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For Immediate Release
February, 23 2017, 09:00am EDT
Contact:
Statement from WeWillReplaceYou.org in Response to DNC Chair Debate
In response to questions posed by moderators at the CNN DNC Debate Wednesday night about whether DNC Chair candidates should back #WeWillReplaceYou primary challengers to Democratic candidates who fail to strongly oppose Trump's agenda, WeWillReplaceYou.org issued the following statement:
WASHINGTON
In response to questions posed by moderators at the CNN DNC Debate Wednesday night about whether DNC Chair candidates should back #WeWillReplaceYou primary challengers to Democratic candidates who fail to strongly oppose Trump's agenda, WeWillReplaceYou.org issued the following statement:
"All of the DNC chair candidates who responded to questions about potential primary challenges in tonight's debate invoked the strategic necessity of running the strongest campaigns possible to take back Congress. We agree. That's why we're calling on Democrats to follow the lead of the grassroots resistance movement and fight Trump with everything they've got. Resistance is the only viable path forward--morally or strategically.
"The assumption that Democrats need to appease Trump or offer 'Republican lite' policies to win in red states or districts is morally wrong, deeply unstrategic, and reflective of the failed establishment thinking that the Democratic Party urgently needs to shed. Aiding and abetting Trump's agenda of hate and greed and will not win over conservative voters, and would likely just result in Democratic base voters losing the motivation to show up in midterm elections that will come down to turnout.
"The best chance Democrats have for retaking power is through articulating a clear and consistent message about why Trump's divide-and-conquer agenda is bad for our country, and offering a genuine alternative for what we need to do to fix our rigged economy. Anything less than that puts millions of Americans at risk and also compromises our ability to win. In other words, asking Democrats to resist Trump is not about purity, it's about strategy.
"The American people get it. This week, thousands of Americans are telling both Democratic and Republican members of Congress to 'do their job' at town hall events across the country. For months, Americans have been organizing meetings, calling their Senators, and marching in the streets with one simple message: #resist. If the Democratic party wants to win back Congress and the White House by 2020, we hope they will heed the actions of everyday American resistors. We're in a battle for the soul of America, and the Democratic Party needs to decide which side it's on."
LATEST NEWS
'A Damn Bloodbath': Unions Decry Layoffs at McClatchy Papers as Local Journalism Takes Another Hit
"We've done everything asked of us, and more," said one fired journalist. "Yet when corporate plans fail, McClatchy executives run and hide while our workers and this community suffer all the consequences."
Sep 11, 2026
As social media networks filled with posts from journalists "deeply saddened" to reveal they were part of McClatchy's latest round of "gutting" layoffs this week, newspaper staffers and the unions that represent them highlighted "how local coverage will suffer" because over 90 workers were fired by the hedge fund-controlled publisher.
"I'm part of this bloodbath. After dodging layoffs for my entire 19-year career, I finally caught a stray as the Idaho Statesman gutted 60% of its staff," said sports writer Michael Lycklama, noting his union membership and six-months severance package.
"My heart goes out to my coworkers who have poured their blood, sweat, and tears into Idaho," he wrote. "We've done everything asked of us, and more. Yet when corporate plans fail, McClatchy executives run and hide while our workers and this community suffer all the consequences."
"These layoffs will create holes in our community and leave it poorer," he stressed. "There are now drastically fewer eyes watching your elected officials. Fewer reporters uncovering shady businesses. And fewer journalists to highlight and celebrate our state's unsung heroes."
With at least 90 workers let go across 17 McClatchy publications, the NewsGuild-CWA similarly warned Friday that "the departure of these talented reporters, visual journalists, and writers will immediately leave gaping holes in local coverage for dozens of communities across the United States."
At least seven reporters were fired from four newsrooms in Washington state: The Bellingham Herald, The News Tribune, The Olympian, and Tri-City Herald. The NewsGuild noted that "Tacoma will no longer have even a single dedicated journalist tracking city hall, Pierce County government, or local schools," while "the region near the Canadian border lost an environmental watchdog, and the Hispanic community can no longer turn to a Spanish-speaking reporter in Eastern Washington."
The Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, a local representing reporters in Washington and Idaho, highlighted that "these are journalists who investigated local hospitals, served as watchdogs over state and local government, showed up at every high school game, jumped in to cover breaking news like wildfires, covered news in overlooked communities, and monitored development in one of the fastest-growing regions in the country."
"One of these papers will no longer have a dedicated reporter covering city hall. Another will no longer have anyone dedicated to covering the state capitol," the union said. "McClatchy has decided that short-term profits for a hedge fund matter more than the well-being of the communities that its newspapers are supposed to serve. That is a model that is destined to fail."
Employees of multiple California outlets were also impacted. The Fresno Bee lost staffers, as did the Modesto Bee, which laid off 25% of its newsroom. The Sacramento Bee, the city's "paper of record," the NewsGuild said, "lost dogged reporters and veteran journalists who worked for decades to serve readers in the capital region."
