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1
In a sign that the US is preparing for yet another evil war, Marco Rubio is now claiming that Cuba poses a “national security threat” to the United States, saying the likelihood of a peaceful agreement is “not high”.
“Cuba not only has weapons that they’ve acquired from Russia and China over the years, but they also host Russian and Chinese intelligence presence in their country — not far from where we’re standing right now,” Rubio told the press on Thursday. “So Cuba has always posed a national security threat to the United States. They, by the way, have been one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the entire region.”
Rubio’s comments come as a US intelligence report laundered through Axios claims that Cuba may be preparing to launch a drone strike against US military forces. Havana said the Axios report misrepresents Cuba’s defensive measures as a preparation to attack, accusing the US of “fabricating pretexts, creating and spreading falsehoods, and distorting as extraordinary the logical preparation required to face a potential aggression.”
The US has also unsealed an indictment for Raul Castro, the 94 year-old brother of Fidel Castro, in a move that resembles the playbook used for the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
The excuses for military action are already being rolled out. This happens as US war machinery relocates to the Caribbean, and as Cuba flounders under a crushing US oil blockade that is already inflicting a severe humanitarian toll.
And everyone knows it’s all based on lies. You know it. I know it. Marco Rubio knows it. The war propagandists know it. The gusanos brigading social media begging for war know it. We all know it’s a sham.
Not one person sincerely believes Cuba poses a threat to the United States.
No one sincerely believes Cuba just coincidentally became an urgent menace to US national security all of a sudden right when the US began scrambling to consolidate geostrategic control in the middle east and the western hemisphere.
Nobody actually thinks that a tiny, impoverished island nation is preparing to launch a war of aggression against the United States.
This is a performance put on by warmongers and bootlickers. It insults our intelligence and robs us of dignity.
If things cool down with Iran, then it’s a safe bet they’re going in for the kill shot on Cuba. The US empire never makes peace, it just moves the crosshairs of its war machinery from nation to nation.
We see this over and over again.
Yay! The troops are leaving Afghanistan — oh, now they’re waging a proxy war in Ukraine.
Excellent, they’re deescalating against Yemen — whoa, now they’re kidnapping the president of Venezuela.
Oh hey, it looks like the mass slaughter in Gaza has slowed down — oh, now they’re going to war with Iran.
Look, they’re pulling thousands of troops out of Germany — oh, it’s so they can move them to Poland.
Hey these Iran negotiations are finally getting somewhere — ah man, now they’re invading Cuba.
Over and over and over and over again. As soon as the human butchery slows down in one place, it picks up somewhere else.
The US empire exists in a constant state of war. War is the glue that holds the empire together. If the wars stop, the empire stops.
That’s why the denizens of the empire are never allowed to vote for an end to wars. You can vote for candidates who will end abortions or trans rights or corporate regulations, but you can’t vote for a candidate who will actually end the wars. Peace is never on the ballot, because war is too critical for the functioning of the empire.
Which is why it’s so important for us all to stand against the war machine. If we can end the wars, we can end the empire. Not until then will we have a shot at building a healthy world.
___________________
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From Caitlin’s Newsletter via This RSS Feed.
2
24
Iran declares ‘historic victory’ over the U.S., says enemy forced to accept its proposal
(www.workers.org)
The following statement issued by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council in response to the MAGA president’s two-week “ceasefire” was published by Press TV on April 7. “Good news to the dear nation of Iran! Nearly all the objectives of the war have been achieved. * “The noble people of Iran . . .
From Workers World via This RSS Feed.
3
In the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, up to 175 young children and school staff were blown to pieces at an elementary school. Others were maimed and burned, and will be suffering from their injuries for the rest of their lives. Even any comparatively fortunate ones with minimal injuries will surely experience permanent trauma from having witnessed something so horrific. Witnesses describe scenes of unfathomable horror, with limbs and blood strewn across classrooms. "People were pulling out children's arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads," said a woman whose child was killed. The Guardian cites verified videos that show "children's bodies lying partly buried under the debris":
In one video, a very small child's severed arm is pulled from the rubble. Colourful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams can be heard in the background.
Drop Site News spoke to the father of a six-year-old girl, Sara Shariatmadar, who was killed in the attack. "I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this," he said. "We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price."
The United States and Israel have not denied responsibility for the attack, although it is still unclear which country fired the missile. The U.S. said that it does not "target" schools, which does not mean that it does not bomb them. ("We take these reports seriously," a spokesman said.) Israel's spokesperson said the government was not "aware" of such an attack, which does not mean its military did not carry one out. Photos supposedly showing that a misfired Iranian missile caused it were debunked, although they spread widely online among Americans and Israelis desperate to believe that only the Bad Guys do things like this.
Domestic coverage of this horrible crime against humanity has been muted. U.S. media has a policy of not showing gruesome images of violence---the Guardian explicitly stated that it was concealing the photos and videos it had "due to their graphic nature." As a result, war is always sanitized, so that Americans can read that 150+ schoolgirls were killed without having to confront the full horror of what it means for their country to drive a missile into a crowded school in the middle of the day. (Saturday is a school day in Iran, a fact that the U.S. government would easily have been able to know when deciding how to time its attacks, but Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been open about the fact that he regards such niceties as rules of engagement and international law as meddlesome hindrances that can be ignored, lambasting those who "wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.")
I suspect that this attack is also difficult for U.S. media to cover because the basic facts of the situation are so twisted, so depraved, so evil, that they shatter the comforting narrative that the U.S. has the moral high ground over the Ayatollah. In fact, the U.S. government is on the moral level of the Sandy Hook school shooter, a fact that even president Trump's critics may have a hard time fully accepting.
And this was not the only massacre carried out by the U.S. and Israel in a war that has been going on just a few days. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that there have already been over 1,000 civilian deaths in Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, with thousands more civilians injured. Drop Site reports on the nauseating scene in a middle-class Tehran neighborhood following a "double tap" strike (dropping one bomb first, and then dropping another on the survivors and emergency responders, a favorite war crime of the U.S. and Israel). Warning, the following description is extremely graphic and may undermine any love you may have for your country:
Videos of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed several individuals dead and wounded as well as massive destruction on the street outside. In Cafe Ahla, next to the square, blood and debris soaked the floors. Several patrons who had been sitting there when the attack struck could be seen dead on the floor or with their mutilated bodies still sprawled across their seats. "We were sitting here around 8:00-8:30 p.m. and suddenly there was the noise and explosion. We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone's hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor," said Shahin, a witness who had been at the cafe and asked to be identified by first name only. "There were scalps torn off, hands severed, a few people were laying here all cut up and two people were martyred."
I will get to the many ways in which the Iran war is illegal, making us less safe, founded on lies, strategically insane, unbelievably costly, etc. But let us dwell for a moment on what we are doing to these people. The right-wing Telegraph newspaper reports that in Tehran, "millions of civilians are trapped under relentless bombardment as food and medical supplies dwindle and the death toll mounts," and the city is an "'apocalypse' of hospitals in flames and children buried beneath rubble." The paper records a total humanitarian disaster, with sick people lacking medicine, children going hungry, diabetics running out of insulin, and the repeated bombing of residential areas. While Americans pat themselves on the back for assassinating Iran's repressive head of state, everyday Iranians (even those with little love for their theocratic government) are facing the prospect of being killed at any moment, or watching their children be ripped to pieces. I realize that in the U.S., the devaluation of Middle Eastern lives means that little Iranian girls will receive a fraction of the compassion and concern that has arisen around, say, Nancy Guthrie. But if we apply our morality consistently, I cannot see how we can be anything other than completely revolted by the carnage our president is choosing to inflict (and will apparently soon be further escalating, according to Marco Rubio, who is promising an increased use of force to come, and Pete Hegseth, who is salivating about delivering "death and destruction all day long").
We are all complicit. If you are an American, you paid your government to murder those little girls and those Tehran cafe-goers. Money was withdrawn from your paycheck in the form of federal income taxes. If the attack was conducted with a Tomahawk missile (of which 400 were fired in 72 hours), that money would have been paid to the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon). Each missile fired costs somewhere between $1.3 million and $2.2 million, of which approximately $200,000 would be pure profit. Thus the killing of the Iranian schoolgirls, which left their bloody backpacks and tiny severed limbs scattered across classroom floors, transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from us (the American taxpayers) into RTX's bank accounts. It also boosted the GDP. And the stock market.
