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One Racist Batshit Christo-Fascist Homeland Under God
In retrospect, Sunday's taxpayer-funded blasphemy fest to "rededicate" America as a Christian nation though it's not and never was looks ever more obscene amidst an unholy regime's mounting crimes and abuses. Its sectarian circus - ICE milled, vendors urged "WIVES SUBMIT," zealots screeched "We welcome Jesus!", speakers attested God is eager for the ballroom - just queasily re-shaped a 250-year-old America into the kind of country it once sought freedom from.
"Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving," a "constitutional abomination wrapped in layers of blasphemy and demagoguery," sought to proclaim America "One Nation Under God," but only a white male evangelical God; Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, commies, Jews, atheists, agnostics, black, brown, queer, Native people and even mainline Protestants need not apply. As such, it attacked what Jefferson deemed an unalienable right of conscience "which lies solely between Man & his God," defied the core constitutional tenet of separation of church and state, and "torpedoe(d) the best of American traditions - inclusivity and diversity" with, essentially, "a Jubilee of Christian Nationalism."
Its state-sponsored, right-wing fever dream marked the successful MAGA hijacking of Congress’ bipartisan, 2016 America250 commission, meant to honor the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and its core values of equality and agency before the law. Instead, Trump concocted his own Christo-fascist Freedom 250 to celebrate a racist, corporate, jingoistic narrative of America, rewriting history to create an imaginary, monolithic, jingoistic, white, male, Christian national identity that celebrates "God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history," and what is this inequality or oppression of which you speak?
Freedom 250 swiftly collected most of the $150 million appropriated by Congress, along with support from patriotic sponsors like ExxonMobil, Mastercard, Palantir, Amazon, Coinbase. Year-long festivities have included a weekly America Prays initiative; a series of Interior Department events celebrating “the triumph of the American spirit” plastered with flags, logos, Trump National Park passes; a fleet of nationwide “Freedom Trucks,” mobile museums offering right-wing takes on US history created with PragerU; a national Freedom 250 Patriot Games - Hunger Games anyone? - competition for high school athletes; a revamped Great American Farmers Market in DC with a "MAHA Monday."
On social media, meanwhile, DHS has begun declaring itself "One Homeland Under God," complete with image of church and cross and highlighted Bible verse; for April 19, it urged, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." The Washington Monument was transformed into “the world’s tallest birthday candle," with projections celebrating historic achievements by white men like Christopher Columbus and Henry Ford, with no black, Native, female people in sight. To re-enforce the white-centric narrative, organizers have also promised a Summer Surge of thousands more ICE and DHS thugs to make the nation still whiter.
Sunday's Jubilee continued the rebrand of a newly pristine, godly history, with 14 of 15 speakers Christian, arched stained-glass windows and a looming white cross all "glorifying the name of Jesus over our nation’s capital." "Our nation more than any other was shaped by the idea that faith brought freedom," said Marco Rubio in a prerecorded speech. "This is who we are." Virginia pastor Gary Hamrick concurred, but added the imaginary threat of a "spiritual war," perhaps best personified by the scary scattered signs of protesters urging, “Celebrate Democracy, Not Theocracy.” "This is a battle in our day between good and evil," he said. "Our hope is built on Jesus' blood."
Also, Jesus merch. As the faithful braved three-hour lines in the heat and prayed, arms lifted to the sky, vendors handed out "Jesus Saves" bracelets and buttons that said, “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.” There were "Thank you Jesus!" signs, a huge "Jesus Make America Godly Again" banner, $47 Freedom 250 baseball caps, t-shirts that read, "God Guns Family Freedom" and "Forever In Our Hearts, Charlie Kirk." "We welcome Jesus into this place!" declared one speaker. Another noted, "It's hard to believe it would take two centuries for the Lord to raise up a great man to bring that ballroom to stand where it needs to stand." (Jesus.)
Pete Hegseth,on video, was typically unshy about praising Jesus. He dubiously zeroed in on The Prayer at Valley Forge, a 1975 painting by Arnold Friberg of George Washington praying in the snow widely deemed a romanticized legend, not fact. Historians argue Washington was a deist and freemason who rarely mentioned God or Jesus, whose favorite Biblical quote - "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid" - symbolizes peace, safety, religious freedom, and who always prayed standing. Still, Hegseth ran with it: Washington "did not lose faith," and "let us pray as he did...without ceasing...on bended knee, for our Lord and savior Jesus Christ."