Across the country, The Lexington Herald-Leader, "one of two remaining statewide newspapers in Kentucky, laid off half of its Pulitzer-prize-winning newsroom," the NewsGuild detailed. "Those layoffs include a senior reporter who worked at the Herald-Leader for more than 20 years, all of the paper’s core political team covering the state legislature in Frankfort, the editor of that politics team, the newspaper’s primary city government reporter in Lexington, a longtime high school sports reporter, two University of Kentucky basketball and football reporters, the paper’s only remaining environmentalist reporter in Eastern Kentucky, the paper’s only regional economic development reporter, a photographer, and a video journalist."
The gutting of local journalism continues.I started as an intern at the Lexington Herald-Leader, which laid off a majority of its reporters today. The McClatchy company was bought by a hedge fund that promised to be a good steward of journalism. And here we are...www.lpm.org/news/2026-09...
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— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) September 10, 2026 at 5:04 PM
As the union laid out, The State's cuts included "the only reporter doing environmental coverage for the state of South Carolina, a more than 30-year veteran of the local newsroom; an investigative reporter who was recognized by the SC Press Association for his work on charter schools; the only reporter covering the city of Columbia; the lead reporter on the Darline Graham Senate race; half of our photography team."
North Carolina breaking news reporter Jeffery Chamer announced on LinkedIn that "I've been informed this morning that I was one of eight people being laid off from The Charlotte Observer. I wish I had something uplifting and optimistic to say, but I’m honestly scared and sad right now. In two weeks, we’ll all be unemployed. And that just breaks my heart."
"I know deep down we'll all be OK and land on our feet, but for now it all feels terrifying," he said. "It’s also so shocking to think about the incredible talent the Observer is losing. I love my colleagues. They’re not just incredible reporters, but people too. I will miss them so, so much."
I, the only data reporter at the Charlotte Observer, am among the McClatchy layoffs in the bloodbath today. The HR person asked me not to talk about it! AMA. Anyway, here’s a link to one of my most important stories this year. www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/a...
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— Caitlin McGlade (@caitmcglade.bsky.social) September 10, 2026 at 11:32 AM
In Florida, "these layoffs leave the Bradenton Herald with half of its former staff, or only one editor and two reporters," the NewsGuild pointed out. "There will be no one to report on local government and no professional photographer and videographer to document the news."
The cuts also hit Florida papers southeast of Bradenton. As the union detailed: "After more than a century of operation, this layoff will leave the Miami Herald without a city hall reporter at the paper's namesake. It guts the entire writing staff at El Nuevo Herald, our sister paper that has doggedly covered majority-Latino Miami-Dade County in Spanish for decades."
Longtime former columnist Carl Hiaasen wrote on Facebook that "this is a death blow to the already skeletonized Miami Herald, once one of the country's top newspapers. I worked there for over 40 [years], and I feel heartsick for the talented journalists who've been gutting it out while McClatchy blithely keeps swinging the axe."
"By the time the company is finished, all the reporters left standing will fit in a phone booth, and millions of readers in South Florida will be forced to scrounge for actual, true local news on the always-reliable internet," he continued. "It's tragic, but there's a lesson here: If you own a newspaper company, don't sell it to a hedge fund unless you truly don't give a shit about your readers."
As The New York Times reported:
McClatchy has newspapers in 14 states. Formerly a family-run business, it was sold to the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management in 2020 after it declared bankruptcy.
The company has gone through rounds of layoffs in recent years. In late 2025, McClatchy closed its breaking-news desk and shut down its Washington, DC, bureau, while carrying out further layoffs across its newspapers.
McClatchy leadership said in an internal email that for the past five years, the company has "made a deliberate choice to maintain our investment in local news reporters," and "consumer revenue declined 41% while local news expenses remained largely flat."
Thus, "we are reshaping our newsrooms and reducing positions as we align our resources more closely with what our subscribers value," the company claimed. "We are making these changes because the status quo no longer works."
Noting that message, Aaron Leibowitz, who left the Miami Herald last month, wrote on social media that "my former colleagues... deserve better than this disingenuous spin from McClatchy's hedge fund owners. Assuming those revenue figures are accurate, they're not just the result of consumer choice in a vacuum. They're also the result of corporate mismanagement."
Alexandra Duggan is a reporter for the Washington-based Spokesman-Review, which is not a McClatchy outlet—but as journalists across the Pacific Northwest were laid off on Thursday in "a damn bloodbath," she said on Bluesky that "some are people I've worked with, some are calling me crying because their mentors no longer have jobs."
"Journalism is so needed. Cutting investigative reporters, city reporters… Idaho and Washington will be worse off," Duggan said. "You might not care about McClatchy, but taking your hatred of hedge funds out on the reporters who are underpaid and just want to write for their communities ain't it. Those reporters did damn good work, owned by a hedge fund or not. It's rare you still see people who give a shit, and they did."
