June, 18 2026, 12:48pm EDT
130+ Groups Ask Congress to Reject AI Preemption Bill
Unions, Consumer Advocates & Civil Society Groups Warn that Obernolte-Trahan Bill Would Kill State AI Enforcement
On Thursday, Demand Progress and 130+ civil society groups sent a letter asking Republican and Democratic congressional leaders to reject legislation that would effectively kill state AI safeguards. The letter warns that the so-called Great American Artificial Intelligence Act, introduced by Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Lori Trahan (D-MA), would impose a federal ban preventing states from regulating AI.
Convened by Demand Progress, the letter is signed by SEIU, Center for Biological Diversity, Common Cause, Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen, Young People’s Alliance, UltraViolet Action and many more. Demand Progress has also been leading a campaign opposing previous congressional efforts to pass an AI moratorium.
“Obernolte and Trahan are trying to give Big Tech CEOs what they desire most: a federal ban on state laws that could prevent them from unleashing unfettered AI on everyone,” said Demand Progress Education Fund AI Policy Advisor Colin McGlynn. “AI has flirted with children, pushed minors towards suicide, created pornographic deepfakes of countless women and girls, and are being used to make life or death decisions about our health, our jobs and even our military. The Obernolte-Trahan bill would recklessly stop state laws that are the only legal safeguards we have against these threats.”
“Right now, states are the only enforcers in the country doing anything to protect the public from AI harms,” stated the letter. “In the process they’ve not only passed legislation, but carefully worked to not create the patchwork that industry warns of. The exceedingly small number of regulatory bills that have passed are intentionally harmonized, not conflicting. This bill would freeze all of that work for three years over the fear of a patchwork that has not materialized at the very moment the technology is moving fastest and the stakes are climbing.”
Demand Progress amplifies the voice of the people -- and wields it to make government accountable and contest concentrated corporate power. Our mission is to protect the democratic character of the internet -- and wield it to contest concentrated corporate power and hold government accountable.
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Thanks to Trump's Iran War Disaster, Fossil Fuel Industry to Enjoy $700 Billion Windfall in 2026
"We witness not only a massive fossil fuel crisis but a vast upward transfer of wealth built on instability of fossil fuel markets and pain," said an expert at 350.org.
Jun 18, 2026
US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran may finally be reaching a close. But consumers and businesses around the world will continue to pay the price in the months ahead as still-elevated energy costs funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to fossil fuel giants.
That’s according to a report from the environmental group 350.org released Thursday, following Trump’s signing of a memorandum of understanding with Iran this week to begin the process of formally ending a war that has sent global oil prices skyrocketing and saddled ordinary people with record fuel prices.
The group estimated that just 110 days of war resulted in the transfer of an additional $374 billion from consumers and businesses into the coffers of oil and gas companies beyond what would have been expected had the war never been launched.
And while Trump claims his agreement to end the war this week will avert an “economic catastrophe,” there will likely still be tremendous pain even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens promptly.
Using oil and gas pricing scenarios from the International Monetary Fund’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook and data on global consumption, 350.org predicted that by the end of the year, consumers and businesses will spend an additional $199.8 billion on oil and $128.1 billion on gas above a non-war scenario, making for a grand total of more than $700 billion as a result of the war.
This, the group said, is a conservative estimate, as it does not even take into account knock-on effects. The war will ultimately end up costing much more when factoring in inflation across the rest of the economy, resulting from higher fuel costs or fertilizer shortages caused by the strait's closure, which has affected food prices.
It also does not take into account the resulting effects on economic output or employment as rising costs and lower consumer spending force companies to tighten their belts.
"The oil and gas industry is draining billions from people and businesses on the back of a war that has killed thousands and pushed millions toward poverty and hunger," said Andreas Sieber, head of political Strategy at 350.org.
"Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens tomorrow, we should expect prices to remain above pre-crisis levels," he said. "We witness not only a massive fossil fuel crisis but a vast upward transfer of wealth built on instability of fossil fuel markets and pain."
