SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
SEIU: With Eyes of the Word Focused on Arizona, We Need Balanced, Practical Immigration Solutions More Than Ever
Senate Immigration Bill Starts Process but Needs Serious Fixes to Provide the Immigration Solutions America Needs
WASHINGTON
Today,
Senators Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez and Harry Reid will introduce
an immigration reform outline. In anticipation, SEIU Executive Vice
President Eliseo Medina issued the following statement:
"As the eyes of the world focus on Arizona, it
is clear that we need balanced, practical immigration solutions more
than ever. While SEIU appreciates the leadership of Senators Schumer,
Menendez and Reid, we are deeply concerned with elements of their reform
outline that appear to put enforcement-only mandates ahead of the
practical immigration solutions that America needs.
"If we have learned anything from Arizona, it
is that "tough" enforcement is not "smart" enforcement; that enforcement
first is really just the same as enforcement only. Instead of fixing
the underlying problems, putting enforcement before comprehensive reform
just wastes over $18 billion a year on border walls and worksite round
ups; it wreaks havoc in local communities and leads to the kind of
racial profiling our nation left behind years ago, but solves nothing.
"SEIU is committed to working with Senators
Schumer, Menendez and Reid to fix this framework and move a balanced,
comprehensive bill that gets
undocumented immigrants into the system and under the rule of law;
passes smart enforcement on the border and in our workplaces; and
creates a visa system that protects labor rights and meets the economic
needs of our future.
"In order to do that,
Republicans must join with Democrats and show they have the will to fix
our broken immigration system once and for all. It's time to put smart
policy ahead of partisan politics.
"On behalf of the thousands of Americans who
are marching in over 80 sites across the country this Saturday to call
for real solutions, Congress must enact real and lasting solutions. On
behalf of Arizonans who will soon be stopped on the street just because
of the color of their skin, the clothes they wear and the language they
speak, Congress must get this bill done and get this bill done right.
"SEIU will not back down until Congress can
deliver a balanced, workable immigration bill that will truly reform
immigration for America. Diverse
groups are aligned on the need for a comprehensive solution. A majority
of Americans are in support. Now we need Congress to take bold steps,
roll up their sleeves and pass smart reforms once and for all.
SEIU's Comprehensive Immigration
Reform Principles:
A comprehensive solution would
couple enforcement at the border and in the workplace with a path to
earned legalization for all hard working immigrants. It will also replace guest worker programs
with a system that guarantees immigrant workers full labor and civil
rights protections, and a path to U.S. citizenship. Done together, these reforms will
finally restore the rule of law and eliminate an informal labor market
that drives down wages and labor protections for all U.S. workers. Read more about the Change to Win and AFL-CIO's Unified
Immigration Reform Framework.
With 2 million members in Canada, the United States and Puerto Rico, SEIU is the fastest-growing union in the Americas. Focused on uniting workers in healthcare, public services and property services, SEIU members are winning better wages, healthcare and more secure jobs for our communities, while uniting their strength with their counterparts around the world to help ensure that workers--not just corporations and CEOs--benefit from today's global economy.
LATEST NEWS
'We Have Only Just Begun,' Hegseth Says as 4 House Dems Join GOP to Back Trump War on Iran
"This disgraceful vote does not change Congress' legal duty, and it certainly does not silence the millions of Americans who oppose another illegal war," said an ACLU director.
Mar 05, 2026
As US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared Thursday that "the amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically," four Democrats in the House of Representatives voted with nearly all Republicans to reject a bipartisan war powers resolution that would have halted President Donald Trump and Israel's assault on the Middle East country.
Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Greg Landsman (Ohio), and Juan Vargas (Calif.) stood with the GOP for the 212-219 vote against H.Con.Res.38, which was led by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). The only other Republican to support the resolution was Rep. Warren Davidson (Ohio)—though GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales (Texas), who is facing an unrelated scandal, did not participate.
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the think tank Center for International Policy, highlighted that given Massie and Davidson's votes, "if those four Democrats had stuck with their caucus and their voters, it would have passed."
