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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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68% of US Voters Back Sanders/Casar Bill for AI Pause, Ban on Superintelligence: Poll
As whistleblowers in the artificial intelligence industry speak out about the extraordinary risk posed by their technology if it remains unchecked, a new poll out Wednesday reveals that more than two-thirds of US voters agree with a new proposal in Congress to pause artificial intelligence development until guardrails are set up and ban AI superintelligence completely.
The proposed legislation, announced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) last week, and soon to be introduced in Congress, would ban developers from creating “superintelligent” AI programs capable of surpassing human cognition and resisting human attempts to shut them down. It would also halt "advanced" AI development until a new federal regulatory body was established to set clear rules and processes for AI safety.
The polling firm Data for Progress asked more than 1,300 likely voters about the bill. According to survey results released on Wednesday, 68% of them said they would support the proposal to temporarily pause advanced AI development and permanently prohibit the development of superintelligent programs, while just 25% said they'd oppose it.
Though the bill was proposed by a pair of progressive lawmakers, its appeal spans the political spectrum: 72% of Democrats and 70% of independent and third-party voters said they supported it. But so did 63% of Republican voters.
The poll results come just one day after AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, saying that the company and one of its top competitors, OpenAI, where he previously worked, were more concerned with winning the AI race than with protecting the public against out-of-control “superhuman systems” that many of his industry colleagues privately fear could “kill us all by the end of the decade.”
"Neither company is acting responsibly," Coxon said. "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
With reports piling up of AI agents escaping human control, hacking into external computer systems, and deceiving users, several other researchers at leading AI firms have cosigned Coxon's warning, saying that AI could have catastrophic results if it surpasses human capabilities.
Evan Hubinger, an alignment science lead at Anthropic, said that while "the risk from present models is low," he and other researchers "earnestly believe AI could kill all humans" if it continues to develop and put the likelihood of it happening within the next decade at above 10%.
Alex Turner, who left his job as a research scientist at Google's DeepMind in June, concurred that Coxon was "right" and that "many researchers believe they are building something that could kill everyone on the planet. It was literally my day job to think about how to stop that."
Even if AI doesn't lead to the extinction of humanity, other researchers have said they are gravely worried about its impacts on society.
"I think there are a number of ways AI could go poorly for humanity, and at the current, frankly terrifying pace, humanity will be quite lucky if we manage to find and stay on the narrow path between all the bad outcomes," wrote Jason Wolfe, a researcher at OpenAI. "Regardless of what you think of OpenAI, this is not a problem that can be solved by any one company (or country) in isolation."
Jonathan Richard Schwarz, former Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, noted that he left the company after seven years and rejected offers from other AI companies "due to severe concerns about the concentration of power these labs represent."
"What is currently happening in this field is deeply unhealthy for society," Schwarz said.
In a Wednesday social media post, Sanders pointed to these and other warnings from industry experts as evidence that federal intervention is urgently needed.
"The very people building this technology admit that it could threaten the future of humanity," the senator wrote.
He added on Thursday that "Unless we reverse course, there is a very real possibility that once advanced AI surpasses human intelligence, it could escape our control with catastrophic consequences."
Wednesday's poll results are consistent with other recent surveys showing that solid majorities of voters across all parties object to the construction of AI data centers near them, an issue that has come to dominate the 2026 election season.
William Lawrence, a cofounder of the Sunrise Movement, became the Democratic nominee for the US House in Michigan's 7th Congressional District last month, in part by tapping into constituents' fears about data centers. He said recent whistleblower warnings were evidence that AI companies were "gambling with our lives" and needed to be reined in.
"I can't see the future," Lawrence said in a video posted online Thursday. "But if there is even a 5% chance of a bioweapon being set loose, authoritarians using AI to entrench their own power, or a rogue AI hacker taking down the economy, that risk is too great."
"We need a pause on the development of AI models and data center construction," he said. "I do believe that AI is very powerful and could potentially be of tremendous benefit to humanity. But if we stay trapped in this arms race, if OpenAI and Anthropic have to keep competing for market share, we know that they will not slow down."
