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AFT's Weingarten on DC Public Schools' $5 Million Settlement with Teachers
Compensation is Partial Vindication for Unwarranted Layoffs during Michelle Rhee Reign
WASHINGTON
AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Washington Teachers' Union reached a landmark settlement with District of Columbia Public Schools over teachers terminated by former Chancellor Michelle Rhee:
"This settlement doesn't take away the hurt and shame Michelle Rhee inflicted on so many great D.C. teachers--but after a long fight, it is a small step toward vindication for those who suffered from her top-down, test-and-punish policies that have failed both the arbitrator's test and the test of time.
"Instead of helping teachers get what students need, Rhee embarked on a blame-and-shame campaign that was as ineffective as it was indefensible. There is a straight line between the Rhee agenda--which tried to strip educators of any voice and dignity and reduced students to test scores and teachers to algorithms--to the current walkouts in which educators are fighting for an appropriate investment in public schools. Teachers fight for what students need. That is as true now as it was when Michelle Rhee denigrated their voice.
"What happened a decade ago still stings, but the teachers in Washington, D.C., who were wrongly fired will take some measure of comfort from this settlement; and their unions will continue to fight to make sure the wrong-headed mentality that pitted students against their teachers never arises again."
Background
The Washington Teachers' Union, an AFT affiliate, has reached a settlement with District of Columbia Public Schools over the union's grievance involving teachers "excessed" in 2010. The overall value of the settlement agreement is more than $5 million.
Under the settlement agreement, each teacher who was terminated by DCPS as a result of this "excessing" will be entitled to monetary compensation.
The American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do. The American Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, was founded in 1916 and today represents 1.6 million members in more than 3,000 local affiliates nationwide.
LATEST NEWS
Trump Accused of 'Last-Ditch Attempt to Buy Off Voters' With Checks, Diesel Deal
The editorial board of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that President Donald Trump is engaging in "rank bribery" ahead of the midterms.
Oct 13, 2026
US President Donald Trump's pledge to send every American adult $5,000, delivery of small healthcare rebates to millions of people, and announcement of a deal to secure Russian diesel amount to "a last-ditch attempt to buy off voters and dodge a richly deserved reckoning," the editorial board of The Philadelphia Inquirer argued Tuesday as the midterm elections approach.
The editorial accuses Trump–whose illegal war against Iran has sent gas prices soaring and whose signature legislative achievement has stripped healthcare and food aid from millions of Americans—of engaging in "rank bribery" as a "last crass resort" ahead of the midterm elections as his approval rating plummets and threatens to drag Republican candidates down with it.
"His deeply unpopular Middle East war is metastasizing, contributing to persistently high prices and a historically low public opinion of his presidency," the editorial reads. "Republican schemes to rig the vote by gerrymandering and other means appear insufficient to withstand a Democratic wave, forcing them to abandon formerly favorable territory such as Georgia and North Carolina and fight for ruby-red turf in Kansas and South Carolina."
"And polls have shown voters are divided over Trump’s crude promises of cash, which most don’t believe," the editorial adds. "When it comes to winning over voters, it seems promises of payoffs are no substitute for a record of success."
Trump's flurry of pledges and rebate announcements come amid widespread discontent over high energy prices and surging health insurance premiums—which the president's $90 Medicare rebates and $500 Affordable Care Act checks will do very little to offset for most Americans. People who receive the healthcare checks will also get an accompanying letter in which Trump touts his record—without mentioning his unprecedented cuts to Medicaid or the millions of people who have lost coverage during his second term.
"There is no better reflection of the purely transactional nature of Donald Trump’s politics than his love for buying Americans’ affections with cold hard cash," New York magazine's Ed Kilgore wrote last week. "The reality is that he’s commandeering (with no apparent legal authority) money designed for other public purposes and sending it out as individual checks. The ACA money is legally supposed to go to Obamacare enrollment and outreach efforts... while the Medicare dollars have typically gone to provider reimbursement-rate adjustments. Neither source was supposed to finance a preelection slush fund for politicians."
Reuters estimated that the Trump administration is sending a combined $2.35 billion in direct payments to millions of Americans ahead of next month's elections.
