SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
america 250
Hegseth Is Demanding US Households Pay $5,000 More Per Year to Fund the Pentagon, Economist Says
“Secretary Hegseth, you are asking for unlimited money for bombs when people can’t feed their families," said one Democratic senator.
Jul 22, 2026
Critics lit into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he demanded on Tuesday that Congress pass President Donald Trump's plan for a $1.5 trillion military budget.
While testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Hegseth once again made a pitch for the president's massive defense spending proposal, going so far as to say that "not funding [the US Department of Defense] at $1.5 trillion is the greatest threat that our nation faces."
Pete Hegseth: Not funding this department at $1.5 trillion is the greatest threat our nation faces. pic.twitter.com/j2AvDMdpzg
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 21, 2026
In a social media post, economist Dean Baker put Trump's proposed budget into context by noting that the additional requested defense spending "is a bit less than $5,000 per household."
Baker also pointed out that the US already has a massive defense budget, writing that "before Bozo the president came in, we did fine on $860 billion," a total that is larger than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, Germany, India, and the UK.
Some Democratic lawmakers signaled their opposition to the $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request, which would represent an increase of more than 50% of what the US spent on its military in 2025.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) slammed Hegseth to his face during the hearing and pointed out that the unprecedented defense spending request was coming at a time when many Americans are struggling to afford gasoline and groceries.
"Secretary Hegseth, you are asking for unlimited money for bombs," Gillibrand said, "when people can't feed their families."
GIllibrand: So essentially you're asking for literally $1.5 trillion for a war that President Trump said he already won? Secretary Hegseth, you are asking for unlimited money for bombs when people can't feed their families. pic.twitter.com/MY03ohvj6W
— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) July 21, 2026
In an interview with MeidasTouch chief Washington correspondent Scott MacFarlane, Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) predicted that Democrats’ response to Hegseth's demand for tens of billions of dollars in supplemental funding for the Iran war on top of the sprawling NDAA “is going to be a ‘hell no.’”
"How many times have we been told this war is over?" Ansari asked. "How many times have we been told that it's not a war?... I'm not giving another dollar to this."
“The response is going to be a ‘Hell No”
Rep Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) on how Democrats will vote on Pete Hegseth’s request for tens of billions of dollars for war pic.twitter.com/q9IQ9mYVH4
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) July 22, 2026
Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) announced his opposition to the Hegseth budget in a social media post.
"Trump and Hegseth forced us into a disastrous, illegal war in Iran and now they want $1.5 trillion to keep it going," wrote Carbajal. "The American people want to end forever wars, not to fund them."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Grotesque and Indefensible': At Least 1.5 Million Kids Have Lost Food Aid Under GOP Budget Law
"The damage from the SNAP cuts could worsen quickly as some states are considering ending their SNAP programs entirely as soon as October 2027," warned one expert.
Jul 22, 2026
At least 1.5 million children have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits since US President Donald Trump signed the Republican budget package into law last summer, enacting the largest cuts to federal food aid in the nation's history.
The new estimate of food aid loss among children comes from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which said Tuesday that SNAP participation was down by over 4.5 million people overall between July 2025 and April 2026. Refuting the Trump administration's narrative, the liberal think tank emphasized that the unemployment rate nationwide has been roughly flat since last July, meaning it is "very unlikely that reduced need is driving the decline in SNAP participation."
Arizona has seen the most staggering decline in SNAP participation. It has fallen 48% overall and 49% among children in the state since enactment of the Trump-GOP budget law, which instituted new work-reporting requirements for some recipients and punishments for states with elevated payment error rates. Under Republican law, states will for the first time have to pay a portion of SNAP benefit costs, which previously were fully covered by the federal government.
"Grotesque and indefensible," policy analyst Michael Linden wrote in response to the new data, noting that the Republican budget law slashed taxes for wealthy households while decimating SNAP.
Earlier this week, The New York Times published a report detailing the horror show residents have experienced as they've attempted to reenroll in SNAP after improperly losing benefits due to bureaucratic chaos stemming from the GOP law.
As states have raced to limit the massive new costs they will soon face under the law's cost shift, many eligible families are losing SNAP because they can’t navigate new bureaucratic obstacles & understaffed states can’t keep up with the added paperwork. https://t.co/DOCI3axDed pic.twitter.com/8OzMUpkLc7
— Katie Bergh (@Katie_Bergh) July 21, 2026
Sharon Parrott, CBPP's president, said Tuesday that the consequences of the massive SNAP cuts—totaling around $200 billion over the next decade—have been "stark: an ill grandmother raising teens can’t get her SNAP reinstated despite being eligible, and parents are skipping meals to save food for their children. Families who have had their food assistance taken away are turning to overburdened food banks, which cannot fill the gap."
" House Republicans are looking past this emergency in their budget legislation—while using it to help farmers struggling with high costs due to Trump’s tariffs and oil prices driven up by the war in Iran," said Parrott, referring to the GOP's new reconciliation package.
"The damage from the SNAP cuts could worsen quickly as some states are considering ending their SNAP programs entirely as soon as October 2027, when the cost shift takes effect. States unable or unwilling to pay the costs they incur will have no choice but to end the program," Parrott warned. "People across the US consistently say they want Washington to focus on affordability, especially the cost of food. Mitigating last year’s cuts to SNAP and staunching the number of families and children losing SNAP would be a good place to start."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Trump Admin Teaming Up With Mass Voter Challengers Is a Nightmare for Democracy
Mass voter challenges threaten voters, they swamp overburdened election officials with unnecessary work, and they fuel mistrust in our elections.
