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Like every authoritarian before him, Trump is working to co-opt news sources and control what the public sees and hears. Too many corporate outlets are bending the knee—but not Common Dreams. We will never be intimidated, and we will never compromise the core values that define our community: social justice, universal human rights, equality, and peace. Because we are funded by ordinary people like you, our editorial freedom is guaranteed.
Lisa Hoyos, lisa@climateparents.org, 510-282-0440. climateparents.org
Statement by Climate Parents Director and Co-Founder Lisa Hoyos
"Today, with the publication of the Clean Power in the Federal Register, parents and families are celebrating this groundbreaking policy that will protect our kids' health and our damaged climate by growing clean energy. The fact that twenty-four states have already filed suit against the Clean Power Plan highlights the undue influence of the fossil fuel industry on public policy , and underscores exactly why the federal government needed to act.
Statement by Climate Parents Director and Co-Founder Lisa Hoyos
"Today, with the publication of the Clean Power in the Federal Register, parents and families are celebrating this groundbreaking policy that will protect our kids' health and our damaged climate by growing clean energy. The fact that twenty-four states have already filed suit against the Clean Power Plan highlights the undue influence of the fossil fuel industry on public policy , and underscores exactly why the federal government needed to act.
"The EPA's authority to implement the Clean Power Plan is steadfast, as court rulings have already established. It is not surprising--only discouraging--that big polluters and their allies in too many state governments are seeking to block energy that is kid-safe and climate-safe. But what is truly exciting is that parents and families support the Clean Power Plan, and will continue to do so until it is fully implemented in every state."
"Most corrupt administration in history," said Sen. Patty Murray of the latest Trump pardon.
President Donald Trump on Thursday formally pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the pardon, noted that it came "following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company."
According to the Journal, Binance has been a major financial booster of World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture backed by the Trump family that has added an estimated $5 billion to their total wealth.
"Binance has been one of the main drivers of the growth of World Liberty’s dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, called USD1," the Journal reported. "It delivered World Liberty’s first big break this spring when it accepted a $2 billion investment from an outside investor paid in USD1. Binance has also incentivized trading in USD1 across platforms it controls."
Critics of the president hammered him for pardoning Zhao, whose company willfully flouted reporting requirements that allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers. As flagged by CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane, prosecutors also found that Binance "critically undermined the effectiveness of US sanctions against Iran by providing its Iranian customers the ability to transact with the US customers."
Journalist Isaac Saul described Zhao as "comically corrupt" and said that his pardon would be "a monthslong scandal in any other normal administration" given the role Binance has played in boosting the Trump family's personal wealth.
Tommy Vietor, co-host of the Pod Save America podcast, was aghast at the brazenness of Trump's latest actions.
"Binance willfully failed to report transactions on its platform by al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad," he wrote on X. "But then Trump's crypto company made a multibillion-dollar deal in partnership with Binance, so Trump gave the founder a pardon. Shockingly brazen corruption."
Chuck Todd, the former host of NBC News' "Meet the Press," demanded that Republicans in Congress start doing their jobs and investigate the president's pardons.
"I know the GOP’s tolerance for government corruption has never been higher, but the obvious pay-to-play pardon scam for Trump family business partner Changpeng Zhao must make some elected GOPer squeamish," he said. "A normal functional congressional majority would do things like 'Oversight hearings' on what looks like obvious corrupt act like this one, and yet, cue the crickets."
Several Democratic politicians pounced on Trump's latest pardon, which they called evidence of unprecedented corruption.
"Make Trump rich and he'll gladly pardon you for your crimes," wrote Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). "Most corrupt administration in history. Meanwhile, he doesn't give a damn if you can't afford healthcare next year."
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) argued that pardoning Zhao "rewards corruption" and said it makes the Trump administration "look like a RICO organized crime enterprise."
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) expressed fury that the president would feel emboldened to pardon a criminal who helped boost his own net worth by billions of dollars.
"Trump got paid," he wrote. "And in exchange, he is rewarding a criminal who will use his new freedom to make every single American less safe. Get furious. I sure as hell am, and wish we had a single Republican who was willing to support ANY oversight."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also demanded congressional Republicans do their jobs and act as a check on the executive branch—and she warned them of political consequences if they failed to do so.
"If Congress does not stop this kind of corruption, it owns it," she said.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) noted that Trump, who commuted the prison sentence of notoriously corrupt former Rep. George Santos (D-NY) less than a week ago, seems to have a soft spot for wealthy white-collar criminals.
"Trump’s pardons and embrace of fraudsters—all to support his corruption—is just outrageous," she said. "So much for Republicans as the so-called party of 'law and order.' Insurrectionists, fraudsters, criminals—oh my."
“We’ve seen this pattern before—the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny," said Bishop William Barber II.
Calling the North Carolina Republican Party's new congressional district map "surgical racism with surgical precision," Bishop William J. Barber II of Repairers of the Breach was in Raleigh Thursday announcing a lawsuit challenging the redistricting effort—pledging that the state's voters will "challenge gerrymandering in the courts, in the streets, and at the ballot box."
"This is a direct attack on the state's Black Belt district and marginalized communities," said Barber at a press conference announcing the legal challenge, a day after the state House of Representatives approved the new map in a party-line vote.
The new map, which was passed by the state Senate earlier this week and cannot be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein under state law, will likely give the GOP an additional seat in the US House after the 2026 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump has called for mid-decade redistricting efforts by the GOP in states including Missouri and Texas as well as North Carolina, with state Republicans heeding his demands.
North Carolina's new map will likely give Republicans 11 of the state's 14 districts, by moving some Black voters out of the 1st District and into the 3rd District. Had the new map been in place in 2024, Trump would likely have won 55% of the vote in the new 1st District in 2024, up from the 51% he won.
Barber denounced the redistricting efforts across the country as "political robbery" by a party that wants "to rob people of their rights through this racially based gerrymandering... so that they can give power or keep power in the US Congress to engage in political violence," including by cutting healthcare and blocking the passage of living wages.
“We’ve seen this pattern before—the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny," said Barber. "But the truth is simple: When you steal people’s representation, you steal their healthcare, their wages, and their future. That’s why we will fight back... to make clear that in North Carolina, and across America, the people’s will cannot be gerrymandered out of existence."
Barber said Republicans in the state Legislature are "gambling" in order to win another seat, instead of trying to win over voters.
"They're saying, 'Let's move this county over here, let's move this county over here,' he said at the press conference. "Black voters in Congressional District 1 make up approximately 40% of the population, and there's a growing Latino population that makes up 7%... Black communities, Latino communities, and rural, working-class, poor white voters, if the districts are fair, have the power to build a fusion electorate that can overcome the greedy oligarchs' will to control elections in our state."
Along with filing a legal action against state lawmakers to challenge the legality of the map, Barber said Repairers of the Breach will hold a "Mass Moral Fusion Meeting" and public hearing on November 2.
“If they won’t hold public hearings, we will,” said Barber. “This is our Edmund Pettus Bridge moment... Black, white, and brown together—because our democracy is not for sale.”
"If these cuts take effect without replacement funding, it won't just mean longer lines—it means people won't be able to get care when they need it," said one healthcare worker.
A coalition of frontline healthcare workers, unions, and economists launched an effort Thursday to build support for a proposed ballot measure in California that would impose a one-time tax on the state's billionaires to avert a looming crisis spurred by national Republicans' unprecedented Medicaid cuts.
The proposed ballot initiative, titled "The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act," would levy a single 5% tax on the wealth of California's roughly 200 billionaires to offset healthcare funding shortfalls caused by the roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts that US President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans approved over the summer.
Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), one of the largest healthcare worker unions in the country, is spearheading the organizing push to get the proposal on the California ballot in November 2026. The union expects support for the measure to grow quickly in the coming weeks, and organizers said they hope the effort can serve as a "playbook" for other states working to mitigate the increasingly devastating impacts of the GOP assault on Medicaid.
Dave Regan, the president of SEIU-UHW, said during a press call Thursday that "it is a 100% certainty that we have the ability to put this on the ballot in 2026, and we intend to do so."
"We know what's going to happen if we don't do this," Regan added, alluding to the hospital closures, healthcare job cuts, and other havoc the Trump-GOP Medicaid cuts are already causing across the nation.
Supporters of the new initiative warn that if Medicaid funding cuts aren't offset with new revenue, California could lose around 145,000 healthcare jobs and see hospital closures across the state, a disaster for vulnerable families.
"We are already short-staffed, and every week more patients walk through our doors with fewer places to go," said Mayra Castanada, an ultrasound technologist in Lynwood, California. "If these cuts take effect without replacement funding, it won't just mean longer lines—it means people won't be able to get care when they need it."
"The tax is small relative to the massive gains billionaires have made, yet large enough to preserve programs that are crucial for California's economy and its continued success."
Experts estimate that the one-time tax would raise $100 billion—a fraction of the staggering $2 trillion in combined wealth controlled by the 200 wealthiest Californians. Billionaires impacted by the tax would include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, two of the richest men in the world.
Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a leading expert on wealth inequality, voiced support for the initiative, saying that "the wealth of California billionaires has exploded in recent years while health and education in California are getting defunded by the Trump administration."
"The tax is small relative to the massive gains billionaires have made, yet large enough to preserve programs that are crucial for California's economy and its continued success," said Saez.
Former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich also backed the initiative, saying the GOP Medicaid cuts have sparked a "manufactured crisis."
"These federal cuts didn't happen by accident—they were designed to shield billionaires from contributing while pushing the consequences onto patients and workers," said Reich. "A time-limited emergency tax on the ultra-wealthy is a practical way to keep the healthcare system functioning."