That total doesn't include Trump's promised $5,000 checks, which would cost an estimated $1.2 trillion. The president is explicitly dangling the checks as an enticement to vote Republican. During a Monday rally in Ohio, Trump said that "if Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate, I am going to give all adult citizens in the United States $5,000 each."
"Only Republicans can do that," Trump declared.
Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, told The Washington Post that Trump is clearly attempting to distract from the nation's worsening affordability crisis and trying to "buy votes."
"It reeks of desperation," said Burga.
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From Healthcare and Fuel Costs to Tariffs, Trump GOP's Policies 'Crushing' Small Businesses
"Costs are hitting Main Street from every direction at once and Washington doesn't seem to care about the needs of small business owners," said the head of a national coalition.
Oct 13, 2026
Arizona-based Gabe Hagen said Tuesday that "to keep my business afloat, I invested my 401(k) savings and leveraged my home equity as collateral for additional capital, putting my family's financial security on the line to sustain my business and employees."
"I raised my prices, but sales have just flattened out because customers are ordering less," explained Hagen, who founded the Tempe coffee roasting company Brick Road Community Corporation. He's among over 1,000 US small business owners polled by the national coalition Small Business for America's Future from mid-August to early October.
Among those surveyed, 77% have seen customers spend less, delay purchases, or trade down recently, with 46% saying that shoppers are spending "significantly less." Meanwhile, owners like Hagen are increasingly enduring more financial stress, with many cutting their own pay or pulling money from personal savings to keep their companies operating.
The survey exposes how "a combination of factors is crushing small business," the coalition said in a statement announcing its resulting report—which highlights soaring costs for everything from fuel to healthcare, and was released just weeks away from the US midterm elections that will determine control of Congress for the latter half of Trump's second term.
"Costs are hitting Main Street from every direction at once and Washington doesn't seem to care about the needs of small business owners," said Walt Rowen, the coalition's co-chair and president of Susquehanna Glass Co., a family-owned glass manufacturer in Columbia, Pennsylvania that's been around for over a century.
Rowen—whose company is located in a key swing state—noted that "my business is a good example of what is happening. We've been navigating erratic tariff policies that have disrupted our supply chains, and now my heating oil costs $4,000 to $6,000 a month."
"We've lived through the Depression, wars, and recessions," he said. "Heating my factory in this current economy is some of the hardest math I've ever had to do, and I'm expecting the bill to jump 30% to 40% this winter. This survey shows us that I am far from alone. Small business owners everywhere are comparing this economy to some of the worst moments we've had this century."
The survey shows that 83% of small business owners are concerned about their company's financial health over the next year, including 44% who are very concerned. Three-quarters called this one of the hardest economies of their careers, with over half drawing comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic, and nearly a third pointing to the Great Recession.
A similar share (78%) accused decision-makers in Washington, DC of putting large corporations first, and 72% said running their business is harder than it was a year ago—with 85% citing inflation and rising prices as the source of strain. Majorities saw increases for utilities (72%); fuel (68%); transportation, shipping, or supplies (64%); business services (64%); healthcare and health insurance (54%); and employee wages and benefits (53%).
Those soaring costs have had consequences. Two-thirds of surveyed owners said they canceled, delayed, or scaled back investments in equipment, facilities, or technology. Over half did the same for hiring and expansion to new markets. Nearly two-thirds skipped or reduced their own pay, and 52% said their personal debt has increased in the past year.
Rising costs can be clearly connected to decisions by Trump and congressional Republicans—many of whom are up for reelection next month, as the GOP tries to hang on to its slim majorities in both chambers.
The president returned to power early last year having campaigned on a mass detention and deportation agenda, despite arguments from economists and elected Democrats that his approach was not only inhumane but economically risky. A clear majority of surveyed owners (61%) said that immigration enforcement has hurt the small business economy.
Trump and Republican lawmakers also enacted a 2025 budget package that cut federal healthcare spending and did not extend Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits. Among surveyed business owners who buy their own insurance coverage through an ACA marketplace, 90% saw their premiums rise after the subsidies expired. Nearly three-quarters also said they fear rising health insurance costs will make it harder to hire and keep needed employees.
The administration's shifting tariff policy and refund process have caused further stress: 59% of owners said trade-related cost increases have made it harder to run their business, and only 3% have filed refund claims since the US Supreme Court's February ruling against many of Trump's tariffs.
Trump's illegal war on Iran continues to drive up fuel prices. The construction of artificial intelligence data centers—which the president has encouraged—is also increasing energy costs. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed are worried about the impact of electricity demand from new AI facilities. Around the same share is concerned about the consequences of the new armed conflict in the Middle East, which the GOP-controlled Congress never authorized, but has refused to end.
In a social media post about all the findings, Small Business for America's Future urged, "Lawmakers, make your next decision with Main Street in mind."
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As Americans Face Affordability Crisis, Poll Reaffirms 'Supporting Medicare for All Is Not Radical'
“Healthcare is one of the significant ways that people experience economic pressure every day,” said Ipsos' president.
Oct 13, 2026
Yet another poll, this one released on Tuesday, shows significant support for Medicare for All as Americans grapple with rising healthcare costs and the Trump administration and congressional Republicans target federal programs upon which tens of millions of people rely.
A plurality—43%—of respondents to the latest Axios-Ipsos American Health Index said they support replacing private health insurance with a government-run Medicare for All system, compared with 24% who oppose the idea. Another 32% were unsure, leaving supporters outnumbering opponents by nearly two to one. Two-thirds of respondents also backed increased federal spending to reduce healthcare costs.
Respondents' views on Medicare for All are divided along party lines, with a majority of Democrats (62%) and a plurality of independents (47%) supporting the proposal, while a majority of Republicans (52%) oppose it.
Again: Supporting Medicare for All is not Radical — opposing it is. We can’t afford NOT to do it. #MedicareForAllNOW www.axios.com/2026/10/13/a...
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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) October 13, 2026 at 5:24 AM
The most commonly cited reason people said they oppose Medicare for All is fear that the quality of care would be inferior to that offered by private health insurance (38%), followed by concern that the program would be too expensive for taxpayers (22%), and that the federal government should not be involved in providing healthcare (21%). Supporters were not asked why they favor Medicare for All.
The survey also revealed deepening distrust of political leaders on healthcare issues. Just 20% of respondents said that they trusted President Donald Trump for health-related information, down from 31% in March 2025, while only 25% trusted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The poll also found that 49% would be less likely to support a candidate who received money from pharmaceutical company political action committees.
"Healthcare is one of the significant ways that people experience economic pressure every day," Mallory Newall, Ipsos senior vice president for US public affairs, told Axios. She noted that while many Americans still "have questions" about Medicare for All, the current level of support for the proposal is "noteworthy—and it is not solely driven by members of the Democratic Party."
Newall said that even if candidates "don't call it Medicare for All," expanding federal healthcare programs so that they cover more people "is a message that can connect with voters" as they prepare to cast their ballots in next month's midterm elections.
The stakes extend beyond Medicare for All. Republicans' sweeping 2025 budget law enacted the biggest cuts to Medicaid in the program's six-decade history, while enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits expired at the beginning of 2026, threatening higher costs for millions of enrollees.
Progressives have cited these and other developments to argue that the private insurance system leaves working-class families vulnerable to corporate profiteers and political attacks.
A separate survey released last week by the health policy research organization KFF found that 66% of Americans favor Medicare for All, the highest level of support since the organization began tracking the issue a decade ago. While 84% of Democrats and 72% of Independents polled backed Medicare for All, 66% of Republican respondents opposed the proposal.
According to a study published in August by researchers at Yale University, shifting to a Medicare for All-type system would save more than 114,000 lives and around $1 trillion annually in the US. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has cited the study while promoting his Medicare for All Act.
"Do not tell me we cannot afford Medicare for All," he said at the time of the study's publication. "What we cannot afford is a broken healthcare system based on greed."
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Observers Shocked by Trump Press Secretary's Debut
"She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she'll break Scaramucci's record," said one unnamed White House official.
Oct 13, 2026
New White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia gave her debut press conference on Tuesday and was quickly panned by critics, including some anonymous Trump administration officials.
Zacharia's first briefing, which lasted less than 15 minutes, was marked by halting speech and apparent difficulty in reading her prepared remarks.
