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jeff merkley
US Senators Praised for Report on US Complicity in Israel's Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza
CAIR urged Congress "to immediately act on their findings by halting all military aid to the Israeli government, enforcing existing US human rights laws, and supporting international accountability efforts."
Sep 12, 2025
The Council on American-Islamic Relations on Friday commended Sens. Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen for a new report about their recent trip to the Middle East that calls out US complicity in Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Merkley (D-Ore.) and Van Hollen (D-Md.) "have demonstrated a rare and commendable commitment to truth and accountability in the face of overwhelming political pressure," said CAIR Maryland director Zainab Chaudry in a statement.
"Their report confirms what Palestinians and human rights organizations have been documenting for years: that Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank amount to ethnic cleansing at the very least—and that the US bears responsibility for enabling these atrocities through billions in unconditional military aid and uncritical political support," Chaudry continued.
"We thank the senators for standing on the side of justice," she added, "and urge Congress to immediately act on their findings by halting all military aid to the Israeli government, enforcing existing US human rights laws, and supporting international accountability efforts."
CAIR, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States, previously praised the pair last month for their attempt to enter or even fly over Gaza, where Israeli forces continue to slaughter and starve Palestinians. The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that the death toll since October 7, 2023 is at least 64,756, though experts believe the actual figure is far higher.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "is implementing a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians," declares the cover page of the senators' 21-page report, released Thursday. "America is complicit. The world must stop it."
Merkley said in a statement that "our report details what we saw during our recent trip to the region, including the destruction of Rafah that has reduced the city to rubble, and what we heard from experts in the field about how the Netanyahu government is systematically depriving Palestinians of the essentials needed to live—food, shelter, medicine, and water."
The report—which followed videos that the senators filmed and shared on social media at various stops—states that "the findings from our trip lead to the inescapable conclusion that the Netanyahu government's war in Gaza has gone far beyond the targeting of Hamas to imposing collective punishment on the Palestinians there, with the goal of making life for them unsustainable."
"That is why it restricts the delivery of humanitarian assistance and uses food as a weapon of war," the publication asserts. It also points to the death toll from the Israeli assault and that "at least 1.9 million people, about 90% of the population, across the Gaza Strip have been displaced during the war. Many have been displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more."
Over 90% of Gaza's homes "have been destroyed or severely damaged," school buildings and agricultural lands "have been rendered unusable," and hospitals "have been damaged or destroyed, forcing many to close or operate under severely compromised conditions," the document notes. Additionally, "essential water and sanitation infrastructure have also collapsed under relentless bombing, leaving much of Gaza without access to clean water or functioning sewage systems."
"The fact that both the Netanyahu government and now the Trump administration are framing their plan as a call for the 'voluntary' exodus of Palestinians from Gaza is one of the most fraudulent, sinister, and twisted cover stories ever told," the report adds. "It is a farce to suggest people who have been subjected to destruction and dehumanization on such a vast scale would be departing Gaza 'voluntarily.' The plan is clearly to pressure Palestinians to leave Gaza by making life for them there virtually impossible."
Van Hollen said that "we hope this report will draw greater attention to these facts both here and around the world," and pledged that "we will do everything in our power to end America's ongoing complicity in this humanitarian disaster."
Under Democratic and Republican administrations, the US has given Israel billions of dollars in annual military aid. Both senators have repeatedly voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) resolutions that would prevent the sale of certain offensive American weaponry to Israel, which have increasingly gained Democratic backers but still lack sufficient support to pass.
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US Lawmakers Urged to Follow Merkley and Van Hollen's Lead After Senators Denied Access to Gaza
CAIR said that they "have taken a bold and necessary step by confronting the Israeli-manufactured and US-backed humanitarian calamity in Gaza head-on. Their mission must not stand alone."
Aug 31, 2025
The largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States is calling on US lawmakers to follow in the footsteps of Sens. Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen, who on Saturday shared a video about their unsuccessful attempts to visit—or even just fly over—the Gaza Strip during Israel's ongoing assault.
