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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) Friday announced legislation to expand on the success of the universal free lunch approach recently extended by the USDA, and bring long-term relief to millions of food-insecure families. The Universal School Meals Program Act of 2021 would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children regardless of income, eliminate school meal debt, and strengthen local economies by incentivizing local food procurement.
The Universal School Meals Program Act is cosponsored in the Senate by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); and in the House by Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Raul M. Grijalva (Ariz.), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Joseph Morelle (D-N.Y.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), Andre Carson (D-Ind.), Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.), Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), and J. Luis Correa (D-Calif.).
The bill is also endorsed by over 360 organizations, including the School Nutrition Association, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), Hunger Free America, UnidosUS, Children's Defense Fund, and National Action Network.
"In the richest country in the world, it is an outrage that millions of children struggle with hunger every day," said Sen. Sanders. "Every child deserves a quality education free of hunger. What we've seen during this pandemic is that a universal approach to school meals works. We cannot go backwards. I am proud to introduce this legislation alongside my colleagues to ensure no student goes hungry again."
"No child in the richest country in the world should face hunger," said Rep. Omar. "One in six children in my state of Minnesota don't know where their next meal will come from. Families across Minnesota and nationwide are still struggling from the fallout of the pandemic, and children are often bearing the brunt of this crisis. I am proud to partner with my colleagues to implement a universal school meals program to ensure all of our children have the nutrition they need to succeed."
"Many children in New York and across the country rely on school meals to keep from going hungry," said Sen. Gillibrand. "This important legislation will deliver essential resources for school meal programs to ensure no student is ever denied a school meal. With USDA currently providing universal school meals through the 2021-2022 school year, now is the time to take bold action and make universal school meals a permanent reality. As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I will fight for the inclusion of the Universal School Meals Program Act in the upcoming Child Nutrition Reauthorization and look forward to a robust debate on this important legislation. I thank Senator Sanders for his leadership to end child hunger and I will keep fighting to pass the Universal School Meals Program Act so that all children have a reliable source of meals and schools have the resources to administer these critical programs."
"I remember the challenges of keeping my three kids fed, but I felt reassured knowing that when they were in school, they would receive nutritious meals," said Rep. Moore. "Every student should have the opportunity to learn, grow, and focus in school, without worrying about where their next meal will come from. It's why I am so honored to join my colleagues in introducing the Universal School Meals Program Act."
The USDA estimates that 12 million children in the United States lived in food insecure homes at the height of the pandemic. By offering universal school meals this past year, schools across the nation have played an important role in combatting the spike in child hunger brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Through a combination of federal waivers, many schools for the first time were able to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students regardless of their income. Following this success, the USDA recently announced it will extend these waivers for the 2021-2022 school year and continue to provide meals to all students for free.
While the extension of these short-term waivers will come as a relief to many families, without a permanent solution to provide free meals to all students, schools will eventually have to revert to the complicated myriad of paperwork and programs that leave out or discourage too many children from accessing meals throughout the day.
Almost 30 million children in this country rely on free or reduced-price lunch. If the pandemic waivers are allowed to expire, many students from homes with incomes just above 130 percent of the poverty line, $34,450 for a family of four, will not be able to receive free meals at school. Research supports universal access to school meals. When all students are able to access breakfast and lunch at school, all students benefit.
The Universal School Meals Program Act provides for the long-term with the most cost-effective and inclusive model for ensuring all students have access to nutritious meals without overwhelming barriers such as stigma, burdensome paperwork, or threats to have their children taken away.
Prior to the pandemic, school participation rates in the universal school meals program more than doubled from 2014 to 2018. This legislation builds off that success and offers major benefits to students, families, public schools, and communities. Studies show that students with access to free breakfast have improved attendance rates and perform better in school. Free and accessible school meals have also shown to reduce financial stress for students and families, improve health outcomes in students, reduce stigma associated with the programs, and lead to fewer behavioral incidents and lower suspension rates.
For communities, the inclusion of local foods in school meal programs protects and promotes small family farms, enriches local economies, and provides nutritious ingredients for our kids. Every dollar spent on local food generates over two dollars in local economic activity, and local food programs provide hands-on education about proper nutrition, regional crops, traditional Native foods, farming techniques, and environmental stewardship. That is why this legislation provides up to a $0.30 per meal incentive for schools that procure 25 percent of their food from local sources. If all schools met the 25 percent local food criteria for school meals, it would provide local farmers with an additional $3.3 billion in income per year, a 28 percent increase in local food sales - an enormous investment for our rural communities.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, 75 percent of school districts reported carrying school lunch debt, which in some cases can be hundreds of thousands of dollars and has led to reports of heinous and unacceptable scare tactics to collect. This bill would reimburse schools for all of their delinquent school meal debt and stop the harassment of parents and students.