Stock price of RTX (formerly Raytheon)
It is hard for me to write about this war, because I am so sickened every time I contemplate the full dark reality of the country I live in. I realize that not only are there people who will drop a bomb on a school without losing a wink of sleep, but there are people who get rich when we bomb schools, who have a direct financial stake in ensuring we keep dropping as many bombs as possible. (And that's just the weapons companies. Others are getting rich from betting on the atrocities on prediction markets.) The fact that many Congressional Democrats implicitly or explicitly supported this war (whether by outright goading Trump into it, as Chuck Schumer did, dragging their feet on opposing it, or raising meek procedural objections) further adds to my disgust. Many Democrats apparently declined to try to stop the war, reasoning that if it achieved U.S. foreign policy goals it would be embarrassing to have opposed it, but if it went south Trump would own it anyway. When I open the New York Times op-ed page, and I find resident foreign policy guru Thomas Friedman cautioning against adopting any "black and white narrative" about what goes on in "a complicated, kaleidoscopic region," I want to vomit. The moment calls for moral clarity: our country is engaged in a mass murder campaign. It must be stopped. It is depressing to see so many debates around strategic end-goals, congressional authorization, or the consistency of the justifications. They take us away from the basic fact that our president, with the blessing of his party and many members of the so-called opposition, is gruesomely murdering children by the dozen. Every day this continues, we are paying our government to commit some of the worst crimes humans are capable of.
Of course, the war is also based on a pack of lies. The Trump administration can't even get its story straight on why the war is being waged and has produced no justification beyond vague invocations of National Security. (Trump says Iran was a "bad seed.") Some Republicans won't even admit that this is a war. (Perhaps they might want to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Putin: "special military operation.") House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to have it both ways, saying that while the Iranians "have declared war on us," we're "not at war right now." Others are tying themselves in pretzels trying to explain how this differs from the "regime change" wars that Trump has so vocally opposed. (Pete Hegseth: "This is not a so-called 'regime change war.' But the regime sure did change.") Sometimes there are direct self-contradictions within a single sentence, as with Tom Cotton declaring that "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." This was too much for right-wing commentator Matt Walsh, who accused Republicans of "gaslighting" for suddenly discovering that Iran has been waging a half-century of war against the U.S. Even leading Iraq war hawk Bill Kristol is confused about the reasoning behind the war, saying there is "no coherent rationale." (Of course, Kristol's own favorite Middle East war was equally illegitimate, but that's an argument for another day.)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. attacked because it knew Israel was going to attack, and needed to defend itself against the inevitable Iranian retaliation for Israel's attack---perhaps the most tortured and unpersuasive case for self-defense ever made. Perhaps because this seemed like an admission that Israeli choices dictate U.S. policy, Trump subsequently denied that Israeli decision-making had anything to do with the attack, although it's clear that Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied heavily for this, as he has been salivating at the prospect of a major war with Iran for decades, and has been scheming for a way to get the U.S. involved.
The idea that Iran was a threat to the United States was always laughable. U.S. intelligence has consistently assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. The Trump administration itself declared that it had destroyed Iran's nuclear program with last year's bombings. Iran has in fact consistently shown itself very reluctant to engage in military confrontation with the U.S., often carefully limiting its retaliation after U.S. provocations. To the extent that Iran did want to become a nuclear threshold state, with at least the capacity to pursue a weapons program if it wanted to, credible analysts believe that Iran mainly wanted an insurance policy against potential U.S. and Israeli attacks. North Korea has shown that the possession of nuclear weapons is enough to make the U.S. think twice about forcible regime change, and there is a good argument that it would have been rational for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons for the sake of its own self-protection. As Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld observed, the world "witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy." (Van Creveld is wrong that Iraq was attacked for "no reason," however. It was attacked for the same reason Iran is being attacked: the establishment of U.S.-Israeli dominance over the Middle East.) While U.S. commentators often talk as if Iran would pursue nuclear weapons mainly in order to destroy the U.S. or Israel (which would, of course, be suicidal given both countries' superior nuclear forces), there's no evidence that Iran would want nuclear weapons for any reason beyond deterring potential external attacks. (A fear that recent events have proven to be well-founded.)
In fact, the entire prevailing narrative about Iran is completely backwards. It's the U.S. that has been a threat to Iran, not the other way around. It was the United States and Britain that overthrew Iran's legitimately elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. (The New York Times was elated by the coup, commenting that "underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.") Since 1979, when the Iranians ousted the dictator (the Shah) that the U.S. had helped install and maintain in power, the U.S. has had a virtually unremittingly hostile attitude toward Iran. This is not because of the government's (very real) human rights abuses, since the U.S. is happy to support human rights abusing states that are pliant and servile (see, e.g., Saudi Arabia and Egypt). But Iran is viewed as a threat to U.S. dominance in the Middle East. Thus, in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein as he waged a ruthless war of aggression against Iran, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians including with chemical weapons. (The U.S. concealed evidence of Hussein's chemical weapon use from the UN, because it wanted him to go on killing Iranians.) More recently, the U.S. and Israel have tried to destabilize the country through devastating cyberattacks, economy-wrecking sanctions, and assassinations. The sanctions have been explicitly aimed at harming civilians, with Mike Pompeo boasting in 2019 that "things are much worse for the Iranian people" thanks to sanctions and hoping that their suffering would lead them to overthrow their government.
Importantly, while U.S. policymakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties constantly affirm that "Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons," they rarely state their implicit corollary to this proposition, which is that Israel must be allowed to have nuclear weapons. As it happens, Iran actually agrees that it shouldn't be allowed to have nukes, and has long supported turning the entire Middle East into an official nuclear weapons free zone, much as Africa and Latin America have done. The problem is that the U.S. and Israel demand a double standard, with Israel refusing to contemplate giving up its nuclear weapons. The entire nuclear disagreement, then, is not about whether Iran should have nuclear weapons, but about whether Iran should hold itself to a different standard to Israel. (Amusingly, Chuck Schumer recently accidentally declared that "no one wants a nuclear Israel," and had to correct himself, because he does want a nuclear Israel.)
Anyone who values human life should treat war as an absolute last resort, to be engaged in only once every diplomatic option has been exhausted. In this case, it was the Trump administration that sabotaged diplomacy. First, even though asking Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons means imposing an unfair double standard that imperils Iran's national security, Iran had agreed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to severely constrain its development of nuclear technology, and agreed to a detailed monitoring and compliance regime. It was confirmed to be adhering to that agreement until Donald Trump ripped it up in 2018, subsequently criticizing Iran for failing to adhere to the agreement that he himself had destroyed. Joe Biden declined to pursue the revival of that agreement, even though Iran signaled that it was open to it. But to this day, Iran has shown that it is willing to consider even highly unfavorable agreements in order to avoid war---it has never shown any sign of launching an unprovoked strike, only deploying military action in response to violence by others, such as an Israeli attack on its embassy or the assassination of its allies' leaders.
Iran has long wanted to keep a war with the U.S. from breaking out, which is why its responses to U.S. and Israeli attacks have previously been notably measured and cautious. (This time around, Iran reasons that unless it inflicts major damage, it will be perceived as weak and attacked further, since previous restraint only encouraged the U.S. and Israel to press their advantage.) Diplomatic talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing, and Oman, mediating talks, saw "the most promising diplomatic opening in years" and thought "diplomacy was producing tangible results and that a negotiated settlement was imminent." The U.S. and Israel decided to sabotage diplomacy and assassinate the Iranian head of state, possibly because they felt they just couldn't forgo the opportunity to kill as many high-ranking Iranians as possible in one fell swoop. (They killed so many Iranian government officials that Donald Trump admitted the U.S. had killed all of the people who had been considered likely candidates to take Khamenei's place.) Iran professed itself baffled as to why the U.S. attacked. "I do not know why the U.S. administration insists on beginning a negotiation with Iran and then attacking Iran in the middle of talks," said the country's foreign minister. He told NBC: "We were able to address serious questions related to Iran's nuclear program. We obviously have differences, but we resolved some of those differences, and we decided to continue in order to resolve the rest of [the] questions."
Because mass civilian casualties are a predictable consequence of intense airstrikes, to choose to unnecessarily end diplomatic engagement and start bombing is unconscionable depravity. But it's clear that the Trump administration didn't really care whether Iran was genuinely willing to engage in diplomacy, because Trump's position is that Iran should simply do what we say, period. There is nothing to negotiate, because for Trump, the only choice is whether a country is willing to comply with U.S. demands, or whether we will have to use force to ensure their compliance.
I haven't even gotten to the illegality of the war. Leaving aside the ridiculous Republican denials that this is a war (if a country assassinated our head of state and bombed our cities, would anyone doubt that they were waging war?), it's plain that all of this is unconstitutional. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress, not the president. Congress didn't declare war, therefore the war is illegal. Case closed. I know presidents have stretched their powers as far as possible (Obama's drone strikes, etc.) but if a president has the power to wage a relentless bombing and assassination campaign without Congressional approval, the Constitution simply ceases to mean anything. Congress has plainly failed in its responsibility to ensure that Trump complies with the Constitution, but the failure of our politicians to enforce the law doesn't change what it says.
Of course, it virtually goes without saying that the war violates international law. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force (or even the threat of force) except in response to an armed attack. Iran had not attacked the U.S., nor was there any evidence Iran was going to attack the U.S. Propagandists assert that Iran (and its "proxies") have killed "hundreds" of Americans over the years, but they decline to specify who these Americans are or discuss the Iranians killed by the U.S. and our own "proxies." There's no real point discussing international law, because Trump has made it clear he simply doesn't care about it, saying he doesn't need it and is unconstrained by it. Unfortunately, other countries have been just as pathetically weak as members of the U.S. Congress, with countries like Britain and France issuing statements that were de facto supportive of the assassination of a foreign head of state. (Canada issued a supportive statement and then appeared to regret it after noticing that letting the U.S. and Israel tear up the last vestiges of international law might be unwise.) Germany's chancellor has even made the stunning statement that Iran shouldn't be protected by international law, waving away the obvious illegality of the attacks by saying that "now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies." The killing of a head of state is a major crime, the normalization of which would open a horrible Pandora's box of lawless state action, and the world should be unified in condemning U.S.-Israeli lawlessness, but even among the Arab states there is a reluctance to antagonize the U.S.
None of the long-term consequences of this war will be good. The Trump administration does not appear to have any kind of strategic plan for what will happen next in Iran. (Lindsey Graham says it's "not [Trump's] job" to have a plan for what happens to the country's government next.) We could see the country's collapse into civil war, Libya-style. (Obama adviser Ben Rhodes recently admitted that Obama's decision to topple Libya's dictator without a plan for the country was a major error.) We could simply see the hard-line theocrats be replaced by more hard-line theocrats who are more convinced than ever that there can be no negotiating with the U.S., that the only language this country understands is force, and that the best thing for Iran's safety would be for it to obtain a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. What we are unlikely to see is a pro-American government emerging, and this war puts Americans everywhere in considerable danger. (Ask yourself: if what happened to Sara Shariatmadar happened to someone you love, would you see the country that carried out the bombing as a liberator? Or would you want revenge?) Although plenty of Iranians are justly celebrating the end of the Ayatollah's rule, like the Iraqis who celebrated in 2003, they will soon find out that the U.S. has no interest in their well-being, and will happily watch their country slide into civil war if this serves America's perceived "national security" interest.
Six Americans have already died in addition to the 1,000 Iranians. Because this is a war of choice, totally unnecessary and unjustifiable, their blood is on Donald Trump's hands, and he (as well as Congress) should be treated no differently than we would treat someone who murdered these Americans with their bare hands. But the costs to this country are only just beginning. Of course, if you're an RTX shareholder this may be a bonanza, but the rest of us are likely to see major economic disruption, in addition to all the resources that are put into the production of weapons. Eisenhower famously tried to warn Americans that war spending is an act of "theft" from the public, because it's money not spent on schools and hospitals, and the "opportunity cost" is therefore enormous. But Eisenhower's warning has largely been ignored.
Worse, as Abby Martin notes in the terrifying and important new film Earth's Greatest Enemy, military action has catastrophic climate consequences, since the U.S. war machine is the world's biggest polluter and the carbon emissions of our vast, brutal empire are driving us toward ever-worsening climate catastrophe. Unfortunately, that's just fine with some in the administration and the military---terrifying recent reporting suggests that some evangelical Christian officers are celebrating the war as hastening the apocalypse, claiming Trump was "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth." These people would sacrifice the rest of us to the inferno to fulfill their delusional prophecies.
Of course, the war reveals that Trump and his coterie were complete frauds when they pledged to keep the U.S. out of senseless Middle East wars. Trump fooled a lot of people with this stuff, although hopefully their illusions will now be hard to maintain. (Former hardcore MAGA types like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes are now admitting they were duped.) If there is one silver lining here, amid all of the horror, it is that because this war is deeply unpopular and Trump has no idea how to deal with its consequences, perhaps we will finally see the MAGA movement collapse politically. Trump's approval rating was already in the toilet, and while I sadly have no illusions that public opinion will be especially moved by the bombing of a school, when the fallout in cost, lives, and global chaos begins to come home, perhaps Americans will turn once and for good against their warmongering president.
But it is hard for me to think hopefully right now, as I see pictures of the remnants of former schoolchildren, schoolchildren whose lives were brutally extinguished with the help of my tax dollars. All I can feel is horror and rage at the sociopaths willing to do such things, who claim to want peace while ensuring that humanity will be consigned to a future of endless, senseless conflict.
PHOTO: Graves being dug for the elementary school girls killed in the bombing of the Minab school. Iran Foreign Ministry.
From blog via This RSS Feed.
4
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has collected $9m (£6.6m) in unpaid fines from Amazon, which has been violating clean air regulations by leaving engines running on its parked vehicles.
His office announced the recovery of the money last week, days after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos appeared to criticise Mamdani’s push to tax the rich in order to fund education.
“Amazon is worth $2tn. Yet it did not deign to pay the millions of dollars it racked up in unpaid fines as its trucks illegally polluted our air and forced New Yorkers to breathe in their exhaust,” Mamdani said in a statement.
“We are going to collect every dollar they owe the people of this city.”
Lisa F Garcia, commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, said: “I applaud Mayor Mamdani and the Department of Finance for securing more than $9m in illegal idling fines from Amazon, which has long been among the top worst idling offenders in the city.”
In an interview with broadcaster CNBC last week, Bezos criticised New York’s public education system and said that even doubling his taxes would not help local teachers.
“If we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system, your packages would take six weeks to arrive,” he said.
Mamdani’s administration has prioritised enforcing existing laws against large companies as part of a bid to rein in corporate power and improve public finances. Earlier this month, his office said it had secured a record-breaking $31m (£22.9m) in penalties against negligent landlords.
From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.
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14
Trump Aide Claims Americans ‘Spending More Money on Everything’ Shows They're ‘Optimistic’ About Economy
(www.commondreams.org)
For the second time in a month, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on Tuesday claimed that Americans spending more money on gasoline and other goods is a sign of strength for the US economy—rather than evidence of the Trump administration's inflationary policy decisions.
During an interview with Fox Business, Hassett tried to counter recent data showing US consumer sentiment hitting all-time lows during President Donald Trump's second term.
"The thing that I've seen when I look at credit card data," Hassett said, "is that while people have been spending more money at gas stations, they've been spending more money on everything else, which means that they're still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy, and they should be."
Hassett: "The thing I've seen is that while people have been spending more money at gas stations, they've been spending more money on everything else, which means they're still very very optimistic about the state of the economy"
(Consumer sentiment is actually at an all time… pic.twitter.com/oyWfsCGy8O
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 26, 2026
In fact, multiple consumer surveys have shown that Americans have never been more pessimistic about the state of the economy.
Last week, the University of Michigan's latest Surveys of Consumers showed consumer sentiment hitting the lowest level ever, driven primarily by concerns about the cost of living.
Gallup last week published new data showing that Americans’ economic confidence has fallen to its lowest level since October 2022, with just 16% of Americans rating the economy as excellent or good, and nearly half describing it as poor.
Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo asked Hassett about these surveys, and he said they should be dismissed because they only show negative sentiment from Democrats and independents, who combined make up the majority of US voters.
"They call it 'consumer sentiment' but I don't think those words mean what they think they mean anymore," Hassett said. "We find that basically the consumer sentiment indicator at the University of Michigan, it's just a political survey. And in fact, what the correlation between what Democrats say and what independents say... it's almost exactly perfectly correlated."
BARTIROMO: Consumer sentiment is a record low. What's the most important messaging you can put out there to help sentiment?
HASSETT: They call it 'consumer sentiment' but I don't think those words mean what they think they mean anymore. The correlation between what independents… pic.twitter.com/kAM3JyWUjD
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 26, 2026
In fact, consumer sentiment surveys taken during President Joe Biden's administration showed that independents joined with Republican voters to rate the economy significantly more poorly than Democratic voters, indicating that independents' views of the economy are not in lockstep with Democrats'.
Polling averages calculated by elections analyst Nate Silver currently show Trump's approval rating on his handling to the economy to be just 34%, with disapproval standing at 63%.