"The only entity that has the power to intervene here," Lawrence said, "is the federal government."
Sep 10, 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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‘Serial Killer Empire’: US Kills 3 in Boat Strike, Bringing Trump Murder Count in ‘Make-Believe War’ to 230
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about a shift in the Pentagon's boat bombing operations, in which the US in recent days has begun interdicting suspected refueling vessels for drug boats in Ecuador's territorial waters—but he made clear that the military is also still killing people aboard boats, as it did Wednesday in the latest bombing in the Caribbean.
US Southern Command announced that Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—the recently rebranded name of the Trump administration's expanding military operation that it says is aimed at stopping drug trafficking—had executed its latest "lethal kinetic strike" on a boat operating along known "narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean," killing three people that the US claimed were "narco-terrorists."
"Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking," said US Southern Command, releasing no evidence of the boat's illegal activities.
International legal experts have emphasized that the US is not in an authorized military conflict with drug cartels and that drug trafficking under international law is treated as a crime by law enforcement agencies—not as an act of force that the US can legally respond to with military action.
Officials and military service members involved in the strikes may be liable for war crimes or murder, experts have warned. Some of the at least 230 victims of the boat bombings since last September have been identified, with family members saying they were not even involved in drug trafficking.
Historian Alexander Aviña used the term "serial killer empire" to describe the Trump administration after the latest bombing.
Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America noted that the announcement by US Southern Command Wednesday night was the first in more than a year of attacks in which the strike order was "not attributed to a person."
Isacson also pointed out that according to Customs and Border Patrol data, there is little, if any, evidence that bombing boats and killing crew members and passengers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean has done anything to stop the flow of drugs into the US.
Outside the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, Rubio told reporters Wednesday that as the US also begins conducting joint operations with Ecuador to interdict suspected refueling vessels in the country's territorial waters, "we have to operate according to their laws."
In those operations, people aboard the boats have been removed and handed over to Ecuadorian authorities before the US has conducted strikes.
Rubio at one point referred to the lethal boat bombings as operations that took place "earlier, last year," but also emphasized, "We still blow up ships if need be."
Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group said the administration is continuing its campaign of "illegal killing in a make-believe war."
The latest boat bombing also came as Rubio announced that the US was designating Los Tiguerones, an Ecuadorian gang, as a foreign terrorist organization, empowering the administration to freeze the group's assets in US financial institutions.
The designation does not give the US the legal authority to carry out military strikes against Los Tiguerones or other gangs the administration has designated as terrorist groups—but a key element of Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere's expansion in Latin America has been joint military operations, including a US-Ecuadorian joint attack on a dairy farm where officials had claimed drug traffickers were operating.
The new designation "is part of [the administration's] narrative about a new 'War on Terror' against the narcos," said Finucane.
Glaeldys González Calanche, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told The New York Times that Los Tiguerones has had diminishing power and influence in Ecuador in recent years and expressed surprise at the designation.
Ecuadorian gangs "operate at the lowest links of the chain" of drug trafficking operations in Latin America, González told the Times. “They provide services, like moving cargo from point A to point B. Ecuadorian groups are not decisive, they aren’t major players.”
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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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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'Hit the Brakes': Anthropic CEO's Push to 'Pace' AI Development Called Latest Sign Congress Must Act
"When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sep 12, 2026
As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei added his voice on Saturday to the growing call to slow down development of artificial intelligence, writing in a 3,800-word essay that companies must pace "the rate of capabilities advancement" in light of recent cyberattacks by AI models, progressive lawmakers and journalists were among those who said the warning made clear that action must be taken—but with Congress and regulatory agencies, not tech billionaires who have spent years pushing for an AI expansion, leading the way.
Amodei wrote that two things have convinced him that "we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models": the fact that in recent months, "AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI"—also known as recursive self-improvement—and the recent OpenAI-HuggingFace incident, in which hundreds of agents in OpenAI's security test systems broke out of confinement and hacked into the AI startup HuggingFace, conducting cyberattacks on targets they had not been asked to attack.