The Biden administration recently announced more than 30 million children will get nutrition assistance over the summer as a result of the American Rescue Plan. Under the Universal School Meals Program Act, nutrition assistance over the summer would be made permanent for all children regardless of income, including for families that struggle to get their children to meal sites, often an issue in rural areas. This bill also expands the number of allowable meal services for child care providers, and empowers schools to collect relevant data using existing resources instead of putting the burden on individual families to report their income.
Read the bill summary here.
Read the legislative text here.
Read full list of organizational support here.
Rep. Ilhan Omar represents Minnesota's 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs.
(202) 225-4755"We do not live in a system that is broken. We live in a system that is functioning exactly as it is intended," said Graham Platner, running for US Senate. "We live in a system that has been built by the political class to enrich and support billionaires on the backs of working people."
Sen. Bernie Sanders headlined a Labor Day rally in downtown Portland, Maine on Monday as part of his ongoing "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, where he joined hands in solidarity with the two candidates—Troy Jackson and Graham Platner—both of whom embrace the Vermont independent's democratic socialist message and a critique that argues concentrated wealth and power have corrupted both major political parties at the expense of working people.
Platner, an oysterman from the small coastal town of Sullivan seeking to win the Democratic primary in order to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in 2026, launched his campaign last month by stating flatly that "the oligarchy is the enemy."
During his remarks Monday at the Cross Insurance Arena, Platner brought the crowd of over 6,500 people to their feet multiple times by blasting the ruling class and lamenting the struggle of too many Maine families.
"Politicians have made a series of decisions over the last 40 years that have resulted in the world that we see today. Their choices have left many of us with very little while, very few accrue vast amounts of wealth," he declared. "In 1990, there were less than 100 billionaires in the United States—today there are over 800. I ask you: when you look around, do you see a community and a state that is eight times wealthier than it was in 1990?"
Sanders rally with Graham Platner and Troy Jackson
"Much of the world that we have today is the specific result of policy choices made by establishment politicians. And the shameful truth of all of this is the blame cannot simply be left at the feet of one political party," said Platner. "We have two parties that want the votes of working people, but neither has done anything lately to earn it. No one is owed allegiance. Support must be earned and that will never happen as long as Democrats are part of the same corporate apparatus that the Republicans are."
Platner's bid against Collins, who has held the seat in the US Senate since 1997, is seen by some political observers as a long shot, but Platner was emphatic that voters in Maine are no longer fooled by what he described as her political "charade" in which she postures as a moderate while backing President Donald Trump's far-right, pro-corporate agenda.
"No one cares that you pretend to be remorseful as you sell out to lobbyists," Planter said of Collins. "No one cares while you sell out to corporations and no one cares while you sell out to a president who are all engineering the greatest redistribution of wealth,—from the working class to the ruling class—in American history."
"Symbolic opposition does not reopen hospitals," he continued, referencing the destruction repercussions of Collins' support for the GOP megabill earlier this year that will strip hundreds of billions from Medicaid. "Weak condemnations do not bring back Roe v. Wade. Sellling out the same working class voters who've delivered mandate for change after mandate for change is not forgivable. A performative politics that enables the destruction of our way of life is disqualifying for the role of United States Senator."
Platner drove home his message that the ruling class, both in Maine and nationwide, is at the heart of the struggles and challenged the idea that voters don't understand the term "oligarchy"—something that segments of the Democratic Party establishment have argued as Sanders toured the country this summer with his message.
"I keep getting told that voters don't know what that word means," said Platner. "But from the standing ovation, I assume everybody knows what it means because we know what's happening when we're getting robbed blind. But let's be clear, we do not live in a system that is broken. We live in a system that is functioning exactly as it is intended. We live in a system that has been built by the political class to enrich and support billionaires on the backs of working people."
The state of Maine, he declared amid a standing ovation, "deserves better than Susan Collins and Maine deserves an alternative who is not at risk of being mistaken as being beholden to the same status quo that she is. I am running because it is time for change."
Planter vowed to "beat back fascism," called for defense of democracy, and said people must embrace a notion of freedom that goes beyond a "romantic freedom"—one that recognizes the affordability crisis that makes life so difficult for working people.