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End Trump Oil Embargo on Cuba With War Powers Vote, Coalition Urges House Democrats
“Cuba is suffering through a man-made economic and humanitarian catastrophe, caused in significant part by deliberate policy choices of the United States."
Sep 11, 2026
Dozens of advocacy groups this week urged House Democratic leaders to force a vote on an existing war powers resolution aimed at endingr President Donald Trump's unauthorized aggression toward Cuba, including his administration's deadly de facto US oil embargo.
“Cuba is suffering through a man-made economic and humanitarian catastrophe, caused in significant part by deliberate policy choices of the United States," 45 groups said in a letter dated September 9 to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Foreign Affairs and Rules Committee Ranking Members Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).
"Since January 2026, the Trump administration has imposed an oil blockade that has cut off the island from nearly all fuel imports, allowing only a single tanker to dock over the past seven months alongside minor US sales that are wholly insufficient to sustain the country’s economy and basic services," the letter continues.
"The consequences have been devastating and far-reaching, and the crisis is deepening," the groups stressed. "Cuba has endured at least six nationwide grid collapses this year—at times leaving over 9h million people without power, with outages stretching well beyond 20 hours in much of the country. Fuel shortages have stalled transportation, disrupted food and water supplies, and pushed a once-renowned universal healthcare system toward collapse and the rationing of care."
The groups behind the letter—which include American Friends Service Committee, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Demand Progress, Indivisible, National Nurses United, Pax Christi USA, RootsAction, United Church of Christ, and Win Without War—called for an immediate vote on Rep. Nydia Velázquez's (D-NY) Cuba War Powers Resolution, H.Con.Res. 106.
The privileged resolution—which can be called for a vote without approval from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)—would direct the removal of US armed forces from hostilities within or against Cuba absent congressional authorization. The measure targets the de facto US oil blockade on Cuba, which proponents argue amounts to unauthorized hostilities against Cuba.
Velázquez's resolution came amid the Trump administration's escalating aggression against Cuba, including threats to attack or even invade the island, economic strangulation including the oil embargo and decades-old blockade that critics said were causing the deaths of infants and sick people, and the US Department of Justice indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by a hostile US-based counterrevolutionary group following repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.
In April, US senators voted 51-47—with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania joining all but two of his Republican colleagues, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky—to block a war powers resolution introduced in March by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).
"Despite falling short of the majority, this was among the strongest votes in congressional history against the use of blockades, and one of the most important stands Congress has taken against US economic sanctions toward Cuba in over six decades," the 45 groups said in their letter. "The House should take a similarly forceful action at this crucial moment."
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Son of 9/11 Victim Says 'Please Stop' Exploiting Tragedy to Spread Anti-Muslim Bigotry
"You do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate."
Sep 11, 2026
Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and others and sparked a worldwide US-led war on terrorism that has left nearly one million people dead, some relatives of 9/11 victims pleaded that their grief must not be weaponized in the form of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Michael Massaroli Jr., whose father, Michael Massaroli, was killed in the attacks, made one such appeal during Friday’s 25th anniversary commemoration at the National September 11 Memorial at ground zero in Lower Manhattan.
"One parting thing I want to leave everyone with is that you do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate," Massaroli said. "We have seen a medley of people come up today of all races, all religions, all creeds, and this tragedy is just that—it's a tragedy."
"I've had to grow up and spend the past 25 years seeing people use it to hate on our Muslim brothers and sisters, to hate on people who don't look like them," he added. "And that's wrong. And that does no honor to the victims here. And I want to use the little platform I have to ask for that to please stop."
"My father Michael Massaroli...you do my dad's legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate. We have seen a medley of people come up today, of all races, all religions, all creeds and this tragedy is just that, it's a tragedy. I've had… pic.twitter.com/xRtXgZZyYn
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 11, 2026
Massaroli wasn't the only one decrying Islamophobic exploitation of 9/11. Members of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, including co-founder Colleen Kelly, have repeatedly denounced the violence and hatred perpetrated after the attacks.
On Friday, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad recalled how "the trauma we all felt after the attacks was exploited to erode civil liberties, justify torture, normalize illegal discrimination, empower hate groups, and launch forever wars across the Middle East that killed thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in numerous countries."
Recently, Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—the first Muslim elected to lead the city—has been subjected to a wave of Islamophobic vitriol. Critics have invoked his religion and 9/11 in questioning whether he should participate in the city’s September 11 commemoration. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other Republicans have said that Mamdani should skip the ceremony, while broadly attacking Islam.
The Trump administration's immigration policies have also been called discriminatory against Muslims. CAIR said in a March report that it received a record 8,683 anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints in 2025, attributing part of the increase to the administration's immigration crackdown and its response to pro-Palestinian protests. The cases included immigration and travel discrimination, employment discrimination, and alleged targeting of Muslim and Arab communities.