Jul 22, 2026
In March 2025, two members of the Department of Government Efficiency team communicated with a political advocacy group that was seeking to “find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.” The group was trying to match Social Security records with copies of voter files that it had acquired. One of the DOGE team members even signed a “voter data agreement” with the group. While it’s still unclear if DOGE members shared any personal Social Security data, the revelation raised a scary prospect: that the federal government might collaborate with election deniers looking to block American voters from the ballot box.
Most states have laws that allow voters to challenge other voters’ eligibility. Baseless mass challenges to hundreds or thousands of voters at a time are a growing problem. They threaten voters. They swamp overburdened election officials with unnecessary work. And they fuel mistrust in our elections.
As my colleague Andrew Garber lays out in a new report, the rise of the election denier movement and technological advances have come together to make mass voter challenges a persistent problem in recent elections. Our research found that at least 185,232 voter challenges were filed in 2024 alone, and that follows hundreds of thousands of challenges filed in the previous two election cycles.
Mass challenges by private citizens add little value because of the work by dedicated and professional election officials to keep the voter rolls clean. In contrast, these challenges rely on shoddy data-matching techniques often designed to confirm wild conspiracy theories.
The reality is that the president has no more power to run our elections than the activists bringing these challenges. So the only way their efforts to undermine our elections will succeed is if voters lose faith in the whole enterprise and stay home this fall.
Until recently, these challengers have been outsider activists. The idea they may now have the support of the federal government sends chills.
The Trump administration’s efforts to support baseless voter challenges go beyond a couple of stooges at DOGE. As we’ve been tracking for months, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been pressuring states to cough up their voters’ confidential personal data. Like all the Trump administration’s election interference efforts, this pressure campaign has mostly fallen flat, with courts consistently blocking the requests. But 16 states were all too happy to hand over their voters’ data. And when they did, the DOJ asked them to sign a data security agreement that contained an ominous loophole in the protocols for private contractors with whom the department might share voter data. Meanwhile, one of the primary perpetrators of mass challenges in recent years, Rick Richards, creator of a mass challenge software called EagleAI, reportedly met with the DOJ in 2023 to demonstrate the tool. “They like it,” he claimed.
For these reasons and more, Garber predicts that “challenges will continue to be an integral strategy in the playbook to undermine the democratic process” in this year’s elections and beyond.
Promisingly, the Brennan Center’s research also reveals that thanks to the tireless efforts of election workers and federal legal protections, the vast majority of mass challenges do not lead to inappropriate purges of voters from the rolls.
But even small rates of disenfranchisement are a concern, and challenges can confuse or intimidate voters even when they don’t formally block them from voting. And the harms of mass challenges extend much further.
For one thing, they create tremendous burdens on election officials during a time when they should be preparing for the daunting task of running elections. In 2022, in Gwinnett County, Georgia, it took between 5 -10 experienced elections staff working “all day, every day, six days a week” to evaluate the 37,000 challenges filed by just one organization, VoterGA. In the end, not a single ineligible voter was removed as a result of the challenge.
You may be asking yourself: If these mass challenges do nothing to help election officials and only make their jobs more difficult, why do our laws allow them? There must be some good reason why we let Americans challenge their neighbors’ right to vote. Well, no, not really. The answer, as is so often the case when it comes to restrictive voting laws, is racism.
In a separate publication released Tuesday, my colleague Justin Lam lays out the racially discriminatory history of voter challenge laws. They were one of many devices states used to undermine the promise of the 15th Amendment and continue to deny Black people the right to vote. Some of these tools, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, were outlawed in the 1960s. Others, such as felony disenfranchisement and voter challenge laws, survived, perhaps because they were not so closely associated with Jim Crow. But history makes the association clear. As just one example, in 1946, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Eugene Talmadge distributed challenge forms to his supporters and urged them to “disqualify and mark off the voters’ list three-fourths of the Negro vote in this state.” Lam explains that these laws have also been used to successfully suppress the votes of Native, Latino, and Asian American voters.
Modern challenges look a little different. They are often more noteworthy for how incredibly wide a net they cast. Activists challenge everyone to create the illusion of issues with voter rolls. Today’s challengers often seem less concerned with targeting a particular group than they are with advancing conspiracy theories. In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, a Republican member of the board of elections griped, “I can’t tell you how many hours of my life I’ve wasted trying to debunk” the false narratives of voter challengers.
That official’s complaint hints at the final harm of mass challenges and their true purpose: undermining public faith in elections. Indeed, it makes sense that the Trump administration might be looking to partner with mass challengers. The administration’s election interference campaign has the same goal. The reality is that the president has no more power to run our elections than the activists bringing these challenges. So the only way their efforts to undermine our elections will succeed is if voters lose faith in the whole enterprise and stay home this fall.
Garber’s report ends with a series of policy recommendations for ending mass challenges. We hope lawmakers take them up. But, as with so many other threats to our democracy, perhaps the most important response will come from voters. Check your registration and make a plan to vote. Read and respond to election mail sent by your local officials. Cast your ballot as early as possible. Consider all the options in your state and consider returning your ballot in person or via drop box if you can. Encourage your friends and family to do the same. The more we invest in our democracy, the harder it will be to undermine it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
LA Must Stop Bidding for Mega Sports Events
The city’s FIFA World Cup experience raises questions about the costs and benefits of hosting.
