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Taxpayer-Funded Trump Ad Violates the Hatch Act
A television ad boosting the image of President Donald Trump, which was paid for by government funds, violates laws prohibiting the use of government resources for propaganda, the Hatch Act, and other related laws, according to a complaint filed today by Public Citizen.
The complaint, sent to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, takes issue with ads airing in two media markets that include a disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.” Both markets airing the ad contain key districts in the upcoming midterm elections.
“For anyone with a modicum of ethics, common sense or respect for the law, it’s the most basic thing: Taxpayer funds cannot pay for partisan political propaganda,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. “These ads should immediately be pulled from the air, and the White House’s many apparent violations of the law should be investigated.”
“This administration’s repeated and flagrant violations of the law, including the Hatch Act, are an affront to taxpayers and our democracy,” said Craig Holman, Ph.D., a government ethics expert with Public Citizen. “Public Citizen has filed a dozen Hatch Act complaints with OSC over the past year and, to our knowledge, all have been ignored by the agency. That negligence is dangerous, and creates conditions that allow for the situation we are responding to today.”
The full complaint is available to read here.
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.
(202) 588-1000LATEST NEWS
Fresh Calls for Trump Removal as Tucker Carlson Claims He Said 'In the End, We All Die, Anyway' Ahead of Iran War
Carlson's account of his conversation with the president days before the US and Israel attacked Iran was "extremely disturbing," said one journalist.
Sep 25, 2026
New revelations from right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson about President Donald Trump's push to wage war on Iran earlier this year prompted the latest calls for Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment and force Trump out of office on the grounds that he is unable to fulfill the duties of the office—namely, to protect the security of the people of the United States.
"Days before the war began," Carlson told Steve Inskeep of NPR on Thursday, the president explicitly said that the outcome of the conflict didn't matter, because "in the end we all die, anyway."
Carlson revealed that he visited Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in late February, after having gone to Tel Aviv and interviewed Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel.
Trump expressed annoyance at Carlson, an on-and-off ally of the president over the years who claimed in April that he had "regrets" about supporting him, for challenging Huckabee on the US relationship with Israel.
Carlson had pressed Huckabee on his comment that "it would be fine if Israel took" over huge swaths of the Middle East, including parts of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Türkiye.
The host of "The Tucker Carlson Show" said he told Trump he had come away from his two-hour discussion with Huckabee understanding that the unprovoked war the US and Israel was days away from started was not aimed at ending Iran's nuclear program—which the president had claimed was taken out of commission in June 2025 by US strikes.
The Israeli threats against Iran, said Carlson, were actually aimed at ending Iran's "regional power," "diminishing the power" of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and ultimately "getting the US out of the Middle East because we constrain their ambitions" by maintaining a presence in countries in the region.
As the podcaster warned the president not to be manipulated by the Israeli government into taking military action against Iran, according to Carlson, "he looked at me and said, 'Yes, you're right, but in the end we all die, anyway, so it doesn't matter."
This is also 25th Amendment stuff. Extremely disturbing. pic.twitter.com/SnyqCwI3fL
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) September 25, 2026
"That's exactly what he said," said Carlson. "I said to him, shocked, ''But what about our kids and our grandkids, and like, our country?' And he goes, 'Argh!'... That's a verbatim exchange."
"I was shocked by that," he added. "Who lives or dies does matter, the future does matter."
The president's assertion that allowing Israel to push the US into war—something Secretary of State Marco Rubio also openly acknowledged had happened after the conflict began—could be disastrous for the US and lead to an untold number of American deaths, was called "extremely disturbing" by Drop Site News journalist Ryan Grim, who suggested Carlson's revelation should prompt the use of the 25th Amendment.
Journalist Pedro L. Gonzalez expressed wariness at the thought of taking Carlson at his word regarding his exchange with Trump and his current opposition to the president, while Carlson said he believed the need for Cabinet members to push Trump out of office predated the interview.
He said that Trump's threat of nuclear war in April, when he threatened to annihilate the "whole civilization" of Iran, "never to be brought back again," was grounds for invoking the 25th Amendment, with a majority of his Cabinet members voting to remove him from office.
Tucker Carlson: Trump should have been removed from office immediately when he threatened nuclear war pic.twitter.com/eYPbYBRsta
— FactPost (@factpostnews) September 24, 2026
"He should have been bundled up and taken out," said Carlson. "That's a crime."
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US Citizens 'Could Lose Their Right to Vote' After Supreme Court Gives Green Light to Trump's Voter Purge Database
"The SAVE database has known errors, including incorrectly flagging numerous eligible citizens... as noncitizens," an election security expert told Common Dreams.
Sep 25, 2026
Many eligible voters may be at risk of having their voter registrations wrongfully canceled just weeks before the midterms after the US Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for the Trump administration to screen voters using a database known for flagging naturalized citizens.
In a 6-3 decision, the court's conservative majority lifted a lower court order that blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from using and expanding the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database—whose original purpose was to check if noncitizens qualified for government benefits—to trawl through state voter rolls and link them to information supposedly confirming citizenship.
The expanded SAVE system relied upon by the Trump administration has also incorporated federal immigration and Social Security records that can be outdated.
"Because Social Security data was never intended for verifying voter eligibility, [the Social Security Administration] has no reason to keep people’s immigration status up to date in cases where it isn’t relevant for their benefits," explained Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, on Friday.