As The Wall Street Journal and Politico reported Friday, another cyberattack was carried out by OpenAI's agents months before the HuggingFace incident in July. The company's models that were being tested and had not been given full access to the internet nevertheless hacked into an online coding service called RubyGems earlier this year. The models created reports and filled out spreadsheets. Anthropic and Meta have also reported autonomous cyberattacks by their AI agents.
Amodei said the incidents led him to call for a three-step plan to pace AI development and allow companies time to "align and safeguard their models, and for third-party evaluators to confirm this."
He called for:
- Embedded evaluators, with each AI company committing to giving "ongoing, employee-like access to a team of embedded third-party evaluators" who would "verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes";
- Democratic coordination, with companies establishing "common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress"; and
- Global coordination, with democratic governments attempting to "coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance."
Amodei's essay was published days after Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic, publicly resigned out of fear that the company's AI technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade" as it builds "superhuman systems"—a concern he said is shared by many in the industry.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and tech billionaire Elon Musk expressed agreement with Amodei. Altman called "independent evaluators with employee-like access" a "great idea."
"We will do the same," said Altman. "We'll have more to share soon."
US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was among those who appeared less than impressed by Amodei and Altman's sudden push for their industry to slow down their rapid pace of development.
In a video posted on social media, Khanna called on Amodei to disclose whether or not he agrees with Coxon about the possibility that AI could wipe out humanity, and to back more far-reaching regulations on AI.
"AI guys act as if they're a priesthood speaking Latin, keeping the rest of us in the dark," said Khanna. "But behind all the jargon, it's actually pretty straightforward... We need to stop, ban, self-improving AI. You cannot have recursive, self-improving AI that basically is able to improve itself and exceed human capability, that has us lose control."
He added that laws must be passed establishing "mandatory liability and criminal penalties. If you're creating an AI that is doing illegal things, you either should face liability or criminal sanctions."
The tech lords act like priests who know Latin & keep the rest of us in the dark.
Get beyond the opaque jargon and its pretty straightforward.
Amodei doesn’t go nearly far enough.
We must pause recursive self improving AI.
We must have criminal and civil liability for AI that… https://t.co/ewjSnjYuXK pic.twitter.com/f7ujo4HQNY
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) September 12, 2026
Journalist David Sirota of The Lever agreed, writing that "if the law explicitly made AI CEOs financially and criminally liable for any mass destruction their technologies create—and if AI industry shareholders knew their companies faced the threat of significant financial losses for such destruction—much of the 'AI is getting out of control!' threat would instantly end."
"Those CEOs would instantly make AI far safer and impose guardrails on their companies," he said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has called for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of AI data centers and this week announced a bipartisan hearing on the "extraordinary dangers" of rapid AI development—including testimony from one leading AI scientist who has warned against self-regulation by tech firms—said the calls by Amodei, Altman, and Musk were "not enough."
"When you are racing towards a cliff, you don’t just ease up on the gas pedal," said Sanders. "You hit the brakes. When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence—an AI mind smarter than any human and capable of operating independently beyond our control."
Sanders called on President Donald Trump—who has aggressively pushed for more AI data center development and sought to stop states from passing their own AI regulations—to negotiate a treaty pausing AI and banning superintelligence with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders are set to meet later this month to discuss AI.
Trump on Friday dismissed concerns about warnings coming from the AI industry, telling a Los Angeles Times reporter, "It's going to be fine," and adding that his top worry about the technology is falling behind China.
Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker were also among the politicians who said Amodei's warning was the latest sign that Congress and the Trump administration must take action to rein in the industry.
Juliette Kayyem, the faculty chair of homeland security at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said AI CEOs' warnings about their technology would be seen as more credible if they also announced a pause on their plans for initial public offerings (IPO), which Anthropic and OpenAI are both pursuing in the coming months.
Altman said Friday that OpenAI will not plan for an IPO, which could value the company at $1 trillion, in 2026.
