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Again To the Grisly Well, With Ballrooms
Leave it to this still-repugnant regime to instantly twist a Keystone Cops security breach - not a so-distant-it-was-on-another-floor "assassination attempt" - to their own skeevy purposes: blaming Democrats for "this dark moment," demanding a $400 million gold ballroom for "national security," burnishing the Brave Dear Leader myth of an addled old man who barely registered it, and what gun control issue? Meet the Epstein class: When shots (again) ring out, they get a friggin' ballroom, kids get thoughts and prayers.
The latest "clown show on steroids" - and grim proof of Trump's relentless corrosion of political discourse - unfolded Saturday night at an evidently sloppily unsecured Washington Hilton, where in 1981 John Hinckley shot Reagan, who survived. The already contentious White House Correspondents' Dinner drew the black-tied, preening, profit-driven remnants of a craven legacy media - and a growing right-wing slopaganda brigade - both willing to pretend it was normal to party with an abusive enemy of free speech who's spent years attacking, belittling, suing, bullying and name-calling them as an "enemy of the people" for seeking to do their jobs and tell the truth, thus turning the evening into a queasy "case study in institutional self-abasement."
Even before the vitriolic and incendiary Trump - who led a Jan. 6 riot, urged fans to “knock the crap out” of protesters, bade Proud Boys "stand by," mused "the 2nd Amendment people" could do something" about his opponents, warned of "a bloodbath" if he was defeated, killed schoolgirls and threatened genocide in an illegal war he doesn't know how to end - let loose with what he dubbed "the most inappropriate speech ever made" (which Press Barbie called "shots fired") - before all that came a few muffled thuds of a dud of an assassination attempt, on the floor above, by a suspect who ran past a security checkpoint before being tackled. One shot was fired - it's unclear by whom - and one cop was wounded through a bulletproof vest; he is expected to be okay.
On the floor below, meanwhile, "absolute chaos" reigned. Panicked women in gowns and men in tuxedos hit the floor, flipping over chairs, lunging under tables and sometimes holding phone cameras aloft as a horde of Secret Service agents swarmed the ballroom, leaping on stage, yelling "Get down! Get down!", running in all directions at once, weapons poised and flailing. A crowd of security guys whisked J.D. Vance out of his chair first; then another cluster went for Trump, dazed and stumbling, guys holding him up on both sides. Video later showed alleged FBI head Kash Patel crouching absurdly behind a chair and RFK Jr. heroically leaving his wife behind; an idiotic "USA!" chant that "absolutely nobody wanted to hear" flared briefly before dying a well-earned death.
The suspect was identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a Torrance, CA. mechanical engineer, game developer and teacher with a Masters degree in computer science; on Facebook, he also called himself "an amateur entomologist, casual composter and occasional artist." When he tried to breach the metal detectors above the ballroom, he was armed with a shotgun - loaded with buckshot not slugs "to minimize casualties" - a handgun and several knives. He was charged with two counts: Using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon. Earlier, he'd posted a lucid, relatively mild missive from "a Friendly Federal Assassin" to explain his actions; it began with, "Hello everybody!" and apologies to "everyone whose trust I abused."
He apologized to his parents "for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for 'Most Wanted,'" to his colleagues and students, to "everyone abused or murdered before this or after, any "person raped in a detention camp, fisherman executed without trial, schoolkid blown up, child starved... I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." As a Christian, he noted, "Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is rather complicity in the oppressor’s crimes." He blasted the "insane" incompetence of the lax security he encountered, said he felt "awful" about what he thought he had to do, and expressed "rage thinking about everything this administration has done...Stay in school, kids."
Despite its placid tone, MAGA world promptly dubbed it "a manifesto" of "anti-Christian bile" from "a depraved crazy person." Press Barbie blasted the "demonization (and) hateful rhetoric directed at Trump...Nobody has faced more bullets and violence." Similarly, nobody in the cult wants to admit they're adamantly declining to acknowledge years of vicious Trump rhetoric that have shaped "an angry, polarized nation," or the role of rabid MAGA responses, say, to AOC noting she's glad everyone was safe - "There is a special place in hell for demons like you," "Go fuck right off with the other Commie losers" - or the "vibes for security" so lax - no photo ID, attendee list, checkpoint to enter the ballroom, basic competence - even attendees and the would-be assassin both denounced it.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Despite faux-thoughtful deadlines - "Stunned Washington Faces Searching Questions About Political Violence" - Trump entirely missed the point, rambling and deflecting in his clueless, bonkers, self-serving way. He said he wanted the dinner to go ahead: The show must go on. He (weirdly) crooned about the "very strong, really attractive law enforcement." He babbled he'd "studied assassinations...The most impactful people, they're the ones they go after. Like Abraham Lincoln. I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot." He called the presidency "a dangerous profession," worse than bullfighting. He declared the "manifesto" “strongly anti-Christian," and the perp "a very sick person...a lone wolf whack job," though he's an incomparably more dangerous one.
Mostly, relentlessly, he shilled for his ballroom: "This event would never have happened...The conditions that took place, I didn't wanna say it but this is why we have to have it...We need levels of security probably like no one's ever seen...This is exactly the reason our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and every President for the last 150 years have been demanding a large, safe, secure Ballroom be built," which is bullshit 'cause only he's demanding it. Still, miraculously, within six minutes of the lone shot fired, MAGA pivoted, lockstep, online to the same skeevy, amidst-a-war-and-ravaged-economy-how-is-this-a-thing refrain: This is why Trump needs the ballroom. Also, the lawsuit against it "puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk."