"As a result," she said, "US citizens could wrongfully lose their right to vote."
Investigations and court records have documented eligible US citizens being wrongly targeted by voter-purge systems using flawed citizenship data. In Missouri and Texas, for example, investigations have found that the system wrongly flagged hundreds of eligible voters as noncitizens, often those born outside the US who have since become naturalized.
Halting the SAVE system's implementation in June, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the US District Court in Washington, DC, wrote that the Trump administration had “haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable."
But the Supreme Court's conservatives wrote on Friday, in an unsigned majority opinion, that the lower court's block on the use of SAVE impeded “the federal government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”
In her dissent, the liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson emphasized that "the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take."
The court did not issue a final ruling on SAVE's legality to scrutinize voting rolls. But the timing—less than six weeks before the November 3 midterm elections—means the administration can potentially use it to direct states to identify and purge purported noncitizens on their voter rolls.
"The Supreme Court’s decision today wrongly lifts the burden from DHS and puts it on the shoulders of voters," Pamela Smith, president and CEO of the election security nonprofit Verified Voting, told Common Dreams. "The SAVE database has known errors, including incorrectly flagging numerous eligible citizens, such as recently naturalized citizens, as noncitizens."
"Now more than ever," she said, "voters must check their registration well in advance of Election Day to ensure they are not swept up in a flawed system through no fault of their own."
Jon Sherman, the litigation director for the Fair Elections Center, told Common Dreams that the court's ruling did contain a "silver lining." It "acknowledged that the National Voter Registration Act cuts off systematic voter removal programs 90 days before a federal election." However, voters could still be individually flagged as potential noncitizens.
The use of citizenship data is part of a larger effort by Trump to "nationalize" voting to clamp down on what he claims, without evidence, is a rash of noncitizens voting. He has used unsubstantiated claims of mass illegal voting to justify his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court refused to let Trump enforce another portion of his voting executive order, which would have had the US Postal Service block mail-in ballots in states that did not turn over information about mail-in voters to the federal government.
There is little evidence that noncitizen voting, or voter fraud more generally, is a significant problem: The right-wing Heritage Foundation's nationwide database of alleged instances of voter fraud identifies just 99 total cases of suspected noncitizen voting dating back to the year 2000.
A Brookings Institution review of that data in 2024 found that across several swing states, all forms of fraud impacted less than one vote for every million, far below what would be needed to swing an election.
"The Supreme Court’s decision to allow DHS and states to use an error-ridden system is completely unacceptable and didn’t need to happen this close to the election," said Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of the watchdog group Common Cause. "This DHS system, which the federal government itself admits is flawed, has always been part of the Trump administration’s campaign to interfere in our elections and sow distrust—and it will fail."
The legal challenge to the SAVE database was brought by the League of Women Voters and several state affiliates, along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), who are represented by Democracy Forward, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and the Fair Elections Center.
The coalition said Friday's decision was "profoundly disappointing, as it puts millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database weeks before the midterm elections."
"However, this case is not over," it said. "The DC District Court ruled that the expanded SAVE program violated multiple laws. We will be doing everything in our power to protect Americans’ voting and privacy rights by ensuring that the district court decision stands."
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said that with Friday's ruling, the Supreme Court had upheld a "Trump administration voter-suppression tactic."
"It's disappointing that the Supreme Court decided to capitulate to and enable an authoritarian, again," she said. "States must hold the line and do everything in their power to protect voting rights and our democracy!"
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Ad for US Senate Seat in Kansas Pillories Roger Marshall for Having Pregnant Mom Arrested Over $50 Medical Payment
'The healthcare system is broken, but not for Roger Marshall. He's absolutely profiting from it."
Sep 25, 2026
The campaign of Kansas Democratic US Senate candidate Adam Hamilton on Friday released an ad highlighting incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall's history of having patients arrested for medical debt.
The ad features Meischa Zimmerman, a one-time patient of Marshall, who prior to running for political office had a long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist.
Zimmerman begins the ad by recounting her 2011 arrest.
"One evening, I see [police] lights, I open the door, and it's a police officer," Zimmerman explains. "They arrested me because I didn't make a $50 payment to Roger Marshall."
"I was eight months pregnant," she continues. "And I said, 'Please do not handcuff me in front of my two-year-old daughter.'"
At the end of the ad, Zimmerman turns Marshall's aggressive debt collection tactics into an indictment of the for-profit US healthcare system.
"Roger Marshall preyed on the low-income families of Kansas," she says. "The healthcare system is broken, but not for Roger Marshall. He's absolutely profiting from it."
Meischa was Roger Marshall's patient. This is her story. pic.twitter.com/M6bmqK92gm
— Team Hamilton (@TeamHamiltonHQ) September 25, 2026
Zimmerman's story was highlighted earlier this month in a report from The New York Times, which found that Marshall filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients for medical debt, leading to at least 81 of them getting arrested.
Zimmerman owed Marshall $3,596 for a C-section her performed while delivering one of her children and, after his office sued her for outstanding medical debt, she agreed to undertake a monthly $50 payment plan.
Zimmerman told the Times that, while she tried to make the monthly payments, there were times when she couldn't keep up.
"I had to choose whether I’d pay my electricity," Zimmerman said, "or pay $50 to a doctor who didn’t need it."