Amodei, said Kayyem, should "put his money where his mouth is."
"He has known of this danger a while," she said. "It is now threatening his valuation in the IPO. Cancel the IPO. Then I’ll believe he’s serious."
Journalist Peter Rothpletz noted that the safety concerns within the AI industry must be "much more dire" than the public is aware, considering "Dario, Sam, and Musk are all issuing these statements in unison."
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Federal Court Blocks Trump's 'Loyalty Question' on Civil Service Job Applications
A union member testified that she was "afraid" answering the question about the president's executive orders honestly would "hurt her application."
Sep 12, 2026
A court's decision to block the Trump administration from including a "loyalty question" on federal job applications was a win not only for the nonpartisan civil service, but also for the communities public employees serve, said one labor leader whose union was among the plaintiffs in the case against the Office of Personnel Management.
Patrick Moran, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union, said Friday that the loyalty questions the OPM placed on job applications for public servants were a "blatantly illegal attempt to hire partisan cronies who would endanger our communities by putting politics before people, rather than dedicated, qualified public service workers."
The question was added to applications in response to one of President Donald Trump's first executive orders of his second term, titled “Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service." The OPM was directed to develop a “Federal Hiring Plan that brings to the Federal workforce only highly skilled Americans dedicated to the furtherance of American ideals, values, and interests."
Several essay questions were added to job applications for the civil service as a result, including one that asked: "How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired."
Over 70,000 job postings have included the question, and the plaintiffs in the case—including AFSCME, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), argued that its inclusion compelled applicants to make political statements and chilled the speech of those who may not agree with Trump's executive orders.
The US District Court for the District of Massachusetts found that continuing to include the question would cause "irreparable harm" to workers applying for government jobs.
Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. said the plaintiffs' arguments that the OPM had violated applicants' First Amendment rights and the Administrative Procedure Act were likely to succeed in court.
A sworn declaration from an AFGE member figured prominently in the case. The employee said she "was afraid" that answering the loyalty question with an honest response about her personal views on Trump's executive orders would "hurt her application."
O'Toole wrote that the question's plain language "calls for the applicant’s personal views on a political topic, and directly links that personal view to the duties of the desired civil service job."
Everett Kelley, AFGE national president, said that "requiring federal job applicants to answer politically motivated questions goes against the very nature of the nonpartisan civil service, and we are pleased the judge has put an immediate stop to the administration’s loyalty questions. Federal employees should be hired based solely on their ability to perform the job—not their allegiance to any particular administration."
O'Toole denied the unions' request for a preliminary injunction blocking the government from incorporating answers that applicants have already provided into hiring decisions.
Still, Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represented the plaintiffs, said the ruling "protects the Constitution, the civil service, and the people who depend on a professional, nonpartisan federal workforce.”
“For more than a century, civil servants have been hired based on their merits, not based on allegiance to a partisan political agenda,” said Perryman. “Today’s decision—stopping the Trump-Vance administration’s required loyalty question for public servants—reaffirms the importance of a nonpartisan civilian workforce that serves the American people."
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'A Damn Bloodbath': Unions Decry Layoffs at McClatchy Papers as Local Journalism Takes Another Hit
"We've done everything asked of us, and more," said one fired journalist. "Yet when corporate plans fail, McClatchy executives run and hide while our workers and this community suffer all the consequences."
Sep 11, 2026
As social media networks filled with posts from journalists "deeply saddened" to reveal they were part of McClatchy's latest round of "gutting" layoffs this week, newspaper staffers and the unions that represent them highlighted "how local coverage will suffer" because over 90 workers were fired by the hedge fund-controlled publisher.
"I'm part of this bloodbath. After dodging layoffs for my entire 19-year career, I finally caught a stray as the Idaho Statesman gutted 60% of its staff," said sports writer Michael Lycklama, noting his union membership and six-months severance package.
"My heart goes out to my coworkers who have poured their blood, sweat, and tears into Idaho," he wrote. "We've done everything asked of us, and more. Yet when corporate plans fail, McClatchy executives run and hide while our workers and this community suffer all the consequences."
"These layoffs will create holes in our community and leave it poorer," he stressed. "There are now drastically fewer eyes watching your elected officials. Fewer reporters uncovering shady businesses. And fewer journalists to highlight and celebrate our state's unsung heroes."
With at least 90 workers let go across 17 McClatchy publications, the NewsGuild-CWA similarly warned Friday that "the departure of these talented reporters, visual journalists, and writers will immediately leave gaping holes in local coverage for dozens of communities across the United States."
At least seven reporters were fired from four newsrooms in Washington state: The Bellingham Herald, The News Tribune, The Olympian, and Tri-City Herald. The NewsGuild noted that "Tacoma will no longer have even a single dedicated journalist tracking city hall, Pierce County government, or local schools," while "the region near the Canadian border lost an environmental watchdog, and the Hispanic community can no longer turn to a Spanish-speaking reporter in Eastern Washington."
The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, a local representing reporters in Washington and Idaho, highlighted that "these are journalists who investigated local hospitals, served as watchdogs over state and local government, showed up at every high school game, jumped in to cover breaking news like wildfires, covered news in overlooked communities, and monitored development in one of the fastest-growing regions in the country."
"One of these papers will no longer have a dedicated reporter covering city hall. Another will no longer have anyone dedicated to covering the state capitol," the union said. "McClatchy has decided that short-term profits for a hedge fund matter more than the well-being of the communities that its newspapers are supposed to serve. That is a model that is destined to fail."
Employees of multiple California outlets were also impacted. The Fresno Bee lost staffers, as did the Modesto Bee, which laid off 25% of its newsroom. The Sacramento Bee, the city's "paper of record," the NewsGuild said, "lost dogged reporters and veteran journalists who worked for decades to serve readers in the capital region."
Across the country, The Lexington Herald-Leader, "one of two remaining statewide newspapers in Kentucky, laid off half of its Pulitzer-prize-winning newsroom," the NewsGuild detailed. "Those layoffs include a senior reporter who worked at the Herald-Leader for more than 20 years, all of the paper’s core political team covering the state legislature in Frankfort, the editor of that politics team, the newspaper’s primary city government reporter in Lexington, a longtime high school sports reporter, two University of Kentucky basketball and football reporters, the paper’s only remaining environmentalist reporter in Eastern Kentucky, the paper’s only regional economic development reporter, a photographer, and a video journalist."
The gutting of local journalism continues.I started as an intern at the Lexington Herald-Leader, which laid off a majority of its reporters today. The McClatchy company was bought by a hedge fund that promised to be a good steward of journalism. And here we are...www.lpm.org/news/2026-09...
[image or embed]
— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) September 10, 2026 at 5:04 PM
As the union laid out, The State's cuts included "the only reporter doing environmental coverage for the state of South Carolina, a more than 30-year veteran of the local newsroom; an investigative reporter who was recognized by the SC Press Association for his work on charter schools; the only reporter covering the city of Columbia; the lead reporter on the Darline Graham Senate race; half of our photography team."
North Carolina breaking news reporter Jeffery Chamer announced on LinkedIn that "I've been informed this morning that I was one of eight people being laid off from The Charlotte Observer. I wish I had something uplifting and optimistic to say, but I’m honestly scared and sad right now. In two weeks, we’ll all be unemployed. And that just breaks my heart."
"I know deep down we'll all be OK and land on our feet, but for now it all feels terrifying," he said. "It’s also so shocking to think about the incredible talent the Observer is losing. I love my colleagues. They’re not just incredible reporters, but people too. I will miss them so, so much."
I, the only data reporter at the Charlotte Observer, am among the McClatchy layoffs in the bloodbath today. The HR person asked me not to talk about it! AMA. Anyway, here’s a link to one of my most important stories this year. www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/a...
[image or embed]
— Caitlin McGlade (@caitmcglade.bsky.social) September 10, 2026 at 11:32 AM
In Florida, "these layoffs leave the Bradenton Herald with half of its former staff, or only one editor and two reporters," the NewsGuild pointed out. "There will be no one to report on local government and no professional photographer and videographer to document the news."