As if the whole corrupt ballroom shtick, "the definition of a non-sequitur,” wasn't grotesque enough, there was the right's virtual ignoring of any recognition of guns as a relevant part of the deadly equation - this, in a country with more guns than people, with 120 mass shootings since the start of the year, with over 3,800 people dead and over 6,500 wounded, with 100 people shot every day, with Trump having dismantled gun safety and mental health measures, with as yet no accountability for Renee Good and Alex Pretti being gunned down in the street, with the awful, prevailing, willfully blind, "gun violence for thee but not for me" admonishment that, "Every few months, Americans are asked to resume their banquet, and pretend a shooting didn’t just happen."
Which is what we regularly ask of our kids. "Last night, powerful people hid," wrote Digital Drumbeat. "Journalists, lobbyists, and politicians dove under tables, pressed against walls, and ran for exits..Secret Service moved. Protocols activated. And within hours, everyone went home. Welcome to the reality American children, teachers, and parents live every single day. Except they do not get the protocols. They do not get the security detail. And not all of them get to go home." It was not "crouching in a locked, darkened classroom for three hours while your phone dies and you cannot call your mother," or a teacher saying "to be very, very quiet," which is "a Tuesday in America." What we can't imagine: "Wanting an entire secure ballroom for one man, and not wanting gun reform for every child."
Other obscenities abound: The billions in ballroom funding from corporations, most of which are seeking billions more in federal contracts; the latest grift of secretly awarding the ballroom-building company a no-bid $17.4 million contract to repair two fountains in Lafayette Park that Biden estimated would cost $3.3 million; the "brazen inversion of reality" that is the MAGA claim criticism of Trump's hateful, violent rhetoric is what somehow incites more violence, when he's done more than anyone in recent history to normalize it; the righteous indignation - Fire Jimmy Kimmel (again) for joking Melania looks like an expectant widow! - when anyone notes the gross hypocrisy. Color America skeptical: "Fuck him, he can only go to the well so many times."
Also, we're still gonna need those Epstein files. See Trump lash out at CBS' Norah O'Donnell when she quotes Cole Allen's "pedophile, rapist, and traitor": "I was waiting for you to read that (because) you're horrible people..I'm not a rapist...I'm not a pedophile... You're disgraceful." Will Bunch: "This is our country now." The Rude Pundit: "We live in the goddamn United States. We're never far away from someone shooting a gun. It's what we are debased enough to call 'freedom.'" And in the two days before the shooting, Trump made a racist attack against Hakeem Jeffries, called for Hillary and Obama to be arrested, boasted of more war crimes. In brief, "We don't have to pretend that a motherfucker isn't a motherfucker just because someone wanted to kill him."
Update: It seems CBS cut out more paranoid babbling in his "I'm not a rapist" interview. His brain is oatmeal and grievance.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did security tell you about what may have been his motives?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, see, they– the part– the reason you have people like that is you have people doing No Kings. I’m not a king. What I am– if I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you. No, I’m not a king. I– I get– I– I don’t laugh. I don’t– I– I see these No Kings, which are funded just like the Southern Law was– funded– you saw all that? Southern Law is financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups.
In 'Major Earth Day Win,' House GOP Cancels Vote on Gutting Endangered Species Act
Republican leadership in the US House of Representatives planned to mark Earth Day with a "catastrophic" attack on the Endangered Species Act, but ultimately canceled Wednesday's vote at the last minute, a development celebrated by conservationists nationwide.
After reports of "problems" getting some Republicans to back the ESA Amendments Act and a procedural vote that "showed shaky support from party members," as The New York Times put it, the House adjourned without a final vote on the bill—which the newspaper called "an embarrassing setback" for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
While the lead sponsor, House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), claimed that "we just have a few provisions we've got to work through on it, and hopefully in the next couple of weeks, we'll be able to vote on it," Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that "this should be a wake-up call to Rep. Westerman that not even his own colleagues support his extreme attacks on wildlife."
"It's time for him to drop this failed crusade," Kurose declared. "Good riddance."
Other wildlife defenders joined Kurose in enthusiastically welcoming the blow to what Bradley Williams, the Sierra Club's deputy legislative director for wildlife and lands protection, called "extremely harmful legislation."
"We are encouraged to see that the House of Representatives has pulled this bill after outcry from Republicans and Democrats," Williams said in a statement. "By rejecting a bill that would have gutted protections for endangered and threatened species across the country, Congress is sending a clear message that protecting wildlife is a shared American value, not a partisan issue."
Jewel Tomasula, policy director for the Endangered Species Coalition, which has hundreds of member organizations, said that "given the more than 58,000 emails sent to elected officials, along with hundreds—if not thousands—of calls made in just the past few days, it is clear that the American people support the Endangered Species Act, understand its value, and want its protections for threatened and endangered wildlife to remain in place."
"This is a welcome sign that efforts to gut protections for imperiled species are not moving forward on Earth Day," Tomasula continued. "We're glad Congress is hearing their constituents' concerns about Westerman's harmful bill and taking pause to listen. For now, the important work to protect endangered species can continue. This Congress should leave the ESA alone."