The Trump press secretary took just three questions from right-wing outlets—Fox News, The Daily Mail, and Breitbart—before abruptly ending the briefing.
😬 Katie Zacharia's first press briefing was brutally bad 😬Trump managed to find a press secretary who can barely read, but she does have the number one qualification -- looking like IvankaHere's a supercut from Zacharia's first briefing, which made Karoline Leavitt seem like Ronald Reagan
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2026
An anonymous Trump administration official told MS NOW White House correspondent Jake Traylor that Zacharia might already be on thin ice after such a poor first performance.
The official compared her to former White House Press Secretary Anthony Scaramucci, who was infamously fired from his job after only 11 days.
"Getting behind the podium is tough, but she got off on the wrong foot," the official said. "She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she'll break Scaramucci's record."
Scaramucci himself predicted that Trump wouldn't long tolerate Zacharia's bumbling performance, writing in Tuesday social media post that "the clock is running" on her tenure.
Other White House officials told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that they were similarly unsure how long Zacharia would last on the job, with one official describing her performance as "unusual" and another calling it "brutal."
MS NOW's Pete Alexander said he spoke with "a former high-level Trump aide" who said of Zacharia, "I think she is going to be a train wreck."
Journalist Aaron Rupar described Zacharia's debut as "an SNL cold open come to life," adding that "she can barely read."
Mother Jones' Inae Oh observed that Zacharia "appeared physically strained as she struggled to deliver prepared remarks" during her first day on the job, "as if the task of reading was too much to endure."
"By turns halting and anxious," Oh wrote, "it made [former White House Press Secretary] Karoline Leavitt, who resigned in September, seem like a rhetorical genius."
Democratic political strategist Adam Parkhomenko sarcastically praised Zacharia as doing "a great job for someone who was clearly pissing herself."
New Yorker theater critic Emily Nussbaum described Zacharia as "a shining role model for women crippled by imposter syndrome."
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'Inspired By the Young People,' Greta Thunberg Joins French Students Demanding School Funding
"Our future is being robbed away from us," said the Swedish climate activist. "It just gives a signal to young people that you're not prioritized in our society."
Oct 13, 2026
Arriving Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis to stand with students demonstrating against poor school conditions, climate and rights activist Greta Thunberg had one question for French leaders and authorities who have appeared shocked that hundreds of thousands of high schoolers would rise up against disinvestment in their education: "What do you expect young people to do?"
"Of course we're going to revolt, of course we're going to rise up," the Swedish climate action leader told L'Humanité. "It should have been expected."
Thunberg joined the protesters—a group that originally included students, mostly aged 15-18, when the demonstrations began last month, but that's grown to include hundreds of thousands of people including union members and teachers—as the movement entered its fourth week.
She expressed pride in the French students who have led the movement, and denounced political leaders for refusing to invest in public education.
"Our future is being robbed away from us," she told Agence France-Presse. "Schools are not getting investments that they need... It just gives a signal to young people that you're not prioritized in our society."
Greta Thunberg est venue manifester mardi matin devant le lycée Paul-Eluard de Saint-Denis, un des épicentres du mouvement lycéen, où plus d'une centaine de jeunes étaient rassemblés pour l'acte V de la mobilisation ⤵️ #geneu_AFP https://t.co/dd1Rur6NZb
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) October 13, 2026
Hundreds of schools have been closed as students have formed chains at the building entrances and marched through Paris and cities and towns across France, demanding more funding for schools.
Students are raising alarm about dilapidated buildings, overcrowded classrooms, and too many teacher absences, and the protests have exploded as French President Emmanuel Macron's government tries to pass a budget including a modest increase in education funding—which students and teachers have denounced as an effective cut due to inflation.
Students are calling for €10 billion increase in investment for the country’s lycées, or high schools.
Thunberg said that students "are not being included in the conversation," and condemned French authorities for their "extremely violent" response to the protests.
Police were pushed to end their use of stun grenades last week after a teenager lost his hand because of one of the weapons. Another student lost the use of his eye, and another lost many teeth when tear gas canisters were fired at close range.