Trump took an even more sketchy approach: He went golfing and sent in a slurry, pre-taped Bible reading recycled from the last fake Christian event three weeks ago. Then, moments after it aired, the self-described peace president went on a frenzied, genocidal social media spree, posting on his crappy app over 30 times in two hours. He threatened Iran: "The Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them." He posted bizarre, AI, warmongering images: Manning a spacecraft, firing away with massive explosions and mushroom clouds, personally arresting an alien, a real one. Say what? Praise Jesus.
Still, spineless, smarmy, unholy Mike Johnson was the worst. Having already whined about "naysayers" who view Christian Nationalism as "a derogatory term," he gave a long hollow prayer about his task to "bring us straight to the Lord, whose mighty hand has been upon our (freest and most benevolent) nation since the very beginning." But now "sinister ideologies sow confusion among our people," attacking our history as "one of oppression and hypocrisy and failure." So "grant us the moral clarity to rise above partisan differences," says the guy who keeps shutting down Congress to block Dem policies. Finally, unconscionably, he prayed for “mercy upon our land.”
Mercy. He seeks mercy.
Mercy for the hundreds of people in the Congo and elsewhere dying of an Ebola outbreak after Trump gutted USAID and its dedicated outbreak response team because it helped people who aren't white, thus triggering what could be over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030?
Mercy for those killed at San Diego's biggest mosque amidst a Trump-fuelled rising tide of Islamophobia? Mercy for those ripped off or otherwise betrayed in a rabid mob by a $1.8 billion slush fund, or "pardon on steroids," in the "most brazen act of presidential corruption this century."
Mercy for the estimated 145,000 U.S. citizen brown children who had a parent detained by ICE and are now scattered across the country, or the 22,000 who lost both parents? Mercy for the woman, a domestic violence victim, detained and deported whom ICE is now blaming for the murder of her own child by her ex-partner?
Mercy for the 21-year-old Honduran with no criminal record just arrested and detained by ICE outside a New York immigration court less than 24 hours after a federal judge's ruling such arrests are illegal, because, as one ICE thug responded when shown the ruling, "We don't care"?
Mercy for 18-year-old, Chicago-born, Mexico-raised Kevin González, being treated in Chicago for metastatic stage-four colon cancer when his health began failing? His parents in Mexico sought emergency visas to travel to the US to say their final goodbyes; when DHS denied them, citing “previous unlawful entries into the US," in desperation they tried to cross the border without permission and were detained by ICE in Arizona. Kevin pleaded in vain for their release; ultimately, he checked himself out of the hospital and flew to his grandmother's home in Mexico to be with family at the end. Finally, in Kevin's last hours, a judge in Arizona ordered their release. They arrived at his bedside on the afternoon of May 9. His sobbing mom called him, “Chiquito," "little one”; his father knelt by his son's bed, asking for forgiveness if he ever let him down. Kevin died the next day.
Mercy? Does Mike Johnson want mercy for Kevin and his parents?
Fuck Mike Johnson and all his fucking odious cohort. Fuck their prayers, and their Jesus, and their cruelty, and their fucking despicable hypocrisy, which knows no bounds. What would Jesus do? Not this, any of it.
May 21, 2026
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Fuel Prices Have Spiked More in ‘Energy Independent’ US Than in Nations That Have Moved Away From Oil and Gas
Average gas prices in the United States are quickly climbing toward $5 per gallon this week as US President Donald Trump's war with Iran shows little sign of resolution.
Where average prices were about $2.98 the day before the war's launch, they had shot up to $4.48 as of Tuesday, according to AAA's gas price tracker, as Iran's restriction of ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz has squeezed global oil shipping and the shipping of other fuel sources like liquefied natural gas (LNG), causing global price hikes.
And while Trump has touted America’s supposed “energy independence” as an ace in the hole, achieved by ratcheting up fossil fuel production while canceling solar and wind power projects, data shows that the US has been hit harder by the price shocks than any other major economy in the world, with those that have embraced renewable energy being especially resilient.
Although the US leads the world in oil production by a large margin, data from JP Morgan Commodities research, analyzed Friday by MarketWatch, showed that between February 23 and April 27, the US experienced about a 42% increase in gas prices, the fifth-highest in the world.
"The spike in US gasoline prices over the past two months has outpaced everywhere except Southeast Asia, the region most dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf," explained Yahoo Finance geopolitics reporter Jake Conley.
Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader and managing director at CIBC Private Wealth, explained to MarketWatch last week that while increased fuel production gives the US a "buffer," oil is a global market and "it doesn’t operate in a vacuum." She said, "Global tightness and domestic bottlenecks still show up in gasoline prices."
