SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Hoo boy. The stupid and evil, somehow accelerating, burn. America's so-called leader, the "Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath," manifests ever more cognitive dissonance on steroids. Absurd, addled, vindictive, looming above "a circus of death and chaos," he commits war crimes, guts voting rights, plots devastation, abases decency, murders mercy, yet whines about mean jokes. But as America reels, Banksy, Bruce, Platner and others increasingly declare, "We are not fucking doing this anymore."
Amidst what the head of Amnesty International calls "the year of the predators," humanity itself is under attack, most notably by our ludicrous narcissist and his "casual, bewildering cruelty." Despite his foolishness, Nesrine Malik writes, "This is what evil looks like": See history's portrayals of Hitler - "the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog" - and Mussolini, "that funny man, that consummate buffoon." Trump's "farcical puniness," Malik notes, is "a projection onto the world, not of large intent, but of smallness and fear...The consequences of his violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it (to) erase his terror of humiliation (and) feed his sociopathic appetite for escalation." Thus can deeply silly still equal dangerous.
Daily, the large and small atrocities are both, albeit without the resonance of the label "fascist" only because he lacks the wit, intent and coherence it requires. The war in Iran is won, it's won but not by enough, it's not a war, we made a deal, we don't want a deal. The (imaginary) talks are going very well, we don't wanna talk. Iran struck a school full of young girls, killing hundreds, or if we did it's Obama's fault. Give me ballroom or give me death: The solution to gun violence that kills 12 children a day, wounds 32 more and has affected over 390,000 kids since Columbine - is to build one rich white guy who's never expressed any grief over any of them a gilded bunker of his own. The way to keep more people safe is to kill as many as possible, including by firing squad.
Also, Bill Maher, Hakeem Jeffries, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel are low IQ losers, James Comey tried to kill and "inflict bodily harm on" him with "aggravated beachy seashell pictures," he's so "young, vital, vibrant" he could've joined the Artemis II astronauts easy like he aced his three screening tests for dementia - "A lion, a giraffe, a bear, and a shark. Which one is the bear?" - which the Villages audience def couldn't do, ditto sketchy Harvard Law graduate Hussein Obama. America's response to his musing what we'd do if a con man moron turned up - "How do you get to be president and you're stupid?": "That would suck - we'd probably have unprovoked wars, high gas prices and all our allies would hate us," "He's so close to getting it," "The Irony Meter is dead after spontaneously combusting," and "You're a fucking moron." Also, so grotesquely weird.

Meanwhile, the Orwellian rules for what you can/can’t see/say keep spooling out, lies sold as half-truths to justify a brazen, racist, whitewashing of both present and past under the shameless moniker of content “inappropriately disparaging Americans past or living,” but always white. Among dozens of changes at our National Parks, gone are signs about the contributions of Native Americans and women, warnings about climate change "not grounded in real science," evidence of Founding Fathers owning slaves and explorers' atrocities against Native tribes. But you do get Trump's loathsome mug plastered on park passes, like on our money, buildings, passports ad nauseum. Happily, fighting back for years have been patriots like the Resistance Rangers, the Alt National Park Service and whatever genius slapped these "Sex Offender" flyers across D.C.'s parks.
Hence incrementally, far too slowly but feeding vital hope and our frayed spirits, the flip side of our grim absurdist timeline begins to emerge as Trump and his monstrous clowns flail, fail, dig their own dank holes. So many horrors should have sparked it -Gaza, ICE, USAID, the boundless greed, cruelty, stupidity. Instead, prices did it, a non-stop, staggering incompetence that saw people being screwed once too often and lied to about one too many senseless wars. Last week, Banksy registered his own anti-imperialist protest in a middle-of-the-night dropping into the heart of ceremonial London a large statue mocking such Blind Patriotism. Mirroring the classical style of surrounding monuments celebrating the British Empire's inglorious colonial past, he presents a suited man, his flag flying into his face, one foot poised to step off into his own demise. Much like, you know.

Kicking off his Land of Hope and Dreams American tour several weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen offered his own fiery rebuttal to "a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration," which drew roars from a huge first night crowd in Minneapolis. Equal parts celebration and call to action, The Boss insisted, "This is still America, and - shades of the Big Lebowski, "this will not stand." Summoning "the righteous power of art, music and rock and roll in dangerous times," he asked the crowd to "join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over....(lights come up to segue into) "WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely nothin'!" complete with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello shredding a solo. A righteous, dynamic pair.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
In contrast, standing grotesque and slumped-shouldered in a dingy, empty corner, is the small, mad man-child who spent Monday bellowing to a weary world that Iran will be "blown off the face of the Earth" if it targets U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which his inane recklessness closed in the first place. Online, in "the most desperate shit" to ever make its demonic way from the White House, a juvenile lackey posted him saying, "Winning it" on a loop for over 60 minutes, which still didn't make it so. The text read, "Can't stop, won't stop." Please fucking do. A horrified America: "This is a real tweet from a real account about a real man who leads a real country." Kyle Kulinski, on "the war criminal of all war criminals" who makes genocidal threats and bleats about insults: “We are not fucking doing this anymore. You don't get to say shit."
