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ProsperUS Condemns Partisan Short-Term Funding Proposal: “Deeply unpopular and doomed to fail”
Statement builds on ProsperUS letter urging Congressional leadership to quickly pass appropriations bills; New poll finds Americans overwhelmingly oppose Republicans’ proposed cuts
Following reports of a new short-term funding proposal from a group of House Republicans that includes massive cuts to federal investments and shameful poison pill riders, the 87-member ProsperUS coalition released the following statement:
“These last-ditch efforts to slash critical investments in workers and families are deeply unpopular and doomed to fail. Extreme House GOP members should accept reality: The majority of Congress is with the American people in rejecting hostage-taking and painful and irresponsible cuts.
“The House majority should set aside this latest failed proposal and allow the full House to vote on government funding bills at or above the floor set in the bipartisan debt limit deal. Anything less would be a clear step backward for our economy and hurt the most vulnerable communities we represent.”
ProsperUS is a coalition of movement groups, labor organizations, think tanks, experts, and advocates that believes government should invest in people.
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Platner, El-Sayed Embrace Warning That They Are 'Direct Threat to the US-Israel Relationship'
"I’m Abdul El-Sayed and I endorse this message," said the US Senate candidate in Michigan.
May 06, 2026
Two Democratic US Senate candidates in closely watched primary races found themselves in rare agreement with a powerful pro-Israel lobby group on Tuesday evening after it warned the two progressives posed "a direct threat to the US-Israel relationship."
"I’m Abdul El-Sayed and I endorse this message," said the physician and public health advocate running in a three-way race in Michigan, where he recently emphasized at a rally that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—the group that issued the warning to voters—has endangered Jewish Americans by promoting the idea that criticizing the Israeli government is antisemitic.
In Maine, combat veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner, the presumed winner of the June 9 primary following Gov. Janet Mills' decision to suspend her campaign, said he was also "proud to appear" in AIPAC's fundraising email, "and many AIPAC fundraising emails to come."
In its email to supporters, AIPAC said El-Sayed and Platner are the chosen candidates of a "coordinated, well-funded effort to punish anyone who stands with Israel"—one that's being "driven by the far-left fringe of American politics."
The group added that the movement is being "pushed" by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—one of the nation's most prominent Jewish political leaders and consistently ranked as the most popular member of the US Senate—and "amplified by voices like Hasan Piker," a Twitch streamer and commentator who has campaigned with El-Sayed.
Piker's involvement in El-Sayed's campaign sparked a weekslong controversy, with the other two Michigan Democrats in the race, AIPAC-backed Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, accusing El-Sayed of associating with someone who's promoted antisemitism and comparing Piker to white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes. Both El-Sayed and Piker have condemned antisemitism, expressed vehement support for Palestinian rights, and denounced Israel's US-backed attacks on the occupied Palestinian territories.
In its email, AIPAC doubled down on its claims that El-Sayed and Platner are part of an extremist movement that occupies the fringes of American public life, warning that they've embraced "extreme rhetoric, pushed false accusations of genocide, and openly support cutting off aid" to Israel.
But numerous polls in recent months have suggested that Israel's actions since it began attacking Gaza in October 2023 with US military funding—killing more than 72,000 Palestinians, creating the largest child amputee population in the world, and imposing an intentional starvation policy—have resulted in plummeting approval ratings for the country and its right-wing government, without any help from Sanders, Platner, El-Sayed, or Piker.
Months into Israel's war on Gaza, cracks in Israel's popularity among US voters were already beginning to show. In May 2024, a poll by Data for Progress found that 56% of Democratic voters believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and 54% said they supported suspending all US arms sales to Israel until it stopped blocking humanitarian aid.
Public disapproval has only grown more pronounced since then. A Gallup poll showed in February that for the first time, a larger share of Americans sympathized with the Palestinians than with Israel in the Middle East conflict. In March, a survey by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies found that just 32% of US voters viewed Israel positively, down from 47% in 2023.
Just before the US helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas last October—a deal Israel has repeatedly violated, killing hundreds of Palestinians since it was reached—a Washington Post poll found that 61% of Jewish Americans believed Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza and 40% said Israel was guilty of genocide.
At a rally held by Platner and Sanders in September, the political newcomer garnered loud applause when he called for an end to US funding for the Israeli military.
On Tuesday, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, AIPAC replied to El-Sayed's "endorsement" of its attack by insisting that many voters want to vote for a candidate "who backs a partnership that delivers for Michigan—more jobs, a stronger auto industry, thriving agriculture, and better healthcare."
The Medicare for All advocate retorted that he plans to be "a senator who keeps Michigan tax dollars in Michigan to fund schools, healthcare, and roads... in Michigan."
