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Trump Proposes Revoking SEC’s Decades-Old Pay-to-Play Rule
President Donald Trump and his recently appointed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Aitkins are proposing to rescind the pay-to-play rule. The rule prohibits investment advisers and their officers from making or soliciting campaign contributions above a small threshold to government officials responsible for awarding investment contracts to those advisers for two years prior or during the contracting period. Craig Holman, Ph.D., government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, released the following statement:
“In a stunning and completely out-of-the-blue new proposal, President Trump and SEC Chair Aitkins are seeking to overturn a highly successful and decades-old anti-corruption rule. Trump’s proposal comes on the heels of – nothing. There have been no new problems with the rule and no new reasons for its repeal, though investment advisers have never particularly cared for it. The effort to rescind the pay-to-play rule is simply the latest extension of the Trump administration canceling ethics rules, especially those that get in the way of the rich getting richer.
“Back in 1994, then-SEC Chair Arthur Levitt grew fed up with repeated scandals in which investment advisers appeared to be buying government contracts by making large campaign contributions to those responsible for awarding the contracts. Levitt cracked down on this corrupt practice by banning anything but small de minimis contributions from advisers and their associates to those responsible for awarding government investment contracts, which quickly became known as the ‘pay-to-play’ rule.
“The pay-to-play rule remains on the books today because it works. Repealing it is nothing but the most brazen corruption.”
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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'Stolen Valor': Trump's Fabricated 9/11 Story Draws Immediate Scorn
"He created a fictitious event featuring himself, who did nothing, as the hero of 9/11."
Sep 08, 2026
While Republicans express "offense" at plans for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to attend September 11 remembrances this week due to his Muslim faith, President Donald Trump provoked outrage on Tuesday when he told what seems to be a fabricated story about his heroism following the terrorist attack.
Before a crowd that included over 100 first responders, Trump described being at ground zero with a construction crew he said he'd deployed to help with the aftermath of the attack. He described walking beneath the US Steel building, now known as One Liberty Plaza, which was believed to be at risk of collapsing.
“The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down,” Trump recalled. “And I'll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys—and I'm not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here!’ And they literally lifted me up."
“This is not easy to do. I'm big," Trump continued. "They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself,’ but they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn't come down."
Trump has claimed on multiple occasions to have been present in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and has told a version of the same story before, including on the 2016 campaign trail.
But many aspects of the tale are in doubt or contradicted by both the public record and others known to be involved in the recovery.
Trump said he saw the attacks happen from his office in Trump Tower, about four miles away from the World Trade Center. In an interview with WWOR-TV that day, he infamously boasted (incorrectly) that he now had the tallest building in downtown Manhattan after the collapse of the World Trade Center.
While Trump himself was documented on September 13 to have been a few blocks from ground zero and said he'd visited the site, his claim to have sent over 100 of his construction workers in the immediate aftermath of the attack and to have "helped a little" himself has been disputed.
In 2019, Richard Alles, a New York City Fire Department battalion chief on the day of the attack, who said he was on the scene about 20 minutes after the second tower collapsed, told PolitiFact that he had no knowledge of Trump sending a crew of men to help with the wreckage.
“I was there for several months—I have no knowledge of his being down there," Alles said, adding that if Trump had sent a crew of 100 workers, "there would be a record of it. Everybody worked under the direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services. Is there a chance he was ever down there by himself and I didn’t know it? It’s possible, but I know of no one who ever witnessed him there.”
Other outlets, including The Associated Press and The Washington Post, said they contacted Trump's 2016 campaign to ask for details about his activity following the attacks, but received no response.
Neither of the two firefighters who supposedly carried Trump to safety has ever publicly come forward to discuss their run-in with the famous New York developer, and Trump did not mention the incident during interviews at the time.
Trump has a history of lies surrounding 9/11, including that he saw "thousands" of Muslims "cheering" in Jersey City as the towers fell and that he personally "predicted" the attacks in one of his books.
He has also been found to have misled the public about his philanthropy related to the tragedy: In 2001, he pledged to donate $10,000 to a recovery fund for victims and first responders, which the city comptroller's office ultimately found was never delivered. More than 15 years later, his foundation gave $100,000 to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
His business empire also received $150,000 from a post-9/11 recovery program meant for businesses affected by the attacks, which Trump has claimed was reimbursement for allowing victims to use his building at 40 Wall Street to take shelter. But the application made no mention of shelter and instead stated that the request was for compensation for lost rent, cleanup, and repairs following the attacks, according to a 2016 investigation by the New York Daily News.
Journalist Ron Filipkowski described Trump's tale about the firefighters as yet another instance of what he's called "stolen valor," but was astonished by its specificity.
"I know he's lied about his non-role in 9/11 rescue and recovery before, but never this level of detail," he said. "Trump could have made the ceremony with 9/11 first responders today about the many heroes who died attempting to rescue people and others who risked their lives and long-term health. But instead, he created a fictitious event featuring himself, who did nothing, as the hero of 9/11."