Additionally, the law firm representing Marshall began charging 18% interest on her unpaid bill, which she said nearly doubled the total value she owed.
The Times story found that many patients Marshall sued didn't have anywhere close to the thousands of dollars in medical debt owed by Zimmerman, and that one of his patients was arrested for owing as little as $114.
The anti-Marshall ad drew praise from many political observers, who described it as a searing indictment of the Kansas Republican's character.
"This is a killer ad," wrote Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, in a social media post. "If Hamilton defeats Marshall for Senate in Kansas, include it in your analysis."
Bloomberg columnist Francis Wilkerson similarly described the ad as "among the best... I've seen."
Amanda Litman, president of Run for Something, declared after watching the ad that "Roger Marshall is a real piece of shit."
James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, argued that the ad was so strong that it could break through a key barrier progressives have long faced when challenging right-wing politicians.
"One of the structural advantages that Republicans have enjoyed the last 10 to 15 years is ordinary people didn't believe you when you told them how evil they were," Goodwin wrote. "After all, how could anyone be that evil? That's just the left exaggerating again, right? It feels like that is starting to fall apart."
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'Every Taxpayer... Should Be Outraged': Anger Spreads Over 'Illegal' US-Funded Pro-Trump Ad
“This is the sort of government propaganda one might expect in North Korea, not the United States of America, and it is an egregious and utterly illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” said four lawmakers.
Sep 25, 2026
Outrage mounted Friday over a taxpayer-funded television advertisement glorifying President Donald Trump, with critics describing the 30-second spot as self-aggrandizing propaganda and questioning whether the administration violated federal law restricting the use of public money for partisan communications.
The ad—which aired this week on outlets including Fox News, Newsmax, and CBS—features a dizzying montage of Trump at rallies, White House events, sporting events, and alongside military personnel, captioned, "AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY."
The refrain of R&B singer JMSN’s “Love Me” plays over the rapid-fire images. The spot concludes with a voiceover from Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White praising Trump as “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met.”
At the bottom of the screen, an alarming disclosure appears, reading, "Paid for by the US government."
The White House dismissed criticism of the ad—which aired ahead of November's midterm elections—by calling the spot a "public service announcement" intended to remind Americans “to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending.”
However, on Friday, US Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Jack Reed (D-RI), along with Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), excoriated the clip.
“This is the sort of government propaganda one might expect in North Korea, not the United States of America, and it is an egregious and utterly illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” the four senior congressional appropriators said in a joint statement.
“The law is not complicated," the lawmakers added. "You cannot use taxpayer dollars for political advertisements.”
Federal appropriations law—including the funding bill Trump signed earlier this year—prohibits the use of government funds for unauthorized “publicity or propaganda purposes,” while the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has interpreted the prohibition to encompass communications whose obvious purpose is “self-aggrandizement” or “puffery,” as well as “purely partisan” communications.
The consumer advocacy watchdog group Public Citizen on Friday filed a complaint with the GAO alleging the ad "violates laws prohibiting the use of government resources for propaganda, the Hatch Act, and other related laws."
"Whether or not President Trump was personally involved in the ad, it was conceived, produced, and distributed by Trump’s White House staff," Public Citizen said.
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Friday on social media that "every taxpayer, no matter your party, should be outraged by this."
"Your money is being used to fund campaign ads for Trump," the senator added. "It’s totally, completely [illegal]. He’s stealing your money for his campaign."
"The advertisement raises deep concerns about the Trump administration’s use of taxpayer dollars and its compliance with federal laws that prohibit the use of appropriated funds for the promotion of a political party or candidate," Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said Thursday.
“This taxpayer-funded political advertisement serves as yet another troubling example of President Trump’s growing list of expensive vanity projects—including the White House ballroom—that are estimated to cost over $1.8 billion, money that could have instead [been] spent lowering costs for Americans.”
Sam Stein, co-host of "The Bulwark Podcast," said, "What possible rationale could there be for using tax dollars to play that ad? This is just pure cult propaganda paid for by us."
@timmiller.bsky.social and @samsteindc.bsky.social react to a taxpayer-funded TV ad praising Trump, complete with “Love Me” playing over footage of the president.“This is just pure cult propaganda paid for by us.”
[image or embed]
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) September 24, 2026 at 6:46 PM
Noting that Trump's approval rating has plunged below 30%, Stein added: "People are abandoning him... members of his own party are starting to distance themselves from him, and he uses that moment to have an ad [saying] please love me... It's desperate."
Tim Miller, Stein's co-host, called the ad "alarming" and "Orwellian."
Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of the advocacy group Common Cause, said Friday in a statement that “taxpayer dollars should never be used to bolster the president’s self-esteem because his ego has been damaged."
"Running political messaging stamped with ‘Paid for by the US Government’ dangerously crosses the line from public service into authoritarian self-promotion," she added. "It also raises serious questions about whether it violates federal law barring tax dollars from being used for publicity or propaganda."
Others noted that the ad blasted communism as Trump rolled out the red carpet at a state dinner for Chinese President Ji Xinping, who is also the secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party.
"The clip’s heavy-handed anti-communist messaging also strikes a wildly hypocritical note, if not for anything but the fact that the Supreme Leader that ran it followed up by hosting China’s Xi Jinping with open arms, a flyover of US military planes, and a statue of a bald eagle," Jezebel's Danielle Han wrote on Friday.