Still, one Tom Wellborn says it best in, “A Eulogy for the Worst That Has Ever Drawn Breath,” subtitled “Being a Complete and Unflinching Account of the Most Loathsome Specimen Ever to Consume Resources, Occupy Space, and Insult the Patience of a Universe That Deserved So Much Better." "There are villains, and then there are monsters, and then there are creatures so cosmically, transcendently... terrible that language itself recoils," he begins. "Grammar buckles. Syntax weeps...He is this thing. He is the thing past the thing past the thing. He is the sub-basement of the human condition, the moldy crawlspace beneath that sub-basement, and the writhing centipede beneath that."
"He has no morals. Not a single one. Not even the bad morals that at least imply a moral framework: the corrupt cop who loves his dog, the mob boss who goes to church. No. He exists in a morality vacuum so total that ethicists have proposed naming it after him...A being entirely without moral content. Not evil, because evil requires intention. Simply absent of the entire apparatus...A moral negative space shaped vaguely like a man...He has no empathy....like a raisin...He is incapable of the most basic social theater that even sociopaths manage....He takes without asking. He takes everything without asking. He takes things that aren’t takeable...The principle being: I can....He is stupid in a way that is almost majestic...His stupidity (is) total. Unified....He has been wrong about everything, always, without exception..."
"He is callous the way concrete is callous: not through malice, not through choice, but through an utter material inability to register (another) person’s pain...You could show him the face of grief, and he would wonder aloud if there was parking nearby...He is vicious the way a blunt instrument is vicious: through sheer, undirected force, through the momentum of his own awfulness...He is smelted fury with no purpose, unforged, unbent, uselessly molten....(He is) a statistical outlier so extreme that evolution seems to be embarrassed by him, a glitch in the long project of civilization...And the most horrifying part...He will never know any of this. He will never know what he is." Name it, damn it, take it down. Maine's Graham Platner hopes to help do that. We wish him well.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned on Tuesday that the current model of fossil fuel-driven capitalism was leading the world into "barbarism" and "fascism."
According to a Wednesday report from The Guardian, Petro told attendees of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels being held in Santa Marta, Colombia that capitalism's insistence on continued fossil fuel dependence was "suicidal" and driving the world toward more conflict.
"There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy—fossil fuels—that lead to death," said Petro. "Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide, taking with it humanity and [other] life... The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”
Petro also warned that the consequences of sticking with a model of capitalism that centers fossil fuel energy won't be merely economic but also political.
"We are heading towards barbarism," he said. "And barbarism is the prelude to, or the very essence of, fascism."
As reported by Common Dreams last week, the conference in Colombia, which wraps up Wednesday, has featured more than 50 nations discussing strategies to phase out energy based on coal, oil, and gas.
Ralph Regenvanu, minister for climate change of the island nation of Vanuatu, told NPR on Wednesday that his country has been seeing the impacts of the climate crisis up close in the form of rising sea levels and spiraling energy costs.
Because of this, Regenvanu said his government has accelerated plans to begin solar energy and electric vehicle projects, telling NPR that "the decision on EVs was directly stimulated by the crisis."
France was also a major presence at the conference, reported The Guardian, as French climate envoy Benoit Faraco outlined an ambitious plan to make his country a major renewable energy producer.
"This process has made us realize we want to be an electro-superpower," said Faraco. "We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries."
But Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told The Guardian that the ability to transition away from fossil fuels will be much harder for many developing nations, even though these nations are the ones most adversely impacted by the climate emergency.
"There are many fossil-fuel producing countries in the Global South that are being pushed into expanding fossil fuel production just to feed their debt," Berman explained. "There is an expanding debt crisis in the Global South. It is impossible for countries to even imagine a fossil fuel transition with such limited fiscal space."
Advocates warned that the conference did not appear set to produce new commitments to fund climate action in the Global South, but discussions were taking place about tackling massive subsidies that have been granted annually to fossil fuel giants.
"It is a space where conversations can take place about, for instance, subsidy reform," Leo Roberts of the think tank E3G told The Guardian, "to take the $1.5 trillion in [annual] fossil fuel subsidies and repurpose them to somewhere else.”