Making it more offensive, other commentators said, was the double standard from Republicans, like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who have claimed "offense" at the fact that Mamdani, as a Muslim, was planning to attend 9/11 memorials on Friday.
"The people mad about the Mayor of New York attending the 9/11 event must be ENRAGED that Trump just lied about being at ground zero on 9/11," wrote Tim Fullerton, a former digital strategist for the Obama administration, on X. "This is all about honoring the victims and not just to score points. Right???"
Mamdani on Tuesday released around 170,000 pages of records indicating that Giuliani's administration had misled New Yorkers about the severity of air quality risks near ground zero after the attacks.
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El-Sayed Plays 'The Price Is Wrong' With Michigan Voters to Expose Cost of Trump Trade Wars
"Come on down! All this could be yours... except the price is WRONG because of Trump's tariffs."
Sep 08, 2026
Modeled on the familiar logo of a long-running daytime game show, US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed displayed a hand-drawn picture of a dollar sign along with the words "The Price Is Wrong" in a video posted to his official social media accounts Tuesday—and offered Michigan voters the chance to play his version of the game, inspired by President Donald Trump's policies.
"This is probably true of everything you're buying right now," said El-Sayed, who is running against former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers after winning the Democratic primary election last month, as he pointed to the handmade sign. "We're going to ask Michiganders about just how much everything has gotten more expensive over the last year because of Trump's tariffs and his war in Iran."
First up, a voter learned that a container of 100 Tide detergent pods, which now costs nearly $30, cost just under $22 a year ago at this time—before Trump joined Israel in attacking Iran, leading to the retaliatory measure of Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting spike in oil and gas prices.
"That's almost a 30% increase in price for the same Tide pods," said El-Sayed.
A package of Target brand toilet paper cost $6 last year, and another voter guessed it's currently marked at $8.50—off by 50 cents, said El-Sayed, who revealed the package would now cost $9 at a Target store in Michigan.
Target-branded protein powder cost $40 last year, and Trump's policies have raised the price to $54 this year, said El-Sayed, while a one-pound bag of coffee beans from Tim Hortons is nearly a dollar more than it was last year, priced now at $9.32.
El-Sayed released the video as Canada imposed its new retaliatory tariffs targeting about $20 billion in US imports, in response to the 50% tariffs Trump announced late last month on a range of Canadian goods including dairy products, paper, and cement.
According to a June poll by Epic-MRA, 63% of Michiganders—including 35% of Republicans—opposed Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods, which he first announced last year along with levies on numerous other countries that he said had treated the US unfairly in trade.
About three-quarters of voters in that poll said they thought Trump's tariff policy was fueling higher prices for everyday goods.
The Midwest Economic Policy Institute found in July that due to Michigan's shared border with Canada and the close ties shared between the auto industries in Michigan and Ontario, Michigan households were paying as much as $3,200 in extra costs due to Trump's tariffs—about 142% more than the rest of the US.
“Donald Trump is launching this trade war for his own vanity, and he’s asking Michigan families to pay the price,” El-Sayed said in a statement last month. “Trump has been failing Michigan through these chaotic tariffs and bad trade deals for far too long, and Mike Rogers won’t do anything but rubber-stamp them.”
At Michigan Advance, columnist Rick Haglund warned last month that Michigan would likely "pay a steep price for Trump’s reckless actions."
"Canada is Michigan’s largest trading partner with about $70 billion in goods flowing across their borders in 2024, the latest available data," said Haglund. "Thousands of jobs are connected to Michigan auto parts manufacturers, farmers, and others who export goods to Canada."
Trump's unprovoked war on Iran has also been linked to spiking diesel prices, which is driving up transportation costs—and as a result, consumer prices—for many everyday goods like those featured in El-Sayed's mock game show.
"Americans are paying way more for everyday goods they have to buy at the grocery store, all because of this insane war that is spiking the price of gas, spiking the price of diesel, spiking the price of your everyday goods," said El-Sayed. "And now, a trade war that's expanded with Canada."
"Americans are sick and tired of playing 'The Price Is Wrong,'" he added. "I think it's time for us to play 'The Price Is Right.'"
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Doctors Without Borders Says Trump Aid Cuts Fueling Humanitarian Catastrophe in Sudan
"War is driving Sudan’s needs; funding cuts are shrinking the response."
Sep 08, 2026
The renowned humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday that the Trump administration's destruction of the US Agency for International Development has contributed to the collapse of the war-torn nation's healthcare system, forcing clinics to close and leaving millions of people without access to lifesaving treatment.
The organization, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said the closure of USAID last year at the behest of President Donald Trump and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, left many healthcare providers in Sudan "unable to find alternative funding to continue providing services," leaving facilities with no option but to shut down in the midst of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe.