“Today, bad actors are once again exploiting the 9/11 attacks to score political points, incite discrimination, and justify forever wars overseas," Awad said on Friday. "We cannot let these resurgent voices of division, hate, and violence succeed. We must instead embrace the spirit of unity that bonded all of us together 25 years ago and stand up for the universal value of human life, anywhere and everywhere."
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Federal Appellate Court Kills Trump Bid to Keep 'Old, Expensive, and Dirty' Coal Plant Open
"Preventing the market-driven retirements of coal plants to advance a coal-friendly agenda is not a proper use of emergency powers," said one lawyer.
Sep 11, 2026
Climate defenders celebrated on Friday after a federal appellate court rejected the US Department of Energy's abuse of emergency powers to keep a Michigan coal plant open, part of President Donald Trump's broader push to boost the climate-wrecking industry.
"The court rejected the Trump administration's nationwide push forcing unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online," said Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for US clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund—which was among the advocacy groups that joined Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois in challenging the DOE's abuse of Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to keep the JH Campbell Generating Plant running.
"The Department of Energy's unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago," said Kelly. "That's why these aging coal plants are scheduled to retire in the first place—they are incredibly expensive, dangerous to our health, and break down frequently."
The Campbell plant was scheduled to retire on May 31, 2025, after over six decades of operation. As the opinion from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia notes, Consumers Energy "worked for several years to develop plans and secure regulatory approval to retire the old Campbell plant and replace it with a mix of expanded and new electricity-generation sources."
While Michigan officials approved the company's retirement plan for the facility, Trump's DOE intervened, forcing not only that plant but six others across the country to remain open—collectively costing Americans over $547 million, according to a live tracker from the Sierra Club, which has challenged all of the department's coal plant orders.
The three-judge appellate panel unanimously vacated the department's order on Friday, writing that "our reading of the text, structure, and history leaves us unpersuaded by DOE's sweeping conception of its 'emergency' authority under Section 202(c)."
The Associated Press reported that while the DOE didn't respond to a request for comment, Consumers Energy spokesperson Brian Wheeler said the plant operator was reviewing the court ruling and, in the meantime, will keep the facility operating through mid-November.
In a statement to Bridge Michigan, DOE spokesperson Emily Mathews claimed the emergency orders prevented blackouts and "likely saved hundreds of lives," without offering evidence. She did not confirm plans for an appeal but did say that the department "will continue to protect and defend energy security for all Americans."
Consumers Energy spokesperson Katie Carey told the outlet that the company "is reviewing today's court ruling," and "while that happens, we are continuing to comply with the current 90-day Department of Energy order." Still, those who fought against the administration's policy welcomed their legal victory.
"By forcing its continued operation, DOE tried a never-before-used tactic to illegally prop up the aging JH Campbell coal plant that nobody asked to keep, sticking ratepayers with a bill for a facility that should have been retired more than a year ago," said Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in a statement.
"I am relieved that the court saw through this facade and threw out DOE's order that had zero basis in reality," she continued. "My office has been fighting this unlawful political stunt at every turn, and this ruling proves what we have been saying all along: This administration does not get to invent fake emergencies to bypass the rule of law against the best interests of Michigan residents. We remain committed to fighting these nonsensical orders and protecting our ratepayers."
Derrell Slaughter, the Natural Resources Defense Council's Michigan policy director for climate and energy, declared that "Michiganders shouldn't have been saddled with artificially high energy bills or forced to deal with toxic air pollution over a fabricated 'emergency.' The Campbell coal plant is out of date, costs more to operate than other electricity generation options, and is one of the worst polluters in the state."
While applauding the decision as "a victory for families across the Midwest who are tired of paying to keep this old, expensive, and dirty power plant online," Sierra Club chief appellate counsel Sanjay Narayan stressed that "instead of working to lower costs and clean up our air and water, the Trump administration has been pulling out all the stops to try to bolster dirty and expensive fossil fuels—at public expense."
"This reckless agenda will not succeed," the attorney pledged. "We will continue to hold the Department of Energy accountable to the law, and ensure that the JH Campbell plant finally retires as it was scheduled to, and we will continue to fight back against the other illegal extensions across the country."
Earthjustice attorney Michael Lenoff also cheered the court's rebuke of the "Trump administration's abuse of emergency powers" and vowed to "continue to challenge unlawful orders if DOE persists in issuing them."
"The DOE needs to stay in its lane and use its emergency powers only in actual emergencies," he said. "Preventing the market-driven retirements of coal plants to advance a coal-friendly agenda is not a proper use of emergency powers."
Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, noted that two years ago, his consumer advocacy organization "predicted Trump would try to force household consumers to pay higher utility bills to prop up uneconomic coal power plants, and we proudly joined with other public interest groups in June 2025 to challenge his bogus emergency declaration for the Campbell coal power plant."
"But Americans have already been forced to shell out half a billion dollars for Trump's obscene coal bailout vanity project," he emphasized, pledging to "explore all options to force" the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission "to refund consumers for this Trump boondoggle."
The appellate court's ruling came on the heels of data released this week showing that 2026 had the warmest August and meteorological summer on record in the contiguous United States, and globally, last month was the hottest ever recorded, tied with July 2023.
Despite such records, and scientists' persistent warnings, Trump has repeatedly delivered on his campaign promises to serve the fossil fuel industry, from declaring a national energy emergency and waging a war on renewable power projects to ditching the Paris Agreement, again, and signing executive orders on coal denounced as "reckless" and "breathlessly stupid."
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Hawley Probe Into AI Breakout Called an Important Step, But ‘Only a Start’
"The American people deserve to know the details of what went on in the Hugging Face incident and other incidents of AI models going rogue."
Sep 11, 2026
US Sen. Josh Hawley on Friday announced that he was launching an investigation into OpenAI after hundreds of agents in its cybersecurity test environments escaped confinement and hacked into machine learning company Hugging Face.
Hawley (R-Mo.), chair of Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Management, wrote a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman citing "new, disturbing evidence" surrounding the Hugging Face cyberattack, which was carried out without any human intervention.
Hawley's letter outlines how OpenAI learned that its agents were exhibiting what he described as "rogue behavior" and didn't intervene to shut them down, instead allowing them to work autonomously for weeks leading up to the Hugging Face hack.
"This is reckless," Hawley emphasized. "And this is merely what we know from what limited information you disclosed to and allowed your partner auditors to investigate."
Hawley gave Altman an October 1 deadline to provide him with requested information about the attack, emphasizing that "the American people deserve to know the details of what went on in the Hugging Face incident and other incidents of AI models going rogue."
The Missouri Republican also said that he would be conducting a broader probe into the potential dangers posed by the AI industry.
"As you may know... more AI experts are warning about the existential risks of AI," Hawley wrote. "Just this week, three Anthropic researchers expressed publicly that there is a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all human beings within the next decade."
The senator said that critical questions needed to be answered about AI safety, including AI agents' ability to autonomously hack into critical infrastructure and Americans' personal data, as well as legal liability for rogue AI attacks.
JB Branch, director of federal AI governance and technology policy at Public Citizen, praised Hawley for launching an investigation into OpenAI, but said much more needs to be done to regulate the AI industry.
"An investigation is only a start," said Branch. "These companies are developing technologies with profound consequences to our digital infrastructure and public safety. Congress must follow the facts wherever they lead and use its oversight authority to determine what went wrong and what binding safeguards are necessary to prevent the next incident from causing far greater harm."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) cited the Hugging Face incident earlier this month when they unveiled legislation that would pause "advanced" AI development, while outright banning the development of artificial superintelligence.
“Despite its potential deadly consequences, cutting-edge AI technology is less regulated than the average food truck,” Casar said when announcing the bill. “That must change. In just four years, we have gone from the first version of ChatGPT to AI models so powerful they cannot be properly controlled."
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Exploiting Tragedy to Promote War, Hegseth Falsely Claims That Iran 'Cheered on 9/11'
"What haunts me," said one anti-war activist, "is how little accountability there has been for those who lied us into war—and how those same lies are now recycled to justify the attack on Iran."
Sep 11, 2026
Twenty-five years later, Republican politicians are still using 9/11 to justify war in the Middle East. And they're still lying shamelessly.
During remarks outside the Pentagon on Friday commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth portrayed their deeply unpopular war in Iran as part of the lineage of the global War on Terror, which was marked by a pair of lengthy military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost well over $2 trillion and millions of lives.
Trump declared that he was prosecuting his new war with Iran to fulfill the "sacred oath" sworn in the names of the nearly 3,000 people whose lives were lost that day, that "we will never, ever forget."
Hegseth seems to have forgotten quite a lot. Attempting to draw a link between the ideology of the al-Qaeda hijackers who committed the attack and the current Iranian government, the defense secretary said, "Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11."
However, the claim that Iran "cheered on 9/11" is at odds with the historical record of how the nation's government and people reacted.
On September 19, 2001, The Washington Post reported that:
Despite two decades of official hostility, the people and government of Iran have offered vivid messages of sympathy and condemnations of terrorism in the aftermath of last week's attacks on New York and Washington...
Hard-line conservative Iranians and moderate reformers, top government and religious officials, Friday prayer leaders, and citizens on the street have uniformly denounced the plane hijackings and suicide crashes of September 11. Some, including President Mohammad Khatami, have offered to join an international campaign against terrorism under certain circumstances, including United Nations sponsorship.
On the day of the attacks in 2001, Khatami issued a swift condemnation over Iranian state TV of what he called "the terrorist operations of hijacking and attacking public places in American cities, which have resulted in the death of a large number of defenseless American people."
Khatami later decried the attacks as “the ugliest form of terrorism ever seen." According to later congressional testimony by a State Department official, he also asked to visit ground zero to light a candle out of respect for the victims, a request that was denied by the administration of then-US President George W. Bush.
Days after the attacks, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—who was killed this past February during the opening salvo of the joint US-Israeli war against Iran—agreed at the time that “mass murder of human beings is condemned," though he also suggested that "expansionist" US foreign policy had played a role in provoking the attacks.
The US-funded Radio Free Europe reported that, far from celebrating in the streets, around 2,000 Iranians had gathered in Tehran for a candlelight vigil a week after the attacks, at which participants "chanted against terrorism and expressed their sympathy with America." Days earlier, the Post reported that about 50,000 spectators at a World Cup qualifying match in Tehran observed a minute of silence in recognition of the attacks.
Iran's support for the US following the attack also went beyond words. While still describing Iran as the world's leading "state sponsor of terrorism," a May 2002 State Department report emphasized Iran's cooperation with US operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This included offering search-and-rescue assistance for downed US air crews, diplomatic cooperation at the 2001 Bonn Conference to build Afghanistan's post-Taliban government, and promising border controls to prevent fleeing Taliban and al-Qaeda members from escaping.
Though Trump promised at the outset that it would last only a matter of weeks, his war with Iran has now lumbered into its sixth month with no sign of stopping. It has spilled out into a wider Middle Eastern conflict that has taken the lives of about 8,000 people, displaced millions, and wreaked financial chaos.
The war has included US attacks on civilians that have had a similar resonance with Iranians that 9/11 has for Americans, most infamously the bombing of an elementary school that killed at least 150 people, most of them children.
According to one economist's recent estimate, the war has conservatively cost the average American household about $1,200 over six months, combining the direct cost to taxpayers with the knock-on effects of spiking oil prices and broader inflation.
Though around two-thirds of Americans say they oppose the war and Congress has ordered Trump to bring it to an end, recent reports indicate that the administration is considering expanding it following this November's midterm elections.
Trump described the war as a grim necessity on Friday, in part to honor those who perished on September 11, 25 years earlier.
“That’s why we fight today," Trump said. "We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win.”
Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, reflected earlier this week on how the tragedy is still being used to this day to justify endless wars overseas.
"What haunts me today is not only the devastation of the invasion, but how little accountability there has been for those who lied us into war—and how those same lies are now recycled to justify the attack on Iran," Benjamin said. "The War on Terror did not end."
"The same impunity that has shielded the architects of the global War on Terror," she added, "now emboldens the war criminals behind the genocide in Gaza and the Minab school massacre in Iran."
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Trump Administration Making Aggressive Push to Use Public Lands for AI Data Centers
One critic said the Trump administration was "bending knee to the tech oligarchs and letting them do whatever they need to do."
Sep 11, 2026
President Donald Trump's administration is making an aggressive push to find public lands to use for building artificial intelligence data centers, according to a Friday report in The Washington Sun.
The US Department of the Interior, under the leadership of Secretary Doug Burgum, has pushed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to "identify public land ripe for data center development," and provide lists to department leadership, reported the Sun.
Leaders at the Interior Department gave state BLM leaders just three days to compile their lists, emphasizing this was a "top priority," the Sun's sources said.
Additionally, reported the Sun, Burgum has been meeting regularly with Big Tech executives to discuss ways to accelerate data center development.
The department's aggressive push stems from a Trump executive order signed in July 2025 that tasked the government with identifying federal lands that could be used to build data centers.
Mary Jo Rugwell, president of the Public Lands Foundation and former BLM state director, told the Sun that she's concerned that the Trump administration is "bending knee to the tech oligarchs and letting them do whatever they need to do" without asking the right questions about data centers' impact on public lands.
Rugwell added that the BLM during Trump's second term has shed nearly half of its staff, leaving few experts available to evaluate the environmental impact of data centers.
“Where are they going to get people to do the analysis especially when you have a technology that’s relatively new and not well defined?” Rugwell asked. “It’s a headache BLM doesn’t need."
Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Nevada chapter, told the Sun that the nationwide backlash to data center construction has gotten so intense that the tech industry might see using public lands as their best option for building out capacity.
“A lot of elected officials in Nevada on both sides of the aisle are really hesitant to approve data centers in their local jurisdiction,” said Tanager. "I would imagine in some cases, despite the environmental review being heightened in a lot of instances being sited on federal public land, there’s more political will to move those projects forward."
Jayson O'Neill, spokesperson for Save Our Parks, accused Burgum of trying to "exploit our parks and public lands" for the benefit of wealthy tech donors.
"Data Center Doug Burgum is actively shopping America's public lands to data center developers, the AI industry, and big energy companies lining up to power them," O'Neill said. "And he’s keeping communities in the dark, hiding the details from Congress and the public."
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Fresh Calls to End Iran War After Trump Reportedly Denies MBS Request to Bomb Houthis
"Imagine if we had just built on the JCPOA and created a stable Middle East through cooperation instead of these endless wars," said one observer.
Sep 11, 2026
Calls to halt the Iran War and avert yet another US bombing campaign in Yemen intensified Friday after President Donald Trump reportedly declined a request from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to launch airstrikes against Houthi forces amid their stunning advance toward a vital global shipping lane.
