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Stung by the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the abandonment of his health care initiative by members of Congress, and fearful of a political backlash President Obama may himself not be "too big to fail." He has now "pivoted," to use a favorite phase from the pundits, and shifted his focus to trying to fix a still deteriorating economy.
He has gone from coddling the banks to turning on them with strong rhetoric that has financial stocks reeling, and progressives cheering. Analysts who have looked at the content of his new rules though say they are vague enough to dive a supertanker through. Another reform in gesture, but not necessarily in reality.
The administration is also floating new proposals to reenergize a foreclosure relief program that has brought little relief to beleaguered homeowners. More liberal terms for loan repayments are being introduced especially for those who have trouble paying their mortgages because they have lost jobs.
Today, default/delinquency/foreclosure rates continue to skyrocket and soon there will be more prime mortgages in arrears than subprime ones. More than 25% of all homes are now "under water." Millions of more families are at risk. Foreclosures continue to rise. The housing crisis at the center of the financial crisis has not been "fixed."
What to do? Doing nothing is no longer an option.
This crisis will spill over into the political arena unless the Administration does a lot more than it is doing.
For nearly two years, I have been calling to modify loans, not foreclose on homes. The government said they would do it but their programs don't appear to be working because banks and real estate companies make more money foreclosing than making deals that keep homeowners under their roof.
The consequence: 14 million families -- and we are talking millions of children, too -- forced into the streets or worse conditions.
The New York Times blamed the President's Making Home Affordable program for increasing the agony of homeowners.
"Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes."
Wrote a critic on the Atlantic: "Obama's Making Home Affordable program is actually increasing the agony of homeowners, who pour money down the rat hole of their mortgage rather than recognizing the loss and starting over. In the meantime, the modification programs disguise the true condition of bank balance sheets (because modified mortgages are not yet non-performing mortgages), and slow down the process of recovery.
The Washington Post found, "The government's foreclosure relief program is sputtering, according to government data showing that the pace of help being offered to struggling homeowners slowed last month and many borrowers are at risk of losing the aid they have already received."
The LA Times went further, "Only 31,382 of more than 700,000 mortgage modifications under the federal program had been made permanent by the end of November... The numbers reinforced the bleak picture that Treasury Department officials painted last week when they said the number of permanent reductions was low. They unveiled new measures, including the threat of fines, to push mortgage servicers to improve their performance."
When airport security doesn't work, they junk it. It is time to do the same with programs that are not helping homeowners. These half-measures that are being so half-heartedly implemented are a cruel disgrace.
But if we are to solve this problem, we are going to need to press the Administration and the banks to recognize they must go further. To achieve that, we need to get back in the streets to push for what we really need: debt relief, and a moratorium on foreclsures.
Sounds radical? It isn't. There are precedents. The US government and even Republicans have backed debt forgiveness... in Africa.
There, our government and others agreed to debt forgiveness programs because it was clear that colonial powers had illegally shackled the newly independent states with an unsustainable debt burden. Those debts were imposed, suffocating unfair and illegal.
Recently, just before the earthquake, Haiti won a billion dollars in debt forgiveness and then promptly began to borrow money again. Haiti's problems may mirror our own in another way with Presidential proclamations of "help on the way" undermined by poor or non-existent delivery.
There is a moral and legal case for going beyond existing programs.
In our country, millions of people were talked into taking bogus Subprime loans that lenders knew were deceptive. According to the FBI there was "an epidemic of mortgage fraud." These loans were then securitized by Wall Street and sold worldwide with misrepresented values. Another fraud.
They were also insured by companies like AIG with shady insurance deals to guard against the defaults they knew would follow. This was not just business as usual but, in part, a criminal enterprise. There are many foreclosure relief scams too. A lawyer in Orange County California was just charged with engineering 400 foreclosure modification frauds.
Compensating victims of predatory rip-offs is only fair. Human rights should come before property rights
An Online Legal Dictionary reminds us that the government has powers to act that it is not using.
"As a function of its Police Power, a state may suspend contractual rights when public welfare, health, or safety are threatened. During the World War I housing shortage, some New York landlords raised rents to exorbitant levels and evicted tenants who failed to pay..."