"War is driving Sudan’s needs; funding cuts are shrinking the response,” Muhammad Ibrahim, MSF's head of mission in Sudan, said in a statement on Tuesday. “MSF’s work in Sudan is privately funded. But when funding disappears from other health services, clinics close, patients have fewer places to go, and pressure shifts to the facilities that remain, including ours.”
MSF said its hospital in Um Rakuba, a refugee camp in eastern Sudan, is now "the only lifeline left" for locals and refugees.
"The cuts here go well beyond healthcare," emphasized Fabrizio Locuratolo, MSF humanitarian affairs manager. "Food rations are shrinking and protection programs are being dismantled, pulling away the last safety nets and leaving refugees completely exposed.”
The dismantling of USAID by Musk's wrecking crew at the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency has already killed hundreds of thousands of people—most of them children—according to experts tracking the impacts on humanitarian aid around the world. Musk and the Trump administration have continued to deny that the aid cuts have killed any children.
A study published in The Lancet earlier this year estimated that the gutting of USAID—whose surviving programs were mostly transferred to the US State Department—could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by the end of the decade. The US Department of Agriculture took over USAID's Food for Peace program—and subsequently omitted Sudan from the list of countries that would receive shipments of US grain.
MSF said Tuesday that "just as health providers faced the impending removal of US support, many European governments also reduced their assistance to people in Sudan."
The results have been horrific. MSF said that "malaria and malnutrition cases are already rising despite limited rainfall, ahead of the peak of the rainy season—and we expect numbers to increase as the rain intensifies."
"In August, our teams admitted 191 children under five with severe malnutrition to our inpatient feeding center, and nearly 22% also tested positive for malaria," the group said Tuesday. "The UN reports that 825,000 children under five are expected to suffer severe acute malnutrition and 19.5 million people faced crisis-level hunger earlier this year. Yet the UN’s $2.87 billion response plan is barely 41 per cent funded, and 37 per cent of Sudan’s health facilities are estimated to be completely out of service."
"As world leaders gather at the UN General Assembly, governments and institutional donors must protect funding for essential health services in Sudan and provide flexible transitional financing where facilities are at risk of closure," the organization pleaded.
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Corbyn Urges UK Government to Condemn Gaza Genocide After Israeli Settlement Trade Ban
"This is not merely a matter of semantics. This is a matter of international law."
Sep 08, 2026
Amid Israeli settlers and soldiers' unprecedented violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn was among those arguing on Tuesday that the United Kingdom's new "sanctions on illegal settlements are welcome, but not enough," and calling on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to condemn Israel's war on the Gaza Strip as genocide.
On behalf of the UK's ruling Labour Party, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He was joined by leaders from Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, who confirmed "their intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions" on trading with Israeli West Bank settlements.
Corbyn, a former Labour leader from Islington North who has since co-founded Your Party, declared that "Britain must end all arms sales, all military cooperation, and all forms of support that sustain Israel’s system of apartheid, occupation, and genocide."
In addition to speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Corbyn wrote to Burnham that "for three years, we have witnessed the abominable destruction of human life in Gaza," where "Israel has killed at least 73,000 people, excluding an untold number of people lost under the rubble."
While welcoming Burnham's recent admission that Labour "got it wrong" and its "initial response to the treatment of Gaza caused huge hurt," Corbyn said that "it is extremely disappointing that these words have not translated into meaningful action."
"It has not gone unnoticed that, 50 days into your premiership, you have declined to call 'the treatment of Gaza' what it really is: a genocide," the MP stressed, noting that the term has long been used by scholars and human rights advocates globally. "This is not merely a matter of semantics. This is a matter of international law."
"Far from preventing genocide, the British government has facilitated genocide through ongoing military, economic, and political cooperation," Corbyn charged, pointing to his call for an independent public inquiry into the UK's complicity. "The question is not whether Labour got it wrong. The question is what your government will do now."
Corbyn asked Burnham to confirm if he will establish an inquiry, end all military cooperation with Israel, impose widespread sanctions, overturn the ban on the advocacy group Palestine Action, and support the work of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice—the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, and the ICJ has taken up South Africa's genocide case on the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) conduct in Gaza.
As Corbyn pushed UK leaders to go further than the new trade ban—which is largely symbolic—the Israeli government responded to the sanctions by taking aim at a dozen people, including Corbyn and his Your Party co-founder, MP Zarah Sultana, barring them from entering Israel.
Israel also banned four Labour MPs—Diane Abbot, Richard Burgon, John McDonnell, and Naz Shah, as well as five members of the Green Party: Sian Berry, Ellie Chowns, Carla Denyer, Adrian Ramsay, and Hannah Spencer. The final person barred from Israel is Fahad Ansari, a lawyer who has represented Hamas' political wing in court in the UK, according to The Times of Israel.
Ansari replied on social media Tuesday that "I am neither British nor an MP but do take this as a badge of honor (although pretty sure I'm already a persona non grata in the apartheid state)."
Meanwhile, others in the United Kingdom and around the world joined Corbyn in framing the Labour government's sanctions as progress, while also emphasizing that, as the Corbyn-founded Peace & Justice Project put it, "they should only mark the start of the process in bringing about real peace and social justice for the Palestinian people, who have been subjected to decades of unimaginable subjugation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide."
"The UK government must commit to a full arms embargo on Israel, ending all forms of military cooperation with the IDF, and supporting the ICC arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his Cabinet," the project declared, calling for the full implementation of recommendations from the Gaza Tribunal report from last year.
Describing the UK's "concrete action" and recognition of "Israel's unlawful occupation and ethnic cleansing" as "hugely welcome," Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK's chief executive, noted that Miliband "promised a 'comprehensive reset' and today could be the sea change that is needed."
“Amid ethnic cleansing, genocide, and apartheid against Palestinians, today's measures are a genuine step towards accountability for Israel's repeated and flagrant violations of international law," she said. "The commitment to ban trade in settlement goods and some services, prohibit financing of settlements, refuse arms that contribute to the occupation, and support the genocide case before the International Court of Justice represents a significant change of course."
"For years, Amnesty has worked with members, partners and parliamentarians from across the political spectrum to press for meaningful change, and today shows that campaigning for human rights works," she added. "But today is not the end of the road. The test now is whether these commitments are properly implemented and enforced, and followed by the wider action needed to hold Israel accountable for its crimes and meet the UK's obligations under international law."
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'Urgency Is Real': Experts Call for New Federal Investigative Agency Amid Rogue AI Breakouts
"We’ve been lucky so far—the harms have been limited. But luck is no substitute for the law."
Sep 08, 2026
Following last week's exposure of new details about OpenAI's artificial intelligence agents autonomously escaping a controlled environment and hacking outside computer systems, experts on Tuesday called for the creation of a new federal agency tasked with investigating AI companies.
Initial reporting on the recent breakout by ChatGPT maker OpenAI's artificial intelligence agents—which independently breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during internal testing—described the incident as an attempt to achieve optimal performance on a cybersecurity evaluation.
But citing a report published late last month by the independent nonprofit Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR), Mackenzie Arnold and Stephan Llerena at the Institute for Law & AI wrote for The Guardian on Tuesday that the OpenAI incident involved hundreds of coordinated rogue agents that "took steps to hide their behavior" from the company's human workers.
"Concerned that the automated scoring system might identify the agents’ cheating, they aimed to learn more about the scorer," Arnold and Llerena wrote. "The goal wasn’t just to cheat, but to hide it."
Artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing toward a point at which humans will no longer be able to control it. Meanwhile, companies like OpenAI are proving that they cannot be trusted to be transparent about incidents like the Hugging Face breach. Yet there is no existing regulatory body tasked with addressing the obvious—and unknown—threats posed by a technology whose own creators openly worry could one day wipe out humanity.
Arnold and Llerena warned that they've "been worried for a while that legal requirements for reporting incidents" like the OpenAI breakout "are insufficient."
"When planes crash, trains derail, or chemical plants explode, expert government investigators arrive with legal authority to compel evidence, preserve records, and tell the public what happened," they wrote. "Hugging Face reported this incident to law enforcement, and multiple attorneys general have expressed interest in looking into it."
"But no government agency has both the mandate and expertise to investigate the technical facts of the incident and OpenAI’s conduct," the experts noted. "As far as we know, the only people to examine this incident did so at OpenAI’s discretion and with its consent."
"And while the Hugging Face breach is not as severe as a plane crash, it was a serious and costly attack. It’s unlikely to be the last, or the most severe," the pair continued. "What we need is a federal body equipped to conduct expert investigations of serious AI incidents—with the authority to compel documents and testimony, resources, and personnel to examine the systems involved, and the ability to partner with third-party experts like METR."
Arnold and Llerena cited the National Transportation Safety Board as a model for such an agency. The NTSB, they wrote, "investigates accidents with subpoena and wide-ranging investigative powers. Aircraft operators must preserve wreckage and records; and the NTSB may confer with employees and contract external experts."
"Congress can build a similar system for AI incidents, while protecting AI developers’ legitimate interests," they asserted. "Investigations should open only upon clear triggers and be bound to the incident. Certain confidential information can receive statutory protection. And investigations can be limited to one agency, with priority to avoid duplicative investigations."
While some Democrats in Congress and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have called for stronger federal oversight and regulation of AI companies, critics argue that these calls don't go far enough, and that existing legislation—such as the American Artificial Intelligence Leadership and Uniformity Act—is far more focused on limiting AI regulation than on actually regulating the technology.
