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For Immediate Release
November, 07 2019, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Seth Gladstone—sgladstone@fwwatch.org, 917.363.6615
Mike Bloomberg Sides with Fossil Fuels and Fracking
WASHINGTON
With news that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is planning to file for the Democratic Party presidential primary in Alabama, Food & Water Action Climate & Energy Program Director Mitch Jones issued the following statement:
"As mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg opposed efforts to ban fracking. He also supported the Keystone pipeline. Earlier this year he confirmed his support for continued use of fossil fuels. It is clear that Bloomberg's reputation as a climate warrior is drastically overblown. He has been and he remains a pro-fracking, pro-pipeline, pro-nuclear billionaire who favors half measures and false solutions because he's more interested in protecting his friends in the C Suite than he is in stopping climate change.
"This race doesn't need another candidate supporting tepid climate change policy. As our climate crisis deepens, this is a "which side are you on" moment. We know which side Bloomberg is on - the side of fossil fuel fracking and pipelines."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
Markey, Merkley, and Sanders Lead Charge Against Trump's $5 Billion Saudi Weapons Deal
The effort comes as senators also sound the alarm about a possible nuclear energy agreement and the administration continues to greenlight arms sales to the kingdom.
Sep 18, 2026
A trio of progressive US senators this week introduced legislation to block a $5 billion conventional weapons sale to Saudi Arabia while also pushing for the release of more details about President Donald Trump's proposed nuclear cooperation agreement with the Middle Eastern kingdom.
"The United States must not send thousands of conventional weapons to Saudi Arabia or allow it to develop a nuclear program," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in a Thursday statement—a day after he partnered with Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to introduce the joint resolution of disapproval, which was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"I am deeply concerned by the kingdom's human rights abuses, the security of the region as the war in Iran rages on, and the proxy war that is escalating between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen," Markey explained. "Further escalation in the Saudi-Iran proxy war will worsen an already dire humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and risks setting off a nuclear arms race between Iran and Saudi Arabia."
The resolution targets a sale approved by the US State Department on September 4 that includes over 10,000 joint direct attack munition (JDAM) guidance kits. As Breaking Defense detailed, "The prospective transaction includes a similar number of dumb bombs—split almost evenly between 500 lb. and 2,000 lb. munitions—which, when equipped with a JDAM, can be used as a precision weapon."
The bill does not apply to the other possible sale to Saudi Arabia endorsed by the department that same day—$750 million for AGT-1500 engines and related equipment—or the $24.3 billion deal for F-35 Lightning II fighter jets, which the Trump administration greenlit Thursday, after the resolution was introduced.
The latest approval "comes nearly two months after Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman traveled to Washington to lobby senior Trump administration officials on the sale, with Riyadh hoping to advance the deal ahead of the midterms," Semafor noted. The upcoming US elections could lead to Trump's Republican Party losing control of Congress.
The warplanes sale could also face pushback from Congress. According to Politico, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, warned that "it could put the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party."
US approves $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 stealth warplanes to Saudi Arabia.US intelligence analysts have raised the possibility that China could acquire F-35 technology through its partnerships with Saudi. Israel had been the only country in the Middle East to operate the jetsu.afp.com/SjRn
[image or embed]
— AFP News Agency (@en.afp.com) September 17, 2026 at 9:41 PM
In addition to unveiling their resolution about the JDAMs and bombs on Wednesday, Markey and Merkley, co-chairs of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, led a bipartisan group of senators—including Sanders—in urging a pair of Trump Cabinet members to declassify two side letters associated with the administration's proposed nuclear deal.
The administration submitted the pending 30-year agreement—which would allow US companies to share nuclear power technology with the kingdom—to Congress after it was signed by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman in July.
Under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, Congress has 90 days of continuous session to review the deal and either move to block it or let it take effect. The senators' new letter to Wright and Secretary of State Marco Rubio notes that "in previous 123 agreements, the executive branch publicly released the agreement along with side letters and related documents."