Meanwhile, the controversy has spread beyond politics. JMSN—whose real name is Christian Berishaj—said that he never authorized Trump to use “Love Me,” writing that he would “never authorize my music to be used for ANY political agenda or campaign.”
"I am looking at lawyers," he added, "and handling this internally.”
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'We Won't Let Him': Efforts to Stop Trump Grow as Work Observed at 'Illegal and Immoral' Arch
"I will continue doing everything in my power to stop this illegal and reckless attempt to turn our nation's capital into a monument to Donald Trump," vowed Rep. Don Beyer.
Sep 25, 2026
While Americans are stressed about the economy and President Donald Trump's approval rating has hit a historic low, the second-term Republican is focused on vanity projects like his proposed 250-foot "Triumphal Arch," which opponents are trying to block.
The watchdog group Public Citizen is planning a protest and press conference for the morning of October 1 at Memorial Circle in Washington, DC. Speakers include Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.), military veterans, and other critics of the "self-indulgent project" that lacks congressional approval—and which Trump is now trying to push as a national security project.
"Trump's planned construction is not only illegal," Public Citizen said in a Thursday statement, pointing to the lawsuit it filed on behalf of three Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian. "It is an affront to American veterans and their families."
"The arch will sit on Memorial Circle along the Potomac River, impeding the symbolic line-of-sight between the Lincoln Memorial in DC and Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where hundreds of thousands of our nation's military members have been laid to rest," explained the group, which has secured from a federal judge temporary restrictions on work at the site.
Beyer—whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery—headed to the site on Thursday. He said in a statement that "after hearing from constituents who saw construction equipment at the site of Trump's proposed vanity arch, I drove down to Columbia Island to see for myself. When I arrived, I found workers operating heavy equipment who told me they were conducting archaeological work to evaluate the composition of the soil."
"When I asked whether this work was a precursor to construction of the arch, they said that they could not answer," the congressman continued. "The logical conclusion, however, is that the presence of this heavy equipment and additional surveyors is a clear indication that the Trump administration is preparing to move forward with construction. That would be deeply troubling. Trump's arch is illegal and immoral, and the administration is also under court order requiring 48 hours' notice before work proceeds."
"Yet, the administration appears to be pushing ahead with activity at the site even while it still has not done the basic work necessary to understand the consequences of this project," Beyer warned. "There has been no adequate assessment of the regional impacts of this 250-foot structure on public safety, vehicular traffic, air traffic, or historic sites, including the implications of Trump's latest ravings about using the arch as a base for drone and sniper operations."
Beyer, who also shared video of his visit to the site on social media, added that “Donald Trump and his administration are determined to find a way to push this project through by any means necessary, regardless of the law or the concerns of the people who live here, but my constituents have made their views abundantly clear: They do not want this project. Neither do I. I will continue doing everything in my power to stop this illegal and reckless attempt to turn our nation's capital into a monument to Donald Trump."
In May, Beyer and Dina Titus (D-Nev.)—who, as co-chair of the Congressional Humanities Caucus, led challenges to the administration's illegal attempts to fund the arch using the National Endowment for the Humanities budget—introduced the Arlington National Cemetery Viewshed Protection Act, which would explicitly prohibit construction of Trump's project.
"As President Trump strips away the necessary safety nets from Americans who are struggling to afford their basic needs like groceries and healthcare, he builds his unauthorized, grandiose Triumphal Arch. While destroying historical monuments and artifacts important to our American identity, he is erecting monuments to honor himself," Titus said at the time. "The American people deserve a leader who is responsibly using federal funding for critical government services, not for self-promotion."
After months of pushback over the project, Trump announced last Sunday that "at the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage."
"There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World," the president wrote on his Truth Social platform. "Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, DC, IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all!"
The Hill reported Friday that analysts and lawmakers "are perplexed by President Trump’s surprise declaration," with Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, telling the outlet that adding military elements to the arch "is not totally fictional or crazy—but also not optimal."
Whether or not the project include military components, "to build an arch on federal land (that is not in the White House complex), the administration needs to navigate a lot of bureaucracy," The Washington Post noted Thursday. "The administration has argued the arch doesn't need to abide by DC's height laws for buildings and that it doesn't need congressional authorization because Congress authorized something similar a century ago nearby."
However, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation—whose members are picked by the president—has attempted to abide by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and related regulations, and consulted with local officials "to seek ways to avoid, minimize, or mitigate adverse effects to historic properties that would result from this undertaking."
ABC News highlighted that "the law says federal officials don't have to reach an agreement with state officials on mitigation of those harms, but they do have to try. Those consultations can then be unilaterally terminated if there's a failure for parties to meet in the middle."
The council's vice chair, Travis Voyles, on Thursday wrote to Tammy Stidman, associate regional director for lands and planning at the National Park Service, that "we are hereby terminating consultation," but the panel "will develop and transmit its final comments to the secretary of interior," aiming to deliver them by October 7.
According to the Post, "The administration is hoping to start construction by November."
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Marking One Year of NSPM-7, Rights Advocates Call On Congress to Rein In FBI's Spying Capabilities
"The actions of the Trump administration, especially those of Stephen Miller, have made it clear they aim to use the counterterrorism bureaucracy to destroy their domestic political opponents."
Sep 25, 2026
On the first anniversary of President Donald Trump's signing of one critical national security memo, every member of Congress on Friday received a report on how his administration's "blatant use of the counterterrorism framework against left-wing domestic speech" has allowed the FBI to "spy on the First Amendment," attacking one of the bedrock principles of the US Constitution in order to crack down on "speech disfavored by Trump."
The 19-page report, titled "7Can the FBI Spy on the First Amendment?," was sent to every congressional office by the advocacy group Defending Rights and Dissent (DRAD), exactly a year after the president signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) in the wake of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Trump and other top White House officials immediately blamed the killing of 31-year-old Turning Point USA co-founder on the "radical left," and claimed left-wing extremists were behind "the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today." Days earlier, the US Department of Justice had removed from its website a report showing that political violence perpetrated by far-right extremists in the US far outpaced that of people on the left.
The memo outlined how the Trump administration planned to crack down on left-wing groups by directing law enforcement agencies to treat political speech "as a precursor to terrorism," if it came from organizations that demonstrated particular viewpoints—including those critical of capitalism or the US government. Groups that displayed so-called "extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality" were also named as potential targets.
NSPM-7 called for the FBI's 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF)—comprised of about 4,000 agents across the country—to investigate groups suspected of left-wing extremism under the memo, with local police officers staffing many of the task forces.
"This extremely broad language leads to individual agents interpreting what these viewpoints mean to them when determining who to target. And thanks to the existence of FBI assessments, designed with the same preventive purpose that NSPM-7 echoes, Task Force officers can investigate groups or individuals without a factual basis to suspect them of criminal wrongdoing or consider them a national security threat," wrote Chip Gibbons, policy director at DRAD. "At the assessment level, the FBI can even have an informant infiltrate their group. Informants often act as agent provocateurs in sting operations, in which the informant proposes and recruits individuals to participate in a fictitious terror plot concocted by the FBI."
Under pressure from Trump, Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, and other officials to deliver prosecutions of suspected left-wing extremists, wrote Gibbons, "the agents' loose guidelines, politicized guidance, and track record of the FBI creates a recipe for disaster."
"Trump and Miller have made clear they plan to exploit the broad counterterrorism authorities of the executive branch to unleash this machinery of repression upon their domestic political opponents. Unless Congress acts now, they will get away with it."
A year after NSPM-7 was signed, the memo has already underpinned a crackdown on groups and individuals who oppose Trump's deeply unpopular deployment of federal immigration agents to carry out his violent mass deportation policy and other aspects of his far-right agenda.
US Attorney Daniel Rosen cited the memo in June when he announced the indictment of 15 organizers who led protests against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota, and those indictments came out of a sprawling investigation into local labor and rights groups that was opened after federal agents fatally shot anti-ICE protester Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January. Top administration officials also accused Pretti, soon after he had been killed, of being a "domestic terrorist."
In July, Miller said NSPM-7 would allow the administration to "disrupt, identify, defund, de-bank, arrest, prosecute these political terrorists that are operating within our country," as Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that four left-wing groups had been designated as "foreign terrorist organizations."
And in March, the memo underpinned the conviction of eight people accused of domestic terrorism for wearing all black to a protest at Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, where one demonstrator shot and wounded a police officer. The protesters were later sentenced to 30-100 years in prison.
“This wouldn’t be a terrorism case if it weren’t for that memo,” a defense lawyer told one news outlet after the conviction.
Gibbons emphasized on Friday that carrying out NSPM-7's directives "requires no new laws, no new agencies, because well before Trump ever returned to power, the FBI and its enablers have amassed for itself the power to spy on pure political speech."
As hundreds of thousands of Americans expressed opposition to President George W. Bush's impending invasion of Iraq in 2003, notes the report, "the FBI issued two controversial intelligence bulletins, one on 'Tactics Used During Protests and Demonstrations,' and one on 'Potential for Criminal Activity at Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Annual Meeting.'"
"The latter bulletin was prepared in advance of mass protests against the Iraq War," reads the report. "It went so far as to list 'tactics by which protestors draw attention,' which included 'marches, banners, and forms of passive resistance such as sit-in.' It urged law enforcement to 'be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.'"
The inspector general of the Department of Justice at the time raised alarm about the bulletins' potential violation of the First Amendment, but the head of the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), Jack Goldsmith, dismissed the concern.
"The OLC opinion made clear that the executive branch believes it is not unconstitutional for the FBI to monitor protected speech so long as it claimed it was looking for potential unlawful activity, such as terrorist threats or 'civil disorder,'" writes Gibbons.
The FBI's international terrorism program has also pursued "homegrown violent terrorists," and the agency sought to prove in the 1960s and '70s that anti-war protests were "the product of Soviet foreign"—providing the National Security Agency with the names of US citizens to be added to a watchlist.
"While the stakes were high before, the actions of the Trump administration, especially those of Stephen Miller, have made it clear they aim to use the counterterrorism bureaucracy to destroy their domestic political opponents," reads the DRAD report.
Gibbons called on Congress to take several key actions to rein in the FBI as it seeks to carry out the directive outlined in NSPM-7, including:
- Creating a statutory charter for the FBI that outlines what it can investigate and why;
- Imposing on the FBI a definition of "terrorism" that puts the focus on criminal violence against people instead of political ideology;
- Eliminating the FBI's assessments of individuals based on their political speech and putting the agency "out of the business of suspicionless investigations"; and
- Requiring a warrant for foreign intelligence searches and queries under §702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"With NSPM-7, Trump and Miller have made clear they plan to exploit the broad counterterrorism authorities of the executive branch to unleash this machinery of repression upon their domestic political opponents," said Gibbons. "Unless Congress acts now, they will get away with it."
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Lula Teams With Bad Bunny to Highlight Dangers of Trump’s Colonial Ambitions Across Latin America
"Brazil has only one owner: The Brazilian people," said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Sep 25, 2026
The campaign of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva released new advertisements this week that sounded alarms about the threat posed by US President Donald Trump to the country's sovereignty and resources.
One ad, released on Tuesday, features a Portuguese version of Puerto Rican music star Bad Bunny's song "Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii," the lyrics of which decry the damage done by US imperialism throughout the Western Hemisphere.
The ad consists of a video montage highlighting Brazil's rich cultural, ethnic, and ecological diversity, and ends with Lula saying, "Brazil has only one owner: The Brazilian people."
Do Latim, Silva é a própria selva: a raiz que brota do solo, o verde que resiste e a força viva da terra.
Durante séculos quiseram diminuir a nossa gente, mas foi na garra, no suor e na dignidade que cada Silva construiu este país.
A nossa força não se curva, a nossa bandeira… pic.twitter.com/iwujl0ojq0
— Lula (@LulaOficial) September 23, 2026
"Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii" was one of the songs that Bad Bunny performed during his acclaimed Super Bowl halftime show in February, which some critics saw as a joyful rebuke to the colonialist vision for Latin America that Trump has embraced throughout his second term.
According to a report published Thursday in Correio Braziliense, Bad Bunny gave Lula's team permission to use his music in the campaign video.
Another ad, released on Thursday, is more explicit in its warnings about Trump's ambitions for Latin America.
Unlike the video released Tuesday, the later ad directly links the unpopular US president to far-right politician Flávio Bolsonaro, who has emerged as Lula’s top rival for the presidency in upcoming elections and is the son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, still serving a criminal sentence for efforts to overthrow Lula's government.
"Flávio Bolsonaro is Trump's candidate," says that ad's narrator. "And what Trump wants is to colonize Brazil, take our wealth, steal our future, and leave us behind."
"Flávio Bolsonaro," the narrator concludes, "is playing against the Brazilian people."
Flávio Bolsonaro é o candidato do Trump.
Quer entregar o nosso país e as nossas riquezas para os Estados Unidos.
Se depender dele, o Brasil vira colônia de novo.
Mas o Brasil só tem um dono: o povo brasileiro. pic.twitter.com/jOSJ83xcKb
— Lula (@LulaOficial) September 25, 2026
In a Thursday social media post, Lula said Bolsonaro “wants to deliver our country and our wealth to the United States,” adding that, if it were up to Bolsonaro, “Brazil will become a colony again.”
During a speech delivered at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Lula called out efforts to treat Brazil as a colony, although he didn’t mention the US directly.
“Brazil is no one’s backyard,” the Brazilian president said at one point.
“We will not allow the enemies of democracy—internal or external—to attack the will of the people," he said. "Brazilian democracy belongs to the Brazilians.”
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Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
"We have moved from development blocked to development reversed," said the UN official behind a new report.
Sep 25, 2026
Israel’s US-backed military assault on Gaza has not only caused mass death and destruction; it has also created “the world’s most severe economic crisis on record,” according to Pedro Manuel Moreno, the acting secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Moreno presented a recent report at a press conference on Thursday showing that 92% of economic establishments in Gaza—including shops, factories, restaurants, and farms—have been damaged or destroyed since Israel launched its assault on the territory in October 2023 and reduced most of its infrastructure to rubble.
Less than 1.5% of cropland across the strip remained accessible and undamaged, while more than half of its hospitals and primary health clinics have been rendered nonfunctional.
Compared with 2022, Gaza’s main productive sectors have been almost entirely wiped out: Agricultural and industrial output were each down 94%, while construction was down 99% in 2025. With most of its economic capacity destroyed, unemployment in the exclave skyrocketed to 78% in 2025, while tremendous scarcity led prices to soar to 274% above 2022 levels.
Dropping to just 17% of its 2022 level, Gaza’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita cratered to $212 in 2025, equivalent to about 58 cents per person per day.
"Productive capacity is wiped out while the entire population is displaced and condemned to multidimensional poverty," said UNCTAD's coordinator for assistance to the Palestinians, Mutasim Elagraa, who led work on the report. "By multidimensional poverty I mean not just income poverty; it's also a lack of proper shelter, a lack of access to basic services like health and education and sanitation."
"Before the onset of this crisis in October 2023, two out of three residents were poor," Elagraa continued. "Today, everyone in Gaza is multidimensionally poor."
These conditions have increased the territory's reliance on outside aid, which Israel has often blocked, leading UN experts and human rights organizations to accuse its leaders of using starvation and deprivation as "weapons of war."
The International Criminal Court has found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who gave a defiant speech denying Israel's responsibility for genocide at the UN General Assembly Thursday—bears criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.
The report estimates that $71.5 billion will be needed for recovery and reconstruction, as well as $35.2 billion in physical infrastructure damage and $22.7 billion in economic and social losses.