"The need and urgency is real," Arnold and Llerena stressed. "Subsequent reports have revealed that the Hugging Face breach was not an isolated incident and that autonomous agents from Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI have hacked third parties in separate incidents."
"We’ve been lucky so far—the harms have been limited," they added. "But luck is no substitute for the law."
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Private Chats From Israeli Guards Detail 'Horrifying' Abuse, Killings of Palestinian Prisoners
"Israeli detention centers have essentially become torture camps," said one Israeli rights group in response to the new revelations. "Torture is Israel's policy."
Sep 08, 2026
Newly uncovered text messages sent by guards at Israel's Ketziot Prison reveal a pattern of appalling abuse against Palestinian prisoners, with some guards boasting of beating detainees to death.
As reported by Haaretz on Tuesday, WhatsApp messages sent in November 2023 showed guards at the prison gleefully recounting violent assaults on prisoners, openly hoping their actions would deliver fatal injuries.
"They're doing CPR in the clinic right now, baby!" wrote one guard after describing the beating delivered to a detainee. "God willing, that son of a thousand whores will die."
Another guard excitedly wrote that "they're doing CPR on a prisoner because we beat him," then relayed news that the prisoner had passed away.
"He's dead," wrote the guard. "Listen, it's funny how it all happened in an instant: Boom, count. Boom, dead prisoner."
A third guard gloated in a message that "we fucked them up so bad."
The texts were uncovered by Israeli prosecutors as part of an indictment filed last week against a dozen prison guards for their alleged roles in the deaths of nine Palestinian prisoners.
Haaretz noted that prosecuting guards for alleged abuses against Palestinians is normally difficult due to guards' unwillingness to speak out, which is why prosecutors' ability to obtain the text messages was so crucial.
"The investigation files now coming to light offer a rare glimpse into the guards' routine use of severe violence against Palestinian prisoners," Haaretz explained. "They also reveal evidence of senior officials suppressing accounts and turning a blind eye, if not taking part themselves. At least one witness alleged that Ketziot Prison commander Yosef Knipes was involved. He denied it."
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who earlier this year published interviews with Palestinian prisoners detailing the sexual abuse they allegedly suffered at the hands of Israeli forces, wrote in a social media post that the unearthed texts offer a "horrifying account" of "how Israeli prison guards brutalized Palestinian prisoners, sometimes killing them, even as the US supplied endless weapons and diplomatic support."
Israeli rights group Breaking the Silence argued that the texts uncovered by investigators represent only a small part of the total abuse carried out in Israeli prisons.
"Since October 2023, more than 100 Palestinians have entered Israeli custody alive and later left in body bags," the organization wrote. "Israeli detention centers have essentially become torture camps. Torture is Israel's policy."
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Amnesty Says US-Israeli Attacks With Indiscriminate Weapons in Tehran May Have Been War Crimes
"The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in the vicinity of concentrations of civilians has foreseeably indiscriminate effects and as such is prohibited under international humanitarian law."
Sep 08, 2026
The recent resumption of US airstrikes in Iran, including on a wedding party where at least 25 civilians were killed last week, made Amnesty International's Tuesday report on previous suspected US-Israeli attacks in Tehran in the early days of the war all the more urgent, said the organization as it pointed to new evidence of potential war crimes by the American and Israeli militaries in the densely populated Iranian capital.
Amnesty analyzed US-Israeli airstrikes on three residential neighborhoods—Resalat, Niloufar, and Javadieh—between March 1-13, in which the coalition used "explosive weapons with wide-area effects," killing at least 41 civilians and damaging multiple homes, a school, businesses, and other civilian infrastructure.
“Amid the resumption of US strikes in Iran and renewed threats by US President Donald Trump to target civilian infrastructure, it is imperative that the US and Israel end all unlawful attacks and strictly comply with international humanitarian law, including by taking all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects during the planning and execution of military operations," said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.
The group noted that military infrastructure and police stations—which could be considered legitimate military targets in Iran, as the police forces are part of the broader armed forces there—were struck in the attacks in question. Israel and the US have not publicly claimed responsibility for the three specific attacks, but they announced strikes against Iranian "regime" targets in Tehran at the time of the airstrikes.
Amnesty emphasized that even if military and police buildings were the primary targets, "a large presence of civilians was clearly foreseeable" when the US and Israel evidently carried out the attacks in the three neighborhoods, which "resulted in devastating and yet entirely predictable consequences for civilians."
International law demands that warring parties do not carry out "indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks" that could harm civilians across the surrounding area, said the group.
Military leaders, said Amnesty, are also obligated to "choose weapon types and attack methods that reduce the risk of harming civilians and destroying civilian objects."
"The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in the vicinity of concentrations of civilians has foreseeably indiscriminate effects and as such is prohibited under international humanitarian law," the group stated. "Additionally, an attacking party remains at all times bound by the principle of proportionality, weighing the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from an attack against the expected harm to civilians and civilian objects, including the reverberating humanitarian consequences resulting from the attack."