"Access to the full text is required for the Senate and the public to have a clear understanding of the commitments being made on the nation's behalf and those being made by Saudi Arabia to the United States," the senators argued. "Their public release would also allow civil society, independent experts, and other affected stakeholders to scrutinize the deal."
"Transparency and open debate are cornerstones of our democracy," they emphasized. "Congress and the American public must have a meaningful opportunity to review and debate the key components of the US-Saudi nuclear deal before it potentially enters into force. To that end, we call on you to declassify and release the two side letters without delay."
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Abbas Barred From US by Trump While Netanyahu, Wanted by ICC for War Crimes, Gets Welcome Mat
A director at Amnesty International said the US had made clear it was seeking to “punish the state of Palestine for pursuing international justice and accountability at international institutions.”
Sep 18, 2026
While the Trump administration bars Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his delegation from entering the US to attend the United Nations General Assembly for the second year in a row, it is welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza by the International Criminal Court.
In November 2024, the ICC found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu bore criminal responsibility for the use of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, including intentionally targeting civilians.
Since October 2023, Israel's assault on Gaza has killed at least 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,000 children, while reducing much of the landscape to rubble and leaving most of the population displaced. Meanwhile, Israel's restrictions on food, water, medicine, electricity, and other essentials have created conditions of severe hunger, dehydration, the collapse of medical care, and civilian deaths.
President Donald Trump has previously assured Netanyahu that he would not be arrested while visiting New York on the basis of the ICC warrant. The US and Israel are not parties to the Rome Statute, meaning that they are not obligated to enforce the ICC's warrant.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani examined whether his administration had the legal authority to detain Netanyahu earlier this year. Officials determined they did not, but Mamdani called on the federal government to execute the ICC warrant and said, “Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large."
As The Jerusalem Post reported earlier this week, there has been "unusual involvement" from the US Secret Service with the prime minister's visit next week, with more than 60 New York Police Department security officers and detectives expected to participate in his security detail.
Netanyahu is set to take the podium on Thursday, September 24, amid intense international scrutiny and condemnation of the aggressive US-Israeli war against Iran, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements across the West Bank and the explosion of settler terrorism against Palestinians, and Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon.
The US State Department has emphasized that it barred Abbas and around 80 other Palestinian officials from attending—forcing Abbas to appear at the UNGA remotely via video call—partially in response to Palestinian leaders bringing evidence of Netanyahu's crimes before international tribunals including the ICC and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Israel has been accused of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention in Gaza.
The State Department described the use by Palestinians of international legal bodies like the ICC and ICJ as part of an effort to "internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Incidentally, around two-thirds of the weapons Israel has imported between 2021-25 have been from the US.
Erika Guevara Rosas, a senior director at Amnesty International, said on Thursday that “the State Department’s statement makes it obvious: This decision is designed to punish the state of Palestine for pursuing international justice and accountability at international institutions, including through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).”
"This measure is part of a relentless campaign of reprisals against the very notion of international justice," Guevara Rosas continued.
The Trump administration has also sanctioned ICC personnel over its case against Netanyahu, as well as Palestinian human rights organizations that provided evidence that assisted in the prosecution of Israeli nationals.
In July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was launching a “whole-of-government response” intended to “systematically disable” the ICC's ability to operate and threatened to dismantle the institution “brick by brick, if necessary.”
Guevara Rosas argued that the ban on Abbas constituted a "clear violation" of the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement, which states that the US cannot block individuals from entry simply because of poor relations with their home government.
The State Department acknowledged this explicitly on Thursday when it announced that it would allow the president and foreign minister of Iran—a nation with which the US has been at war for more than six months—into the country “consistent with our host country obligations,” though they have faced some shopping and travel restrictions.
