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For Immediate Release
April, 21 2016, 12:45pm EDT
Contact:
Email: media@reproductivefreedomforall.org
NARAL Launches New TV Ad Campaign Against Trump: #TrumpHatesUs
In Addition To New TV Ad, Group Launches New Interactive Website That Lets People Find Out How Much Trump Hates Them
WASHINGTON
NARAL Pro-Choice America today launched a new campaign targeting GOP-frontrunner Donald Trump and his hateful rhetoric. The #TrumpHatesUs campaign launched with a new television ad campaign hitting Donald Trump by highlighting the alarming number of groups of people Republican Donald Trump hates.
The ad, which will air statewide in Pennsylvania through the primary on Tuesday, uses some of Donald Trump's most offensive comments about women, Latinos, Muslims and abortion.
You can see the ad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHwvv0Tdbk8&feature=youtu.be
In addition to the ad, NARAL is rolling out a new interactive website that allows people across the country to find out how much Trump hates them.
You can see the site at: https://www.trumphatesus.org/
"How people campaign is a crystal clear look into how they will lead if elected," said Joel Foster, Political Director of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "In the case of Donald Trump, whose campaign has been driven by hateful, misogynistic and bigoted campaign rhetoric, this should scare every voter. Donald Trump's hatred of large groups of Americans is more than 'un-presidential' it is outright un-American and dangerous."
For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.
202.973.3000LATEST NEWS
Mamdani Says NYC Can Honor 9/11 Victims by Building a City Where 'We Run Toward One Another'
"Let us remember the extraordinary compassion, resilience, and bravery that carried our city through its darkest day."
Sep 11, 2026
With Lower Manhattan and the site of the September 11 attacks in the background, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday called on people to honor the memory of the nearly 3,000 victims—as well as those who have died of illnesses stemming from toxic air at the site of the attacks—by caring "for one another" as thousands of people "cared for strangers" as the tragedy was unfolding exactly 25 years ago.
Mamdani honored the 2,753 New Yorkers—"parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and colleagues, 2,753 universes gone in an instant"—and said the city and country remember September 11 as "the darkest day" when hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and passengers aboard a fourth plane fought to stop another target from being struck.
The mayor urged viewers to remember the actions of thousands of New Yorkers in the immediate aftermath of the attack—those who donated blood and "opened their homes to those who could not get home."
"We remember the workers who carried their colleagues down hundreds of stairs, then turned around and went back up to find someone else who needed help," said Mamdani.
On social media, as the country marked the 25th anniversary of the attacks, many users spoke about specific acts of bravery, including those of Rick Rescorla, the head of security at Morgan Stanley, who was killed at the World Trade Center after he led roughly 2,700 of his colleagues to safety.
In a separate social media post on Instagram, Mamdani highlighted several lesser-known New Yorkers who "sprang into action to help however they could," including teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers, and healthcare providers.
His office interviewed Roseann Caruana of the city's Department of Transportation, who described a triage center that was set up for victims, and Rashel Dorleans—now a New York City public school teacher, and a high school student at the time of the attacks.
"I think it's a credit to the teachers that were there," said Dorleans. "They did not seem panicked. I'm sure they were panicked on the inside, but they were kind and calm with us."
Mamdani said that "we have a sacred obligation to those who were stolen from us to care for one another as they cared for strangers, to live lives worthy of the sacrifices they made, and to build a city worthy of their courage, a city where we run toward one another. That is how we remember."
Ahead of the anniversary this week, the mayor released long-hidden files regarding how New York residents were misled about the toxicity of the air at the World Trade Center attack site. He said the number of people who have died thus far from related cancers and other health issues has likely surpassed the number of victims on September 11.
Mamdani was also the target of attacks this week from Republicans including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and City Council members Vickie Paladino and Joann Ariola, who explicitly cited Mamdani's Muslim faith as they said he did "not belong" at the September 11 memorial ceremony held on Friday.
“I’m proud to be the mayor of this city. I love this city. I love this country,” Mamdani said when asked about the racist remarks. “What I want this week to be a focus on is the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11, and a focus also on the first responders who did everything they could.”
The mayor was seen shaking Giuliani's hand and speaking to him at the ceremony.
"Let us remember the extraordinary compassion, resilience, and bravery that carried our city through its darkest day," said Mamdani. "Today, New York remembers."
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On 25th Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks, Condemnation of Global 'War on Terror' That Has Killed Millions
"US officials who orchestrated post-9/11 abuses must also be held accountable, and their victims must receive meaningful remedy and reparation."