Jul 22, 2026
The FIFA World Cup is over, but with the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics on the horizon, Los Angeles’ mega-event spree is just beginning. Paul Krekorian, a former LA City councilmember and now head of the mayor’s Office of Major Events, has declared the World Cup a triumph for the city.
“Even some of the naysayers about the ’28 [Olympic] games,” he told The New York Times, “will have to look at the unmitigated success of the World Cup here in Los Angeles and say, 'OK, now I understand what you’ve been talking about, when you talk about the benefit of major events. Now I get how this is beneficial to Angelenos.'”
As one of those so-called “naysayers,” I disagree. LA’s World Cup experience reinforces concerns about the city’s ongoing efforts to bring one sports mega event after another to the region. Hosting major events always gobbles up public resources that could otherwise be directed toward pressing needs, while host cities under pressure to sparkle on camera often violate residents’ rights.
The people paid to organize these big events, like Krekorian, love to repeat myths about mega-event benefits while pooh-poohing questions about the costs. But saying, "No" to more mega events is saying, "Yes’ to a city that puts residents ahead of corporate sponsors. It’s saying, "Yes" to a city that puts long-term planning ahead of last-minute scrambling.
The host committee’s human rights listicle fails to acknowledge that mega events’ own massive security apparatuses often threaten residents’ rights and safety.
Bidding to host one major sports event after another is the explicit goal of the LA Sports and Entertainment Commission (LASEC), a little-known but influential organization that acts as the local host committee for both the FIFA World Cup and the Super Bowl.
As LA’s World Cup host committee, LASEC has refused to publish the host city contract with FIFA. That means Angelenos do not know who exactly is paying—and how much they’re paying—for the significant additional city and county-run security, transportation, and sanitation services that come with hosting. Refusing to disclose that information is shady business. What is LASEC hiding? (Probably at least the fact that taxpayers are footing a large bill.) If LASEC leaders show such little regard for basic transparency, why should residents allow them to continue shaping the region’s commitments?
Because World Cup hosts have a record of violating human rights as they prepare for and host the mega event, each 2026 host committee was supposed to develop a plan to proactively protect human rights. LA’s long-overdue “plan” turned out to be a list of existing laws and hotlines. Several local advocacy groups have concluded that human rights were an afterthought for LASEC.
The host committee’s human rights listicle fails to acknowledge that mega events’ own massive security apparatuses often threaten residents’ rights and safety. On the day of the first game in the US, for example, snipers in military fatigues sat on rooftops about a mile from the temporarily renamed “Los Angeles Stadium,” pointing rifles down in the direction of Black and Latino kids playing soccer at a street festival. Over LA’s eight game days, the area around the stadium was teeming with local, state, and federal police. Some prevented local residents from accessing their own homes; some hassled and ticketed street vendors; and others monitored the area’s extensive (and expanding) AI-powered surveillance systems, technology that has been denounced by privacy and human rights organizations. Before and during the World Cup, federal agents conducted multiple raids on a LA city park, one where homelessness and drug use are visible. The raids allegedly targeted drug trafficking networks but have had the effects of displacing vulnerable individuals and disrupting essential harm reduction services. It seems likely these spectacular policing operations were timed with the park’s World Cup watch parties in mind.
The militarization of relatively small urban areas for the World Cup offers us just a taste of the much larger, more invasive operations Angelenos can expect to see with the 2028 Olympics, as police forces try to “secure” more of the region. Unfortunately, like LASEC, LA28 is showing little appetite to take human rights seriously. Its own months-late “human rights strategy” suggests unsheltered Angelenos will be displaced from event areas, a recipe for trampling on human rights. The strategy does not mention Immigration and Customs Enforcement once, even though ICE will be a core part of Olympic security operations. While there were few reports of ICE around the Los Angeles Stadium for the World Cup, ICE arrests surged across LA and the nation while we consumed the beautiful game. ICE’s efforts will be more concentrated on LA for the Olympics.
Krekorian talks up the benefits of hosting major events. The meager “legacy” projects promoted by LA’s World Cup Host Committee—26 community grants, two volunteer days, and one soccer clinic—reflects a paradigm shift from past World Cup and Olympic host cities that promised large-scale urban transformation as legacy projects. While it’s good that LA leaders aren’t overpromising at the same scale and public expense, we’re now left with a new question: Without marquee legacy investments, what justifies the financial and social costs of hosting?
LASEC argues that mega events bring lasting economic benefits, but these claims have been consistently debunked by economists. The assertion that events generate a long-term tourism boost? There’s little evidence of that for already popular destinations like LA. The promise of a short-term bump in tourist spending? Mega events attract sports-loving tourists but actually deter other potential visitors. So while attendees spend a lot of money at stadiums and multinational hotels, other cultural attractions and businesses struggle during big events. Just ask the Louvre about the Paris 2024 Olympics. During this World Cup, much like for the 2022 Super Bowl, the owners and staff of several local businesses near the Los Angeles Stadium told me game days were bad for business, as their regular customers stayed away to avoid chaotic traffic.
Beyond one-off grants and volunteer days, LA’s World Cup “legacy” boils down to intangibles, like the moments of collective effervescence and the sense of witnessing history. These intangibles are why I love watching the World Cup. But they do not justify the costs of hosting.
