SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Relatives of Palestinians killed in the Israeli war on Gaza mourn as the bodies are brought to the morgue of a hospital in Deir Al Balah on January 26, 2024.
However valid the claims of oppression, apartheid, etc., against the Palestinian people may be, Hamas’ October 7 attack, in which 1,163 Israeli civilians were killed and 252 taken hostage, some of whom, it is alleged, may have been sexually assaulted, does constitute a war crime. As such, the Jus Ad Bellum criteria—international and moral laws governing when states may resort to armed conflict in national defense—have been satisfied. That being said, the crimes of October 7 do not provide Israel with blanket justification for its use of any and every means at its disposal even as a response to what it may interpret as an existential threat. There is a profound moral and legal distinction between national defense and national preservation.
Nor do International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Laws of Armed Conflict, and the International Law of Human Rights (ILHR) sanction acts of revenge or reprisals against civilians and civilian objects. These include “medical or religious personnel, units, transports, or material; prisoners of war; civilian persons or civilian objects; cultural property or places of worship; objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.”
It is important to note that the statutes and principles of international and moral law are not transactional, that is, they apply universally and remain applicable to all parties to the conflict, irrespective of:
Consequently, despite its warrant to resort to armed conflict in national defense, Israel’s response is not without legal and moral limits. That is, its conduct of the war must satisfy IHL’s Jus In Bello criteria (international and moral law governing a belligerent’s behavior IN armed conflict.)
These two sets of criteria for determining the legality and morality of war, Jus Ad Bellum and Jus in Bello, are conjunctive (“and”) rather than disjunctive (“or”). Consequently, BOTH sets of criteria must be satisfied for a nation’s use of armed conflict to be justified under international and moral law. As noted above, while Israel’s involvement in the conflict in Gaza may be justified in terms of Jus Ad Bellum, there is adequate evidence to raise serious doubts regarding its justness in terms of Jus In Bello—how Israel is prosecuting the war—a scenario Michael Walzer terms “fighting a just war unjustly.”
While the Jus In Bello criteria of noncombatant immunity and the principle of proportionality, diminished somewhat by the Doctrine of Double Effect, does not provide noncombatants with total protection from harm, it does prohibit deliberate—intentional—harming or killing of civilians. Further, it requires that belligerents ensure that any harm done to the civilian population during a military attack must be incidental and involuntary. Further, its purpose must be militarily necessary, unachievable by alternative less or nonlethal means, and proportionate, that is the number of civilian injuries and deaths are not excessive in relation to the direct military advantage gained.
As of this writing, according to local health authorities, more than 35,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 79,366 injured, at least 12,300 of them children, as the Israeli military expands its war into Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, the last refuge of some 2 million Palestinian civilians. “Using publicly available data, Oxfam calculated that the average number of Palestinian deaths (250 per day) in Gaza is higher than any recent major armed conflict including Syria (96.5 deaths per day), Sudan (51.6), Iraq (50.8), Ukraine (43.9), Afghanistan (23.8), and Yemen (15.8.)” Additionally, 150 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) distribution centers and 165 relief facilities including food distribution centers, schools, and hospitals have been attacked and team members killed including seven World Central Kitchen workers.
In response, Israeli apologists have argued that “war is hell,” mistakes do happen, and, despite the best of intentions, civilian casualties are inevitable, especially in densely populated cities. Further, when Hamas fighters use civilians as human shields, responsibility for the civilian deaths must be borne not by the attackers but by those being attacked. Such was the case, it is argued, when an Israeli airstrike killed an alleged Hamas commander who had taken refuge (or perhaps was visiting family members) in a densely populated refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Other casualties in the attack included 50 Palestinian civilians killed and 150 injured.
Under international and moral law, the fact that Hamas may use civilians as shields and that the Israelis may claim that Palestinian casualties were unintended—collateral damage—does not diminish the weight of civilian dead and injured in the proportionality calculus to determine whether the attack was a war crime. Nor does it relieve the Israelis of their obligation and hence, culpability, under Jus In Bello to discriminate and afford immunity to civilians.
