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Wowza: Food Fight Clean-Up In Wingnut Aisle 47
In what was dubbed a "grievance Olympics," "conference of clowns" and "Wrestlemania with Podcasters," the noxious mucky-mucks of MAGA assembled for the first time since Charlie Kirk's death at an ostensibly celebratory AmericaFest that swiftly cratered into a toxic mess of orcs hating on each other. Despite the blinding glitz, savage barbs flew: Anti-Semite! Islam whore! Epstein flack! A coward! A cancer! And nonsense-vomiting. One viewer: "Holy shit, America." The Nazi kids are not all right.
Last weekend's public, ugly, inevitable fracturing of a once-lockstep right for all to see came at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference at Phoenix Convention Center. Billed as "a powerful celebration of faith, freedom, and the legacy of our founder" - though others called it "brownshirts in the desert" - it had Kirk plastered everywhere. Outside, banners urged "MAKE AMERICA CHARLIE KIRK"; inside, a huge portrait proclaimed, "WE ARE ALL CHARLIE KIRK"; nearby, weirdly, a Charlie Kirk murder re-enactment tent was set up for fans to take selfies in a spot just like where he was shot and killed. Wonkette: "Normal youth conference things!" About a third of the reported 30,000 in attendance, a "wretched hive of scum and villainy," were high school and college students who evidently have yet to find a life of non-malignant purpose.
Amidst the desperate, shrieking, best-is-yet-to-come! decor - omnipresent flashing red, white and blue, flashy pyrotechnics, gushing fountains, choking smoke bombs, glittering grifting widow in long blond locks and billowing gold and silver - the event quickly descended into a vicious gripefest where some of the world's most awful people - Carlson, Bannon, Don Jr., Megyn Kelly - furiously torched each other. Oddly, many focused their ire on a missing foil, podcaster Candace Owens, who'd been deemed too out there to even be invited for her lurid conspiracy theories about Kirk's death; she's charged it was choreographed by Israel and Turning Point bad actors, Egyptian airplanes have been following Erika Kirk for years, the public is being "gaslit," and police evidence to the contrary is "fake and gay." (LOL, sorta).
Leading off the squalid crack-up was Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro, who ripped pretty much everyone else as anti-Semitic "frauds," "grifters" and "charlatans" who have put the conservative movement "in serious danger." He called Steve Bannon "a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein,” blasted Tucker Carlson's recent interview with "Hitler apologist, Nazi-loving, anti-American piece of refuse" Nick Fuentes - which over 7 million people watched - as an act of cowardice and "moral imbecility," and said Candace Owens "has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years."
Then Owens, online because unwelcome, called Shapiro "a miserable imp," whose remarks made her "more certain" that Israel was involved with Kirk's death.
Then Bannon trashed Shapiro for being "a cancer, and that cancer spreads. It metastasizes." Mocking Shapiro for trying to take over first Breitbart, now Turning Point, he snarled, "Stop playing patty-cake. Let's get down to it."
Then Carlson ripped Shapiro for being "pompous." Listening backstage, he said he laughed at Shapiro the way you would "when your dog starts doing your taxes." He also blasted former accomplices for "fake race wars" and "attacking millions of people because they're Muslims...It's disgusting. What the hell are you doing? You should not attack people." He added that calls to "de-platform" anyone at a Charlie Kirk event were "hilarious" when debate was (allegedly) "the whole point of Charlie's life."
Then Bosch Fawstin, creator of the anti-jihad cartoon superhero PIGMAN, assailed Tucker online: "Fresh from his most recent visit to his beloved Qatar, and after Muslims murdered Jews in Australia, Islam whore @TuckerCarlson yells at Americans to stop 'attacking Americans because they’re Muslim' to a silent crowd."
Then Rev. Jordan Wells castigated Shapiro, going full Nazi Kanye: “F**K YOU Ben Shapiro and the midget horse you rode in on. Ben IS the Synagogue of Satan...Jews aren’t chosen anymore."
Then Megyn Kelly slammed Shapiro (or maybe also Owens) with, "Only cowards take to the national stage to attack their 'friends' without so much as a phone call," like when the girl who was the head of our middle-school chorus told me she was going to take all my friends away...I helped make him a star."
In a rare, startling break from the rancorous fray, the equally startlingly brown Vivek Ramaswamy then decried all the raging racism, arguing the idea of a “heritage American” is ridiculous, and immigrants who just received citizenship are as American as anyone else: "We believe in ideals." The audience, silent and dubious, largely ignored him.