Recent polls have shown a close race in the state. The most recent survey by the Glengariff Group found Stevens ahead of El-Sayed by just two points, with McMorrow behind six points. A poll by Emerson College, also taken in mid-April, found El-Sayed and McMorrow tied with 24% of the vote, despite the attacks on El-Sayed over his campaigning with Piker.
The Michigan primary is scheduled for August 4.
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Billionaire Compares 'Tax the Rich' Calls to Hate Speech as Study Finds Barely Half of Americans Earn Living Wage
Vornado CEO Steven Roth was particularly upset by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's proposed tax on second homes in the city that are valued at $5 million or more.
May 06, 2026
A real estate investment tycoon on Tuesday said that calls to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans were akin to "racial slurs."
As reported by The New York Times, Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steven Roth took time during his company's latest earnings call to decry calls from politicians such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to fund public programs by taxing the rich.
“I must say that I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’... when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs," said Roth.
Roth took aim at Mamdani for celebrating a proposed pied-à-terre tax on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners have other primary homes, and was particularly upset that the mayor filmed a video announcing the tax outside a $238 million penthouse owned by Ken Griffin, the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel. He called the announcement “dangerous" and an “ugly, unnecessary video stunt.”
The Vornado CEO went on to say that America's wealthiest individuals deserve the nation's gratitude, not their scorn.
"The rich, whom the politicians are targeting... are the epitome of the American dream,” he said. “They are at the top of the great American economic pyramid for a reason. They should be praised and thanked."
Roth's remarks drew criticism from Douglas Farrar, former director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden.
"A billionaire real estate CEO compared being asked to pay taxes to a racial slur, then said the top 1% should be 'praised and thanked,'" Farrar wrote in a social media post. "There was a time when the wealthy had the good sense to be quiet about it. Now they demand gratitude on earnings calls."
Activist and healthcare advocate Melanie D'Arrigo noted that Roth build developments in the city after intentionally allowing properties to sit in a state of blight for years, which "gutted Black and brown neighborhoods in exchange for billions in tax breaks."
Roth's lamentations about the treatment of the wealthy in the US came as human resources and software services company Dayforce teamed with the Living Wage Institute to release a new study showing that the percentage of Americans earning a living wage has significantly declined over the last five years, from 55.8% in 2021 to 50.7% in 2025.
The report notes that "job growth has recently slowed, and millions of workers haven’t seen a meaningful improvement in their financial situation," even as "the costs of housing, food, childcare, and other essentials are elevated, energy prices have spiked, and affordability continues to be a major issue for a significant share of the workforce."
The data in the report all came from 2025, before President Donald Trump launched his illegal war with Iran that has sent gas prices soaring above $4.50 per gallon and is threatening to unleash a global food crisis.
US consumer sentiment as measured by the University of Michigan hit a record low last month, and the university found that the effects of the Iran war were the primary drivers of Americans' economic pessimism.
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Advocates Demand Reversal of Trump FDA's 'Appalling' Censorship of Vaccine Studies
"Suppressing scientific research exposes the absurdity of Kennedy’s frequently repeated claim that he would bring ‘gold standard’ science and ‘radical transparency’ to the nation’s public health agencies."
May 06, 2026
Public health campaigners are calling on the Trump administration to end its censorship of vaccine research immediately after a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed on Tuesday that the agency recently blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of commonly used inoculations against Covid-19 and shingles.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the two Covid-19 vaccine studies in question were "withdrawn because the authors"—which included Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists—"drew broad conclusions that were not supported by the underlying data." The abstract of one of the studies, which had been accepted for publication in the medical journal Vaccine, stated that "no new safety concerns were found following 2023–2024 Covid-19 vaccination among US health plan enrollees aged 6 months–64 years."
The blocked shingles studies underscored the safety and effectiveness of Shingrix, according to reporting by The New York Times and Washington Post.
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, the Health Research Group director at Public Citizen, noted in a Tuesday statement that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recently blocked a Covid-19 vaccine study from being published in the agency's scientific journal.
“The censorship of FDA and CDC scientific studies because their findings undermine Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine agenda is outrageous and appalling," said Steinbrook. "Suppressing scientific research exposes the absurdity of Kennedy’s frequently repeated claim that he would bring ‘gold standard’ science and ‘radical transparency’ to the nation’s public health agencies."
“FDA Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary and Dr. Erica Schwartz, the nominee for CDC Director, must publicly commit to reversing these decisions and allowing the vaccine studies to be promptly published," Steinbrook added. "Bona fide public health agencies do not censor bona fide vaccine research.”
Kayla Hancock, director of the advocacy group Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project, said the censorship of vaccine studies further demonstrates that "this administration does not care how many Americans suffer from preventable diseases, so long as the anti-science elements of their base keep supporting them."
"Contrary to claims of its demise, the Trump-RFK Jr. HHS anti-vax agenda is here to stay and they will keep seizing any opportunity to put politics over public health," said Hancock.
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