifying match in Tehran observed a minute of silence in recognition of the attacks.
Iran's support for the US following the attack also went beyond words. While still describing Iran as the world's leading "state sponsor of terrorism," a May 2002 State Department report emphasized Iran's cooperation with US operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This included offering search-and-rescue assistance for downed US air crews, diplomatic cooperation at the 2001 Bonn Conference to build Afghanistan's post-Taliban government, and promising border controls to prevent fleeing Taliban and al-Qaeda members from escaping.
Though Trump promised at the outset that it would last only a matter of weeks, his war with Iran has now lumbered into its sixth month with no sign of stopping. It has spilled out into a wider Middle Eastern conflict that has taken the lives of about 8,000 people, displaced millions, and wreaked financial chaos.
The war has included US attacks on civilians that have had a similar resonance with Iranians that 9/11 has for Americans, most infamously the bombing of an elementary school that killed at least 150 people, most of them children.
According to one economist's recent estimate, the war has conservatively cost the average American household about $1,200 over six months, combining the direct cost to taxpayers with the knock-on effects of spiking oil prices and broader inflation.
Though around two-thirds of Americans say they oppose the war and Congress has ordered Trump to bring it to an end, recent reports indicate that the administration is considering expanding it following this November's midterm elections.
Trump described the war as a grim necessity on Friday, in part to honor those who perished on September 11, 25 years earlier.
“That’s why we fight today," Trump said. "We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win.”
Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, reflected earlier this week on how the tragedy is still being used to this day to justify endless wars overseas.
"What haunts me today is not only the devastation of the invasion, but how little accountability there has been for those who lied us into war—and how those same lies are now recycled to justify the attack on Iran," Benjamin said. "The War on Terror did not end."
"The same impunity that has shielded the architects of the global War on Terror," she added, "now emboldens the war criminals behind the genocide in Gaza and the Minab school massacre in Iran."
Sep 11, 2026
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Trump Treasury Would Strip Tax Refunds From Hundreds of Thousands of American Kids, Researchers Warn
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities experts said the move “would harm people who are immigrants and their families, including many US citizen children, who are critical to the nation’s future prosperity.”
Sep 14, 2026
Hundreds of thousands of US citizen children could lose access to key benefits as part of a Trump administration proposal to strip tax credit refunds away from immigrant families, including those with legal status.
In August, the US Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) proposed rules redefining four tax credits—the adoption tax credit, child tax credit (CTC), American opportunity tax credit, and earned income tax credit (EITC)—as "federal public benefits" under a decades-old welfare reform law, meaning that certain groups of noncitizens, not considered "qualified aliens," would be ineligible to claim refunds from them.
Among them are undocumented immigrants, but also many people with temporary nonimmigrant visas, as well as holders of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
According to the Treasury and IRS, the average refunded benefit among all taxpayers whose claims contain at least one of the affected credits is $3,656.
Reporting on the proposal last month, CNBC described it as an effort to "use the nation’s financial safety net as a way to implement stricter immigration policy" and noted that low-income recipients, who are less likely to have large income tax bills to refund, would be hit the hardest.
In a policy brief published on Monday, a group of experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)—director of federal tax policy Kris Cox, vice president for immigration policy Shelby Gonzales, deputy director of federal tax policy Samantha Jacoby, and senior research analyst Claire Zippel—examined the likely effects of the policy.
They estimated that the proposal would take away access to the refundable portion of the CTC and/or the EITC for 1 million people in affected families, including US citizens and people with lawful immigration statuses.
While the proposed rule estimates that between 200,000 and 700,000 taxpayers would become ineligible, the researchers said this understated the potential impact because it only included the tax filers themselves, without noting that their family members would also be hurt.
Using immigration status data from the Department of Homeland Security, the researchers said they determined that "the rule would take access to refundable credits away from hundreds of thousands of US citizen children if both parents—or their parent, for single-parent families—have an immigration status that is not a 'qualified' status."
"For 30 years, no administration, Democratic or Republican, has treated refundable tax credits this way," the researchers said. "The proposed rule includes a misguided reinterpretation of a 1996 law that created restrictive immigration-related eligibility standards for 'federal public benefits,' taking away access to basic needs programs from many immigrants with lawful statuses."
"The Trump administration is seeking to apply those same immigration-related restrictions—which require people to have a 'qualified' immigration status—to the refunded portion of certain tax credits," they continued. "This contradicts both the clear reading of the statutory text and congressional intent, which Congress has demonstrated by legislating on immigrant eligibility for tax credits several times since the 1996 law, most recently in 2025."