What Graham and others fail to understand or choose to ignore is that there is no obligation to unquestioningly support nations or subnational groups, allies or not, that commit war crimes.
Also of legal and moral concern is Israel’s forced displacement of over 1 million Palestinian civilians—450,000 refugees are again on the move fleeing Rafah after Israel’s latest evacuation warning. According to Cindy McCain, the American Director of the U.N. World Food Program, due to the war and Israeli siege tactics—its restrictions on food, water, fuel, and electricity—northern Gaza is experiencing “full-blown” famine.
According to Ilze Brands Kehris, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, more than 90% of the civilian population of Gaza is suffering from food insecurity as a consequence of what can only be described as Israel’s employment of starvation as a method of war. Together with the dramatic increase of violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and security personnel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the indiscriminate attacks that fail to distinguish between civilian and military objectives; the unacceptably high civilian casualty rate; the nearly complete destruction of essential civilian infrastructure; and the forced displacement of most of the population of Gaza provide conclusive evidence not of isolated incidents or mistakes but of a pattern of behavior that disregards the dictates of morality and International law.
Yet, war hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, continue to argue that “Israel should do whatever they want to Palestinians like when the U.S. nuked Japan” and that the United States must fulfill its “obligation” to unquestioningly provide military support to Israel in its war against Gaza.
According to a New York Times investigation, American-made one-ton bombs were responsible for among the most devastating attacks on Palestinian civilians since the beginning of the war.
Tragically, to date, the response by the United States to this humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been limited only to shallow threats “to review some near-term security assistance... while remaining absolutely committed to continuing to support Israel in its right to defend itself.” By failing to hold Israel accountable in any real and meaningful way for its violations of international law, and by continuing to provide money and weapons to support its criminal behavior—something for which we are quick to condemn Iran regarding the Houthis, Hezbollah, and other criminal organizations—the United States violates domestic and international law and risks becoming complicit in Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people.
What Graham and others fail to understand or choose to ignore is that there is no obligation to unquestioningly support nations or subnational groups, allies or not, that commit war crimes. U.S. President Joe Biden in his Memorandum on United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, dated February 23, 2023, reaffirmed that his administration will comply with the Department of Defense Leahy Law that prohibits the U.S. government from “using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.” Yet, despite his rhetoric, Biden has advanced a $1.2 billion transfer of ground-based weapons to Israel, mainly tank ammunition and tactical vehicles, in anticipation of its incursion into Rafah.
To affect an end to the war in Gaza, the U.S. and other High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions must:
Finally, an enduring long-term peace in the region will be possible only when and if:
It is the justifiable moral outrage against Israel’s wanton disregard for international and moral law and for the lives of Palestinian civilians and not antisemitism or support for Hamas, as misreported by Joe Scarborough and others in the mainstream media, that has motivated a resurgence of activism on college campuses all over this nation and the world.
Power to the people!
Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That’s why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we’ve ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here’s the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That’s not just some fundraising cliche. It’s the absolute and literal truth. We don’t accept corporate advertising and never will. We don’t have a paywall because we don’t think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
However valid the claims of oppression, apartheid, etc., against the Palestinian people may be, Hamas’ October 7 attack, in which 1,163 Israeli civilians were killed and 252 taken hostage, some of whom, it is alleged, may have been sexually assaulted, does constitute a war crime. As such, the Jus Ad Bellum criteria—international and moral laws governing when states may resort to armed conflict in national defense—have been satisfied. That being said, the crimes of October 7 do not provide Israel with blanket justification for its use of any and every means at its disposal even as a response to what it may interpret as an existential threat. There is a profound moral and legal distinction between national defense and national preservation.
Nor do International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Laws of Armed Conflict, and the International Law of Human Rights (ILHR) sanction acts of revenge or reprisals against civilians and civilian objects. These include “medical or religious personnel, units, transports, or material; prisoners of war; civilian persons or civilian objects; cultural property or places of worship; objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.”
