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jd vance
As Catholic Convert Vance Casts Doubt on Execution Livestream, Lead US Bishop Says Plan Promotes 'Culture of Death'
"The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people," Archbishop Paul Coakley.
Oct 09, 2026
While US Vice President JD Vance—a Catholic convert—suggested on Friday that the administration may not actually livestream a firing squad execution at a military base in December, the church's top bishop in the country denounced the widely decried plan.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pledged this week to make the execution of Fort Hood mass shooter Nidal Hasan "public," and officials said that would mean a livestream. As Religion News Service noted, the Pentagon chief is an evangelical Christian who has often spoken about his faith and "attends a church led by Pastor Doug Wilson, a self-described Christian nationalist."
On Friday, the vice president—who recently published a book about his religious experiences, including his conversion to Catholicism—told reporters that despite those statements about a livestream, "I don't know that that's actually gonna happen."
Vance argued that Hasan, a former Army major and doctor, committed "the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9/11," but also said that "if it's ultimately livestreamed, I'm not gonna be watching it."
Meanwhile, using President Donald Trump's preferred term for the Department of Defense, Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement that "it is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War's decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan."
"Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hasan's actions be condoned, but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered. The word of God exhorts us: 'Do not repay anyone evil for evil' (Romans 12:17)," declared Coakley, a "conservative culture warrior" elected to his leadership role last year.
"The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people," he added. "I pray for the intercession of Our Lady of Good Counsel that we as a nation may always choose life even in the most trying times and circumstances."
Coakley joined a growing chorus of critics who have condemned the Pentagon plan, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which said Friday that "the livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture."
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, who had blasted the livestream decision on Thursday, called the archbishop's statement a "strong response from the Catholic Church."
James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of America Magazine, explained that "the Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is 'inadmissible,' primarily because every human being has God-given dignity, even a murderer, even a mass murderer. The televising of an execution is barbarism of the worst kind, offering up death as entertainment."
"Some Catholics still reject Pope Francis' magisterial pronouncement on the death penalty, which is now included in the Catechism," he noted. "But opposition to the death penalty, grounded in the respect for all human life, is not a brand new doctrine. Rather, it is one that took time to develop, as the church came to understand more deeply the innate dignity of every human life."
Sharing Coakley's comments on social media Friday, journalist Paul Blest wrote that "this happening so soon after the botched Tennessee execution is creating the conditions for real momentum against the death penalty."
Tennessee last week botched two attempts to kill Christa Pike with injections of pentobarbital, after which she was rushed to the hospital. Pike's legal team said Thursday that she "continues to experience cognitive challenges" but is taking "limited steps" with assistance. While Republican Gov. Bill Lee has responded by halting executions and ordering a probe, the incident has fueled fresh calls for the US to outlaw the death penalty at the state and federal level.
The Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, also weighed in on the livestream plan, saying Friday that "it is truly incomprehensible that anyone would want to use this method in this day and age. I do not know for what purpose. It is certainly unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle. However guilty the person may be, there are other ways."
"The church's position is one of total opposition to the death penalty. It is incompatible with human dignity and does not serve as a deterrent," Parolin said, acknowledging Coakley's comments and pledging that "there will be a statement from the Holy See."
As the Catholic leaders and others from various faiths spoke out against the Defense Department plan, Robert Jeffress, a Texas-based American Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist, wrote on social media that "I support the Pentagon's decision to livestream the execution of mass murderer Nidal Hasan. Capital punishment is commanded by God in Genesis 9:6 to remind people of the sanctity of human life. The more people that can see that truth illustrated through a public execution, the better."
Christa Brown, a former lawyer, sexual abuse survivor, and author of the memoirs This Little Light and Baptistland, responded: "Livestreaming an execution is barbaric. And no amount of Bible verses will change that."
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'What They Say When They're Scared': Vance Offers 'Brain-Dead' Definition of Socialism
"JD is the most irritating of Trump’s acolytes because he spouts absurd MAGA bullshit, knowing full well how stupid it is," said one critic.
Oct 08, 2026
As Republicans struggle to convince Americans to vote for the party whose policies have made workers' lives more difficult and expensive, they've increasingly invoked the tried-and-true bogeyman of socialism—a word for which Vice President JD Vance offered a bizarrely inaccurate definition during a Thursday press conference.
Asked at the White House how he defines socialism "personally" and why he thinks "socialist candidates are popping up everywhere across the country," Vance replied, "Oh man, you know, I guess, it's honestly, it's a hard term to define these days."
"Because very often socialism, you know, classically, you would think socialism is about prioritizing workers, and yet in reality I guarantee that most of the self-described socialists running across the United States of America are going to howl about this announcement today, which is prioritizing American workers over foreign workers," the vice president said, referring to President Donald Trump's new actions targeting alleged fraud and abuse in the H-1B/J-1 visa system.