Meanwhile, some of the countries that have best survived the price hikes include France and Spain, which derive large shares of their power from nuclear energy and renewables, respectively.
Craig Hanson and Jessica Isaacs, a pair of researchers at the World Resources Institute, explained last month that while a mix of factors is at play, countries less reliant on fossil fuels generally "find themselves in a better position to withstand the current crisis."
"Every country has homegrown access to at least two clean energy resources—the sun shines, and the wind blows just about everywhere at some point," they said. "The same cannot be said of oil and gas, where production is concentrated in a small number of countries and exposed to geopolitical disruption."
"Renewable resources like wind, solar, and geothermal have zero fuel costs, and the fuel cost of nuclear power is quite low. Again, the same cannot be said of fossil fuels, which have costs set by volatile global markets," they added. "These two advantages are why some of the world’s clean energy frontrunners are faring better than other countries amidst the Iranian energy crisis."
As Reuters reported in late April, the contrast between Europe's biggest gas guzzlers and green energy adopters is particularly stark.
While Albania has kept energy prices in check and even lowered them compared to last year by using its large system of hydroelectric dams, which supply much of its power, countries like Germany and Italy, which still rely heavily on gas, have seen electricity prices spike.
Hanson and Isaacs noted that while clean energy investments have helped soften the blow of global price shocks, the effects are not the same across the board. While price hikes for the electricity used to power factories, homes, and cars have been blunted by the availability of alternative energy sources, others, like heat—which are more reliant on natural gas—have still been affected.
Still, though, they said the crisis has shown that in addition to environmental sustainability, "clean energy systems’ greatest benefits today might actually be price stability and domestic energy resilience."
While Trump has continued his efforts to choke off any federal investment in renewable energy and double down on oil and gas production, other nations have taken the war’s price hikes as a sign to further accelerate their transition away from fossil fuels.
Germany and several other European Union members, for example, have announced expedited timelines to expand offshore wind and solar investments, explicitly citing the volatility in oil markets caused by the war.
Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the energy price shocks showed that "the only real energy independence from the Middle East is renewables."
May 05, 2026
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Landmark Study Finds Trump’s Mass Deportation Agenda Is Costing Americans Jobs
A landmark study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that President Donald Trump's mass deportation operations are actually costing Americans jobs, contrary to the White House's frequent claims that its anti-immigration agenda is helping US workers.
The NBER study, which was published last month and reported on by The New York Times Tuesday, claims to provide "the first national, causal empirical evidence on the labor market impacts of immigration enforcement in the second Trump administration," and finds that mass deportations have not resulted in more job offers for native-born Americans.
In fact, the study identifies "a negative and significant impact on employment of US-born male workers with at most a high-school education" who are working in industries that employ the most undocumented immigrants, including construction, agriculture, and manufacturing.
The study finds that instead of hiring more US-born workers in the absence of available undocumented workers—who may have been deported, left the country to avoid deportation, or have stayed home out of fear of immigration raids—employers are more likely to simply slow down economic activity altogether, which has a cascading impact on related industries.
"We see no evidence that employers increase wages to attract US-born workers to fill these jobs in the face of immigration enforcement," the researchers explain. "Instead, our results are consistent with employers reducing labor demand overall, including for jobs more often taken by US-born workers."
The NBER researchers also say that undocumented workers are more often than not complements to US workers, as they "are more likely than US-born individuals to work in jobs that are less desirable due to lower pay, on the job hazards, and irregular schedules."
University of Colorado, Boulder economist Chloe East, who co-authored the NBER study, told the New York Times on Tuesday that construction firms "view it as easier to reduce production, reduce the construction of new homes and new buildings in general, rather than try to increase wages for US-born workers."
East said that this would likely hurt efforts to build more housing in the US, telling the Times that "I assume we're going to see... a long-term shock to the construction sector" due to Trump's mass deportations.
Anirban Basu, chief economist at the Associated Builders and Contractors national trade organization, told the Times that he wasn't surprised by the finding that aggressive immigration raids shut down projects rather than open up new work for native-born Americans.
"Given high interest rates, given rising material prices and fewer people available to provide roofing, tiling, carpeting, and other flooring services," Basu said, "it renders fewer projects financially viable."
NPER's study echoes an analysis released last month by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which found that unemployment for US-born workers has increased since the start of Trump's second term, as the federal government has carried out its draconian deportation operations.
"Claims that mass deportations have helped US-born workers are simply inconsistent with the data," EPI wrote. "This is no surprise, given that economic research has repeatedly shown that increased immigration enforcement harms everyone in the labor market, including US-born workers."