It is important to note that the statutes and principles of international and moral law are not transactional, that is, they apply universally and remain applicable to all parties to the conflict, irrespective of:
Consequently, despite its warrant to resort to armed conflict in national defense, Israel’s response is not without legal and moral limits. That is, its conduct of the war must satisfy IHL’s Jus In Bello criteria (international and moral law governing a belligerent’s behavior IN armed conflict.)
These two sets of criteria for determining the legality and morality of war, Jus Ad Bellum and Jus in Bello, are conjunctive (“and”) rather than disjunctive (“or”). Consequently, BOTH sets of criteria must be satisfied for a nation’s use of armed conflict to be justified under international and moral law. As noted above, while Israel’s involvement in the conflict in Gaza may be justified in terms of Jus Ad Bellum, there is adequate evidence to raise serious doubts regarding its justness in terms of Jus In Bello—how Israel is prosecuting the war—a scenario Michael Walzer terms “fighting a just war unjustly.”
While the Jus In Bello criteria of noncombatant immunity and the principle of proportionality, diminished somewhat by the Doctrine of Double Effect, does not provide noncombatants with total protection from harm, it does prohibit deliberate—intentional—harming or killing of civilians. Further, it requires that belligerents ensure that any harm done to the civilian population during a military attack must be incidental and involuntary. Further, its purpose must be militarily necessary, unachievable by alternative less or nonlethal means, and proportionate, that is the number of civilian injuries and deaths are not excessive in relation to the direct military advantage gained.
As of this writing, according to local health authorities, more than 35,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 79,366 injured, at least 12,300 of them children, as the Israeli military expands its war into Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, the last refuge of some 2 million Palestinian civilians. “Using publicly available data, Oxfam calculated that the average number of Palestinian deaths (250 per day) in Gaza is higher than any recent major armed conflict including Syria (96.5 deaths per day), Sudan (51.6), Iraq (50.8), Ukraine (43.9), Afghanistan (23.8), and Yemen (15.8.)” Additionally, 150 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) distribution centers and 165 relief facilities including food distribution centers, schools, and hospitals have been attacked and team members killed including seven World Central Kitchen workers.
In response, Israeli apologists have argued that “war is hell,” mistakes do happen, and, despite the best of intentions, civilian casualties are inevitable, especially in densely populated cities. Further, when Hamas fighters use civilians as human shields, responsibility for the civilian deaths must be borne not by the attackers but by those being attacked. Such was the case, it is argued, when an Israeli airstrike killed an alleged Hamas commander who had taken refuge (or perhaps was visiting family members) in a densely populated refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Other casualties in the attack included 50 Palestinian civilians killed and 150 injured.
Under international and moral law, the fact that Hamas may use civilians as shields and that the Israelis may claim that Palestinian casualties were unintended—collateral damage—does not diminish the weight of civilian dead and injured in the proportionality calculus to determine whether the attack was a war crime. Nor does it relieve the Israelis of their obligation and hence, culpability, under Jus In Bello to discriminate and afford immunity to civilians.
What Graham and others fail to understand or choose to ignore is that there is no obligation to unquestioningly support nations or subnational groups, allies or not, that commit war crimes.
Also of legal and moral concern is Israel’s forced displacement of over 1 million Palestinian civilians—450,000 refugees are again on the move fleeing Rafah after Israel’s latest evacuation warning. According to Cindy McCain, the American Director of the U.N. World Food Program, due to the war and Israeli siege tactics—its restrictions on food, water, fuel, and electricity—northern Gaza is experiencing “full-blown” famine.
According to Ilze Brands Kehris, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, more than 90% of the civilian population of Gaza is suffering from food insecurity as a consequence of what can only be described as Israel’s employment of starvation as a method of war. Together with the dramatic increase of violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and security personnel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the indiscriminate attacks that fail to distinguish between civilian and military objectives; the unacceptably high civilian casualty rate; the nearly complete destruction of essential civilian infrastructure; and the forced displacement of most of the population of Gaza provide conclusive evidence not of isolated incidents or mistakes but of a pattern of behavior that disregards the dictates of morality and International law.
Yet, war hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, continue to argue that “Israel should do whatever they want to Palestinians like when the U.S. nuked Japan” and that the United States must fulfill its “obligation” to unquestioningly provide military support to Israel in its war against Gaza.
According to a New York Times investigation, American-made one-ton bombs were responsible for among the most devastating attacks on Palestinian civilians since the beginning of the war.
Tragically, to date, the response by the United States to this humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been limited only to shallow threats “to review some near-term security assistance... while remaining absolutely committed to continuing to support Israel in its right to defend itself.” By failing to hold Israel accountable in any real and meaningful way for its violations of international law, and by continuing to provide money and weapons to support its criminal behavior—something for which we are quick to condemn Iran regarding the Houthis, Hezbollah, and other criminal organizations—the United States violates domestic and international law and risks becoming complicit in Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people.
What Graham and others fail to understand or choose to ignore is that there is no obligation to unquestioningly support nations or subnational groups, allies or not, that commit war crimes. U.S. President Joe Biden in his Memorandum on United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, dated February 23, 2023, reaffirmed that his administration will comply with the Department of Defense Leahy Law that prohibits the U.S. government from “using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.” Yet, despite his rhetoric, Biden has advanced a $1.2 billion transfer of ground-based weapons to Israel, mainly tank ammunition and tactical vehicles, in anticipation of its incursion into Rafah.
To affect an end to the war in Gaza, the U.S. and other High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions must:
Finally, an enduring long-term peace in the region will be possible only when and if:
It is the justifiable moral outrage against Israel’s wanton disregard for international and moral law and for the lives of Palestinian civilians and not antisemitism or support for Hamas, as misreported by Joe Scarborough and others in the mainstream media, that has motivated a resurgence of activism on college campuses all over this nation and the world.
Power to the people!
However valid the claims of oppression, apartheid, etc., against the Palestinian people may be, Hamas’ October 7 attack, in which 1,163 Israeli civilians were killed and 252 taken hostage, some of whom, it is alleged, may have been sexually assaulted, does constitute a war crime. As such, the Jus Ad Bellum criteria—international and moral laws governing when states may resort to armed conflict in national defense—have been satisfied. That being said, the crimes of October 7 do not provide Israel with blanket justification for its use of any and every means at its disposal even as a response to what it may interpret as an existential threat. There is a profound moral and legal distinction between national defense and national preservation.
Nor do International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Laws of Armed Conflict, and the International Law of Human Rights (ILHR) sanction acts of revenge or reprisals against civilians and civilian objects. These include “medical or religious personnel, units, transports, or material; prisoners of war; civilian persons or civilian objects; cultural property or places of worship; objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.”
It is important to note that the statutes and principles of international and moral law are not transactional, that is, they apply universally and remain applicable to all parties to the conflict, irrespective of:
Consequently, despite its warrant to resort to armed conflict in national defense, Israel’s response is not without legal and moral limits. That is, its conduct of the war must satisfy IHL’s Jus In Bello criteria (international and moral law governing a belligerent’s behavior IN armed conflict.)
These two sets of criteria for determining the legality and morality of war, Jus Ad Bellum and Jus in Bello, are conjunctive (“and”) rather than disjunctive (“or”). Consequently, BOTH sets of criteria must be satisfied for a nation’s use of armed conflict to be justified under international and moral law. As noted above, while Israel’s involvement in the conflict in Gaza may be justified in terms of Jus Ad Bellum, there is adequate evidence to raise serious doubts regarding its justness in terms of Jus In Bello—how Israel is prosecuting the war—a scenario Michael Walzer terms “fighting a just war unjustly.”