Guevara Rosas said the Trump administration was "setting a dangerous precedent in which the US instrumentalizes its privilege as the host country of the UN to impose arbitrary restrictions on attending the UNGA, and other UN meetings."
On Thursday, the General Assembly voted 152-3 calling on the US to reverse its decision to deny entry to the Palestinian delegation in person and allow them to participate via a pre-recorded message.
Itay Epshtain, an Israeli international humanitarian law expert who works with the Norwegian Refugee Council, argued that the UN could do much more, including voting to move part of the General Assembly to a location where the Palestinians would be allowed to participate.
“The [UNGA] decision to allow President Abbas to speak remotely is welcome,” he wrote on social media. “But precedent is more exacting: In 1988, when the US barred PLO chairperson [Yasser] Arafat, the assembly moved its Palestine debate to Geneva.”
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‘Time We Send Her Packing,’ Troy Jackson Says of Collins Voting to Confirm 2 Anti-Abortion Judges in a Week
"Does she think that people in Maine are stupid?" said Jackson of the Republican senator, who has long claimed to be a supporter of reproductive rights.
Sep 18, 2026
"Enough is enough," Democratic US Senate candidate Troy Jackson declared on Thursday after Republican Sen. Susan Collins voted once again for an anti-abortion judge to join a federal court for a lifetime appointment—a frequent action taken by the five-term Maine lawmaker despite her persistent claims that she supports reproductive rights.
Collins' vote on Thursday was for Kasdin Miller Mitchell, a litigator and former solicitor general of Alabama who also served as a clerk for far-right US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She was confirmed in a 49-45 vote to serve on the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
But Mitchell wasn't the only anti-choice judge Collins voted to confirm this week, Jackson noted with scorn.
On Tuesday, the former logger and Maine state Senate president recorded a video responding to her tie-breaking vote in support of Judge Matthew Byrne to join the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Byrne sits on the board of an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center and said in 2020 that he opposed allowing pregnant patients to access abortion in nearly all cases, without any exceptions for rape or incest. He said he supported exceptions—which, in reality, often do little to protect access to care—for cases in which a pregnant patient's life is at risk, but said that the term “life of the mother” should be “strictly defined so as to avoid creating loopholes.”
Jackson asked in his video on Tuesday, "Does she think that people in Maine are stupid?"
"It's time that Mainers had somebody that's going to fight for their reproductive rights every damn time," he added.
On Thursday, Jackson expressed disbelief that for the second time in four days, Collins had voted in favor of an anti-choice judge.
Mitchell helped defend the state of Alabama as it tried to terminate Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, arguing in a brief that the state had "inherent sovereign authority to determine which providers qualified" for Medicaid, "based on their own unchecked assessment of an organization’s ethics," according to Reproductive Freedom for All.
Mitchell also signed letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of other anti-abortion judges and served as the counsel of record for the Independent Women’s Law Center, an anti-choice group that has opposed the Affordable Care Act's contraception coverage, equal pay and family leave legislation, and the Violence Against Women Act.
Maine Democratic Party spokesperson Misha Linnehan said Collins' votes this week "show she’s not going to stand up for Maine women any time soon.”
“Susan Collins confirmed justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and said herself she still doesn’t regret it," said Linnehan. "Now, she’s falling in line with Trump once again to put fanatical anti-abortion judicial nominees on the bench for life."
The Maine Democratic Party highlighted more than a dozen federal judges Collins has backed in recent months, including Judge Whitney Hermandorfer of the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, who defended Tennessee’s total abortion ban; Judge Joshua Dunlap of the US Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, which includes Maine, who advocated for a "fetal personhood" bill in the state; and Judge Maria Lanahan to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, who defended Missouri’s near-total abortion ban and pushed for restrictions on medication abortion.
"For the second time this week, Susan Collins has voted to confirm ANOTHER anti-abortion, MAGA judge," said Jackson on Thursday. "It’s time we send her packing."