While the war has brought it into starker relief, previous reports from 350.org have shown that even if the US had never attacked Iran, the continued global dependence on fossil fuels was resulting in trillions of dollars of avoidable costs each year, including $9.3 trillion to mitigate climate-related damages and air pollution-related deaths each year, costs that disproportionately fall on the world's poorest.
In order to alleviate economic strain from the war, Sieber said, "governments should tax these excess profits now and use the revenues to protect people, cut bills, and rapidly deploy renewables that make households and small businesses less vulnerable to the next fossil fuel shock.”
Estimates of inflation also do not account for how the war has heightened global instability and poverty, which will require additional resources for humanitarian relief efforts. In late April, the United Nations Development Program estimated that even if the conflict had ended then, more than 32 million people worldwide would be pushed into economic precarity.
This is not to mention the resources that will need to be expended to address the harms caused by the war itself.
In exchange for negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, a portion of the memorandum of understanding requires the US to work with "regional partners," presumably other Persian Gulf allies, to scrounge up at least $300 billion to help Iran pay for reconstruction and economic development after the country was devastated by American and Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure and millions were displaced.
As a report from the International Rescue Committee detailed last week, the Iran war has also had cascading effects on other conflicts and catastrophes.
"Six months ago, the IRC warned that a New World Disorder was emerging," said David Miliband, the humanitarian group's president and CEO. "Since then, disorder has not only grown but accelerated. A war with Iran. A million people have been forced to flee their homes in Lebanon. A brewing global food security catastrophe that risks plunging millions more people into acute hunger. An expanding Ebola outbreak. Defanged diplomacy and collapsing aid budgets."
"The Iran war couldn’t have happened at a worse time," Miliband said in a New Yorker article published Thursday. "It set off a chain of events that’s very damaging.”
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'Another Unauthorized Trump Fund': Democrats Fume Over $300 Million in Taxpayer Money for Ballroom
"While Republicans slash healthcare and other programs Americans depend on, President Trump is reportedly using hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for a White House ballroom," said US Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi.
Jun 18, 2026
Democratic lawmakers are reacting with disgust amid new reporting on how the White House has been using sneaky budget maneuvering to get US taxpayers to fund President Donald Trump's luxury ballroom that was never approved by Congress.
According to a Thursday report in The Washington Post, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) mysteriously shifted $352 million within the US Secret Service budget that had been earmarked for training and recruitment, but that will now be spent on White House security measures.
An insider familiar with the process told the Post that the redirected funds were related to the construction of the ballroom.
A White House spokesperson did not deny that the money was going toward the ballroom project, while insisting that "the East Wing Modernization Project is inextricably tied to the security of the president, the White House grounds, and the certain security infrastructure assets."
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, told the Post he was concerned that money "intended to pay Secret Service agents and ensure they have the technology and resources they need to keep individuals under their protection safe" is now being spent on the president's "vanity project."
In a Wednesday interview with NOTUS, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said it appears Trump "was just flat out lying when he said the taxpayers will not pay a dime for his ballroom," adding that it appears "he is now trying to find ways to funnel public money into it."
In a Thursday social media post, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) contrasted Trump's willingness to use taxpayer cash for his ballroom with cuts he and the GOP made to vital healthcare and food assistance programs.
"While Republicans slash healthcare and other programs Americans depend on," Krishnamoorthi wrote, "President Trump is reportedly using hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for a White House ballroom he claimed would be privately funded."
Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) similarly argued that while the GOP's 2025 budget law "kicked 4.3 million people off SNAP and 5 million people off [Affordable Care Act] health insurance coverage," the administration is now "dishonestly spending millions of dollars of YOUR money to fund a ballroom instead of helping struggling Americans put food on the table and receive essential medical care."
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) linked the ballroom money to other Trump schemes to enrich himself through the presidency, including his acceptance of a luxury jet from the government of Qatar and his $1.8 billion slush fund for political allies.
