Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a DNA test report confirming that she has Native American ancestry on Monday. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Oct 15, 2018
After spending months mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) claim that she has Native American ancestry and demanding that she prove it, President Donald Trump feigned ignorance on Monday when confronted with the fact that the senator had taken a DNA test confirming that she has an ancestor who was Native American.
On the White House lawn, the president was asked about his reaction to Warren's test, which revealed that one of her ancestors, likely from six to 10 generations ago, was a Native American.
"Who cares?" Trump replied hastily.
When pressed about the $1 million Trump publicly offered to give to the charity of Warren's choice if she produced DNA evidence of her family background, the president flatly denied making the offer--despite widely-available footage of him doing so on July 5 at a rally in Great Falls, Montana.
"I didn't say that," Trump told a reporter. "No, you'd better read it again."
\u201c"Who cares?" President Trump, who has railed about Sen. Warren's heritage, says when asked about Warren releasing her DNA test. https://t.co/7cfAD6dLzw\u201d— MSNBC (@MSNBC) 1539617577
To clear up any confusion, a number of journalists and critics posted the president's remarks from July on social media.
The White House has backed up Trump's attacks on Warren in recent months, with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying last November that Warren's so-called "lies" about her ancestry "to advance her career" were more offensive than the president's insistence on calling the senator "Pocahontas."
But on Monday one of Trump's top advisers, Kellyanne Conway, appeared to deny that a controversy over Warren's heritage had ever taken place, calling the test the president had specifically asked the senator to take "junk science."
"I haven't looked at the test," Conway told reporters. "I know everybody likes to pick their junk science and sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days, but I haven't looked at the DNA test and it really doesn't interest me to be frank with you."
\u201cKellyanne Conway: "I haven't looked at the test. I know everybody likes to pick their junk science & sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days but I haven't looked at the DNA test and it really doesn't interest me to be frank with you." https://t.co/oJhYDzMO2J\u201d— The Hill (@The Hill) 1539612840
The White House's especially brazen denialism was slammed by several critics on social media.
\u201cAs @ddale8 has shown, Trump lies literally a hundred times a week and yet he's set the narrative here that Warren is somehow the untrustworthy one. It's just surreal.\u201d— Kevin M. Kruse (@Kevin M. Kruse) 1539609322
\u201cThe most astonishing thing about Trump is that he gets so many people to think he's strong when he's the weakest little pissant on earth.\u201d— Oliver Griswold (@Oliver Griswold) 1539611370
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After spending months mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) claim that she has Native American ancestry and demanding that she prove it, President Donald Trump feigned ignorance on Monday when confronted with the fact that the senator had taken a DNA test confirming that she has an ancestor who was Native American.
On the White House lawn, the president was asked about his reaction to Warren's test, which revealed that one of her ancestors, likely from six to 10 generations ago, was a Native American.
"Who cares?" Trump replied hastily.
When pressed about the $1 million Trump publicly offered to give to the charity of Warren's choice if she produced DNA evidence of her family background, the president flatly denied making the offer--despite widely-available footage of him doing so on July 5 at a rally in Great Falls, Montana.
"I didn't say that," Trump told a reporter. "No, you'd better read it again."
\u201c"Who cares?" President Trump, who has railed about Sen. Warren's heritage, says when asked about Warren releasing her DNA test. https://t.co/7cfAD6dLzw\u201d— MSNBC (@MSNBC) 1539617577
To clear up any confusion, a number of journalists and critics posted the president's remarks from July on social media.
The White House has backed up Trump's attacks on Warren in recent months, with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying last November that Warren's so-called "lies" about her ancestry "to advance her career" were more offensive than the president's insistence on calling the senator "Pocahontas."
But on Monday one of Trump's top advisers, Kellyanne Conway, appeared to deny that a controversy over Warren's heritage had ever taken place, calling the test the president had specifically asked the senator to take "junk science."
"I haven't looked at the test," Conway told reporters. "I know everybody likes to pick their junk science and sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days, but I haven't looked at the DNA test and it really doesn't interest me to be frank with you."
\u201cKellyanne Conway: "I haven't looked at the test. I know everybody likes to pick their junk science & sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days but I haven't looked at the DNA test and it really doesn't interest me to be frank with you." https://t.co/oJhYDzMO2J\u201d— The Hill (@The Hill) 1539612840
The White House's especially brazen denialism was slammed by several critics on social media.