"Launching indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians and disproportionate attacks are war crimes," said Amnesty.
The group analyzed satellite imagery and verified 60 videos of the three attacks, as well as reviewing public statements from officials in the US, Israel, and Iran to reach the determination that US and Israeli forces had potentially committed war crimes in the Tehran neighborhoods—a possibility the group said must be independently investigation.
In Niloufar, where at least 20 civilians were killed on March 1, eyewitness accounts described two explosions at around 9:00 pm local time, when restaurants and other businesses were open in the bustling neighborhood.
The attack directly struck a police station, but residential buildings and businesses were also struck.
A shop owner told Etemad Online that "before the attack… dozens of people were sitting in front of the cafés in the square. All the shops were open... When the police station was struck, those who were sitting on the pavement in front of the cafés were killed."
"The whole street was full of blood," they added. "I saw one person whose chest had been pierced by broken glass. Many children, women, and young people were killed here that night."
Callamard said that "the civilian death toll, the scale of destruction, the timing of the attacks, the impact on nearby civilian structures, and the lack of effective advance warnings point to alarming failures by the US-Israeli coalition to abide by the obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm and spare civilian objects."
At least 16 people were killed in Resalat on March 9, in an attack that heavily damaged a building belonging to the Basij battalion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as three buildings adjacent to the facility. Amnesty International confirmed that at least one of the buildings, known as Number 12, was a residence.
Satellite imagery from March 6, 2026 (left) shows the Basij facility and nearby buildings in the Resalat neighborhood. On March 21, 2026 (right), imagery shows four distinct buildings with heavy damage and destruction. (Photo by ©Planet Labs PBC)
Twelve members of the same family were killed when Number 12 was struck, and an informed source identified as Payam told Amnesty that "there were no military people, no special individuals, no one connected to the government, no important person" in the building.
"Everyone living [in Number 12] was ordinary civilians," he said. "The whole building was families.”
The husband of a 26-year-old woman who was killed in the attack told Etemad Online that the scene of the bombing was "so horrific that they will never leave my mind. Body parts were found separately... A hand had been thrown to the entrance of the road or onto the roof of a house."
The attack in Javadieh, a densely populated low-income neighborhood in Tehran, took place on March 13 and killed at least five civilians, with a police station on Ghorbani Street a possible target.
"The destruction and damage extended well beyond the police station, and affected homes, businesses, and other civilian structures across the surrounding neighborhood," said Amnesty. "State media reported that several nearby residential buildings were also destroyed and many others severely damaged."
Videos verified by Amnesty show the impact of the blast extending up to more than 50 meters (164 feet) away from the police station. A restaurant, bakery, and motorcycle shop were all damaged, as well as a number of residential buildings.
Amnesty called on the US, Israel, and Iran to coordinate inquiries by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission regarding allegations of "serious violations of international humanitarian law by all parties."
Tens of thousands of US and Israeli attacks on Iran have killed at least 1,469 civilians, including hundreds of children. Israel has also killed at least 4,333 people in Lebanon since early March, in retaliation for Hezbollah's strikes in response to the assault on Iran. In retaliatory strikes across the region, Iran has killed at least 50 people civilians, according to Amnesty.
“The US/Israeli strikes in Tehran investigated by Amnesty International may constitute indiscriminate attacks and amount to war crimes," said Callamard. "They must be the object of independent, impartial, effective, and transparent investigations."
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Watchdog Thanks Mamdani for Release of 9/11 Air Quality Files Hidden From Public for Years
"People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air," Mamdani said, announcing the release of 170,000 files.
Sep 08, 2026
A watchdog group representing 9/11 first responders and survivors applauded New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday as his administration released a trove of long-buried files that shed new light on how New Yorkers were misled about air quality and health risks in the wake of the terrorist attack.
“I want to thank Mayor Mamdani for being the mayor, after 25 years, who finally begins to answer the question, ‘What did the city know about the dangers from the toxic cloud at ground zero, and when did it know it?’” said Benjamin Chevat, a longtime advocate for programs to help survivors and first responders, who leads the group 9/11 Health Watch.
Days before the 25th anniversary of the attack that took nearly 3,000 lives, Mamdani's office is releasing around 170,000 pages of records that were stored in a city office and kept from public view for more than two decades. The New York Times, which reviewed the documents prior to their release, said they contain "air quality reports, contamination records and correspondence among city officials."
There is no definitive total of the number of people who have died as a result of health complications caused by the attack, but as Mamdani noted during a press conference on Tuesday, it has almost surely far surpassed the number killed in the attack itself.
"The devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled," Mamdani said. "For so many New Yorkers who lived, or worked, or studied near ground zero, and for the thousands of others who worked on the pile, recovering those we'd lost and clearing the rubble, that was only the beginning of years of hardship and illness."