Within just six months of President Donald Trump signing last year's Republican mega budget bill and enacting an unprecedented cut to federal food assistance, more than 3 million low-income Americans lost benefits.
According to data from the US Department of Agriculture, cataloged by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dropped by 8% nationwide in the six months following the bill's passage in July 2025.
It is the steepest drop recorded in more than three decades, even greater than that experienced amid the recovery from the Great Recession, when millions of Americans left the program as their economic conditions rebounded after a period of widespread unemployment and economic precarity.
Enrollment levels have fallen in every single state over the past year, with some drops particularly startling. In Arizona, where nearly 900,000 people received benefits in January 2025, just over 500,000 were on SNAP a year later—a 43% drop.
Levels of enrollment in SNAP, which provides monthly funds to Americans with incomes at or below 130% of the federal poverty line to pay for food, have often been a reliable indicator of poverty in America, with more people enrolling during hard times.
But unlike during that period of mass disenrollment from 2012-16, Joseph Llobrera, CBPP's senior director of research, said in a report on Wednesday that the dramatic fall in SNAP participation "cannot be explained by a rapid improvement in people’s economic well-being or reduced need for help affording food."
"Labor force data show that the unemployment rate was flat between July 2025 and March 2026, the most recent data available," Llobrera said. In Arizona, where nearly half of SNAP recipients lost their benefits, unemployment actually increased during the same period.
"A more likely explanation for why people are losing access to food assistance," he said, "is that states are now facing new challenges as they respond to the cuts in HR 1—the largest in the program’s history."
While funding more than $1 trillion worth of tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, HR 1—known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—mandated around $186 billion worth of cuts to SNAP over a decade, including through harsher work requirements for older adults, parents, veterans, and homeless people.
Katie Bergh, a senior food assistance policy analyst at CBPP, noted that "the harm will only grow as the full brunt of HR 1's SNAP cuts takes effect."
Beginning in 2027, the law will require states to cover 75% of SNAP administrative costs, up from the previous 50%. They will also have to cover a larger share of the benefit costs if they provide benefits to large numbers of ineligible people.
"States will soon be required to pay for part of SNAP benefits costs—totaling billions of dollars across all states—creating enormous fiscal challenges," explained Llobrera. "Many steps states are taking to lower error rates in response to this cost shift could make it harder for eligible people to access SNAP, driving down caseloads."
He noted that some states like Illinois and Georgia are now expending more resources on means testing, requiring households to recertify their eligibility for SNAP twice as often and "putting families at risk of losing SNAP if they can’t navigate the additional red tape."
Other states have made cuts preemptively. In the year leading up to the GOP bill's passage, Arizona cut staffing at its SNAP agency by more than a third, creating a major backlog of cases. While the state remains an outlier, Llobrera and research analyst Catlin Nchako said that "other states may not be far behind."
"In the face of massive new costs," Llobrera warned, "states may even withdraw from the program altogether, terminating food assistance for all low-income people, including children, seniors, people with disabilities, and veterans."
He said, "Congress must delay the cost shift before even more people lose the food assistance they need."
Addressing 1,360 Michigan voters who packed into a gymnasium at Detroit's Mumford High School on Sunday evening, Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed received raucous applause when he frankly addressed an issue that's loomed large in the primary race—the influence of the pro-Israel lobby and its aggressive efforts to conflate antisemitism with opposition to Israel's attacks on Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East.
"The single most dangerous thing that they’ve tried to tell us is somehow they can extend the definition of antisemitism to include a foreign government and its leaders," said El-Sayed of the pro-Israel lobby, especially the highly influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). "I call bullshit."
El-Sayed, a physician and former public health official, emphasized that "AIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people" and accused political leaders and the powerful lobbying group of "creating a dangerous circumstance" by conflating respect for a religion with support for a foreign government that's committed genocidal violence in Gaza over the last year-and-a-half, according to leading human rights groups and Holocaust scholars.
"We love Judaism and the Jewish people because we love people, and we love Palestinians and their rights because we love people," said El-Sayed to growing applause.
Abdul El-Sayed: “AIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people. I love Judaism and I love the Jewish people. The single most dangerous thing they’ve tried to tell us is somehow they can extend the definition of antisemitism to include a foreign government and… pic.twitter.com/NFwpljcomI
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 3, 2026
Democratic Party leaders and establishment organizers continue to treat criticism of Israel as a third-rail issue, but the positive response to El-Sayed's comments reflected numerous recent polls that have shown voters, particularly Democrats, are growing weary of the government's insistence that the US must continue to arm Israel.
A survey by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies in March found that after the Israel Defense Forces' US-backed slaughter of more than 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, and as the US joined the IDF in assaulting Iran in an unprovoked war, just 32% of registered US voters viewed Israel positively—a dramatic shift from three years ago, when close to half of voters expressed positive views of Israel.