Some states went further imposing a debt moratorium. In happened in Minnesota during the depression when there was a sharp rise in foreclosures on farm property, "Fifty years later the Minnesota legislature responded again to public pressure to relieve farm debts by passing another Mortgage Moratorium Act (Minn. Stat. SS 583.03 [Supp. 1983])."
"In its view, the state had a right under its police power to declare an economic emergency," says the writer Alex Abella, who contributes to the LA Times, "to safeguard the public and promote the general welfare of the people" which necessitated the drafting and implementing of the moratorium.
"Needless to say, financial interests -- banks, loan holders -- sued, losing both at the state and the federal level. When the case finally arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Charles Evans, in the case of Blaisdell versus Home Building & Loan Association upheld the constitutionality of the Moratorium as a "reasonable means to safeguard the economic structures upon which the good of all depend."
If you believe as I do that there is an economic emergency underway effecting the most vulnerable among us, as foreclosures grow and poverty deepens, isn't it time to start demanding debt relief, not just temporary adjustments such as questionable mortgage modifications? If we can sanction other countries for violating laws, why not crooked banks and lenders?
Some may consider this demand unrealistic, but sometimes demanding the impossible is precisely what makes the possible more possible. Remember the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King taught us: "We never get change without demanding it. We never have and we never will."
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Stung by the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the abandonment of his health care initiative by members of Congress, and fearful of a political backlash President Obama may himself not be "too big to fail." He has now "pivoted," to use a favorite phase from the pundits, and shifted his focus to trying to fix a still deteriorating economy.
He has gone from coddling the banks to turning on them with strong rhetoric that has financial stocks reeling, and progressives cheering. Analysts who have looked at the content of his new rules though say they are vague enough to dive a supertanker through. Another reform in gesture, but not necessarily in reality.
The administration is also floating new proposals to reenergize a foreclosure relief program that has brought little relief to beleaguered homeowners. More liberal terms for loan repayments are being introduced especially for those who have trouble paying their mortgages because they have lost jobs.
Today, default/delinquency/foreclosure rates continue to skyrocket and soon there will be more prime mortgages in arrears than subprime ones. More than 25% of all homes are now "under water." Millions of more families are at risk. Foreclosures continue to rise. The housing crisis at the center of the financial crisis has not been "fixed."
What to do? Doing nothing is no longer an option.
This crisis will spill over into the political arena unless the Administration does a lot more than it is doing.
For nearly two years, I have been calling to modify loans, not foreclose on homes. The government said they would do it but their programs don't appear to be working because banks and real estate companies make more money foreclosing than making deals that keep homeowners under their roof.
The consequence: 14 million families -- and we are talking millions of children, too -- forced into the streets or worse conditions.
The New York Times blamed the President's Making Home Affordable program for increasing the agony of homeowners.
"Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes."
Wrote a critic on the Atlantic: "Obama's Making Home Affordable program is actually increasing the agony of homeowners, who pour money down the rat hole of their mortgage rather than recognizing the loss and starting over. In the meantime, the modification programs disguise the true condition of bank balance sheets (because modified mortgages are not yet non-performing mortgages), and slow down the process of recovery.
The Washington Post found, "The government's foreclosure relief program is sputtering, according to government data showing that the pace of help being offered to struggling homeowners slowed last month and many borrowers are at risk of losing the aid they have already received."
The LA Times went further, "Only 31,382 of more than 700,000 mortgage modifications under the federal program had been made permanent by the end of November... The numbers reinforced the bleak picture that Treasury Department officials painted last week when they said the number of permanent reductions was low. They unveiled new measures, including the threat of fines, to push mortgage servicers to improve their performance."
When airport security doesn't work, they junk it. It is time to do the same with programs that are not helping homeowners. These half-measures that are being so half-heartedly implemented are a cruel disgrace.
But if we are to solve this problem, we are going to need to press the Administration and the banks to recognize they must go further. To achieve that, we need to get back in the streets to push for what we really need: debt relief, and a moratorium on foreclsures.
Sounds radical? It isn't. There are precedents. The US government and even Republicans have backed debt forgiveness... in Africa.
There, our government and others agreed to debt forgiveness programs because it was clear that colonial powers had illegally shackled the newly independent states with an unsustainable debt burden. Those debts were imposed, suffocating unfair and illegal.
Recently, just before the earthquake, Haiti won a billion dollars in debt forgiveness and then promptly began to borrow money again. Haiti's problems may mirror our own in another way with Presidential proclamations of "help on the way" undermined by poor or non-existent delivery.
There is a moral and legal case for going beyond existing programs.
In our country, millions of people were talked into taking bogus Subprime loans that lenders knew were deceptive. According to the FBI there was "an epidemic of mortgage fraud." These loans were then securitized by Wall Street and sold worldwide with misrepresented values. Another fraud.
They were also insured by companies like AIG with shady insurance deals to guard against the defaults they knew would follow. This was not just business as usual but, in part, a criminal enterprise. There are many foreclosure relief scams too. A lawyer in Orange County California was just charged with engineering 400 foreclosure modification frauds.
Compensating victims of predatory rip-offs is only fair. Human rights should come before property rights
An Online Legal Dictionary reminds us that the government has powers to act that it is not using.
"As a function of its Police Power, a state may suspend contractual rights when public welfare, health, or safety are threatened. During the World War I housing shortage, some New York landlords raised rents to exorbitant levels and evicted tenants who failed to pay..."
Some states went further imposing a debt moratorium. In happened in Minnesota during the depression when there was a sharp rise in foreclosures on farm property, "Fifty years later the Minnesota legislature responded again to public pressure to relieve farm debts by passing another Mortgage Moratorium Act (Minn. Stat. SS 583.03 [Supp. 1983])."
"In its view, the state had a right under its police power to declare an economic emergency," says the writer Alex Abella, who contributes to the LA Times, "to safeguard the public and promote the general welfare of the people" which necessitated the drafting and implementing of the moratorium.
"Needless to say, financial interests -- banks, loan holders -- sued, losing both at the state and the federal level. When the case finally arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Charles Evans, in the case of Blaisdell versus Home Building & Loan Association upheld the constitutionality of the Moratorium as a "reasonable means to safeguard the economic structures upon which the good of all depend."
If you believe as I do that there is an economic emergency underway effecting the most vulnerable among us, as foreclosures grow and poverty deepens, isn't it time to start demanding debt relief, not just temporary adjustments such as questionable mortgage modifications? If we can sanction other countries for violating laws, why not crooked banks and lenders?
Some may consider this demand unrealistic, but sometimes demanding the impossible is precisely what makes the possible more possible. Remember the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King taught us: "We never get change without demanding it. We never have and we never will."
Stung by the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the abandonment of his health care initiative by members of Congress, and fearful of a political backlash President Obama may himself not be "too big to fail." He has now "pivoted," to use a favorite phase from the pundits, and shifted his focus to trying to fix a still deteriorating economy.
He has gone from coddling the banks to turning on them with strong rhetoric that has financial stocks reeling, and progressives cheering. Analysts who have looked at the content of his new rules though say they are vague enough to dive a supertanker through. Another reform in gesture, but not necessarily in reality.
The administration is also floating new proposals to reenergize a foreclosure relief program that has brought little relief to beleaguered homeowners. More liberal terms for loan repayments are being introduced especially for those who have trouble paying their mortgages because they have lost jobs.
Today, default/delinquency/foreclosure rates continue to skyrocket and soon there will be more prime mortgages in arrears than subprime ones. More than 25% of all homes are now "under water." Millions of more families are at risk. Foreclosures continue to rise. The housing crisis at the center of the financial crisis has not been "fixed."
What to do? Doing nothing is no longer an option.
This crisis will spill over into the political arena unless the Administration does a lot more than it is doing.
For nearly two years, I have been calling to modify loans, not foreclose on homes. The government said they would do it but their programs don't appear to be working because banks and real estate companies make more money foreclosing than making deals that keep homeowners under their roof.
The consequence: 14 million families -- and we are talking millions of children, too -- forced into the streets or worse conditions.