They noted that the new policy follows other efforts by the administration to restrict access to other programs for families with immigrants, including Head Start, child welfare services, and health services, all of which are being challenged in court.
Many of the people who'd be barred from receiving the credit refunds, the researchers said, are especially vulnerable, including:
- Children granted special immigrant juvenile status, who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected by one or both parents;
- Survivors of serious criminal activity who have cooperated with law enforcement;
- People with DACA and TPS; and
- Many others who are living and working lawfully in the United States.
"Taking away these tax credits would harm people who are immigrants and their families, including many US citizen children, who are critical to the nation’s future prosperity," the researchers said, pointing to studies linking additional income from tax credits with improved health, education, employment, and earnings."
"People who are immigrants and their families contribute to our communities and nation in immeasurable ways," they concluded. "These restrictions on tax credits create a higher effective tax rate for people who are filing their taxes solely based on their immigration status."
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Research Warns of Surge in Cancer-Causing Forever Chemicals From AI Data Center Build-Out
"This global trend towards expanding PFAS production raises the frightening prospect that the partial restrictions on PFAS favored by some politicians will be swept aside by a tidal wave of new output."
Sep 14, 2026
As a United Nations expert reiterated a call for a global ban on nonessential uses of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a Swedish nonprofit on Monday released research on how rapidly advancing artificial intelligence and related data centers are helping to drive a surge in PFAS production.
Often called "forever chemicals" because they don't easily break down in human bodies or the environment, PFAS are tied to range of health issues, including various cancers. For months, advocacy groups, journalists, and researchers have stressed that "data centers have a PFAS problem."
That's illustrated clearly in the new report from the International Chemical Secretariat, or ChemSec, which found that an ongoing expansion by many of the world's top 10 PFAS producers "is driven by three main sources of demand—AI and data center infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing, and lithium-ion battery materials."
Covering the report, The Guardian explained that "PFAS are used for a new form of data center cooling touted as more water- and energy-efficient. In 'two-phase immersion cooling' systems, servers are immersed in a pool of PFAS with a low boiling point. As the hardware gets hot, the fluid boils, drawing heat away as vapor. That rises to a water-cooled condensing coil at the top of the tank, cools back to a liquid state, and reenters the cycle."
ChemSec highlighted that "PFAS manufacturers all over the world are explicitly framing their investments around 'the AI revolution' and microchip fabrication. Battery-grade fluoropolymers are a parallel growth area, in which Arkema and Syensqo are expanding their existing production and building new manufacturing facilities."
In addition to those companies—based in France and Belgium, respectively—the report examines AGC and Daikin in Japan, Archroma in Switzerland, BASF and Bayer in Germany, Chemours and Solstice in the United States, and Orbia Fluor & Energy Materials in Mexico. It also mentions US-based 3M, which "pioneered PFAS production when the chemicals were first invented back in the 1940s" and has plans to leave the industry, though that exit "is still very recent and shrouded in secrecy."
The report points out that "the CEO of US manufacturer Solstice told investors in June that strong AI demand represents a 'generational opportunity' for growth. And we know what that means: a lot more PFAS. Japanese multinational Daikin plans to more than triple its fluoropolymer production capacity in response to the rapidly growing semiconductor market. It is building a new factory, set to start manufacturing more PFAS next year."
"This global trend towards expanding PFAS production raises the frightening prospect that the partial restrictions on PFAS favored by some politicians will be swept aside by a tidal wave of new output," ChemSec warned. "It confirms that the only effective method to end this toxic pollution crisis is to implement universal bans with strictly time-limited derogations to enable certain sectors to adjust."
"The only clear exceptions are 3M and BASF, which have announced they will cease production as expensive legal challenges to their PFAS pollution pile up, and Archroma, which markets PFAS-free alternatives," the group noted. "These companies are sending a signal to the rest of the industry—it can be done, and it must be done."
Bethanie Carney Almroth, an environmental scientist and researcher who became the United Nations' special rapporteur on toxics and human rights last month, spotlighted a recent UN report on PFAS—which urged a ban on nonessential uses—and emphasized that "this is an issue of global environmental justice."
Melanie Benesh, the US-based Environmental Working Group's vice president for government affairs, said in a Monday statement that "PFAS have been linked to kidney, liver, pancreatic, and testicular cancers; as well as immune system suppression, thyroid disease, reduced vaccine efficacy, reproductive and developmental harm, low birth weight, increased cholesterol, weight gain in children and dieting adults, and a growing list of serious health effects."
"For decades, US regulators have let industry set the pace on PFAS. Communities pay the price, like in North Carolina, where Emily Donovan's group Clean Cape Fear is leading the fight to make polluters pay," she continued. "The United States helped create this crisis. It has a responsibility to help end it."