A Pew Research poll last month found that 60% of respondents had a negative opinion of Israel, which receives roughly $4 billion in US military aid annually, while 37% expressed positive views.
And a survey by Upswing Strategies found last October, when it canvassed 850 Democratic voters in districts across swing states including Michigan, that nearly half said they "could never support" a candidate for Congress who received funding from AIPAC or the pro-Israel lobby more broadly. Over a quarter said they "strongly" felt they would not support a candidate who took AIPAC donations.
As he has condemned Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza and demanded an end to US military funding for Israel, El-Sayed has spoken out against antisemitic acts like a shooting at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan in March, saying Jewish people "have a right to worship in peace" and to "know that your religious identity and faith practice are respected."
"There is no room for antisemitism in America," said El-Sayed at the time. He added in a video posted on social media that the attack was part of a "cycle" of violence, noting that the suspect has lost family members in Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which intensified in March as the war on Iran widened.
Reflecting on the attack at Temple Israel. pic.twitter.com/u9p4BwdzoA
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) March 13, 2026
Writer and researcher Matt Stoller said Sunday that—as the crowd in Detroit appeared to concur—El-Sayed "is a far better friend to Jews than AIPAC."
The issue of Israel has previously played a role in El-Sayed's three-way primary race against US Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who has received more than $5 million in funding from pro-Israel groups, and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8), who wrote a position paper for AIPAC.
El-Sayed's opponents attacked him for campaigning with the popular commentator and live-streamer Hasan Piker, who has also spoken out against antisemitism and has strongly criticized Israel, saying that Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack was a “direct consequence” of actions by the IDF and the US in Gaza.
A Data for Progress poll taken last month found that Michigan voters were far more concerned about AIPAC influence in the election than they were about El-Sayed's decision to campaign with a commentator who harbors negative views about the increasingly unpopular Israeli government.
The race is close according to recent polls, with Stevens backed by 24.9% of voters, according to the latest Detroit Regional Chamber survey, and El-Sayed supported by 22.9% of respondents. Thirty-six percent of voters said they were undecided.
Sunday's rally served as both an event promoting El-Sayed's campaign ahead of the August 4 primary and the latest stop on US Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) Fighting Oligarchy tour, with the progressive leader also urging Detroit voters to support state Rep. Donavan McKinney (D-11) in the primary in Michigan's 13th Congressional District, now represented by Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.).
"I want to give you some good news,” Sanders said. “As Rashida Tlaib will tell you, over the last six to eight years, we have elected dozens of great members of Congress; strong progressives who are standing up and fighting for the working class. And I certainly hope Donavan McKinney will join that group.”
While El-Sayed and McKinney—who are both supporters of Medicare for All and raising taxes on billionaires—have three months to go until primary voters go to the polls, and are campaigning without the support of party leaders, Sanders reminded voters in Detroit that other progressive leaders like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have recently emerged victorious in races after being denounced as too critical of Israel or too far to the left.
“Think about what’s happened in the last six months,” said Sanders. “Zohran Mamdani started his campaign for mayor of New York City at 1% in the polls. Got it? He was opposed by the entire Democratic establishment, he was obviously opposed by the Republican establishment, he was opposed by the president of the United States, he was opposed by every oligarch in New York City.”
“I don’t care how much money the other folks have, when you have 100,000 people knocking on doors, whether it’s New York, or Michigan for Abdul, there ain’t nobody gonna beat you,” Sanders said. “They’ve got the money. We’re never going to compete with that. And they don’t like Abdul, by the way, in case you haven’t noticed, for a lot of reasons. … But if we mobilize the people, we win.”
Rights advocates swiftly sounded the alarm on Friday after the infamously far-right US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit temporarily blocked a federal rule allowing mifepristone to be dispensed by mail, dramatically curtailing access to the medication—commonly used for abortion and early miscarriage care—nationwide, particularly in states with policies hostile to reproductive freedom.
Just months after the US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversed Roe v. Wade, the Food and Drug Administration permanently lifted mifepristone's in-person dispensing requirement in early 2023, under then-President Joe Biden. Louisiana—which has among the nation's most restrictive abortion policies—challenged the FDA's move.
A federal judge in Louisiana paused that lawsuit last month while President Donald Trump's administration conducts an FDA review that seems "designed to manufacture an excuse for further restricting medication abortion across the country," as Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, warned at the time.
After a panel from the appellate court overturned that decision and revived the in-person dispensing rule on Friday, Kaye declared that "anti-abortion politicians have just made it much harder for people everywhere in the country to get a medication that abortion and miscarriage patients have been safely using for more than 25 years."