Sep 11, 2026
International human rights campaigners, United Nations experts, journalists, and anti-war activists marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US by paying tributes to the thousands of lives lost on that day while condemning what followed: an unparalleled expansion of state surveillance, crackdowns on dissent, arbitrary detention, torture, and catastrophic wars that cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives.
Mourning the lasting impact of "those horrific acts of violence" perpetrated in the US a quarter-century ago, a group of more than 40 UN experts said in a joint statement on Friday that "we equally acknowledge the millions of other victims worldwide of terrorist attacks, excessive counter-terrorism responses, and conflicts in the name of countering terrorism."
"Too many governments have adopted unnecessary and disproportionate responses that have seriously undermined human rights, civil society, civic space, democracy, and the rule of law," the experts continued. "Wars of aggression. Unlawful occupations. Countless war crimes and crimes against humanity, and plausible allegations of genocide. Assassinations dressed up as 'targeted killings.' Torture disguised as 'interrogation.' Transboundary abductions, extraordinary renditions, and transnational repression. Secret detention and enforced disappearances. Unfair military trials and special courts, including at Guantanamo Bay. Toxic residues from conflicts have severely harmed human health."
The experts argued that global "wars on terror" launched by the US and other nations in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks have "have stretched foundational rules of international law beyond their breaking point," "counterproductively fueled terrorism," and "entrenched cycles of violence."
Many of those grave abuses continue in the present, the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights emphasized in a statement marking the anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities.
"In the 25 years since September 11, 2001, the sweeping political project the US government undertook in its aftermath has shaped, shattered, or ended millions of lives," the group said. "Exploiting fear and suffering, the Bush administration launched a limitless 'war on terror,' whose stated purpose was all pretext to impose its will on other countries, expand its power beyond constitutional bounds, and target vulnerable communities."
"Today, because of the lack of accountability for these gross abuses of human rights, Trump can use 'counterterrorism' to pursue his authoritarian program," said CCR.
Nick Turse, a senior reporter at The Intercept, argued the attacks coordinated by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2001 created a "swirl of toxic policies and governmental overreach" that "opened the door to something beyond bin Laden’s wildest dreams, the rise of an even more effective terrorist who has crippled the US in countless ways and sought to strangle the best of the country: President Donald Trump."
"Bin Laden’s attacks turned the US government into an engine for the destruction of America, inducing it to implement policies that have devastated the country and immiserated its people," Turse wrote in a column published Friday. "That includes unrestrained spending while cutting taxes on the rich, closer ties with despotic regimes, the sneak-and-peek warrants and roving wiretaps of the Patriot Act and other domestic surveillance programs, and the ruinous failed forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere."
Those wars, according to Brown University's Costs of War project, have cost the US federal government upwards of $8 trillion.
"The opportunity costs are staggering," the project noted. "Many of these funds could have been spent on public health or in sectors that create far more jobs than the defense sector, like education or green energy."
As for the human toll, the Costs of War project noted in a brief published last week that as of 2023, "an estimated 905,000-940,000 people—including US soldiers, allied security forces, civilians, and militants—have died due to war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria (in the fight against the Islamic State), Yemen, and elsewhere. At least 408,749—432,093 of those who have died were civilians."
"Many other people have died indirectly as a result of the wars," the brief observed. "An estimated 3.6-3.8 million indirect deaths have occurred in post-9/11 war zones."
Scott Roehm, Amnesty International USA's chief human rights strategy officer, said Friday that the US government could have responded to the 9/11 attacks "by upholding human rights and the rule of law while pursuing justice and accountability for victims’ families."
"Instead, it embarked on a campaign of widespread abuses against Muslim, Brown, and Black communities, including arbitrary detentions and mass surveillance in the US; unlawful lethal air strikes abroad; enforced disappearances and torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and at CIA black sites; and the opening of the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center," said Roehm. "The choice to engage in torture, then build prosecutions against those alleged to be most responsible for 9/11 on the back of torture-derived evidence, is largely why, 25 years later, there has been neither justice nor finality for victims’ families."
"The US government must end the last 25 years of abuses," Roehm added. "US officials who orchestrated post-9/11 abuses must also be held accountable, and their victims must receive meaningful remedy and reparation.”
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Demagogue Trump Makes Supporters 'Pledge' to 'Cheat Like Hell' in 2026 Midterms
"Having people pledge allegiance to himself is the most on-brand Trump thing to do," said one progressive critic. "And it shows how cult-like the base is that they did it."