The New York Times blamed the President's Making Home Affordable program for increasing the agony of homeowners.
"Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes."
Wrote a critic on the Atlantic: "Obama's Making Home Affordable program is actually increasing the agony of homeowners, who pour money down the rat hole of their mortgage rather than recognizing the loss and starting over. In the meantime, the modification programs disguise the true condition of bank balance sheets (because modified mortgages are not yet non-performing mortgages), and slow down the process of recovery.
The Washington Post found, "The government's foreclosure relief program is sputtering, according to government data showing that the pace of help being offered to struggling homeowners slowed last month and many borrowers are at risk of losing the aid they have already received."
The LA Times went further, "Only 31,382 of more than 700,000 mortgage modifications under the federal program had been made permanent by the end of November... The numbers reinforced the bleak picture that Treasury Department officials painted last week when they said the number of permanent reductions was low. They unveiled new measures, including the threat of fines, to push mortgage servicers to improve their performance."
When airport security doesn't work, they junk it. It is time to do the same with programs that are not helping homeowners. These half-measures that are being so half-heartedly implemented are a cruel disgrace.
But if we are to solve this problem, we are going to need to press the Administration and the banks to recognize they must go further. To achieve that, we need to get back in the streets to push for what we really need: debt relief, and a moratorium on foreclsures.
Sounds radical? It isn't. There are precedents. The US government and even Republicans have backed debt forgiveness... in Africa.
There, our government and others agreed to debt forgiveness programs because it was clear that colonial powers had illegally shackled the newly independent states with an unsustainable debt burden. Those debts were imposed, suffocating unfair and illegal.
Recently, just before the earthquake, Haiti won a billion dollars in debt forgiveness and then promptly began to borrow money again. Haiti's problems may mirror our own in another way with Presidential proclamations of "help on the way" undermined by poor or non-existent delivery.
There is a moral and legal case for going beyond existing programs.
In our country, millions of people were talked into taking bogus Subprime loans that lenders knew were deceptive. According to the FBI there was "an epidemic of mortgage fraud." These loans were then securitized by Wall Street and sold worldwide with misrepresented values. Another fraud.
They were also insured by companies like AIG with shady insurance deals to guard against the defaults they knew would follow. This was not just business as usual but, in part, a criminal enterprise. There are many foreclosure relief scams too. A lawyer in Orange County California was just charged with engineering 400 foreclosure modification frauds.
Compensating victims of predatory rip-offs is only fair. Human rights should come before property rights
An Online Legal Dictionary reminds us that the government has powers to act that it is not using.
"As a function of its Police Power, a state may suspend contractual rights when public welfare, health, or safety are threatened. During the World War I housing shortage, some New York landlords raised rents to exorbitant levels and evicted tenants who failed to pay..."
Some states went further imposing a debt moratorium. In happened in Minnesota during the depression when there was a sharp rise in foreclosures on farm property, "Fifty years later the Minnesota legislature responded again to public pressure to relieve farm debts by passing another Mortgage Moratorium Act (Minn. Stat. SS 583.03 [Supp. 1983])."
"In its view, the state had a right under its police power to declare an economic emergency," says the writer Alex Abella, who contributes to the LA Times, "to safeguard the public and promote the general welfare of the people" which necessitated the drafting and implementing of the moratorium.
"Needless to say, financial interests -- banks, loan holders -- sued, losing both at the state and the federal level. When the case finally arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Charles Evans, in the case of Blaisdell versus Home Building & Loan Association upheld the constitutionality of the Moratorium as a "reasonable means to safeguard the economic structures upon which the good of all depend."
If you believe as I do that there is an economic emergency underway effecting the most vulnerable among us, as foreclosures grow and poverty deepens, isn't it time to start demanding debt relief, not just temporary adjustments such as questionable mortgage modifications? If we can sanction other countries for violating laws, why not crooked banks and lenders?
Some may consider this demand unrealistic, but sometimes demanding the impossible is precisely what makes the possible more possible. Remember the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King taught us: "We never get change without demanding it. We never have and we never will."