LASEC is unwilling to be transparent with the public and uninterested in grappling seriously with human rights concerns. This World Cup has not demonstrated that mega events generate substantive benefits that warrant the immense expenditure of city and county resources. LA must put a stop to LASEC’s plans to continue diverting public resources to one mega event after another.
Keep ReadingShow Less
SCOTUS as Tyrant: Handmaiden to Corporate America
In exercising its power today, the Supreme Court’s priority is not the state of the nation, but the well-being of corporate enterprise.
Jul 22, 2026
The Supreme Court of the United States today is the final arbiter of public policy—deciding incontestably which laws will stand and which will not—but that power was simply asserted by the court years ago, never bestowed by the Constitution or in law.
Merriam-Webster defines a tyrant this way: an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution; a usurper of sovereignty. Close enough?
In exercising its power today the court’s priority is not the state of the nation, but the well-being of corporate enterprise in America.
A recent example: On June 29, 2026 the court issued its decision in the case of Trump v. Slaughter. It found unconstitutional the statutory isolation of the Federal Trade Commission from partisan political interference. It said President Donald Trump could fire Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter not for cause—inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance, as specified in the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914—but only because she is a Democrat.
By neutering the Voting Rights Act, encouraging gerrymandering, and freeing Trump to gut the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the court is up to its enrobed necks in rigging the upcoming elections.
The largest winner by far was not Donald Trump, but every corporation in America regulated by law. There are dozens of other independent regulatory agencies protecting the American people from harmful activities, conditions, and practices. So critical are these agencies to the health, safety, and welfare of the nation, Congress intentionally set them apart from the executive branch, to insulate them from the back-and-forth of partisan politics. The court has upended that safeguard, exposing the agencies to the whims of Donald Trump—who can staff them now with corporate-friendly Republicans. (Trump wasted no time in decapitating the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the agency funding election security measures at the state level.)
Note how the Supreme Court jeopardized the regulatory agencies. It declared as unconstitutional the provision in the Federal Trade Commission Act protecting commissioners from capricious removal. The court can do this because it holds a power known as judicial review. It measures the laws underlying its cases against the Constitution, and strikes down those it finds inconsistent.
Supreme Court justices were never elected, but they nullify laws enacted by people who were—the Congress and the president. Every time it does so the court literally overrides democracy. Isn’t that tyranny?
This is not remotely what the Framers of the Constitution intended.
Article III Section 2 specifies what the Supreme Court can do. Except for infrequent interstate and international litigation the court functions with appellate jurisdiction. The court can do either of two things: It can uphold a lower court decision, or overturn it. Nothing else. That’s it. The court is empowered to sit in judgment of law cases. Nowhere is it empowered to sit in judgment of the laws.
The Framers meant the court to be subordinate. In Federalist 78 Alexander Hamilton said this:
The Judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of powers... it can never attack with success either of the other two [branches]…
And in Federalist 81 he was explicit:
...there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration [i.e. the Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution…
Today’s Supreme Court invalidates laws without a speck of constitutional authority, and it has done so for 233 years.
That takes us back to 1803 and the Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison.
Federalist President John Adams in the last days of his term appointed 16 new lower court judges—all of Adams’ Federalist persuasion. Among them was William Marbury. The judges’ commissions were to be delivered by the secretary of state, as specified in the Judiciary Act of 1789, but in the scurry of a departing administration they were not. Then Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as president. Intending to appoint judges of his own party instead, Jefferson ordered his Secretary of State James Madison not to deliver the commissions. Marbury sued for his, citing the 1789 law. John Marshall’s Supreme Court found Madison guilty, but also saw the Judiciary Act as slightly askew of the Constitution. It was the pickiest technicality, but on that basis the court dismissed the case.
Chief Justice Marshall said in the court’s written decision, “It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is... a law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” So said John Marshall, but nobody else, certainly not the writers of the Constitution.
Marshall claimed judicial review simply by fiat and set the subordinate court on the road to tyranny.
Note where our Supreme Court is today. By neutering the Voting Rights Act, encouraging gerrymandering, and freeing Trump to gut the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the court is up to its enrobed necks in rigging the upcoming elections.
Judicial review was initially benign. After Marbury it wasn’t invoked again for 57 years, and might have remained tolerable had not the court paired it with another appalling action: a decision enabling corporate enterprise eventually to dominate the writing of public policy.
In the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the Supreme Court simply declared chartered corporations were persons as described in the 14th Amendment, with rights guaranteed by the Constitution: free speech, equal protection under the law, etc. The declaration violated the protocols for establishing legal precedents, but later courts cited the case anyway. Corporate personhood—prima facie preposterous—became a matter of stare decisis, “settled law.”
If corporations have constitutional rights and if they can prove in court those rights are violated by a law, they can sue to have the law overturned. They can use judicial review as a weapon.
And after Santa Clara County they did.
The 14th Amendment was meant to grant citizenship to Black Americans, freed from enslavement by the Emancipation Proclamation, and to guarantee their equal treatment under the law.
Three-hundred and seventy-seven cases based on the 14th Amendment were heard by the Supreme Court over the 27 years following Santa Clara County: 19 of them dealt with Black citizens seeking equal protection under the law; 288 were initiated by corporation citizens, also seeking equal protection—primarily to invalidate irksome laws.