"Everyone who opposed the resolution owns this war—along with the casualties, rising gas prices, and regional chaos that comes with it."
The House vote came just a day after Democratic US Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) and all of the chamber's Republicans but Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) rejected S.J.Res.104, a similar resolution sponsored by Paul and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). As with the Wednesday vote, a range of critics called out Congress for enabling Trump's illegal and already seemingly endless war.
"This is a shameful abdication of Congress' constitutional authority to take the country to war," said Defending Rights & Dissent, noting the rising death toll. "US and Israeli strikes have hit elementary schools, hospitals, and the capital city of Tehran, home to 10 million. Six US service members have died. Trump is carrying out yet another regime change war of choice, and the American people have been overwhelmingly clear that they don't support it."
"This was Congress' best chance to stop further killings, to stop an all-out regional war with no end in sight, and to uphold the constitutional principle that prevents presidents from going rogue," the group continued. "We are deeply disappointed in both chambers' failure to stand up to this dangerous insanity."
Christopher Anders, director of the ACLU's democracy and technology division, stressed in a statement that "this failed war powers vote is nothing short of cowardly, but Congress can't dodge the Constitution forever."
"By refusing to rein in President Trump's unauthorized war with Iran, Congress has allowed President Trump to make a mockery of the Constitution and is trying to duck responsibility for putting service members and civilians in great danger," Anders added. "But, this disgraceful vote does not change Congress' legal duty, and it certainly does not silence the millions of Americans who oppose another illegal war. We will hold President Trump accountable for this abuse of power."
In the lead-up to Thursday's vote, one unnamed "senior progressive House Democrat" told Axios that the groups including Justice Democrats, MoveOn, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and Our Revolution "will primary anyone" who votes no.
After the vote, Justice Democrats shared the congressional office numbers of the four Democrats, and said to "call these spineless Dems who support Trump's new forever war with Iran and tell them to go to war themselves if they want it so bad."
Another progressive group, a youth-led climate organization Sunrise Movement, also took aim at the House Democrats who voted with the GOP, declaring on social media: "Absolutely ridiculous. Call them out. Vote them out."
Council on American-Islamic Relations government affairs director Robert S. McCaw commended all lawmakers "who voted to uphold Congress' constitutional duty and demand an end to unauthorized hostilities with Iran," particularly Massie and Davidson for their "courage to break with their party and stand on principle."
It is also "deeply disappointing" that some Democrats "joined Republicans to defeat this effort and enable an unconstitutional war," he said, warning that "their votes helped give the administration a green light to continue a dangerous escalation that threatens American lives and regional stability."
Earlier this week, Cuellar, Golden, and Landsman joined Democratic Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), and Jimmy Panetta (Calif.) to introduce a competing war powers resolution that would let Trump wage war on Iran for a month. Noting that proposal, McCaw argued that "Americans did not elect Congress to issue a '30 days of carnage hall pass' for an unauthorized war. If a war is unconstitutional today, it should not be allowed to continue for another month."
“The Constitution is clear: Congress, not the president, has the authority to decide when this nation goes to war," he added. "The American people must continue pressing their elected representatives to reclaim that authority and stop another disastrous war in the Middle East before it spirals further out of control."
As of Thursday, the Iranian government put the death toll at 1,230, though US and Israeli attacks continue, and Hegseth said that "we have only just begun to fight and fight decisively... If you think you've seen something, just wait. The amount of combat power that's still flowing, that's still coming, that we'll be able to project over Iran is a multiples of what it currently is right now."
On top of the lives lost, recent reporting suggests that Trump's war on Iran could be costing US taxpayers $1 billion per day. Calling the House vote "profoundly disappointing," Demand Progress senior policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian said that "everyone who opposed the resolution owns this war—along with the casualties, rising gas prices, and regional chaos that comes with it."