Then whew, Don Jr. clumsily lumbered back into the mud by arguing the "real enemy" wasn't any of these creeps but "the radical left that murdered Charlie," though of course they didn't. Ever cringey, he called up his dad, shouting out to “Mr. President,” so Trump could, ever abusive, praise Charlie and menace his idiot first-born: "I hope my son’s doing a good job representing me. Otherwise, I’ll have to say ‘You’re fired, Don.' So thank you very much."
Other odd ducks popped up to offer their malevolent insights. Laura Loomer stormed she would not support any candidate "who brings Tucker Qatarlson on the campaign trail. If you aren’t willing to publicly call Islam a death cult, I can’t vote for you." Russell Brand - what happened to him? - attacked vaccines and sorta commended Fuentes and Owens: "They’re Christians like you and me. They’re broken human beings like you and me." The few merciful in the crowd applauded.
Online, also (mostly) unwelcome, Nick Fuentes lambasted the sinking, "do-nothing" Trump, his latest bonkers speech, the Epstein files, the Reiner baseness, the relentless "SCAM": "He’s not delivering. All he’s doing is talking. Everyone hates this administration. The whole thing is a bait and switch. A never-ending advertisement...The magic is gone." Also largely gone, MTG echoed him, blasting Shapiro attacking Tucker and Bondi redacting Epstein: "People are raging and walking away."
Still, into the vitriolic mayhem, dreamily, spookily smiling, with God on her side and Charlie on her shoulder, wafted the gold-festooned widow Erika Kirk, aka "Princess Griftsalot." Between the group's assets, Charlie's estate, and sympathy donations, the former Liberty U "Christo mouthpiece" and Arizona beauty queen and glossy new head of Turning Point is now worth about $100 million dollars. After Charlie's death, media reports suggested she'd bring more young women into the MAGA fold - "Conservative women see the future" - but most still voted for Kamala, evidently unmoved by Kirk's call and perfect make-up to leave careers behind and "submit" to their husbands. But MAGA remains entranced. Onstage, Shapiro burbled that "to judge the goodness of a man is to see the goodness of his wife and children," and Erika is "unsurpassed."
But, like many of us, not great with tech issues. Gliding onstage in a glam gold lamé suit amidst erupting fireworks and wild applause, her hair looped in a blonde crown of thorns, she fumbled witeFesth her iPad, couldn't turn it on and wryly announced, "You know, the enemy has thrown a lot of curve balls at us, and now one of them is my entire speech has been wiped." (Antifa Hacks 'R Us!) After lamenting its lost "stats (and) things we have going on," she decided "we're just gonna wing it," awkwardly roamed the stage, and happily declared that, speech or no, "Charlie is sitting in one of those back seats." Later, she managed to laugh off both "the greatest Freudian slip of all time" - presenting a Charlie Kirk Courage Award to a student, she praised him for "persisting with the same grift" - and the flub of Nicki Minaj calling J.D. "an assassin. Trilled Erika, "God is good!"
Kirk notably ended her appearance by proclaiming, "We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected," though God knows why anyone would choose to lift up the racist, unprincipled "mutton-loaf," "professional embarrassment" and "greatest example in our nation’s history of ignorant, unqualified and incompetent people being rewarded for their pigmentation." Speaking of: Appearing late in HateFest, JD went from dog-whistle to bullhorn by proudly boasting of a new America where, "You don't have to apologize for being white (supremacist) anymore." The rabid crowd roared, grateful to be free - Thank God almighty we are free at last - of the longtime shackles of white oppression. Online, a gazillion people reported they'd never felt the need to apologize for being white, though some conceded JD may have been asked to apologize for being an awful human being.
Because he's evidently never heard of the First Amendment or George Washington's vow of a country that "gives to bigotry no sanction,” Vance also made the outrageous claim, "The only thing that has truly served as an anchor (of) America is that we have been, and by the grace of God always will be, a Christian nation." Adding to his Christofascism, he slammed progressive Senate candidates Graham Platner in Maine and Jasmine Crockett in Texas - "We're gonna kick their ass" - declined to condemn MAGA extremists as long as they "love America" - ie: Nazis welcome - touted the regime's deportation, vaccine and anti-trans atrocities, blamed "far left" Dems for Kirk's death (again, not) and, the next day, lashed out at both Nick Fuentes and Jen Psaki for "attacking" Usha, sneering, "They can eat shit. That's my official policy as vice-president of the United States." He sounds nice.