As the centuries turned corporations succeeded in overturning minimum wage laws, child labor laws, laws limiting the workday, workmen’s compensation statutes, laws limiting corporate lobbying, and laws regulating utility companies. They sued for and won additional constitutional rights, those granted by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments—rights of privacy and the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Between 1905 and the mid-1930’s, the Supreme Court found some 200 corporate-restraining laws and regulations to be unconstitutional.
As the 20th century progressed the toxicity grew. The combination of judicial review and corporate personhood would prove in time to be fatal to democracy.
In a 1976 case, Buckley v. Valero, the Supreme Court found unconstitutional the 1910 Corrupt Practices Act, a law strictly limiting the money political candidates could spend campaigning. No, the court said, spending money is a form of free speech, and the Congress cannot abridge that right. Dollars are words? Isn’t that also prima facie preposterous? Two years later in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the court overturned the 1907 Tilman Act, prohibiting corporations from spending money on political campaigns. Citing Buckley, the court said the equivalence of money and speech applied to corporations as well.
Bellotti, however, clashed with an existing law, not prohibiting but sharply limiting corporate campaign contributions: FECA, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1972.
In 2010 the case of Citizens United v. FEC resolved the clash. If corporations could not be restrained at all, then how much they spent was immaterial. Section 441b of FECA was unconstitutional. Out with it. Corporations can spend as much as they please.
But not to worry, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:
...independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption…The appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in democracy.
Yes, prima facie preposterous, as documented in a 2026 study by the Brennan Center: 92% of registered voters surveyed said corruption is a major problem in politics and government, citing campaign contributions from corporations and billionaires as the causative factors.
After Citizens United a torrent of corporate money cascaded into the political campaigns of both parties, protected by the right of free speech. And for years corporate lobbying had been protected by their right of petition. The corporate grip tightened in a frontal attack on democracy.
Corporations today outspend citizen interest groups in lobbying by a factor of 86:1. In the 2024 election cycle corporations and their PACs and super PACs contributed 71% of the total of campaign donations, about $10.65 billion. “Large private donors” (read billionaires) contributed another $2.85 billion, 19% of the total. Small individual donations came to $1.5 billion, about 10%.
By any measure corporations and to a lesser extent billionaires are the dominant influencers of federal governance today. Their financing of political campaigns renders elected officials into indentured servitude, open to corporate requests. Then corporate lobbyists specify the details.
Public policy today routinely advances not the well-being of the American people, then, but the preferences of corporate America and its embedded billionaires.
This is what the Supreme Court has enabled, after Marbury, after Santa Clara County, after Buckley, after Bellotti, after Citizens United, after Trump v. Slaughter,
Dollars outweigh votes.
This article is drawn from a book the author is completing, The Triumph of Corporate Oligarchy: How It Defeated Democracy, Normalized Fraudulent Warfare, Devastated a Thriving Nation, and Enabled the Trump Presidencies.
Keep ReadingShow Less
No, Friends on the Left, We Shouldn’t Tax Hardworking Americans Into Poverty
Many of those who would adamantly oppose the creation of a society where the income tax impoverishes struggling workers to enable those with seven-figure incomes to pay low rates are working overtime to maintain that very same situation.
Jul 22, 2026
Imagine this 2029 scenario: Americans making $1,000,001 or more per year have a slightly higher federal income tax rate than they currently do, while Americans who can’t afford to put food on the table—the ones who make less than what it takes to cover basic living expenses—don’t pay federal income taxes at all. Now imagine that President JD Vance proposes to cut the income tax rates of those with incomes over $1 million and to recover the lost revenue by taxing the working poor even further into poverty.
How many Democratic politicians would vote for that? How many left-leaning think tanks would write white papers supporting it? And how many left-leaning activist groups would lobby in support of it? NONE.
Unfortunately, the very tax structure that hypothetical proposal envisions already exists. Yet, amazingly, many of those who would adamantly oppose the creation of a society where the income tax impoverishes struggling workers to enable those with seven-figure incomes to pay low rates are working overtime to maintain that very same situation.
Recognizing that taxing hardworking people into poverty is both morally wrong and economically asinine, earlier this year, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) introduced the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act (WATCA). Twenty-one senators and 13 representatives have signed on. The AFL-CIO has endorsed WATCA, as have the American Federation of Teachers, Oxfam, Americans for Tax Fairness, Take on Wall Street, and nearly a dozen other tax and justice organizations.
WATCA is based on the simple concept that workers with incomes equal to or less than the basic cost of living should not be required to divert income needed for basic necessities to pay federal income tax. WATCA provides an exemption from federal income tax for income up to the basic cost of living, $46,000 per year for a single American with no children, and recovers the lost tax revenue with a surtax on incomes over $1 million.
Criticism of WATCA has been fast and furious, coming mostly from folks who purport to advocate for average Americans. Their commentary, which can be found in American Prospect, Democracy, The New York Times, and even Rolling Stone, is chock-full of concocted reasons why continuing to oppressively tax struggling Americans is a fine idea. Mostly, their arguments are a repackaged version of billionaire Republican Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) idea that he pushed in 2022 that the income tax requires all Americans to have “skin in the game.” Scott’s idea bombed badly—so badly, in fact, that he shelved it after just a few months.
The Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act fixes a fundamental structural flaw in the federal income tax: We’re taxing those with no ability to pay into poverty, while maintaining top rates that are absurdly low.
The words used by WATCA critics differ, although often not by very much, but the concept is the same. A Roosevelt Institute blog post explains how tax policy should “bind us all to one another.” In an impressive mental gymnastics routine, former Larry Summers acolyte Natasha Sarin acknowledges that ordinary Americans are “right to resent a tax system that’s skewed against them,” but that making those at the top pay their fair share would not be enough, so it’s the civic duty of everyone, no matter their level of income, to pay federal income tax. In Democracy, writers from the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, including two Obama and Biden administration alums, somehow manage to start by recognizing that the income tax "embodies the principle that the government should be financed based on ability to pay” yet end by attacking a proposal based on its recognition of the inability of those with income below the basic cost of living—or income below any threshold for that matter—to pay income tax.
You can’t top the tone-deafness of a billionaire Republican senator insisting that all Americans pay income tax to have “skin in the game.” But you know what comes close? A group of ivory-tower policy wonks ensconced in air-conditioned offices and drawing comfortable six-figure salaries insisting that exempting janitors making $40,000 a year from federal income tax would be a tragic policy mistake. No, they don’t use the phrase “skin in the game,” but they may as well.
And let’s be clear, all Americans have a lot of skin in the tax game whether or not they pay federal income tax. In fact, if Social Security and Medicare taxes were labeled to reflect what they actually are—income taxes—all but the lowest income Americans would be considered to be paying federal income tax.
Other attacks on the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act are equally off base. The second favored theme is to mischaracterize WATCA as a middle-class tax cut. That attack line seizes on the reality that it’s never possible to craft a tax bill that precisely addresses its underlying policy objective. Exempting income up to the basic cost of living from income tax unavoidably confers an incidental benefit on those with incomes at a slightly higher level, a benefit that is rapidly phased out under WATCA.
So, yes, Americans with incomes considered middle class stand to benefit from WATCA. The benefit, however, becomes vanishingly smaller as income increases into middle-class range. But that didn’t stop former Biden National Economic Council member Bharat Ramamurti from referring to WATCA as a “very sweeping middle-class tax cut” which he suggested reflected poor prioritization. Consider how flat Ramamurti’s criticism would fall had he said that a tax cut for underpaid workers struggling to make rent reflected poor prioritization.
The Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act fixes a fundamental structural flaw in the federal income tax: We’re taxing those with no ability to pay into poverty, while maintaining top rates that are absurdly low. We can quibble about the details of fixing that flaw. Maybe the basic cost of living in America is not exactly $46,000. Maybe the cost-of-living exemption should be phased out over a narrower income range.
When our organization, Patriotic Millionaires, worked with congressional offices to develop WATCA, we fully expected commentary along those lines. But ironically enough, there has been remarkably little of it. Instead, we’re hearing that the fundamental structural flaw—and the misery it inflicts on struggling workers—should be left unaddressed. And as a result of their moral ambivalence, we’re left with a Democratic Party that can’t understand why working-class Americans have left them. We can.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Netanyahu 'Should Be Arrested and Tried,' Says Mamdani, But NYC Lacks Authority to Detain Him
"The federal government, however, does—and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant," said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Jul 22, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a brief video address late Tuesday that his administration lacks the "independent legal authority" to enforce an International Criminal Court warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
Mamdani said in his two-minute address that after reviewing "every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here," his administration determined that it did not have the authority to do so.
"The federal government, however, does—and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant," said Mamdani, who characterized Netanyahu as a "war criminal" and "the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people."
"Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large," said the New York City mayor, who—according to one recent poll—is more popular with Jewish adults in the US than the Israeli prime minister. "While we cannot end the genocide on our own, we can decide whether our silence will become another weapon, and we can examine every tool we have to defend the humanity and dignity of all people."
Watch Mamdani's full remarks:
Mamdani said during his 2025 mayoral campaign that, if elected, he intended to pursue Netanyahu's arrest should the Israeli prime minister set foot in New York City. Netanyahu is expected to be in the city in September for the United Nations General Assembly.
US President Donald Trump said earlier this week that Netanyahu would "not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America."
Neither the US nor Israel are party to the treaty that established the International Criminal Court, and the US State Department earlier this month launched an effort to "dismantle" the ICC, which is tasked with investigating and prosecuting individuals for war crimes.
Mamdani said in his address on Tuesday that Netanyahu is "responsible for the killing of more than 73,000 people, for the maiming of tens of thousands of children as those who survive undergo amputation without anesthesia, [and] for the targeting of neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers, denying newborns even the chance to live."
The mayor also cited a recent UN report accusing the Israeli military of deliberately targeting children in Gaza.
"The list goes on and on. All as we, as Americans, pay for the bombs that do the killing," said Mamdani. "I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes, as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Imagine All the Better Things That Could Have Been Done': Trump Has Blown $37.5 Billion on Iran War
"THIS from the administration that said there was no money for food assistance, Medicaid, and healthcare tax credits."
Jul 21, 2026
While economists have warned for months that the true cost of President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran could be trillions of dollars, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth estimated on Tuesday that it's currently about $37.5 billion.
That figure came from a line of questioning by US Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), as Hegseth appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to support Trump's June supplemental funding request, which includes tens of billions for the Pentagon.