"Restoring the collapsed health system, rebuilding destroyed education infrastructure and other public infrastructure will need to go together while restoring productive capacity, employment, functioning markets and the ability for businesses to operate," Moreno said. "Peace cannot be built on a collapsed economy."
Though the report emphasizes how Israel's bombardment has brought near-apocalyptic conditions upon the strip, it notes that Gaza's economic deprivation dates back decades before the Hamas-led attack in October 2023, which was the catalyst for the unprecedented assault.
It noted that 59 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine had severely stunted its economic growth, particularly as it tightened its blockade of Gaza in the last two decades.
Previous UNCTAD analyses have shown that between 2006, a year before Israel began its land, air, and sea blockade of Gaza, and 2022, Gaza's real GDP per capita fell by 37% while its productive economy, including agriculture and manufacturing, was hollowed out by Israel's restrictions on movement and imports. Even before 2023, nearly half of Gaza's workforce was unemployed, roughly two-thirds lived in poverty, and 80% depended on international aid.
“The central message of this report we are talking about today is that about six decades of occupation have hollowed out the Palestinian economy and de-developed it,” Elagraa said. “We have moved from development blocked to development reversed, and now decades of human development that has been achieved in Gaza has been wiped out."
"Although the intensity of destruction is far more in Gaza" than in the West Bank, he said, the report showed the "destruction" to be "a dramatic escalation of a pattern that dates back to 1967 with the onset of occupation."
"The report," he said, "maintains that history did not start in October 2023."
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'Never Fails to Disappoint': Fetterman Joins GOP to Keep Trump's Iran War Going
"This reckless war has cost American lives, innocent lives, tens of billions of dollars, and higher prices on nearly everything here at home. John and 49 Republican Senators voted in favor of all of that."
Sep 25, 2026
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the lone Democrat on Thursday to help Republicans in the US Senate vote down a resolution to end the "illegal" war of choice launched against Iran by President Donald Trump earlier this year.
In the 49-50 vote, the Republican majority blocked the latest resolution calling for an end to the war. While four Republicans—Susan Collins of Maine, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—joined Democrats by voting in favor, Fetterman became the deciding vote.
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) was among those expressing frustration with Fetterman, a lawmaker who has become a thorn in the side of his party since taking office and taking a hard right with his pro-war positions, accommodations to Trump, and determined support for pro-Israeli policies.
"John Fetterman just cast the deciding vote to keep the Iran War raging," said Deluzio. "This reckless war has cost American lives, innocent lives, tens of billions of dollars, and higher prices on nearly everything here at home. John and 49 Republican Senators voted in favor of all of that."
"Fetterman never fails to disappoint," said Susan Wild, a former Democratic member of the US House from Pennsylvania.
The vote came on the same day that an advocacy group representing American citizens with Iranian heritage sued the Trump administration for usurping the powers of Congress when it launched an "unconstitutional" war against Iran—a military conflict that has lasted nearly 7 months with no end in sight, causing misery across the Middle East and economic pain worldwide, including in the United States.
Filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the National Iranian American Council Action (NIAC Action), asks the court to declare that President Donald Trump's unprovoked attack on Iran violates the Constitution’s Declare War Clause.
In a statement, NIAC Action said the suit was brought "on behalf of its members whose families have been injured, displaced, economically devastated and are in continuing mortal danger as a result of a war that was never lawfully authorized."
Launched on Feb. 28, the US attack, in coordination with the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was launched despite ongoing diplomatic efforts and active talks over US sanctions against Iran and questions about Iran's domestic nuclear program and its conventional missile capabilities. The war was initiated, according to the group,
without a declaration of war or other congressional authorization and that the war has continued, including repeated heavy bombardments and a naval blockade, despite this lack of authorization and the passage by both chambers of Congress of an explicit directive to terminate unauthorized hostilities against Iran.
“No President should have the power to take this country into an indefinite war by himself,” said NIAC Action president Jamal Abdi, in a statement. “Congress never authorized this war. Yet Iranian families are being bombed, American service members have been killed, and communities on both sides are being forced to bear the consequences. This lawsuit asks a fundamental question: can one person decide, on his own, to keep an entire nation at war?”
NIAC Action offered the example of one plaintiff, Nima Dilmaghani, whose cousin in Iran was injured when the company warehouse where she worked was bombed. Dilmaghani's cousin, the group explained, "suffered a broken leg, serious damage to their eardrums, and the loss of their index finger, which surgeons reattached but which has lost motion. Approximately ten of her coworkers were killed, and approximately ten more were injured. In a separate bombing, their apartment was destroyed while they were away at work. They are now working two jobs to survive." Other NIAC Action members have detailed similar stories.
Lawyers behind the lawsuit said that just because President Trump and other officials, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have tried to argue that war against Iran is not a "war," that does not make it so.
“President Trump has spent months waging a war that Congress never authorized, while insisting that changing the terminology somehow changes the constitutional question,” said attorney Bruce Fein. “Calling a war a ‘military operation’ or an ‘excursion’ does not erase the Declare War Clause. The question before the Court is whether the President can continue these hostilities without the authorization the Constitution requires.”
While War Powers resolutions have been passed in the House to cease military operations in Iran, none of those have been binding on President Trump, and overall, Congress has stood aside in the face of what critics have described as criminal aggression and war crimes by Trump.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other members of the Democratic Caucus in the US Senate, have continued to voice their opposition to Trump's war as poll after poll show that the US voting public—across the political spectrum—want the war, and the economic harm it has wrought—to end.
"The American people, overwhelmingly, want to end this horrific war in Iran," Sanders said after the failed vote. "Pathetically, today, nearly every Republican voted with Trump to keep the war going. When will Republicans represent their constituents and have the courage to oppose their mentally unstable leader?"
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'Baseless Lies Meant to Sanitize His Genocide': Mamdani Hits Back After Netanyahu's Attacks During UN Speech
“No lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity,” New York City's mayor said of the Israeli prime minister.
Sep 24, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani hit back Thursday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the United Nations General Assembly podium to accuse him of supporting Hamas and making Jewish New Yorkers feel unsafe—remarks that came after delegates from scores of countries walked out of the chamber to protest the far-right fugitive's presence.
Refuting allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza—where Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,500 children, since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023—Netanyahu said, "To all those spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic mayor of New York City, I say this: Shame on you."
"Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York," the prime minister claimed. "It’s no wonder... You falsely and repeatedly accuse Israel of genocide. Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide. And that’s exactly what Mr. Mamdani’s Hamas buddies would have done to us had we not stopped them. They would have killed every last one of us."
Mamdani issued a statement later Thursday saying: “As he has done time and again, Prime Minister Netanyahu used his speech to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians. Yet no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity."
Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are accused of murder and forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, but Israel assassinated them.
While neither Israel nor the United States is a party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC, the treaty states that people from nonsignatory states who commit alleged crimes in states that are party to the treaty—as Palestine is—can be arrested in third countries and subsequently tried by the court.
Mamdani has said that Netanyahu should be arrested and brought before the Hague-based tribunal for trial, but that he lacks the legal authority to apprehend the prime minister in New York.
The International Court of Justice—also located in The Hague, Netherlands—is currently processing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations. The case is based on what the ICJ called the plausibility that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The court has issued a series of provisional orders for Israel to adhere to the Genocide Convention—orders that critics say Israel has simply ignored.
Last year, an independent UN commission of inquiry found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, a conclusion shared by the International Association of Genocide Scholars and other experts including many Israeli and diaspora Jewish academics, jurists, human rights campaigners, and others.
As Netanyahu prepared to deliver his UN speech Thursday, delegates from a reported 77 nations walked out of the chamber in protest.
"If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall—please do so now," the prime minister said. "Thank you very much."
While some observers applauded the display of solidarity with Palestinians, others expressed disgust that Netanyahu was allowed to address the world body and that he has not yet been brought to justice.
"The head of the genocidal Israeli apartheid regime, a fugitive indicted for crimes against humanity, was allowed to enter the US and to address the UNGA today, without arrest," said Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN official who resigned in protest of what he described as the world body’s failure to stop Israel’s genocidal war.
"Netanyahu insulted delegations, openly celebrated the regime’s many crimes, bragged about its terrorist pager attacks on Lebanon, repeated the regime’s debunked genocide propaganda, defended the illegal occupation of Palestine and Syria, lied incessantly, called violent, racist, illegal Zionist settlers 'peaceful' and 'honorable people,' labeled human rights defenders as 'antisemites,' even arrogantly attacked American citizens and officials for speaking out against the regime’s crimes," he continued.
"This violent psychopath cannot hide behind [US President Donald] Trump’s skirts forever," Mokhiber added. "He (and his collaborators) must be captured and brought to justice. And the UN must finally act to isolate the regime and hold it accountable. "
Referring to Netanyahu's address and Trump's threat on Tuesday to "annihilate" Iran during his rambling, lie-laden General Assembly speech, University of Colorado Law School associate professor Maryam Jamshidi said on social media, "Between Trump threatening Iran w/annihilation and Netanyahu bragging about Israel’s pager attacks, the UN podium has become a venue for promoting genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes."
Meanwhile, people took to the streets of New York to protest Netayahu's presence in the city, US complicity in Israeli crimes, and to show solidarity with Palestinians.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside UN headquarters in Turtle Bay for a sit-in demonstration led by Jewish Voice for Peace. Demonstrators blocked roads while chanting slogans including, "Netanyahu you can't hide, you are wanted for genocide!"
As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, more than 100 demonstrators were arrested.
THEY’RE PUTTING THEM IN THE BUS!
Susan Sarandon Chelsea Manning, and MANY OTHER CELEBS ARRESTED at UN protest ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address! 👀
The 79-year-old actress – who has previously said she's been blacklisted over pro-Palestinian comments… pic.twitter.com/pvzuRGwGG4
— SANTINO (@TheRealSantino) September 24, 2026
Among those reportedly arrested were progressive congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier; actors Susan Sarandon, Hannah Einbinder, and Cynthia Nixon; New York state Assemblymember Emily Gallagher (D-50); Democratic New York City Councilmembers Chi Ossé and Alexa Avilés; former Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning; and Palestinian American political activist Linda Sarsour.
"I will never, ever be silent," Sarsour said on Facebook. "I will never just accept the world as it is. I want history to record for future generations of Palestinians that we fought. At every turn. In every way. When it was easy and when it was hard."
"I want Palestinian girls in Gaza to see me in my hijab and my unapologetic Palestinian blood fighting for them to live FREE," she added. "This is bigger than all of us. Netanyahu is a war criminal and belongs in The Hague, not the United Nations."
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