On Sunday, unholy Mike Johnson declared the vituperative event "a defining moment" and an "epic battle (to) determine the future of our great republic." He also said he's going to work to put up a Charlie Kirk statue in D.C., because that's really what America needs right now. This, then, is what came of the latest, meanest fascist food fight: A promised statue of a bigot, a consensus Nazis are OK by us, the lingering fumes of many feuds among execrable humans. And the mystifying drop of Erika Kirk's "worldwide exclusive" "Debut Music Video" - though she made one in 2012 where she maybe lied a bit - "and it is straight fire!" It is also deeply, incomprehensibly bizarre, an AI, badly dubbed, make-up-slathered, insensate non-look-alike dabbing her eyes with dollar bills and a fake handkerchief, pushing a wheelbarrow of money, coyly babbling, "Where's my spotlight? Buy my book. This mascara don't run. Give me privacy or I will cry. Boss babes always lie." Say what? This timeline is killin' us.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Trump 'Taking a Sledgehammer' to One of World's Most Vital Climate Research Center, Scientists Warn
One US House Democrat pledged Tuesday night that Colorado officials will fight the Trump administration's latest attack on science "with every legal tool that we have" after top White House budget adviser Russell Vought announced a decision to break up a crucial climate research center in Boulder.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) called the decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) "a deeply dangerous" action.
"NCAR is one of the most renowned scientific facilities in the WORLD—where scientists perform cutting-edge research every day," said Neguse. "We will fight this reckless directive."
Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the National Science Foundation (NSF), which contracts the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to run NCAR, "will be breaking up" the center and has begun a "comprehensive review," with "vital activities such as weather research" being moved to another entity.
He added that NCAR is "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
But scientists pointed to the center's 65-year history of making major advances in climate research and developing systems that scientists use regularly.
NCAR developed GPS dropsondes, which are dropped from the center's aircraft into the eye of hurricanes to gather crucial data and improve forecasts, as well as severe weather warnings and analyses of the economic impacts that weather can bring, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, told USA Today, which first reported on the plan to dismantle the facility.
Neguse also called the decision to shutter NCAR "blatantly retaliatory." The breakup of the center was announced days after President Donald Trump announced his plan to pardon Tina Peters, despite uncertainty over his authority to do so. The former county clerk was convicted in Colorado court on felony charges of allowing someone to access secure voting system data—part of an effort to prove the baseless conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Trump attacked Colorado's Democratic governor, Jared Polis, over the Peters case last week, calling him "incompetent" and "pathetic."
Also on Tuesday, the administration announced it was canceling $109 million in environmental transportation grants for Colorado that were aimed at boosting investment in electric vehicles, rail improvements, and other research.
Writer Benjamin Kunkel said the dismantling of NCAR is evidently "what happens to a state whose leading officials do accept climate science... and don't accept that Trump won the 2020 election."
Polis said Tuesday that his government had not received any communication from the White House about the NCAR review and dismantling, but "if true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked."
"Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science," he said. "NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The White House Tuesday said it objected to UCAR's "woke direction," including its efforts to "make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered" via the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences and wind turbine research that aims to "better understand and predict the impact of weather conditions and changing climate on offshore wind production.”
The administration also said the review of NCAR will eliminate "green new scam research activities"—green energy research completed by many of the center's 830 employees.
Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe warned that the dismantling of NCAR was an attack on "quite literally our global mothership."
"NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes—the largest community climate model in the world," said Hayhoe. "Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."
Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry said the center is "crucial to cutting-edge meteorology and improvements in weather forecasting."
"It's far, far bigger than a 'climate' research lab," he said. "This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face."
The president this year has also pushed massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where major climate and weather research takes place. The cuts have come as 2024 has been named the hottest year on record and scientists have warned that planetary heating has contributed to recent weather disasters.
“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR," UCAR president Antonio Busalacchi told the Washington Post, "would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters."
'An Abject Failure': Economists Trash Trump's Disastrous Job Creation Record in Year-End Reviews
President Donald Trump has justified his historically high tariffs on foreign goods by promising that they would lead to a boom in domestic manufacturing jobs in the US.
However, in year-end reviews of the US job market, three economists make the case that Trump's record on creating manufacturing jobs has been a massive bust.
Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and a former member of President Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, argued in his personal newsletter on Friday that the Trump administration's efforts to reorganize the US labor market away from service sector jobs have completely failed.
In particular, he found that jobs in manufacturing, mining, and logging have all declined throughout the first year of Trump's second term, while jobs in construction have remained mostly flat after years of steady growth during former President Joe Biden's administration.
What's more, the administration's stated goal of opening up more jobs for native-born US workers by conducting mass deportations of immigrant workers has also flopped, as native-born unemployment has been higher in 2025 than in either of the last two years.
"The bleak irony is that even after sacrificing real prosperity to chase this 4chan-level political economy, they still won’t achieve their goal," Konczal concluded. "The jobs aren’t coming back, the wages aren’t rising, and family formation won’t be rescued by trying to rewind the labor market to a world that never existed in the first place."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman concurred with Konczal's assessment of the US labor market in an analysis published Monday in which he described Trump's record on jobs as "an abject failure."
Krugman argued that Trump's war on clean energy projects is almost certainly making the situation even worse by killing blue-collar manufacturing and construction jobs in the wind and solar industries.
"Trump has scrapped Biden’s green energy policies in favor of tariffs and fossil fuels," Krugman noted. "But it isn’t working. Instead, employment in 'manly' sectors has fallen since Trump took office."
Additionally, said Krugman, Trump's plan to use tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs to the US was always destined to fail given the realities of how modern economies work.
"In the modern world nations mostly don’t sell each other completed consumer goods," he explained. "Instead, the majority of trade involves sales of goods that are used to produce other goods... What this means in practice is that tariffs, which raise the prices of those capital goods and inputs, raise the production costs of US manufacturers, in many cases making them less competitive with foreign producers."
Ball State University economist Michael J. Hicks, in a column published Monday by the Indianapolis Star, also pointed the finger at Trump's tariffs when explaining his failure to revive US manufacturing.
Hicks argued that the damage the president's policies have done to manufacturing won't be undone any time soon.
"The US is in the early days of a manufacturing contraction that will run through most of 2026, even if the tariffs are lifted today," he warned. "We should call it the deindustrialization of America. All of this flies in the face of the nonsensical claims of a manufacturing renaissance or onshoring that would bring factory jobs back to the US."
Trump 'Sends a Dangerous Message' With 'America First' Diplomat Purge, Says Union
Following Politico's Friday reporting that "the Trump administration is recalling a number of career ambassadors appointed by former President Joe Biden," several news outlets confirmed Monday that the purge is affecting at least 29 diplomats.
"This is a standard process in any administration," an unnamed senior official at the US Department of State claimed to multiple journalists. "An ambassador is a personal representative of the president, and it is the president's right to ensure that he has individuals in these countries who advance the 'America First' agenda."
However, Nikki Gamer, a spokesperson for the diplomats' union, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), told the New York Times that "those affected report being notified abruptly, typically by phone, with no explanation provided."
"That method is highly irregular," she said. "The lack of transparency and process breaks sharply with long-standing norms."
Gamer told Reuters that "abrupt, unexplained recalls reflect the same pattern of institutional sabotage and politicization our survey data shows is already harming morale, effectiveness, and US credibility abroad."
In a statement, the AFSA added: "To remove these senior diplomats without cause or justification sends a dangerous message. It tells our public servants that loyalty to country is no longer enough—that experience and oath to the Constitution take a back seat to political loyalty."
According to the Associated Press:
Africa is the continent most affected by the removals, with ambassadors from 13 countries being removed: Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritius, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, and Uganda.
Second is Asia, with ambassadorial changes coming to six countries: Fiji, Laos, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Vietnam affected.
Four countries in Europe (Armenia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovakia) are affected; as are two each in the Middle East (Algeria and Egypt); South and Central Asia (Nepal and Sri Lanka); and the Western Hemisphere (Guatemala and Suriname).
Noting that there are about 80 vacant ambassadorships, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) accused President Donald Trump of "giving away US leadership to China and Russia by removing qualified career ambassadors who serve faithfully no matter who's in power."
Eric Rubin, a retired career diplomat and former AFSA president, similarly highlighted that over half of US embassies won't have a confirmed ambassador, which he called "a serious insult to the countries affected, and a huge gift to China."
"This has never happened in the 101-year history of the US Foreign Service," Rubin told CNN. "Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president. But every president has kept most career professional ambassadors in place until their successors are confirmed by the Senate."