Sep 11, 2026
Far-right President Donald Trump on Thursday night asked his Republican supporters at a party convention event to raise their right hands and vow fealty directly to him in a mocking version of the "pledge of allegiance" in which he also called on them to "cheat like hell" at the ballot box in November in order to secure a midterm win against Democrats.
"Please right your right hand," Trump told attendees at the first-ever GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Texas.
"I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States—that loves us so much he can't even breathe—that I will go out with my family, my friends, I'll do it any way—I don't care if I'm registered or not, I'm going to try to cheat like hell like [the Democrats] do... there's never been bigger cheaters, they don't care."
President Trump led his Republican Party in a mock pledge during their political convention in Dallas, telling them to ‘cheat like hell’ and vote whether they're ‘registered or not’ in November's midterm elections https://t.co/JgD3J8BdV9 pic.twitter.com/tCDKAi3FBo
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 11, 2026
"Having people pledge allegiance to himself is the most on-brand Trump thing to do," said Jonathan Cohn, political director of the grassroots advocacy group Progressive Mass. "And it shows how cult-like the base is that they did it."
Trump has built the second half of his political career around lies related to false claims of voter fraud and stolen elections. With the midterms less than two months away, and early voting starting soon in some states, the GOP fears losing both the House and Senate because of a crippled economy and historically low approval numbers for the president.
While the president is not on the ballot, Trump has asked his base to pretend that he is in order to help Republican prospects in races nationwide. However, not all political observers are convinced that Trump will be the turnout booster for his party that he claims to be.
In his speech on Thursday—a night after he said that he would issue $5,000 checks to every US adult if the Republicans win in the midterms—Trump told the crowd that those who don't vote this year would "go to hell" as punishment.
"Night One: Trump offers $5k bribes to get people to vote for Republicans," said Amanda Carpenter, a writer for the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy United. "Night Two: Trump tells his supporters they'll go to hell if they don't vote. Sounds like it's going well!"
" Donald Trump just replaced the Pledge of Allegiance with a pledge of allegiance to himself," noted Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. "This November, the choice is yours on the ballot: America or Trump."
"Bro had his supporters raise their right hands and pledge to vote for him. Then told them they'd go to hell if they don't," said one online commentator.
"This shit is literally beyond parody!" exclaimed another.
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Trump's $500 Healthcare Rebate Plan Called 'An Absolute Joke' as Premiums Skyrocket
"At a time when people are scraping by to keep up with the high cost of groceries, rent, and healthcare, this $500 gimmick won’t even begin to dig them out of the hole that Trump and Republicans created."
Sep 11, 2026
President Donald Trump said Thursday that his administration would issue $500 rebate checks to some Americans who were purportedly "overcharged" under the Affordable Care Act, a move that would provide little to no relief to the millions of people impacted by surging health insurance premiums.
The White House said in a fact sheet that around a million Americans in 30 states would receive rebate checks, beginning next month—just weeks before the November midterms. Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, ripped the rebate plan as "an absolute joke," calling $500 "a drop in the bucket compared to what Americans are paying because Trump and Republicans gutted healthcare to bankroll massive tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations."
Woodhouse was referring to a Republican budget measure, signed into law last summer by Trump, that enacted more than $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.
The GOP also declined last year to extend enhanced ACA subsidies that helped reduce costs for tens of millions of Americans, sending premiums skyrocketing. Some families have seen annual premium increases in the thousands of dollars, leading many to drop marketplace coverage entirely. ACA premiums are set to surge by double digits for a second consecutive year in 2027.
"At a time when people are scraping by to keep up with the high cost of groceries, rent, and healthcare, this $500 gimmick won’t even begin to dig them out of the hole that Trump and Republicans created," said Woodhouse.
The White House said ACA enrollees who "do not receive premium assistance" and who live in states that "use the federal exchange for the operations of their Obamacare markets" would be eligible for a rebate check, meaning the payments would disproportionately benefit enrollees with higher incomes in red states.
"The vast majority of ACA enrollees won't get $500 from the Trump administration, including: those who still get premium subsidies, though what they're paying has gone up a lot with expiration of enhanced tax credits. And, those in mostly blue states that run their own exchanges," noted Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF. "There are 19.2 million ACA enrollees. The Trump administration is talking about sending $500 rebate checks to fewer than one million of them."