What people need, he said, is a "freedom to not be condemned to scraps and to struggle, but to live with the dignity and fulfillment that gives us the society we deserve. Where instead of dreaming of a life where we can get by, we can afford a life that allows us to dream."
Following Platner, Troy Jackson, a seventh-generation logger from northern Maine who turned to politics on a working-class platform and rose to become president of the State Senate, is among those seeking to become the next governor of Maine when Gov. Janet Mills, also a Democrat, leaves office next year.
"I'm running because it's time to put power back in the hands of the people," said Jackson, after recounting his days in the woods, struggling to provide for his family while the wealthy owners of the logging companies grew ever richer and ever greedier.
"I'm running for governor because the American dream of putting down roots and owning a home and being able to provide for your family with a good-paying job is moving way out of reach," said Jackson. "I am running for the people who worked their entire lives and still can't afford to retire because the economic system in this country is rigged against them. And I'm running for all the workers who've been told to do or go home who've been told that they're replaceable and that their lives are disposable."
Like Platner, Jackson railed against the "status quo" and while he credited Democrats in the state for doing many important things over recent years, also admitted the party had fallen "woefully short" on many issues.
During his speech to conclude the rally, Sanders said this year's Labor Day comes at a perilous time in US history, with Trump's authoritarianism coinciding—and not coincidentally—with obscene levels of economic and political inequality.
Sanders said that the hundreds of thousands of people he has now spoken to as part of the "Fighting Oligarchy" tour have made it clear to him that there is a shared set of beliefs that can overturn the assault on democracy and working people that Trump is now leading.
"We have been to 15 states—and now I can say from Maine to California and a lot of states in between. And we've talked to over 300,000 people," said Sanders. "And what I can tell you without any fear of contradiction is the American people do not want an oligarchic form of government."
"They do not want to live under a kleptocracy where a president gets rich by being president and they sure as hell a sick and tired of the ongoing war of the rich against the working class of this country," he continued. "This is an unprecedented and, in fact, dangerous moment in American history and we have got to respond in an unprecedented way. And the way we respond is to build the kind of strong, progressive grassroots movement, the likes of which this country has never seen."
Echoing Platner, Sanders said that simply denouncing and confronting the Republicans will not be enough to turn the tide.
"What we need to do—which the Democratic Party, the leadership does not do—is have a vision of where we want this country to be," said Sanders.
"What I am begging of you is don't think small, think big," he continued, championing Medicare for All, robust support for public education, an end to disastrous US foreign policy—including support for the Israeli assault on Gaza, an expansion of Social Security, and serious efforts to curb rising food costs and the housing crisis that is crushing working people from coast to coast.
"Brothers and sisters, we got to be thinking outside the box in this state. We got to elect Graham and we got to elect Troy and other good people, but they can't do it alone," said Sanders.
The trick of the ruling class, he told the crowd, is "they basically try to say that ordinary people are powerless."
"What they're saying is they have all the money, they have all of the power, you got nothing. And they can do anything they want and you can't stop them," Sanders continued. "Well, I think we've got some news for them. Not only can we stop them, not only will we stop them, but for the future of this country and in fact the world, we must, must stop them today."
"On Labor Day—when we thank the unions for all they have done for the working class of this country—we understand and remember what a union is," he concluded. "A union is the understanding that one person cannot do it alone. That we all have got to come together to fight with and for each other. And what the union movement is about is solidarity forever."
"Workers are fighting for a society where public schools take precedence over private profits, healthcare is prioritized over hedge funds, and affordable housing is valued more than homelessness," said May Day Strong.
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates.
Americans turned out across the United States on Monday for more than 1,000 demonstrations against President Donald Trump and other oligarchs "to reclaim worker power against billionaires who hoard unprecedented wealth and power."
The "Workers Over Billionaires" protests are being led by the May Day Strong Coalition, which is made up of dozens of organizations including the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, National Union of Healthcare Workers, and advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Fairness, Indivisible, Our Revolution, and Public Citizen.
Demonstrations took place or are set to happen in big cities, small towns, and communities in between all across the nation. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) spoke at a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, where Sanders—whose "Fight Oligarchy Tour" has been drawing huge crowds across the country—vowed that "together, we will create an economy and government that work for all, not just the 1%."
Khanna said that "today on Labor Day, we must recognize the workers across the country who build our economy and strengthen our nation. We need to fight for a living wage and stronger unions as we work to reindustrialize America."
Sanders took his Fighting Oligarchy Tour to Portland, Maine on Monday, where he was joined by guests including Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who is running to unseat five-term Republican US Sen. Susan Collins.
In a video posted on the social media site Bluesky before the rally, Platner said he "could not think of a better day to be a pro-labor candidate."
"Organized labor is the basis of the movement that we are going to have to build to retake this country for working people," Platner added.
May Day Strong said Monday's mobilizations aim "to build collective action against billionaires taking over the US government."
"Building upon momentum from May Day, Good Trouble Lives On, No Kings, and key impromptu actions in the streets and the workplace, Workers Over Billionaires will reach communities nationwide, tapping rural and city workers to stop the billionaire agenda that continues to burden everyone," the coalition said. "As the federal government continues to enable the ultrarich, working people are stepping onto pavement to stop their greed and protect their families."
"Working families want to live in a country that puts workers over billionaires," the coalition added. "Workers are fighting for a society where public schools take precedence over private profits, healthcare is prioritized over hedge funds, and affordable housing is valued more than homelessness."
In New York, actions included a rally outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, where demonstrators demanded a $30 an hour minimum wage. Members of groups including One Fair Wage (OFW) staged a "Restaurant in the Street" demonstration "designed to highlight the struggle of working people and launch the New York Living Wage for All campaign."
"The action coincides with the release of a new OFW report, Making America Affordable Now: The Case for a Living Wage for All, which finds that nearly half of US workers—67 million people—earn less than $25 an hour," One Fair Wage said. "In New York, 41% of workers fall below that threshold."
OFW said that the demand for a living wage is the "next generation of the Fight for $15," warning that "past wage gains have been erased by historic inflation, skyrocketing rents, and cuts to Medicaid and SNAP," the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
"It also highlights how gimmicks like Trump's 'No Tax on Tips' proposal do little to address workers' needs, since two-thirds of tipped workers earn too little to benefit," OFW added.
In Chicago, at least hundreds of people from dozens of groups including the Chicago Teachers Union, Teamsters, and healthcare and hospitality workers rallied against Trump's Project 2025-inspired evisceration of federal agencies and the social safety net.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson denounced Trump's threat to send federal forces into the Windy City in a similar occupation to the one underway in Washington, DC, leading chants of "No troops in Chicago! No troops in Chicago! Invest in Chicago!"
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten told Chicago protesters that "what has happened in this country is that the billionaires don't understand this country was created in protest and resistance to fight off a king, not to recreate a king."
Chicago protester Mark Petersen told NBC Chicago: "I think solidarity among workers is probably the most important thing we can do right now. We're looking at our country get disassembled from the top down, and the best thing we can do is unite from the bottom up."
Hotel workers at the Hilton Americas-Houston downtown went on strike before dawn Monday, demanding a $23 hourly minimum wage. They kicked off their planned nine-day strike with a protest at 6:00 am, during which workers chanted, "Aquí estamos, y no nos vamos"—"We are here, and we won't leave."
"The workers are feeling this need urgently," Franchesca Caraballo, president of Unite Here Local 23's Texas chapter. "We have to take it up several notches here to turn up the pressure on this company."
In Indianapolis, marchers chanted, "No fascists, support unions, support workers."
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said ahead of the protests: "Every single thing working people have won for ourselves in this country's history—it's not because we asked those in power. It's not because they were handed to us. It's because we fought for them relentlessly."
Saqib Bhatti, executive director of Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), told USA Today that "it's important to show that there is opposition to the Trump-billionaire agenda in every community, big and small; it's not just cities that are united against what's happening... it's all towns, it's small towns that voted overwhelmingly for Trump."
Monday also saw the launch of the Department of Class Solidarity (DOCS), "a permanent national war room tracking nearly 1,000 US billionaires, their wealth, corporate holdings, and political contributions."
"This Labor Day weekend, we are not resting," DOCS said on social media. "The oligarchs are snatching away our healthcare, our livelihoods, and our rights. Now is the time to act."
DOCS and allied groups rallied for a "Hamptons Billionaire Shutdown" on Long Island.
🔥 March on Billionaires Lane in the Hamptons — one of the densest concentrations of billionaires in the world.Oligarchs are hiding in their mansions as they bankroll attacks on us with fortunes they plundered from us.The working class is rising. ✊ #PeopleOverBillionaires #FightOligarchy
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— Our Revolution (@our-revolution.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 1:33 PM
"The Hamptons is where right-wing billionaires like Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb plot and plan in their hundred-million-dollar mansions, ensconced from the workers they exploit," DOCS said. "Time to give them a taste of their own medicine."
Under the proposal, the US would take control after "voluntary" relocation of Palestinians from the strip, where proposed projects include an Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone and Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands.
The White House is "circulating" a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into US President Donald Trump's vision of a high-tech "Riviera of the Middle East" brimming with private investment and replete with artificial intelligence-powered "smart cities."
That's according a 38-page prospectus for a proposed Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust obtained by The Washington Post and published in a report on Sunday. Parts of the proposal were previously reported by the Financial Times.
"Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets... resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments," the prospectus states.
However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to "genocide packaged as real estate."
Here comes the Gaza Network State.A plan to turn Gaza into a privately-developed “gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” with “AI-powered smart cities” and “Trump Riviera” resortgift link:wapo.st/4g2eATo
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— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) August 31, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The GREAT Trust was drafted by some of the same Israelis behind the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose aid distribution points in Gaza have been the sites of deliberate massacres and other incidents in which thousands of aid-seeking Palestinians have been killed or wounded.
According to the Post, financial modeling for the GREAT Trust proposal "was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group"—which played a key role in creating GHF. BCG told the Post that the firm did not approve work on the trust plan, and that two senior partners who led the financial modeling were subsequently terminated.
The GREAT Trust envisions "a US-led multirlateral custodianship" lasting a decade or longer and leading to "a reformed Palestinian self-governance after Gaza is "demilitarized and de-radicalized."
Josh Paul—a former US State Department official who resigned in October 2023 over the Biden administration's decision to sell more arms to Israel as it waged a war on Gaza increasingly viewed by experts as genocidal—told Democracy Now! last week that Trump's plan for Gaza is "essentially a new form of colonialism, a transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate" colonialism.
The GREAT Trust contains two proposals for Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians. Under one plan, approximately 75% of Gaza's population would remain in the strip during its transformation. The second proposal involves up to 500,000 Gazans relocating to third countries, 75% of them permanently.
The prospectus does not say how many Palestinians would leave Gaza under the relocation option. Those who choose to permanently relocate to other unspecified countries would each receive $5,000 plus four years of subsidized rent and subsidized food for a year.
The GREAT Trust allocates $6 billion for temporary housing for Palestinians who remain in Gaza and $5 billion for those who relocate.
The proposal projects huge profits for investors—nearly four times the return on investment and annual revenue of $4.5 billion within a decade. The project would be a boon for companies ranging from builders including Saudi bin Laden Group, infrastructure specialists like IKEA, the mercenary firm Academi (formerly Blackwater), US military contractor CACI—which last year was found liable for torturing Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison—electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, tech firms such as Amazon, and hoteliers Mandarin Oriental and IHG Hotels and Resorts.
Central to the plan are 10 "megaprojects," including half a dozen "smart cities," a regional logistics hub to be build over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, a central highway named after Saudi Crown Prime Mohammed bin Salman—Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states feature prominently in the proposal as investors—large-scale solar and desalinization plants, a US data safe haven, an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone," and "Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands" similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai.
In addition to "massive" financial gains for private US investors, the GREAT Trust lists strategic benefits for the United States that would enable it to "strengthen" its "hold in the east Mediterranean and secure US industry access to $1.3 trillion of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf."
Earlier this year, Trump said the US would "take over" Gaza, American real estate developers would "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" atop its ruins after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal exclave. The president called for the "voluntary" transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, both of whose leaders vehemently rejected the plan.
"Voluntary emigration" is widely considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' general unwillingness to leave their homeland.
According to a May survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, nearly half of Gazans expressed a willingness to apply for Israeli assistance to relocate to other countries. However, many Gazans say they would never leave the strip, where most inhabitants are descendants of survivors of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. Some are actual Nakba survivors.
"I'm staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Younis now," one Gazan man told the Post. "But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland."
The Post report follows a meeting last Wednesday at the White House, where Trump, senior administration officials, and invited guests including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, investor and real estate developer Jared Kushner—who is also the president's son-in-law—and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer discussed Gaza's future.
While Dermer reportedly claimed that Israel does not seek to permanently occupy Gaza, Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation in Gaza—have said they will conquer the entire strip and keep at least large parts of it.
"We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said. "On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."
The Israel Knesset also recently hosted a conference called "The Gaza Riviera–from vision to reality" where participants openly discussed the occupation and ethnic cleansing of the strip.
The publication of the GREAT Trust comes as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City amid a growing engineered famine that has killed at least hundreds of Palestinians and is starving hundreds of thousands of more. Israel's 696-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 233,200 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures are seen as a likely undercount by experts.