"That the police are now meeting it with such violence and politicians are meeting it as if it's something unexpected, or that young people are destroying things, just shows that they are living in a completely different reality," said Thunberg.
🔴 FLASH — Greta Thunberg est actuellement à Saint-Denis (93). 👉 « La police est tellement violente, évidemment que nous allons nous révolter et nous soulever ! La jeunesse française est un exemple pour le monde entier.» https://t.co/RKdT2WQ8h5
— FranceUnie 🇫🇷 (@FranceSouvUnie) October 13, 2026
At least 24 instances of police brutality are being investigated, and the violent police response has drawn condemnation from international human rights groups.
"They should know that all over the world we are following these developments. We are inspired by the young people who are demanding their basic rights,” Thunberg told reporters outside Lycée Paul Eluard in Saint-Denis. “Whether it’s not funding schools enough, or the climate crisis, or social injustice crises... It’s about time that young people are stepping up and reclaiming that future.”
The government is prosecuting about 1,500 people for their participation in the protests, which are backed by the leftist political party France Unbowed, led by presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
In Paris on Tuesday, students blockaded the entrances to their schools, while in Marseille, some pushed dumpsters on wheels in front of school doors.
Speaking to L'Humanité, Thunberg called on "workers' movements, migrants' rights movements, climate movements" and others to "stand united because we are facing the same enemy."
"We are not going to give up, and we are going to fight for this future that is being stolen from us right before our eyes," she said.
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Air Force Major Who Called for Trump’s Impeachment Is in Solitary Confinement 24 Hours a Day
One law professor told Common Dreams the detention of Maj. Jason Watson was a "blatant case of illegal pretrial punishment."
Oct 13, 2026
Air Force Maj. Jason Watson was arrested July 1 on the steps of the US Capitol after calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. According to his lawyer, he's now being held in solitary confinement 24 hours a day in what some legal experts say could amount to illegal pretrial punishment.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) contains provisions barring officers from engaging in public political activities that are typically protected for civilians, including criticizing the president and other elected officials.
Prosecutors have charged Watson with violating them when he participated in a news conference calling for Trump to be removed from office over his launching of military actions against Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela without congressional authorization.
After the speech, Watson stood on the Capitol steps holding a sign that read “Impeach, Convict, Remove" and was arrested after he refused to move.
Before he was charged, Watson gave a CNN interview on August 17 in which he continued to criticize Trump, accusing him of "flagrantly violating the Constitution" and "breaking the law."
He acknowledged that he could face severe consequences as a result of his speech: "We just have to be willing to accept that we can change what is happening in our country if we are just willing to pay a price for it," he said.
One day later, he was arrested while on duty and taken into pretrial confinement. He now faces a general court-martial, the military's most severe trial, which is capable of imposing lengthy prison sentences.
On Friday, Watson's lawyer, Christopher Mutimer, told CNN that after nearly two months, Watson is "still in solitary confinement 24 hours a day," which he said amounted to "cruel and unusual" punishment.
"Even if he gets an hour to eat or to exercise, he is alone," Mutimer said. "He is literally by himself, with his thoughts, in a room where the light never turns off all day."
In an essay published Sunday by writer Monte Mader, Watson himself acknowledged spending his days in isolation, revealing that his Bible had only recently been returned to him and that he had little access to news.
Watson described the conditions of his confinement as the reality one must accept when choosing to engage in nonviolent resistance.
“Walking this path," he said, "means exposing oneself to violence while refusing to retaliate against it.”
After his July 1 protest, Watson had been restricted to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington. Though the base reportedly has a confinement facility, following his detention, he was instead moved to a county jail in Maryland.
During Watson's September 18 preliminary hearing, Maj. Joshua Wendell, the hearing officer, said Watson could not be confined with civilians and was therefore kept in solitary confinement.
"He was placed in confinement because of the law, which puts him in solitary confinement," Wendell said, according to Stars and Stripes.
Article 13 of the UCMJ "forbids punishing a service member before trial and forbids pretrial restraint more rigorous than the circumstances require."
Mutimer has pointed out that solitary confinement is "usually reserved for individuals who are disobeying or are violent, and injuring other people," and usually only for "a day or two, or a week." Watson, he said, has "been in there for months now."
Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force judge advocate and professor of law at Southwestern Law School, told Common Dreams that this "seems to be a blatant case of illegal pretrial punishment given that the nature of his pretrial restraint does not seem necessary to either ensure his presence at trial or to prevent foreseeable serious criminal misconduct."
“Solitary confinement is rare, and must be justified,” she said. “What, is the administration so afraid of this major’s words that he cannot talk to anyone?”
Military defense attorney Cody Harnish, who attended Watson's preliminary hearing, has raised concerns that his detention could be unlawful and that his especially harsh treatment was political in nature.
"I represent people at court-martial in the military, who are accused of doing some very bad things," he said during an interview this weekend with Meidas Defense. "They are not in pretrial confinement."
Harnish noted other abnormal aspects of Watson’s preliminary hearing: He was denied the ability to wear his uniform and instead arrived handcuffed, unshaven, and wearing an undershirt, which pointed to the possibility that he was facing degrading treatment.
He also pointed out that Watson had submitted a request to resign his commission in exchange for avoiding a court-martial, but that the request was denied in 24 hours.
"Nothing gets processed in the military that fast," he said, suggesting that this could indicate influence from senior Pentagon officials.
During his second term, Trump has used members of the military for political purposes in ways that have challenged longstanding norms of political neutrality. This has included hosting overtly political rallies before uniformed troops, screening them for ideology, and purging senior military officers deemed disloyal.
Harnish suggested that the Trump administration was seeking to make an example out of Watson for speaking out against the president.
"When someone speaks out against this administration in the military," he said, "they're going to crush him to silence anyone else in the ranks from ever thinking about it."
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59% of Americans Believe Trump Has Done Illegal or Unethical Things to Profit From Presidency
"His wealth increases," said an independent voter from Florida, "but the people in the country are just barely getting by."
Oct 13, 2026
US President Donald Trump has made over $2 billion since returning to power last year, and polling results released Tuesday show a majority of Americans believe he has not only prioritized himself and his inner circle, but also engaged in illegal or unethical behavior to cash in on his control of the White House.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research surveyed 2,140 US adults from September 24-28 and found that 56% of Americans across the political spectrum believe that Trump has prioritized his personal business interests "a lot" since 2025. Another 19% said he has prioritized those "some."
As for prioritizing the business interests of his friends and family, 54% said he has done so a lot, and 19% said some—figures published just days after an analysis estimating that companies backed financially by the president's sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, have scored more than $6 billion in contracts from the US Department of Defense.
Meanwhile, as Americans struggle with the high cost of everything from gasoline and groceries to healthcare and housing, and with the midterm elections just weeks away, only 23% of those polled said the president has prioritized the country a lot, and 19% said some. Even worse, 11% said he's prioritized "people like me" a lot, and 18% said some.
Trump—whose approval rating has recently plummeted to record lows, fueling GOP fears about losing majorities in both chambers of Congress next month—disclosed in July that he pocketed at least $2.2 billion, over half of which came from his family’s cryptocurrency grift.
That "completely unprecedented" windfall generated allegations of corruption—as have Trump's stock trading disclosures since then, despite White House attempts to stress that his "stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions."
AP-NORC found that 59% of Americans across the political spectrum believe Trump has done something illegal (41%) or unethical but not unlawful (18%) to profit from the presidency. That includes 89% of Democrats, 50% of independents, and 32% of Republicans.
"His wealth increases," 87-year-old retiree Barbara Thaxton, an independent from Summerfield, Florida, told the AP, "but the people in the country are just barely getting by."
Last week, Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the "Trumpflation Tracker," a tool that she said shows "families across the country exactly how much of a price they are paying for Trump's and Republicans' failed economic agenda."
According to Warren's tracker, during Trump's second term, gasoline prices have soared 43.7%, healthcare costs are up 14.6%, residential electricity prices are 12.7% higher, childcare has risen 7.6%, and rent has jumped 5.1%. The tool suggests the average US household is paying thousands of dollars more due to GOP policies, from the president's illegal war on Iran and tariffs to cuts in his party's 2025 budget package.
