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Largest Federal Workers Union Calls Anti-Union RETURN Act Outrageous Assault on Collective Bargaining
AFGE says bill nullifying contracts is ‘colossally foolish and un-American.’
WASHINGTON
In response to the announcement of a new bill introduced by Sens. Charles Grassley, Martin Heinrich, Mark Kelly, and Roger Wicker that would require abrogation of provisions in contracts negotiated by federal agencies and their unions, American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley released the following statement:
"If passed, this legislation would be a more significant assault on federal agencies' and workers' union rights than any executive order signed by President Donald Trump. It would effectively end the limited collective bargaining rights that benefit both federal government agencies and workers.
"If Congress will dispense with federal workers' union rights whenever legislators disagree with a particular aspect of a union contract, then Congress is telling American workers they should have no rights and their legal contracts are null and void.
"If Congress ever has the poor judgment to send this colossally foolish and un-American piece of legislation to President Biden's desk, he should veto it."
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union proudly representing 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide and overseas. Workers in virtually all functions of government at every federal agency depend upon AFGE for legal representation, legislative advocacy, technical expertise and informational services.
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Calls Grow to Release Transcript of 'Highly Disturbing' Trump-MBS Call After Khashoggi Murder
Rep. Eugene Vindman—who was a White House national security lawyer at the time of the 2019 call—said it “would shock people if they knew what was said.”
Nov 21, 2025
The widow of Jamal Khashoggi on Friday joined Democratic members of Congress in urging President Donald Trump to release the transcript of a phone conversation between the US leader and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the journalist's 2018 kidnapping and gruesome murder by Saudi operatives.
Speaking outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC flanked by Democratic members of Congress including Reps. Eugene Vindman of Virginia and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said she is seeking the lawmakers' help "to get the contents of the conversation between President Trump and MBS to get the truth."
“Try as much as you can to save the democratic freedom of America," Khashoggi implored the audience at the gathering. "Do not be a copy of the Middle East dictator countries. We look to America as our role model of modern civilization. Please maintain it.”
Jamal Khashoggi's widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi: "I'm seeking the help of Congressmen Vindman and Jamie Raskin, to get the transcript of the conversation between President Trump and Crown Prince MBS to understand the truth."
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— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) November 21, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Vindman urged the declassification and release of what he called a "highly disturbing" 2019 call between Trump and MBS—who US intelligence agencies say ordered Khashoggi's murder—the contents of which the congressman claimed “would shock people if they knew what was said.”
At the time of the call, Vindman was serving as a lawyer on Trump's National Security Council, where his duties included reviewing presidential communications with foreign leaders.
"All week, I’ve urged the president to release this transcript," Vindman said during his remarks at Friday's press conference. "Yesterday, I sent him a letter with 37 of my colleagues demanding its release. We will continue pressing until the American people get the truth.”
"Given President Trump’s disturbing and counterfactual defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this week, I felt compelled to speak up on behalf of the Khashoggi family and the country I serve," he added.
On Tuesday, Trump warmly welcomed the crown prince to the White House, calling him a "respected man," designating Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally, and announcing the planned sale of F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom.
Trump also threatened an ABC News reporter who attempted to ask MBS about his role in Khashoggi's murder, calling the victim "somebody that was extremely controversial" and whom "a lot of people didn’t like."
“Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen," Trump said as MBS smugly looked on, dubiously adding that the crown prince "knew nothing about it."
Responding to Trump's comments, Khashoggi's widow said during Friday's press conference that “there is no justification to kidnap [Khashoggi], torture him, to kill him, and to cut him to pieces."
"This is a terrorist act," she added.
Khashoggi—a Washington Post columnist and permanent US resident—vanished in October 2018 while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkish officials said he was attacked, suffocated to death, and dismembered with a bone saw inside the consular compound. One Turkish investigator said Khashoggi was tortured in front the Saudi consul-general and dismembered while he was still alive.
Saudi officials initially denied that Khashoggi died in the consulate but later confirmed his death, claiming it resulted from a “fistfight” gone wrong. In 2019, a Saudi court sentenced five people to death and three others to prison terms in connection with Khashoggi’s murder. However, the death sentences were later commuted.
The Central Intelligence Agency concluded that MBS ordered Khashoggi's murder. Saudi officials refuted the CIA's findings. Trump also expressed skepticism at his own intelligence agency's conclusion, which came as the US was selling or seeking to sell billions of dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia despite its rampant war crimes in Yemen.
Hopes that former President Joe Biden would take a different approach to Saudi Arabia over war crimes and Khashoggi's murder were dashed as his administration continued selling arms to the kingdom and argued in federal court that MBS should be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case filed by the slain journalist's widow.
Trump has sought closer ties to Saudi Arabia during his second term as he courts up to $1 trillion in investments from the kingdom and works to broker diplomatic normalization between Riyadh and Israel.
The New York Times reported Monday that the Trump Organization—which is run by the president’s two eldest sons—is “in talks that could bring a Trump-branded property" to Saudi Arabia, raising concerns about possible corruption and conflicts of interest.
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Deluzio Gets Bomb Threats After Trump Said Hang Him for Warning Troops About Illegal Orders
"We stand with Rep. Deluzio and every patriot holding the line," said one veteran group. "We reject violence. We reject intimidation. And we will never apologize for defending the oath."
Nov 21, 2025
Just a day after President Donald Trump suggested that six congressional Democrats should be hanged for reminding members of the US military and intelligence community of their duty not to obey illegal orders, one of those lawmakers was the target of multiple bomb threats.
A spokesperson for US Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) said Friday afternoon that his "district offices in Carnegie and Beaver County were both the targets of bomb threats this afternoon. The congressman and congressional staff are safe, and thank law enforcement for swiftly responding. Political violence and threats like this are unacceptable."
On Tuesday, the former US Navy officer had joined Democratic Reps. Jason Crow (Colo.), Maggie Goodlander (NH), and Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.), along with Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), for the 90-second video.
Trump—who notably incited the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol while trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential contest—lashed out at the six veterans of the military and intelligence agencies on his Truth Social platform Thursday, accusing them of "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" and reposting a call to "HANG THEM."
Deluzio and the others have doubled down on their message that, as he says in the video, "you must refuse illegal orders."
In a joint statement responding to Trump's remarks, the six Democrats reiterated their commitment to upholding the oaths they took "to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," urged every American to "unite and condemn the president's calls for our murder and political violence," and stressed that "we will continue to lead and will not be intimidated."
Deluzio also addressed Trump's comments on CNN, denouncing his "outrageous call for political violence."
Other lawmakers, veterans, and political observers have also condemned Trump's comments—and the grassroots vet group Common Defense pointed to them on social media Friday, after Deluzio's staff confirmed the bomb threats.
"First: Common Defense unequivocally condemns political violence in all shapes, forms, and from any party. Violence has no place in our democracy. We believe in the rule of law. But we cannot ignore the cause and effect here," the organization said.
"The response to quoting the Constitution was a call for execution," the group continued. "Now, Rep. Deluzio, an Iraq War veteran, is facing actual bomb threats. When leaders normalize violence against political opponents, this or worse is the inevitable result."
"We stand with Rep. Deluzio and every patriot holding the line," Common Defense added. "We reject violence. We reject intimidation. And we will never apologize for defending the oath."
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A Month After Trump Doubles Down on Atrazine, WHO Dubs It 'Probably Carcinogenic to Humans'
"It is outrageously irresponsible that we still allow use of this dangerous poison in the United States," said the Center for Biological Diversity's environmental health science director.
Nov 21, 2025
Just a month after the Trump administration doubled down on the alleged safety of atrazine, a United Nations agency said on Friday that the pesticide—which is banned by dozens of countries but commonly used on corn, sugarcane, and sorghum in the United States—probably causes cancer.
"It is outrageously irresponsible that we still allow use of this dangerous poison in the United States," said Nathan Donley, the Center for Biological Diversity's environmental health science director, in a Friday statement. "This finding is just the latest indictment of the industry-controlled US pesticide oversight process that is failing to protect people and wildlife from chemicals linked to numerous health harms."
Research into and alarm over atrazine have mounted since the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer initially concluded in 1999 that it was not classifiable as carcinogenic to humans. IACR has now announced new findings for atrazine and alachlor, another herbicide widely used on crops, as well as the agricultural fungicide vinclozolin.
Of the three, only atrazine was previously examined by IARC. From October 28 to November 4, a working group of 22 international experts from a dozen countries met in France to evaluate the carcinogenicity of pesticides. They classified vinclozolin as "possibly carcinogenic to humans, and both alachlor and atrazine as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
The latter two decisions were based on a combination of limited evidence for cancer in humans, sufficient evidence for cancer in animals, and strong mechanistic evidence in experimental systems. IARC said that "for atrazine, positive associations have been observed for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that is positive for the chromosomal translocation t(14;18)."
A couple of weeks before that IARC meeting, the Trump administration sparked outrage with a US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) draft opinion claiming that atrazine does not pose an extinction risk to a single protected animal or plant.
That draft opinion came as President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were already under fire for the second Make America Healthy Again report. After the first MAHA publication noted concerns regarding pesticides, even naming atrazine, agribusiness lobbyists confronted the administration, and the following document ultimately featured pesticide industry talking points.
The second report's "only mention of pesticides is an Orwellian promise to ensure 'confidence in EPA's robust pesticide review procedures'—procedures courts have repeatedly found unlawful and that frontline communities know cannot be trusted," the Center for Food Safety said after its September release. "Instead, it says that it will speed up pesticide approval and it will 'partner' with the pesticide industry to 'educate' the public about the 'robust review' of EPA's regulation of pesticides to provide the public with 'confidence.'"
Then came the USFWS draft, which Center for Food Safety senior attorney Sylvia Wu said "makes clear that despite the rhetoric of MAHA, there will be no robust review of the dangers of pesticides by the Trump administration... Instead, a toxic poison like atrazine will continue to contaminate our lands and waters, making our children sick for decades to come."
Wu's group has long been critical of atrazine. During the first Trump administration, it was part of a coalition that sued over the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2020 reapproval of the herbicide. So was the Center for Biological Diversity—which was also angered by the USFWS document, with Donley calling it "an absolute joke."
Donley took aim at the Trump administration again on Friday, after IACR announced its new classification for atrazine.
"Despite its rhetoric to the contrary, there is no better friend of atrazine than the Trump administration," he said. "Hiding behind the rhetoric of MAHA, EPA reapproval of a poison that's likely to keep Americans sick for generations is moving ahead full steam."
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