"The ambassadors who have been dismissed will mostly have to retire, which means the State Department will lose a large number of our most senior, experienced, and accomplished professionals," he explained. "This is bad for our diplomacy, bad for our national security, and bad for our influence in the world."
Progressive Jews Decry ADL 'Mamdani Monitor' for Conflating Israel Criticism With Antisemitism
The heads of three left-leaning US Jewish groups on Monday admonished the Anti-Defamation League after the controversial watchdog once again conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism in its latest report on New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and his transition team.
The Anti-Defamation League noted approvingly in its updated "Mamdani Monitor" that "at least 25 individuals" in the democratic socialist's transition team "have a past relationship with the ADL or partner organizations, or a history of supporting the Jewish community."
The group also appreciated that "Mamdani's team can and will respond appropriately" to actual incidents of antisemitism, pointing to last week's resignation of Catherine Almonte Da Costa, Mamdani's former director of appointments, following the revelation of antisemitic social media posts she published in the early 2010s.
However, the ADL said it remains "deeply concerned" by Mamdani's statements and actions, highlighting what the group claimed were "many examples of individuals who have engaged in some type of antisemitic, anti-Zionist, or anti-Israel activities and/or have ties to groups that engage in such activities" among the mayor-elect's transition team appointees.
"These activities include spreading classic antisemitic tropes, vilifying those who support Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland, seeking to undermine the legitimacy and security of the Jewish state, and more," the ADL said, adding that "at least a dozen transition committee appointees expressed support for the anti-Israel campus encampments in the spring of 2024."
The Mamdani Monitor also noted that "at least 20% of the 400-plus appointees have ties to anti-Zionist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which openly glorifies Hamas’ October 7 attack... Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a fringe group that advocates for the eradication of Zionism and demonizes Zionists; Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a New York-based radical anti-Zionist organization... and others."
Asked about the report during a Monday press conference, Mamdani said, "We must distinguish between antisemitism and criticism of the Israeli government."
“The ADL’s report oftentimes ignores this distinction, and in doing so it draws attention away from the very real crisis of antisemitism we see not only just in our city but in the country at large,” he continued. “When we’re thinking about critiques of Zionism and different forms of political expression, as much of what this report focuses on, there’s a wide variety of political opinion, even within our own 400-plus transition committee.”
Critics say the ADL's claim in the update that it "has long distinguished between legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies and antisemitism" is belied by not only the Mamdani Monitor's language, but also its own significantly expanded definition of antisemitism and antisemitic incidents, which include protests against Israel’s US-backed genocidal war on Gaza.
Jamie Beran, CEO of the progressive group Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, said in an X thread that "we were disappointed but not surprised to see today’s ADL report continue their conflation of criticism of the Israeli government’s actions with antisemitism" and the group's "favoring of Trumpian tactics over bridge building and its prioritization of fearmongering over the safety of American Jews and our neighbors."
Beran continued:
The ADL of today seems to have three interests: keeping their right wing megadonors happy, protecting the current Israeli government’s violent far-right agenda by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and cozying up to [US President Donald] Trump to stay close to power.
None of this fights antisemitism. Their McCarthyist Mamdani Monitor is the first of its kind because the ADL chose not to deploy a similar tactic when their bedfellows offered Nazi salutes, hired and pardoned neo-Nazis, and continued to openly spread dangerous antisemitic conspiracy myths.
"If the ADL truly wanted to fight antisemitism—like we do every day—they would actually confront it at its roots and how it works alongside all forms of bigotry, not instrumentalize it for an unpopular political agenda that has nothing to do with Jewish safety," Beran added.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Jewish group J Street, also rejected the ADL's "continued conflation."
“J Street continues to be deeply concerned by the ADL’s ongoing use of its so-called ‘Mamdani Monitor,’ which goes well beyond combating antisemitism and too often conflates legitimate political speech with hate," Ben-Ami said in a statement Monday.
Ben-Ami asserted that there is "something deeply wrong when major Jewish leaders and institutions focus disproportionate attention on left-of-center activists’ views on Israel while failing to apply the same scrutiny to the Trump administration and MAGA leaders, whose blatant antisemitism and ties to white nationalist movements pose a clear and dangerous threat to American Jews."
"Our communal institutions should fight antisemitism consistently and credibly, wherever it appears—not selectively, and not in ways that inflame fear or deepen division," he added.