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Watchdogs Sue to Stop Wall Street's 'Pay-to-Play' Access to Trump Truth Posts
"This brazen scheme is illegal many times over and is an affront to the basic principle that the government exists to serve the people, not to enrich cronies and insiders," said their lawyer.
Sep 18, 2026
A pair of watchdog groups on Thursday sued President Donald Trump and other US officials over their "pay-to-play" scheme that gives subscribers who fork over a monthly fee of up to $100,000 early access to key decision-makers' posts on Truth Social.
The president's Trump Media & Technology Group announced the social media platform's program in July, drawing swift criticism from ethics experts and Democratic lawmakers—including House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who opened a probe. Despite corruption concerns, Truth Application Programming Interface (API) launched early last month.
Because Truth API covers the accounts of Trump, as well as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, they are all named in the new suit—as is the president's executive assistant, Natalie Harp.
"It is no accident that the Truth API covers so many official government accounts," says the complaint, filed by American Oversight and Campaign for Accountability, in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. "Information the Trump administration disseminates on Truth Social through its official accounts can have significant consequences for the global economy."
"Truth API subscribers—who now receive this potentially market-moving information before the rest of the public—can profit on their early knowledge of what the Trump administration says, does, and believes," the filing stresses.
In other words, "the president is selling Wall Street faster access to official government announcements and lining his own pockets in the process," said American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu. "Like so much of his agenda, this scheme is built to benefit the wealthy and well-connected while the rest of us are pushed to the back of the line."
Gerstein Harrow attorney Samuel Davis, who is representing the groups, declared that "this brazen scheme is illegal many times over and is an affront to the basic principle that the government exists to serve the people, not to enrich cronies and insiders."
Specifically, "this two-tier system of access" not only "serves no legitimate public purpose" but also "is irrational, inequitable, and illegal under the First and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution and the Paperwork Reduction Act," the complaint argues. After outlining the alleged violations of federal law, the filing asks the court to declare the scheme unconstitutional and unlawful.
"If President Trump has one talent, it is finding new and creative ways to monetize his presidency," Campaign for Accountability executive director Michelle Kuppersmith said of the man who has pocketed at least $2.2 billion—over half of it from his family's cryptocurrency endeavors—during his first year back in the White House, according to recent disclosures.
"In another era, Congress would be outraged and take immediate action, but since that's out of the question, a lawsuit offers the only possible remedy," Kuppersmith continued. "We look forward to discovery so the American public can learn exactly which companies are willing to pay up."
The suit—filed less than two months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats aim to take control of both chambers of Congress from Trump's Republican Party—is not the first filed over Trump API. The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and the media outlet The Intercept sued last month in the Southern District of New York.
That pair—represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon—filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction earlier this month. The Intercept's CEO, Annie Chabel, said that "Trump doesn't get to charge people for his own public statements."
"The First Amendment doesn't have a paywall, and we're not going to let him build one," Chabel added. "Journalists and the public shouldn't have to pay the president for news he's constitutionally obligated to share with everyone."
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Star YouTube Educator Ms. Rachel Vows to Match Macklemore's $1 Million Donation to Palestinian Aid Groups
"We have a moral obligation to use our privilege and platforms to protect children and human rights," said Ms. Rachel.
Sep 18, 2026
Rachel Griffin Accurso, the YouTube star and child educator known popularly as Ms. Rachel, is vowing to match the $1 million donation made by rapper Macklemore to Palestinian aid organizations.
In a Thursday social media post, Ms. Rachel said she was giving $1 million to groups dedicated to helping Palestinians who have been suffering for years under Israeli military assaults and occupation.
The YouTube star also encouraged "every wealthy white celebrity to match it and speak out against the genocide in Gaza."
"Over 20,000 precious Palestinian children have been killed and children continue to be killed every day," Ms. Rachel said. "We have a moral obligation to use our privilege and platforms to protect children and human rights."