While the Jus In Bello criteria of noncombatant immunity and the principle of proportionality, diminished somewhat by the Doctrine of Double Effect, does not provide noncombatants with total protection from harm, it does prohibit deliberate—intentional—harming or killing of civilians. Further, it requires that belligerents ensure that any harm done to the civilian population during a military attack must be incidental and involuntary. Further, its purpose must be militarily necessary, unachievable by alternative less or nonlethal means, and proportionate, that is the number of civilian injuries and deaths are not excessive in relation to the direct military advantage gained.
As of this writing, according to local health authorities, more than 35,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 79,366 injured, at least 12,300 of them children, as the Israeli military expands its war into Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, the last refuge of some 2 million Palestinian civilians. “Using publicly available data, Oxfam calculated that the average number of Palestinian deaths (250 per day) in Gaza is higher than any recent major armed conflict including Syria (96.5 deaths per day), Sudan (51.6), Iraq (50.8), Ukraine (43.9), Afghanistan (23.8), and Yemen (15.8.)” Additionally, 150 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) distribution centers and 165 relief facilities including food distribution centers, schools, and hospitals have been attacked and team members killed including seven World Central Kitchen workers.
In response, Israeli apologists have argued that “war is hell,” mistakes do happen, and, despite the best of intentions, civilian casualties are inevitable, especially in densely populated cities. Further, when Hamas fighters use civilians as human shields, responsibility for the civilian deaths must be borne not by the attackers but by those being attacked. Such was the case, it is argued, when an Israeli airstrike killed an alleged Hamas commander who had taken refuge (or perhaps was visiting family members) in a densely populated refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Other casualties in the attack included 50 Palestinian civilians killed and 150 injured.
Under international and moral law, the fact that Hamas may use civilians as shields and that the Israelis may claim that Palestinian casualties were unintended—collateral damage—does not diminish the weight of civilian dead and injured in the proportionality calculus to determine whether the attack was a war crime. Nor does it relieve the Israelis of their obligation and hence, culpability, under Jus In Bello to discriminate and afford immunity to civilians.
What Graham and others fail to understand or choose to ignore is that there is no obligation to unquestioningly support nations or subnational groups, allies or not, that commit war crimes.
Also of legal and moral concern is Israel’s forced displacement of over 1 million Palestinian civilians—450,000 refugees are again on the move fleeing Rafah after Israel’s latest evacuation warning. According to Cindy McCain, the American Director of the U.N. World Food Program, due to the war and Israeli siege tactics—its restrictions on food, water, fuel, and electricity—northern Gaza is experiencing “full-blown” famine.
According to Ilze Brands Kehris, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, more than 90% of the civilian population of Gaza is suffering from food insecurity as a consequence of what can only be described as Israel’s employment of starvation as a method of war. Together with the dramatic increase of violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and security personnel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the indiscriminate attacks that fail to distinguish between civilian and military objectives; the unacceptably high civilian casualty rate; the nearly complete destruction of essential civilian infrastructure; and the forced displacement of most of the population of Gaza provide conclusive evidence not of isolated incidents or mistakes but of a pattern of behavior that disregards the dictates of morality and International law.
Yet, war hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, continue to argue that “Israel should do whatever they want to Palestinians like when the U.S. nuked Japan” and that the United States must fulfill its “obligation” to unquestioningly provide military support to Israel in its war against Gaza.
According to a New York Times investigation, American-made one-ton bombs were responsible for among the most devastating attacks on Palestinian civilians since the beginning of the war.
Tragically, to date, the response by the United States to this humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been limited only to shallow threats “to review some near-term security assistance... while remaining absolutely committed to continuing to support Israel in its right to defend itself.” By failing to hold Israel accountable in any real and meaningful way for its violations of international law, and by continuing to provide money and weapons to support its criminal behavior—something for which we are quick to condemn Iran regarding the Houthis, Hezbollah, and other criminal organizations—the United States violates domestic and international law and risks becoming complicit in Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people.