Another liberal Jewish antisemitism watchdog, Nexus Project, also decried the ADL update, which it said "repeatedly blurs the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism."
J Street among the groups supporting the Antisemitism Response and Prevention Act (ARPA), legislation introduced last week by US Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Becca Balint (D-Vt.), and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) in the wake of the Sydney Hanukkah massacre.
According to Nadler's office, the bill "clearly states that it is against the policy of the United States to use antisemitism as grounds to pursue ulterior political agendas, including attacks on educational institutions, suppressing constitutionally protected speech, or any other enforcement of ideological conformity."
ARPA stands in stark contrast with the Antisemitism Awareness Act (ARA), which was introduced in 2023 by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ, Max Miller (R-Ohio), and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in the House of Representatives and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) in the Senate.
The bill would require the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism when determining whether alleged harassment is motivated by anti-Jewish animus.
The ADL has pushed a wide range of governments, institutions, and organizations to adopt the IRHA definition, which conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial apartheid state engaged in illegal occupation and colonization, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
House lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the legislation last year; however, the bill remains stalled in the Senate.
Zionism—the settler-colonial movement for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—is being rejected by a growing number of Jewish Americans due to the racism, settler-colonialism, illegal occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide perpetrated by Israel and rooted in claims of divine right and favor.
Jewish-led groups like JVP, IfNotNow, and Jews for Economic and Racial Justice (JERJ) have been at the forefront of pro-Palestine demonstrations since the start of Israel's war and siege on Gaza, which have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing; 2 million others displaced, starved, and sickened; and most of the coastal strip in ruins.
Israel's Continued Blockade on Medical Supplies Worsening 'Destruction' of Gaza's Health System
With the Israeli military having violated its "ceasefire" agreement with Hamas at least 875 times since it was finalized in October, and aid groups warning that everyone in Gaza remains at risk of starvation, the exclave's healthcare system desperately needs to treat people impacted by the ongoing humanitarian disaster—but medical experts there warn Israel's blockade has left many hospitals barely functioning.
On Tuesday, the director-general of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Munir al-Barsh, told Al Jazeera that the healthcare system is suffering from "widespread shortages of medicines and medical supplies, particularly surgical consumables needed to perform operations."
The situation is "tragic and horrific," al-Barsh told the outlet.
After Israeli attacks on nearly all of Gaza's healthcare facilities during the war, 34 hospitals and 125 other health centers have been badly damaged. The health system has lost about 1,700 medical professionals who were killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and at least 80 doctors and other providers have been detained by Israel since 2023.
About 70% of the aid trucks that Israel has allowed into Gaza since October have carried food; the other 30% have brought in a variety of medical equipment, shelter supplies, tents, clothings, and other items. Israel is failing to allow in the agreed-upon number of medical aid trucks, Al Jazeera reported.
Earlier this month, al-Barsh told Al Jazeera that the medical supplies allowed in remain limited, with "antibiotics, IV solutions, and surgical materials" banned.
“We are facing a situation in which 54% of essential medicines are unavailable, and 40% of the drugs for surgeries and emergency care—the very medications we rely on to treat the wounded—are missing,” al-Barsh said.
Dr. Alaa Helles, director of pharmaceutical care at the Ministry of Health, also said Sunday that 52% of medications on an "essential list" were "zero stock."
Director of Pharmaceutical Care at the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Alaa Helles, says there is a severe shortage of vital medications in Gaza. The highest it has been in two years. Israel is not allowing medicine into Gaza. pic.twitter.com/VuySKCAtkf
— Samira Mohyeddin سمیرا (@SMohyeddin) December 21, 2025
On Tuesday, al-Barsh added that three-quarters of the total supplies needed in hospitals are unavailable, while power outages and shortages of generators are making it nearly impossible for healthcare workers to help critically injured and ill people.
He said Israel must open border crossings both to allow more supplies in and to permit the transport of thousands of people who are on long waiting lists to receive treatment outside of Gaza.
Nearly 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza are on the lists, including 18,500 who have received approval from the World Health Organization but have yet to be referred by Israeli authorities for security approval. About 3,700 of those on waiting lists are in critical condition and about 4,300 are children, Al Jazeera reported.
Al-Barsh told the outlet that at least 1,156 patients have died while waiting for security clearance from Israel.
The director-general's comments came a day after the United Nations issued a similar warning about the thousands of people waiting for treatment outside of Gaza and the "destruction of health infrastructure" in the exclave.
