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ProsperUS Warns Against Deeply Damaging House Rules Changes
WASHINGTON
Claire Guzdar, spokesperson for the ProsperUS coalition, reacted to yesterday’s passage of the new House Republican rules package with the following statement:
“House Republicans have jammed through a rules package that makes it very clear what their priorities this Congress will be: more tax breaks for the rich; massive cuts to health care, education, and other family priorities; and politically-motivated manufactured crises.
“The House Republican rules package puts this Congress on a path we’ve traveled before, which will lead to slower economic growth, fewer good jobs, and hurt for millions of families by slashing the investments they need at a time when we should be cementing and building on our economic recovery. We demand better from Congressional leadership – it’s time to make the economically-sound investments that families need to thrive.”
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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'Total Panic' Across Beirut as Israel Issues 'Unprecedented' Mass Evacuation Warning
"They want civil chaos in this country," said one journalist of Israel's military plans in Lebanon.
Mar 05, 2026
The Israeli military on Thursday issued what the Times of Israel described as an "unprecedented" evacuation warning to residents in Beirut's southern suburbs ahead of planned strikes against Hezbollah.
According to the Times of Israel, the warning "covers four major neighborhoods in the southern suburbs" of the Lebanese capital, and represents a marked difference from past evacuation warnings that have typically covered specific locations where Israel intended to launch strikes.
In the warning, Israeli Army spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee told residents of the four neighborhoods to "save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately," and warned that any movement southward toward the Israeli border "may endanger your lives."
Israel has deployed soldiers and conducted airstrikes in Lebanon as its military also joins the US in attacking Iran in an operation they began late last week. The US and Israeli attacks have led to a widening conflict in the region, with the Iran-backed Hezbollah launching missiles at Israel in retaliation.
Maha Yahya, director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, said in a Thursday social media post that the Israeli warning has caused "total panic across the city," as the area being targeted by Israel is home to "at least a half million people."
Lebansese-Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid similarly described "widespread panic" across Beirut in the wake of the order.
"Traffic is choked, people rushing to leave and head north," Abouzeid wrote. "Drones in the air. WhatsApp messages urging people to crack windows open to avoid shattering from expected blasts."
Ariel Oseran, senior Middle East correspondent for i24News English, posted video on social media showing packed streets filled with cars of people trying to escape the impending Israeli attack.
Residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs seen fleeing shortly after the IDF issued an evacuation warning for the entire area. https://t.co/V34p1mhCW6 pic.twitter.com/LCQfOxO59J
— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) March 5, 2026
Mohamad Safa, executive director of PVA Patriotic Vision, an international multilateral organization with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that the evacuation order was making a dangerous situation on the ground in Lebanon even worse.
"Our teams have been on the ground assisting [internally displaced peoples] since day one," he wrote. "The humanitarian situation in Lebanon is going from bad to worse. Shelters are overcrowded, and there are no apartments available for rent. Emergency relief is insufficient. People are sleeping on the ground without blankets or mattresses in the bitter cold."
Journalist Rania Khalek of BreakThrough News said that Israel "is trying to empty out huge portions of the country," and she speculated that it was being done in a way to maximize chaos on the ground.
"The Israelis are telling Lebanese they are displacing from Shia neighborhoods to take roads to what will inevitably land them in Christian and Sunni areas," she wrote. "They want civil chaos in this country."
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that his agency "has opened emergency shelters for displaced people—Palestine refugees, Lebanese, and Syrians alike" in the wake of Israel's evacuation warning.
Lazzarini also emphasized that "Lebanon needs peace, not more destruction, displacement, and death."
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While Cost of Living Soars and Healthcare Taken Away, Trump Spending $1 Billion Per Day in War of Choice With Iran
"We can't afford to keep our hospitals open, but we can afford a billion dollars a day to bomb Iran?"
Mar 05, 2026
With fresh reporting that the ongoing US assault on Iran could be costing $1 billion per day in taxpayer money, opposition lawmakers, candidates for office, and outside critics are ripping the Trump administration and his allies in Congress for the financial recklessness of the unlawful and unprovoked attack on the Iranian people.
"We can't afford to keep our hospitals open, but we can afford a billion dollars a day to bomb Iran?" asked Graham Platner, a Democrat running to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collin of Maine in this year's midterm elections, in a social media post Wednesday.
Hundreds of hospitals across the US, most of them in rural areas, are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or closure in the wake of Trump's signing of a spending and tax giveaway bill last year that gave billions in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy while slashing healthcare, including Medicaid.
Collins on Wednesday joined all but one member of the Republican caucus in the US Senate to vote down a War Powers Resolution that would have compelled Trump to cease military operations against Iran.
"In one fucking month we will spend more over there than we needed to save healthcare for more than 2 million Americans. They literally are taking away your food and your healthcare for this regime change war of choice." —Sen. Brian Schatz
Planter was responding to journalist Nancy Youssef of The Atlantic, who reported, citing a congressional official, that a "preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 billion a day."
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) expressed similar outrage to the figure.
"This war is costing a billion dollars a day," said Schatz. "In one fucking month we will spend more over there than we needed to save healthcare for more than 2 million Americans. They literally are taking away your food and your healthcare for this regime change war of choice."
An analysis by Allison McManus at the Center for American Progress published Tuesday estimates that the US costs since bombing raids were launched by the American and Israeli forces over the weekend easily exceed $5 billion. According to McManus:
In a March 2 press conference, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine provided a glimpse into the nature of operations thus far in Operation Epic Fury. Caine described the deployment of more than 100 aircraft, the use of Tomahawk missiles, and attacks on more than 1,000 targets in just the first day of operations. Utilizing Brown University’s “Costs of War” project cost estimates of previous operations in the region—including Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran last June and engaging the Houthis in Yemen—it is likely that the operations Caine described alone would cost more than $4 billion.
But these are not the only costs. Elaine McCusker, a former Pentagon official in the first Trump administration, estimated the costs of repositioning forces in the Middle East to be around $630 million even prior to the start of hostilities. On March 2, Kuwaiti forces accidentally shot down three F-15 fighter jets in a friendly-fire incident. As these aircraft can cost as much as $117 million, this translates to an estimated total loss of $351 million. Added to the operations Caine described, a conservative estimate for the initial costs of Operation Epic Fury is more than $5 billion as of March 2—and the campaign is just getting started.
McManus further notes that the billions in military spending for a war that polls show a large majority in the US oppose, "come at a time when American citizens are acutely feeling the pressures of increased prices at home, including housing, energy, and health care costs."
As independent journalist Zaid Jilani noted, "Trump is spending a billion dollars a day killing people abroad while cutting Medicaid and health care for Americans."
"Waging a senseless and costly war raises legitimate questions about this government’s priorities," argues McManus in her analysis. "Priced at around $2.2 million, a single Tomahawk missile could cover 775 children on Medicaid for a year or provide more than 3,600 children with meals in the National School Lunch Program. At more than $5 billion and counting, the costs of Operation Epic Fury—in only its first few days of operations—could cover Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for more than 2 million Americans for a year. If this war continues at the same pace, Americans could see their government burn through tens of billions of dollars, funds that would amount to the cost of Medicaid for millions in the United States."
John Collins, political writer based in Boston, was contemplative about the military expenditures. "Just thinking of what we could do with a billion dollars a day that doesn’t include bombing people," Collins said.
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Federal Judge Orders Trump Admin to Refund Billions of Dollars to Businesses That Paid Illegal Tariffs
One organizer called the ruling a "victory for small businesses who have paid billions in unlawful tariffs and deserve their money back."
Mar 05, 2026
US customs officials are due to report to the Court of International Trade in New York on Friday to detail their plans for issuing billions of dollars in refunds to American businesses that paid tariffs which were struck down by the US Supreme Court last month.
On Wednesday, Judge Richard Eaton at the federal trade court ruled that "all importers of record" are "entitled to benefit" from the Supreme Court ruling that found President Donald Trump had illegally invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on more than 300,000 US businesses that import goods, the vast majority of which were small businesses, as a central policy of his economic agenda.
The Supreme Court found Trump could not use the IEEPA to unilaterally set tariffs.
Eaton ruled in a case brought by Atmus Filtration, a company based in Nashville, Tennessee, which filed one of about 2,000 lawsuits at the trade court seeking refunds for the tariffs.
US Customs and Border Protection is likely to appeal the decision or “seek a stay to buy more time," former US trade official Ryan Majerus told NBC News, but Eaton did not appear convinced Wednesday when a Justice Department lawyer Claudia Burke, said in court that issuing refunds en masse would be time-consuming for the CBP and would necessitate the manual review of millions of entries.
"We live in the age of computers," said Eaton. "It must be possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it doesn't need a manual review.
Burke also told Eaton that the administration hadn't determined its position on refunding the tariffs, to which the judge replied: "Your position is clear. The Supreme Court told you what your position is."
Eaton noted that refunds are processed every day by CBP through a process called "liquidation" when goods are imported through the agency. CBP issues an accounting of what is owed by the importer, and the company has 180 days to formally contest its duties. The judge ordered customs officials to stop collecting tariffs on goods currently in the liquidation process and to recalculate duties for goods that were past the 180-day window, without the illegally imposed tariffs, resulting in a refund.
“Customs knows how to do this,” said Eaton. "They do it every day. They liquidate entries and make refunds."
Atmus Filtration estimated in court filings it had paid $11 million in illegal tariffs. The federal government collected $130 billion in tariffs under the IEEPA last year, and according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, could ultimately owe $175 billion in refunds to businesses.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said the Trump administration "must move quickly to reimburse the thousands of small businesses in Virginia and across the country that bore the brunt of President Trump’s harmful and illegal tariffs."
Dan Anthony, executive director of the We Pay the Tariffs coalition, called the ruling a "victory for small businesses who have paid billions in unlawful tariffs and deserve their money back."
"The court acted swiftly and correctly," said Anthony. "Now the ball is in the government's court and small businesses are concerned they will drag this out further. American small businesses have waited long enough. A full, fast, and automatic refund process is what these businesses are owed and anything less is unacceptable."
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