May 19, 2026
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Amid Wave of Working-Class Victories, Poll Shows Platner With Clear Lead Over Collins
After a strong night for progressive candidates in Democratic primaries across the country on Tuesday, things are continuing to look up for Maine's presumptive Democratic Senate nominee, Graham Platner, as he seeks to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
A poll out Wednesday from the independent firm Pan Atlantic Research showed the 41-year-old former Marine leading the incumbent senator by a clear margin of 48%-41% in November's general election among likely voters.
It's a three-point jump in Platner's favor since the last Pan Atlantic poll in March, where he led with 44% of the vote to Collins' 40%. According to the New York Times' poll aggregator, it's the seventh straight poll to show Platner with a clear lead.
Wednesday's poll showed Platner having striking success with women and independent voters, where he leads Collins by margins of 19 points and 13 points, respectively.
But crucially, Platner is also tied with Collins among non-college-educated voters, who broke hard for President Donald Trump in 2024, even as former Vice President Kamala Harris ultimately took the three out of the state's four electoral college votes up for grabs in the election.
Platner's continued momentum—on a platform built around Medicare for All, tax hikes for billionaires, and an end to reckless and costly overseas military engagements—comes alongside a series of election results that Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of the left-wing advocacy group Our Revolution, said demonstrated that populist economic messaging from working-class candidates can galvanize voters.
“The throughline across many of these races is that voters are responding to candidates willing to directly challenge concentrated power, rising costs, political corruption, and the growing disconnect between working people and political establishments in both parties,” Geevarghese said.
"What’s notable is that this energy is manifesting in very different political terrains—from deep blue urban districts to tougher working-class and red-to-blue areas," he continued. "Whether it’s Bob Brooks speaking to economic frustration in Pennsylvania, Chris Rabb unapologetically confronting establishment politics and endless war, or Ruwa Romman building a grassroots organizing operation in Georgia, these campaigns reflect a growing appetite for candidates rooted in economic populism, movement politics, and multiracial working-class organizing.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly suggested Harris took all of Maine's four electoral votes in 2024. By winning more votes in the state's 2nd Congressional District, Trump secured one electoral vote while Harris took three by winning the 1st District and having more votes in the state overall.
May 20, 2026
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ACLU Urges Supreme Court to Stop Tennessee From 'Executing a Potentially Innocent Man'
The ACLU on Wednesday urged the US Supreme Court to intervene and block the state of Tennessee from executing a man who could be exonerated by DNA evidence.
In its plea to the court, the ACLU said that Tennessee is "sitting on unidentified DNA and fingerprint evidence" that could prove the innocence of Tony Carruthers, who has been on death row for three decades after being convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1996.
The ACLU has repeatedly asked for Carruthers' execution, which is scheduled for Thursday, to be postponed so that investigators can take between two and three weeks to examine potentially exculpatory forensic evidence.
Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, legal director of the ACLU of Tennessee, said the state had a duty to ensure that it had convicted the right man, and he pointed to troubling aspects of the case that should give courts pause before signing off on his execution.
“Mr. Carruthers was forced to represent himself at trial, and now faces death based on flimsy circumstantial evidence and unreliable witnesses," Cameron-Vaughn said. "Forensic evidence the state refuses to test could change everything. The Supreme Court must act now to stop Tennessee from taking an irreversible step while so many critical questions remain unanswered.”
Maria DeLiberato, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, argued that the Supreme Court is "the final safeguard between Tennessee and this irreversible injustice" that would come from executing someone for a crime they may not have committed.
"We are only hours away from the state of Tennessee executing a potentially innocent man while they are sitting on evidence that could prove who really committed this crime," DeLiberato said. "The court must stand firmly on the side of truth, fairness, and the basic principle that we should not take a life while serious questions of innocence remain unanswered and while readily available forensic testing could answer those very questions."
Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday said he would not intervene to stop Carruthers' execution, even after local faith leaders and past exonerees delivered a petition signed by more than 130,000 Americans asking him to reconsider.
May 20, 2026
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'Way Out of Line': 15+ Countries Slam Israel's 'Intolerable' Abuse of Gaza Flotilla Abductees
A growing number of countries—and even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—on Wednesday condemned far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's humiliation of people violently abducted in international waters from the latest Global Sumud Flotilla as it attempted to break the illegal blockade of Gaza.
Ben-Gvir posted a video on social media showing him joyfully waving an Israeli flag as he walked among detained activists, journalists, and others who were mostly kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs and their foreheads forced to the ground.