According to Axios' Barak Ravid, Mohammed bin Salman, who is also the Saudi prime minister, made two urgent calls to Trump on Thursday as Houthi forces captured the strategic Yemeni port city of Mocha and advanced toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints. MBS reportedly pressed Trump to intervene militarily, but the president declined to order US attacks at this time.
"With Iran already disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi control of Bab el-Mandeb could give Tehran a powerful new point of leverage over the US and its Gulf allies," Ravid wrote.
However, he added that "US officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now."
Understanding that Trump's apparent refusal of MBS' request could be temporary, opponents of a wider Middle East war are urging the US leader to refrain from any further strikes on Houthi targets.
Instead of attacking Yemen, Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said on social media that a "better idea" would be to "end the war on Iran and remove US forces from the Middle East."
California-based Israeli academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said on social media that "Trump wisely decided not to get involved in the Yemeni civil war. Stop expanding all these wars."
"Imagine if we had just built on the JCPOA and created a stable Middle East through cooperation instead of these endless wars in Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza," he mused, referring to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal unilaterally abandoned by Trump during his first term, despite Tehran's full compliance with its terms.
Drop Site News national security and foreign affairs reporter Murtaza Hussain called on the Gulf Arab states—which have borne the brunt of Iranian counterattacks—to circumvent the United States and negotiate an agreement with Tehran.
The Houthi victories give the group—officially called Ansar Allah—a commanding position near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The narrow waterway links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and carries an estimated 12% of global goods, including approximately 4-5% of the world's total seaborne-traded oil and petroleum products.
Saudi Arabia launched Friday airstrikes on Mocha's airport, while the Houthis attacked targets including Saudi pipeline infrastructure used to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis said that maritime traffic would be safe except for Saudi vessels.
Oil prices surged more than 6% on Thursday, with both major benchmarks trading at over $100 a barrel amid the Houthi advances and continued instability stemming from Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz despite over six months of unsuccessful efforts by the US military and Trump administration to reopen the vital waterway, through which around one-fifth of the world's oil previously transited.
The average US price of a gallon of gasoline reached nearly $4.30 on Friday, a 37% increase from when Trump—who promised both no new wars and $2 gas—entered office in January 2025.
US forces have carried out airstrikes and ground raids on al-Qaeda and other militants in Yemen for decades. According to the UK-based casualty monitor Airwars, an estimated 445-643 Yemeni civilians have been killed by US forces since 2009.
Starting under then-President Barack Obama in 2014, the US provided arms and support to the Saudi-led coalition during Yemen's civil war. International experts attribute more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to a US-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade, which has fueled mass starvation and disease in the country of approximately 43 million people.
A report published Thursday documented more than 500 Yemeni civilian casualties caused by US attacks between December 2023 and May 2025. All but seven of 46 strikes covered by the report occurred during Trump's presidency, including massacres at the Ras Isa oil port and at a detention center for African migrants in Saada.
During Israel's war on Gaza, the US, Israel, and the United Kingdom carried out repeated airstrikes in response to Houthi attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea that the group said were intended to pressure Israel as it killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Responding to the latest developments, UK political commentator Bushra Shaikh said that "America went to war for Israel, seeking to dominate the Middle East."
"Now Trump is negotiating with Iran, Saudi Arabia is looking towards regional diplomacy, Pakistan says the Mecca Pact won't be used against Yemen, and the Ansar Allah Houthis retain leverage over Bab el-Mandeb," she continued.
Shaikh added: "The ultimate humiliation? America will come out of this war having failed to defeat Iran while pushing the very region it wanted to control towards strategic independence from Washington."
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Advocates Say Benefit Cuts by Medicare Advantage Giants Highlight 'Dysfunction' of For-Profit System
"It is well past time that the United States joins the rest of the industrialized world and treats healthcare as a right, not a privilege, by improving traditional Medicare and expanding it to everyone."
Sep 11, 2026
News that top Medicare Advantage insurers are moving to cut benefits and drop some plans entirely in a bid to boost their profitability came as no surprise to critics of the for-profit US health insurance system, which enriches giant companies and their executives while leaving tens of millions of people in the lurch.
In recent public remarks, executives at Humana and UnitedHealthcare—two of the largest Medicare Advantage insurers in the US—have indicated that the companies plan to exit certain geographic markets and implement other changes deemed necessary to drive "margin expansion," corporate-speak for profits. The changes by the two companies are expected to impact more than a million seniors who receive coverage through the insurers' Medicare Advantage plans, which are privately run but funded by taxpayer dollars.
Wendell Potter, president of the Center for Health and Democracy and a former Cigna executive, told Common Dreams that companies like Humana and UnitedHealthcare "have long made clear they answer to their shareholders, not those they insure."
"These companies are not really in the healthcare business, they are in the business of making money for their shareholders and their executives," said Potter, who now advocates for a Medicare for All system. "They will cut any corner, deny any care, and cut any patient if it helps increase their bottom line."
UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare's parent company, reported $5.5 billion in profit during the second quarter of 2026, up from $3.4 billion the same time last year. Humana reported $694 million in second-quarter profits.
Recent research led by Mark Meiselbach, a healthcare economist at Johns Hopkins University estimates that "approximately one in 10 beneficiaries in HMO or PPO Medicare Advantage plans will be forced to disenroll from their current plan due to their plan exiting the market" this year. That amounts to around 3 million seniors who will be forced to find a different plan or switch to traditional Medicare during the open enrollment period, which begins next month.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works and author of The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action, told Common Dreams that "misleadingly-named Medicare 'Advantage,' together with all private health insurance, is why our nation’s healthcare system is so dysfunctional."
"It mixes healthcare with the motive to make a profit, resulting in the most expensive system in the industrialized world with the worst health outcomes," said Altman. "The recent announcements by UnitedHealthcare and Humana that they plan to exit markets and cut benefits is just one symptom of the dysfunction."
"It is well past time that the United States joins the rest of the industrialized world and treats healthcare as a right, not a privilege, by improving traditional Medicare and expanding it to everyone," said Altman.
A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis published in July found that federal spending per Medicare Advantage enrollee "is projected to be 7% higher, on average," than spending on traditional Medicare over the next 10 years.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted that the CBO's analysis "suggests the federal government will spend about $1 trillion on MA overpayments over the next decade." Medicare Advantage plans are notorious for making patients appear sicker than they actually are, reaping larger federal payments.
President Donald Trump pledged during remarks earlier this week to the Republican midterm convention that his administration would "end all payments to big health insurance companies."
But Potter noted that Trump's administration is set to shell out over $13 billion in payments to Medicare Advantage plans this year along.
"If Trump were serious about lowering healthcare costs," Potter told Common Dreams, "he'd break up the monopolies and the for-profit healthcare system."
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Inflation Could Soon ‘Get a Lot More Painful’ as Trump’s Iran War Drives Diesel Over $6 a Gallon
"Diesel touches almost everything Americans buy," said one expert.
Sep 11, 2026
The price of diesel fuel hit another record high on Friday, thanks in large part to President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran.
New data released by the American Automobile Association showed the average price of diesel in the US increasing to $6.06, a 14% increase over the average price one month ago and a 64% increase from the average price one year ago.
In a Friday social media post, petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan reported that the price of diesel "is not slowing down," hitting an average of $6.07 as of 10:34 am ET.
De Haan also projected that Americans will collectively spend $711 million more on gasoline and diesel on Friday than they did a year ago, and warned "this number will continue to grow and could soon be $1 billion per day."
Rising diesel prices often portend higher inflation because it is the fuel used by trucks to ship goods across the country.
In an interview with The Associated Press published Friday, David Ortega, professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University, warned that US consumers are likely in for another painful round of cost increases if the price of diesel stays at record highs.
“Early on, much of the cost increase gets absorbed along the supply chain through existing freight contracts and retailer margins,” said Ortega. “But as contracts reprice and fuel surcharges take hold, more of that cost makes its way to the grocery store.”
Ortega's analysis was echoed by Mark Tepper, CEO of Strategic Wealth Partners, who wrote in a social media post that "inflation could be about to get a lot more painful" if the price of diesel doesn't come down soon.
"Diesel touches almost everything Americans buy," Tepper explained. "Coming out of the pandemic, rising diesel prices were a leading indicator for the inflation that followed."
Diane Swonk, chief economist at audit services firm KPMG, said rising diesel costs, combined with the latest Consumer Price Index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing continued elevated inflation, made it likely that the US Federal Reserve will hike interest rates.
"The Fed will begin hiking in September, removing what it gave us in rate cuts in late 2025," Swonk predicted. "We now expect three rate hikes by early 2026. The probability that the vote will be unanimous just rose."
The record diesel prices, and their subsequent impact on inflation, come less than two months before the midterm elections.
The social media account for Democrats in the US House of Representatives pounced on news of higher diesel prices, which they said would mean "higher delivery prices, more expensive groceries, and surging electric bills."
"Trump's war with Iran did this," the House Democrats added.
Alex Jacquez, senior vice president of policy, advocacy, and research at Groundwork Collaborative, also took a shot at the president's policies, noting that in recent weeks he has "imposed further tariffs on one of our closest trading partners and continues escalation in Iran."
"Trump promised to lower costs and improve daily life for Americans," Jacquez added. "He’s not only failed to deliver on that promise, he’s driven our economy over a cliff."
Willamette University historian Seth Cotlar argued that the spike in diesel fuel could have significant impact on the US Senate race in Maine, where Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins is vying for a sixth term in office.
"Home heating oil season is about to start up," Cotlar observed. "In Maine, about 50% of homes use heating oil which is almost identical to diesel. How’s that GOP affordability agenda coming Senator Collins?"
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