Hegseth told Durbin that the $37.5 billion estimate includes what's been spent so far, plus some projected spending through the end of the fiscal year in September—an exchange quickly met with fury by various critics, many of whom pointed out the range of ways that money could have been better spent by an administration allegedly dedicated to combating "waste, fraud, and abuse."
"Imagine all the better things that could have been done with $37.5 billion," Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, wrote on Bluesky.
Noting that the Strait of Hormuz "is still closed," progressive writer Alex Cole similarly said, "Imagine what $37.5 billion could've done for veterans, schools, or healthcare."
Congressman James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) specifically noted: "That could cover a full school year of free lunches for 30 million children. Or a full year of childcare for nearly 2 million kids."
"Trump finds money for war while families get excuses," he added, as working people struggle with rising costs of housing, groceries, and gasoline—the price of which has soared due to Iran restricting strait traffic over US attacks.
Trump’s war on Iran has so far cost taxpayers $37.5 BILLION.As if skyrocketing gas prices weren’t enough, Trump also expects us to foot this bill.Trump’s illegal forever war has spiraled out of control.
— Public Citizen (@publiccitizen.bsky.social) July 21, 2026 at 5:00 PM
The liberal political group American Bridge 21st Century highlighted how Trump and congressional Republicans have attacked programs for working families while giving more tax cuts to billionaires and waging war on Iran.
"THIS from the administration that said there was no money for food assistance, Medicaid, and healthcare tax credits," the organization said.
Since Trump joined with Israel to start bombing Iran on February 28, most congressional Democrats, legal experts, and other critics have argued that the war—for which the president never secured support from Congress—is not only foolish but also unlawful under both international and US law.
Citing Trump’s attempts to evade limits of the War Powers Act of 1973, Congressman John Larson (D-Conn.) said Monday that he is preparing legal action against the administration and a new bill to cut off funding for the war on Iran, which has killed over 3,000 people according to the Iranian government.
Previous war cost estimates from the US Department of Defense have been met with scrutiny. After Pentagon comptroller Jules "Jay" Hurst offered the $25 billion figure in April, Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, estimated that the government spent at least $71.8 billion during the first two months of the war, or around $1.2 billion per day.
As for the US death toll, at least 17 service members have been killed and many more wounded. The New York Times revealed Monday that the Pentagon hid dozens of American military injuries from Iranian strikes on bases in Jordan last week.
Two Iranian-Americans, a US veteran, and a nurse disrupted Hegseth's Tuesday appearance before the Senate, according to CodePink. In addition to that anti-war group, the protesters were from the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and Vets About Face DMV.
"Pete Hegseth and this administration will be remembered for the killing of innocent civilians and children. They have protected neither the American people nor our security, only the interests that have lined their pockets,” said Bella of NIAC, who joined the protest, in a statement.
"While Americans struggle to afford their lives, this government always finds billions to bomb our families in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, and elsewhere," Bella added. "This is a repugnant betrayal of humanity. It is illegal, and the American people will hold them accountable."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Official Reports 'Unprecedented' Rise in Gaza Miscarriages Amid Israeli Genocide
One US author called the staggering surge a "reproductive genocide that Western feminists can't be allowed to ignore."
Jul 21, 2026
A senior medical official in the Gaza Strip sounded the alarm on Tuesday over a dramatic rise in miscarriages in the Palestinian exclave, with nearly 4,000 cases reported during the first half of 2026 amid Israel's ongoing genocide.
Gaza Medical Relief Director Bassam Zaqout said that 3,958 miscarriages were recorded in Gaza during the first half of this year—an increase the doctor called "unprecedented," and a serious risk to the health of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses.
Zaqout cited the soaring miscarriage rate to factors in Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, including the destruction of the strip's infrastructure, unsanitary living conditions in camps for forcibly displaced Palestinians—where numerous babies have died of hypothermia—lack of hot water and hygiene supplies, and relentless terror caused by Israel Defense Forces bombing.
The Gaza Health Ministry documented 921 miscarriages and 2,004 live births in April. This staggering ratio—460 miscarriages for every 1,000 live births—is more than double that in neighboring nations Israel and Egypt.
Live births have also dropped dramatically in Gaza this year, from 5,210 in January, to 3,433 in February, 3,233 in March, 2,004 in April, and just 1,701 in May 2026, according to the ministry.
Last month, the Gaza Center for Human Rights said that the alarming rise in miscarriages is due to the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, repeated attacks on hospitals, and widespread deprivation of food, medicine, and essential medical services amid 33 months of what United Nations experts and others have described as a genocide.
The Gaza Center for Human Rights said the following factors are the most significant drivers of the miscarriage crisis:
- The widespread destruction of hospitals, primary healthcare centers, maternity wards, and fertility clinics;
- Repeated attacks on medical personnel, including the killing, detention, and targeting of healthcare workers;
- Mass malnutrition caused by Israel's siege;
- The collapse of maternal and child healthcare services; and
- Restrictions on the entry of essential medicines and medical supplies needed by pregnant women and newborns.
The center also noted that Article II of the Genocide Convention—the legal basis for the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice—includes “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” in its definition of the crime.
United Nations officials and other experts have accused Israel of “systematically” using reproductive, sexual, and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians in Gaza and committing “genocidal acts” by deliberately destroying reproductive and healthcare facilities in the strip.
There has also been a documented surge in birth defects among Gaza newborns. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, congenital anomalies doubled in 2025 compared with 2022.