"So I don't know what the term means anymore," Vance added. "I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls' sports. That's what unites the socialists that I see running across the United States of America today."
Vance's apparent inability to define socialism, whose fundamental characteristic is collective ownership and control of the means of production—something very few, if any, Democrats are openly advocating—drew ridicule from across the political spectrum.
The vice president's comments came after multiple democratic socialist and other progressive congressional candidates—running on issues including Medicare for All, imposing higher taxes on the rich, and ending US support for military violence in the Middle East—won primary races to face off against Republicans in the November midterm elections.
"This is what they say when they're scared of people learning the real definition, when they're scared of people demanding more from their government and an economy that actually works for everybody," the nonprofit progressive news organization More Perfect Union said on social media.
New Republic writer Malcolm Ferguson said: "Vice President JD Vance was asked to define socialism on Thursday. Instead of even trying to sincerely engage with the concept, the [Yale]-educated lawyer and author offered a brain-dead, tailored-for Fox News answer."
"Regardless of what you think socialism means, it is certainly not 'replacing American workers with foreign workers and wanting boys to play girls’ sports," he added. "This was a confusing, unintelligent answer from a man who’s supposed to be quite smart."
Ryan Knight, better known as "Proud Socialist" on social media, said that Vance "almost told the truth (socialism is about prioritizing workers and more specifically about workers, not billionaires, owning the means of production), but then quickly remembered he serves the billionaires so started lying and fearmongering about foreigners."
What a stupid and intellectually dishonest answer by JD Vance. He defines socialism as anything that's icky. Under that definition, I think lima beans are socialist.
[image or embed]
— Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) October 8, 2026 at 8:30 AM
Right-wing policy expert Jessica Riedl said that "JD Vance defines 'socialism' as... the free movement of labor and capital across borders, and transgender girls playing on girls' sports teams."
"In other words, anything he personally finds icky," Riedl added. "And he's supposed to represent the highly educated, intellectual wing of MAGA."
Billy Binion, a reporter at the libertarian site Reason, called Vance's comments "laughably dishonest," invoking an ethos that former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich once described as "socialism for the rich, brutal capitalism for the rest of us."
"The Trump administration," Binion said, "would like to change the definition of socialism because it's *engaging in it* and has bought stakes in dozens of private companies."
Heather Parton, who publishes the progressive blog "Digby's Hullabaloo," wrote:b "First of all, you don’t get to 'personally' define socialism. It has a definition, and that ain’t it."
"Second, forgetting his fatuous suck-up to MAGA culture war nonsense in that comment, it must be noted that his Dear Leader is strong-arming one corporation into another into giving up pieces of their companies to the government," she continued, referring to Trump.
"JD is the most irritating of Trump’s acolytes because he spouts absurd MAGA bullshit, knowing full well how stupid it is," Parton added.
Reich also weighed in on the vice president's remarks, writing on social media that "Trump, Vance, and Republicans are terrified of policies that curb their own wealth and power, and the wealth and power of the oligarchs that bankroll them."
"That's why they're amping up the fearmongering about 'socialism,'" he added. "They've run out of cards to play."
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Five Reasons Trump Might Actually Resign
Trump, having lost much of his leverage, knows he can’t even appear to accomplish much in 2027 and 2028.
Oct 03, 2026
It is hard to read President Donald Trump’s mind—what with his chronic lies, delusions, and fake promises. His incentives to finish his term are numerous—pomp and ceremony, daily vengeance, judicial immunity, Democratic leaders, for now, opposing impeachment (see "Open Letter to Representative Hakeem Jeffries", August 31, 2026), and immensely enriching himself using the punishing or rewarding powers of the presidency.
The rewards are insatiable. This failed businessman, riven with debts and losses, revealed in his 2025 financial disclosures a profit of $1.1 MILLION AN HOUR on a 40-hour week! He probably will reap more dollars in 2026, which he has ensured would be non-taxable by his captured Internal Revenue Service (See: "DOJ Settlement ‘Forever’ Bars IRS Trump Audits, Sparks Backlash").
Then, what could be the counter factors in his mind for resignation? Foremost, he is exhausted physically and mentally, declining at an accelerating rate, worrying his physicians and family. Over 30 prominent mental health professionals—some with expert witness credentials in courts—and physicians have observed his deterioration in a disciplined statement read into the Congressional Record on April 30 by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Jack Reed (D-RI). (See also: "Midterm Countdown, 33 Days to Go: Language from Our Leader" by James Fallows.) Trump yearns for more R&R and golf and less grueling travel requirements.
He can claim that it is time to hand the great future of America to a younger generation of Republicans led by a new president, JD Vance.
Second, he would avoid the many investigations the Democrats would launch against his administration, coupled with negative headlines, disclosures by whistleblowers, congressional subpoenas, and charges of contempt of Congress.