Major #EarthDay win 🎉: H.R. 1897, aka the Endangered Species Act Amendments Act was just pulled from house floor consideration following outcry from both Republicans and Democrats who oppose the bill.
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— Center for Biological Diversity (@biologicaldiversity.org) April 22, 2026 at 2:36 PM
Sara Amundson, president of Humane World for Animals Action Fund, similarly said that "on Earth Day, pulling the House vote on the deeply flawed Endangered Species Act bill is a clarion call that legislators need to stop heeding their own leadership and start doing the will of their constituents."
"At a time when we should be strengthening protections for species like grizzly bears and sea turtles, not weakening them, it’s clear there is growing opposition to efforts that put special interests ahead of science and conservation," Amundson said. "We urge Congress to abandon this harmful proposal altogether and instead focus on upholding and strengthening the Endangered Species Act for future generations."
Defenders of Wildlife legislative director Mary Beth Beetham proclaimed that "now we can really celebrate Earth Day!"
"The public defeat of the Westerman bill is a direct result of sustained constituent pressure," she stressed. "Congress is finally listening to the majority of Americans who support the Endangered Species Act, rather than centering politics and money in its policy decisions."
"The decision to not advance the vote keeps current safeguards in place, which have protected 99% of species from extinction," Beetham added. "While there is still much more work to secure lasting protections for wildlife, today's outcome is a meaningful victory for conservation."
'These People Are Shameless': RFK Jr.'s Son Launches Healthcare Investment Fund
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s son, Finn Kennedy, is reportedly seeking to raise $100 million for a new healthcare industry investment fund that will seek to capitalize on "policy initiatives in government"—including RFK Jr.'s so-called Make America Healthy Again agenda.
The Financial Times reported Friday that Finn Kennedy's fund, Victura Ventures, has already secured roughly $70 million in commitments. The fund is "targeting early-stage growth companies involved in healthcare AI, consumer health, and other health technologies," FT reported, citing an offering document.
"Kennedy’s foray into healthcare investing marks the latest example of the cozy relationship between the Trump administration and close associates who have sought to capitalize on it," the newspaper added. "Sons of President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have invested in cryptocurrency businesses as Trump has promoted alternative currencies. Donald Trump Jr. has joined the board of 1789 Capital, a fund founded by pro-Trump donors in 2023. At least four of 1789’s portfolio companies have won contracts from the Trump administration. 1789 has also invested in big government contractors, such as Anduril and Elon Musk’s SpaceX."
Additionally, as Common Dreams reported on Thursday, Eric Trump appeared on Fox Business to brag about a $24 million Pentagon contract secured by Foundation Future Industries, where the president's son serves as chief strategy adviser.
"These people are shameless," journalist Doug Henwood wrote in response to the reporting on Finn Kennedy's new fund.
The advocacy group Protect Our Care said the FT reporting and a Friday story in The New York Times—which detailed how a top Kennedy aide "was advising on changes to the American health system while running a rapidly growing wellness company poised to benefit from Trump administration health policies"—show that "the festering swamp of corruption and self-dealing surrounding the Trump White House just got even deeper."
According to the Times, Kennedy aide Calley Means "held between $25 million and $50 million in stock in the company, Truemed, through November, as he continued to serve as its president."
"For months, Mr. Means has ignored questions from Democrats in Congress about his finances, including the extent of his stake in Truemed, and how they related to federal policy," the Times added.
Kayla Hancock, the director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project, said in a statement Friday that "it’s perhaps easy for RFK Jr. to look at Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Lutnick blatantly abuse the power of the White House to enrich themselves, family members, and big donors, and say, ‘Why not me?’"
"Kennedy claims he’s following ethics rules, but why did he keep the barn door open for his son and close associates to profit off his policy decisions?" asked Hancock. "It follows a corrupt pattern of Trump administration officials exploiting loopholes to steer money into their family and friends’ pockets at the same time they rip away healthcare from millions of Americans and push policies that hike costs on everything from insurance premiums, gas, to groceries.”
Maine Lawmakers Fail to Override Mills' Data Center Ban Veto That Won Applause From Trump-Aligned Group
The Maine Legislature on Wednesday failed to override Democratic Gov. Janet Mills' veto of a bill that would have established an 18-month moratorium on the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers in the state.
The state House needed 101 votes, of two-thirds of the members' support, to override the veto. The vote on reversing the governor's decision was 72-65.
Environmental and local control advocates were among those expressing anger in recent days over Mills' veto of the trailblazing bill that would have made Maine the first state to impose such a moratorium—while a group with strong ties to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party applauded the move this week, claiming the Democratic governor, also running for US Senate this year, has stood up "for Maine’s economic future" by siding against the ban.
“Gov. Mills made the right decision to veto the data center moratorium," said Ross Connolly, Northeast region director for Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing political advocacy group affiliated with the billionaire Koch brothers, earlier this week.
"At a time when states across the country are competing for investment and innovation, this veto sends a strong signal that Maine is open for business and reinforces the state’s commitment to growth and innovation," said Connolly. "AFP looks forward to working with policymakers to advance solutions that keep Maine on a path toward long-term economic opportunity.”