"So much for Trump's 'Golden Age' of economic opportunity," retiring Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in response to the tracker. "Inflation is up more than 5% since he returned to the White House. Whether it's the president's tariffs, war with Iran, or cuts to healthcare and food assistance, his administration is making it harder for you to afford the basics."
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'Malicious Use' of AI, Nuclear War Pose Extinction Threat to Humanity This Century: Lancet Study
"Although the likelihood of both dangers remains low, the scale of harm, should they be realized, would inflict an apocalypse on humanity."
Oct 13, 2026
A comprehensive new assessment of worldwide health threats published in The Lancet concludes that nuclear war and "malicious use" of artificial intelligence pose existential risks to humanity over the remainder of the 21st century, a finding that comes amid mounting global concern about the implications of rapid AI advancements.
The Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health, comprised of dozens of experts across a range of fields, identifies 17 leading threats to human health and society, from the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency and pandemics to childhood malnutrition, income inequality, conventional war, and air pollution. Two of the threats carry "extinction potential" this century, according to the commission: nuclear conflict and misuse of AI.
"Although the likelihood of both dangers remains low, the scale of harm, should they be realized, would inflict an apocalypse on humanity," The Lancet warned in an editorial accompanying the new analysis, which was presented Sunday at the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany.
The commission notes that AI's "potential to advance health and wellbeing is enormous," but "the risk of catastrophic harm is equally profound." The authors of the analysis point to several ways in which AI could be "used maliciously," including the design of bioweapons, autonomous nukes, and invasive ransomware targeting global healthcare and financial institutions.
"The final pathway is loss of control through the emergence of agentic, unaligned artificial general intelligence," the analysis states. "This loss of control includes AI systems creating subgoals that lead to the seeking of human disempowerment or elimination, particularly if such agents autonomously gain access to financial networks, key infrastructure, or physical tools in the real world."
Regarding the existential threat of nuclear conflict, the study authors note that a famine stemming from atomic warfare "would affect all regions of the world, including those far from the conflict itself, through reduced caloric availability and cascading food-system failures."
"The devastation that could result from nuclear war cannot be overstated," the analysis argues. "The risk is not hypothetical: We found that between 1948 and 2010, 22 nuclear weapon accidents and 21 close calls were recorded. Future nuclear conflicts could occur due to multiple distinct mechanisms, including nuclear exchange arising from international crises between nuclear powers, accidental detonation of nuclear warheads, terrorist use of nuclear devices, and AI deployment of nuclear weapons."
To avert the most catastrophic possible outcomes and mitigate other threats, the commission calls for "collective action between nations and within nations," emphasizing that risks posed by AI, nuclear war, the climate crisis, and future pandemics "cannot be solved by governments or other actors acting for their own national populations alone."
Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and co-chair of the new commission, said in a statement that "the striking finding is not only the scale of these threats, but that humanity still has the agency to act."
"Across all 17 catastrophic threats, the decisions made by leaders today will shape the health and wellbeing of the next generation," said Murray. "But delaying action will only serve to shift and increase the costs into the future."
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Godfather of AI Denounces Trump as a ‘Corrupt, Senile Felon’
“I’m sure the oil and asbestos companies would have liked to [regulate themselves] as well,” said computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton in reference to President Donald Trump's approach to overseeing the AI industry.
Oct 13, 2026
Computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the "godfather" of artificial intelligence, delivered a withering assessment of President Donald Trump's understanding of the technology in an interview published by The Guardian on Tuesday.
The 78-year-old Hinton, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, told The Guardian that he was particularly unimpressed with the president's insistence that AI be rebranded as "superintelligence," which is a concept that he noted has long been clearly defined by computer scientists.
"Superintelligence means smarter than people, and has been around for at least 20 years," Hinton explained. "It’s got a very clear meaning. And now he says we’re going to call AI ‘superintelligence’. You can’t make it smarter than people just by calling it smarter than people."
Hinton also denounced Trump as a "corrupt, senile felon," and ridiculed the president's declaration that the AI industry is fully capable of policing itself without government intervention.
“I’m sure the oil and asbestos companies would have liked to [regulate themselves] as well,” he said. “Do we think tobacco companies should have been allowed to design the warnings on the packets? So that they could print them in a six-point font, in dark grey on black?”