\u201cAs @ddale8 has shown, Trump lies literally a hundred times a week and yet he's set the narrative here that Warren is somehow the untrustworthy one. It's just surreal.\u201d— Kevin M. Kruse (@Kevin M. Kruse) 1539609322
\u201cThe most astonishing thing about Trump is that he gets so many people to think he's strong when he's the weakest little pissant on earth.\u201d— Oliver Griswold (@Oliver Griswold) 1539611370
After spending months mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) claim that she has Native American ancestry and demanding that she prove it, President Donald Trump feigned ignorance on Monday when confronted with the fact that the senator had taken a DNA test confirming that she has an ancestor who was Native American.
On the White House lawn, the president was asked about his reaction to Warren's test, which revealed that one of her ancestors, likely from six to 10 generations ago, was a Native American.
"Who cares?" Trump replied hastily.
When pressed about the $1 million Trump publicly offered to give to the charity of Warren's choice if she produced DNA evidence of her family background, the president flatly denied making the offer--despite widely-available footage of him doing so on July 5 at a rally in Great Falls, Montana.
"I didn't say that," Trump told a reporter. "No, you'd better read it again."
\u201c"Who cares?" President Trump, who has railed about Sen. Warren's heritage, says when asked about Warren releasing her DNA test. https://t.co/7cfAD6dLzw\u201d— MSNBC (@MSNBC) 1539617577
To clear up any confusion, a number of journalists and critics posted the president's remarks from July on social media.
The White House has backed up Trump's attacks on Warren in recent months, with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying last November that Warren's so-called "lies" about her ancestry "to advance her career" were more offensive than the president's insistence on calling the senator "Pocahontas."
But on Monday one of Trump's top advisers, Kellyanne Conway, appeared to deny that a controversy over Warren's heritage had ever taken place, calling the test the president had specifically asked the senator to take "junk science."
"I haven't looked at the test," Conway told reporters. "I know everybody likes to pick their junk science and sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days, but I haven't looked at the DNA test and it really doesn't interest me to be frank with you."
\u201cKellyanne Conway: "I haven't looked at the test. I know everybody likes to pick their junk science & sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days but I haven't looked at the DNA test and it really doesn't interest me to be frank with you." https://t.co/oJhYDzMO2J\u201d— The Hill (@The Hill) 1539612840
The White House's especially brazen denialism was slammed by several critics on social media.
\u201cAs @ddale8 has shown, Trump lies literally a hundred times a week and yet he's set the narrative here that Warren is somehow the untrustworthy one. It's just surreal.\u201d— Kevin M. Kruse (@Kevin M. Kruse) 1539609322
\u201cThe most astonishing thing about Trump is that he gets so many people to think he's strong when he's the weakest little pissant on earth.\u201d— Oliver Griswold (@Oliver Griswold) 1539611370
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.
LATEST NEWS
Trump Admin Circulating Plan to Transform Depopulated Gaza Into High-Tech Cash Cow
Under the proposal, the US would take control after "voluntary" relocation of Palestinians from the strip, where proposed projects include an Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone and Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands.
Sep 01, 2025
The White House is "circulating" a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into US President Donald Trump's vision of a high-tech "Riviera of the Middle East" brimming with private investment and replete with artificial intelligence-powered "smart cities."
That's according a 38-page prospectus for a proposed Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust obtained by The Washington Post and published in a report on Sunday. Parts of the proposal were previously reported by the Financial Times.
"Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets... resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments," the prospectus states.
However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to "genocide packaged as real estate."
Here comes the Gaza Network State.A plan to turn Gaza into a privately-developed “gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” with “AI-powered smart cities” and “Trump Riviera” resortgift link:wapo.st/4g2eATo
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— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) August 31, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The GREAT Trust was drafted by some of the same Israelis behind the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose aid distribution points in Gaza have been the sites of deliberate massacres and other incidents in which thousands of aid-seeking Palestinians have been killed or wounded.
According to the Post, financial modeling for the GREAT Trust proposal "was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group"—which played a key role in creating GHF. BCG told the Post that the firm did not approve work on the trust plan, and that two senior partners who led the financial modeling were subsequently terminated.
The GREAT Trust envisions "a US-led multirlateral custodianship" lasting a decade or longer and leading to "a reformed Palestinian self-governance after Gaza is "demilitarized and de-radicalized."
Josh Paul—a former US State Department official who resigned in October 2023 over the Biden administration's decision to sell more arms to Israel as it waged a war on Gaza increasingly viewed by experts as genocidal—told Democracy Now! last week that Trump's plan for Gaza is "essentially a new form of colonialism, a transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate" colonialism.