"They came with a lot of pride, as great heroes; look at what they look like now," Ben-Gvir says with glee. "No heroes, nothing. Terrorism supporters. I tell Netanyahu, give them to me for a long, long time."
The video shows one female detainee shouting, "Free, free Palestine!" as Ben-Gvir walks by. She is grabbed roughly by the head and forced into a squatting position.
Senior officials in countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Libya, the Maldives, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Portugal, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, and Turkey decried the treatment of their citizens and others seized from the flotilla off the coast of Cyprus.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni—whose strong support for Israel has tempered amid the Gaza genocide and slaughter in Lebanon—called the video "unacceptable."
"It is inadmissible that these demonstrators, including many Italian citizens, are subjected to this treatment that violates human dignity," she said. "The Italian government is immediately taking, at the highest institutional levels, all necessary steps to secure the immediate release of the Italian citizens involved."
"Italy further demands an apology for the treatment reserved for these demonstrators and for the total contempt shown toward the explicit requests of the Italian government," the right-wing leader added. "For these reasons, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation will immediately summon the Israeli ambassador to request formal clarifications on what has occurred."
Portugal's Foreign Ministry called Ben-Gvir's behavior "intolerable" and "a humiliating violation of human dignity."
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung accused Israeli forces of illegally abducting his country's citizens from the flotilla, a move he called "way out of line."
Speaking Wednesday at a meeting of his Cabinet in Seoul, Lee noted the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants issued in 2024 for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza. The ICC is also believed to be seeking the arrest of Ben-Gvir and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in connection with the ethnic cleansing and settler colonization of the illegally occupied West Bank.
"Almost all European countries have issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and announced plans to arrest him if he enters their territories. We should also consider this,” Lee said. "There are minimum international norms, and Israel is violating them all. They must adhere to principles; we have tolerated this for too long."
“What is the legal basis for Israel seizing or sinking ships, including those carrying our citizens, who are volunteering for Gaza? Isn’t Israel’s invasion and occupation of Gaza illegal under international law?” Lee asked.
When National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac countered that "the conflict began with Hamas attacking Israel" on October 7, 2023, Lee retorted by asking whether Gaza is Israeli territory. When Wi conceded that it is not, Lee added: “Shouldn’t we protest? Even during combat, can third-country ships be seized? This is a matter of basic common sense, not just law, right?”
"There are minimum international norms, and Israel is violating them all."
Israel maintains that the San Remo Manual allows for the interception and seizure of flotilla vessels attempting to reach Gaza on the high seas. However, numerous international and maritime law experts note that San Remo isn't a legally binding treaty. Critically, the document also prohibits blockades that cause "excessive" civilian harm and that result in the inadequate provision of "food and other objects essential" for survival. Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza has fueled famine and disease and is the basis for the ICC arrest warrant for Gallant.
Meanwhile, United Nations treaties and resolutions, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the ICC Rome Statute, and the Genocide Convention—on which the genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and backed by nearly 20 countries is based—prohibit or limit Israel's blockage of humanitarian aid.
Netanyahu and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar—who is also a member of the prime minister's Likud party—surprised many international observers by condemning Ben-Gvir's behavior.
“Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza," Netanyahu said. "However, the way that Minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms."
Israeli forces have been accused of physically and psychologically torturing past flotilla abductees, without protest from Netanyahu. In 2010, Israeli troops killed nine activists aboard one of the first-ever Gaza flotillas, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
In a statement that followed Netanyahu's remarks, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said, "The actions of Mr. Ben-Gvir toward the passengers of the Global Sumud Flotilla, denounced by his own colleagues in the Israeli government, are unacceptable."
"I have requested that the Israeli ambassador to France be summoned to express our indignation and obtain explanations," he added. "The safety of our compatriots is a constant priority. Whatever one thinks of this flotilla—and we have indicated on several occasions our disapproval of this initiative—our compatriots who are participating in it must be treated with respect and released as quickly as possible."
Some critics also noted that Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting the Jewish terror group Kach after he advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Others warned against pointing the finger at individual Israeli leaders.
"There is an attempt to portray Ben-Gvir and his treatment of the activists as the entire issue, as if it were an individual act," Palestinian journalist Reda Yasen said on X in a post with video showing Israeli forces opening fire on one of the flotilla vessels.
"It must be emphasized that this matter is connected to full-scale state terrorism practiced by an occupying power and its army," he added. "It begins with genocide, the blockade, maritime piracy, the hijacking of ships, firing at participants, the use of skunk water cannons, deliberate ramming, beatings, and other violations."