These survivors, he said, were forced to remember September 11, not just on its yearly anniversary, but "each time they take a struggling breath, each time they have to swallow a pill, each time another chemo dose is administered."
The documents released by Mamdani's office were uncovered following a yearslong fight between 9/11 Health Watch and New York City's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which initially claimed the files had gone missing.
Following pressure from the City Council and a lawsuit from 9/11 Health Watch, DEP later revealed that the files had been stored in 68 highly organized boxes in the agency's possession, which fueled speculation about a cover-up by the city and led a New York City judge to rule that the city's denial was "arbitrary and capricious."
"For 25 years," Chevat said, "four different mayoral administrations kept from the public, the US Congress, and the City Council documents showing what the city actually knew about the danger of the toxic chemicals in Lower Manhattan and Western Brooklyn after the World Trade Center collapse, even as city officials continued messaging to the public that the air was 'safe and acceptable.'"
The first tranche, released on an online portal Tuesday, shows that while city and federal officials assured Americans that the air was safe to breathe, asbestos and other toxic chemicals were being detected at and around Ground Zero until at least July 2002, more than 10 months after the attacks. It also shows that analyses by the Environmental Protection Agency found carcinogens around lower Manhattan, in some cases above acceptable limits.
Also released was an October 2001 memo sent to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's deputy mayor, Robert Harding, showing that the then-mayor's administration expected as many as 10,000 claims from plaintiffs harmed, including by toxic exposure, after public health advisories assured them it was safe to return to Lower Manhattan, and from first responders who had inadequate safety equipment.
The records also point to apparent efforts by the city to downplay the substandard air quality in order to ease the public’s fears about returning to business as usual following the attacks.
Documents show that even as test results revealed worrying levels of asbestos, city officials sought to massage those findings, avoiding the word "risk" in public advisories. Another document acknowledged that the city may have given residents a dangerous recommendation when it advised them to use wet mops and rags to clean up asbestos dust in their homes, a task that typically requires licensed crews.
The release of the files gives credence to the concerns raised at the time by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), whose district included ground zero.
“They knew about the air quality, and they essentially did nothing about it,” Nadler said of the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations in an interview with the Times last week. "I suspect that all they cared about was getting Wall Street reopened, and they didn’t give a damn about the health of the people down there.”
Mamdani's release of the files comes as his opponents launch attacks against his Muslim identity and imply he bears sympathy with the al Qaeda jihadists who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Over the weekend, Giuliani said in an appearance on the right-wing cable channel Newsmax that Mamdani should be banned from participating in the ground zero commemoration because the attack was carried out "in the name of the Muslim religion” and that the perpetrators "weren’t hiding it like Mamdani is trying to hide it.”
Mamdani has responded that he would attend multiple 9/11 remembrance events on Friday to support first responders and families who lost loved ones.
“I’m proud to be the mayor of this city. I love this city. I love this country,” he said. “What I want this week to be a focus on is the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11, and a focus also on the first responders who did everything they could.”
Mamdani said on Tuesday that his release of the files was part of an effort to do right by New Yorkers harmed by the shortcomings of the city's response to the attacks.
"It would be one thing if the government had stood alongside survivors and provided them with everything they needed at every step of the way. And yet, we know that could not be further from what actually happened," Mamdani said. "People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air."
"Administration after administration has ignored those calling for answers and clarity, instead choosing to bury them in legal arguments and in red tape," he continued. "We will do no such thing as we mark 25 years."
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Elections Analyst Says Trump Has 'Uniquely Hurt' His Own Voters Ahead of 2026
"Take Iran—after promising no more wars and all that—but fuel, fertilizer, no more wars, you take tariffs, and all this goes to the heart of his base."
Sep 08, 2026
President Donald Trump's economic policies have hurt his own voters to such an extent that it's creating opportunities for Democrats in unexpected places, according to elections analyst Charlie Cook.
In an interview with The New Republic's Greg Sargent published Tuesday, Cook pointed to a number of Trump actions that have caused discontent among both swing voters and members of his base.
Cook pointed to Trump's illegal war with Iran as a particularly toxic policy, both because it broke a key 2024 campaign promise about no new wars in the Middle East, and because it has raised the price of countless consumer goods, including diesel fuel and fertilizer, both vitally important for US farmers.
"I mean, you take Iran—after promising no more wars and all that—but fuel, fertilizer, no more wars, you take tariffs," Cook said, "and all this goes to the heart of his base, of, you know, small-town, rural, farm, all of that."
"To have the people that are generally the most enthusiastic for you uniquely hurt," Cook added, "now, that’s new territory."
Cook said that Trump similarly hasn't helped himself with actions such as "redecorating the White House in Washington, self-aggrandizement, alienating allies, depleting military stockpiles," which the veteran analyst said further eroded voters' patience.
What the overall data shows, Cook concluded, is that Republicans are "underperforming in places that have just been gimme putts,” a development he described as “astonishing."