"Congress needs to stop listening to warmongering elites," Kharrazian added, "and start listening to the American people who are sick and tired of being dragged into forever wars."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel Accused of Using AI to Pick Iran Targets 'Without Any Human Oversight’—Just Like in Gaza
"Israel built AI targeting systems in Gaza—approved kills in 20 seconds, 10% error rate accepted," said one expert. "Now those same systems are running over Iran... and there’s an arms industry IPO-ing off the back of it."
Mar 05, 2026
After Israel's unprecedented use of artificial intelligence to select bombing targets in Gaza, experts are now sounding the alarm regarding what one analyst on Thursday called a lack of human supervision over Israeli AI targeting in Iran.
"Similarities between Israel's bombing of Gaza and Tehran are growing stronger," Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi said Thursday on X. "In both cases, it appears Israel is using AI without any human oversight."
"For instance, Israel has bombed a park in Tehran called 'Police Park,'" Parsi added. "It has nothing to do with the police. But it appears AI identified it as a target since Israel is bombing all government-related buildings. No one in Israel bothered to check and find out that it is just a park."
Borrowing from startup vernacular, tech journalist Jacob Ward calls Israel's use and export of AI technology in the post-Gaza era "lethal beta."
"Gaza was the prototype," Ward explained in a video posted this week on Bluesky. "Iran is the launch."
"[It's] a live-fire, live-ordnance lab experiment on people, killing people, that creates a pipeline of exportable products to the rest of the world, and it has become a big industry in Israel—and it's something that we in the United States have been dealing with and doing business with for some time as well."
Israel built AI targeting systems in Gaza — approved kills in 20 seconds, 10% error rate accepted. Now those same systems are running over Iran and being exported all over the world. I’m calling this “lethal beta,” and there’s an arms industry IPO-ing off the back of it. Full breakdown at
[image or embed]
— Jacob Ward (@byjacobward.bsky.social) March 3, 2026 at 4:45 PM
Previous investigations have detailed how the IDF uses Habsora, an Israeli AI system that can automatically select airstrike targets at an exponentially faster rate than ever before. One Israeli intelligence source asserted that the technology has transformed the IDF into a “mass assassination factory” in which the “emphasis is on quantity and not quality” of kills.
Mistakes were all but inevitable, but expert critics argue Israeli policy has made matters worse. In the tense hours following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, mid-ranking IDF officers were empowered to order attacks on not only senior Hamas commanders but any fighter in the resistance group, no matter how low-ranking.
According to a New York Times investigation, IDF officers were also permitted to risk up to 20 civilian lives in each airstrike, and up to 500 noncombatant lives per day. Even that limit was lifted after just a few days. Officers could order any number of strikes as they believed were legal, with no limits on civilian harm.
Senior IDF commanders sometimes approved strikes they knew could kill more than 100 civilians if the target was considered high-value. In one AI-aided airstrike targeting one senior Hamas commander, the IDF dropped multiple US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, which can level an entire city block, on the Jabalia refugee camp in October 2023.
That bombing killed at least 126 people, 68 of them children, and wounded 280 others. Hamas said four Israeli and three international hostages were also killed in the attack.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the US military in Iran has "leveraged the most advanced artificial intelligence it’s ever used in warfare, a tool that could be difficult for the Pentagon to give up even as it severs ties with the company that created it."
According to the Post, Palantir's Maven Smart System—which contains Anthropic's Claude AI language model—reportedly helped US commanders select 1,000 Iranian targets during the war's first 24 hours alone.
Experts are urging a more cautious approach to military AI use. Paul Scharre, executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, told the Post that “AI gets it wrong... We need humans to check the output of generative AI when the stakes are life and death.”
It is not publicly known whether AI was used in connection with any of the deadliest massacres of the current war on Iran, which has left more than 1,000 Iranians dead, including around 175 children and others who were killed by what first responders and victims' relatives said was a double-tap strike on a girls' school last Saturday in the southern city of Minab.
Last week, Trump ordered all federal agencies including the Department of Defense to stop using all Anthropic products in apparent retaliation for the San Francisco-based company's refusal to allow unrestricted government and military use of its technology over fears it could be used for mass surveillance of Americans and in automated weapons systems, also known as "killer robots."
Trump gave the Pentagon six months to phase out Anthropic products, allowing their continued use in the Iran war pending replacements.
Project Nimbus—a $1.2 billion cloud-computing and AI contract signed in 2021 between the Israeli government and Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud—provides cloud infrastructure, AI tools, and data storage for the IDF and other agencies. The deal prohibits Google or Amazon from refusing service to Israeli government, military, or intelligence agencies.
Academics and jurists are gathered this week in Geneva, Switzerland—with a second four-day round of talks starting August 31—for a United Nations-sponsored conference on lethal autonomous weapons systems.
Attendees are examining the risks posed by killer robots that can select and engage targets without meaningful human control. They are also studying the legal, military, and technological implications of autonomous weapons systems and working to build international consensus on regulation.
“The current failure to regulate AI warfare, or to pause its usage until there is some agreement on lawful usage, seems to suggest potential proliferation of AI warfare is imminent,” Craig Jones, a political geographer at Newcastle University in England who researches military targeting, told Nature's Nicola Jones on Thursday.
While some proponents of AI weapons systems have claimed their use will reduce civilian harm, Jones stressed that "there is no evidence that AI lowers civilian deaths or wrongful targeting decisions—and it may be that the opposite is true."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Cowardly and Despicable': Hegseth Condemned for Sinking of ‘Defenseless’ Iranian Ship
"If the United States is at war, then Pete Hegseth is a war criminal. If the United States is not at war, then Pete Hegseth is a murderer."
Mar 05, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday was condemned for his boasts on Wednesday about sinking an Iranian military ship after allegations emerged that it was "defenseless" at the time it was torpedoed in international waters by a US submarine.
Military.com reported Thursday that the Iranian ship had been departing from a biennial multinational naval training exercise that it had been invited to participate in by the Indian government.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has so far remained silent on the US attack on the ship, but other politicians in India delivering sharp condemnations.
According to the Times of India, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi tore into Modi for not speaking up after the US torpedoed a boat that his government had invited into its waters.
"The conflict has reached our backyard, with an Iranian warship sunk in the Indian Ocean," Gandhi said. "Yet the PM has said nothing. At a moment like this, we need a steady hand at the wheel. Instead, India has a compromised PM who has surrendered our strategic autonomy."
In a social media post, former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said there was no way that the Iranian ship could have been perceived as any kind of military threat.
"I am told that as per protocol for this exercise ships cannot carry any ammunition," he wrote. "It was defenseless... The attack by the US submarine was premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship's presence in the exercise to which the US navy was invited but withdrew from participation at the last minute, presumably with this operation in mind."
Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim noted that, in addition to striking what appears to have been a defenseless boat, the US also didn't help rescue any of the shipwrecked men who were aboard the vessel.
"The Sri Lanka Navy was left to pull the dead bodies from the water," Grim commented. "I am hard pressed to think of any other nation throughout history that would do something so cowardly and despicable. We are genuinely in a league of our own, and American media—mostly shrugging off the bombing of a girls school and acting as if carpet bombing Tehran is a normal military tactic—is deeply complicit."
Author Bruno Maçães also pointed to the decision to leave the shipwrecked crew at sea as an act of historic depravity.
"Really quite extraordinary that the US bombed an Iranian ship and then left the surviving sailors to drown," Maçães wrote. "There are many many accounts of the Nazis or Imperial Japan saving survivors at sea. I see we have now dropped below that level."
Mohamad Safa, executive director of PVA Patriotic Vision, an international multilateral organization with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that the US attack on the Iranian ship constituted either a war crime or straight-up murder.
"What Pete Hegseth ordered the military to do violates international law," he wrote. "The Iranian ship was near Sri Lanka, in international waters outside the combat zone and on a training exercise. Under the Geneva Conventions, you are obligated to rescue the crew of a ship that you sink during war. Abandoned any survivors and leaving them to drown is illegal and a war crime."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular