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Elon Musk Becomes Senate Leadership Fund’s Main Donor In Quarter Three
New FEC filings show the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has become the dominant funder of the Senate Leadership Fund, the leading Republican Senate super PAC. Musk was responsible for 58% of the fund’s third-quarter fundraising, and his latest contributions bring his total giving to the Republican group to $168 million. His contributions to a single party super PAC appear poised to exceed the previous record by approximately $100 million.
In response, Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said:
“Elon Musk is pouring unprecedented sums of money into Republican super PACs, giving him extraordinary financial leverage over the party’s political future, in an attempt to sway the midterm results with his net worth. The current state of our campaign finance system allows one billionaire to supply the overwhelming share of a major party’s political funding. This is undemocratic and flat-out wrong. America should be a nation where the voices of regular people are heard just as loudly as the ultrawealthy. And where the billionaire class is prevented from consolidating political power.”
Musk also has his own pet super PAC, which he has given $126 million according to recent analysis by Public Citizen. In 2026, Musk has contributed a total of $366 million to super PACs and other political groups in an effort to help Republicans win in November.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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'Outrageous': Trump Loaded Up on Big Pharma Stocks While Jacking Up Drug Costs
"Trump and congressional Republicans intentionally force seniors to pay more for cancer treatment so that Big Pharma can rake in more money that Trump can personally profit from."
Oct 16, 2026
An analysis released Friday by Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee details how US President Donald Trump loaded up on shares of major pharmaceutical companies last year as his administration and Republican allies enacted policies that benefited the industry—at the expense seniors and other patients.
The JEC analysis estimates that Trump increased his stock holdings in the pharmaceutical sector from $1.7 million in 2024 to as much as $56.2 million last year. The committee notes that Trump, who has repeatedly promised to cut drug prices while implementing policies that raised them, "held as much as $39.1 million in stock in the same Big Pharma companies that directly benefited" from a budget package that the president signed into law last summer.
“Trump and congressional Republicans intentionally force seniors to pay more for cancer treatment so that Big Pharma can rake in more money that Trump can personally profit from," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC's ranking member. "It’s outrageous and yet typical from this president, who makes the American people foot the bill again and again for his own gains."
Tucked in the Trump-GOP budget law was a provision exempting some widely used, high-priced prescription drugs from Medicare price negotiations. Merck's cancer medication Keytruda was one of the drugs temporarily shielded by the provision; Merck appears more than 60 times in the president's 2025 financial disclosure.
The JEC analysis notes that "in 2025, Merck reported $18.8 billion in US revenues for Keytruda, which helped the company net $22.5 billion in profits that year, a 16% increase compared to 2024."
The president also made big purchases of stock in Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, Pfizer, and Amgen last year. The JEC found that each of those companies "had at least one drug that benefited from the carveouts" in the Trump-GOP budget law.
Additionally, the Trump administration has entered friendly agreements with pharmaceutical companies in which the president is invested, including Pfizer and Eli Lilly.
“Trump’s drug pricing deals are a mirage, designed to convince Americans that he’s taken significant action on drug pricing while creating minimal if any downside for Big Pharma,” Peter Maybarduk, access to medicines director for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said last month after his organization obtained heavily redacted texts of the agreements.
"The texts show Trump handing out favors to Big Pharma, undercutting his own models to lower prices, and throwing the support of the US government behind corporate decisions to deny medicines entirely to other countries," said Maybarduk.
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‘Billionaires Aren’t Compatible With Democracy’: Elon Musk Tries to Boost Ken Paxton With $158 Million Donation
"How does democracy function when one person can donate $150 million for one Senate race?" said one observer.
Oct 16, 2026
The world's richest man is spending an unprecedented sum of money to help Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton win a crucial US Senate race, according to Federal Election Commission filings disclosed Thursday.
As reported by the Texas Tribune, the filings show SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in September gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), the largest super PAC dedicated to defending Republicans' majority in the US Senate.
While the donation to SLF theoretically could have been directed toward any GOP Senate candidate, filings show the super PAC immediately plugged the Musk money into an entity called Texas PAC, which took to the air with advertisements praising Paxton and attacking Democratic rival James Talarico.
"Musk’s donations armed Senate Republicans to take over the airwaves in Texas," the Texas Tribune noted. "Using Texas PAC as the vessel to book airtime, SLF has thus far spent over $159 million on TV, radio, and digital advertising, double the outlay from Talarico’s campaign, according to media tracking firm AdImpact."
Polls have consistently shown Paxton trailing Talarico, whose campaign has raised an estimated $134.3 million from 1.3 million individual donors, 97% of whom donated $100 or less to the Texas Democrat.
This means that, in just one month, Musk singlehandedly gave Paxton more money than Talarico's campaign has raised since its inception in September 2025.
The sheer scale of Musk's contributions stunned Punchbowl News co-founder John Bresnahan.
"How does democracy function when one person can donate $150 million for one Senate race?" Bresnahan asked in a Thursday social media post. "In a state where one of his companies has major facilities?"
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, indirectly answered Bresnahan's question by opining that Musk's attempt to buy an election shows "billionaires aren’t compatible with democracy."
Author EW Niedermeyer, a longtime critic of Musk, speculated that the billionaire moved his companies' operations from California to Texas so that he could "buy people like Ken Paxton wholesale."
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse argued that Talarico's campaign could turn Musk's massive intervention in the Senate race into an advantage.
"I'm begging James Talarico to run against Musk," Kruse wrote. "He's an unpopular and creepy white nationalist asshole billionaire whose approval rating in most polls is 20 points underwater. You can mock Paxton for needing to be bailed out and mock the puppet master pulling his strings."
Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, pointed to the stark contrast in how the Talarico and Paxton campaigns are being funded.
"It’s corrupt Ken Paxton and his sugar daddy oligarch Elon Musk versus Talarico and tens of thousands of people giving $10 to $100," Filipkowski wrote. "Choose your brand of democracy."
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Secret and 'Illegal' Trump Plan to Spin Off Federal Student Aid Office Sparks Outrage
"This intentional sabotage only threatens to create true financial chaos in people’s lives," said Sen. Patty Murray.
Oct 16, 2026
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to remove the Federal Student Aid office from the Department of Education and establish a new independent agency tasked with managing roughly $1.6 trillion in debt owed by more than 40 million borrowers.
The plan, first reported by The Washington Sun on Thursday, comes as President Donald Trump works to illegally dismantle the Education Department without congressional authorization and assails student aid programs. Legally spinning off the Federal Student Aid office—the largest segment of the Education Department—would require an act of Congress, something that administration officials have "acknowledged internally," according to the Sun.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, expressed outrage over the administration's reported plan, noting that the Trump administration has already gutted the student aid office's staff.
"Tens of millions of Americans are depending on government to actually work here," Murray said in a statement. "This intentional sabotage only threatens to create true financial chaos in people’s lives."
“Every family filling out the FAFSA, every student counting on a Pell Grant, and every borrower trying to make a student loan payment will pay for Trump’s idiotic obsession with abolishing the Department of Education," Murray added. "Americans do not support abolishing the Department of Education—they just want a financial aid system that works. I will keep fighting to block this illegal move every way I can, and it is past time for Republicans to join Democrats and put an end to this nonsense.”
The Sun's reporting marks the latest evidence that the Trump administration is working to follow through on the president's campaign promise to abolish the Department of Education, which is currently led by billionaire Linda McMahon. Over the summer, as Common Dreams reported, the Trump administration placed the department's work defending civil rights and students with disabilities under the authority of other federal agencies.
According to the Sun, Education Department officials are privately "concerned that the Trump administration is rushing" the Federal Student Aid spinoff "without considering the consequences to families and colleges around the country."
"The department’s senior leaders have told staff that student financial aid can be managed more effectively as an independent agency, but current and former officials said the department is taking a chaotic approach that is setting it up for failure," the Sun reported. "Details of the latest potential offloading remain scant, said one official involved in the planning."
The unnamed official told the outlet that the office "does not know how to be independent" because it depends on the Education Department for many of its functions.
Mike Pierce, executive director of the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Thursday that "the secret plan to eject FSA from the Education Department shows, yet again, that McMahon and Trump care more about pandering to their anti-government base than keeping their promise to tens of millions of Americans who cannot keep up with their bills."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that "millions of teachers, nurses, and other public service workers are being buried by rising costs, including out-of-control student loan payments that are a direct result of President Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and Secretary McMahon’s callous mismanagement of the student debt portfolio."
“We had to sue McMahon once to force her to follow the law and respect borrowers’ rights to lower student loan payments, and this reorganization won't solve the issue—it will only make things worse," said Weingarten. "As voters head to the polls, they should remember that Trump and McMahon pretending to shrink the Department of Education—while in practice throttling its core functions in reams of red tape—is not doing anything to shrink working families’ bills.”
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'Let Them Eat Cake': How Trump Family Pocketed Nearly $3 Billion While Millions of Americans Lost Food Aid
"Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families," said the co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition. "Instead, he turned the presidency into his family's most profitable business."
Oct 15, 2026
A report released Thursday details how the family of President Donald Trump "pocketed more than $2.9 billion"—including "in cash and gifts from crypto ventures, legal settlements, a luxury jet from a foreign government, and corporate deals"—while Republican cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program left millions of Americans without critical food aid.
The report, "Let Them Eat Cake: Cost of Corruption," was published by the Not Above the Law Coalition—a group of more than 150 advocacy organizations mobilized against the Trump administration's corruption—and cites data from the Center for American Progress revealing over $2.9 billion in cash and gifts received by the Trump family since the 2024 election.
The bulk of that amount—more than $2.4 billion—comes from the cryptocurrency industry. Trump has boasted about how his administration won't investigate alleged crypto-related crimes.
Not only has Trump embraced crypto deregulation, he also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023. Binance has provided critical support for World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture enriching the Trump family.
"The Trump family cashed in on the presidency while American families paid the price," Not Above the Law said in a statement. "Over the same period, Trump signed a budget law that cut almost $187 billion from SNAP, leaving 5.2 million fewer people with help buying groceries."
That law, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ushered in the biggest cuts to both SNAP and Medicaid in those programs' histories.
According to the report, "The Trump family's take alone could cover a full year of groceries for about 1.3 million people on SNAP."
"At the same time, Trump's pardons let wealthy allies and fraudsters walk away from nearly $1.7 billion owed to victims and taxpayers," the publication adds.
Not Above the Law noted that "foreign money flowed straight to the [Trump] family" via an investment vehicle controlled by the United Arab Emirates' national security adviser, who "put $500 million into World Liberty Financial, and the administration soon cleared advanced [artificial intelligence] chip exports to the UAE."
The report highlights that "Trump also accepted a roughly $400 million luxury jet from Qatar."
Not Above the Law said that, in addition to groceries for 1.3 million people for a year, the $2.9 billion could buy "more than 600 million free school lunches, or three months of groceries for the 5.2 million people who lost SNAP benefits."
In addition to the nearly $3 billion the report says Trump's family pocketed, the coalition noted "companies backed by Trump's sons have collected $3.2 billion in federal funds, including a fast-tracked $620 million Pentagon loan" to a business in which Donald Trump Jr. invested.
"Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families. Instead, he turned the presidency into his family's most profitable business," said Lisa Gilbert, Not Above the Law co-chair and co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "While the Trumps collected nearly $3 billion from crypto schemes, foreign governments, and corporations seeking favors, millions of Americans lost help putting food on the table. Congress must stop the self-dealing and hold this administration accountable."
The new analysis follows a report published earlier this year by a group of Democratic US senators accusing the president and his family of turning “the power of the presidency into eye-popping profits,” with Trump increasing his personal net worth by more than $2 billion during his second term alone, according to official disclosures.
Also on Thursday, The Washington Post reported on companies and billionaire CEOs who donated a combined $333 million to Trump’s White House ballroom project, as well as previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon, government contracts, and at least one closed federal investigation.
"This is what corruption is all about," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the Post report. "We don’t want a government of, by, and for the billionaire class. FIGHT BACK."
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'A Devastating Day for Oregon': Suspect Dead, Kids Among Victims in Elementary School Shooting
"No words can adequately express the grief our community is experiencing," said the Bend-La Pine Schools superintendent.
Oct 15, 2026
A 16-year-old boy killed three children—ages 5, 8, and 11—and a teacher in a Thursday shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon.
Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz confirmed their deaths during an evening press conference, where he was joined by department communications manager Sheila Miller, Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Steven Cook, Mayor Melanie Kebler, and Gov. Tina Kotek.
Krantz said the shooter was killed by a community member who saw the teenager enter the school with a long gun. Neither of them has been named publicly, nor have any of the victims—including a 7-year-old child and another teacher who were transported to the medical facility St. Charles Bend.
During an earlier press conference, Miller told journalists that just minutes after receiving 911 calls that an unknown person had shot into a car and entered the school, police officers were on the scene at 1:02 pm Pacific time—and they reported that the suspect had been shot and killed inside the school.
Miller said that there will be a large law enforcement presence in the area, and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel confirmed that includes FBI agents. A reunification location for families was set up at Journey Church.
As The Oregonian reported:
Kayla Jensen, the president of the school’s Parent Teacher Organization, said she and other parents were gathered at the church, awaiting word about their children.“ We are unsure. We have not gotten any news. We are all here,” Jensen said. She said she could not offer any further comment.
"We are stunned and heartbroken by this senseless tragedy," Cook, the superintendent, said in a statement. "We extend our deepest sympathy to the families and to everyone affected by this violence."
"No words can adequately express the grief our community is experiencing," Cook added. "Our immediate priorities are caring for our students and staff and assisting law enforcement and emergency responders."
US Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said that "as details continue to come out, my heart is with the Bend community and all of the students and families affected. No one should have to fear violence at school."
Congresswoman Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) wrote on social media that "this is a devastating day for Oregon. My heart is with the Bend community, and every family who is being impacted by this tragic, senseless shooting. Schools should be places of learning, friendship, and joy. It is incumbent on me, and every lawmaker, to do everything we can to ensure our kids are safe."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also stressed the need for policy action, saying: "My heart is with the victims of today’s shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School and their loved ones now facing the consequences of another school shooting in America. Once again, we must ask how many schools must be shot up before Republicans agree to act to curb gun violence."
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of the advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said that "today, families in Bend are living through every parent's worst nightmare... No parent should have to wonder whether the school drop-off will be the last time they see their child. This is not normal, and we cannot allow it to become normal."
"In an average year, 655 people die and 719 are wounded by guns in Oregon," she noted. "Guns are also the leading cause of death among children and teens in the state, with an average of 34 children and teens dying by guns every year."
Giffords—a gun violence prevention group led by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who survived an assassination attempt—said that "our hearts are with the terrified children and the families anxiously waiting to hear that their loved ones are safe. We cannot keep accepting this as a fact of life."
The former congresswoman similarly said that "my heart is completely broken for the children, families, teachers, and entire Silver Rail Elementary community in Bend, Oregon today. Elementary school should be about jungle gyms, math class, and making new friends—not learning where to hide from a shooter. We cannot keep asking our children to be brave enough to survive school shootings. Our leaders must be brave enough to stop them."
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Trump DOJ Sues After California Refuses to Disqualify Voters Based on Faulty Citizenship Database
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said DOJ was “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians' right to vote, based on unverifiable information."
Oct 15, 2026
In what one former election official called a significant "escalation" of President Donald Trump's interference in the midterm elections, his Department of Justice sued California on Thursday for not disqualifying over 20,000 mail ballots from voters it claims could be noncitizens.
The suit comes two days after acting Deputy US Attorney General Trent McCotter sent a letter demanding that, within 48 hours, state election officials set aside ballots from a list of voters it determined were ineligible to vote using federal databases administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—systems that have previously been shown to regularly spit out errors.
When other states, like Nevada, Texas, and Missouri, have used the DHS system to vet their voter rolls for noncitizens, investigations have found that it incorrectly flagged hundreds of US citizens as ineligible to vote.
California officials have said the list of names was provided to them on a thumb drive, which came with a password written on a sticky note. They did not consider this to be a secure device and refused to open it. The letter was sent more than a week after California began sending mail ballots to 23 million registered voters.
The state refused to set the ballots aside, saying that the administration had not provided credible evidence that the voters were not citizens and that eligible voters could be disenfranchised. In its complaint Thursday, the DOJ called on the court to stop the ballots from being tallied until the citizenship status of each voter could be independently verified. It also requested that the state not send a ballot to anyone who has not yet received one.
The DOJ's batch of roughly 20,000 supposedly ineligible voters is a significant reduction from the 190,000 that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin alleged were registered in the state back in July. When California asked for the underlying data and methodology for that figure, DHS declined to provide it.
"What happened to those 170,000?" said California Attorney General Rob Bonta at a press conference on Thursday. "They just got those wrong."
This highlights the concerns states have expressed about using the DHS system to purge their voter rolls. In refusing the DOJ's request, state officials have noted that in Nevada, the system flagged 185 voters as possible noncitizens only for state officials to determine that every single one of them was a US citizen.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber responded to the DOJ's lawsuit with a sharply worded letter, accusing it of “demanding unprecedented measures that threaten thousands of Californians' right to vote, based on unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.”
Weber described it as an effort to block “thousands of Californians’ right to vote” weeks before an election and said, “The extraordinary measures you demand are contrary to both federal and state law.” Federal law prohibits states from systematically purging voter rolls within 90 days of an election.
“We are not impressed with the federal government’s letter. We are not impressed with its lawsuit," Bonta said. “This is what the federal government does. They lie, they advance misinformation, disinformation, they advance conspiracy theories. They try to sow distrust with those lies."
“Their timing is rife with and smacks of and reeks of desperation and bad faith, to do this during an election,” he said.
Stephen Richer, the former Republican Maricopa County recorder in Arizona, described the government's lawsuit as "a real escalation by the federal government."
"I've mostly said 'Calm, calm. It's going to be OK' with respect to federal involvement in election administration," he wrote on social media. "This lawsuit—in October, in the middle of early voting—that asks election officials to disqualify certain voters based on suspect databases, not conclusive evidence, which definitely could have been alleged before early voting began... This does represent an escalation."
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Voting Rights Project filed an emergency brief on Thursday seeking to stop the DOJ from using its list to withhold ballots.
"With voting already underway, eligible citizens should not have their ballots withheld based on a federal list they have never seen and have had no opportunity to challenge," said its director, Chad Dunn. "We are asking the court to intervene before voters suffer harm that cannot be corrected after Election Day."
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the Trump DOJ "is now actively trying to interfere in the 2026 elections and strong-arm California into purging names from our voter rolls and blocking mail ballots based purely on vague allegations less than three weeks before Election Day."
He added, "This lawsuit has no legal basis or evidence behind it and is nothing more than a blatant abuse of power designed to sow distrust in our elections and threaten Americans’ right to vote."
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Israeli Strike Burns Gaza Mother Alive in Front of Toddler, 'Without Generating Any Headlines'
"If she was Israeli, this image would be front-page news," said one observer.
Oct 15, 2026
A Palestinian toddler watched, screaming in horror, as her mother was burned alive in an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home early Wednesday that left the wounded girl orphaned—and received almost no coverage in US corporate media.
Reem Asaad Awad was killed when an Israeli helicopter attacked her family's apartment in the Rimal neighborhood at approximately 3:48 am local time Wednesday, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported.
Trapped inside the burning apartment was Awad's daughter, Maryam Ahmed Ghanem, whose age has been reported as between 2 and 4 years old. Prominent Palestinian author Mosab Abu Toha said family friends confirmed the child was born in February 2024.
Palestinian journalist Ali al-Jaafrawi witnessed and recorded the immediate aftermath of the strike.
"There are children are screaming alive inside," al-Jaafrawi is heard saying as he approached the building.
"I went up to the apartment. There were flames everywhere," al-Jaafrawi told Al Jazeera. "I went in despite the fire and smoke and heard a little girl screaming inside. I went in, found her, and rescued her immediately. I carried her and handed her to people so they could take her to hospital."
"I went back to rescue others and to document what happened, but I suffocated and lost consciousness because of the thick smoke," he added. "I saw a woman on fire inside the apartment."
Photos and video recordings show Ghanem being treated for injuries, including burns, at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which is struggling to operate after much of the facility was destroyed or damaged by Israeli forces, who besieged and raided the complex multiple times since October 2023.
Abu Toha, who saw Ghanem in the hospital, said the child "kept repeating the same heartbreaking words: 'I want my mum. My body hurts. There was a lot of fire.'"
Ghanem—whose father, Ahmad Ghanem, was reportedly killed by Israeli forces early in their genocidal assault—has joined the ranks of the more than 56,000 Gaza children who have lost at least one of their parents in the war, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.
"Reem and Ahmad had waited four years to conceive Maryam," Abu Toha wrote. "Four years of waiting and hoping to bring a child into this world. Ahmad never lived to see his daughter’s face. Reem lived long enough to watch her little girl grow for two-and-a-half years before she was burned alive in front of her. Now Maryam is an orphan, fighting to survive her horrific burns."
Ghanem's grandfather told Middle East Eye that the child and her mother "did nothing wrong."
"They were sleeping quietly at night," he said. "There was no one in the apartment except the two of them."
Israel said it is investigating the strike, which it claimed—without providing evidence—targeted a member of Hamas.
Dismissing a nominal yearlong ceasefire during which at least 1,500 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 others wounded by Israeli attacks, the grandfather said that "honestly, there is no security."
"I fear for my family," he added. "All people are afraid, not just me. There is still assassination, war, hunger, poverty, and destruction... Nothing has changed."
The horrific footage of the strike's fiery aftermath evoked imagery from earlier in Israel's onslaught, including video of a 7-year-old girl trying to escape an inferno caused by bombing that killed dozens of Palestinians—among them her mother and siblings—and a teenager photographed burning alive after Israeli forces bombed a tent encampment.
Some observers noted the almost complete absence of US media reporting on the story, with the apparent exception of CBS News, which published video of the burning apartment in a Facebook Reel.
"This little girl watched her mother be burned alive in Gaza. If she was Israeli, this image would be front-page news. But Israel can kill Palestinians in the most horrific ways without generating any headlines," US historian, author, and political analyst Assal Rad said on social media.
"Video has been circulating all day; you can hear the little girl cry and see her engulfed in smoke," Rad said in a separate post. "I can’t find headlines in Western media *because* the story is horrific. They want you to forget."
The Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement calling on members of Congress "to condemn Israel for burning a Palestinian mother alive while her daughter watched in Gaza."
“The horrific video of a little girl surrounded by fire as her mother burns to death in their home exemplifies the reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza," CAIR said. "We cannot comprehend how any political leader with a conscience could continue to fund the sheer cruelty of the Israeli government and the war criminals who carry out its orders."
"Members of Congress must condemn this atrocity and demand an immediate end to all US support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza," the group added.
The US has provided Israel with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid, as well as diplomatic cover, including repeated vetoes of a series of United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions, throughout the three-year annihilation of Gaza, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, weighed in on the attack on Bluesky.
"I have reached the limits of my ability to put words to pure evil," he wrote. "Once again, Israel burned another family in Gaza alive. But the image of the... daughter in the family watching the rest of her family die in the flames will haunt me for the rest of my life."
"But," Parsi added, "will it haunt Israel?"
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Ilhan Omar’s Office Slams Trump Deportation Plot as ‘Authoritarian Move to Silence an Opponent’
"To Trump, no American value or principle is too important to be shredded for his own personal gain."
Oct 15, 2026
The office of Rep. Ilhan Omar slammed the Trump administration on Thursday over its reported plot to have the Minnesota Democrat stripped of her US citizenship.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the raid on Omar's home carried out earlier this week by Department of Homeland Security agents was part of and effort to build "a case to strip her of her US citizenship and ultimately deport her."
"The multipronged effort is focused at least in part on how Omar obtained her citizenship after she arrived in the US from Somalia decades ago," the Journal explained. "Investigators are focused both on the congresswoman and actions of her deceased father."
Omar spokesperson Jackie Rogers responded to the report by accusing President Donald Trump of engaging in "desperate attempt to justify his extraordinary abuse of power."
"This is politically motivated and an escalation of Trump’s personal vendetta against her lasting over a decade," Rogers told HuffPost. "He has lied about her family, about her immigration history, and about her love of this country."
Rogers also accused Trump of acting like a dictator by singling out a member of the opposition party for punishment.
"This isn’t a legitimate law enforcement action," said Rogers, "it is an authoritarian move to silence an opponent right before an election where he and his party will be rejected by Americans in historic proportions... To Trump, no American value or principle is too important to be shredded for his own personal gain."
Author John Ganz on Thursday published an analysis of the reported Omar deportation plot, which he said is "undoubtedly driven by racial and religious animus" and also "a serious assault on the constitutional order being carried out through the executive branch’s legal and bureaucratic machinery."
Ganz argued that a serious attempt to strip Omar of her citizenship and remove her from the country would be a major escalation from the Trump administration toward establishing an outright totalitarian state.
"Authoritarian governments suppress political opposition and deprive their subjects of particular rights," Ganz explained. "Totalitarian movements aspire to something much more radical: the destruction of the independent political and juridical personhood. They attack not merely the liberties of particular citizens they seek to repress, but the concept of citizenship itself—and then, ultimately, the concept of shared humanity."
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75% of Likely US Voters Oppose Giving Big Oil Immunity From Climate Lawsuits
Even 67% of Republican voters think states should be allowed to sue oil companies for climate damage. But Trump and GOP lawmakers are pushing to kill these suits for good.
Oct 15, 2026
President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have sought to stop state-level lawsuits aimed at holding oil and gas companies responsible for climate-related damage. But most voters don't think they should be immune from accountability.
In a poll released last week by Data for Progress, 75% of likely voters said they would oppose legislation that would give fossil fuel companies "legal immunity from having to pay for the damages they have caused by worsening climate change."
Just 20% said they would either "somewhat" or "strongly" support such legislation. Meanwhile, more than half (53%) said they would "strongly" oppose it.
Opposition was strong across political affiliations: 83% of Democrats and 76% of independents said they opposed giving oil companies immunity from lawsuits, but so did 67% of Republicans.
(Graphic by Data for Progress)
In recent years, states and municipalities have sued fossil fuel companies over their well-documented history of misleading the public about their products' role in warming the planet. These lawsuits have sought compensation for damages from worsening floods, wildfires, droughts, and other climate-related disasters.
Eleven US states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont—as well as the District of Columbia, have active lawsuits, as do at least two tribal governments and dozens of municipalities around the country, according to a tracker by the Center for Climate Integrity.
The new poll suggests voters are even more opposed to shielding oil companies from these lawsuits than they were five months ago. Another Data for Progress poll in May showed just 65% opposed legislation to shield oil companies, compared with 75% now.
"Big Oil is desperate to secure legal immunity and escape accountability for its role in the climate crisis—and the billions of dollars of damages that have followed," said Iyla Shornstein, the political director at the Center for Climate Integrity. "These poll results show that Americans across the political spectrum are opposed to putting Big Oil above the law.”
Protesters hold a banner outside the US Supreme Court as it considers the Suncor v. Boulder case in Washington, DC, on October 5, 2026. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The oil industry's lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, has described stopping state climate lawsuits as a top priority for 2026. Their Republican allies have pushed at all levels of government to advance that goal.
In April, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and several GOP cosponsors joined Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) to introduce legislation that would shield fossil fuel companies from any climate-related lawsuits, dismiss pending cases, and overturn state "superfund" laws requiring the industry to pay for climate damages.
That bill failed to pass out of the House Judiciary Committee last month but could be brought forth again during the "lame-duck" session after the midterm elections in November.
ProPublica has identified at least 15 bills across 11 states that have either been enacted or proposed to shield companies, either by granting them broad immunity from liability for greenhouse gas emissions or restricting the ability of communities to sue over climate-related damages. Groups linked to Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the right-wing Federalist Society, have coordinated many of these efforts.
Republican attorneys general in 16 states have proposed creating a "liability shield" for fossil fuel companies modeled on the one that protects gun manufacturers from liability for the misuse of their products. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a leading conservative policy shop, approved a model bill in August aiming to establish this shield in state legislatures nationwide.
The oil industry has also pushed for the right-wing Supreme Court to step in to block these lawsuits. Earlier this month, during oral arguments, oil giants ExxonMobil and Suncor urged the court to block a lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colorado, that accused oil companies of deceiving the public about climate change and sought to hold them financially responsible.
If the court blocks the Boulder suit before it gets to trial, it could set a precedent that derails dozens of similar lawsuits around the country.
Meanwhile, Trump, who pledged to help Big Oil executives in exchange for their donations to his presidential campaign, signed an executive order last year directing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to identify and challenge state lawsuits that seek to impose financial penalties on fossil fuel companies.
His DOJ has weighed in on the Suncor v. Boulder case on the side of the oil industry and has sued at least five states that have sought to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
The question about climate lawsuits was part of a broader set of questions Data for Progress asked voters about rising insurance costs and corporate accountability in partnership with the Insurance Fairness Project. Other results showed that many Americans want legal recourse against insurers and other companies that impose costs on consumers.
"As rising home insurance costs directly threaten housing affordability for the majority of Americans, voters are tired of their prices rising while insurance companies, energy providers, and the oil and gas industry go unchecked," said Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist for the Insurance Fairness Project. "There is a strong appetite for holding corporations accountable, both for their role in driving up costs and their role in contributing to the climate crisis."
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'Blatant Corruption': Donors Pouring $330 Million Into Trump Ballroom—and Reaping Benefits—Exposed
"Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system," said one watchdog leader. "Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in."
Oct 15, 2026
A newly revealed list of companies and billionaire CEOs who donated millions of dollars to President Donald Trump's ballroom construction project shows that Big Tech, according to one government watchdog, "bankrolled it fully expecting a return on their investment."
The list, first reported by The Washington Post, doesn't just show the $25 million donations from tech giant Apple, the pro-Israel Adelson Family Foundation, and microchip firm Nvidia—the latter of which requested anonymity.
It also reveals previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon as well as government contracts and at least one closed federal investigation.
The 57 donors whose names were published by the Post had committed to contributing at least $100,000 to the ballroom construction project, which is proceeding for now following a Supreme Court ruling in August.
The list shows a total of $333 million contributed from private donors, but does not include Trump's name, though the president has said the demolition of the White House's East Wing and the construction of the ballroom would be "paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine."
It also falls short of the $600 million projected price tag; according to the Post, taxpayer funds have been used to partially fund the project, along with donations from companies with business before the government.
Nvidia's $25 million donation came three months after the company reached a deal with the Trump administration to sell advanced microchips to China.
A $25 million donation from Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of the telecommunications company Dish Network, came shortly after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dropped an investigation into the failure of EchoStar, which owns Dish Network, to upgrade its cellphone network.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had threatened last May to revoke government licenses from EchoStar, and a month later, Ergen met with Carr and Trump in a closed-door meeting where his political donations were discussed, Bloomberg reported.
Ergen then negotiated a deal to sell some of the licenses to AT&T. Carr dropped the investigation the following month, and months later, with the sale pending, the executive donated $12.5 million to Trump's ballroom construction. A second $12.5 million contribution came soon after, according to the list published by the Post.
“Big Tech giants didn’t just chip in for Trump’s ballroom," said Sacha Haworth of the Tech Oversight Project, a watchdog group. "The same companies funding Trump’s vanity project lined up for tax breaks, chip deals, federal contracts, and a blind eye to lawbreaking. Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system. Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in."
The Post also detailed a $2.5 million contribution from Isabela Herrera, the daughter of international banker Julio Herrera Velutini, whom the US Department of Justice indicted on bribery charges in 2022.
Herrera Velutini's charges were reduced to a misdemeanor months after his daughter donated millions of dollars to Trump's MAGA Inc. political action committee, and a month later, she committed to a $2.5 million donation for the ballroom. Soon after, Herrera Velutini was pardoned.
The transactions detailed by the Post amount to "blatant corruption," said progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler.
Companies with massive stakes in decisions before President Trump and his administration gave many millions to the White House ballroom project, which the President has made clear is important to him. So are you confident he'll make those decisions based only on what's good for the American people?
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— Noah Bookbinder (@noahbookbinder.bsky.social) October 15, 2026 at 10:43 AM
Cryptocurrency investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss donated more than $5 million in bitcoin—a portion of the more than $18 million the industry contributed to the ballroom. Trump has pushed for loose regulations for the industry.
Other top donors include Google, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, and Palantir.
Government watchdog Public Citizen said a new tax filing from the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit charity that manages the donations for the ballroom, shows that $169.7 million came from just 10 big donors.
“One year after the people’s house was abruptly bulldozed for a gold-plated ballroom that most Americans will never be allowed inside, we are uncovering who paid the most to fund it," said Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen. "The question these ballroom megadonors all now need to answer is—why?”
Haworth said that "when Democrats take back gavels in January, they need to investigate Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, and others for potentially breaking the law to buy get-out-of-jail-free passes and sweetheart deals in exchange for their donation."
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