Third, it resolves a messy presidential primary race by installing JD Vance—his present choice as successor—as a president who would maintain a compliant Department of Justice and, crucially, maintain loyalty to Trump across the board in his regime. This continuity might mitigate his base blaming him for November’s losses, since he demanded that the GOP candidates pretend that he is on the ballot. Trump cannot stand the shrinking of his MAGA base, plus the departure of his bone-tired, super loyal personal staff.
Fourth, his military intelligence and domestic advisers are briefing him on what is likely to come. Troubling scenarios would land on his desk for responses and decisions. They include the arrival of deadly drones; runaway AI Frankensteins; a possible pandemic (see: "Are We Ready for the Next One?" from Johns Hopkins University); more intensive storms, floods, droughts, and mega wildfires; all pressures that he can try but not succeed in avoiding. Moreover, there is a broad consensus that his deficits and national debt are surging from runaway military spending, corporate welfare, giveaways, huge tax reductions, and evasions by the super rich and mega corporations that will raise the hated interest rates everywhere.
Fifth, he is confident he can declare victory on every front, domestic and foreign, with rhetoric that he has been honing for years. He can say he has accomplished his pledges to the American people, showing his list of “promises made and promises kept.” He can claim that it is time to hand the great future of America to a younger generation of Republicans led by a new president, JD Vance, who is in his 40s.
Though contrary to his past boasts of being in “excellent health,” he could invoke “Drs. Orders” and wanting to spend more time with his family. Melania would certainly not object to this kind of resignation. She has not liked at all the limelight of being the first lady, and knows that the coming two years are going to be much more stressful for her and her husband.
Trump, having lost much of his leverage, knows he can’t even appear to accomplish much in 2027 and 2028, in addition to having lost his power to nominate toady judges through a Democratic Senate. Just as the obstinate Richard Nixon saw his Republican base shrinking in Congress, for a sliver of the serious impeachable offenses that Trump commits daily and boastfully. Remember Nixon resigned in 1974, saying he had lost his base of protection in Congress.
Given Trump’s propensity to double down on his crazed, often violent provocations abroad and in American cities, his base in Congress may similarly diminish and make a resignation of lame duck Donald involuntary.
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When War Crimes Become Normal: The Price of Impunity
If we truly believe that all human life has equal value, then we must demand that those who order and carry out attacks on civilians face the same scrutiny and consequences, whoever they are.
Sep 29, 2026
On Tuesday, September 1, 2026, the United States military struck a home in the town of Kuhestak, in Sirik County, southern Iran, where a wedding was underway, killing four people and wounding more than 50. The youngest victim was 4-year-old Amir Ali Karimi. Asked about the strike, US Vice President JD Vance told reporters: "What I can say with 100% confidence is that, unlike the IRGC, the United States never targets civilians in combat. We never will do that. We never have done that." However, he added, “Sometimes, things happen.”
It's worth remembering that the campaign the United States and Israel waged against Iran—launched without United Nations Security Council authorization—opened with a strike on the office of Iran's Supreme Leader that killed him along with his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, and his 14-month-old granddaughter. Roughly an hour or two later, the US struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab with Tomahawk cruise missiles, killing 156 people, including 120 schoolchildren between the ages of six and 13. That same day, an attack on the small town of Lamerd used Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM)—munitions that burst in midair and scatter thousands of tungsten fragments—killing at least 21 people, including four children, among them 2-year-old Avina Barzegar, and wounding 100 more. In the months since, the US and Israel have struck not only military sites but universities, bridges, power plants, police stations, and even desalination plants serving remote islands in southern Iran. Whatever assurances Vance offers, the record is clear that the United States has a long history of striking civilians.
Of course none of this is new. More than two years have now passed since Israel launched its full-scale assault on Gaza, backed fully by the United States and most Western governments. Over those two years the world has watched strikes on hospitals, schools, and universities, the shooting of civilians, even an assault captured on camera—and despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Israel's prime minister, no action has been taken either to enforce that warrant or to halt the war. It was hardly surprising that a year-plus of unanswered war crimes in Gaza—what many now call a genocide—normalized the same conduct elsewhere. Israel applied much the same pattern in Lebanon, violating that country's sovereignty to bomb schools, apartment buildings, universities, and villages. The absence of any serious response to crimes broadcast live to the world sent every power on Earth a clear message: If you are strong enough, you can commit any crime—including the crime of crimes.
Isn't it time that those responsible for striking a bridge, a wedding, a power plant, a desalination plant, be held to account?
President Donald Trump himself has, through his own public statements, documented attacks that could easily amount to war crimes. In one Truth Social post, he wrote, "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." In another, he shared footage of the strike that brought down Karaj's unfinished B1 bridge—a civilian structure, not yet even complete, hit on Sizdah Bedar, the 13th day of Nowruz, when most Iranians are out picnicking in nature and many families were gathered under and around the bridge. The strike was a so-called double tap: A second missile hit after rescue workers arrived to help the wounded, killing two more and injuring several others. In all, 13 people were killed and 95 wounded.