In a Truth Social post last month, Trump suggested that his own intellect was singlehandedly capable of regulating AI, a technology so complicated that even its own creators have acknowledged difficulties in understanding it.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote, “and the USA has that, in spades!”
Elsewhere in the interview, Hinton pushed back on critics who accused him of predicting that AI will wipe out human life. Rather, Hinton said he is only arguing there is an uncomfortably high probability that the technology could pose an extinction risk.
"I'm trying to convey that there is a really serious possibility of something happening," Hinton said. "If, for example, you're told there was a 10% possibility of a bus crashing, you wouldn’t get on the bus. The point of giving numbers is to say this is a serious risk."
The computer scientist pointed to the recent incident where hundreds of agents in OpenAI's cybersecurity test environment escaped confinement and hacked into machine learning company Hugging Face as something that "used to be the domain of science fiction."
Hinton said the stakes were particularly grave given AI's potential destructive power.
"The unique problem with AI is that if it goes wrong, if it takes over, you don’t get a second chance," he warned. "We can’t say, ‘Well, we lost that time. Let’s rerun the game.’ It’s not like that."
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El-Sayed Releases Policy Proposal to Get AI Development 'Under Control'
“If we don’t act quickly, we may get to a point at which we cannot act because it’s too late.”
Oct 13, 2026
US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said Tuesday that to stop Silicon Valley "billionaires" from unilaterally deciding how artificial intelligence will be used, he proposed a regulatory framework for the technology that mirrors federal legislation pushed by top progressives in Congress.
The Michigan Democrat, who is running against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, unveiled his "AI Under Control" proposal following recent warnings from AI executives regarding the technology and its capacity for "recursive self-improvement"—the process through which AI models develop more sophisticated versions of themselves.
Executives including Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Sam Altman of OpenAI have said in recent weeks that AI development should be "paced" to safeguard the future of humanity, and as Common Dreams reported last week, some of those same CEOs are already plotting how to respond to a public revolt in the event of a "large-scale event" perpetrated by their tech, such as a cyberattack.
Echoing calls by lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), El-Sayed shared a different vision, titled "AI Under Control."
The policy proposal calls for a ban on recursive self-improvement and a new Cabinet-level government agency that would inspect AI labs, "block releases" of dangerous AI models like those that have hacked a number of websites and platforms during testing, and "order a pause or command a shutdown” when such attacks take place.
“The answer to what is stopping rogue AI agents from triggering a global nuclear crisis or deploying bioweapons cannot be the whims of a few billionaires in California,” El-Sayed said Tuesday.
The Senate candidate, a former Detroit public health official, also called for mandatory reporting on safety breaches like the one that involved OpenAI's agents at the AI platform Hugging Face earlier this year, and for whistleblower protections.
OpenAI has been slow to publicly disclose its breaches and to notify those affected, as in the case of the company's agents hacking an Australian government healthcare website earlier this year. The company also reportedly fired several safety researchers this month.
“The answer to what is stopping rogue AI agents from triggering a global nuclear crisis or deploying bioweapons cannot be the whims of a few billionaires in California."
El-Sayed called for a national plan to respond to an emergency caused by AI, and reiterated his call from last month to pause advanced AI development until a government agency is established to regulate the technology, and to halt the development of AI data centers, which some communities in Michigan have fought back against.
President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders have called for rapid development of AI and a nationwide buildout of AI, fixated on the idea that, as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said last month, "China will overlap us" if the US imposes regulations at the federal and state level.
Rogers has broken with Trump somewhat, backing a one-year moratorium on AI data centers in Michigan, but he has been criticized for holding at least $1.7 million in investments in various companies that stand to benefit from AI and data center development.
The former congressman has also accepted nearly $150,000 in campaign donations from people with AI and data center investments, including Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and several executives from the private equity firm Blackstone.
“I understand that there’s a lot of money being sloshed around by AI super PACs, but this is the existential crisis of our time,” El-Sayed told The New York Times Tuesday. “If we don’t act quickly, we may get to a point at which we cannot act because it’s too late.”
A recent poll by the Times showed that voters in Michigan had greater confidence in El-Sayed than Rogers on the issue of AI, by an 11-point margin.
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