Some observers highlighted incendiary remarks about flotilla members made by other Israeli officials, including Likud Transport Minister Miri Regev, who posted a video of her reveling in the detainees' treatment.
Knesset Member Keti Shitrit, also Likud, said during an interview on far-right Channel 14 that the activists "must be dealt with" like terrorists—who are typically killed by Israeli forces, often along with their families.
Israeli Knesset Member Kati Shitrit incited against the Global Sumud Flotilla on Israel’s Channel 14, claiming that its activists, who were kidnapped from international waters, were terrorists.! pic.twitter.com/8quHqgwEIA
— Warfare Analysis (@warfareanalysis) May 20, 2026
Responding to Ben-Gvir's video, the Israel-based Palestinian legal aid group Adalah said that "Israel is employing a criminal policy of abuse and humiliation against activists seeking to confront Israel's ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people."
"The international community must take urgent measures to protect the flotilla members against this brutal and illegal conduct by Israeli officials," the group added.
Palestinians marched in Gaza on Wednesday in support of the detained activists, at least 87 of whom have reportedly begun a hunger strike “in protest of their illegal abduction and in solidarity with the over 9,500 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli dungeons," according to flotilla organizers.
May 20, 2026
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'Her Charade Is Over': Platner Slams Collins for Skipping Abortion Hearings Since Roe Reversal
The Maine Republican was a decisive vote for Brett Kavanaugh, "and in the years since Roe was overturned, Susan Collins has done everything she can to skirt responsibility and avoid accountability," said the Democrat.
May 22, 2026
As part of Graham Platner's campaign to oust Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, the Democrat on Friday called out the five-term senator for skipping committee hearings on reproductive healthcare, including abortion, since the US Supreme Court that she helped build overturned Roe v. Wade.
Reproductive freedom advocates across Maine have renewed efforts to replace Collins since she voted to confirm various anti-choice judicial nominees during President Donald Trump's first term, including Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was credibly accused of sexual assault, in 2018.
Kavanaugh is part of the far-right supermajority that reversed Roe with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision in 2022, which led to a fresh wave of state-level restrictions on reproductive healthcare.
Beacon, run by the Maine People's Alliance, reported Friday that since the Dobbs ruling, Collins has not attended any Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee "meetings focused on abortion or reproductive healthcare," according to the panel's hearing reports.
They included the July 2022 hearing titled "Reproductive Care in a Post-Roe America: Barriers, Challenges, and Threats to Women's Health" and the June 2024 hearing titled "The Assault on Women’s Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Healthcare Nightmare Across America."
More broadly, the Beacon noted, "Collins has also missed more than half of all possible HELP Committee meetings during her current term. Between 2021 and March 2026, she did not attend 67 of 125 possible HELP Committee and relevant subcommittee hearings."
Since launching his campaign last year, Platner has repeatedly called out Collins for demonstrating "symbolic opposition" to Trump while enabling his agenda and serving the interests of wealthy donors instead of working people. The combat veteran and oyster farmer—who's now the presumptive Democratic nominee after Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the primary race last month—similarly took aim at his opponent in response to the new reporting.
"Thanks to Susan Collins' decisive vote for Brett Kavanaugh, the freedom to choose was stolen from millions of women. And in the years since Roe was overturned, Susan Collins has done everything she can to skirt responsibility and avoid accountability—from skipping hearings to avoiding town halls at all costs," said Platner in a statement.
"In November, Susan Collins will learn she can only run and hide from her damaging votes for so long. Because whether she knows it or not—her charade is over," added the Democrat, who has been open about his family's fertility struggles during the campaign.
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'Keep Digging': Progressives Welcome Jeff Bezos' Entrance Into Tax the Billionaires Debate
"The political danger in Bezos’ argument" to eliminate income taxes for the bottom 50% of American earners, said one op-ed, "is that it lets billionaires sound generous while leaving the structure of wealth largely untouched."
May 22, 2026
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' decision to wade into the tax the rich debate raised eyebrows Thursday, as progressives who have long demanded a wealth tax for billionaires said they'd be happy to include him in the ongoing discussion about how the US tax system can be reformed to benefit working people.
In an interview with CNBC this week, the world's fourth-richest person claimed that doubling his taxes would do nothing to help working people, and attempted to shift the conversation on the tax system to a proposal that the bottom 50% of earners in the US should pay nothing in income taxes.
“You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens," said Bezos. "I promise you.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani replied, "I know a few teachers in Queens who would beg to differ." The democratic socialist has been relentlessly focused on making the city more affordable for working people and last month announced his plan to tax second homes valued at more than $5 million.