"Now we learn that Trump’s bad architecture obsession is costing us all $600 million," Raskin wrote, in reference to earlier reporting on how the ballroom project has ballooned in costs from the White House's early estimates. "Turn your illegal Qatari jet over to the people and we’ll sell it for $400 million and we’ll take the rest out of other illegal emoluments and slush funds, including the $1.776 billion fund for insurrectionists, and the Board of Peace, another unauthorized Trump fund bankrolled by money misallocated from the State Department."
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'Would You Rather Go Back to War?' Critics Ask Democrats Fuming Over Trump's Iran Deal
"Trump currently owns this failed war," said one expert, "but if the Democrats help torpedo the MOU and war resumes, then they will co-own the next war."
Jun 18, 2026
Supporters of a diplomatic resolution to the illegal war that US President Donald Trump launched against Iran earlier this year are pushing back against Democratic critics of the interim peace agreement signed on Wednesday, warning it is politically and morally foolish to attack efforts to end a conflict that has killed thousands and plunged the global economy into chaos.
"Would you rather go back to war?" Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), asked Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of several Democrats joining war-hawk Republicans in openly decrying the new memorandum of understanding (MOU).
In a series of social media posts on Wednesday, Blumenthal pointed to "bipartisan condemnation" of what he called "a disgraceful deal" and "unconditional surrender" on the part of the US. The senator added that "anything like this deal will be dead on arrival in the Senate" and declared, "It must be approved here to have enforceable effect."
Other prominent Democrats offered similar critiques. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said it is "hard to imagine a more thorough capitulation," while Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) called the deal a "dangerous giveaway" to "this enemy," referring to Iran.
"His war proved only one thing: that diplomacy was the answer all along."
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned Thursday that such criticisms of the interim peace deal imply that "a war should not be brought to an end until it has produced better terms—even when the war itself is failing."
"Taken seriously, that logic leads to a dangerous conclusion: that a failed war must continue until the battlefield fortunes somehow improve and a more favorable outcome becomes attainable. Perhaps that day will come. Perhaps it never will. In the meantime, the costs—in lives, treasure, regional stability, and strategic credibility—are treated as secondary considerations," Parsi wrote. "This is how endless wars are born."
Parsi expressed disappointment at the rhetoric of some Democrats "because it echoes the same bad-faith tactics Republicans deployed" against the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Trump ripped up in 2018, setting the stage for war.
"To be sure, Trump has invited some of this treatment. He spent years attacking Obama’s agreement with a barrage of misleading arguments and exaggerated claims," Parsi noted. "But that does not make it wise for Democrats to return the favor. Trump currently owns this failed war, but if the Democrats help torpedo the MOU and war resumes, then they will co-own the next war. Trump’s disaster will become theirs as well."
Many Democrats appear to understand that risk and are welcoming diplomatic progress—while also condemning the illegal war and its consequences for the US and the world.
"Matters of war and peace must rise above partisan politics," said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). "Democrats must not replicate Republicans’ irresponsible opposition to the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear agreement, which placed real constraints on Iran’s nuclear program before President Trump foolishly tore it up, setting the stage for this disastrous war."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), in a Thursday morning appearance on Fox News, said the emerging deal between the US and Iran "is not as good as the JCPOA was," while also expressing support for efforts to end the war.
Watch:
Ro Khanna on Maria Bartiromo's show makes the case for why Trump's deal with Iran is far inferior to the JCPOA (Note that Bartiromo acknowledges he's making "important points, and good ones") pic.twitter.com/n1nm3LyBcd
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 18, 2026
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) wrote in a social media post on Thursday that "any move toward diplomacy and away from violence is welcome news," calling Trump's Iran war "reckless" and "illegal."
"This war should be a lesson. The push for military adventurism and regime change by neocon war hawks was, unsurprisingly, an unmitigated disaster," said McGovern. "After three months of death and destruction, the rest of us are now left paying the price. His war proved only one thing: that diplomacy was the answer all along."
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