This scale of targeting civilians, met with so little response from the media or the international community, is itself a troubling kind of normalization—one we cannot afford to treat with indifference. Imagine, for a moment, that Iran had bombed the White House on a holiday morning, killing the American president along with members of his family, and then struck an elementary school in Texas, killing more than 120 American students along with their teachers. How would American society, and the West more broadly, have responded? Would the dead children be called a "necessary action" or "mistake"? Or would the entire West have mobilized to respond to such an atrocity?
This same Western indifference to the deaths of people in the Global South—particularly at American hands—is visible in the words of Afghanistan's former president, Hamid Karzai. Asked recently why he, perhaps alone among Afghan leaders, had wept in public, Karzai spoke of "our national helplessness before powers that had come in the name of helping Afghanistan," and recalled asking American officials a simple question: If their bombs killed Afghan children, was that terrorism? They told him no—terrorism, he said they told him, is when American interests are put at risk.
This becomes painfully concrete when you consider that the Sirik wedding was only the latest entry in a long, grim record of American strikes on wedding celebrations across Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen going back more than two decades—a pattern trackers have documented since at least December 2001.
Isn't it time that those responsible for striking a bridge, a wedding, a power plant, a desalination plant, be held to account? Don't the citizens of a country whose president launched a war on another nation without UN authorization, and whose forces have committed numerous documented war crimes in the process, bear some responsibility for holding their own leaders accountable? Would the West have stayed this indifferent if a wedding, or a school, had been hit at home—or would it have moved heaven and Earth to bring the perpetrators to justice? These are the questions that demand an answer. The world cannot continue to condemn violence selectively while treating the deaths of civilians in the Global South as an unfortunate but acceptable consequence of geopolitics.
Every time a war crime is ignored, the threshold for the next one becomes lower. Every time accountability is abandoned, impunity becomes stronger. If we truly believe that all human life has equal value, then we must demand that those who order and carry out attacks on civilians face the same scrutiny and consequences, whoever they are. The first step toward ending war-crime normalization is refusing to look away.
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MAGA ❤️ Motherhood (If You’re White)
The Trump-Vance family policy reeks of white supremacy and misogyny.
Sep 25, 2026
Creepy. That’s the word for the rising right-wing interest in family policy, exemplified by a recent administration proposal to pay $9,000 each year per child for women to stay at home with their children. The money would come from, and deplete, an existing federal program that helps working parents pay for childcare.
Of course, that program, the Child Care and Development Fund, is already woefully underfunded—only 1 in 7 eligible parents is able to use it. Most of those are single working mothers, the kind of hardworking people who do tough work for low wages and are derided by conservatives as “Welfare Queens.” They would not be eligible for the stay-at-home moms benefit.
MAGA leaders like Vice President JD Vance have a model of family life that is a caricature of a 1950s TV family: Dad works and Mom stays home with the kids, shops, cooks, cleans house, and puts on a clean apron and a big smile for Dad when he comes home from the office. A woman’s appropriate concerns in that model life are “Kinder, Küche, Kirche.” Children, cooking, church, as 19th-century Germans described the feminine role.
MAGA right-wingers define America as a white nation and seek to shrink our non-white population, so the only solution acceptable to them is persuading or forcing women to have more babies than they want. It won’t work.
Or put more simply, “barefoot and pregnant.”
In Vance’s view, women who seek a professional career have chosen a “value system that leads to misery.” Consistent with the MAGA conception of women’s roles in society, Vance opposes abortion in all circumstances, wants to make divorce more difficult, and sees traditional family life as “the path to happiness and to fulfillment.”
But Vance and the right are motivated by bigger concerns than female happiness. They believe more pregnancies are critical to preserving civilization. It’s a “crisis,” says Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “Low birth rate is the number one threat to the West,” says Elon Musk.
Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Mehmet Oz warns that “1 in 3 Americans are under-babied.” Declining teen pregnancy is part of the problem: Fox medical analyst Marc Siegel laments that teen pregnancies (15-to-19-year-old girls) are “down 70% over the last two decades, meaning we’re telling people who are young not to have babies.” To remedy that problem, President Donald Trump is actually defunding federal programs designed to reduce teen pregnancies.
This despite the well-documented medical and developmental risks of teen pregnancies for both mother and child: high blood pressure, preeclampsia, post-partum hemorrhage, systemic infections, mental health difficulties, life-long health issues, premature births, neonatal fatalities and stillbirths, low birth weight. And the teen mom’s interruption in schooling commonly means a life of poverty and instability.