What Graham and others fail to understand or choose to ignore is that there is no obligation to unquestioningly support nations or subnational groups, allies or not, that commit war crimes. U.S. President Joe Biden in his Memorandum on United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, dated February 23, 2023, reaffirmed that his administration will comply with the Department of Defense Leahy Law that prohibits the U.S. government from “using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.” Yet, despite his rhetoric, Biden has advanced a $1.2 billion transfer of ground-based weapons to Israel, mainly tank ammunition and tactical vehicles, in anticipation of its incursion into Rafah.
To affect an end to the war in Gaza, the U.S. and other High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions must:
Finally, an enduring long-term peace in the region will be possible only when and if:
It is the justifiable moral outrage against Israel’s wanton disregard for international and moral law and for the lives of Palestinian civilians and not antisemitism or support for Hamas, as misreported by Joe Scarborough and others in the mainstream media, that has motivated a resurgence of activism on college campuses all over this nation and the world.
Power to the people!
Democratic lawmakers are vowing to investigate the Trump administration's pressure campaign that may have led to ABC deciding to indefinitely suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday that he filed a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr one day after he publicly warned ABC of negative consequences if the network kept Kimmel on the air.
"Enough of Congress sleepwalking while [President Donald] Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance shred the First Amendment and Constitution," Khanna declared. "It is time for Congress to stand up for Article I."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also said on Thursday that he was opening an investigation into the potential financial aspects of Carr's pressure campaign on ABC, including the involvement of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate and is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC," he said. "We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment."
Progressive politicians weren't the only ones launching an investigation into the Kimmel controversy, as legal organization Democracy Forward announced that it's filed a a Freedom of Information Act request for records after January 20, 2025 related to any FCC efforts “to use the agency’s licensing and enforcement powers to police and limit speech and influence what the public can watch and hear.”
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday vowed to fight back against US President Donald Trump's efforts to attack and dismantle liberal and progressive organizations.
Led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the Democrats introduced the No Political Enemies Act aimed at protecting organizations' free speech rights from retaliation from the federal government.
During his speech touting the new legislation, Murphy recounted recent actions by Trump and his administration, including the president's threats to "arrest members of the Soros family simply for funding groups that oppose his agenda," as well as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr's pressure campaign to get ABC to fire late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel.
Murphy then said that the No Political Enemies Act was necessary because "Donald Trump is right now instructing his Department of Justice to go on the hunt for his political enemies" for challenging him.
"Trump is making it 100% clear that he is going to ramp up his efforts to use the power of the federal government to punish his critics," he said. "This is legislation that makes sure that the law is on the side of free speech and the right to dissent."
The proposed law would give political organizations and individuals new tools to combat political harassment from the federal government, and would allow them to both recover attorney fees and more easily file lawsuits against federal officials who abuse their authority for political purposes.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), who also expressed support for the legislation, put the stakes facing Americans in stark terms.
"We are in the biggest free speech crisis this country has faced since the McCarthy era," he said. "The murder of Charlie Kirk was a horrific crime, and it's clear that Trump wants to hijack that horrific crime to silence anyone who disagrees with the president about any issue."
Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also took a shot at major corporations who have been caving to the president's demands in recent months.
"As we saw last night, far too many billionaires and corporate-owned media companies are bending the knee: Disney and ABC, Paramount and CBS, the Washington Post editorial board, Facebook," he said. "Let's be clear, the ultrawealthy men who own these companies are making a choice. David Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bob Iger—these men are enriching themselves, auctioning off the United State's First Amendment to a wannabe dictator and tyrant."
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) pointed out that the FCC's pressure campaign on ABC to fire Kimmel is particularly nefarious given that Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate, is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"All of this ties back to money and people enriching themselves, and bending the knee to Donald Trump to make it happen," he said.
The Democrats' proposed legislation comes after Trump announced late Wednesday night that he planned to designate “antifa,” a movement of autonomous individuals and loosely affiliated groups who oppose fascism, as a “major terrorist organization."
It also comes comes days after Trump adviser Stephen Miller began pushing a plan to "dismantle" the organized left using the power of the federal government.