"Louisiana's legal attack on mifepristone shamelessly packaged lies and propaganda as an excuse to restrict abortion—and the 5th Circuit rubber-stamped it," she continued. "This decision defies clear science and settled law and advances an anti-abortion agenda that is deeply unpopular with the American people. For countless people, especially those who live in rural areas, face intimate partner violence, or live with disabilities, losing a telemedicine option will mean losing access to this vital medication altogether."
Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), similarly stressed that "this ruling is a sweeping and dangerous rollback that disregards the well-established safety and efficacy of the use of mifepristone via telehealth, and will create immediate, medically unnecessary barriers to care for patients across the country."
"Make no mistake: This ruling is not grounded in science or patient safety," she said. "It is a politically driven decision that overrides medical expertise and years of research, and threatens to upend how abortion care is delivered nationwide. Through this litigation, Louisiana seeks to impose its cruel abortion ban across the nation—including in states with legal protections for abortion—and today the court has taken an extreme step toward that end."
While pledging that "NAF and our allies will continue to advocate to restore full access to medication abortion," Fonteno reminded patients that mifepristone "remains available in doctors' offices, clinics, and hospitals."
Terrific thread. I’ll just add:1. I think there’s a good chance the Supreme Court will stay this decision, allowing providers to keep mailing mifepristone for the time being.2. The Trump administration didn’t want this! Its plan was to wait until after the midterms to crack down on mifepristone.
[image or embed]
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) May 1, 2026 at 6:52 PM
After Roe's reversal, the anti-choice movement and its allies in elected offices ramped up efforts to impose state-level restrictions on reproductive healthcare. A significant majority of abortions in the United States involve a two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, and a quarter of those patients receive care via telemedicine.
"Telehealth has been the last bridge to care for many seeking abortion, which is precisely why Louisiana officials want it banned," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which joined over 100 other reproductive health, justice, and rights groups, including the ACLU and NAF, that filed an amicus brief in this case.
"This isn't about science—it's about making abortion as difficult, expensive, and unreachable as possible," Northup added. "Telehealth has transformed healthcare. Selectively stripping that away from abortion patients is a political blockade."
The drug companies Danco Laboratories, which makes the brand-name version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, and GenBioPro, which makes the generic, have intervened in Louisiana v. FDA. GenBioPro is represented by the law firm Arnold & Porter and Democracy Forward, whose president and CEO, Skye Perryman, declared Friday that "this is the anti-abortion extremists' playbook in action once again: Weaponize the courts to serve their political interests, ignore decades of scientific evidence proving mifepristone’s safety, and put women directly in harm's way."
"Even as this assault defies the will of the overwhelming majority of the American public, these ideologically extreme politicians and organizations are determined to impose a narrow, autocratic agenda—no matter the cost," she continued, emphasizing that "our fight is not over."
This is a ruling purporting to halt telehealth prescriptions of mifepristone NATIONWIDE. Louisiana asked the Fifth Circuit for a decision by Monday, May 11. That they dropped it on a Friday afternoon feels intentional to keep it in effect for longer. Expect emergency appeal to SCOTUS shadow docket
[image or embed]
— Susan Rinkunas (@susanrinkunas.com) May 1, 2026 at 5:35 PM
The effects of the 5th Circuit's decision are expected to be immediate absent a quick intervention from the Supreme Court, and Nourbese Flint, president of All* Above All, warned that "as always, the people most impacted will be Black and brown communities and those already navigating systemic barriers to care."
Serra Sippel, executive director of the Brigid Alliance, a national abortion support group that helps coordinate and fund travel, said that "we expect to see an immediate increase in patients forced to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles for care. That includes many who are later in pregnancy—when care is more complex and more expensive."
"Over the past several years, we've seen a dramatic rise in abortion travel and a growing reliance on practical support networks like ours, particularly in states where patients already travel long distances for care," Sippel noted. "We will continue to monitor the impact of this ruling and are committed to ensuring abortion patients who need to travel can safely get to the care they need, regardless of where they live."
The Trump administration has denied reports from Iranian media on Monday that a US Navy warship was hit in the Strait of Hormuz.
After US President Donald Trump said this weekend that the US Navy would help “guide” commercial ships through the strait, in what was referred to as "Project Freedom," an Iranian official described it as a ploy to "provoke" retaliation and pledged that any vessels attempting to navigate the waterway without authorization would be "promptly intercepted" by Iranian forces.
According to Iranian news agencies, that is just what occurred on Monday morning. The Fars News Agency, which is linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that according to local news sources, “two missiles” had made impact in an attack on a US Navy frigate that had entered the strait without permission from the Iranian government.
It said the ship “violated security protocols for transit and navigation near Jask with the intent to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, [and] came under missile attack after ignoring warnings from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Navy.” Fars added that the ship "has been prevented from continuing its course due to these strikes and has been forced to retreat and flee the area."
In a comment to Reuters, a senior Iranian official added that it was unclear whether the warship had sustained any damage.
The Tasnim news agency published a statement from the Iranian army’s public relations department, saying that “with the decisive and swift warning from the Navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the entry of enemy American Zionist destroyers into the Strait of Hormuz area was prevented.”
US Central Command (CENTCOM) quickly denied the claim, posting a "fact check" on social media.
"CLAIM: Iranian state media claims that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hit a US warship with two missiles," the post said. "TRUTH: No US Navy ships have been struck. US forces are supporting Project Freedom and enforcing the naval blockade on Iranian ports."
Another post stated that "US Navy guided-missile destroyers are currently operating in the Arabian [Persian] Gulf after transiting the Strait of Hormuz in support of Project Freedom" and that "American forces are actively assisting efforts to restore transit for commercial shipping."
It added that "as a first step, two US-flagged merchant vessels have successfully transited through the Strait of Hormuz and are safely headed on their journey."
Iran's shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz to unauthorized ships has allowed it to wreak havoc on the Western economy in retaliation for the war launched by the US and Israel at the end of February.
About 20% of the globe's seaborne oil shipments pass through the waterway, and its closure has caused global oil prices to spike, driving US gas prices to more than $4 on average and rippling inflation through the economy.
Observers of open-source marine tracking reports have said it did not show that two US-flagged merchant ships passed through the strait on Monday. However, it is possible the ships could have navigated the strait with the tracking technology disabled.
While information from the strait remains scarce, Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said the public should remain skeptical of the Trump administration's denials given its track record.
"Watch closely," he wrote on social media. "The Trump administration's consistent pattern has been immediate, unequivocal denial, then slowly dribbling out confirmation that 'yeah, that happened, it was bad, actually very bad,' and hope coverage has already moved on, and no one notices."
As an example, he pointed to the first Trump administration's claim following the 2020 assassination of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani that retaliatory attacks against the Al Asad airbase, a US military installation, had resulted in zero casualties.
“Initially, Trump claimed, ‘We suffered no casualties,’” Duss said. “In the weeks that followed, we learned that there were actually over 100 casualties." At least 109 US troops had suffered brain injuries from the strikes, according to the Pentagon.
More recently, CENTCOM initially denied claims that Iran had shot down US fighter jets in early April, claiming that "all aircraft are accounted for" when a plane had, in fact, been shot down, requiring a multi-day operation to rescue two pilots from Iranian territory.
"You represent the majority of people not only in the United States who overwhelmingly in the public opinion polls, say they're against the war, but of course the majority of people in the world," said peace activist Medea Benjamin.
As the one-man protest of activist Guido Reichstadter reached its fifth day, 168 feet above the Anacostia River on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC, the anti-war activist is receiving praise both at home and worldwide as he said Tuesday he would go another day even though he has run out of both food and water.
"We are profoundly touched," said CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin during a visit Monday, standing below Reichstadter's perch at the top of one of the bridge's arches, which he has been occupying since last Friday in protest of President Donald Trump's war on Iran and the rapid proliferation of unregulated artificial intelligence.
"It's such a beautiful act of profound civil disobedience that is making waves all over the world," said Benjamin in a video clip posted on social media by documentary filmmaker Ford Fischer.
2) Guido Reichstadter spoke by phone with Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, saying he's "touched" by their support.
"We are just amazed that you did this!" Benjamin told him. "Just something beyond our belief."
Police over a loudspeaker continued to implore Reichstadter to accept… pic.twitter.com/cnBXv0mNTy
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) May 4, 2026
Reichstadter climbed up to the arch on Friday and unfurled a long black banner that he says represents the "shame and grief" of those who have been forced to be complicit in the US-Israeli war on Iran.
He released a statement saying he was demanding "an immediate end to the Trump regime’s illegal war on Iran and the removal of the regime’s power through mass nonviolent direct action and non-cooperation.”
The 45-year-old activist and father of two has staged other high-profile acts of civil disobedience in the past, but this one garnered the attention of Explosive Media, an independent media group that has released several viral videos skewering the Trump administration's deeply unpopular war. Reichstadter appeared in a video released by the group over the weekend, portrayed as a heroic LEGO figure.
As Benjamin spoke to Reichstadter, police continued trying to convince him to climb down from the arch, which he said he planned to leave Tuesday afternoon.