The group previously denounced the Maine Legislature for passing the bill, which would have stopped state and local governments from approving data center projects with electrical loads of 20 megawatts or more until November 2027. The bill passed with bipartisan support, and its lead sponsor, state Rep. Melanie Sachs (D-48), told Puck that the protections in the legislation would allow the government to “get it right" in Maine by studying the impacts of large data centers before allowing industry-friendly expansions to continue.
President Donald Trump and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have pushed for state and local governments to welcome the "innovation" offered by artificial intelligence companies by allowing the construction of massive data centers.
But opposition lawmakers in Congress and state legislatures as well as numerous public advocacy groups have warned the expansion of the energy-sucking facilities is already pushing working families' electricity bills higher, straining resources by consuming up to 5 million gallons of water per day, and being used for an industry that's projected to replace nearly 100 million jobs in the next decade, according to an analysis put out by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
In numerous states—including Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan—communities have rallied to block the construction of data centers, citing many of those concerns.
Trump issued an executive order late last year aimed at blocking state governments from regulating the rapidly growing industry.
In Maine, Mills vetoed the legislation after lawmakers voted down an amendment that would have provided a carve-out for the town of Jay, where the local Select Board voted last month to approve a data center that would be housed in the former Androscoggin Mill site. The paper mill was closed in 2023 following a wood pulp digester explosion on the premises, resulting in the loss of about 230 jobs.
"People will say all kinds of things to get their project approved. And then rural communities are often left holding the bag... And the record is clear: Data centers are not producing jobs. They're taking jobs away from people."
Though local policymakers backed the plan to build an over 200-megawatt data center, Seth Berry of Our Power, a group that advocates for clean energy and local control over energy resources, emphasized that Republican lawmakers in Maine appeared intent on ensuring the desires of working people in Jay and other towns aren't represented.
An amendment that would have allowed the Jay project to go forward also would have permitted data centers in "any community where there was a referendum of all voters," Berry, executive director of the group and a former Democratic member of the state House, told Common Dreams. "That amendment was shot down 29-115, and the vast majority of those who voted against it also voted against any moratorium at all."
"So it leaves me wondering, do people really want local communities to have a say?" said Berry, who also served in the state legislature and was House majority leader as well as leading the Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology for three terms. "I'm all for that. I don't think that's what data center developers want."
He added that plans for data centers have been developed "secretly" between companies and Mills' Department of Energy Resources, which officials "failed to disclose" at a public hearing on the moratorium.
"There was extraordinary dishonesty on the part of the administration," Berry told Common Dreams.
Jim Walsh, policy director for Food & Watch, which advocated for Maine's data center moratorium, cautioned that while many people in Jay and other towns where the facilities are being considered may see the expansion of data centers as a solution to job loss and economic struggles, the employment provided by the centers would mostly be "some level of short-term construction jobs that tend to be for people that aren't in the communities."
"The long-term job prospects are minimal," Walsh told Common Dreams, citing research. "While the impacts on our energy and water infrastructure and water supplies are significant, and we need to be working to move forward with investments in communities that will help to improve people's lives, not drive up costs and allow corporations to profit off of scarce water resources."
Berry suggested that working people in struggling towns where data centers are being proposed need only "look at the facts" to determine whether the "pretty promises made by data center developers are actually trustworthy."
"People will say all kinds of things to get their project approved," Berry told Common Dreams. "And then rural communities are often left holding the bag. And that's exactly the reason in many cases that these towns are in desperate situations, because they trusted people in the past who proved not trustworthy. We've seen paper mills purchased and then sold for scrap after promises of hundreds of jobs. And the record is clear: Data centers are not producing jobs. They're taking jobs away from people."
As Drop Site News reported Tuesday, job loss among Jay residents who worked in paper manufacturing wasn't just the result of the 2023 equipment explosion. Private equity firm Apollo Global Management ran the paper mill in Jay as well as one in Bucksport from 2006-20, during which time it bankrupted "them both, selling off their carcasses for scraps, and eliminating more than 1,000 jobs" in the two towns.
Drop Site noted that the billionaire founder and CEO of Apollo, Marc Rowan, has contributed $50,000 so far to a super political action committee backing Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a strong AI supporter. The super PAC, Pine Tree Results, recently began running attack ads against Mills' progressive opponent in the Democratic primary, political newcomer and combat veteran Graham Platner, who supported the moratorium.
Platner told NBC News after Mills announced her veto that his "biggest problem with data centers and AI" is not the technology itself, but with who benefits and who is harmed by the manner in which it is rolled out.
"In every moment in human history where a new, transformative technology arises that increases productivity, when it’s left in the hands of corporate power, it is always used to disenfranchise people," Platner warned. "It is always used to, frankly, impact workers negatively.”
Along with the project proposed for Jay, a Minnesota-based company called LiquidCool Solutions has been proposed in Limestone, with the center expected to use up to 26 megawatts of power—the equivalent amount of energy used by more than 20,000 Maine households.
Texas-based multiFUELS has also proposed an integrated energy center including a data center in Sanford in southern Maine. A lawyer representing the company, Anthony Buxton, told Maine Morning Star last week that the project would be in the 100-200 megawatt range.