The numbers are even worse when it comes to the president's handling of inflation, where an average of 28% of Americans approve and 69% disapprove.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
6
The number of U.S. casualties in the Iran War ticked higher on Tuesday, hours after American military forces conducted what U.S. Central Command called “self-defense strikes” in southern Iran. Official Pentagon statistics put the current casualty toll at 423, an increase of three wounded from the War Department’s last official tally issued on Friday.
The increase in casualties came as Iran’s supreme leader said the war had exposed the vulnerability of U.S. military bases.
The increase in casualties came as Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a written statement that the war had exposed the vulnerability of U.S. military bases across the Middle East and as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps threatened to respond to any U.S. strikes.
“The hands of time do not turn backward, and the nations and lands of the region will no longer serve as shields for American bases,” Khamenei said in his statement. “America, in addition to no longer having a safe place for aggression and military bases in the region, is moving further away from its former status day by day.”
The U.S. has been clinging to a rickety ceasefire with Iran for more than a month, as President Donald Trump — who previously threatened to commit genocide in that country — has oscillated between claims that a peace agreement is imminent and talk of renewed hostilities.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that talks to end the war were continuing but that a peace agreement could take “a few days.”
Reporting by The Intercept found that the Pentagon’s official tally of dead and wounded military personnel from the Iran War is a gross undercount, stemming from what one U.S. government official called a “casualty cover-up.” The Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the president, is missing hundreds of known casualties.
[
Related
“Casualty Cover-Up”: The Pentagon Is Hiding U.S. Losses Under Trump in the Middle East](https://theintercept.com/2026/04/01/iran-war-us-casualty-numbers-trump-hegseth/)
On the day the ceasefire deal was struck between the Trump administration and Iran, the tally of U.S. dead and wounded was 385. Despite a pause in hostilities, the number slowly rose to 428, according to Pentagon statistics.
On April 21, however, the number of wounded-in-action troops declined by 15 without public comment from the War Department, dropping the casualty total to 413. Despite repeated questions over the last month, the Pentagon has not commented on the disparity in its casualty count.
Since then, the casualty count has crept upwards, with the number of dead increasing by one and the number of wounded topping out at 409 on Tuesday, yielding a total of 423 dead and wounded U.S. personnel.
On Thursday, CENTCOM told The Intercept, “13 service members were killed in action and one service member passed due to a non-combat related medical emergency during Operation Epic Fury” — the military’s name for the campaign.
For weeks, DCAS listed 13 hostile and non-hostile U.S. deaths during the war. Most DCAS webpages still claim 13 U.S. deaths but one put the tally at 14, as of Tuesday.
[
Read Our Complete Coverage
Targeting Iran --------------](/collections/targeting-iran/)
The Pentagon list of the names of the dead is still missing Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and reportedly died of sudden illness while on duty in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6, 2026. CENTCOM did not reply to a request for comment on whether Davius was the non-combat fatality they referenced.
“He passed away while deployed to Kuwait in support of Operation Epic Fury,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., during a memorial service for Davius in late March. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also recognized Daviuswhile “honoring our fallen” from the war.
While DCAS provides a running tally of “non-hostile” deaths — meaning those who died from accidents or by illness — it doesn’t include “non-hostile” injuries. The DCAS figures show that 64 Navy personnel have been wounded in action.
Missing, however, are the more than 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation or lacerations due to a March 12 fire that raged aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford. The aircraft carrier had been conducting round-the-clock flight operations to, Caine said, “project combat power” in the Middle East. The ship returned to its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, this month after 326 days at sea, its longest deployment since the Vietnam War.
The numbers also don’t include a sailor who suffered a non-combat-related injury aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln as it was involved in “strike missions in support of Operation Epic Fury” on March 25.
For weeks, the Pentagon has failed to reply to repeated requests for comment on why DCAS provides counts of non-hostile war zone deaths but not non-hostile injuries or illnesses. CENTCOM did not immediately respond on Tuesday to requests for clarification concerning the casualty figures.
The post U.S. Casualties in Iran War Rise as Military Strikes Begin Again appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
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'We Are Coming for You, Susan Collins': 1,700+ Rally With Sanders, Platner Against Oligarchy in Maine
(www.commondreams.org)
Over 1,700 people attended a packed-house rally in a former waterfront warehouse in Portland, Maine on Monday as Sen. Bernie Sanders championed the working-class populist candidacies of Graham Platner for US Senate and Troy Jackson for governor in front of a crowd that never missed a chance to boo and rail against Republican Sen. Susan Collins—and the billionaire class that has benefited most from her nearly 30-year career in Washington, DC.
"We are coming for you, Susan Collins," said Bill Jefferson, a Vietnam veteran and peace activist, who opened the Memorial Day event by noting "the horror of combat and unbearable losses" that come with war.
Jackson, a fifth generation logger from northern Maine who previously served as president of the State Senate, denounced a political system in which "people that can write the biggest checks" win while working people—stretched to the breaking point week after week just trying to get by—always end up on the losing end.
"What little time we have is being stolen by the oligarchy," —Troy Jackson
"This is a hard point sometimes to get across," said Jackson, "but honestly, I'm running for governor because we've been robbed by so many things in this world by the people who control it, but there's never been any greater robbery than that of our time. It's something that we can never get back. The time that we have with our parents, our children, and our loved ones is limited. It's finite."
"What little time we have is being stolen by the oligarchy," said Jackson, "who see our lives, who see us as nothing more than a commodity—something to monetize."
"We can't afford to wait any longer," he said, before declaring: "Our time is now!"
Ahead of the Democratic Party primary in Maine on June 9, where he faces a large field of candidates looking to take over from outgoing Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, Jackson said that "solidarity" between the people of the state is not a word, but a "lifestyle," and that campaigning next to Sanders and Platner is about building a movement with the strength of working people behind it.
"Right here in Maine," he said, "we are going to remind the world that the Democratic Party is the party of the working class and we're damn well going to fight for it for a change."
Graham Platner and Troy Jackson raise hands together during the event at Thompson's Point in Portland, Maine on Monday, May 25, 2026. (Photo: Peter Logue/flickr/Graham for Maine)
Kelli Brennan, president of the Maine State Nurses Association (MSNA), told the crowd that the fight at hand is against President Donald Trump and "his billionaire buddies," but also about building a better society where Medicare for All is embraced and people are not profiting off the sickness of others.
"This isn't about the right versus the left," said Brennan. "This is about the haves versus the have-nots; the billionaires versus the working class; and healthcare capitalism has no place in the world of healing."
After Gov. Mills dropped out of the race for the US Senate last month, the primary is no longer the obstacle it once was for Platner's campaign, which now has its sights firmly set on the general election against Collins. After a similar rally on Sunday further north in Orono, Platner told the crowd in Portland, the state's largest city, that the strength his campaign has shown thus far is more a credit to them than to him.
"Senator Sanders asked a question in his 2020 presidential run," said Platner. "Are you willing to fight for somebody you don't know as much as you are willing to fight for yourself? If this campaign is any indication, the answer in Maine is a resounding yes."
"This isn't about the right versus the left. This is about the haves versus the have-nots; the billionaires versus the working class." —Kelli Brennan, MSNA president
Back in September, Sanders became the first major political figure to endorse Platner at a Labor Day event when the campaign was just a few weeks old. In the months since, Platner explained Monday, he has seen firsthand what the question posed by the man he credits with inspiring him politically means in practice.
"I've heard from students who fear not only for themselves, but for their parents and their grandparents, the people who gave them everything and whose Social Security checks get smaller each month as everything else gets more expensive," said Platner. "I've heard from fishermen, who—with all the challenges they face—are concerned about how tariffs are impacting their neighbors who are contractors. Or I've heard from loggers who fear for the nurses and the teachers in their communities who seem to never be paid what we know they are owed."
"Here in Maine, we are ready to fight as hard for the people we do not know as we are for the ones that we do," Platner thundered. "It is who we are and it is who we will always be."
Kelli Brennan, president of the Maine State Nurses Association (MSNA), speaks at the 2026 Memorial Day rally against oligarchy in Portland. (Photo: flickr/ Graham for Maine)
"This movement—our movement—is not divided by age or by class or by gender or by race," he continued. "It's not divided by where you live in Maine or for how long. This is a movement of Maine, by Maine, and for Maine. And we are going to take back what is ours, because for decades—they have taken. Piece by piece, store by store, hospital by hospital, home by home—they have taken. They took so much they began to think that we didn't exist at all, but they don't know Maine."
Recalling claims by establishment Democrats like Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who last year complained that Sanders’ use of the word “oligarchy” wouldn’t resonate with Americans even as he had drawn more than 100,000 people to rallies on the nationwide Fighting Oligarchy tour, Platner jokingly checked with the crowd before using the term.
“There’s a word I want to use to describe what we are fighting,” he said. “Before I use it, I just want to make sure. Can you raise your hand if you know what the word ‘oligarchy’ means?”
"That's what I thought," said Platner as hands shot up across the crowd.
"Piece by piece, store by store, hospital by hospital, home by home—they have taken. They took so much they began to think that we didn't exist at all, but they don't know Maine."—Graham Platner
The word, defined by Merriam-Webster as "a system of government where all power is concentrated in the hands of a small, elite group," appeared well understood by attendees who filed out of the building after the rally.
"Balancing society with us versus the 1%, fighting the oligarchy... That's very important to me as a concern for the future," a resident named Ben Russell, who attended the rally with his young family, told Common Dreams. "We brought life into this world, and we'd like it to not devolve into some cyberpunk dystopia."
The rally speakers, along with Sanders, Jackson, and Platner, offered a "brand of politics that cares about all the people," Russell said, "and not just allowing the greed of a few Americans to ruin it for the rest of us."
Sanders, in his remarks, said that oligarchs, the billionaires, the corporate media, and too many folks in Congress are in the habit of telling people that the society we have now is just "the way it is—you can't do better than that."
But the message from candidates like Jackson and Platner, as well as the nationwide push to confront the oligarchy, is to stand firmly against that position.
"We're here to say that we can do a hell of a lot better than that," said Sanders. "We can create an economy that works for all of us, not just the billionaire class."
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks the rally with Troy Jackson and Graham Platner to speak out against oligarchy in Portland, Maine on Monday, May 25, 2026. (Photo: flickr/Graham for Maine)
Another rallygoer, who asked not to be identified, said she was motivated to spend Memorial Day at an indoor political event because "the billionaires are running this country right now, and we have a criminal wannabe billionaire king in the White House who's allowing it to happen."
"My son has to live with me because he can't afford to live on his own," she told Common Dreams, referring to a living arrangement that's grown more common for adults aged 18-34 across the country.
Among Americans aged 25-34, the share living with their parents has jumped over 87% over the past two decades, US Census data shows, as adults struggle to afford housing.
At the rally, Sanders asked the crowd whether "everybody here in Portland [has] great housing at an affordable cost," leading the crowd to answer with a resounding, "No!"
"Well, nobody in Burlington, Vermont does either," said the senator. "And all over this country, what we're seeing is people paying 40, 50% of their limited incomes on housing."
"We can create an economy that works for all of us, not just the billionaire class." —Sen. Bernie Sanders
The housing affordability crisis is well known to Mainers and Portland residents, with a 2023 study finding the state was in need of 84,000 new housing units by 2030 in order to meet demand. Last year, the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that a full-time worker in Maine must earn $28.42 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent—but the median hourly wage in the state is just $24.19, while the minimum wage is $15.50.
Roughly half of renters in Cumberland County, where Portland is located, were spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs in 2020-24, qualifying them as cost-burdened, according to a Census survey.
At the rally, the crowd expressed anger at the impact of the housing affordability crisis on people at all income levels, booing loudly when Sanders noted that 800,000 Americans are now homeless.
"I think [it] is really unfortunate in the wealthiest country in the world that we can't take care of those people," Russell told Common Dreams.
Potential voters cheer during the rally. (Photo: flickr/Graham for Maine)
Along with loudly booing Collins throughout the speeches, the crowd erupted in cheers at Platner's demand that US tax dollars be used to "build schools and hospitals in America instead of bombs to drop on them in Gaza," and at Sanders' call to pass "legislation to get super [political action committees] out of the political process."
"I want the day to come when young people who want to run for public office," said Sanders, can do so "without having to beg wealthy people and billionaires for campaign contributions."
Planter, who has said that before last year he never aspired to any public service beyond serving as harbor office in his small town of Sullivan, credited Sanders for his relentless commitment to a message that says "we can have an economy and a government that works for the 99% and not just the 1%." But Platner also emphasized that "we are not going to get any of this with speeches alone or with any politician alone."
"No one is coming to save us. We need one thing, something the man speaking after me has been fighting for for 60 years. We need a political revolution," said Platner, drawing some of the biggest applause of the night. "It is thousands of people across Maine, millions across America, acting together, creating a movement too powerful for money to buy."
Platner followed with a call for attendees to volunteer for his and Jackson's campaigns, emphasizing that doing so would be an opportunity to connect with people who may have different political beliefs or affiliations.
"It is taking precious time out of our weeks, week after week, and doing something that isn't complicated, but is hard: talking to our neighbors at their doors, overcoming our differences, and bringing them into our fight because this is the fight of our lives," said Platner.
The message stuck with one voter, who said as she was leaving the venue, "People have to take back the power, and this bunch of people can do that."
Those who gathered in Portland, she said, were "not coming from any other place except who they are as individuals and what they want to see for their families."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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Maine Trans Sports/Bathroom Ban Referendum Invalid Over Signature Forgery Concerns And Improper Gathering
(www.erininthemorning.com)
Photo by Serenity Mitchell on Unsplash
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
On Tuesday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that a proposed ballot initiative banning trans students from school sports and bathrooms will not appear before voters this November. The billionaire-funded campaign initially submitted 79,692 signatures—well over the 67,682 required to qualify—and the Secretary of State's office certified the question for the ballot in March. But indications soon emerged that the signature-gathering process was riddled with improper procedures and, in at least one documented case and potentially many others, outright forgery. After a court remand, an evidentiary hearing, and a sworn-testimony review of the petitions, 12,542 signatures were invalidated, leaving the campaign 532 short of the threshold. Barring an appeal—which is likely though its success is far from certain—transgender students in Maine can rest a little easier this election cycle.
The infractions are striking. One out-of-state circulator left his petition forms unattended at a Topsham polling place on Election Day—twice—allowing voters to sign without a witness present, in direct violation of Maine law. Another circulator did the same at a Saco polling place, leaving her table for extended periods while crowds of voters signed unwitnessed petitions. When asked under oath whether she had destroyed the unwitnessed forms as required, she said yes—but a photograph submitted into evidence showed one of those forms was in fact turned in for validation. Most troubling of all, an out-of-state signature gatherer paid per signature submitted forms that appear to contain outright forgeries: one voter listed on her petition testified under oath that she had never signed it and had never even heard of the initiative. After the Oxford town clerk flagged additional suspicious signatures, an Elections Division review compared every name on the circulator's forms against voter registration applications—and concluded that every single one of her validated signatures should have been thrown out as signed by another person.
Based on the evidence, Bellows ruled Tuesday that the initiative had failed to qualify for the November ballot. The decision marked a reversal of her own March certification, when her office initially determined that the petition contained enough valid signatures to move forward. That earlier ruling was challenged in Cumberland County Superior Court by three Maine voters, who alleged that thousands of signatures had been collected in violation of state law. In April, Justice Deborah Cashman agreed that the original review had been incomplete and remanded the case back to the Secretary of State's office for further factfinding, ordering a new determination of validity within thirty days. That process produced the May 12 evidentiary hearing—where witnesses, including town clerks and voters whose names appeared on petitions, testified under oath—and ultimately the decision invalidating thousands more signatures than the initial review had caught. Bellows adopted that recommendation in full.
The initiative would have done far more than what its sports-focused branding suggested. It would have defined a person's sex for school purposes as "a person's biological status as male or female recorded at birth on the person's original birth certificate"—a definition that would have stripped transgender students of legal recognition in Maine schools. It would have required public schools to "maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms, shower rooms, and other private spaces for each sex," extending the ban well beyond athletics and into every gendered space in a school building. It would have created a private right of action allowing any student to sue their school for "direct injury" suffered from a violation of the act, effectively turning every transgender student's presence in a bathroom or on a sports team into potential litigation. And it would have specifically carved transgender students out of the Maine Human Rights Act.
The anti-trans signature drive was not a grassroots effort. It was bankrolled by Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, the co-founder of Uline office supplies, who donated $800,000 to fund the entire effort. Uihlein has given more than $250 million to political causes since 2016, and is a major funder of the American Principles Project, which routinely spends tens of millions on anti-trans campaign ads during election years. He is not alone: an independent analysis published by Atmos and HEATED found that 80% of 45 major anti-trans organizations in the U.S. have received funding from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. The Maine initiative was part of that broader pattern—an attempt by a small handful of extraordinarily wealthy donors to use direct democracy as a workaround in states where elected legislatures have refused to engage in anti-trans legislation.
The decision was greeted with relief by the LGBTQ+ coalition that has fought the initiative since the day it was filed. “Maine has strict rules in place to protect the integrity of our elections and our system of direct democracy. The paid, out-of-state signature gathers and the billionaire who paid to try to put this question on the ballot failed to follow the rules,” said David Farmer, campaign manager for the Campaign for Free and Fair Schools, the coalition led by EqualityMaine, GLAD Law, and the Maine Women’s Lobby. “We believe that the appeals process and the reviews by the Secretary of State are working as the law intends. They are protecting the integrity of our elections.”
The Maine ruling is not the end of fight. Similar billionaire-backed initiatives have been certified for the November ballot in Washington and Colorado, where voters will decide whether to bar transgender students from sports as well as medical care restrictions. Both efforts are also funded by conservative megadonors, and both are part of the same strategy that produced the Maine initiative: use ballot initiatives to roll back trans rights in states whose elected legislatures have refused to do so. The Maine anti-trans campaign is expected appeal Bellows’ decision to Maine Superior Court within the ten-day window the law allows.
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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Citing 'Intentional Race-Based Discrimination,' Court Blocks Alabama's GOP-Rigged Electoral Map
(www.commondreams.org)
A three-judge panel on Tuesday temporarily blocked Alabama from using a Republican-drawn congressional map created to effectively disenfranchise Black people, who make up more than one-quarter of the population of a state that, by GOP design, has just one majority-Black House district.
United States Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus, a nominee of former President Bill Clinton, and District Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer—both of whom were nominated by President Donald Trump—granted a motion by Alabama state Sen. Bobby Singleton (D-24); Black voters, and groups including the national and state ACLU, the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, Legal Defense Fund, and Southern Poverty Law Center to block the state from using a racially rigged congressional map approved by the GOP-led Legislature in 2023.
The panel unanimously found that Alabama could not use the map because it “represents an intentional effort to crack the Black population in Alabama.”
“Ultimately, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the judges wrote.
🧵 The Supreme Court's Callais ruling made it harder to prove in court that a legislative map dilutes minority voting strength.But a three-judge panel today confirmed that intentional racial gerrymanders can still be struck down by federal courts.Here’s what you need to know about Alabama 👇
[image or embed]
— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) May 26, 2026 at 10:31 AM
“Cracking” is the splitting of communities of color to dilute their power in a given district. The related practice of "packing" refers to placing people of color in the same district in order to prevent them from having greater political power in surrounding districts.
The same three-judge panel had blocked a previous attempt by Alabama Republicans to implement a congressional map lacking a second Black opportunity district in defiance of a US Supreme Court ruling affirming a lower court's order to create such a district.
"We do not lightly intrude in state affairs, but our previous review of the undisputed evidence left us in no doubt that Alabama’s legislatively enacted plan (the “2023 Plan”) intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution," the three judges wrote in Tuesday's decision. "Our re-examination in light of Callais yields the same conclusion."
Last month, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Louisiana v. Callais that the Southern state's congressional map is “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander" because race—specifically, ensuring representation for Black voters—was the predominant factor in redistricting. The decision ironically voided the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.
Citing Callais, Alabama and other Southern states rushed to redraw their congressional maps to dilute Black voting power and satisfy requests from President Donald Trump for GOP-controlled state legislatures to rig districts for partisan gain ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Callais was followed by another 6-3 US Supreme Court ruling earlier this month, which found that Alabama could use the 2023 map, prompting liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to dissent and point out that the high court previously found that “Alabama violated the 14th Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters.”
That ruling came two days after Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey had signed legislation authorizing new primary elections if federal courts agreed to rescind the creation of the second Black opportunity district. Ivey's signature came despite ongoing primaries in Alabama.
Black voters sought a temporary restraining order against the 2023 map, arguing that the 14th Amendment still banned redistricting that was deliberately discriminatory, regardless of Callais.
“Alabama cannot use Callais to legitimize its pre-Callais decision to double down on the discriminatory vote dilution that we and the Supreme Court found,” the three judges wrote Tuesday. “And it cannot use Callais to legitimize the series of specific and unusual decisions it made to entrench that dilution."
Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the state would immediately appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court.
“Know this—in my mind, it is not a matter of whether we win this case, only when," he asserted.
US Rep. Shomari Figures (D-Ala.), whose House seat would almost certainly be usurped by a Republican under the GOP-redrawn map, said in a social media post following Tuesday's ruling that "this is a significant step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go before this fight is settled."
NAACP Legal Defense Fund litigation director Deuel Ross told The Associated Press that Tuesday's ruling “again vindicated the constitutional rights of voters in the Black Belt, and our clients look forward to voting under a fair map this fall.”
Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation—an advocacy group supporting fair maps—said in a statement, "Justice prevailed today; Alabama must use its 2023 court-adopted map—a map with two Black opportunity districts—in this year's elections."
"Make no mistake, the fight for justice is far from over in states across the country where politicians are enacting gerrymanders on top of gerrymanders to erase equal representation for communities of color," she continued. "The message from this panel is clear: Courts must fulfill their independent duty to protect voters’ rights, not just rubber-stamp state officials’ efforts to use the Supreme Court’s Callais decision as an excuse to draw Black voters out of a say in our democracy."
"Politicians aiming to enact new gerrymanders in South Carolina, Georgia, and elsewhere should take note," Jenkins added.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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In an international action, Palestine Action Global targeted multiple sites of transport company DSV. The sites were covered in symbolic blood-red paint, with graffiti highlighting DSV’s role in assisting genocide. Numerous windows were also smashed, and DSV vehicles were put out of action.
Over the weekend (Friday 22 May – Monday 25 May), actions took place against the logistics firm, in the US, Germany and at two sites in France.
In a previous coordinated action on 31 March 2026, Palestine Action Global had targeted DSV in several countries, including in the US and across Europe.
The Danish-owned international transport and logistics company has been transporting weapons, and weapons components, for Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest arms manufacturer. As a result, actionists across the world have repeatedly targeted it.
DSV took over the Elbit job after another shipping company, Kuehne + Nagel, one of the only six companies licensed to transport and handle weapons in Britain, was forced to cut ties with Elbit in 2024 following a series of actions by Palestine Action and broader public pressure.
Elbit produces 85% of the Israeli military’s killer drone fleet, and land-based equipment. Its weapons, which it boasts are “battle-tested” on Palestinians, have been used throughout the ongoing genocide in Gaza, in the Palestinian West Bank, against Syria and Yemen, and currently against Lebanon and Iran. Elbit’s drones have also been used to attack international aid flotillas in international waters.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action Global said:
Elbit Systems are only able to transport their weapons because of ruthless, amoral companies like DSV, who play a key role in the genocide in Gaza, and assist in killing people throughout West Asia.
By targeting them, we will disrupt the transport of Israeli weapons, and cost both Elbit and DSV money. It is not a matter of IF DSV will drop Elbit, but WHEN, because we will visit their sites again and again, until they stop facilitating genocide.
Featured image via Getty Images
By The Canary
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Burkina Faso asserts financial independence from the West with mineral-backed sovereign fund
(peoplesdispatch.org)
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Corporate Democrat Auchincloss Slammed for 'Endorsing' Susan Collins Over Platner in Crucial Maine Race
(www.commondreams.org)
With Graham Platner set to become the official Democratic US Senate candidate in Maine following Gov. Janet Mills' suspension of her primary campaign, progressives on Tuesday were incensed by a Massachusetts congressman’s public opposition to the populist oyster farmer, which arrived with a tacit endorsement of five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins instead.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), a former GOP organizer and the scion of an influential political family with Wall Street and Kennedy ties, told CNN Monday that he views a tattoo Platner got while serving in the US Marines as "disqualifying."
"I hope Maine voters agree with me," he said. "I think it would be a mistake for the Democratic Party to think that Graham Platner's brand of the Democratic Party is what wins us durable majorities throughout this country."
💥NEW: Dem Rep. Jake Auchincloss says Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo should be “DISQUALIFYING”🤯
“I find that tattoo and his commentary about it to be personally disqualifying. I hope Maine voters agree with me.”
CNN’s Boris Sanchez: “Wow.” pic.twitter.com/tMzWkz9h88
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) May 25, 2026
The tattoo, which Platner says he got after a night of drinking with fellow soldiers while on shore leave during a tour of duty, resembled a skull-and-crossbones symbol worn by some Nazi soldiers. A controversy broke out last October over the tattoo as well as old posts Platner wrote in online forums in the years after his military service. He has maintained he did not know the tattoo's origins and that the old posts don't represent his current views.
The controversy did not stop Platner from polling well ahead of Mills before her decision to drop out late last month, and ahead of his presumed Republican opponent in at least one recent poll. Several US senators have endorsed him and he has outpaced both Mills and Collins in fundraising as he's held standing-room-only town halls and rallies across the state, railing against oligarchy and President Donald Trump's attacks on immigrant communities and demanding a Medicare for All system and a tax on billionaires' wealth.
Auchincloss' comments suggested he hasn't noticed, or been moved by, the mounting evidence that Platner's campaign is resonating with Democratic voters—who numerous polls have shown are in agreement with the candidate on his demand for a government-funded universal healthcare system and his condemnation of the US government's unconditional support for Israel, as well as the pro-Israel lobby's massive influence on US politics in recent decades.
The Massachusetts lawmaker, meanwhile, appears increasingly out of step with the voters he hoped to sway with his comments.
In addition to opposing Medicare for All, in his state's delegation in the US House, Auchincloss is behind only one member—Rep. Katherine Clark (D)—in taking donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an organization that has long poured money into efforts to elect pro-Israel candidates on both sides of the aisle, but which is increasingly toxic among voters amid Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza and Palestinian communities across the West Bank.
Some critics noted that Auchincloss' position as chairman of a group called Majority Democrats—which promises to "win and sustain Democratic majorities"—was decidedly out of line with encouraging voters to oppose the presumptive winner of the Democratic primary—set for June 9—in a state that's crucial for the party to win in November if it is to wrest control of the Senate from the GOP.
Helen Brosnan, national political director of United Auto Workers, accused Auchincloss of "hating a pro-labor, anti-establishment candidate so much that you root for a Republican to win and ensure we lose the Senate."
Adam Carlson of Zenith Polls wondered whether Auchincloss "still supports his organization’s stated mission," "why he wants Trump to have a Republican Senate majority for his final two years in office," and "why he wants Trump to be able to appoint more MAGA justices to the Supreme Court and federal bench."
And Ryan Grim of Drop Site News noted that Democratic Party leaders would be unlikely to tolerate such behavior if the shoe were on the other ideological foot.
"If a Democrat endorses from the left against another Democrat in a primary, all hell comes down on them," said Grim. "Here’s Rep. Auchincloss coming out against the presumptive Democratic nominee in a crucial swing state. Probably actually helps Platner to have Dems like Auchincloss against him, but I still wonder if he’ll hear from Dem leadership or if they’re quietly ok with Collins.
Auchincloss on Tuesday denied the accusation that his remarks served as an endorsement of Platner's presumed opponent in the general election, pointing to his "track record supporting Democrats to take back both chambers."
But he repeated that "if it were me I'd vote for someone else in the Maine Democratic primary."
The latest poll conducted before Mills suspended her campaign found her 35 points behind Platner. A survey taken in March also asked Mainers about two other lesser-known candidates: organizer Andrea LaFlamme, who is running a write-in campaign and was polling at 2%, and former government worker David Costello, who was polling at 1%.
Grim and others drew attention to a "highly qualified" candidate who is challenging Auchincloss in Massachusetts' Fourth District in the September 1 primary: artificial intelligence and policy researcher Jason Poulos, who supports Medicare for All, protecting workers from AI displacement, strengthening unions, regulating AI data centers, and canceling student debt.
On his campaign website, Poulos, who supports ending military support for Israel, has condemned Auchincloss for counting the pro-Israel lobby as his "top campaign funder."
"When a congressman’s single largest source of campaign funds comes from a lobbying network whose top financiers have poured $230 million into electing Donald Trump," the website states, "voters deserve to ask: Whose interests does he represent?"
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Britain’s political prisoners: courts ‘degrading’ protest rights, new study shows
(morningstaronline.co.uk)
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Rape, Assault and Abuse Are Signature Israeli Government Values Toward Palestinians and Internationals
(codepink.substack.com)
Greek activists from the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla speak upon arrival at Istanbul airport, Turkiye [Murad Sezer/Reuters]
It has been only 72 hours since our colleagues on the Gaza flotilla arrived in Istanbul, Turkiye to tell of the rape, assaults and abuse they endured from the Israeli military on their sailboats, security personnel on the prison ship, civilian police at the Ashdod processing center and guards at the notoriously abusive Ktzi’ot prison.
Criminal Abuse Orchestrated and Ordered at the Highest Level of the Israeli Government
The 72 hours feel like weeks as we heard the stories from each of the 428 unarmed civilians from 45 countries who were on 50 small sailboats, kidnapped in international waters and taken against their will to a place they did not want to go-Israel-and then subjected to criminal abuse from personnel from a multitude of Israeli security institutions.
This criminal abuse was orchestrated and ordered at the highest level of the Israeli government as evidenced by the statement and actions of Minister of National Security Ben Gvir. Gvir himself posted footage on a social media platform showing himself gloating as activists from the flotilla were forced to kneel on the floor, blindfolded, roughed up with the hands bound tightly in zipties at the port of Ashdod.
The videos include a clip of Gvir waving an Israeli flag over the detainees who are hunched over on the ground with their hands bound and a clip of him smiling and chanting “Am Yisrael Chai”—Hebrew for “The nation of Israel lives”—at a detainee. Other clips showed detainees being pushed down to the ground, and detainees with their foreheads pressed against the floor, surrounded by armed guards as the Israeli national anthem plays.
Countries Ban Ben Gvir for Actions Against International Activists, But Not for Actions Against Palestinians
For his actions, France has banned Ben-Gvir from entering French territory stating that his “unspeakable behavior of taunting Gaza flotilla activists who had been arrested and abused by Israeli police forces. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on X on May 23: “As of today, Itamar Ben-Gvir is banned from entering French territory. This decision follows his unspeakable actions towards French and European citizens who were passengers on the Global Sumud Flotilla. We cannot tolerate that French nationals can be threatened, intimidated or brutalized in this way—all the more so by a public officials.” Barrot also called for the European Union to sanction Ben Gvir.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned the treatment seen in the footage in a post on X, calling the images “unacceptable” and saying it was “inadmissible” that demonstrators, including Italian citizens, were subjected to treatment that “violates human dignity”.
“Italy further demands an apology for the treatment of these demonstrators and for the utter contempt shown toward the explicit requests of the Italian government,” she said, adding that Israel’s ambassador in Rome would also be summoned.
President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea on May 20 called Israel’s actions “way out of line.”
Spain and Ireland also issued statements, calling out Ben Gvir’s “monstrous” and “appalling” behavior.
Even US President Donald Trump’s administration issued a rare criticism of an Israeli official, branding Ben Gvir’s actions “despicable. “Flotilla was stupid stunt, but Ben Gvir betrayed the dignity of his nation,” wrote US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on X.
Israeli Government Values-Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing and Theft of Lands
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s disclaimer that Ben Givr’s incitement of violence against flotilla participants does not reflect the “values” of the state of Israel has been ridiculed around the world as the values of the state of Israel are clearly stated by their actions of recent genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank and 80 years of Israeli abuse of Palestinians beginning in 1948 with the Israeli militias massacres of Palestinians and theft of land and homes of over 800,000 in the Nakba, “Catastrophe.”
No one has to look far for the “values” of the state of Israel. The values of the state of Israel are the criminal actions documented in excruciating detail by cases brought to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Gaza Flotilla Participants Suffered Gunshots, Beatings, Sexual Assaults, Concussions, Broken Bones…and They Still Are Willing to Challenge Israeli Brutality Toward Palestinians
Gaza flotilla participants, both men and women, young and old, endured an endless succession of criminal actions by Israeli state security officials. Three were shot by Israeli officials. Beatings, kicked in all parts of the body, dragged on the floor by the hair, forced to remain kneeling and bent over for hours at a time, beaten when one moved slightly, stripped naked numerous times, sexually assaulted, intimidation and humiliation were suffered in various degrees by virtually all of the 428 persons who were kidnapped from their flotilla boats.
Within hours of their arrival in Istanbul, flotilla participants were describing one by one, boat by boat, to Turkish police investigators and civilian lawyers what the Israeli security personnel did to them. These are official statements from participants that will be used in judicial proceedings against the State of Israel.
The first of many reports describing the treatment of many participants was issued on May 24, 2026. Titled “Global Sumud Flotilla Released Horrific, Newly Emerging Testimonies as Survivors Return Home,” it contains descriptions by members of several delegations of Israeli brutality toward flotilla participants:
New Testimonies: Terror Inside the Shipping Containers
As survivors begin speaking to the press upon arrival in their home nations, a shared experience of calculated barbarism—and profound solidarity—is emerging:
The French Delegation: In a chilling personal testimony, French delegate Meriem Hadjal described being dragged toward a dark shipping container by soldiers multiple times her size. “I take the first blow. Slaps that knock you out… Everything happens at the level of the head.” Terrified of being raped, she resisted as a soldier repeatedly touched her, while a second soldier pulled at her chest and pants. Inside the container, she witnessed a third soldier torturing another volunteer on the ground with a taser. Another soldier grabbed her by the hair, beating her head while demanding she show her face. When the container door briefly opened, she recounted, “what I mainly see on the ground, because I don’t look up, are bloodstains.” Meriem noted she, along with other detainees, were stripped naked, removing any warm clothes and crammed into splintered containers where they could hear their “comrades, one by one, screaming, because they were being beaten to a pulp.”
The Polish Delegation: Karim Awad, a medic holding dual Polish and UK citizenship, recounted being choked with a torn Palestinian flag by an iOF soldier. Awad was subsequently subjected to continuous stompings to the head by six soldiers. Because he had written “Free Palestine” on his body, he was singled out for multiple strip searches, severe beatings with a hand-held metal detector, and having his hair ripped out. He further revealed that the iOF systematically flooded the floors of the dark shipping containers with cold water every few hours to prevent detainees from sleeping.
The Greek Delegation: Delegates recounted the boarding of the Kiriakos X, where soldiers used electric shocks and brutal beatings on the crew to force them to identify their captain. To halt the torture of her crew, the female captain courageously stepped forward to claim responsibility for the boat and volunteers; the iOF responded by shooting her directly in the leg with a rubber bullet. She was wounded and denied proper medical care for days.
The South African Delegation: Two South African delegates, Ebrahim Peters and Qutb Hendricks, provided powerful testimony detailing how iOF soldiers explicitly used geopolitical retaliation as a pretext for torture. Upon discovering the participants’ nationality, soldiers dragged them into an isolated room and launched a targeted physical assault. While beating the volunteers, soldiers explicitly referenced international accountability mechanisms, stating, “You guys want to take us to court? We’ll show you,” referencing South Africa’s genocide case against israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The Belgian & Australian Delegations: 77-year-old Belgian delegate Olimpia Dìez Perlines expressed total shock at the sadism of the forces. Julien Cabral, another Belgian participant noted that soldiers could be heard explicitly saying, “let’s have fun,” as they initiated the violent attacks. And Australian delegate Juliet Lamont provided further harrowing details, confirming she was sexually assaulted “in this kind of torture chamber as five men were bashing me and smashing my face.”
The Canadian Delegation: Ehab Lotayef, sailing aboard the Canadian Boat to Gaza, was directly asked by iOF personnel to assist them with translation, only to be stabbed in the hand by soldiers the moment he attempted to provide that help.
The Brazilian Delegation: A delegate returning to Brazil, Ariadne Telles, detailed suffering physical and psychological torture. The delegate was subjected to severe sleep deprivation and targeted physical assaults: “They kicked me on the face, they kicked me on the legs, they zip-tied my hands; I don’t feel my fingers until now.” Detainees were forced to sit on their knees with their heads pressed to the floor for hours, while captors laughed.
Ann Wright was in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves for 29 years and retired as a Colonel. She was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years, but resigned from the U.S. government in 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.” She is on the steering committee of U.S. Boats to Gaza and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
Articles Cited:
Shezaf, Hagar (August 5, 2024). “Torture, Sexual Abuse and Humiliation | Dozens of Testimonies From Palestinian Prisoners Describe Conditions in Israeli Jails During Gaza war”. Haaretz.
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New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, alongside the City’s Commissioners in the Department of Finance (DOF) and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), has announced that his administration has managed to recover over $9m in previously unpaid fines.
These fines came from idling violations committed by Bezos’ delivery vehicles and third-party contractors, and despite the Amazon’s $2 trillion valuation, the company has ignored them – until now.
This serves as a timely reminder that authorities can hold dominant corporations accountable and make them pay up accordingly when political will exists.
Amazon is worth $2 trillion. But it didn't deign to pay the millions of dollars it racked up in unpaid fines as its’ trucks illegally polluted our air and forced New Yorkers to breathe in their exhaust.
⁰We collected every dollar they owe the people of this city — and will… pic.twitter.com/LzlPXP7hR3— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) May 22, 2026
Mamdani: “No company – no matter how large or powerful – is above the law”
This huge sum recovered from billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Amazon was due as a result of New York City’s anti-idling laws, which were introduced to tackle air pollution. These laws subsequently made it illegal for most vehicles to keep the engine running whilst idle for more than three minutes. In turn, this would then improve public health and also work to improve action against climate change.
Speaking about the lack of accountability amongst billionaires compared to ordinary, hard-working people, Mamdani said:
Amazon is worth $2 trillion. Yet, it did not deign to pay the millions of dollars it racked up in unpaid fines as its trucks illegally polluted our air and forced New Yorkers to breathe in their exhaust. We are going to collect every dollar they owe the people of this city.
These laws exist for a reason: cleaner air, healthier communities, and a city where corporations are held to the same standard as everyone else.
Today we are making clear that no company – no matter how large or powerful – is above the law.
Richard Lee, Commissioner for the DOF, showed his support for holding companies accountable, saying:
As part of the Mayor’s directive to ensure fairness, collaboration, and accountability in our agency’s service to New Yorkers, the Department of Finance is committed to collecting debts owed to the city and supporting enforcement efforts that protect New Yorkers’ quality of life.
The successful collection effort led by DOF Deputy Commissioner Annette Hill and her team, demonstrates the effectiveness of this administration working collaboratively with companies to ensure compliance, holding entities accountable for meeting their financial obligations to the City, and assisting companies like Amazon to prevent accumulating debt.
Similarly, Lisa Garcia – Commissioner for the DEP – applauded the Mamdani administration’s successful efforts to confront one of the “worst idling offenders in the city”, stating:
I applaud Mayor Mamdani and the Department of Finance for securing more than $9 million in illegal idling fines from Amazon, which has long been among the top worst idling offenders in the city.
Through the Citizens Air Complaint Program, New Yorkers can report idling with a video upload – helping us cut air pollution and improve quality of life.
Adding a particular poignancy to this news is the fact that it followed Jeff Bezos’ public criticisms of Mamdani’s moves to tax wealth to better fund education.
Contrary to establishment politicians who bend to big money and corporations, Mamdani did not back down and made it clear that society should hold everyone to the same standards, rather than continually burdening the 99% while letting the super-rich escape accountability.
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has collected $9m (£6.6m) in unpaid fines from Amazon, which has been violating the city's clean air laws by leaving engines running on its parked vehicles.
His office announced the recovery of the money last week, days after Amazon CEO Jeff… pic.twitter.com/BGoJb5eHft
— It's politics (@uspolitics1111) May 25, 2026
Citizen-led justice
New Yorkers can make anonymous reports about idling vehicles by calling 311, filing an online complaint, or participating in the NYC Department of Environmental Protection’s Citizens Air Complaint Program.
As a result, this gives ordinary citizens a powerful tool to take action in their local communities and helps ensure they apply accountability without fear or favour, with citizen-led justice as an underlying principle.
Needless to say, this issue is likely also a problem in the UK, where Amazon operates heavily. It will be interesting to see whether UK leaders consider introducing a similar policy. However, that would require them to be willing to make sure that extreme wealth does not shield powerful actors from accountability while they accumulate more wealth at the expense of our society and the environment.
Nevertheless, we won’t be holding our breath.
Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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Scottish ministers urged to reverse fire service cuts following Arthur's Seat blaze
(morningstaronline.co.uk)
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Today, Bernie Sanders is one of the most important figures in American politics. As biographer Dan Chiasson puts it, Sanders is “arguably the most influential leftist politician in the modern history of the nation,” and he’s consistently ranked as one the most popular American leaders of anykind, alongside Barack Obama. He may not have prevailed in his 2016 or 2020 presidential candidacies (and it’s unlikely there will be another, given Sanders’ advanced age), but he left a permanent mark on the generation that campaigned for him. As Chiasson writes, “Bernie’s influence will be long and profound, as his enthusiastic voters age into power and influence.” Indeed, one of his democratic socialist devotees, Zohran Mamdani, has just been sworn in (by Sanders himself!) as mayor of New York City. But Sanders’ national prominence is a relatively recent development, and even committed leftists may not know the full story of what came before. Chiasson’s new book, Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician, is about Sanders’ first act, when in 1981 he improbably became the country’s only socialist mayor, just as the “Reagan Revolution” was sweeping the country. Today, Mamdani, Seattle’s Mayor Katie Wilson, and others are aiming to replicate something like what Sanders tried in tiny Burlington, Vermont. This makes Sanders’ origin story worthy of study, especially for those of us who want to know how the left can succeed.
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