MAGA family policy bears striking similarities to that of Nazi Germany, which linked national greatness to more babies—of the correct race. In the interest of higher birth rates, German mothers could not terminate pregnancies if the child would be “of good blood.” The Nazi state also offered “marriage loans” and child financial incentives, and—in a society that treated single mothers as pariahs—they even tried to destigmatize unmarried motherhood.
Medals for motherhood were a Nazi honor Trump might consider offering. Hitler awarded the Mother Cross for large families. (In bronze for mothers of four children, silver for six, gold for eight or more babies.)
The American fertility rate is indeed substantially below the 2.1 required to maintain the American population level. But if a declining population is a problem, the answer is obvious: Welcome immigrants.
America is already suffering from Trump’s mass deportation efforts, as the agricultural workforce is decimated, and workers in home healthcare, food packing, restaurants, home construction, and building services are in desperately short supply, exacerbating inflation. We plainly need more immigrants, not fewer, to sustain our nation.
Immigration is not an acceptable solution for MAGA because they demand a whiter America, and more immigrants come from what the president has called “shithole countries” than from “Aryan” nations like Norway. But non-whites are not “replacing” supposed “real” Americans because America is and always has been a multiracial, multinational society.
MAGA right-wingers define America as a white nation and seek to shrink our non-white population, so the only solution acceptable to them is persuading or forcing (white) women to have more babies than they want. It won’t work.
A 2025 survey of Americans showed that two children was the most desired family size, and only 20% wanted to three or more. Similarly, an international survey conducted by the United Nations showed most respondents wanted just two children.
In the US survey, cost and the state of the world were high among the reasons Americans gave for not wanting more children.
Here is what the Trump regime is doing to address those concerns: defunding healthcare; slashing food assistance for families and children; weakening education and child welfare systems; imposing eligibility requirements for government rental assistance; denying climate change; ignoring the challenge of AI; deregulating polluting industries; and fueling inflation through deportation, tariffs, and an unending war.
Why are women in the workforce and not staying home with the children? The determination to lead full lives is a driving force. But, in all likelihood, the number of stay-at-home moms has plummeted since the 1970s because rising income inequality has made it impossible for a working class or middle class family to survive on one income. Before right-wing “traditionalists” utter any more demands that women give up their jobs, ambitions, independence, and self-respect, perhaps they can start by confronting the unbearable greed of the billionaire class that has rendered the supposed MAGA aim beyond reach.
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'Sickening and Unacceptable': Anger Mounts as Trump and Vance Gleefully Rip Healthcare From 750,000
"Just six weeks out from the election, the Trump administration continues to kick working Americans while they’re down."
Sep 23, 2026
Anger and alarm are growing over the Trump administration's Tuesday announcement that it is removing at least 750,000 people from their Affordable Care Act coverage because they were "fraudulently" enrolled, a claim that drew deep skepticism from health policy experts and advocates.
Cynthia Cox, senior vice president at KFF, said fraud undoubtedly exists in the ACA marketplaces, noting that "some brokers have enrolled people without their knowledge or switched their plans so the broker could get a commission on the sale." But she warned that at least some of the hundreds of thousands of people targeted by the Trump administration "were likely legitimately enrolled."
Leading Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, announced the large-scale disenrollment during a celebratory press conference on Tuesday, proclaiming that the ACA purge would save American taxpayers $2.2 billion.
“Rather than addressing rising healthcare costs, the administration is forcing more Americans to become uninsured, live sicker, die younger, and risk being one emergency away from financial ruin," said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Families USA. "People are uninsured because of this administration’s own aggressive policies to push and price people out of their health plans, making it harder to get on and stay on coverage."
Among the criteria the administration used to determine whether someone was fraudulently enrolled in the ACA, according to Oz, was if they had "never filed a claim." But health policy experts say it is hardly uncommon for healthy people to not use their insurance in a given year.
The Trump administration did not provide specific breakdowns of why the roughly 750,000 people were stripped of ACA coverage. Vance said during Tuesday's press conference that the federal government uncovered a "fraud ring" involving 40 brokerage agents who funneled around 50,000 people into market place coverage—but the vice president admitted that "some of those people were probably legitimate."
Oz and Vance insisted that the administration went to great lengths to contact those they suspected were enrolled without their knowledge or consent. The officials also said the administration was scrutinizing more than 400,000 additional ACA enrollees for purported fraud, potentially pushing the number of people removed from the program above 1 million.
Ailen Arreaza, executive director of ParentsTogether, said in a statement Tuesday that "while millions of families across the country struggle to afford groceries, housing, childcare, and healthcare, this administration is celebrating taking health coverage away from three-quarters of a million people."
"That tells us everything we need to know," Arreaza added.
Analysts estimate that around 10 million people have lost health insurance coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's term, due in large part a Republican budget package that slashed Medicaid by around $800 billion and did nothing to extend enhanced ACA subsidies, sending premiums soaring for millions of marketplace enrollees—and pricing many people out of coverage.
American voters have consistently ranked healthcare costs as a top concern heading into the 2026 midterm elections. Joel Payne, chief communications officer at MoveOn Political Action, said Tuesday that "just six weeks out from the election, the Trump administration continues to kick working Americans while they’re down."
"It is sickening and unacceptable for this administration to boot 750,000 Americans off their healthcare instead of focusing on lowering costs and ending the war in Iran," said Payne. "The American people and MoveOn members won't forget this betrayal when polls open in November."
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Vance Fraud Task Force Condemned as ‘Smokescreen’ for Booting 700,000 More People Off Healthcare
"This so-called task force is nothing more than a bullshit distraction."
Sep 22, 2026
The Trump administration is planning to boot more than 700,000 people from their Affordable Care Act coverage as part of a purported initiative to root out fraud in the program—an effort that campaigners said is nothing more than a pretext to kick more people off healthcare.
Vice President JD Vance, who is leading the White House's "Task Force to Eliminate Fraud," announced the planned ACA purge during a press conference on Tuesday alongside Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, whose agency has touted a right-wing think tank's dubious claim that millions of ACA enrollees are on the program improperly.
Vance insisted during Tuesday's press conference that the administration is putting itself "under an extraordinary burden of proof" to ensure its mass removal doesn't impact people who are eligible for ACA coverage, but advocates were not convinced.
"Vance's task force is a smokescreen for kicking people off coverage," declared the advocacy group Protect Our Care. The organization's president, Brad Woodhouse, said in a statement that Vance's task force "is nothing more than a bullshit distraction—a political stunt designed to throw even more people off their coverage while pretending to save taxpayers’ money."
"At a time when millions of Americans are already losing coverage and facing skyrocketing costs, Vance and this administration are making the crisis exponentially worse," said Woodhouse. "They are piling on more red tape, more confusion, and more opportunities for people to lose the coverage they rely on. Families need coverage they can afford and count on when they get sick. Vance’s task force won’t accomplish that. It’s a smokescreen for an administration whose sole mission is to make it harder to get and stay covered but to shower billionaires with tax breaks instead."
Millions of people have lost ACA and Medicaid coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's second White House term, due in large part to a Republican budget law that cut Medicaid by more than $800 billion and did nothing to extend enhanced ACA subsidies, sending premiums soaring.
Trump administration officials have baselessly claimed that their anti-fraud efforts were the key driver of ACA enrollment declines this year.
The word ‘fraud’ here obscures a lot.
Many of them may have been accidentally committing ‘fraud’ bc they live in a state that didn’t expand Medicaid and earn too little to qualify for ACA subsidies. There have been cases of brokers signing those folks up for the commission. pic.twitter.com/ek8gaVzJ7g
— Jordan Weissmann (@JHWeissmann) September 22, 2026
The mass disenrollment push comes less than two weeks after the Trump administration said it would send $500 rebate checks to some Americans who were allegedly "overcharged" under the ACA. Critics noted that the checks would only go to a small sliver of ACA enrollees and would do virtually nothing to offset premium hikes that are hitting millions of Americans.
Vance indicated Tuesday that the roughly 750,000 individuals who will soon be removed from the ACA due to alleged fraud are just the start of a broader purge. Around 19 million people are currently enrolled in ACA marketplace coverage.
"We're gonna do some additional verification," said Vance, who suggested the administration is using artificial intelligence tools to identify purported fraud. "We expect that most of these people are fraudulently enrolled, but we're gonna do some additional verification on about 419,000 people."
Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the ACA, wrote Tuesday that "people losing healthcare isn't a bug, it's [Trump and the GOP's] plan."
"First Republicans stripped Medicaid from millions," the Democrats wrote on social media. "Then they let premiums spike for millions more. Now JD Vance is using claims of 'fraud' to take coverage from hundreds of thousands more."
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'Outrageous and Backwards': Trump Officials Plot Raid on Childcare Funds Amid Affordability Crisis
"Raiding an underfunded program solely to score culture war points is not pro-family—it’s a wasteful grift that I will fight every step of the way," said Sen. Patty Murray.
Sep 09, 2026
The top Democratic appropriator in the US Senate responded with alarm and outrage on Tuesday to news that the Trump administration is preparing a rule change that would siphon federal dollars away from a chronically underfunded program that helps working-class parents afford childcare.
The diverted funds would be used to finance a new federal subsidy for "married couples with one stay-at-home parent in certain income brackets," The New York Times reported late last week. The proposed change, a top priority of Vice President JD Vance, is "outrageous and backwards," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday. Murray argued it would be illegal and immoral for the administration to shift taxpayer money away from the Child Care and Development Fund, which serves around 1 million families nationwide in a typical month.
"It’s not the 1950s in America—our government shouldn’t punish people for being single parents or choosing not to marry," said Murray. "Nobody cares what JD Vance thinks constitutes a ‘real’ family—single parents and parents who aren’t married pay taxes, too. Raiding an underfunded program solely to score culture war points is not pro-family—it’s a wasteful grift that I will fight every step of the way.”
The Times reported that "the policy change would effectively create a government incentive for parents to stay home with their children, an idea embraced as part of a broader conservative effort to advance policies that promote more mothers staying at home." Unmarried couples with one stay-at-home parent would not qualify for the newly proposed subsidy.
"The move could end up redirecting money away from working parents and their childcare providers, causing some to raise their rates or even close, critics said, potentially worsening what many experts say is a childcare crisis in the country," the newspaper added. "About 80% of the 870,000 families who currently get the childcare subsidies have single working parents, most of them mothers, according to Health Department data."
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), House Democrats' top appropriator, said in a statement that "supporting stay-at-home parents should never come at the expense of working families."
“At a time when families are already struggling to find and afford childcare, this proposal would force more parents to compete for the same inadequate pot of money, threaten childcare providers, and disproportionately hurt single working parents, most of whom are mothers," said DeLauro, "If Republicans want to support families, they should join Democrats in passing the expanded Child Tax Credit and increasing access to affordable childcare—not rob Peter to pay Paul while imposing their preferred definition of what a family should look like."
Childcare costs—which run many families tens of thousands of dollars per year—are a major concern of US voters. One recent survey found that more than 80% see childcare costs as part of the nation's broader affordability crisis, and 76% view them as "a crisis or major problem" for families with young children.
But the Trump administration has so far done nothing to lower childcare costs—and has taken steps that could raise them and deny low-income families badly needed relief.
Earlier this year, roughly a month after launching his costly and destructive war on Iran, President Donald Trump suggested that the federal government should not provide any funding for childcare.
"We’re fighting wars," the president said. "We can’t take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too."
Amy Matsui, vice president for childcare and income security at the National Women’s Law Center, said it is "outrageous that the administration would propose siphoning money away from families who are struggling to afford childcare to send cash to married couples with a stay-at-home parent, when hundreds of thousands of families are on childcare waiting lists around the country."
"If this administration really wanted to support families," Matsui added, "it would invest more—not less—dollars in childcare, create a national paid family and medical leave program, expand access to a fully refundable Child Tax Credit, and restore health care and nutrition assistance."
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Vance Says US 'Never Targets Civilians'—But Data From First Phase of Iran War Tells a Different Story
During the war's first 40 days, 77% of US attacks involved damage to civilian infrastructure or harm to civilians.
Sep 04, 2026
Following the US bombing of a wedding party in Iran earlier this week that killed at least five people—including two children—and left dozens more wounded, Trump administration officials repeated the mantra that the US military "never targets civilians."
In the days since the strike in the small southern town of Kuhestak, an analysis by Reuters found that the bombing was likely a direct hit by a US munition.
During a White House press briefing on Thursday following the report, Vice President JD Vance said the US was investigating the attack: “We’re investigating it because obviously we care," he said. "We want to know."
But, questioned about US responsibility, he reiterated: "What I can say with 100% confidence is that unlike the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], the United States never targets civilians in combat. We never will do that. We never have done that. And unfortunately, obviously, sometimes things happen."
He added: "And if we do make mistakes, again, this is a big difference between us and Iran. When our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them. So we’re investigating it very fully.”
The comments raised eyebrows immediately: The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has documented that between February 28, when President Donald Trump launched the war, and April 7, when a ceasefire agreement was reached, at least 1,701 civilians were killed, including at least 307 children, and 714 more people have been killed who could not be classified as either military or civilians.
The first phase of the war brought several examples of mass civilian casualty events, including the double-tap bombing of an elementary school in Minab on the war's first day, which killed at least 150 children and teachers, and precision missile strikes on a sports hall and surrounding residential areas in Lamerd, which killed at least 21 civilians, including at least seven children.
Trump administration officials have brushed these attacks off as unfortunate mistakes and denied allegations that civilians were being targeted.
In the case of Minab, the administration has still never formally accepted responsibility, although an internal Pentagon assessment concluded that US forces were "likely" responsible, and several independent investigations have presented evidence demonstrating US responsibility.
But while intent remains an open question about these specific incidents, data from the first phase of the war show that the overwhelming bulk of incidents involved the targeting of nonmilitary infrastructure.
A May investigation by HRANA found that over the war's first 40 days, 77% of the 6,324 verified incidents it documented involved either civilian harm or damage to civilian objects. This included:
- 108 educational facilities;
- 50 healthcare facilities;
- 122 cultural and religious sites;
- 381 industrial and commercial facilities;
- 173 electricity generation and distribution sites; and
- 191 judicial and law enforcement facilities.
The group pointed to "several patterns that raise serious concerns under international humanitarian law," including "apparent failures in target verification, use of artificial intelligence with minimal human oversight, inadequate and inaccessible warnings, the use of large explosive weapons in populated areas, repeated or 'double-tap' strikes, [and] attacks targeting widespread civilian infrastructure."
During that same period, Iranian attacks across Israel and US-allied nations in the Middle East killed at least 36 civilians, according to a country-by-country tally from Reuters on April 7, with additional fatalities in Gulf countries whose civilian or military status is not always specified.
Trump has regularly made threats to rain down mass destruction upon Iran, including threatening that "a whole civilization will die" while promising to destroy "every" bridge and power plant in the country.
Wes J. Bryant, who served as the Pentagon’s chief of civilian harm assessments and now works as a war crimes analyst, rejected the Trump administration's contention that civilian casualties in the war have been the result of mere mistakes, saying they were instead the result of US forces "recklessly and negligently endangering and killing civilians."
"Is the US intentionally targeting civilians in Iran?" Bryant told Al Jazeera. "It is."
"I can tell you from experience, every single target location is recorded at multiple levels throughout the chain of command," he said, adding that in this week's wedding attack and others like the attack on the Minab school, the military would have been able “to report within hours” if a school or wedding was struck.
The anti-war activist group CodePink noted that the bombing of weddings by US forces long predates this week's attack, citing at least 10 other cases since 2001 in which wedding parties have been bombed, leading to dozens of casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
Pointing out that the wedding attack used three Boeing-produced missiles that the company markets as the "most accurate" in the US Navy's arsenal, Danaka Katovich, the national codirector of CodePink, said, "The Trump administration did not do this by accident."
"Even if they say they're 'investigating that'... like they did with the Minab school bombing, they are in a desperate situation," she said. "They are not winning the war, and they are running out of munitions, and they have no public support. They are resorting to tactics that attempt to inflict mass civilian harm."
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'I Wouldn't Call It a War,' Says JD Vance After 6 Months of Trump's Failed, Costly, and Illegal War on Iran
"Your administration just killed a 6-year-old boy and at least 4 other people at a family wedding in Iran. Sounds like war to me."
Sep 03, 2026
Asked Thursday by a reporter in Washington, DC if he thought the war started by President Donald Trump on February 28—over six months ago—would be concluded by the time American voters go to the polls in November, Vice President JD Vance responded by denying the idea that a war is even what's going on.
"I wouldn't call it a war," Vance said.
Despite fresh US airstrikes on Iranian military targets this week acknowledged by Trump and the Pentagon and the US bombing of a wedding Tuesday night—an attack that killed at least five Iranian civilians, including a 6-year-old child, and wounded nearly 70 others—Vance told reporters, "Right now, there's no active shooting."
In the very next breath, Vance said, "I recognize there have been places where this has flared up," but contended that "major combat operations only lasted about six weeks," as a way to make a case that "war" is not taking place.
COLLINS: Will this war be over by the midterm elections?
JD VANCE: I wouldn't call it a war pic.twitter.com/CH2wot7pW1
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 3, 2026
Critics, however, pushed back against the vice president's characterization.
"Your administration just killed a 6-year-old boy and at least 4 other people at a family wedding in Iran," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) in response to Vance's remarks. "Sounds like war to me."
Earlier on Thursday, Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was forced to apologize after falsely claiming that no US servicemembers have died since the US President took the nation to war on February 28.
“I misspoke," Lutnick said in a social media post. "Eighteen members of our military have died, and to those families my heart breaks and I am so very sorry for their loss." Lutnick claimed he was thinking about the US military's attack on Venezuela, ordered by Trump last year and during which the nation's president and first lady were abducted by US soldiers and who remain imprisoned in New York.
Trump's war of choice against Iran, according to independent monitors, has resulted in the death of upwards of 2,100 civilians, though precise estimates vary, including hundreds of children.
On the economic side, the war has unleashed a global energy and food crisis, with gasoline and grocery prices soaring in the US and deeper regional instability unleashed across the Middle East.
During his remarks to reporters on Thursday, Vance tried to argue that "the reason gas prices are so higher right now, is because the Iranians are shooting at commercial shipping" in the Strait of Hormuz, all while refusing to acknowledge it was the Trump administration that started the war in the first place, prior to which the Strait was open to free-flowing shipping traffic.
On the public opinion front, a new poll released by Navigator research company on Thursday found that one-in-five supporters who voted for Trump in 2024 now regret their decision. Among those with buyer's remorse, the survey found that the most cited reasons were broken promises, foreign policy decisions, and the cost of living crisis they are now experiencing.
But the number one reason among those voters (45%) who regretted their vote was due to Trump's war on Iran. And yes, according to the poll, they knew enough to call it a "war."
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