The destruction of health infrastructure and severe shortages are exacerbating #Gaza’s health crisis. @WHO says more than 1,000 patients have died while waiting for medical evacuation from the enclave since July 2024. pic.twitter.com/8rbfhWsJeU
— UN News (@UN_News_Centre) December 22, 2025
"My daughter is ill and suffers from kidney failure," a mother named Balqees Abu Ajwa told the UN News Center. "The crossings are closed and medical supplies are scarce. The medical equipment that could help my daughter stay alive is not available. My daughter has been in this condition for 20 days. She is exhausted."
Latest GDP Figures Show Rich Reaping Rewards as Working Class Continues to Suffer Under Trump
"People at the top are doing fine, people in the middle and lower income brackets are struggling a bit, to say the least."
President Donald Trump's allies this week hyped up newly released data showing that the US economy grew by more than 4% in the third quarter of 2025, but economists and journalists who dove into the report's finer details found some troubling signs.
Ron Insana, a finance reporter and a former hedge fund manager, told MS Now's Stephanie Ruhle on Tuesday night that there is a "split economy" in which growth is being driven primarily by spending from the top 20% of income earners, whom he noted accounted for 63% of all spending in the economy.
On the other side, Insana pointed to retail sales data that painted a very different picture for those on the lower end of the income scale.
"When you look at lower income individuals, nearly half of them are using 'buy-now-pay-later' for their holiday shopping," he said. "So we have this real split... People at the top are doing fine, people in the middle and lower income brackets are struggling a bit, to say the least."
Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, also took note of this split in the US economy, and he cited the latest data showing that real gross domestic income, which more directly measures worker compensation over total economic output, grew at just 2.4% during the third quarter.
Baker also said that most of the gains in gross domestic income showed up at the top of the income ladder, while workers' income growth remained stagnant.
The theme of a split economy also showed up in an analysis from Politico financial services reporter Sam Sutton published on Wednesday, which cited recent data from Bank of America showing that the bank's "top account holders saw take-home pay climb 4% over the last year, while income growth for poorer households grew just 1.4%."
Sutton said that this divergence in fortunes between America's wealthy and everyone else was showing up in polling that shows US voters sour on the state of the economy.
"In survey after survey, a majority of Americans say they’re straining under the pressure of rising living expenses and a softening job market," Sutton said. "The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says low-income consumers have 'substantially' higher levels of credit card debt than they did before the pandemic. Even as growth and asset prices soar, Trump’s approval ratings are sagging."
Economist Paul Krugman on Tuesday argued in his Substack newsletter that one reason for this large disparity in economic outcomes has to do with the US labor market, which has ground to a halt in recent months, lowering workers' options for employment and thus lowering their ability to push prospective employers for higher wages.
"Trump may claim that we are economically 'the hottest country in the world,' but the truth is that we last had a hot labor market back in 2023-4," Krugman explained. "At this point, by contrast, we have a 'frozen' job market in which workers who aren’t already employed are having a very hard time finding new jobs, a sharp contrast with the Biden years during which workers said it was very easy to find a new job."
None of these caveats about the latest gross domestic product (GDP) data stopped US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick from going on Fox News on Tuesday night and falsely claiming that a 4.3% rise in GDP meant that "Americans overall—all of us—are going to earn 4.3% more money."
Lutnick: The US economy grew 4.3%. What that means is that Americans overall—all of us—are going to earn 4.3% more money. pic.twitter.com/SIFi99NRBX
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 24, 2025
In reality, GDP is a sum of a nation's consumer spending, government spending, net exports, and total investments, and is not directly correlated with individuals' personal income.
Before Executing 2 Shipwrecked Sailors, US Admiral Consulted Top Military Lawyer: Report
A military spokesperson refused to comment on what the admiral told Congress beyond confirming that "he did inform them that during the strike he sought advice from his lawyer and then made a decision."
The journalist who initially revealed that President Donald Trump's administration killed shipwrecked survivors of its first known boat bombing reported Tuesday that the admiral in charge consulted with a US military lawyer before ordering another strike on the two alleged drug traffickers who were clinging to debris in the Caribbean Sea.
Just days after Trump announced the September 2 bombing on social media, Intercept journalist Nick Turse exposed the follow-up strike that killed survivors, citing US officials. The attack has sparked fresh alarm in recent weeks, since late November reporting from the Washington Post and CNN that Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley ordered the second strike to comply with an alleged spoken directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to kill everyone on board, which Hegseth has denied.
After the first strike, "Bradley—then the head of Joint Special Operations Command—sought guidance from his top legal adviser," according to Turse. He interviewed several sources familiar with the admiral's recent classified briefing to Congress, former members of the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) Corps, and ex-colleagues of the JSOC staff judge advocate to whom Bradley turned, Col. Cara Hamaguchi.
As Turse reported:
How exactly [Hamaguchi] responded is not known. But Bradley, according to a lawmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified briefing, said that the JSOC staff judge advocate deemed a follow-up strike lawful. In the briefing, Bradley said no one in the room voiced objections before the survivors were killed, according to the lawmaker.
Five people familiar with briefings given by Bradley, including the lawmaker who viewed the video, said that, logically, the survivors must have been waving at the US aircraft flying above them. All interpreted the actions of the men as signaling for help, rescue, or surrender.
Bradley, now the chief of Special Operations Command, declined to comment, the reporter noted. SOCOM also declined to make Hamaguchi available, though the command's director of public affairs, Col. Allie Weiskopf, said: "We are not going to comment on what Admiral Bradley told lawmakers in a classified hearing. He did inform them that during the strike he sought advice from his lawyer and then made a decision."
Tuesday's reporting caught the attention of the former longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Kenneth Roth, who has stressed that not only is it "blatantly illegal to order criminal suspects to be murdered rather than detained," but "the initial attack was illegal too."
Various other experts and US lawmakers have similarly condemned the dozens of strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean since September—which as of Monday have killed at least 105 people, according to the Trump administration—as "war crimes, murder, or both," as the Former JAGs Working Group put it after the Hegseth reporting last month.
"Extrajudicial executions," declared public interest lawyer Robert Dunham on social media Wednesday, sharing Turse's new report and tagging the groups Amnesty International USA, HRW, and Reprieve US, as well as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and independent experts who report to the UN Human Rights Council.
Those experts on Wednesday rebuked Trump's recent aggression toward Venezuela, including not only the boat strikes but also threats to bomb the South American country and attempts to impose an oil blockade. They said that "the illegal use of force, and threats to use further force at sea and on land, gravely endanger the human right to life and other rights in Venezuela and the region."
'Merry Christmas!' Declares Trump Moments After Threat to Destroy Broadcasters Who Air Criticism of Him
Trump's latest threat came shortly after he once against lashed out at late-night host Stephen Colbert.
President Donald Trump sent out a cheery Christmas greeting early Wednesday morning just three minutes after threatening to shut down US broadcasters if their programs did not provide him with more positive coverage.
In a Truth Social post sent out at 12:36 am, Trump renewed his threat to once again strip broadcast licenses from networks that cover or portray him and his administration in a negative light.
"If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows, are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated?" Trump wrote. "I say, YES!"
Just three minutes afterward, at 12:39 am, Trump posted an all-caps message that read, "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!"
It is unclear what sparked Trump's latest threat, although shortly before it was posted he lashed out at comedian Stephen Colbert, whose time hosting CBS' "The Late Show" is set to end in May 2026.
"Stephen Colbert is a pathetic trainwreck, with no talent or anything else necessary for show business success," he wrote. "Now, after being terminated by CBS, but left out to dry, he has actually gotten worse, along with his nonexistent ratings. Stephen is running on hatred and fumes. A dead man walking! CBS should, 'put him to sleep,' NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!"
While Trump frequently delivered angry rants about media coverage throughout his first term, his words appear to be carrying significantly more weight during his second term.
For example, the announcement of Colbert's cancellation raised eyebrows earlier this year because it came shortly before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) signed off on an $8 billion deal for CBS parent company Paramount to be bought by Skydance Media, the company founded by David Ellison, son of Trump ally Larry Ellison.
Weeks after this, Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to rescind broadcast licenses for Disney-owned ABC unless it took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent Trump critic, off the air. Hours after Carr's threat, Kimmel's show was suspended before being put back on the air days later amid a public outcry.
Over the weekend, CBS News boss Bari Weiss spiked a segment on the network's flagship news program "60 Minutes" that cast a critical eye on the Trump administration for sending hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious El Salvadoran prison where they were allegedly subjected to abuse and torture.
Weiss' decision to at least temporarily quash the story came as Larry Ellison is making a hostile bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery that will once again need FCC approval in the future in order to succeed.