During a recent appearance on Fox News, Miller described the entire left as a "domestic terrorism movement in this country," and vowed "to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence."
President Donald Trump's Department of Education has announced that it will partner with right-wing think tanks and organizations to develop a new curriculum for “patriotic education” in American classrooms.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration redirected $137 million initially meant for programs aimed at minority students toward what it described as "American history and civics education."
Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Wednesday that the money will be directed toward discretionary grants aimed at K-12 schools that adopt a new curriculum being drawn up by the 250 Civics Education Coalition—a consortium of more than 40 right-wing groups that launched on same day. The goal, McMahon said, was to advance education that "emphasizes a unifying and uplifting portrayal of the nation's founding ideals" in advance of the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.
It is not Trump's first crack at instilling the nation's youth with a "patriotic education." In the waning days of his first term in office, Trump unveiled the 1776 Report, which, education columnist Jennifer Berkshire recently noted in The Baffler, "was widely panned by actual historians for its worshipful treatment of the Founding Fathers, its downplaying of slavery, and its portrayal of a century-old 'administrative state' controlled by leftist radicals."
While little has been publicized yet about what McMahon's new endeavor will look like, it is known who will be crafting it. The initiative is being led by the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA-aligned think tank that has been responsible for staffing Trump's second administration and has received over $1 million from his political action committee, the Save America PAC. Until 2023, McMahon herself served on the board of AFPI.
In 2022, the group presented a piece of model legislation for a "Civics Course Act" to be introduced in states. It included requirements for students to spend ample time studying the nation's founding documents and figures while banning the teaching of what it called the "defamatory history of America’s founding," which suggests that slavery or inequality are in any way inherent to the nation's institutions.
It also banned the concepts of "systemic racism" and "gender fluidity" and forbade teachers from giving students course credit for engaging with "social or public policy advocacy."
Also included in the coalition is Hillsdale College, a private Christian liberal arts school in Michigan that has proposed its own K-12 curriculum, which Vanity Fair notes "has been criticized for revisionist history, including whitewashed accounts of US slavery and depictions of Jamestown as a failed communist colony."
Another participant is PragerU, the overtly partisan and often factually loose YouTube channel that has been tasked with creating children's educational content in nearly a dozen red states.
The group has produced content venerating figures notorious for practicing slavery, like colonist Christopher Columbus and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Its videos have argued, among other things, that climate change is a myth, that European fascism was a "far-left" ideology, and that Israel has "the world's most moral army."
The pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA will also be involved in crafting the curriculum. Its longtime leader, Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in Utah last week, went on a crusade last year to, in his words, "tell the truth" about Martin Luther King Jr., whom he described as "an awful person," while claiming his signature achievement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was a "huge mistake."
An offshoot of Kirk's group, Turning Point Education, said Kirk's assassination has increased its resolve to promote a "God-centered, virtuous education" in US public schools.
The 250 Civics Education Coalition has not yet published a curriculum. But according to the Department of Education, it will be rolling out "a robust programming agenda" over the next 12 months.
During Trump's second term, he has undertaken an effort to purge federal museums and national parks of what one executive order called "improper ideology," which has resulted in the erasure of exhibits and monuments to Black and Native American history. Last month, he lamented that the Smithsonian Museum focuses too much on "how bad slavery was" and ordered a review of the museum's content.
Federal websites, meanwhile, have systematically eliminated many pages that acknowledged the accomplishments of nonwhite historical figures or important events in women's and LGBTQ+ history.
Critics in the education world view Trump's effort to use grants to induce them to adopt his preferred curriculum as an illegal effort to propagandize children.
"The law is clear," said education historian Diane Ravitch in a blog post. "Federal officials are prohibited from seeking to influence or direct curriculum in any way."
Since 1970, the federal government has been barred by law from "any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum" of public schools.
"Civic education is and must be non-partisan," said Ted McConnell, the executive director of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. "While the funding is long sought, this is the wrong approach and smacks of authoritarianism."