The cuts also hit Florida papers southeast of Bradenton. As the union detailed: "After more than a century of operation, this layoff will leave the Miami Herald without a city hall reporter at the paper's namesake. It guts the entire writing staff at El Nuevo Herald, our sister paper that has doggedly covered majority-Latino Miami-Dade County in Spanish for decades."
Longtime former columnist Carl Hiaasen wrote on Facebook that "this is a death blow to the already skeletonized Miami Herald, once one of the country's top newspapers. I worked there for over 40 [years], and I feel heartsick for the talented journalists who've been gutting it out while McClatchy blithely keeps swinging the axe."
"By the time the company is finished, all the reporters left standing will fit in a phone booth, and millions of readers in South Florida will be forced to scrounge for actual, true local news on the always-reliable internet," he continued. "It's tragic, but there's a lesson here: If you own a newspaper company, don't sell it to a hedge fund unless you truly don't give a shit about your readers."
As The New York Times reported:
McClatchy has newspapers in 14 states. Formerly a family-run business, it was sold to the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management in 2020 after it declared bankruptcy.
The company has gone through rounds of layoffs in recent years. In late 2025, McClatchy closed its breaking-news desk and shut down its Washington, DC, bureau, while carrying out further layoffs across its newspapers.
This week's layoffs also impacted the Centre Daily Times in Pennsylvania, Missouri's Kansas City Star, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas.
McClatchy leadership said in an internal email that for the past five years, the company has "made a deliberate choice to maintain our investment in local news reporters," and "consumer revenue declined 41% while local news expenses remained largely flat."
Thus, "we are reshaping our newsrooms and reducing positions as we align our resources more closely with what our subscribers value," the company claimed. "We are making these changes because the status quo no longer works."
Noting that message, Aaron Leibowitz, who left the Miami Herald last month, wrote on social media that "my former colleagues... deserve better than this disingenuous spin from McClatchy's hedge fund owners. Assuming those revenue figures are accurate, they're not just the result of consumer choice in a vacuum. They're also the result of corporate mismanagement."
Alexandra Duggan is a reporter for the Washington-based Spokesman-Review, which is not a McClatchy outlet—but as journalists across the Pacific Northwest were laid off on Thursday in "a damn bloodbath," she said on Bluesky that "some are people I've worked with, some are calling me crying because their mentors no longer have jobs."
"Journalism is so needed. Cutting investigative reporters, city reporters… Idaho and Washington will be worse off," Duggan said. "You might not care about McClatchy, but taking your hatred of hedge funds out on the reporters who are underpaid and just want to write for their communities ain't it. Those reporters did damn good work, owned by a hedge fund or not. It's rare you still see people who give a shit, and they did."
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End Trump Oil Embargo on Cuba With War Powers Vote, Coalition Urges House Democrats
“Cuba is suffering through a man-made economic and humanitarian catastrophe, caused in significant part by deliberate policy choices of the United States."
Sep 11, 2026
Dozens of advocacy groups this week urged House Democratic leaders to force a vote on an existing war powers resolution aimed at endingr President Donald Trump's unauthorized aggression toward Cuba, including his administration's deadly de facto US oil embargo.
“Cuba is suffering through a man-made economic and humanitarian catastrophe, caused in significant part by deliberate policy choices of the United States," 45 groups said in a letter dated September 9 to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Foreign Affairs and Rules Committee Ranking Members Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).
"Since January 2026, the Trump administration has imposed an oil blockade that has cut off the island from nearly all fuel imports, allowing only a single tanker to dock over the past seven months alongside minor US sales that are wholly insufficient to sustain the country’s economy and basic services," the letter continues.
"The consequences have been devastating and far-reaching, and the crisis is deepening," the groups stressed. "Cuba has endured at least six nationwide grid collapses this year—at times leaving over 9h million people without power, with outages stretching well beyond 20 hours in much of the country. Fuel shortages have stalled transportation, disrupted food and water supplies, and pushed a once-renowned universal healthcare system toward collapse and the rationing of care."