Policy experts disputed the Trump administration's claim that Americans were "overcharged" due to the Biden administration's "gross mismanagement" of the ACA. As The Associated Press reported:
Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, said it’s entirely possible that the funds Trump has promised came from fees collected during Trump’s first term. His first administration collected more user fees from insurers than it spent, resulting in an estimated $1 billion in unspent funds, according to KFF analysis.
It is unclear whether the $500 rebate represents what each enrollee may have overpaid, where the money for the rebates would come from, and whether it requires congressional approval for disbursement.
The White House's rebate check pledge came as Trump also vowed to send $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the November midterms, a promise that was widely derided.
"The 'Trump dividends' scam is just Trump’s latest attempt to distract the country from the Republican affordability crisis," said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). "Trump promised he would lower prices, and instead he keeps mashing the 'make stuff more expensive button.' The American people will not be fooled."
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Israeli Documentary ‘NAZA’ Exposes 'System of Killing' in Gaza From Eyes of Secret Intelligence Unit
The directors of the film—which premiered at the Venice Film Festival—said they "felt the responsibility" to expose insider testimony about Israel's systematic mass killing of Palestinians.
Sep 10, 2026
A documentary film that premiered Thursday at the Venice Film Festival offers a rare inside account of Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, with former members of a secret Israeli intelligence unit describing how they helped transform the mass killing of Palestinian civilians into a routine, bureaucratized affair.
NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is based on interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders, several of whom served in a secret unit that reported directly to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"We really are looking at... a system of killing, which is mass killing [and] relies on mass surveillance," Abraham told reporters in Venice on Thursday. "We felt the responsibility as Israelis to use our position... to bring insider testimony into how the system looks like from the inside... And this is the film that we made."
Szor said that "a lot of these things are also, it's important to say... known because they've been documented by journalists, Palestinian journalists, in Gaza. It's footage that has been out there."
"But I think that we felt that there is still some sort of an importance to take those testimonies and put it in a film in a way that, of course, first of all, it's different to hear," she added. "The people who designed and operated those systems talk about it in front of a camera."
According to the film, one former member bluntly said that the unit's mission was to “thwart peace.”
However, Abraham and Szor said their purpose was not to expose a handful of rogue soldiers, but to examine the machinery and policies behind the violence.
The documentary’s title refers to an Israeli military acronym used to quantify the civilians expected to be killed in an attack—a chilling bureaucratic shorthand for people often referred to as collateral damage, or, in the so-called "War on Terror" still being waged by the United States 25 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, "bugsplat."
The film’s sources describe artificial intelligence-assisted targeting, mass surveillance, and the hacking of mobile phones to identify alleged Hamas operatives, sometimes despite the known presence of family members and other civilians.
Israeli forces have operated under loosened rules of engagement that effectively permit the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member. The Israel Defense Forces utilizes cutting-edge AI technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, and destroys them with weapons including 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs—many supplied by the US.
The result has been the killing and wounding of more than 250,000 Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Most of the victims have been civilians, including more than 21,500 children killed and tens of thousands more disabled or wounded.
Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice—also in The Hague—and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
Abraham and Szor are best known internationally for co-directing with two others the film No Other Land, which chronicled ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The film won the 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature.
NAZA—which reportedly received a 25-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere—is the sole documentary among the films competing for the festival's famed Golden Lion. It joins a growing body of recent films about the Gaza genocide.
American Doctor, directed by Poh Si Teng, follows US physicians working inside Gaza hospitals amid Israel's deliberate destruction of the strip's medical and healthcare systems.
Last year's The Voice of Hind Rajab offered a harrowing mix of acted scenes and the actual 70-minute audio recording of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl's desperate final phone call to Palestine Red Crescent Society personnel amid an Israeli massacre of her family as they were trapped in a car under tank fire.
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Trump EPA Accused of Endangering Public as Study Highlights 'Hidden Health Costs' of Data Centers
The Environmental Protection Network listed actions "that could increase pollution-related health risks, weaken protections that would otherwise reduce those risks, or shift more costs onto families and communities."
Sep 10, 2026
As President Donald Trump claims that US communities fighting against artificial intelligence data centers are promoting "poverty, crime, and squalor," a Thursday report details how his administration "is weakening or proposing to weaken pollution and permitting safeguards" for such facilities, to the detriment of public health.
The Environmental Protection Agency's "mission is to protect human health and the environment," notes the new report. "Yet Administrator Lee Zeldin has made turning the United States into the 'AI capital of the world' a pillar of EPA's work."