Cook isn't alone in noting the deep voter unhappiness. Some Republican running for reelection are showing signs of concern as well.
As noted in a CNN report published Monday, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) took out a negative ad targeting Democratic rival Adam Hamilton, whom polls suggest is creating a surprisingly close race in a state that Trump won by 14 points or more in all three of his presidential campaigns.
And Politico reported on Monday that Rep. Young Kim (D-Calif.) has deleted all references to Trump from her campaign's homepage, even though she used to tout herself as a "proven fighter who will stand with President Trump to deliver a bold America First Agenda."
According to CNN, Democrats in competitive races are hammering away at the broken promises Trump made on the economy during the 2024 presidential campaign, including his vow that prices would start coming down on his very first day in office.
"The word that I hear almost daily is ‘drowning,'" Rep. Kristen McDonald (D-Mich.) told CNN. "Families in my district are drowning, and it is so much worse for them now than it was two years ago."
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'Must Be Just the Beginning': UK, France, Canada Move to Ban Imports From Israeli Settlements
"Today, we refuse to be bystanders to further suffering and to the destruction of the two-state solution," said UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband.
Sep 08, 2026
The United Kingdom, France, and Canada joined forces on Tuesday to ban imports of goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, where settlers and soldiers are assailing, displacing, and killing Palestinians at an unprecedented rate with the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
"Today, we refuse to be bystanders to further suffering and to the destruction of the two-state solution," Ed Miliband, the UK's foreign secretary, said in a speech to the House of Commons. Miliband pointed to the Israeli government's recent approval of construction projects that would evict Palestinian communities and "place settlements directly between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, cutting through the heart of Palestine."
"Let’s be clear what this means: the creation of a set of facts on the ground to make the two-state solution unviable," said Miliband, in what was described as the UK government's most forceful condemnation of Israeli conduct in the West Bank to date. "The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank—perpetrated by settler terrorists. And all too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians."
Miliband said the UK government would "take action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion" and penalize "those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements." He said the sanctions would be in place within six to nine months.
Miliband emphasized that in banning imports from Israel's West Bank settlements, the UK was not acting alone. The British foreign secretary noted that France and Canada will also "ban the import of goods from illegal settlements," joining "the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Norway—which have either banned goods or are in the process of doing so."
Jean-Noël Barrot, France's foreign affairs minister, wrote on social media that France is cutting off imports from illegal Israeli settlements "because the West Bank is on the brink of explosion: unchecked expansion of colonization in violation of international law, surge in violence perpetrated by extremist settlers against Palestinians, acts of terror denounced by the Israeli authorities themselves."
"France cannot, through its trade, support a situation that threatens the security of Israelis and Palestinians alike, as well as peace and stability in the region," Barrot wrote. "Europe must uphold the same imperative."
In a joint statement on Tuesday, the foreign ministers of 12 nations—the UK, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden—said that the situation in the West Bank is "rapidly deteriorating amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project."
The foreign ministers confirmed their "intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law, or that they are actively considering these and other measures, in accordance with their national procedures."
"In this regard, the UK, France, and Canada welcome the important action already taken by Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium, and will bring forward national measures to ban trade in settlement goods," the statement continued. "The government of Israel must immediately halt the expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence, and investigate allegations against Israeli forces."
Advocates largely welcomed the governments' announcements while stressing that they should be the starting point for more sweeping action to confront the Israeli government's illegal annexation efforts in the West Bank and crimes against humanity across the Palestinian territories, including the decimated Gaza Strip.
"Today’s announcement is the result of many years of work by campaigners and Palestinians themselves fighting to end severe injustice," said Nick Dearden, director of the UK-based advocacy group Global Justice Now. "We know this move will be very popular in Britain. But it must be just the beginning. How can we cooperate with a military guilty of the most serious abuses of international law? How can we trade with a country that stands accused of genocide at the world’s highest court?"
Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, dismissed the UK government's sanctions announcement as "largely performative," but said they also "reflect the impact of relentless public pressure on the current government."
"The UK is legally obliged to take serious measures to end its complicity with the State of Israel, not merely with the settlements, per the [International Court of Justice]," said Barghouti. "While Miliband says, 'We will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two-state solution,' he has not said how the UK will stop its active contribution to the Israeli-US led destruction of the international legal system and the drive towards a might-makes-right order."
US and Israeli officials responded furiously to the UK's sanctions announcement. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's extremist national security minister, called for the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem, while Israel's finance minister demanded the expulsion of the British ambassador.
Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, characterized the UK's trade ban as "discrimination against the Jewish people" and suggested that individual American states such as Florida could retaliate against the British government.
US Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), a rabidly pro-Israel lawmaker and anti-Muslim bigot, wrote on social media that "Florida is one of Britain’s largest trading partners" and signaled that the state could move to boycott UK goods.
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