The groups behind the letter—which include American Friends Service Committee, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Demand Progress, Indivisible, National Nurses United, Pax Christi USA, RootsAction, United Church of Christ, and Win Without War—called for an immediate vote on Rep. Nydia Velázquez's (D-NY) Cuba War Powers Resolution, H.Con.Res. 106.
The privileged resolution—which can be called for a vote without approval from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)—would direct the removal of US armed forces from hostilities within or against Cuba absent congressional authorization. The measure targets the de facto US oil blockade on Cuba, which proponents argue amounts to unauthorized hostilities against Cuba.
Velázquez's resolution came amid the Trump administration's escalating aggression against Cuba, including threats to attack or even invade the island, economic strangulation including the oil embargo and decades-old blockade that critics said were causing the deaths of infants and sick people, and the US Department of Justice indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by a hostile US-based counterrevolutionary group following repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
In April, US senators voted 51-47—with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania joining all but two of his Republican colleagues, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky—to block a war powers resolution introduced in March by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).
"Despite falling short of the majority, this was among the strongest votes in congressional history against the use of blockades, and one of the most important stands Congress has taken against US economic sanctions toward Cuba in over six decades," the 45 groups said in their letter. "The House should take a similarly forceful action at this crucial moment."
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Son of 9/11 Victim Says 'Please Stop' Exploiting Tragedy to Spread Anti-Muslim Bigotry
"You do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate."
Sep 11, 2026
Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and others and sparked a worldwide US-led war on terrorism that has left nearly one million people dead, some relatives of 9/11 victims pleaded that their grief must not be weaponized in the form of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Michael Massaroli Jr., whose father, Michael Massaroli, was killed in the attacks, made one such appeal during Friday’s 25th anniversary commemoration at the National September 11 Memorial at ground zero in Lower Manhattan.
"One parting thing I want to leave everyone with is that you do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate," Massaroli said. "We have seen a medley of people come up today of all races, all religions, all creeds, and this tragedy is just that—it's a tragedy."
"I've had to grow up and spend the past 25 years seeing people use it to hate on our Muslim brothers and sisters, to hate on people who don't look like them," he added. "And that's wrong. And that does no honor to the victims here. And I want to use the little platform I have to ask for that to please stop."
"My father Michael Massaroli...you do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate. We have seen a medley of people come up today, of all races, all religions, all creeds and this tragedy is just that, it's a tragedy. I've had… pic.twitter.com/xRtXgZZyYn
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 11, 2026
Massaroli wasn't the only one decrying Islamophobic exploitation of 9/11. Members of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, including co-founder Colleen Kelly, have repeatedly denounced the violence and hatred perpetrated after the attacks.
On Friday, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad recalled how "the trauma we all felt after the attacks was exploited to erode civil liberties, justify torture, normalize illegal discrimination, empower hate groups, and launch forever wars across the Middle East that killed thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in numerous countries."
Recently, Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—the first Muslim elected to lead the city—has been subjected to a wave of Islamophobic vitriol. Critics have invoked his religion and 9/11 in questioning whether he should participate in the city’s September 11 commemoration. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other Republicans have said that Mamdani should skip the ceremony, while broadly attacking Islam.
The Trump administration's immigration policies have also been called discriminatory against Muslims. CAIR said in a March report that it received a record 8,683 anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints in 2025, attributing part of the increase to the administration's immigration crackdown and its response to pro-Palestinian protests. The cases included immigration and travel discrimination, employment discrimination, and alleged targeting of Muslim and Arab communities.
“Today, bad actors are once again exploiting the 9/11 attacks to score political points, incite discrimination, and justify forever wars overseas," Awad said on Friday. "We cannot let these resurgent voices of division, hate, and violence succeed. We must instead embrace the spirit of unity that bonded all of us together 25 years ago and stand up for the universal value of human life, anywhere and everywhere."
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