"The Hidden Health Costs of AI Data Centers"—from the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), which is made up of hundreds of former EPA staffers—documents "at least 30 federal actions since January 2025 that could increase pollution-related health risks, weaken protections that would otherwise reduce those risks, or shift more costs onto families and communities."
As the document details: "17 of the 30 explicitly cite or target AI or data centers in the action itself or in an agency statement specifically describing or justifying that action. The remaining 13 affect how data centers are powered, what pollution safeguards apply, how projects are approved, or how federal requirements are enforced."
The report points to the EPA policy that "made it easier for some long-idled facilities to restart without triggering the major air-permitting requirements," as well as its proposed elimination of federal carbon pollution standards for fossil-fueled power plants and some outstanding state clean-air requirements for areas that failed to meet ozone standards.
The publication also notes the EPA's extended deadlines for several coal-plant wastewater requirements, newly regulated coal-ash units, the 2024 oil and gas standards, and for states to submit plans to reduce visibility-impairing pollution. The agency further interpreted a policy on nonemergency backup generator use that it framed as a move supporting AI and data centers.
It's not just the EPA. The US Department of Energy "authorized grid use of backup generation at data centers and other major facilities during emergencies," the report explains, while the Army Corps of Engineers "expressly named data centers as examples of commercial development covered by" a streamlined water permit.
The race for AI data center growth shouldn’t mean weaker safeguards on pollution. Former EPA official Walter Mugdan explains why strong enforcement matters when families’ health is at risk.What’s being weakened? Read the full report at the link in the comments.
[image or embed]
— Environmental Protection Network (@enviroprotnet.bsky.social) September 10, 2026 at 4:39 PM
"No study has yet calculated the combined health effects of these actions, but the direction is clear," the report says. It cites a study from this year that estimates air pollution related to data centers "could impose roughly $11.7 billion to $20.9 billion in annual public health costs by 2028," and "contribute to roughly 600,000 asthma symptom cases and 1,300 premature deaths."
Dan Costa, who spent about 35 years at EPA studying the impact of air pollution on human health and led its national research program on air quality, climate, and energy, said that "the existing health study gives us a picture of the potential health burden under particular data-center growth and emissions scenarios."
"But it does not estimate the additional health effects of the 30 federal policy actions EPN documents," he stressed. "That is the analysis EPA should be doing now: Measuring what these sources actually emit, modeling both local and regional air-quality effects, and translating those changes into health impacts."
In addition to laying out the Trump policies and their risks, the publication highlights how his agenda on AI data centers conflicts with voters' wishes. An April poll conducted by YouGov for EPN found that:
- Just 16% of US voters support making the United States the "AI capital of the world" an EPA priority;
- 69% of voters are highly concerned about fast-tracking data centers without usual safeguards;
- 85% of voters say Trump should be tougher on corporations that violate environmental laws; and
- by an 8-1 margin, voters say the EPA should prioritize people's health over reducing pollution regulations.
"You would think a build-out of this magnitude would mean more vigilance from EPA: stronger safeguards to make sure companies control their pollution, more science to understand what this scale will bring, and more monitoring," said Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and former EPA assistant administrator. "Instead, EPA and other federal agencies are doing the opposite."
The EPN report was published amid mounting calls for Congress to rein in artificial intelligence development in the wake of Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic who previously worked at OpenAI, quitting, and spotlighting fears within the industry that the rapidly advancing technology "could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have introduced legislation that would permanently ban the development of "superintelligent" AI until a federal body is created to regulate it—and, according to polling results published on Wednesday by Data for Progress, 68% of likely voters in the United States support that proposal.
Sanders has also partnered with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY) for the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act, which would pause construction on the facilities "until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment."
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Anger Grows Over 'Pathological Liar-in-Chief' Donald Trump's $5,000 Midterm Bribes
"Even for the notoriously corrupt and lawless Trump, this explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes in the November election is a new low," said one watchdog leader.
Sep 10, 2026
Many Democrats in Congress are on the growing list of critics calling out President Donald Trump for his Wednesday night vow to give US voters $5,000 each if they help Republicans win control of the Senate and House of Representatives—where they already have majorities—in the November midterm elections.
"Nothing says confidence like trying to bribe people for votes," Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) quipped Thursday.
When Fox News' Laura Ingraham later asked, "Why not just give the money now?" Trump attempted to blame Democrats.
Noting the president's jumbled response to that question, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said: "I don't know what this even means, but I do know the reason Trump won't give a straight answer is that he doesn't really mean to send these checks to anyone. He has lied about this over and over again, and he's lying now. Just like he lied when he said he would lower costs."