"A moratorium would be a pretty clear signal they weren’t welcome here,” said Buxton, who, according to Federal Election Commission records, donated just over $2,000 to Mills' Senate campaign late last year.
Walsh told Common Dreams that "when a corporate-funded group like Americans for Prosperity is cheering a veto that benefits an energy- and water-intensive industry like data centers, and that decision comes after financial support from interests tied to a proposed project, it raises serious flags for the public."
Berry was unsurprised that the Trump-aligned group supported Mills' veto.
"Sadly, corporate multinationals tend to call the shots in the Mills administration," Berry told Common Dreams. "This is why she vetoed multiple pro-labor bills, tribal sovereignty, and [publicly owned utility] Pine Tree Power, among other key bills. And all of these vetoes have been sustained by support not from her own party, but from legislative Republicans."
Berry expressed hope that following the Legislature's failure to override Mills' veto, communities across Maine will take action, as other towns have across the country, to ensure they have a say in whether data centers operate there. He also said he hopes voters back candidates for office who who supported the moratorium.
"My expectation is that the conversation will turn to local action and also to the election," said Berry. "It is a big election year. We will choose the next governor. We'll choose the next US senator... And I expect that energy affordability in general, and data centers, as well will be very front of mind."
Bayer Continues Push to 'Close the Door' on Glyphosate Victims at US Supreme Court
As pesticide critics held a "The People v. Poison" rally outside the US Supreme Court on Monday, the justices heard arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, a case whose conclusion is expected to have sweeping implications for cancer patients trying to take on the Roundup maker—now owned by Bayer—in the country's legal system.
The case stems from John Durnell's 2019 lawsuit against Monsanto in Missouri state court, alleging that exposure to the herbicide Roundup—whose active ingredient is glyphosate—caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. A jury found that the company failed to warn users of the risks associated with the weedkiller, and awarded Durnell $1.25 million in damages.
Bayer argued before the Supreme Court on Monday that Durnell—and others like him—should not be able to bring such a suit because the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts state rules for labeling pesticides when the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't require a cancer warning. Bayer and the EPA continue to insist that glyphosate is safe, despite the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifying it as probably carcinogenic to humans over a decade ago.
As The Associated Press and Reuters reported, the justices appeared "divided" on Monday, with the AP noting that several "seemed sympathetic to the company's argument that it can't be sued under state law because federal regulators have found Roundup likely doesn't cause cancer. Others, though, grilled attorneys about whether that wrongly stops states from responding to changing research."
Patti Goldman, senior attorney at Earthjustice—which filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of farmworker organizations—said in a statement that "questions from the justices recognized that the Environmental Protection Agency approves pesticide labels based on the evidence before the agency at a single moment in time, but that evidence can become outdated as real-world exposure grows and scientific studies document resulting harms."
"Federal law requires the manufacturers to update their labels to provide sufficient warnings and directions to protect the public," Goldman stressed, "and state failure-to-warn claims reinforce that obligation—while ensuring children, families, and workers have a path to seek remedies for the harm they suffer."
Other groups that have submitted amicus briefs include Environmental Protection Network—which is made up of former EPA staffers—and the Center for Food Safety, one of the advocacy organizations that joined the rally outside the court. The event was also attended by members of Congress from both major political parties.
"This isn't left v. right—it's right v. wrong," said US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). "Big corporations and their lobbyists have captured both parties, putting profits over our families' health. I've fought Monsanto and Bayer for years, and just filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to protect our right to sue them for illnesses caused by their products."
Despite President Donald Trump's campaign promise to "Make America Healthy Again," the Republican recently issued an executive order mandating the production of glyphosate, and the US Department of Justice has sided with Bayer in this case—part of a broader trend of his administration serving the pesticide industry's interests.
"Monsanto Company v. Durnell will have enormous consequences for environmental health litigation," Food and Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen said Monday. "Bayer is intent on preserving its right to harm at all costs—a pursuit the Trump administration is all too willing to endorse. This case threatens to close the courthouse doors to the many Americans harmed by pesticides."
Heinzen argued that "should the Supreme Court hold that the Environmental Protection Agency's failed pesticide regulatory scheme preempts state failure to warn lawsuits, leaving tens of thousands of sick Americans without legal recourse, Trump and his industry-dominated EPA will be to blame."
"This high stakes case should be a wake-up call for Congress to act," the campaigner added. "Industrial agriculture's pesticide addiction is poisoning America. Congress must pass the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act to safeguard access to justice for all harmed by toxic pesticides."
As The American Prospect noted Monday in its "three-part series on Bayer's crusade for immunity from Roundup-related cancer claims," the company "is now aggressively lobbying Congress to permanently close the door" on the weedkiller's victims, and managed to get an immunity provision included in the 2026 Farm Bill that advanced out of the US House Agriculture Committee last month.
After joining the rally at the Supreme Court on Monday, Friends of the Earth (FOE) US led a protest outside Bayer's headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, delivering hundreds of thousands of petition signatures are calling on the company to phase out the production of toxic pesticides, including glyphosate and neonicotinoids.
"People are sick and tired of being exposed to toxic pesticides while pesticide corporations shirk responsibility," said FOE senior campaigner Sarah Starman, who spoke at the rally. "Bayer and other pesticide companies should not be allowed to profit from chemicals that threaten our health, harm our environment, and undermine the future of our food system. The hundreds of people who rallied outside the Supreme Court and the 200,000 people who signed comments to Bayer are demanding change."
In the leadup to the arguments before the nation's top court, the Environmental Working Group last week sued the Trump administration at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, accusing the EPA of unlawfully delaying its response to an EWG petition seeking stronger restrictions on glyphosate.
"The EPA's silence leaves families in the dark and falls far short of its responsibility to protect public health," declared EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook. "It's time for the agency to stop stalling and do its job."
Sharing 'Grim' Survivor Stories, Amnesty Renews Call for War Crimes Probe of US Strike in Yemen
A week after Democratic senators launched an investigation into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's assault on federal efforts to mitigate civilian harm, Amnesty International on Tuesday renewed its call for a war crimes probe of the American airstrike on a migrant detention center in Yemen that killed dozens of people last April.
While the United States has been bombing Yemen since 2002 as part of the so-called War on Terror, the Trump administration stepped up attacks last spring, in response to Houthi rebels' resistance to Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
"The Trump administration's approach to its airstrikes in Yemen from March to May 2025 should have set off alarm bells in the USA and around the world, clearly signaling an urgent need to strengthen measures to protect civilians," Amnesty International USA director Nadia Daar said in a statement exactly one year after the bombing in Saada.
"Instead, the US administration has systematically weakened safeguards, shrinking offices aimed at reducing civilian harm, while simultaneously displaying a dangerous disregard for the lives of civilians endangered by armed conflicts," she continued. "Against that backdrop, attacks such as the US attack on a school in Minab in Iran, which killed [155] people, including 120 children, were a tragically foreseeable consequence of a failure to implement robust civilian-harm mitigation efforts."
Amnesty concluded last month that the US bombing of the Iranian school "packed full of children" on February 28 was "a serious breach of international humanitarian law" and those responsible "must be held accountable."
Erika Guevara Rosas—Amnesty International's senior director of research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns—stressed at the time that "the US authorities could, and should, have known it was a school building. Targeting a protected civilian object, such as a school, is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law."
In a potential preview of what Iranian families impacted by that strike will face, Guevara Rosas noted Tuesday that one year after the attack in Yemen, "US officials have failed to hold anyone accountable or even to clarify the status or outcome of the investigations they had announced a year earlier."
"Families of those killed in the attack on the detention center in Yemen are still being denied basic information about what happened, [and] remain without justice for their loved ones," she explained. "Survivors continue to struggle, lacking the means to secure a decent living or even receive adequate medical treatment."
Amnesty interviewed over a dozen survivors identified by pseudonyms, including Araya, a 22-year-old Ethiopian man, who sustained a serious arm injury and said: "If I don't take a painkiller, I feel hopeless and wish to die. I think about how, at such a young age, I can't even support myself and still rely on help from others. The metal rod inside me is very painful and uncomfortable. It drives you insane."
Jirata, a 30-year-old Ethiopian man, has a metal rod in one of his legs, and lost the other in the attack. He told Amnesty that "I have lost hope and I have nothing left that keeps me going. I came here [to Yemen] to work like everyone else to help my family and change mine and their life for the better... Now people carry me to the toilet."
"The US government caused all this and as a result [of the airstrike], I can no longer work and support myself," he detailed. "I want them to provide any type of reparation that will help with our life in any way possible. Something that will revive my hope."
Another Ethiopian man, 32-year-old Abay, similarly said that "I went to Yemen to change my family's life, but now I made my family's life even harder than it was before," due to his leg and hand injuries.
"I feel broken whenever I see their faces," said Abay, who returned to Ethiopia. "You can see the sadness on their faces. I hoped for a better life, to work and change our lives, but everything turned upside down."
Guevara Rosas said that "the story of these migrants is grim and heartbreaking. Traveling to Yemen in search of better opportunities, they were detained by the Houthis, denied their freedom, then attacked in a US airstrike. Those who survived have been left in limbo, with no justice or reparation in sight, nor an explanation for why this happened to them, an acknowledgment of the wrong done to them, or any support offered to help them carry on with their lives."
She argued that "they must receive full, effective, and prompt reparation, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of nonrepetition, through an effective and accessible mechanism."
According to Airwars, US forces have killed 443-642 people in Yemen since 2009. The official government estimate for civilian deaths in that time is just 13. The deadline for the Pentagon's next annual report on civilian casualties is May 1.
Guevara Rosas declared that "in order to stop this deadly spiral, the USA must ensure prompt, transparent, impartial, independent, and effective investigations into attacks that have resulted in civilian casualties, including those in Yemen and Iran."
"The US Congress must also urgently step up its oversight role and demand answers, including a public accounting of these strikes and the adequate and prompt provision of reparation to the civilians that have been harmed, and ensure it is not appropriating funds that may contribute to breaches of international law," she added.
So far, both Republican-controlled chambers of Congress have declined to pass a war powers resolution reining in President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran, invasion of Venezuela, or bombings of boats allegedly transporting drugs on the high seas. Still, Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Tim Kaine (Va.), and Adam Schiff (Calif.) intend to force a Tuesday vote on a measure aimed at blocking the president's use of US forces in unauthorized hostilities against Cuba.
Despite Defeat of Pesticide Liability Shield, House Farm Bill Still 'Has Industry Fingerprints All Over It'
Support for stripping the pesticide provisions, said one advocate, "is proof that the Farm Bill should strengthen our food system, support farmers, and safeguard public health—not serve as a vehicle for corporate giveaways."
The diverse coalition opposed to a legislative "liability shield" for the pesticide industry celebrated on Thursday after the US House of Representatives stripped it out of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026—though progressive voices still sounded the alarm about the chamber's approval of the amended bill.
Dozens of Republicans and all but six Democrats backed Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's (R-Fla.) amendment targeting the protections for the pesticide industry. The 280-142 vote removed Sections 10205, 10206, and 10207 from the Farm Bill—which was later approved 224-200, with support from 14 Democrats and all but three Republicans.
"Major pesticide issues haven't been debated on the House floor in a very long time," said Jason Davidson, senior food and agriculture campaigner with Friends of the Earth US, in a statement. "For the people to win over the size, influence, and money of the pesticide industry is a remarkable display of grassroots power and a tremendous victory for Americans' ability to hold these companies accountable."
The House vote came just days after pesticide critics held "The People v. Poison" rally outside the US Supreme Court as the justices heard arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, which is expected to have sweeping implications for cancer patients trying to take on the maker of the weedkiller Roundup, whose key active ingredient is glyphosate.
Bayer—which bought Monsanto in 2018—and the US Environmental Protection Agency insist glyphosate is safe, even though the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it as a probable carcinogen to humans over a decade ago.
Despite President Donald Trump campaigning on a promise to "Make America Healthy Again," he has often served the pesticide industry, including by siding with Bayer in the case before the high court and signing a February executive order mandating production of glyphosate—a measure that also included a liability shield.
Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) on Wednesday introduced the No Immunity for Glyphosate Act to reverse Trump's order. The bill's lead sponsors in the House, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), were among those cheering the passage of Luna's amendment on Thursday.
"Industrial agriculture's pesticide addiction is poisoning America," declared Food and Water Watch senior food policy analyst Rebecca Wolf. "From the fields of Iowa to the halls of Congress, advocates have made our voices clear: Bayer's cruel Cancer Gag campaign has no place in our communities. US farm policy must support farmers and consumers, not the corporate overlords pulling the strings at our expense."
Wolf's group praised the defeat of the pesticide language but remains concerned about the EATS/Save Our Bacon Act, conservation cuts, and the Farm Bill's failure to reverse the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act's attack on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
"This Farm Bill has industry fingerprints all over it. By shrinking markets for high-welfare sustainable farmers, and doubling down on devastating cuts to federal food assistance, this pro-factory farm bill will do more harm than good," Wolf warned. "It's time to end the corporate power grab in Washington. This Farm Bill must be dead on arrival in the Senate."
Earthjustice Action legislative director of healthy communities Ranjani Prabhakar was also critical, arguing that "by passing this deeply flawed Farm Bill, House Republicans have doubled down on an approach that puts corporate polluters ahead of farmers, families, and our environment. This legislation weakens long-standing protections for endangered species and critical ecosystems and strips funding from conservation programs that help farmers combat climate change."
The "overwhelming support" for Luna's amendment, Prabhakar said, "is proof that the Farm Bill should strengthen our food system, support farmers, and safeguard public health—not serve as a vehicle for corporate giveaways. We urge the Senate to reject this harmful bill and work toward a solution that truly invests in resilient agriculture, healthy communities, and a sustainable future."
Progressive lawmakers also blasted the broader bill. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that "the Farm Bill is a real opportunity to help farmers and Americans across this country. However, Republicans are using it as a shell to push through permanent cuts to food assistance, even as food prices continue to skyrocket."
"As we take food from hungry kids," she said, referring to SNAP cuts, "this bill also leaves American farmers without a lifeline after they have lost billions thanks to Trump's tariffs. At the end of the day, this bill will make more people hungry and does nothing to address the affordability crisis or struggling workers."
While welcoming that the legislation will no longer shield pesticide manufacturers from liability for their products, Jayapal charged that "today's Farm Bill is a further betrayal of the American people."
Mills Suspends Flailing US Senate Bid, Clearing Platner's Path to Nomination
"Now let's unify to defeat Susan Collins," said one progressive.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Thursday officially suspended her campaign for the US Senate, clearing the path for progressive candidate Graham Platner to secure the Democratic nomination.
In a statement posted on social media, Mills claimed that she no longer had the financial resources to continue with the campaign, which multiple polls projected she was losing badly to the upstart Platner.
"I step back from campaigning with unending love, admiration, and hope for Maine people," wrote Mills, "a people whose hearts are filled with love and whose integrity and humility is surpassed only by their kindness, generosity, and compassion."
Shortly after Mills announced her decision, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) released a statement supporting Platner's candidacy.
“After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable," they said, "and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her."
Mills' decision to suspend her campaign came less than a week after she vetoed a bill passed by the Maine Legislature that would have imposed a statewide moratorium on building artificial intelligence data centers.
Mitch Jones, the managing director of litigation for Food & Water Watch, described Mills' veto of the data center moratorium as symbolic of her out-of-touch Senate campaign, saying "it is no wonder" that the Maine governor's "political career seems to be limping to a feeble conclusion."
While Mills' decision to end her Senate campaign was not entirely unexpected given how badly she trailed Platner in both opinion polls and fundraising, some observers nonetheless found it a stunning development given that she's a two-term Maine governor running against a populist oyster farmer who has never held political office.
"A sitting two-term governor recruited by the leader of the Senate Democrats just lost to a Bernie Sanders-endorsed guy who started the race with zero name ID," wrote Zeteo News reporter Prem Thakker.
Kevin Robillard, senior politics editor at HuffPost, said that Mills' campaign will go down as "one of the most stunning flops in recent political history."
"Suspending a Senate campaign because you ran out of cash is something that happens to gadfly state legislators," he observed, "not sitting governors running with the endorsement of party leaders."
Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council staffer under President Barack Obama and cohost of Pod Save America, questioned Mills' claim that she was suspending her campaign due to lack of resources.
"Her problem was lack of support from Maine voters," Vietor wrote, "not money."
Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), graciously welcomed Mills' concession.
"Tough to make these kinds of decisions, but kudos to her for making the right one," wrote Shakir. "Now let's unify to defeat Susan Collins."
As Hegseth Touts Autonomous Warfare Command, Human Rights Expert Pushes Civilian Protections
Responding to other recent remarks from the Pentagon chief, the expert warned that “a sole focus on achieving maximum lethality is inherently incompatible with civilian protection.”
As the US military accelerates its adoption of autonomous weapons systems amid a growing global artificial intelligence arms race, one expert told Common Dreams on Wednesday that "greater action needs to be taken urgently" to protect civilians and ensure meaningful human control over rapidly developing technologies.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told congressional lawmakers Wednesday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the proposed $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget for 2027 that the military will soon have a new "sub-unified command" dedicated to autonomous warfare.
Hegseth, who advocates “maximum lethality” for US forces, has expressed disdain for what he called “stupid rules of engagement” designed to minimize civilian harm. He has overseen the dismantling of efforts meant to mitigate wartime harm to civilians—hundreds of thousands of whom have been killed in US-led wars during this century, according to experts.
This "maximum lethality" ethos, combined with AI-powered systems allowing for exponentially faster and more numerous target selection, has raised concerns that have been underscored by actions including Israel Defense Forces massacres in Gaza and Lebanon, and US attacks like the cruise missile strike on a school in Iran that killed 155 children and staff.
"A sole focus on achieving maximum lethality is inherently incompatible with civilian protection," Verity Coyle, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's (HRW) crisis, conflict, and arms division, told Common Dreams. "If the United States truly seeks to protect civilians, it should forgo this limited focus and ensure it has guardrails in place that assess the proportionality of its actions and guarantee a distinction between civilians and combatants."
"Under international humanitarian law, civilian protection requires that military actions abide by the principles of distinction and proportionality," Coyle noted. "In other words, military actors must distinguish between civilians and combatants and ensure that the resulting harm to civilians from their actions would not be excessive in comparison to the perceived military gain."
Experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems—commonly called "killer robots"—stress the need for meaningful human control. However, with industry-backed efforts afoot to ban state and local governments from placing guardrails on AI development, retaining such control could become increasingly difficult as the technology advances.
"The lack of serious guardrails... shows a troubling lack of concern for these real and immediate risks to civilians both in the United States and abroad," Coyle said. "While we have seen some Congress members and state legislators express concern over these developments, greater action needs to be taken urgently."
Asked about the "if we don't build it, they will" mentality of many US proponents of unchecked AI development that is reminiscent of the Cold War nuclear arms race, Coyle said the United States is ignoring its "ability to set the global agenda and international humanitarian law norms."
"As we see greater integration of AI in the military domain and resulting civilian harm, we need strong international leadership to respond to these threats, not states relinquishing their responsibilities," she asserted.
Coyle continued:
Throughout [HRW's] decades of work in banning weapons that cause indiscriminate civilian harm, including the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munitions, we have seen that even when some major military powers object to new international law, other states are able to band together and create new norms that major military powers eventually abide by. In this moment, the United States needs to decide if it will stand up for the principles of civilian protection and a rules-based order, or if it will walk away from the system it helped create and that has served to protect civilians for several decades.
There is also a danger that companies will proceed with risky AI weapons development, both in pursuit of profit and out of fear of getting left behind if they don't push forward. For example, Anthropic—maker of the AI assistant Claude—lost a $200 million Pentagon contract and is facing a government blacklist and legal battles after the company refused to loosen safety restrictions on autonomous weapons and surveillance.
Meanwhile, OpenAI, which makes the generative AI platform ChatGPT, rewrote its “no military use” policy to allow “national security” applications of its products, opening the door to lucrative Pentagon contracts.
Asked what civil society can do now to rein in reckless AI development, Coyle said that while HRW remains "focused on educating decision-makers and the public," there are "clear steps states can take, including supporting an international legally binding instrument on autonomous weapons systems and regulating the military use of AI."
"Through the Stop Killer Robots Campaign—a coalition of 270+ organizations focused on banning and regulating autonomous weapons systems and AI in the military domain—we are working globally to address these challenges," she noted.
While loss of human control over AI systems still appears to still be well over the horizon, Coyle said that "every day we see a world inching closer to this reality."
"Our message to states is that now is the time to take immediate, robust action to address this risk and protect civilians before it is too late," she stressed.