In the comments, Macklemore thanked Ms. Rachel, who has a long history of advocating for Palestinians and highlighting the horrors inflicted on Gaza by the Israeli military, for backing his campaign.
"Love you so much," he wrote.
Macklemore first announced his $1 million donation shortly after he was removed as an opening act from fellow musician Ed Sheeran's nationwide stadium tour because he said "Free Palestine" onstage earlier this month during a show at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
On Wednesday, Macklemore revealed his donation campaign and invited New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft—who led the pressure campaign to remove the rapper from the tour—to join him.
"Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protection,” Macklemore wrote in a social media post, addressing Kraft directly. “A Palestinian life is no less valuable than any life on this earth.”
The rapper said he was giving to six organizations who were aiding Palestinians: HEAL Palestine, Gaza Soup Kitchen, Medical Aid for Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and American Near East Refugee Aid.
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'F*ck the Consultants': Free Advice Offered for Democrats in Need of a Position on AI
"Wild that candidates are avoiding an enormously consequential issue with broad bipartisan support among voters, for fear of unleashing attack ads from super PACs funded by a tiny handful of AI billionaires and corporations."
Sep 18, 2026
A veteran aide for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has some choice advice for Democrats running for office in this year's election, which is to ignore the guidance some of them are reportedly receiving from their political consultants on the question of regulating the artificial intelligence industry in the face of growing public concerns about runaway machine learning and the data center buildout that big tech companies are pursuing nationwide.
Warren Gunnels, who currently serves as the minority staff director for Sanders on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee in the US Senate, issued his advice in response to a Politico article published Thursday, which had the headline "Democratic advisers are warning their candidates not to go too hard at AI."
While the reporting noted that members of the Democratic Party's consultancy class are "privately encouraging their battleground candidates to avoid talking about AI regulations out of fear that powerful tech groups will unleash a tidal wave of spending against them" ahead of this year's midterm election, Gunnels offered a 9-word antidote to what he considered bad political advice and a failure to recognize where most voters are on the issue.
"Nine words," said Gunnels in his post: "Fuck the consultants, End Citizens United, Ban super PACs." Gunnels backed up his statement with recent polling data suggesting that a strong stance on AI and data centers would likely help, not hurt, those seeking elected office.
Gunnels wasn't the only one to react negatively.
Brendan Fischer, director of strategic investigations at the Campaign Legal Center, said it's "wild that candidates are avoiding an enormously consequential issue with broad bipartisan support among voters, for fear of unleashing attack ads from super PACs funded by a tiny handful of AI billionaires and corporations."
The US Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case, which unleashed a tidal wave of dark money campaign spending, said Fischer, "promised unlimited political spending would mean more speech and a more robust marketplace of ideas. But instead, candidates are chilled from discussing issues voters care about for fear of angering wealthy interests capable of spending millions to defeat them."
In July, Business Insider reported that the AI industry had already spent at least $65 million in midterm races, though other estimates have put that figure much higher. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, CEO of Space X and a major player in the AI space with his GROK model, has vowed to spend a $100 million help his preferred candidates and the Republican Party win.
At a summit on the need for robust regulation of the AI industry held earlier this week, Sanders said he had a message for leaders and executives running theses tech companies.
"My message to the AI CEO’s: If you truly care about the future of humanity," said Sanders, "stop pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs to defeat Members of Congress and candidates who are fighting for serious guardrails on AI."
My message to the AI CEO’s:
If you truly care about the future of humanity, stop pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs to defeat Members of Congress and candidates who are fighting for serious guardrails on AI. pic.twitter.com/2HooEeOQr3
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 15, 2026
As the debate over AI regulation has emerged as a major topic in Washington, DC, and on the campaign trail in recent weeks, a series of polls have confirmed public anxieties about the technology.
A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago released Wednesday showed that more than half of US voters (53%) are “extremely” or “very” concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts, and the poll also found broader concerns about the negative impacts of data centers, especially on local water resources and utility rates.
"Change is scary, and I think some of that is being reflected here,” said Michael Greenstone, who directs the University of Chicago institute that collaborated on the survey, of the results.
The Politico reporting, which drew Gunnel's fiery response, also acknowledged the public sentiment, but described how consultants working on various Democratic campaigns are trying to avoid provoking the ire of deep-pocketed tech giants:
Some top Democratic candidates and their campaigns are quietly trying to avoid crossing any red lines for tech super PACs — even as it’s unclear exactly what those lines would be, after Musk and two of the biggest AI CEOs called for more regulation on the technology last week.Democrats are especially wary of Leading the Future, a pro-AI industry super PAC that spent over $25 million in primary races this year and is backed by investors and executives of OpenAI. The rival super PAC network, Public First Action, pushes for AI regulation and is funded by OpenAI’s chief competitor, Anthropic.
While the fears of being targeted by the industry cash may not be unfounded, progressives like Gunnels suggest that a willingness to take a stand against powerful AI companies is exactly the kind of fight voters want to see from party candidates.
For the Politico article, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House, explained how AI super PACs "come out and they say that they’re concerned, that they want regulation. But then they spend huge amounts of money on defeating anybody who wants legislative regulation."
In a social media post Thursday night, however, Jayapal backed the congressional campaign of Will Lawrence, running as a Democrat to win an open seat in Michigan's 7th Congressional District, by saying voters "need leaders who answer to their constituents, not the corporations that paid for their election."
Following Gunnels advice that bucking the influence of corporate donors is actually a key component of a winning electoral strategy in the 2026 midterms, Jayapal said "electing fighters who don’t take corporate PAC money"—whether on the issue of AI, healthcare, housing policy, or broader concerns about economic inequality and affordability—is key for Democrats.
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Trump Says 'Big Decision' Coming on Whether to 'Annihilate' Iran
"Trump waving around 'annihilation' as if he’s God" is "startling to hear," wrote one progressive critic. "He is, after all, batshit crazy."
Sep 17, 2026
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is weighing whether or not to "annihilate" Iran in a renewed effort to end the illegal 201-day US-Israeli war of choice, musings that came on the heels of a report by United Nations experts who said the United States likely committed war crimes during earlier attacks on the Middle East nation.
"I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?" Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid. "It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."
Ravid said that Trump was referring to the Iranian government. However, the Iranian people have borne the brunt of six-and-a-half months of war and years of deadly economic strangulation.
Trump’s threat came as a United Nations fact-finding mission said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the United States committed a war crime in two February strikes—one on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab and another on a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd—that killed a combined total of at least 178 civilians, including 120 children.
The UN experts' report pointed to the Trump administration’s “deprioritization of civilian harm mitigation and of compliance with [international humanitarian law], expressed through public statements by senior US leadership, including the president and the secretary of defense.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said early in the war that the US would eschew “stupid rules of engagement" meant to protect civilians, while vowing that US forces would rain “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed his willingness to commit war crimes and atrocities against Iran, including through threats to “completely obliterate” the country's power, energy and water infrastructure and bomb the nation of over 90 million people "back to the Stone Ages."
“If they don’t sign the deal, then the whole country is going to get blown up,” the president said in April while unsuccessfully trying to pressure Tehran into an agreement to end the war. He also said that Iran's “whole civilization will die” if Tehran did not accept his demands.
The UN experts said that while they could not independently verify how many Iranian casualties the US-Israeli war has caused, they have "strong grounds to believe that the true figures for deaths and injuries are significantly higher than the [Iranian] government's reported toll" earlier this year of over 28,000 people killed and wounded.
Responding to the president's latest threat, progressive commentator Heather Digby Parton—who blogs under the name Digby—wrote that "this could all be bluster."
"Trump waving around 'annihilation' as if he’s God is still startling to hear," she added. "But I don’t have the sense that even he believes it anymore. But I would never assume that he won’t. He is, after all, batshit crazy."