"The world's governments now have a UN report telling them exactly what needs to happen," she added. "The only question left is whether they'll act on it. We must stop making the problem worse and ensure that polluters—not contaminated communities—pay for the damage."
Separately—and on the heels of various artificial intelligence experts sounding the alarm about the pace at which the technology is advancing—UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk argued Monday in an open letter that "to protect human rights now and into the future, we must govern AI urgently."
In the United States, the current administration and Republican-controlled Congress have resisted restricting AI, data center construction, or PFAS. Amid mounting calls for limits on the first of those, President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that "the only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the USA has that, in spades!"
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Texas Landowners Challenge 'Legally and Factually Unsound' Trump Rationale for Big Bend Border Barrier
"We have brought this extraordinary challenge because, for us, the Big Bend is not an empty place on a map. It is our home."
Sep 14, 2026
A coalition of Texas ranchers, landowners, business owners, and conservationists in the Big Bend region on Monday sued the Trump administration over plans to build border barriers and other destructive infrastructure across one of the most remote and environmentally sensitive stretches of the US-Mexico border.
The lawsuit—filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia by Conserve Big Bend and six landowners with the backing of many others—challenges the administration’s determination that the region is an area of “high illegal entry" under Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996, a finding the plaintiffs say is contradicted by the government’s own statistics.
"That high illegal entry determination is the legal predicate for defendants’ invocation of extraordinary power to immediately construct a 30-foot-high border wall while bypassing all federal, state, and local procedural protections," the complaint states. "That determination is legally and factually unsound and unsupported."
"A host of government statistics and other public reporting [show] that the opposite is true," the lawsuit notes. "The Big Bend sector is the area of the lowest illegal entry along the southwest border... The Big Bend sector has recorded the fewest yearly apprehensions of any Southwest sector for the last 53 years, with last year’s numbers being the lowest yearly apprehension total recorded by any sector in the region since 1967."
The suit comes as the Trump administration presses forward with a $46 billion border security construction program authorized by Congress, including 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and other surveillance infrastructure.
The plaintiffs argue that the administration is abusing the extraordinary authority granted to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the IIRIRA, to sidestep laws protecting wildlife, water, Indigenous rights, historic resources, and private property.
“Thank you, President Trump. You’ve secured the border. But now let it go. It’s time," Laura Allen said at a Monday press conference in Marfa announcing the lawsuit. A former Val Verde County judge and two-time Trump voter, Allen's family owns a ranch that would be divided by the proposed border barrier.
David Keller, an archaeologist and historian who lives in the region, spoke at the press conference. He accused officials supporting the administration's proposal of being "woefully unprepared for the hornet’s nest they stirred up because they had no idea how much we love this place."
“For us, the Big Bend is not an empty place on the map,” Keller stressed. “It is our home.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration waived dozens of environmental laws—including the National Park Service Organic Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act—to expedite the construction of border roads and barriers through Big Bend National Park.
This isn't the first court challenge to the administration's Big Bend border barrier plans. Last month, the Presidio Municipal Development District sued to stop construction, citing alleged violations of the Rivers and Harbors Act. But after DHS added that law to its waiver, US District Judge Reggie Walton—an appointee of former President George W. Bush—ruled that the plaintiffs could not prevail on the merits and declined to block construction plans, declaring that the administration was legally allowed to bypass the legislation.
“Under federal statute, the secretary of homeland security is granted extraordinary, expedited powers to construct border barriers and sweep aside dozens of federal protections, environmental laws, and ordinary due process,” Clara Bensen, a board member with Conserve Big Bend and head of communications for the No Big Bend Wall initiative, said in a statement Monday. “But Congress explicitly set a strict legal prerequisite for that extraordinary power: it can only be invoked in designated areas of ‘high illegal entry.’”
"The government’s own official statistics tell the real story," Bensen added. "You cannot legally bypass the laws of this country by fabricating an emergency that does not exist. Declaring over 500 miles of steep cliff faces and perilously rugged desert an area of ‘high illegal entry’ is not just detached from reality, under federal law, it is arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful.”
Also last month, People of La Junta for Preservation—a Native American advocacy group focused on protecting Indigenous historical and cultural sites in the Big Bend region—sued the administration, arguing that construction threatens sacred sites of the Lipan Apache people. The complaint also challenges DHS' authority to conduct work inside Big Bend National Park.
Amid intense opposition spanning the political spectrum, US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott last month announced a temporary pause on construction in Big Bend National Park pending an “on-the-ground evaluation."