The GREAT Trust contains two proposals for Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians. Under one plan, approximately 75% of Gaza's population would remain in the strip during its transformation. The second proposal involves up to 500,000 Gazans relocating to third countries, 75% of them permanently.
The prospectus does not say how many Palestinians would leave Gaza under the relocation option. Those who choose to permanently relocate to other unspecified countries would each receive $5,000 plus four years of subsidized rent and subsidized food for a year.
The GREAT Trust allocates $6 billion for temporary housing for Palestinians who remain in Gaza and $5 billion for those who relocate.
The proposal projects huge profits for investors—nearly four times the return on investment and annual revenue of $4.5 billion within a decade. The project would be a boon for companies ranging from builders including Saudi bin Laden Group, infrastructure specialists like IKEA, the mercenary firm Academi (formerly Blackwater), US military contractor CACI—which last year was found liable for torturing Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison—electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, tech firms such as Amazon, and hoteliers Mandarin Oriental and IHG Hotels and Resorts.
Central to the plan are 10 "megaprojects," including half a dozen "smart cities," a regional logistics hub to be build over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, a central highway named after Saudi Crown Prime Mohammed bin Salman—Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states feature prominently in the proposal as investors—large-scale solar and desalinization plants, a US data safe haven, an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone," and "Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands" similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai.
In addition to "massive" financial gains for private US investors, the GREAT Trust lists strategic benefits for the United States that would enable it to "strengthen" its "hold in the east Mediterranean and secure US industry access to $1.3 trillion of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf."
Earlier this year, Trump said the US would "take over" Gaza, American real estate developers would "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" atop its ruins after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal exclave. The president called for the "voluntary" transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, both of whose leaders vehemently rejected the plan.
"Voluntary emigration" is widely considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' general unwillingness to leave their homeland.
According to a May survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, nearly half of Gazans expressed a willingness to apply for Israeli assistance to relocate to other countries. However, many Gazans say they would never leave the strip, where most inhabitants are descendants of survivors of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. Some are actual Nakba survivors.
"I'm staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Younis now," one Gazan man told the Post. "But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland."
The Post report follows a meeting last Wednesday at the White House, where Trump, senior administration officials, and invited guests including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, investor and real estate developer Jared Kushner—who is also the president's son-in-law—and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer discussed Gaza's future.
While Dermer reportedly claimed that Israel does not seek to permanently occupy Gaza, Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation in Gaza—have said they will conquer the entire strip and keep at least large parts of it.
"We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said. "On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."
The Israel Knesset also recently hosted a conference called "The Gaza Riviera–from vision to reality" where participants openly discussed the occupation and ethnic cleansing of the strip.
The publication of the GREAT Trust comes as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City amid a growing engineered famine that has killed at least hundreds of Palestinians and is starving hundreds of thousands of more. Israel's 696-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 233,200 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures are seen as a likely undercount by experts.
'Endangering Every American's Health': 9 Former CDC Chiefs Sound Alarm on RFK Jr.
Their "astonishing, powerful op-ed," said one professor, "drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost."
Sep 01, 2025
Nearly every living former director or acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the past half-century took to the pages of The New York Times on Monday to jointly argue that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "is endangering every American's health."
"Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the CDC, the world's preeminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations," Drs. William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle Walensky, and Mandy Cohen highlighted.
What RFK Jr. "has done to the CDC and to our nation's public health system over the past several months—culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as CDC director days ago—is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced," the nine former agency leaders wrote.
Known for spreading misinformation about vaccines and a series of scandals, Kennedy was a controversial figure long before President Donald Trump chose him to lead HHS—a decision that Senate Republicans affirmed in February. However, in the wake of Monarez's ouster, fresh calls for him to resign or be fired have mounted.
This is powerful. Nine former CDC leaders just came together to defend SCIENCE.Maybe it’s time we LISTEN TO THEM—not the loud voices spreading MISINFORMATION.Science saves lives. Lies cost themwww.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
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— Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA (@krutikakuppalli.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 10:35 AM
As the ex-directors detailed:
Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence, and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he's focused on unproven "treatments" while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill-prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of US support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez—which led to the resignations of top CDC officials—adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.
Monarez was nominated by Trump, and was confirmed by Senate Republicans in late July. As the op-ed authors noted, she was forced out by RFK Jr. just weeks later, after she reportedly refused "to rubber-stamp his dangerous and unfounded vaccine recommendations or heed his demand to fire senior CDC staff members."
"These are not typical requests from a health secretary to a CDC director," they wrote. "Not even close. None of us would have agreed to the secretary's demands, and we applaud Dr. Monarez for standing up for the agency and the health of our communities."