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Nader Rips 'Feeble, Weak, Cowardly' Democrats for Eschewing Trump Impeachment
"The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week."
Sep 17, 2026
As Democrats campaign for the November midterm elections after helping kill the latest congressional effort to impeach President Donald Trump, progressive consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader this week renewed attacks on the party's leadership for abandoning their constitutional responsibility to hold the president accountable.
In a September 14 essay published by Current Affairs, Nader argued that Democratic leaders have effectively given up on impeachment even as Trump's second administration faces continuing allegations of executive overreach and misconduct.
"The chronic prevaricator and delusionist Donald J. Trump knows that the worse his outlaw actions become, the less likely the Democrats in Congress are to impeach him," the Public Citizen co-founder wrote. "The massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, systemically racist, unstable, dangerous tyrant increases by the day."
"The American public knows it," Nader continued. "The majority of Americans favor impeaching Trump. Among Democrats, it’s 84% in favor, as well as a majority of independents. Polling even shows that most Americans think Trump is a 'dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.'"
Yet, "when asked about impeachment, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] replied: 'We haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,'" he noted. "What? Every day, the mega-arsonist is burning down our republic and its Constitution, with tens of millions of Americans suffering and endangered. Yet Jeffries has been noncommittal about whether Democrats would pursue impeachment even if they had a congressional majority."
In a column republished by Common Dreams earlier this month, Nader wrote, “What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses?”
“Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck," he opined.
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted 232-147 to table an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), effectively ending the measure's consideration. Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table it, while 46 Democrats—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—voted “present.”
Green's resolution accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors arising from the administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, including alleged violations of civil liberties and due process. Green said before the vote that the Constitution contains no provision requiring Congress to wait before confronting impeachable conduct.
Democratic leaders have attempted to justify their decision not to support Green's resolution by arguing that impeachment requires a substantial investigative record, hearings, witness testimony, and document review. Jeffries, along with Democratic leaders Katherine Clark of Massachusetts—the House minority whip—and Pete Aguilar of California, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said they would vote “present” because “none of that serious work has been done," as they jointly explained.
Nader rejects that reasoning. In Current Affairs, he argued that saying Democrats “don’t have the votes” misses the purpose of a sustained impeachment campaign, which he described as a way of building public pressure and organizing voters.
“Impeachment is a mobilizer for get-out-the-vote efforts," he wrote, as well as "for educating and energizing the people back home."
Trump has already been impeached twice by the House, although the Senate failed to convict him either time. No other president has been impeached multiple times. Nader has pointed out that Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors are more grave than those for which then-President Nixon resigned from office in 1974 rather than face impeachment, and that Democrats' fear of the consequences for impeaching Trump again is no excuse for their cowardice.
"The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week," he wrote.
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Omar Introduces Bill to 'Make ICE Pay' for Destruction to US Cities
"Our bill will force ICE to pay the price for the damage they’ve left in their wake and ensure that these devastating operations can never be repeated," said the Minneapolis congresswoman.
Sep 17, 2026
On January 10, days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot US citizen and mother of three Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, US Rep. Ilhan Omar stood in the bitter cold of her home city, surrounded by a crowd of angry residents who'd taken to the streets.
It was just over a month into the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge"—a campaign that would come to be marked by the staggering scale of racial profiling that led to the arrests of US citizens, brazen defiance of court orders, and stunning displays of force, including two more shootings, one of them fatal.
Of the thousands of armed and masked agents who'd arrived to inflict terror upon the Twin Cities, Omar (D-Minn.) declared, "We are going to make sure that these people pay for what they have done to us." A cheer erupted from the crowd.
On Thursday, Omar introduced a piece of legislation aimed at fulfilling that promise. Titled the Make ICE Pay Act, the bill would block the roughly $140 billion allocated to immigration enforcement in last year's massive Republican budget law and redirect it to recovery efforts in communities reeling from ICE sieges.