Now: Police get some exercise as they monitor Guido Reichstadter, now on his fifth day of occupying the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in a one-man protest against the Iran War and AI proliferation. https://t.co/DFkhA6zABG pic.twitter.com/0dumNmXk20
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) May 5, 2026
He survived on Chex Mix and dried cranberries for the first day of his occupation, before running out on Saturday. He ran out of water Monday afternoon and was almost out of phone battery, but Fischer reported that he "managed to get something working."
Reichstadter said that he would stay for "possibly another day or two."
With reporters assembled nearby, Benjamin asked him if he wanted to share any message about the war in Iran, in which hostilities were continuing this week in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's insistence that a ceasefire that was reached last month is holding.
"We have to end it," said Reichstadter.
"We're so worried that the bombing is going to start once again," said Benjamin, "and that's why you being up there is so important at this moment, because you represent the majority of people not only in the United States who overwhelmingly in the public opinion polls, say they're against the war, but of course the majority of people in the world... So what you're doing is on behalf of people all over the world, who are saying, 'This war was unprovoked, it's illegal, it's reckless, and it has to end."
More than 60% of Americans view Trump's war on Iran as a "mistake," according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll released the day Reichstadter climbed on top of the bridge.
A legal expert explores how the administration is "weaponizing the law... to effectuate a widespread harassment and mass deportation campaign that is more akin to ethnic cleansing than routine immigration enforcement."
President Donald Trump's taxpayer-funded mass deportation campaign has tormented communities across the country with militarized federal agents, killed immigrants and US citizens alike, abused demonstrators and detainees of all ages, and sparked fears of an expansive effort to strip citizenship from Americans.
The "Terrorizing Migrants" report released Tuesday by the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson School of International and Public Affairs details how Trump's xenophobic campaign reflects "specific law and policy options created and strengthened among all three branches of the US government, on a bipartisan basis, since 9/11."
"These law and policy options place heightened unchecked discretionary authority within the administration, and are particularly ripe for abuse against noncitizen persons of color by immigration authorities, law enforcement agents, and other executive branch officials," wrote Widener University Delaware Law School assistant professor Elizabeth Beavers, author of the report.
The publication focuses on five key post-9/11 precedents borrowed from the "War on Terror," though it acknowledges that "the Trump administration is relying on laws and policies far beyond those described in this paper to effectuate its broader anti-immigrant agenda, and justifying much of it in national security language."
The first of the five precedents is "conflation of immigration enforcement and counterterrorism." The report recalls that after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation "orchestrated a mass investigation" that "exclusively targeted Arab, Muslim, and South Asian immigrants in a dragnet roundup, subjecting them to secretive detention at locations inside the US," and holding many of them "for weeks or even months without any charges at all."
Beavers also pointed to the George W. Bush administration's launch of the National Security Entry and Exit Registration System, as well as the creation of the US Department of Homeland Security and the placement of Immigration and Customs Enforcement within DHS. ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents have been key to Trump's campaign.
The Muslim ban from Trump's first term "built upon the structures that came before it, but greatly expanded legal presumptions that people of particular races, religions, and nationalities carry inherent danger," Beavers wrote. His second term policies have "extended this precedent to its logical conclusion by framing migration itself as terrorism. And nearly 25 years after its post-9/11 creation, ICE has been unleashed and empowered to roam American streets, snatching and disappearing people they perceive as unlawfully present, often based solely on race, and often without verifying their immigration status."
The second precedent Beavers explored is "expanded and politicized 'terrorist' designation lists." She noted Trump's invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro, as well as his boat-bombing spree allegedly targeting drug traffickers in international waters.
The expert also dove into "deporting people as 'terrorists' without proving actual violent conduct," flagging Trump's "reverse migration" pledge after an Afghan man allegedly shot two National Guard members in Washington, DC, along with the administration's decision to "hold and review" asylum applications for people from "high-risk" countries.
That review, she warned, "could result in mass removal from the country of 'terrorist' noncitizens who involuntarily paid money to cartels at some point in their lives, whose family remittances have crossed hands with cartel-controlled actors, who have family members or other connections to a designated cartel but no involvement themselves, or who have unwillingly been pressed into service of a cartel at some point."
Much gratitude to @costsofwar.bsky.social for publishing my newest paper, highlighting how legal tools that started as post-9/11 counterterrorism abuses are now being weaponized further for Trump's anti-immigrant agenda:
[image or embed]
— Elizabeth Beavers (@elizabethrb.bsky.social) May 5, 2026 at 10:49 AM
The fourth precedent examined in the analysis is "indefinite detention, torture, and rendition of noncitizens." Beavers began the section with the detention camp at US Naval Station Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, which she called "perhaps one of the most notorious features of the US government's post-9/11 'War on Terror.'"
"It is both a place where every post-9/11 president has detained Muslim men in connection with the post-9/11 counterterrorism wars, but it is also a place where unauthorized migrants are sometimes held," she wrote. "More than 700 migrants have been sent to and from Guantánamo in President Trump's second term, detained there by ICE with support from the military."
The expert also highlighted Trump's deportation of hundreds of men to El Salvador's infamous Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT)—based on often dubious claims that they belonged to the gang Tren de Aragua, which the president designated as a terrorist organization—as well as the "practice of disappearing people into secretive immigration detention" within the United States, and reports indicating that "abusive treatment in those facilities may amount to unlawful torture."
The final precedent Beavers explored is the "anti-democratic concentration of executive national security powers." She wrote that "the second Trump administration has made prompt use of this latitude" from federal courts since 9/11.
"This has included: manipulating the 'terrorist' designation lists in novel ways to include drug cartels without needing court approval, which has expanded the scope of people who can be deported as 'terrorists'; claiming a maximalist version of its immigration powers, daring courts to intervene; invoking the state secrets privilege to avoid accountability in cases challenging its deportation orders; and indefinitely detaining and torturing migrants," Beavers continued. "They have taken each of these actions without fear they will be meaningfully held accountable in court."
Based on her review, the professor concluded that "indisputably, administration officials are weaponizing the law in new and particularly indefensible ways to effectuate a widespread harassment and mass deportation campaign that is more akin to ethnic cleansing than routine immigration enforcement."
"Neither Congress nor the courts have meaningfully checked presidents or held them accountable for their expansive and spurious claims of war authorities, national security powers, and counterterrorism mechanisms to justify harmful and discriminatory practices against noncitizens and especially against people of color," she stressed. "In these and many other ways, US policymakers on a bipartisan basis built and sharpened the legal weapons that President Trump is now utilizing against immigrants."
"Using taxpayer dollars to toady to a wannabe-dictator is both pandering and pathetic," said one critic.
Even though President Donald Trump has long insisted that his proposed White House luxury ballroom would be funded by private donations, congressional Republicans unveiled legislation on Monday that would put US taxpayers on the hook for the project.
As reported by Punchbowl News, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released a proposal for a budget reconciliation package that includes $30 billion more in funds for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), $3.4 billion for Customs and Border Protection, and $2.5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security.
Tucked into the proposal is $1 billion for what is described as an "East Wing modernization project, including above-ground and below-ground security features."
Given that Trump is planning to build his ballroom on the area of the White House's East Wing that he demolished last year, this means that $1 billion in taxpayer money would be going to the president's vanity project.
Democratic officials immediately pounced on news that their Republican counterparts are planning to funnel $1 billion to the ballroom project, noting that the budget plan comes as Americans are struggling with the surging costs of energy and food.
"Zero dollars to lower costs," wrote Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee. "Zero dollars to protect your healthcare. A massive check for an out-of-control ICE, and $1 billion for Trump’s ballroom. This Republican budget bill is a disaster."
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) responded to the GOP ballroom plan by declaring, "Oh hell no."
"Spiking prices, SCOTUS attacking democracy, collapsing faith in the US government," Casten added, "and the GOP is prioritizing sending more money to murderous ICE agents and Trump's ballroom vanity project. This is offensive."
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) contrasted the GOP finding money to fund the ballroom with its unwillingness to extend enhanced subsidies for Americans who buy health insurance through exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act.
"Add the ballroom to the laundry list of things Trump said someone else would pay for," Ansari wrote. "Ultimately, of course, it’s always the American people footing the bill for his outrageous pet projects. A $1BN price tag while he rips away your healthcare. Sickening."
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) welcomed the chance to have his Republican colleagues go on the record in favor of funding the ballroom.
"Just flagging that now everyone gets an up or down vote on the ballroom!" he wrote.
Elected Democrats weren't the only ones to hammer the GOP for the proposal to fund Trump's ballroom.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, called the GOP plan a "corrupt absurdity" that would make taxpayers shell out $1 billion for the president's "grandiose, bombastic, vanity project."
"Using taxpayer dollars to toady to a wannabe-dictator is both pandering and pathetic," added Gilbert, who decried the plans for increased ICE funding as "abhorrent."
Kristen Crowell, executive director of Families Over Billionaires, denounced the ballroom funding plan as "a glaring symbol of misplaced priorities and grift," while also calling attention to other harmful aspects of the GOP's budget proposal.
"At a time when families are struggling to afford housing, child care, and other basic necessities," Crowell said, "the White House and Republicans in Congress are proposing to pour tens of billions of dollars into an already bloated and unaccountable deportation machine—while also carving out funding for the president’s own luxury projects."