"Zeldin's assertion that the EPA shouldn't address greenhouse gas emissions is like a fire chief claiming that they shouldn't fight fires," said one critic. "It is as malicious as it is absurd."
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration faced an onslaught of criticism on Tuesday for starting the process of repealing the 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people—which has enabled federal regulations aimed at the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency over the past 15 years.
Confirming reports from last week, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin unveiled the rule to rescind the 2009 "endangerment finding" at a truck dealership in Indiana. According to The New York Times, he said that "the proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States."
If the administration succeeds in repealing the legal finding, the EPA would lack authority under the Clean Air Act to impose standards for greenhouse gas emissions—meaning the move would kill vehicle regulations. As with the reporting last week, the formal announcement was sharply condemned by climate and health advocates and experts.
"Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and are the root cause of the climate crisis," said Deanna Noël with Public Citizen's Climate Program, ripping the administration's effort as "grossly misguided and exceptionally dangerous."
"This isn't just a denial of science and reality—it's a betrayal of public trust and yet another signal that this administration is working for corporate interests, and no one else."
"Stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases is like throwing away the fire extinguisher while the house is already burning," she warned. "The administration is shamelessly handing Big Oil a hall pass to pollute unchecked and dodge accountability, leaving working families to bear the costs through worsening health outcomes, rising energy bills, more climate-fueled extreme weather, and an increasingly unstable future. This isn't just a denial of science and reality—it's a betrayal of public trust and yet another signal that this administration is working for corporate interests, and no one else."
Noël was far from alone in accusing the administration's leaders of serving the polluters who helped Trump return to power.
"Zeldin and Trump are concerned only with maximizing short-term profits for polluting corporations and the CEOs funneling millions of dollars to their campaign coffers," said Jim Walsh, policy director at Food & Water Watch. "Zeldin's assertion that the EPA shouldn't address greenhouse gas emissions is like a fire chief claiming that they shouldn't fight fires. It is as malicious as it is absurd."
Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Safe Climate Transport Campaign, similarly said that the proposal is "purely a political bow to the oil industry" and "Trump is putting fealty to Big Oil over sound science and people's health."
Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel also called the rule "a perverse gift to the fossil fuel industry that rejects yearslong efforts by the agency, scientists, NGOs, frontline communities, and industry to protect public health and our environment."
"Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin are playing with fire—and with floods and droughts and public health risks, too," she stressed, as about 168 million Americans on Tuesday faced advisories for extreme heat made more likely by the climate crisis.
🚨 The Trump administration just took its most extreme step yet in rolling back climate protections.
[image or embed]
— Sierra Club (@sierraclub.org) July 29, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents over 8,000 EPA workers nationwide, said that the repeal plan "is reckless and will have far-reaching, disastrous consequences for the USA."
"EPA career professionals have worked for decades on the development of the science and policy of greenhouse gases to protect the American public," he continued, "and this policy decision completely disregards all of their work in service to the public."
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) highlighted that Chris Wright, head of the Department of Energy, joined Zeldin at the Tuesday press conference and "announced a DOE 'climate science study' alongside remarks that were rife with climate denial talking points and disinformation."
UCS president Gretchen Goldman said that "it's abundantly clear what's going on here. The Trump administration refuses to acknowledge robust climate science and is using the kitchen sink approach: making every specious argument it can to avoid complying with the law."
"But getting around the Clean Air Act won't be easy," she added. "The science establishing climate harms to human health was unequivocally clear back in 2009, and more than 15 years later, the evidence has only accumulated."
Today, Zeldin’s EPA plans to release a proposal to revoke the Endangerment Finding, which is the legal & scientific foundation of EPA’s responsibility to limit climate-heating greenhouse gas pollution from major sources.
[image or embed]
— Moms Clean Air Force (@momscleanairforce.org) July 29, 2025 at 12:58 PM
David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, was a lead attorney in the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case Massachusetts vs. EPA, which affirmed the agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and ultimately led to the endangerment finding two years later.
Bookbinder said Tuesday that "because this approach has already been rejected by the courts—and doubtless will be again—this baseless effort to pretend that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause climate change are not harmful pollutants is nothing more than a transparent attempt to delay and derail our efforts to control greenhouse pollution at the worst possible time, when deadly floods and heat waves are killing more people every day."