"For over a year, ICE has been tearing through our nation, leading racist terror campaigns that have caused devastating damage to our cities, to our businesses, and to the lives of our constituents," Omar said.
"In Minneapolis, Operation Metro Surge cost our community nearly $700 million," she said, citing an estimate by the city of Minneapolis. "We have a moral responsibility to end this abuse of power. Our bill will force ICE to pay the price for the damage they’ve left in their wake and ensure that these devastating operations can never be repeated."
The Trump administration has used this funding to construct an enormous network of detention camps that have often held people in squalid conditions without contact with their loved ones or lawyers and to launch a hiring blitz that has swelled the agency's ranks with poorly vetted recruits, some of whom have gone on to commit deadly abuses of their newfound power.
It has also been used to supercharge ICE's footprint nationwide. With 51,000 arrests, August was the third consecutive month in which the agency set detention records.
And more than ever, the agency has gone after immigrants without criminal records, as well as asylum seekers, green card and visa holders, and Haitian and Syrian immigrants the administration abruptly stripped of Temporary Protected Status.
Through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Omar's bill would redirect this funding to states and cities on the receiving end of ICE abuses.
It would be used to provide them with economic relief, reimburse them for extra costs and lost economic activity resulting from raids, support schools and colleges that were disrupted, and provide mental health and social support to those affected.
Funds could also be allocated to support record-keeping and investigations into immigration agencies' conduct and to commissions that allow members of the public to testify about their experiences.
In addition to Minnesota, Omar's bill identifies several other localities that would be eligible for funding after being besieged by ICE, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, and Oregon, where numerous incidents of misconduct have also been documented.
The legislation is co-sponsored by Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Ore.), and Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.).
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Trump 'Narcissism and Incompetence' Denounced After Kennedy Center 'Demolition' Plan Exposed
A federal judge has ordered the Kennedy Center board to provide 30 days' notice ahead of any attempt to knock down the building.
Sep 17, 2026
President Donald Trump is coming under heavy criticism after a photograph taken on Wednesday suggested that his threats to destroy the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts are very real.
Shortly after attending a Wednesday night rally in North Carolina, Trump was caught on camera by photographer Brendan Smialowski sitting on Air Force One and looking at a large printout of a graphic that appeared to read, "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED."
Hours before the photo was taken, Trump told reporters that the Kennedy Center would "end up being ripped down" if he was not allowed to put his name on the side of the building in "recognition" for the work he purports to have done to improve it.
Trump basically saying The Kennedy Center will be ripped down unless his name is placed on it because in order for him to want to maintain it, his name should be on it.
(Cleaner audio version) https://t.co/wmkH2JTS7I pic.twitter.com/NEyeS17jhb
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 16, 2026
In a Tuesday social media post, Trump similarly said that the center was "destined to doom" unless he is allowed to add his name to it.
Alarmed by these developments, attorneys representing Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), a Kennedy Center trustee, went to US District Judge Christopher Cooper on Thursday and asked him to intervene and prevent the president from unilaterally destroying the center.
Cooper subsequently ordered the Kennedy Center board to give 30 days' notice "before the implementation of any changes... including but not limited to any 'demolition' of the center's main building."
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) noted in a Thursday social media post that demolishing the Kennedy Center "would be flagrantly illegal," and vowed to protect the building, which he described as "one of the crown jewels of our nation's capital."
"Trump's narcissism and incompetence are putting our national heritage and iconic sites at risk," Beyer added, "and Republicans' silence and acquiescence to this corruption speaks volumes."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed to news from earlier in the week about the resignation of Kennedy Center chief financial officer Donna Kauranen as a particularly ominous development.
"If the Kennedy Center CFO has packed bags and fled," wrote Whitehouse, "that's another warning about center fiduciary failures of due diligence."
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