"Sens. Van Hollen and Merkley have taken a bold and necessary step by confronting the Israeli-manufactured and US-backed humanitarian calamity in Gaza head-on," the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement late Saturday. "Their mission must not stand alone."
"Israel's barring them entry to Gaza underscores the urgency of taking decisive steps to end its rampage of death, violence, and destruction," CAIR continued. "Members of Congress must utilize every tool—diplomatic, legal, and legislative—to ensure that our nation's values and laws demand an end to civilian suffering. The crisis in Gaza is not abstract—it is a matter of life and death. We call on our representatives to act urgently and courageously."
Merkley (D-Ore.) and Van Hollen (D-Md.) documented their Middle East trip on social media, sharing updates from a United Nations World Food Program site in Israel; Kfar Aza, a kibbutz attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023; the Kerem Shalom border crossing; the illegally occupied West Bank, where Palestinians face violence from Israeli settlers and soldiers; and a Jordanian air force base.
In the air force base video, Merkley and Van Hollen—both members of the Senate Appropriations and Foreign Relations committees—talk about their efforts to witness firsthand the sweeping destruction and famine in Gaza at the hands of Israeli forces armed and otherwise supported by the US government.
Both men have repeatedly backed Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) resolutions—introduced during both the Biden and Trump administrations—that would prevent the sale of certain offensive American weaponry to Israel, as have a growing number of Senate Democrats. The most recent vote was last month, and a majority of the chamber's Democratic caucus voted in favor.
In addition to reiterating their calls for a ceasefire and the return of remaining hostages that Palestinian militants took from Israel in 2023, in Saturday's clip, the senators discuss Jordanian airdrops—as Israel has limited the flow of food and other essentials—and stressed that, as Van Hollen puts it, "we need to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza."
"People are starving, and anybody who tells you that people are not starving in Gaza is lying to you," he continues. "And it's outrageous that the United States of America, at the UN, was the country that voted no on a resolution saying that we need to end the manmade starvation in Gaza. Anyone who denies that is lying to you."
In a separate video, Merkley addresses the dishonesty they have encountered during their trip. At the Kerem Shalom crossing, they attended a briefing that Merkley says "was designed to tell us everything that we would like to hear about the best organized process for getting aid into Gaza."
"No mention of any obstructions or frustrations," he notes. "Unfortunately, it didn't reflect reality at all. And that makes it just extremely difficult to listen to what essentially amounted to pure propaganda."
At the crossing, they met with representatives from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the private entity now responsible for distributing food aid in the strip. Israeli soldiers have killed or wounded thousands of Palestinians around the four GHF sites, which have been described as "death traps."
In a Friday video, Van Hollen says that he and Merkley "made it clear" to GHF "that the idea of having only four sites open, mostly in the southern part of Gaza—and by the way, only three are open today—that that is just a way to use food for population control purposes."
"And so, we had a disagreement with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation folks," he adds. "But our goal here today is to be witness to what the system is, and to make sure that we can try to fix what is clearly a broken system for everybody, because there are people in Gaza who are desperately hungry and starving."
The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that 10 more people had died of starvation, plus 15 Palestinians were killed and over 206 others were injured by Israeli fire while trying to get humanitarian aid. The agency puts the overall death toll since October 2023 at 63,371, though experts believe the true figure is far higher. At least 159,835 Palestinians have been wounded.
Israel's assault on Gaza has led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces accusations that he is dragging out the war in an effort to avoid a corruption trial in Israel.
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CBO Confirms With Trump-GOP 'Big, Ugly Law,' Working Families Lose 'And Billionaires Win'
"This isn't shared sacrifice—it's class warfare," said one policy expert.