Critics of Bezos were quick to point out this week that the 1% effective tax rate the billionaire paid between 2014-18 was due to his avoidance of the income tax that working Americans have to pay, with the executive "offsetting earned income with other investment losses and various deductions."
Progressive leaders like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have argued that billionaires including Bezos pay a lower effective tax rate than working people because a vast amount of their wealth comes from unrealized capital gains and other investments instead of income from labor.
Bezos has also not faced a tax on his immense overall wealth of $275.4 billion, which US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other progressives have long called for, saying that taxing a relatively tiny amount of the assets held by billionaires like Bezos, Tesla founder and President Donald Trump megadonor Elon Musk, and other tech and business executives could fund essential services for the rest of society—including many that have contributed to the affordability crisis for working families.
"Let's have that debate" regarding reforms to the US tax system, Sanders said Thursday evening, addressing Bezos on Musk's platform X.
The senator has proposed a 5% annual wealth tax, which he said would leave Bezos still sitting on $269 billion in total wealth, while providing enough revenue to fund guaranteed universal childcare, an expansion of Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing care for senior citizens, a nationwide starting salary of $60,000 per year for public school teachers, and more.
In his interview with CNBC and on social media this week, Bezos repeatedly attempted to shift attention away from his taxes and onto the income taxes paid by the bottom 50% of earners, claiming that the "top 1% pay 40% of taxes, the bottom 50% pay 3% of taxes."
"The United States has the most progressive tax system in the world," he asserted. "We can make it even more progressive by zeroing out taxes on the bottom half. It’s a small amount of the total tax revenue but very meaningful to people in this group."
Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman, who has also called for a wealth tax and last month co-authored a Guardian op-ed with Mamdani explaining how the regressive tax system of the US has helped ensure the top 0.0001% of the global population holds the equivalent of 16% of the world's wealth, said Bezos was misrepresenting the conclusions of global economists regarding the US system.
"Your claim that the top 1% pays 40% of taxes and the bottom 50% only 3% is misleading: It captures just one tax—the federal income tax—and ignores all the rest: payroll taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes, excise duties, etc., many of which are regressive," said Zucman.
Bezos continued debating the issue on social media on Wednesday, sharing an article that explained how numerous analyses have determined he has paid an effective tax rate hovering around 1%.
"Great to see Bezos keeps bringing up his own massive tax avoidance. Keep digging! This travesty needs a real public debate," said historian Rutger Bregman, sharing a graph from Zucman's research, which shows how the average tax rate of the richest Americans has plummeted in recent decades.
At Newsweek on Wednesday, the magazine's editors wrote that Bezos was correct in his CNBC interview that "one billionaire's larger tax bill will not fund a modern state by itself."
"The deeper issue is whether the tax system asks comparable civic seriousness from wages, capital gains, inheritances, consumption, and payroll," wrote the editors. "A nurse's paycheck is easy to tax because it is visible. A billionaire's wealth can grow through assets that may remain untaxed until sale, or perhaps sheltered safely in some offshore domain."
"The political danger in Bezos’ argument" to allow the bottom 50% of American earners to pay nothing in income tax, the editors added, "is that it lets billionaires sound generous while leaving the structure of wealth largely untouched."
Thom Hartmann of The Hartmann Report said Bezos' push to eliminate income taxes for a huge swath of Americans benefits him and other billionaires in three ways, while ultimately harming those he claims to be trying to help save money:
First, it gets millions of Americans on the “we shouldn’t ever pay any income taxes at all” train that’s been rolling for billionaires ever since [former President Ronald] Reagan first gutted our tax code, leading to an explosion of the morbidly rich.
Second, it gets those same average, tax-paying voters on board with Bezos’ second claim, that America’s debt problem isn’t because we’re taxing too little but because we’re “spending too much.”
If we just got rid of—or privatized/profitized—all those pesky “socialist” programs like Medicaid, food stamps, free public highways, fire and police departments, Social Security, food and drug regulation and inspection, air traffic control and TSA, housing subsidies, Pell grants, free public schools, etc., then even billionaires could safely live tax-free.
Third, it means that Bezos will be able to reduce his own labor costs, because the marketplace in which pay rates exist are always exclusively reacting to “after tax” dollars.
Hartmann highlighted Bezos' resistance to a wealth tax and a fair tax rate with an anecdote about "a very wealthy German businessman" he once saw interviewed by an American reporter on Bloomberg News.
The businessman asked the reporter "how he could possibly live in a country" that taxes "very wealthy and successful people" at about 60%.