After Monarez's exit, Trump tapped Jim O'Neill, an RFK Jr. aide and biotech investor, as the CDC's interim director. Critics including Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's health research group, warn that "unlike Susan Monarez, O'Neill is likely to rubber-stamp dangerous vaccine recommendations from HHS Secretary Kennedy's handpicked appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and obey orders to fire CDC public health experts with scientific integrity."
The agency's former directors didn't address O'Neill, but they wrote: "To those on the CDC staff who continue to perform their jobs heroically in the face of the excruciating circumstances, we offer our sincere thanks and appreciation. Their ongoing dedication is a model for all of us. But it's clear that the agency is hurting badly."
"We have a message for the rest of the nation as well: This is a time to rally to protect the health of every American," they continued. The experts called on Congress to "exercise its oversight authority over HHS," and state and local governments to "fill funding gaps where they can." They also urged philanthropy, the private sector, medical groups, and physicians to boost investments, "continue to stand up for science and truth," and support patients "with sound guidance and empathy."
Doctors, researchers, journalists, and others called their "must-read" piece "extraordinary" and "important."
"Just an astonishing, powerful op-ed that drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost," said University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman. "We are so incredibly fortunate to live with the advances [of] modern medicine and health science. Destroying and stymying it is just unforgivable."
'Brazenly Anti-Worker': Labor Day Reports Highlight Trump Attacks on Unions
"This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler.
Sep 01, 2025
Although US President Donald Trump's administration likes to boast that he puts "American workers first," several news reports published on Monday document the president's attacks on the rights of working people and labor unions.
As longtime labor reporter Steven Greenhouse explained in The Guardian, Trump throughout his second term has "taken dozens of actions that hurt workers, often by cutting their pay or making their jobs more dangerous."
Among other things, Greenhouse cited Trump's decision to halt a regulation intended to protect coal miners from lung disease, as well as his decision to strip a million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, told Greenhouse that Trump's actions amount to a "big betrayal" of his promises to look out for US workers during the 2024 presidential campaign.
"His attacks on unions are coming fast and furious," she said. "He talks a good game of being for working people, but he's doing the absolute opposite. This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires."
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, similarly told Greenhouse that Trump has been "absolutely, brazenly anti-worker," and she cited him ripping away an increase in the minimum wage for federal contractors that had been enacted by former President Joe Biden as a prime example.
"The minimum wage is incredibly popular," she said. "He just took away the minimum wage from hundreds of thousands of workers. That blew my mind."
NPR published its own Labor Day report that zeroed in on how the president is "decimating" federal employee unions by issuing March and August executive orders stripping them of the power to collectively bargain for better working conditions.
So far, nine federal agencies have canceled their union contracts as a result of the orders, which are based on a provision in federal law that gives the president the power to terminate collective bargaining at agencies that are primarily involved with national security.
The Trump administration has embraced a maximalist interpretation of this power and has demanded the end of collective bargaining at departments that aren't primarily known as national security agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Weather Service.
However, Trump's attacks on organized labor haven't completely intimidated government workers from joining unions. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the Trump administration's cuts to the National Park Service earlier this year inspired hundreds of workers at the California-based Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon national parks to unionize.
Although labor organizers had been trying unsuccessfully for years to get park workers to sign on, that changed when the Trump administration took a hatchet to parks' budgets and enacted mass layoffs.
"More than 97% of employees at Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks who cast ballots voted to unionize, with results certified last week," wrote the Los Angeles Times. "More than 600 staffers—including interpretive park rangers, biologists, firefighters, and fee collectors—are now represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees."
Even so, many workers who succeed in forming unions may no longer get their grievances heard given the state of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
As documented by Timothy Noah in The New Republic, the NLRB is now "hanging by a thread" in the wake of a court ruling that declared the board's structure to be unconstitutional because it barred the president from being able to fire NLRB administrative judges at will.
"The ruling doesn't shut down the NLRB entirely because it applies only to cases in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, where the 5th Circuit has jurisdiction," Noah explained. "But Jennifer Abruzzo, who was President Joe Biden's NLRB general counsel, told me that the decision will 'open the floodgates for employers to forum-shop and seek to get injunctions' in those three states."
Noah noted that this lawsuit was brought in part by SpaceX owner and one-time Trump ally Elon Musk, and he accused the Trump NLRB of waging a "half-hearted" fight against Musk's attack on workers' rights.
Thanks to Trump and Musk's actions, Noah concluded, American oligarchs "can toast the NLRB's imminent destruction."
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