Aug 11, 2025
Congressional Democrats and policy experts blasted U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers' recently signed megabill on Monday in response to a new nonpartisan analysis about its varied impacts on American households.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) requested the report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The analysis "confirms that the deeply unpopular One Big Ugly Law is also deeply unfair. It rips food and healthcare from children, veterans, and seniors, hurting the most vulnerable among us in order to enact massive tax breaks for billionaire donors," Jeffries said in a statement. "The American people deserve better than this cruel Republican budget scam."
"Hardworking families pay the biggest price while billionaires reap the reward."
The CBO said last month that the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add $3.4 trillion to the national deficit and cause at least 10 million people to lose health insurance over the next decade—though the latter figure ticks up when accounting for other GOP attacks on healthcare.
The agency said Monday that under the GOP law, the richest 10% of households are set to see $13,600 more annually, mainly attributable to tax cuts. Meanwhile, the poorest 10% will lose about $1,200 per year, mostly due to "reductions in in-kind transfers," such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). CBO estimates that roughly 4 million Americans, including 1 million children, will see significant cuts to food aid due to the law's new restrictions.
"Trump and congressional Republicans continue to falsely claim that their Big, Ugly Betrayal of a bill is a windfall for working families. In reality, hardworking families pay the biggest price while billionaires reap the reward," declared Merkley. "It is truly unfathomable that Trump and Republicans in Congress are championing a bill that gives the top 10% $13,600 more per year—while the least affluent 10% will lose $1,200 per year. This is families lose, and billionaires win."
Also noting the projected losses and gains for the bottom and top 10% of households, Brendan Duke, senior director for federal budget policy at the progressive think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), said that "this isn't shared sacrifice—it's class warfare."
As Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst on CBPP's food assistance team, detailed on social media Monday:
Slashing federal funding for SNAP and imposing those costs on most states will eliminate or reduce SNAP benefits for about 300,000 people in a typical month, CBO estimates. And 96,000 kids will also lose free school meals when they're cut off SNAP.
But the impacts could be far greater than CBO projects if more states slash SNAP—or opt out of the program altogether—in response to the deep cut in federal funding. The risk of these drastic cuts would increase during recessions, when state budgets are more strained.
CBO also estimates that 2.4 million people will be cut off SNAP by the dramatic expansion of SNAP's existing harsh, ineffective, and red tape-laden work requirement. Research consistently shows this policy doesn't increase employment or earnings. It just takes food away from people...
But the harm of the work requirement won't be limited to the 2.4 million adults who will be cut off SNAP. When this policy cuts an adult off SNAP, it also dramatically reduces food benefits for everyone else in the household—including kids, seniors, and people with disabilities.
The megabill will also end SNAP eligibility for tens of thousands of immigrants with a lawful status based on humanitarian need, including refugees, people granted asylum, and certain survivors of labor or sex trafficking. Again, many of those losing food assistance are children.
"Bottom line: At a time when low-income families are increasingly struggling to afford groceries, the Republican megabill means millions of them will soon be losing some or all of the help that they need to put food on the table," Bergh added.
With the president waging a tariff war on the rest of the world, polling released earlier this month shows that Americans are having a hard time with the costs of necessities, including groceries, and are stressed about it. The advocacy group Unrig Our Economy recently launched an interactive tool to help Americans see exactly how much the price of essentials has gone up in their state under Trump and Republican control of Congress.
"Prices keep rising, and American families are struggling. So what are President Trump's Republicans doing to help? They passed a law that will make things worse by stealing from working families to give billionaires a tax break," Boyle said Monday. "This nonpartisan report confirms the GOP's Big, Ugly Law is a total betrayal of the middle class. I won't let the American people forget who sold them out."
While the analysis is new, Schumer stressed that GOP lawmakers knew what they were doing when they passed the legislation.
"Today, yet another nonpartisan analysis of Trump and Republicans' 'Big, Ugly Betrayal' lays out the cold hard facts: While multimillionaires get $300,000 per year in tax breaks, the least wealthy will lose $1,200 a year," he said. "The reality is Republicans knew this when they passed it. They just don't care. They sold out American families all to line the pockets of their billionaire donors and special interests."
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