"Why don’t you lead a revolt against those high taxes?" he asked, his tone implying the businessman was badly in need of some good old American rebellion-making.
The German businessman paused for a long moment and then leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, his clasped hands in front of him pointing at the reporter as if in prayer.
He stared at the man for another long moment and then, in the tone of voice an adult uses to correct a spoiled child, said simply, "I don’t want to be a rich man in a poor country."
In contrast, Hartmann wrote, "the billionaires and foreign oligarchs who fund the Republican Party and right-wing media think it’s perfectly fine to rip the financial and political guts out of their own nation and turn its people against each other if it lets them keep a few extra bucks."
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They're Called 'Super Pollutants'—And Trump's EPA Wants to Expose You to More of Them
"EPA owes it to Americans to put people’s health first—not give hidebound corporations more time to keep using outdated chemicals," said one critic.
May 21, 2026
In a reversal of his past position and what critics are calling yet another betrayal of his "Make America Healthy Again" campaign pledge, US President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration is loosening limits on so-called "super pollutant" hydrofluorocarbons used in air conditioners and refrigerators at the expense of the environment and climate.
Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin spun the move as a measure that will "save American families and businesses more than $2.4 billion" by revising "costly overreaching restrictions" imposed during the Biden administration "limiting the type of refrigerants American businesses and families can use."
"Today, the Trump EPA is fulfilling President Trump’s promise to lower costs and is fixing every problem we can under the authority Congress gave us," Zeldin said. "Our actions allow businesses to choose the refrigeration systems that work best for them, saving them billions of dollars. This will be felt directly by American families in lower grocery prices.”
Grocery prices have continued to rise during Trump’s second term, driven by the administration's erratic trade wars and actual war on Iran. Critics of Thursday's move argue that it will do little to reduce consumer costs, while increasing pollution and health risks for American families.
“It’s nice that they are paying attention to affordability, but if they want to make a difference, it’s tariffs and the Iran War," Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, told NOTUS, estimating that the move would save consumers about $2 per year.
Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are called “super pollutants” because they trap far more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, even though they are emitted in much smaller quantities. They were originally introduced to replace ozone-depleting chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that ravaged the ozone layer.
However, scientists soon realized that HFCs are extremely powerful greenhouse gases in their own right. As air conditioning use and demand grows worldwide, so has HFC use.
As the EPA's own website acknowledges on its "Operation: Disrupt HFCs" webpage:
HFCs are potent greenhouse gases... with high global warming potential. HFCs are commonly utilized as refrigerants, aerosol propellants, foam blowing agents, solvents, and fire retardants across residential, commercial, and industrial applications. The major source of HFC emissions is their use as refrigerants—for example, in air conditioning systems in both vehicles and buildings. Emissions occur during manufacturing, as well as through leaks, servicing, and disposal of equipment containing HFCs.
Former EPA Assistant Administrator Joseph Goffman said in a statement Thursday that "families are already stretched thin by high grocery bills and everyday expenses, and weakening safeguards on these super-polluting refrigerant chemicals isn’t going to change that."
"Even manufacturers are saying this delay likely won’t lower prices for consumers because supplies of these chemicals are already being phased down in favor of cleaner, innovative replacements," he added.
Stephen Yurek, president and CEO of the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI)—an industry lobby—warned that the "reckless" new policy could actually cause refrigerant prices to increase.
“This rule works against basic supply and demand,” Yurek said. “By extending the compliance deadline, the EPA is maintaining and even increasing demand in the market for existing refrigerants while supply continues to fall under the AIM Act."
The American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act of 2020, bipartisan legislation signed by Trump during his first term, directed the EPA to "phase down the production and consumption of listed HFCs in the United States by 85% by 2036" and "facilitate the transition to next-generation technologies that do not rely on HFCs."
As of this year, more than 170 countries—including the United States—plus the European Union have ratified the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, the main global agreement to phase down HFCs.
Yurek explained that "instead of falling, refrigerant prices are likely to rise, resulting in higher service costs, and higher costs for consumers."
Addressing the EPA's reversal on HFCs, Goffman said, "All this action does is slow the shift to cleaner technologies while risking continued releases of climate super pollutants and leaving families to face the much greater costs and health threats of dangerous climate change."
"EPA owes it to Americans to put people’s health first—not give hidebound corporations more time to keep using outdated chemicals," he added. "Americans deserve affordable groceries that don’t come at the expense of the strong safeguards they count on to keep our families safer, not sicker.”
The EPA move comes amid mounting calls by over 160 civil rights, environmental, faith, health, and labor groups to fire Zeldin over his agency's deregulation spree.
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