Some conservatives who oppose the administration's plans have cited the inviolability of private property rights, which Lico Miller, whose land is in the path of the border barrier, called "the bedrock of Texas sovereignty" during Monday's press conference.
“The moment we allow any government—state or federal—to come in and seize private land and tell us what is good for us and what constitutes an emergency, we set a precedent that will come back and bite every single Texan,” he argued. “If they can take our land along the river today, they can come for yours tomorrow.”
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Rapper Macklemore Says NFL Owners Got Him Kicked Off Concert Tour For Criticizing Israel
One writer told Common Dreams it was "a really terrifying example of the power of concentrated wealth to censor speech."
Sep 14, 2026
The rapper Macklemore said he was kicked off a tour with Ed Sheeran on Monday after pressure from NFL owners angered by his harsh criticism of Israel.
Macklemore, who has been an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights, especially since October 2023, made headlines earlier this month when he said "Free Palestine" onstage during a show at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, and said he wanted the people of Gaza and the occupied West Bank to know “we have not forgotten about them."
The rapper also performed his 2024 song "Hind's Hall," which debuted amid a wave of campus protests against US support for Israel's military campaign in Gaza. The Israeli assault has killed over 73,000 Palestinians, according to official counts, which major human rights organizations have denounced as a genocide.
The title of the song references pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University, who occupied a building during the protest wave and named it after Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza after spending hours trapped in a car with the bodies of her relatives and pleading for rescuers to save her.
The performance faced pressure from groups, including the Israeli American Council, which launched a petition calling for Sheeran to boot Macklemore from the tour. The performance was also met with criticism from the singer Pink, who said Macklemore's performance may have left Jewish audience members feeling "scared or targeted," though she said she did not want any artist to be "silenced."
Macklemore emphasized during a subsequent show that Jewish spectators were not the targets of his performance. "To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you," he said. "My message is for peace; love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality.”
On Monday, the group promoting Sheeran's Loop Tour announced that Macklemore would not be performing at the remaining shows on the US leg, telling Rolling Stone that it had been "notified by venues on the upcoming US tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans."
In an Instagram post on Monday following the announcement, Macklemore gave more details on what he said prompted his exile from the tour.
"Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding Pink and what I said at MetLife, Ed [Sheeran] told me that Robert Kraft called him," Macklemore explained. "We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners, and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: 'If Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.'"
According to Rolling Stone, other venues where decision-makers allegedly objected to Macklemore's appearance included Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia; Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta; Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis; Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina; AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas; and Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.
Kraft, the multibillionaire owner of the New England Patriots, is one of the nation's most prominent donors to pro-Israel causes and is a close personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
In 2019, Kraft received a $1 million award, presented by Netanyahu, to support his efforts to combat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the US, which aims to use economic means to pressure Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian territory, which is considered illegal under international law.
Since 2022, Kraft has also donated $3 million to the United Democracy Project, the super political action committee affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to federal campaign finance records.
As public support for Israel has cratered, particularly among Democratic voters, AIPAC's political fundraising arms have been spending at a record pace, deploying over $100 million to back pro-Israel candidates during the 2026 election cycle.
Macklemore said he did not begrudge Sheeran, whom he described as a "friend" and "brother," for cutting him from the tour in the face of this pressure.
"Ed was in a fucked up position. He knew it. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before. He told me that the words 'Free Palestine' and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with," Macklemore said. "I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood."
Macklemore said he understood why Sheeran and other artists choose to avoid controversial political topics.
"Taking a side can cost you. Money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows, relationships, and access. I've lost all of those things," Macklemore said. "But there is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed. When one side has the bombs and bottomless financial and military support from America, refusing to take a side doesn't leave you in the middle."
He emphasized that neither he nor Sheeran was a "victim" in this saga. "The victims," he said, "are the Palestinian people. The men, women, and children who have been killed, starved, displaced, and forced to live through unimaginable violence."
Macklemore noted that he has been making similar statements to those he made at MetLife "for almost three years." But now that he's saying it on bigger stages with bigger artists, he said, "it becomes too much of a risk."
"If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next?" he said. "The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that's why this time it became so important to silence me."
"One of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism," he continued. "Antisemitism is real. And that is exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism, or saying 'Free Palestine' gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn't protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability."
Alex Skopic, an associate editor at Current Affairs magazine and author of a 2023 essay, "A Brief Cultural History of the White Rapper," which discusses Macklemore and his history of political activism extensively, said the rapper's removal from the tour was "a really terrifying example of the power of concentrated wealth to censor speech."
"It's one thing for a stadium owner to cancel a particular artist, but apparently Robert Kraft was able to make a few phone calls and get Macklemore banned from the entire tour," Skopic said in an email to Common Dreams. "It's incredibly dangerous to civil society when one guy has that kind of power to dictate what music can and can't be heard."
He added that it was also "notable who gets canceled and who doesn't," pointing out that in his home city of New Orleans, Ye (formerly Kanye West) recently performed before a packed Superdome, even "after he spent two years spouting Nazi rhetoric," including publicly praising Adolf Hitler on numerous occasions.
"Apparently, our elites consider the words 'Free Palestine' more threatening," Skopic said.
He added that Sheeran "has behaved like an absolute coward."
"When you think about it, Sheeran is one of maybe 30 artists on the planet who's big enough, in terms of money and influence, to say no to nonsense like this from stadium owners," Skopic said. "He chose the money over his integrity. It's bad enough that his music for the last decade has been painfully mediocre, but that shows a real lack of spine."
Given the long history of rappers taking controversial stances, Skopic added that "it's also kind of absurd that Macklemore is one of the foremost people in rap who's speaking out against an ongoing genocide."
"There's a lot of cop-outs to go around," he said. "DJ Khaled, famously, is Palestinian himself and won't say a word. Where's Kendrick Lamar, with his massive platform? Where are any of them?"
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'Madness and Puerility': Critics Stunned as Trump Claims His 'High IQ' Enough to Regulate AI
Trump's stance on AI regulation is "a fundamental incompetence that places us all in grave danger," said one critic.
Sep 14, 2026
President Donald Trump on Monday slapped down the idea of putting guardrails on artificial intelligence, despite increased warnings from industry insiders and outside experts about the technology's potential dangers to humanity.
In a Truth Social post, Trump suggested that his own intellect was singlehandedly capable of regulating AI, a technology so complicated that even its own creators have acknowledged difficulties in understanding it.
"The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT," Trump wrote, "and the USA has that, in spades!"
The president then claimed, without offering any details, that his administration had already "stopped AI 'people' from doing bad, or potentially bad, 'things,'" and then baselessly claimed the nationwide backlash to the technology was part of a vast conspiracy theory in service of the Chinese Communist Party.
"There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," Trump wrote. "WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!"
Regardless of Trump's social media rants, there is widespread concern about the impacts of AI across the political spectrum.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, described Trump's stance on regulating AI as "a fundamental incompetence that places us all in grave danger," in a Common Dreams op-ed published Monday.
Reacting directly to Trump's Monday social media post, Sachs told Common Dreams that it was a sign that "we are in the grip of madness and puerility."
Axios reported on Monday that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will join former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and former Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon on Tuesday for a what is being described as a "Pro-Human Assembly" aimed at highlighting the dangers posed by the continued development of the technology.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), chair of Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Management, announced last week that he is opening a probe into the recent autonomous hack carried out by OpenAI agents, while also examining threats posed by the AI industry as a whole.
Calls to regulate AI have grown over the last week since Coxon announced that he had resigned from his position at AI lab Anthropic because he no longer felt it was possible to safely develop the technology.
In a social media post announcing his resignation, Coxon claimed that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” and accused them of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
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Sanders Urges 'Great Deal Maker' Trump to Forge 'Comprehensive' AI Treaty With China
"In order to prevent a nuclear war, Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated a nuclear arms agreement in the 1980s. In order to prevent AI from acting independently of human control, Trump and Xi must do the same."
Sep 14, 2026
Amid intensifying debate in the US about domestic regulation of the artificial intelligence industry, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday called on US President Donald Trump to end his hands-off approach to AI on the international stage by engaging directly and urgently with China to forestall a global AI race that could have devastating consequences in the years and decades ahead.
"President Trump prides himself on being a great deal maker," Sanders asserted in a social media post. "Well. He now has the opportunity to make 'the deal of the century," by reaching out to the Chinese government."
"With the future of humanity at stake," said Sanders, "Trump must negotiate a comprehensive treaty with President Xi of China to establish a pause on advanced AI development and a ban on superintelligence."
While major US-based tech companies—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, and others—race to unlock AI's potential, Chinese companies and researchers are seen as the main competition in the effort to win the technological race. With fresh warnings from industry insiders over recent weeks dominating headlines, AI experts and watchdog groups have said that a coordinated "pause" or a global treaty to govern the technology's future development is desperately needed.
With the question about whether unregulated AI has the potential to "wipe out humanity" if not curtailed dominating headlines and political conversations, Trump on Sunday downplayed such concerns while putting the issue in zero-sum terms, declaring that "whoever wins AI, wins."
"We're leading China in AI, we're the most sophisticated in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way," Trump said.
While Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei backed the call to "hit the brakes" on AI in certain ways in a nearly 4,000-word essay on the subject published over the weekend, he explained to CBS News on Sunday that the "toughest aspect of our situation" for industry leaders in the US is what to do if China would not honor such a slowdown.
China has acknowledged the international competition and tensions driven by technology, but has also expressed skepticism about comments from US industry leaders and the Trump administration's position.
“Fearmongering, confrontation, and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest,” said Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a Monday press conference in Beijing.
"All parties should work together to advance AI in a manner that is open, inclusive, beneficial to all, and oriented toward the good," Jiakun added.
In a statement last week, however, China's Ministry of Commerce said accusations by the US about Chinese efforts only offer "further proof that the US is pursuing technological hegemony in AI, seeking to monopolize computing power, and suppressing competition," an effort that "China firmly opposes."
With Trump scheduled to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month, AI governance is not expected to be high on the list of topics discussed.
Speaking with the BBC, Chang Jun Yan, an assistant professor with the military studies program at Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said a deal between Washington and Beijing on AI would be "next to impossible."
"As part of each state's core national security interests, cooperation in taking things slower and more safely in relation to AI is very, very unlikely," he argued.
In his Sunday statement, however, Sanders said diplomatic efforts—regardless of the difficulties—must be forged, and suggested that the US and China have a special responsibility when it comes to the powerful technology. Offering a historical analogy, Sanders cited the nuclear treaty brokered by US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.
"In order to prevent a nuclear war, Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated a nuclear arms agreement in the 1980s," Sanders said in his Sunday message. "In order to prevent AI from acting independently of human control, Trump and Xi must do the same."
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'Pathetic': Israeli Minister Threatens to Revoke Citizenship of NAZA Filmmakers
The documentary includes interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence whistleblowers on Israel's system of mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
Sep 13, 2026
Following the Venice Film Festival premiere of a lauded documentary film about Israel's mass killing of civilians in Gaza using surveillance and artificial intelligence, the Israeli government is "taking action... against the filmmakers," said one journalist after a top minister threatened to revoke the Israeli citizenship of the two creators of the film.
Culture Minister Miki Zohar said Sunday that Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor were willing to “harm their homeland in order to receive applause from antisemites around the world" after the film, NAZA, received a record-breaking standing ovation and the Special Jury Prize at the festival.
The film's title refers to an acronym used by Israeli intelligence officers for the number of civilians they expect to be killed in an airstrike in Gaza, which Israel began bombarding in 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in Gaza, where Israeli attacks continue despite a ceasefire that was reached 11 months ago.
Israel and its allies, including the US, its top military funder, have persistently claimed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are targeting Hamas, even as thousands of children and women and hundreds of journalists, aid workers, and medical workers have been killed. On Saturday, a pregnant woman was among 10 Palestinians killed over 48 hours.
Abraham previously reported on Israel's AI-powered targeting technology and the IDF's rules of engagement—including its acceptance of 100 Palestinian civilians being killed for a single Hamas member who was targeted—for +972 magazine.
But the film, in which Abraham and Szor interviewed 24 Israeli military and intelligence officers, led Zohar to say he would "act immediately to revoke the Israeli citizenship of these despicable creators for treason against the state."
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the government can revoke an Israeli person's nationality if they fail to show "loyalty," including through acts that are found to be treasonous. The interior minister must submit a revocation request to the justice minister and judges must also validate the revocation.
Etan Nechin, a senior writer at Haaretz in Israel, noted that as the government calls to revoke the filmmakers' citizenship, it has also resisted calls for an independent investigation into the October 7 attacks by Hamas. Haaretz reported last week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned about the attacks before they happened.
Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel at the International Crisis Group, called the threat from Zohar "so pathetic."
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AI Firms Can and Must Face Liability for 'Dangerous, Unvetted Products,' Says Lina Khan
The former FTC chair spoke out as Republican leaders insisted the industry should be permitted to regulate itself.
Sep 13, 2026
As House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump dismissed the idea—backed by the vast majority of Americans—that lawmakers should impose strict regulations on the artificial intelligence industry as insiders call for a slowdown of development, former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on Sunday issued a reminder that the federal government already has tools to rein in AI that poses a danger to the public, and demanded that officials use them.
"Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products," Khan said on social media. "We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books."
Her call echoed that of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who said Saturday, "If you’re creating an AI that is doing illegal things, you either should face liability or criminal sanctions.”
Khan, who was recently appointed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to chair the city's Economic Development Corporation, posted the FTC's Staff Report on AI Partnerships and Investments, which the agency released shortly after Trump took office for his second term last year.
“As companies rapidly deploy generative AI technologies, enforcers and policymakers must stay vigilant to guard against business strategies that undermine open markets, opportunity, and innovation,” said Khan at the time.
On Sunday, Khan noted that the US already has "an extensive set of laws that govern dangerous and defective products," such as consumer protection laws, which releasing unvetted AI models or agents may violate.
Khan made her remarks after two incidents in which OpenAI's agents broke out of security test systems and committed cyberattacks. In July, hundreds of models broke out of confinement, hacked into systems of the AI startup Hugging Face, and conducted cyberattacks on targets they had not been instructed to attack.
Months earlier, it was reported on Friday, the company's models, which had not been given access to the full internet and were still in testing mode, broke out of confinement and hacked into an online coding service called RubyGems.
In the wake of those revelations, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Saturday called for "pacing the frontier" with measures such as "embedded evaluators" who would have employee-like access and could "verify adherence to safety practices and commitments."
But Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher who resigned last week and warned that AI's "superhuman systems" are capable of killing all of humanity "by the end of the decade," told NBC News' "Meet the Press" Sunday that companies should be permitted to regulate themselves until Congress can establish a regulatory framework, and Johnson insisted that Congress must resist "jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium," for fear that "China will overlap us" if the US imposes strict regulations on AI.
"Why did this man become a congressman, let alone speaker?" asked journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo. "He literally never wants Congress to do anything about anything."
But Khan suggested that the reluctance of congressional leaders and the Trump administration to rein in the AI industry shouldn't stop the federal government from holding companies like Anthropic and OpenAI liable for the damage their products have already caused.
She acknowledged, though, that "the highly concentrated and interconnected structure of these markets" could be undermining accountability—for example, in the case of OpenAI and Hugging Face, which computer chip company Nvidia agreed to acquire earlier this month.
"Both federal and state enforcers should be scrutinizing these opaque relationships and interdependencies," said Khan. "We are already seeing how these relationships could undermine accountability. For example, OpenAI could face liability given the Hugging Face incident, but Hugging Face being bought up by Nvidia means that we’re unlikely to see it file a lawsuit over this—given Nvidia’s strong incentive to see OpenAI continue full speed ahead."
Basel Musharbash of the antitrust law and policy firm Antimonopoly Counsel said that Khan's post was the statement that current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson "should be issuing to provide guidance the public on what the law requires in response to the AI situation, but he’s missing in action. Luckily, former FTC Chair Lina Khan is out here still doing the work."
Juliette Kayyem, the faculty chair of homeland security at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told CNN that holding AI firms accountable is a matter of "pretty basic criminal law."
"We should start thinking about using our criminal laws," said Kayyem. "They are putting a dangerous substance into commerce and then saying, 'Well, we're smart enough to kill everyone but we're not smart enough to stop it.' And I think a lot of the American public is done with this."
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85,000+ Yemeni Civilians Displaced by Renewed Fighting Kicked Off by Trump's Iran War
"Behind every number is a family who's lost everything," said a top UN official. "Many have been displaced multiple times."
Sep 13, 2026
The United Nations agency for migration issues said Sunday that 85,818 Yemeni people have been forcibly displaced in recent days by renewed fighting between Houthi forces and the Saudi-backed government as the Houthis seized control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a key waterway for global oil shipping.
More than 2,000 people fled to Djibouti in recent days, and more are expected to arrive as fighting continues to escalate along the western coast of Yemen and Taiz province, near the port city of Mocha, which the Iran-allied Houthis seized from government forces on Thursday.
Nearly 56,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Taiz, where heavy ground fighting and counterattacks have been taking place.
Abdusattor Esoev, chief of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Yemen, told Al Jazeera that the capture of Mocha, where the UN has maintained a strong infrastructure in recent years, has caused difficulty for aid agencies trying to reach people in need of food, water, medicines, and other humanitarian aid.
"Behind every number is a family who's lost everything," saidd Amy Pope, director general of IOM. "Many have been displaced multiple times. People are crossing the sea with nothing because they have no other choice left. Yemen is a country torn by poverty and conflict, and it cannot carry this crisis alone."
Pope called on donor countries to rapidly scale up support for Yemenis arriving in Djibouti and for 5.2 million people who have been internally displaced in Yemen over 12 years of conflict since the Houthis seized the country's capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
More than 900 people have been killed in this month's escalation, Al Jazeera reported.
A UN-brokered truce in 2022 temporarily halted major battles.
In July, the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea, which Saudi Arabia had been using to ship oil due to Iran's effective blockade in the Strait of Hormuz—a retaliatory measure Iran took in response to the war that the Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began in February.
As Common Dreams reported last week, the Houthis see the war being perpetrated by President Donald Trump as a "golden opportunity" to advance against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.
The Houthis also launched missile and drone strikes on southern Saudi Arabia in recent days.
Mohammed al-Basha, founder and lead analyst of the Basha Report Risk Advisory, told Al Jazeera that Saudi Arabia is likely providing air support to the Yemeni government forces and is under pressure to launch a wider military campaign.
Trump reportedly refused a request from Saudi Arabia to launch airstrikes against the Houthis last week, and said Saturday that the Houthis had reached out to Washington, asking the Trump administration not to intervene in the conflict.
The renewed conflict in Yemen has sparked intensified calls for the White House to end its war on Iran, which has also led to casualties across the Middle East, including in Lebanon.
A woman named Aman Murshed told Al Jazeera on Saturday that her family, including five children, has been displaced in a refugee camp for five years in Taiz, and they were forced to flee again this past week.
“The last four years were calm, and our hopes of returning home grew stronger," she said at the al-Malika camp in al-Maafer district in Taiz. "But suddenly, fighting erupted near our camp three days ago, and we found ourselves fleeing again toward an unknown destination. The only priority was to carry the children and flee as quickly as possible, because any delay could mean death. It was around 5:00 am, and there were no cars in the camp or the surrounding area since it is on the front line. So, we walked for more than two kilometers until we found a pick-up truck that brought us to this camp for free.”
Mohammed Ali, a journalist in Taiz, told Al Jazeera that "the broader US-Iran conflict effectively brought an end to the 2022 truce, as the Houthis have been attempting to advance to take control of the Bab al-Mandeb strait to serve Iran’s agenda."
“The warring sides are escalating, but it is civilians who pay the price," he said. "A single visit to one of the camps for displaced families is enough to see the severe toll this escalation has taken on the Yemeni people.”
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Pro-Israel Group Condemned for Demanding UK Ban on Doctors Without Borders
"Support for Israel requires you to be against everything good in this world, like an organization which sends doctors to conflict areas to save human lives," said one observer.
Sep 13, 2026
Doctors Without Borders on Saturday condemned allegations made by a British pro-Israel lobby group, which called on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to investigate and potentially proscribe the group, whose medical providers and other humanitarian workers provide lifesaving aid in 70 countries and have worked in Palestine during Israel's assault there.
As The Telegraph reported, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKFLI) wrote to Mahmood as well as the Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator, calling on the Labour government to investigate Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The group claimed at least two of MSF's workers who were killed by Israeli forces, physiologist Fadi Al Wadiya and driver Nasser Hamdi Abdelatif Al Shalfouh, had connections to terrorist groups in Gaza.
Palestine Islamic Jihad published a poster earlier this year naming Wadiya as a "martyr commander," and UKFLI claimed Al Shalfouh was a sniper for a Hamas battalion.
MSF acknowledged the poster regarding Wadiya in February and said the medical group "had no indication that Fadi Al Wadiya might have been involved in military activity of any kind prior to his killing by the Israeli Forces."
“If the Israeli authorities had any reliable information about Fadi’s involvement in military activity, they never shared it with MSF either prior to his killing or when we reached out immediately after he was killed to ask for clarifications around the circumstances of his death," the group added. “We would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity. Any employee who engages in military activity would pose a danger to our staff and patients.”
UKFLI sent its report on MSF to Mahmood asking her to ban the group, as the Labour government proscribed the protest group Palestine Action last year, labeling it a terrorist group under the Terrorism Act. The government took that action after members of the group vandalized planes at a military base.
The designation put Palestine Action on the same legal footing as Al Qaeda in the UK and made membership of the group—or even expressions of support for it—punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
The demand for the same designation for MSF, said former British Army general Charlie Herbert, was "absolutely grotesque."
MSF doctors and healthcare workers have treated thousands of Palestinians in Gaza since Israel began its onslaught there in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. At least 15 people working with the organization have been killed by Israeli forces. The group is also currently providing humanitarian and medical aid in Sudan as the civil war there has displaced millions of people and collapsed the healthcare system; in Yemen as the conflict between the Houthis and Saudi-backed government troops has escalated; and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is facing an Ebola outbreak as well as humanitarian crises exacerbated by years of conflict.
"I work in aid, and when people ask who to support I always say MSF," said researcher and activist Philip Proudfoot. "MSF, wherever I’ve been, are right there on the front, in dangerous conditions, in isolated outposts, providing life-saving support. They’re heroes. UK lawyers for Israel are not fit to wash their scrubs."
US-based researcher Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said the report by UKLFI demonstrates that "support for Israel requires you to be against everything good in this world, like an organization which sends doctors to conflict areas to save human lives."
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