Some critics highlighted other cases of Trump pledging to give Americans money, including alleged savings from the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said: "So now it's $5,000 bribes that Trump will never deliver to attempt to make voters forget what they are paying for gas and food. What ever happened to those promised DOGE checks? Americans are not fools, we know he lies daily."
Blasting the president as "our pathological liar-in-chief," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also pointed to previous instances of Trump promising money, from a 10% cap on credit card interest rates to $2 for a gallon of gasoline.
"The Trump administration is not about helping working families," the former presidential candidate stressed. "It's about giving a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1% and throwing 15 million Americans off the healthcare they have."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has also sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, shared on social media Groundwork Collaborative's roundup of 15 times Trump has promised a check, dividend, or rebate—and not delivered.
Some Democratic governors also took aim at Trump. California's Gavin Newsom, who is expected to run for president in 2028, said: "After making you sicker and poorer with his war, Donald Trump now wants to buy your vote with $5,000 in taxpayer-funded blood money. The most corrupt man ever to occupy the Oval Office."
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul emphasized that "Trump owes New Yorkers $13.5 billion for his illegal tariffs and hasn't paid up."
"Now he's dangling $5,000 checks if Republicans win Congress. A trillion-dollar campaign bribe from a guy who doesn't pay his bills," she added. "Fool me once…"
It's not just elected Democrats ripping Trump's new pledge. Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a Thursday statement that "even for the notoriously corrupt and lawless Trump, this explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes in the November election is a new low."
"Trump knows he can't do this, and yet he's attempting to bribe voters with the false promise of cash to help his party win an election, which is antithetical to every principle of American democracy," she continued. "Every Republican at the convention and across the country should loudly and vehemently denounce Trump for proposing this dangerous and transparently illegal scheme. The fact that no one has done that yet is cause for deep alarm about the future of American elections."
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Appeals Court Rejects 'Likely Unlawful' Trump Push to Undermine Mail-In Voting as Supreme Court Looms
The First Circuit Court of Appeals found implementing Trump's order would cause "chaos and widespread disenfranchisement... between now and November 3."
Sep 10, 2026
A federal court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration's request to reinstate an executive order that placed restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections, arguing that the order is "likely unlawful."
The US First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that President Donald Trump's mail-in voting executive order likely violates the US Constitution's elections clause, which grants states the rights to oversee their own elections, subject to oversight from the US Congress.
The court also found that the regulations proposed by the order "could prevent millions of Americans from obtaining and returning their ballots" in the coming election.
The ruling noted that the Trump executive order places a number of onerous restrictions on mail-in voting, such as requiring states to print "a voter-specific Intelligent Mail barcode ('IMb')" on all outgoing ballots as a precondition for their delivery by the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Additionally, the court wrote, the order would compel states "to obtain USPS approval for new ballot-envelope designs; to purchase new envelopes to replace those already ordered; to assure that there are technological systems in place adequate to generate IMbs; and to upload voter-specific information to a USPS online portal that is still not operational."
The court said these restrictions are so severe that they validate an earlier ruling from a federal district court, which found that implementing Trump's executive order would lead to "chaos and widespread disenfranchisement... between now and November 3."
Among other things, the court found these Trump-ordered rules would make it "impossible for some states to reprint compliant envelopes," while also creating a "herculean task" of "scanning tens of millions of ballot envelopes and reviewing for a match with information in the presently non-operative portal."
The court also took a shot at Trump administration lawyers, whom it alleged "have not even seriously challenged" the district court's finding about the chaos the president's executive order would cause.
The injunction against Trump's mail-in voting order came as a result of a complaint filed by a number of civil society groups, including the League of Women Voters and the Association of Americans Resident Overseas.
In a joint statement released after the ruling, the plaintiffs and their counsel said that the court affirmed that "the US Postal Service is not the gatekeeper for mail ballots."
"This decision rightly keeps in place an order blocking USPS from enforcing its disruptive and disenfranchising rule through the November election," they added, "and preserves the current system, which has worked safely, securely, and reliably for decades."
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom took the opportunity to taunt the Trump administration for suffering yet another loss in its crusade to clamp down on mail-in voting.
"The rule of law continues to slap down Donald Trump's dangerous and un-American attacks on our free and fair elections," Newsom wrote. "California will never stop fighting for our democracy and the people's ability to exercise their constitutional right to vote."
The Trump administration has asked to the US Supreme Court to reinstate the president's voting order. With mail-in ballots for the upcoming midterms already being sent out in some states, a ruling from the nation's highest court is expected in the coming days.
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Anthropic Report Says Company Blocked Possible Use of AI Model to Build Biological Weapons
"Right now, we're counting on AI corporations to voluntarily block weapons of mass destruction," said Rep. Greg Casar, who is pushing for a ban on "superintelligent" AI.
Sep 10, 2026
As industry insiders issue louder warnings about the catastrophic danger of unchecked artificial intelligence, Anthropic has revealed in a report out Thursday that it had to "disrupt" several attempts by scientists to use its AI models for research that could contribute to the creation of biological weapons.
In the report, titled “Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI,” Anthropic said that over the past eight months, it banned several accounts that had used its chatbot Claude for research into highly contagious diseases.
As NBC News reported:
In each of the five cases Anthropic cited, the company suspected that the researchers behind them were affiliated in some way with a government or military in a country it had banned or took deliberate steps to hide their location and identity, or both. The company declined to say where any of the researchers were based, but its terms of service allow all use from all but a few regions, including China, Iran, and Russia.
In one example, Anthropic said researchers used a third-party platform that attempted to use Claude to complete a grant application for work that would look into how to repeatedly mutate chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus that causes severe pain and fever in humans. Anthropic said it blocked all attempts by the researchers. The research, which would be conducted at a military institute, would seek to repeatedly mutate the virus in live animals to become increasingly more infectious, Anthropic said.
Another had used Anthropic’s Claude to assist in research into how to make bird flu, which historically has a global fatality rate of around 50% in confirmed human cases, more virulent and damaging to mammals. Anthropic said the researcher only received assistance from Claude’s weakest class of models, which provided clerical help.
Anthropic clarified that it did not find any concrete instance of a scientist attempting to use its technology for nefarious purposes, and that these use cases may well have been part of beneficial scientific inquiry, like research into vaccines or other cures for disease. Nevertheless, it said it erred on the side of caution and shut down the accounts.
"Biological misuse is one of the most serious risks of frontier AI models," the report explains. "It has long been a concern that AI models might one day reach the level of capability where they can help to make existing pathogens more dangerous—or create entirely new ones. Without the correct safeguards, such capabilities could have catastrophic consequences."
The report acknowledges that even as safeguards are implemented, those with the intent to do harm are getting more savvy about how to evade them and using the appearance of legitimate science to do it.
"Sophisticated threat actors are aware that we (and other AI providers) are attempting to detect dangerous uses of our models, and they use the dual-use nature of biology to maintain a kind of 'plausible deniability' about their research," the report says. "More sophisticated actors can hide their intent, extracting assistance from an AI model in interactions that look plausibly beneficial, but when put in context and analyzed holistically, can provide clear warning signs of misuse."
The report details other ways in which actors have used its technology for malicious purposes. It found that governments like China, Iran, and Mali had used Claude to collect information about journalists and dissidents. Others used it to conduct hacking campaigns, automate identity theft operations, and create malware.
Anthropic said it hoped that by publishing the report, it would "help other developers recognize similar patterns on their own platforms, give governments and civil society a clearer view of how emerging threats take shape, and strengthen collective defenses."
The report comes amid a torrent of scrutiny directed at Anthropic and its competitor OpenAI following reports in recent months of severe security breaches involving their technology, which has been documented acting autonomously to hack into other websites and evade human detection.
Earlier this week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, resigned from his post and sounded the alarm about fears within the industry that the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade" and that the companies are prioritizing the race toward superintelligence without regard for the potential risks.
In the wake of Coxon's resignation, several other researchers from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have shared similar warnings that the technology could result in an extinction-level disaster or otherwise cause severe harm to human society.
A poll published on Wednesday by Data for Progress showed that 68% of likely voters in the US support a proposal announced last week by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) for legislation that would permanently ban the development of "superintelligent" AI that can surpass human cognition and would put a pause on "advanced" AI development until a federal body is put in place to regulate the industry.
Casar said the fact that Anthropic was being relied upon to stop its own users from using its tech to potentially create bioweapons illustrated the urgent need for regulation.
"Right now, we're counting on AI corporations to voluntarily block weapons of mass destruction. Voluntarily," Casar emphasized in a post to social media on Thursday. "Congress must do the obvious thing: BAN catastrophic AI uses like creating biological or nuclear weapons."
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Report Details 500+ Yemeni Civilian Casualties From 2023-25 US Airstrikes
"The so-called 'War on Terror' never ended in Yemen," said Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell. "This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused."
Sep 10, 2026
A report released Thursday examines the more than 500 Yemeni civilians its authors said were killed or wounded by US airstrikes in the Middle East nation during a recent 17-month period amid the open-ended so-called "War on Terror" that has left nearly one million people dead in around half a dozen nations over the past 25 years.
The report—authored by the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights and published by the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs—documents 46 US airstrikes that took place between December 2023 and May 2025 that caused at least 576 civilian casualties, including 213 deaths and 363 injuries. Among the casualties were at least 50 children and 25 women.
"The so-called 'War on Terror' never ended in Yemen," Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell contended.
"It's important that we continue to account for the civilian lives lost, harmed, and disrupted in Yemen and other US war zones," she added. "This report will allow people to hold the US government accountable for the deaths and destruction it has caused in Yemen in support of the Israeli government's wars since 2023."
The overwhelming majority of the casualties covered by the publication occurred during President Donald Trump’s 2025 "Operation Rough Rider" campaign. Mwatana estimates that the operation killed 208 civilians and wounded 341, while the Pentagon has acknowledged a smaller toll of 153 killed and 243 wounded.
Seven of the 46 strikes took place between December of 2023 and January of 2025 during former President Joe Biden's "Operation Prosperity Guardian," a military campaign that came amid Houthi rebel attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait during Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
Among the deadliest attacks covered by the report was the April 2025 bombardment of Ras Isa oil port ordered by Trump, in which US strikes killed scores of people and wounded more than 150 others. Human Rights Watch called the bombing an “apparent war crime,” saying the destruction of the civilian oil facility also threatened vital fuel supplies in a country already devastated by years of war and humanitarian crisis.
The campaign also included the April 28 bombing of a detention center in Saada while jailed African migrants were sleeping. Amnesty International has called for a war crimes investigation into that attack, in which scores of migrants were killed.
Mwatana researchers conducted site visits and 59 interviews with survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses, first responders, and other sources for the new report.
"The first strike hit while we were in deep sleep. I could not believe what I saw—30 of my fellow detainees died; their bodies were charred, and the smell of burned flesh filled the air," one 25-year-old Ethiopian survivor of the Saada attack recounted. "The place was crowded with bodies, while others were screaming and calling for help and rescue... we could do nothing for them."
In addition to physical harm, survivors described the deep psychological trauma suffered by victims. One mother said her 8-year-old son Taha "saw his father after he was hit by shrapnel—how he was bleeding, and how his intestines were coming out."
"His father was screaming: ‘Run… leave me and run before the American aircraft strikes again and finishes me off,'" she continued. "Taha still cannot sleep; when he does, he wakes up terrified. Whenever he hears thunder or any loud noise, he runs in fear, his whole body trembling."
Overall, US strikes covered by the report "hit civilian structures such as homes, shops, farms, residential neighborhoods, and infrastructure," the publication notes, adding that airstrikes "also caused severe damage to infrastructure and critical facilities, compounding the humanitarian suffering of local populations by striking essential service facilities, particularly in rural areas that already face acute shortages of clean water, electricity, and health services."
"Given Yemen’s economic deterioration and the catastrophic humanitarian situation produced by the armed conflict that has been ongoing since September 2014, it is likely that the US strikes expanded the cycle of poverty in Yemen by increasing unemployment and multiplying the number of households that lost breadwinners and sources of income," the report adds.
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to a US-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade. According to the UK-based casualty monitor Airwars, an estimated 445-643 Yemeni civilians have been killed by US forces during the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
The Costs of War Project says that in the first two decades following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, "between 363,939 and 387,072 civilians were killed by multiple warring parties in post-9/11 war zones, including 12,690 civilians in Yemen."
Mwatana for Human Rights chair Radhya Al-Mutawakel said Thursday that "the losses caused by US airstrikes against civilians cannot be regarded as temporary harm that ends when military operations cease. Civilians who have lost loved ones, homes, or sources of income continue to bear the consequences of these attacks, amid economic and humanitarian conditions that do not provide them with even the minimum capacity to recover.”
"Protecting civilians is not limited to avoiding killing or injuring them; it also includes respecting civilian objects and livelihoods," Al-Mutawakel added. "The United States must assume its legal and moral responsibility to recognize the civilian victims of its military operations in Yemen, provide them with redress and reparation, and hold accountable those responsible for the violations inflicted upon them.”
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