In a statement from the Environmental Protection Network, which is made up of ex-EPA staff, Joseph Goffman, former assistant administrator of the agency's Office of Air and Radiation, also cited the 2007 ruling.
"This decision is both legally indefensible and morally bankrupt," Goffman said of the Tuesday proposal. "The Supreme Court made clear that EPA cannot ignore science or evade its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act. By walking away from the endangerment finding, EPA has not only broken with precedent; it has broken with reality."
Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, responded to the EPA proposal with defiance, declaring that "Donald Trump and his Big Oil donors are lighting the world on fire and fueling their private jets with young people's lives. We refuse to be sacrifices for their greed. We're coming for them, and we're not backing down."
Israel has already summarily rejected the U.K. leader's ultimatum to take "substantive" steps to end the war on Gaza by September, agree to a two-state solution, and reject West Bank annexation.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer was accused of "political grandstanding" after he said Tuesday that his country would recognize Palestinian statehood if Israel did not take ambiguously defined steps to end its war on Gaza—conditions that were promptly dismissed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Today, as part of this process towards peace, I can confirm the U.K. will recognize the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a cease-fire, and commit to a long-term sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution," Starmer said during a press conference.
"This includes allowing the U.N. to restart the supply of aid and making clear that there will be no annexations in the West Bank," the prime minister continued, adding that "the terrorists of Hamas... must immediately release all of the hostages, sign up to a cease-fire, disarm, and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza."
Member of Scottish Parliament Scott Greer (Scottish Greens-West Scotland) responded to Tuesday's announcement on social media, saying, "Starmer wouldn't threaten to withdraw U.K. recognition of Israel, but he's made recognition of Palestinian statehood conditional on the actions of their genocidal oppressor?"
"Another profoundly unjust act from a Labour government thoroughly complicit in Israel's crimes," Greer added.
British attorney and activist Shola Mos-Shogbamimu asserted that "Keir Starmer knows his time is up and pivots to save his career but it's too late."
"By placing a condition on recognizing Palestine this declaration is performative and disingenuous because before September he can claim Israel has substantively complied with the condition," she added.
Leftist politician and Accountability Archive co-founder Philip Proudfoot argued on social media that "decent" Members of Parliament "need to table a no-confidence motion in Starmer now."
"He has just used the recognition of Palestine as a bargaining chip in exchange for Israel following its BASIC LEGAL OBLIGATIONS," he added. "This is one of the lowest political acts in living memory."
Media critic Sana Saeed said on social media, "Using Palestinian life and future as a bargaining chip and threat to Israel—not a surprise from kid starver Keir Starmer."
Journalist Sangita Myska argued that "rather than threatening the gesture politics of recognizing a Palestinian state (that may never happen)," Starmer should expel Israel's ambassador to the U.K., impose "full trade sanctions" and a "full arms embargo," and end alleged Royal Air Force surveillance flights over Gaza.
Political analyst Bushra Shaikh accused Starmer of "political grandstanding" and "speaking from both sides of his mouth."
Starmer's announcement followed a Monday meeting in Turnberry, Scotland with U.S. President Donald Trump, who signaled that he would not object to U.K. recognition of Palestine.
However, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce called Starmer's announcement "a slap in the face for the victims of October 7," a reference to the Hamas-led attack of 2023.
While the United States remains Israel's staunchest supporter and enabler—providing billions of dollars in annual armed aid and diplomatic cover—Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee have all expressed concerns over mounting starvation deaths in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the U.N.-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned that a "worst-case" famine scenario is developing in Gaza, where health officials say at least 147 Palestinians, including at least 88 children, have died from malnutrition since Israel launched its obliteration and siege of the enclave following the October 2023 attack.
Israel—which imposed a "complete siege" on Gaza following that attack—has severely limited the amount of humanitarian aid that can enter the strip. According to U.N. officials, Israel Defense Forces troops have killed more than 1,000 aid-seeking civilians at distribution points run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. IDF troops have said they were ordered to shoot live bullets and artillery shells at aid seekers.
Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and weaponized starvation—responded to the U.K. prime minister's ultimatum in a social media post stating, "Starmer rewards Hamas' monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims."
"A jihadist state on Israel's border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW," Netanyahu said. "Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen."
The U.K. played a critical role in the foundation of the modern state of Israel, allowing Jewish colonization of what was then the British Mandate of Palestine under condition that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," who made up more than 90% of the population.
Seeing that Jewish immigrants returning to their ancestral homeland were usurping the indigenous Arabs of Palestine, the British subsequently prohibited further Zionist colonization. This sparked a nearly decadelong wave of terrorism and other attacks against the British occupiers that ultimately resulted in the U.K. abandoning Palestine and the establishment of Israel under the authority of the United Nations—an outcome achieved by the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs.
On the topic of annexing the West Bank, earlier this month, all 15 Israeli government ministers representing Netanyahu's Likud party recommended the move, citing support from Trump. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found last year that Israel's occupation of Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza, is an illegal form of apartheid.
Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country would announce its formal recognition of Palestinian statehood during September's U.N. General Assembly in New York. France is set to become the first Group of Seven nation to recognize Palestine, which is currently officially acknowledged by approximately 150 of the 193 U.N. member states.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz subsequently threatened "severe consequences" for nations that recognize Palestine.
Starmer's announcement came on the same day that the Gaza Health Ministry said that the death toll from Israel's 662-day assault and siege on Gaza—which is the subject of a South Africa-led genocide case at the ICJ—topped 60,000. However, multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet have concluded that Gaza officials' casualty tallies are likely significant undercounts.
"Eric Adams is a complete non-factor in this race," remarked a founding partner of pollster Zenith Research.
A new poll of the New York City mayoral race found that Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani is very well positioned to win later this year and that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is only competitive in the race if every other Mamdani opponent drops out.
The survey, which was conducted by polling firm Zenith Research, showed Mamdani holding what Zenith founding partner Adam Carlson described on X as a "commanding" lead of 28 points among likely voters in a five-way race featuring Cuomo, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, Republican Curtis Sliwa, and independent candidate Jim Walden. Even in other scenarios where other candidates drop out of the race, Mamdani would still garner more than 50% of likely votes in each instance.
However, Mamdani's lead becomes much smaller when the poll is expanded to all registered voters, among whom he only holds a three-point advantage over Cuomo in a head-to-head matchup. This suggests that Cuomo has room to grow as long as he can convince Adams, Sliwa, and Walden to exit the race.
Even so, commented Carlson, Cuomo faces significant headwinds that could block his path to victory even if he succeeds somehow in making it a one-on-one race.
"Another thing that’s extremely tough for Cuomo is that 60% of likely voters (as well as 52% of registered voters) would not even consider voting for him," he explained. "Only 32% say they wouldn't consider voting for Mamdani. Cuomo will need to go scorched earth to bring that number up."
New Yorkers who oppose Mamdani will have to place their hopes in the disgraced former governor, given the dismal standing held by incumbent Adams.
"Eric Adams is a complete non-factor in this race," remarked Carlson. "He polls at 7% in the five-way race, 14% if Cuomo drops out, and 32% if Cuomo and Sliwa drop out. More than half of [likely voters] strongly disapprove of his performance and have a very unfavorable view of him. 68% won't consider voting for him."
The poll also found Mamdani with an overall lead among Jewish voters despite efforts by opponents to paint him as antisemitic given his opposition to Israel's war in Gaza and his past reluctance to criticize the slogan "globalize the intifada," which he told The Bulwark he viewed as "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights." New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a progressive Jewish ally of Mamdani's who has endorsed his mayoral bid, acknowledged before the election that some Jewish people view the phrase as a threat of violence.
Among likely Jewish voters, Mamdani leads Cuomo by 17 points in a five-way race. Although Cuomo holds a double-digit lead over Mamdani among likely Jewish voters over the age of 45, Mamdani dominates among young Jewish voters by pulling in more than two-thirds of likely Jewish voters between the ages of 18 and 44.