Successive medical warnings of a long-term health catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, with a notable increase in fetal deformities and miscarriages resulting from the harsh conditions of war. pic.twitter.com/T2rN6XQec6
— Eye on Palestine (@EyeonPalestine) June 25, 2026
Experts attribute the increase to many of the same factors driving miscarriages, pointing to contaminated water and widespread malnutrition, including the former famine that killed at least hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, many of them children and infants.
Zaqout warned that Gaza’s health crisis is worsening as severe shortages of medicines, equipment, diagnostic tools, and laboratory supplies persist amid the strip's heavily damaged healthcare infrastructure and ongoing siege. He also noted the epidemics of diseases such as chickenpox, waterborne illnesses, and respiratory infections.
Numerous Palestinian women have lost their pregnancies due to direct acute trauma inflicted by Israeli bombs and bullets, which have often also killed would-be mothers. Israeli invaders have also ordered the evacuation of Gaza's hospitals, forcing staff to leave prematurely born babies to die and decompose in incubators.
A United Nations commission of inquiry reported last month that approximately 30% of the more than 73,000 Palestinians killed during Israel's 33-month war on Gaza were children—many of whom were deliberately targeted. Israeli forces have killed more than 21,500 Gazan children, including 1,022 babies, since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Congress Should Reject Bill That Would Block a Federal Workplace Heat Standard
Jul 21, 2026
The U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce should reject the Heat Workforce Standards Act (H.R. 6123), scheduled to be marked up today, 65 groups said in a letter sent to the committee. The bill would prohibit the Secretary of Labor from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing a federal heat injury and illness prevention standard, or any substantially similar measure.
“Workers have no control over extreme heat, and many are unable to refuse hazardous assignments without jeopardizing their livelihoods,” the letter reads. “Congress should not respond to an escalating occupational hazard by permanently removing the Department of Labor's authority to address it.”
In the wake of a nationwide heat dome that sent workers to emergency rooms across the country just three weeks ago, the committees should reject any legislation that would permanently prohibit federal workplace heat protections. Data from the Centers for Disease Control’s Heat and Health Tracker show that emergency department visits for heat-related illness rose sharply across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic during the first week of July. Postal carriers, delivery drivers, warehouse workers, and manufacturing employees were hospitalized, and in some tragic cases, lost their lives.
Heat-related deaths in the U.S. have more than doubled since 1999, and extreme heat now claims more lives each year than any other weather-related hazard. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimates that its heat standard would protect approximately 36 million workers. Public Citizen has previously estimated that a comprehensive federal heat standard could prevent at least 50,000 heat-related injuries and illnesses each year.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Court Decision to Allow Nuclear Regulator to Ignore Climate Impacts on Future Reactor Operations Does Not Serve Public Safety
Groups vow to continue their challenge to extreme reactor license extensions
Jul 21, 2026
A unanimous decision by three US Court Of Appeals judges in the District Of Columbia to deny an appeal based on the risks of climate change on nuclear reactor safety is a shocking disregard for the ever worsening weather conditions that could put reactor communities at grave risk, said Beyond Nuclear today, one of the groups that brought the appeal.
The petition denied by the court was brought by Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club, against the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), et al. The NRC is federally mandated to protect public safety. The NEI is the lobbying arm and trade group representing the nuclear power industry.
The petitioners argued that the NRC and industry did not adequately consider how aging components and climate change would affect the risk of severe accidents involving reactor-core damage. Of greatest concern is the extension of operating the licenses of the country’s already aging nuclear power plants well beyond the initial 40-year licensing period and the NRC’s refusal to view the more extreme conditions caused by climate change as risk factors to future safe operation.
“We are stunned by the court’s decision, which let the NRC get away with the generalized claim that large conservatisms in their accident risk analyses can cover the unique and site-specific effects of climate change,” said attorney Diane Curran, who argued the case on behalf of Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club. “The NRC has never provided a shred of evidence to show that it has, in fact, evaluated the effects of climate change on accident risk — so how could it know that?”
Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project at Beyond Nuclear said, “This decision allows the NRC to consider future safety challenges to nuclear plants caused by worsening climate conditions by looking in the rear-view mirror. What we are already experiencing today with raging wildfires and extreme flooding, sea-level rise and more frequent violent storms due to climate change, sends a warning that evaluating reactor safety based on the worst climate conditions of the past is not only unrealistic but reckless.
“Just this past week we have seen extreme climate change-driven conditions with raging wildfires in Canada that could equally easily happen in the hotter United States and catastrophic flooding in Texas," Gunter said. "It is shocking that the court accepted the NRC’s argument that under future climate conditions the chances of a severe accident are ‘small.’ Instead of evaluating the real risks, the court decided to adjudicate whether or not the NRC’s environmental review was ‘reasonably explained.’ This does not serve the interests of public safety,” Gunter said.
Beyond Nuclear is carefully evaluating its legal options and will continue to challenge the extreme license extensions at the Oconee (SC), Peach Bottom (PA) and North Anna (VA) nuclear power plants.
“Oconee is of particularly alarming concern because it sits downstream of two earthen rock-filled dams and two million acre feet of water,” Gunter pointed out. “In bringing this case, we were striving to ensure that this community does not become the tragic test case for a failure to guarantee robust safety regulations at our nation’s nuclear plants for the remainder of their operating lives.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy