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Ambassador Sondland Testimony: Delayed Ukraine Aid Linked Directly to Trump's Desire to Win Reelection
Statement of Lisa Gilbert, Vice President of Legislative Affairs, Public Citizen
WASHINGTON
Note: The U.S. ambassador to the European Union and registered Republican, Gordon Sondland, testified today that there was a quid pro quo in the Ukraine controversy.
The immensity of Ambassador Sondland's bombshell testimony cannot be overstated. Sondland has confirmed the bribery scheme, in other words, flatly admitted a quid pro quo, and detailed how widespread the knowledge of the conditioned meeting and aid were within the Trump administration. The president's defenses are crumbling, and the likelihood of impeachment has moved significantly forward with Sondland's clear statements this morning.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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ICE Denounced for Enacting 'Official Government Policy of Disappearing People'
"Hiding prisoners from the courts is unconstitutional," said one expert.
Sep 21, 2026
Critics reacted with horror to a Monday report from The Associated Press detailing how US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has abruptly ended its practice of disclosing the locations of thousands of detainees.
According to the AP, ICE "has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding... detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them."
Immigration attorneys who spoke with the AP said that their clients had "vanished" from the system after ICE removed them from its online detainee locator system last week.
Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the AP that families of detainees "are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be."
Chen added that the new policy has "serious implications" for attorneys' ability to make contact with their clients.
Michelle Mendez, legal director at the National Immigration Project, told the AP that the new policy is "just another iteration of disappearing people."
"Why would we do that in the United States of America?" Mendez asked. "It's something we’d hear about in another country and be concerned about individual rights and due process."
Tom Jawetz, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, echoed Mendez's analysis, writing in a social media post that the AP report reveals "an official government policy of disappearing people," as "systems for attorneys and loved ones to know where—even whether—a person with a final removal order is in ICE custody have been wiped clean."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, described the new ICE policy as "unprecedented" for US immigration enforcement.
"People who have been detained for months are suddenly disappearing from the locator system—even if they haven't been moved anywhere," Reichlin-Melnick explained. "And people newly arrested are not showing up at all, their location now hidden from view."
Georgetown University political scientist Jonathan Ladd argued that the ICE policy was a fundamental violation of long-established rights in the US that date to before the country's official founding.
"The government moving or hiding jailed people to avoid review by courts isn't some loophole in our habeas corpus rights," Ladd explained. "This government behavior has been considered a violation of the people's habeas corpus rights since at least the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679."
Ladd further pointed out that "habeas corpus rights are guaranteed by Article I of our Constitution," which means "hiding prisoners from the courts is unconstitutional."
Journalist Gillian Brockell observed that the new ICE policy "will make it nearly impossible to file habeas petitions, because attorneys won’t even know what federal district their client has been moved to to stage for their removal."
Among those sharing the AP report on social media was Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an attorney for Wilbur Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan shot by ICE in Austin, Texas on Sunday.
Initially, she and the immigrant's wife could not make contact with him, because ICE moved him from the hospital "to an undisclosed location," but Lincoln-Goldfinch said Monday afternoon that her client "is being held at Pearsall for interrogation."
"We got Wilber on the phone live from detention at the press conference," the attorney added. "He says he still has the bullet lodged in his shoulder. He says he is not doing well and has not received the medical care he needs."
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Israel Blocking Hundreds of Wheelchairs for Injured Children From Entering Gaza
More than 11,000 children have severe life-changing injuries, including thousands who have had limbs amputated as a result of Israel's assault on Gaza.
Sep 21, 2026
Gaza has the world's largest concentration of child amputees thanks to Israel's genocidal war. Now, as Australian charities seek to deliver hundreds of wheelchairs to the children injured in the onslaught, Israel has reportedly been blocking them for more than a year and a half.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported last week that:
More than 900 wheelchairs, donated by two Australian charities to help injured children in Gaza, are stuck in warehouses in Jordan due to Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries into the war-ravaged strip.
Two shipments from New South Wales-based charity Kids on Wheels Alliance arrived in Jordan in February 2025, while a third, from Wheelchairs for Kids based in Western Australia, arrived in October 2025.
But instead of being delivered to children with severe mobility issues inside Gaza, they remain sitting in storage facilities managed by the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO).
According to the report, JHCO submitted an application in February 2025 for the wheelchairs to be included in an aid convoy headed to Gaza, where more than 11,000 kids have been left with "severe, life-changing injuries, including permanent disabilities that require long-term care and rehabilitation," according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
That application was denied by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli agency responsible for aid coordination, because "medical equipment and medicines were not approved for inclusion in that convoy." The application has been marked as "pending" for the last 19 months, meaning that a new request cannot be sent.
An Israeli government source told ABC that Israel had not blocked the delivery of the wheelchairs. But COGAT did not answer specific questions from the network about what had happened to the shipment.
The agency said it had allowed the entry of thousands of wheelchairs "without any quantitative restrictions," as well as "approximately 22,000 tons of medical equipment and medicines" since the beginning of the ceasefire in October 2025.
One source told the outlet that the wheelchairs may have been held up under Israel's rules blocking possible "dual-use" items that authorities believe could serve a military purpose.
The wheelchairs have specialized features: they are adapted for rough terrain to help users navigate the rubble-strewn streets of Gaza and are adjustable to grow with the children who use them.
But as Dr. Abdullah Al-Balawi, a physician with the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association who has watched the boxes pile up undelivered, explained, "they do not pose any threat."
The stalled wheelchairs are hardly the first medical or disability equipment to be blocked as a result of Israel's strict restrictions on humanitarian supplies entering Gaza. Human rights groups have previously documented the use of dual-use restrictions to block wheelchair batteries, X-ray equipment, and materials used to manufacture prosthetic limbs.
It's not just medical supplies. Portable toilets have also been blocked, as have sleeping bags and tarps. These items are in high demand as around 90% of Palestinians living in Gaza remain displaced, with Israel's attacks having destroyed most of the buildings. According to a report from humanitarian organizations in April, bandages, diapers, shampoo, and tent poles have also been blocked.
Human Rights Watch has argued that the dual-use restrictions are unnecessarily broad and arbitrary, allowing certain items some days and rejecting them on others. The organization has called on Israel to remove the dual-use label on "medical-related supplies, assistive aids, and accessible technology like eyeglasses, wheelchairs, walkers, canes [and] hearing aids."
Amnesty International has described Israel's blocking of lifesaving medical and other forms of humanitarian assistance—including food, water and sanitation supplies, fuel, and shelter materials and equipment—as part of a pattern that amounts to genocide.
"The humanitarian aid must not stop," Al-Balawi said. "This is part of the stubbornness of the other side by not letting in this aid; the wheelchairs are only a part of it."
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Free Press Advocates Call on David Ellison to Publicly—and 'Harshly'—Condemn Trump's Ban on News Outlets
"If he doesn’t, then there can be no doubt that he is, and always will be, an enemy of the free press, just like his buddy in the White House."
Sep 21, 2026
A coalition of more than 100 journalists, press freedom campaigners, and advocacy organizations demanded Monday that Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison fully and publicly back CNN, MS NOW, and Politico in their legal fight against President Donald Trump, who banned the outlets from the White House last week.
Ellison's company owns CBS and is currently on track to acquire CNN's parent firm, Warner Bros. Discovery. In a letter to Ellison, whose billionaire father is a megadonor to Trump and the Republican Party, the press freedom coalition urged the Paramount CEO to "publicly, harshly, and immediately condemn Trump’s unconstitutional ban on news outlets he dislikes, in violation of decades of precedent protecting the press from content-based punishment, including retaliatory restrictions on their access."
"We further call on you to publicly commit to fully backing any legal challenge to the illegal ban should you come to own CNN," the letter continues. "We need you to make clear that you stand with the reporters, photographers, camera operators, and other journalists you seek to employ, even when their reporting angers the president. If you fail to do so, the only logical conclusion is that your claims to value press freedom, editorial independence, and the First Amendment are empty talk and can’t be trusted."
The coalition's letter was spearheaded by the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), a vocal opponent of Trump's assault on journalism and Paramount's megamerger with Warner Bros. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Free Press, and investigative journalist Laura Poitras were among the other signatories.
Seth Stern, FPF's chief of advocacy, said in a statement that "Ellison’s past actions, from trading away CBS News’ independence to throwing dinner parties for Trump and his censorial hangers-on, have convinced many that he’s all talk when it comes to press freedom."
"Can he instantly rebuild that broken trust by finally standing up for the First Amendment only now, after such an extreme and outrageous action by Trump? Of course not," said Stern. "But if he doesn’t, then there can be no doubt that he is, and always will be, an enemy of the free press, just like his buddy in the White House."
The coalition's letter came shortly after CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued Trump in a federal district court in Washington, DC, arguing his decision to ban the three outlets from the White House "could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles."
The call for Ellison to back the outlets' legal challenge also came amid news that state attorneys general reached a deal with Paramount that paves the way for the company to acquire Warner Bros., CNN's parent company.
"This moment is a test of your sincerity," the coalition wrote in its Monday letter to Ellison. "CNN, under its current ownership, has already released a statement, as have MS NOW and Politico, and they’ve announced they’ll file a lawsuit. Only one of those entities, however, has a parent company seeking to close a transaction in the near future that could steer control of its news operations to friends and political allies of the president."
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'Good Luck With That': Critics Mock Trump for Hyping 'Deal' With Belarus to Replace Canadian Fertilizer
"Canada exports more potash to the US than Belarus produces."
Sep 21, 2026
President Donald Trump drew ridicule on Monday when he announced he was working on an agreement to import potash, an important fertilizer for US farmers, from Belarus.
In a social media post, Trump claimed that the "massive deal" with Belarus would let the US import potash for "substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada," which he described as "very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers."
Canada supplies roughly 80% of all potash used by US farmers, and Trump's trade war against America's largest trading partner has been putting upward pressure the prices of all Canadian imports.
However, even if Trump's deal to buy potash from Belarus comes to fruition, it is unclear how much relief it would provide to US farmers, who have been also been paying a heavy price his illegal war with Iran, which has led to record-high diesel fuel prices.
As noted by a Monday report from Bloomberg, Belarus in 2021 only shipped around 700,000 tons of potassium fertilizers to the US before trade with the nation was restricted following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Canada, meanwhile, supplied the US with more than 10 million tons of such fertilizers last year.
Bloomberg also pointed out that "Belarus doesn’t have enough capacity to supply large volumes to the US" at the moment "because production for the year is already under contract."
There are also several logistical challenges to shipping large quantities of fertilizer from Belarus.
Oil market researcher Rory Johnston observed in a social media post that Belarus is a landlocked country with no easy way to export its products to the west after Lithuania terminated its transit agreement with the country at the start of the Ukraine conflict.
Canada, Johnston added, is "right next door."
Journalist Diana Henriques offered a similar assessment of the challenges of importing potash from Belarus.
"It is 5,080 miles from Nebraska to Minsk," Henriques wrote. "It is about 700 miles from Nebraska to Saskatchewan, the source of most Canadian potash. That's gonna have to be one heckuva discount to cover the transportation differential."
Ross O'Connor, former foreign affairs and national security advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was openly dismissive of Trump's Belarus gambit.
"Good luck with that," O'Connor wrote. "Canada exports more potash to the US than Belarus produces."
David Ryan Miller, professor of government at American University, offered a satirical summary of Trump's latest geopolitical maneuver.
"We are spurning our longtime democratic ally directly to our north in favor of an autocratic regime aligned with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that is 4,000+ miles away," Miller wrote. "We are very smart, serious people!"
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‘Massive Betrayal’: Fury at Newsom and Bonta Over Merger Deal With Paramount
"Today, billionaires have yet again bribed, censored, and bullied their way to the top."
Sep 21, 2026
A coalition of state attorneys general led by California's Rob Bonta reportedly reached a deal on Monday to let Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery proceed, an outcome that press freedom advocates and antitrust campaigners condemned as a disaster for journalism, entertainment industry workers, and American democracy.
The deal, which is set to be formally announced later Monday, will pave the way for the creation of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, helmed by the son of a billionaire megadonor to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
If the merger is finalized, the resulting media behemoth would control nearly 30% of both wide-release theatrical film distribution and basic cable channel licensing in the US. The combination would also put CNN under Ellison's control, heightening press freedom concerns that have intensified since Paramount's takeover of CBS.
"The AGs’ capitulation marks a new low."
“Today, billionaires have yet again bribed, censored, and bullied their way to the top,” Alvaro Bedoya, senior adviser at the American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement. “As a result, a billionaire media conglomerate closely allied with the president will soon own one of its closest rivals, including some of the nation’s most critical news outlets. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund will co-own those outlets, too.”
Bedoya criticized Bonta and California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, who privately pushed the state attorney general's office to settle the lawsuit out of court. Xavier Becerra, the frontrunner to succeed Newsom, also called for a settlement, citing Paramount's threat to leave California if its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. was blocked.
“People want champions who are not afraid of rich bullies. Newsom, Becerra, and Bonta did not meet that mark," said Bedoya. "The people who work in the film and TV industry and the small businesses who support it will suffer as a result. And so will everyone who values dissent in our democracy.”
Jessica González, co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press, also denounced Bonta for reneging on "his promise to enforce the law and protect consumers and workers."
"Hundreds of thousands of people called on our state AGs to stand up to the Ellisons, who have engaged in a campaign of corruption and extortion to pave the way for this unlawful merger. We can no longer rely on the federal government to enforce the law and protect regular people. That much is clear. But the AGs’ capitulation marks a new low. It’s a sad day for all of us who have been opposing this merger because it will cut jobs and raise prices, all as it consolidates the media even more to enable authoritarians."
Actor Mark Ruffalo, an outspoken opponent of the merger who was subjected to what critics called a corporate "smear campaign" because of his stance, trained his ire on California's governor in response to news of the settlement.
"Gavin Newsom hands huge win to Trump and his billionaire cronies," Ruffalo wrote on social media.
The trial was scheduled to begin in March of next year. In its original lawsuit against the proposed merger—filed shortly after the Trump Justice Department dropped its investigation of the proposed purchase—the coalition of 12 attorneys general warned the deal would "combine two of Hollywood’s five major film distributors and two of the five major basic cable channel owners, extinguishing competition between Paramount and Warner Bros. and inflicting substantial harm on movie theaters, basic cable distributors and, ultimately, audiences nationwide."
The settlement deal reached Monday also reportedly includes the lawsuit filed by the Writers Guild of America, which represents TV screenwriters and others in the entertainment industry.
Bloomberg reported that the attorneys general of New York, Connecticut, and other states that had pushed back during settlement talks were able to secure "independent editorial boards for CBS and CNN as part of the deal"—though it's unclear how such boards would function.
"The terms are said to include a financial penalty if the company fails to make good on a promise to distribute 30 films per year in theaters," Bloomberg added.
This news is deeply disappointing and a massive betrayal of everyday workers and small businesses.
David Ellison is willing to make big promises, like 30 films a year, because he knows he doesn't actually have to stand by it.
We've seen it before with past mergers: Promises… https://t.co/yAYXusKiRM
— American Economic Liberties Project (@econliberties) September 21, 2026
The Los Angeles Times noted that Paramount's purchase of Warner Bros. "will be heavily leveraged."
"The company’s bankers have lined up nearly $80 billion in debt to finance the merger. [Paramount CEO David] Ellison’s father, billionaire Larry Ellison, late last year agreed to backstop the $47-billion in equity needed to complete the acquisition. Royal families from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to chip in $24 billion for an equity stake by assuming some of Ellison’s financial commitments."
González of Free Press warned Monday that "consolidating the media in the hands of friendly oligarchs is right out of the authoritarian playbook."
“What’s exceedingly clear is that our laws and our political system are not strong enough to resist the pressure and manipulation of corrupt billionaires," said González. "We need to strengthen democratic systems of government, including getting money out of politics, and pass laws that break up big media conglomerates. We need to ensure that a few billionaires can’t drown out the masses to dictate bad policy.”
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After OpenAI Cyberattack, UN Panel Warns Current Guardrails Are 'Unraveling'
"We need to adapt existing safeguards and develop new ones to provide system-level assurance, covering both the AI itself and the system around it," one expert said.
Sep 21, 2026
As warnings from within the artificial intelligence community fuel growing worldwide calls for regulations on AI, a panel established by the United Nations General Assembly stressed Monday that "the traditional model of safeguarding is unraveling."
On the eve of the first day of the assembly's high-level general debate, the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence released a thematic brief that points to one of several recently revealed incidents involving the rapidly advancing technology that have led to people around the world demanding swift action from policymakers.
In July, ChatGPT maker OpenAI disclosed what it called "an unprecedented cyber incident," explaining that its AI agents autonomously breached the systems of the prominent open-source platform Hugging Face during internal testing.
The first brief from the panel of experts—titled "AI Agents, Misalignment, and Loss of Human Control Risks: Evidence from the OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident"—focuses on "the emergence of goals that contradict the user's intentions when AI systems plan and carry out multistep tasks."
"A traditional AI system (not goal-seeking) may give a wrong answer because it lacks knowledge, misunderstands a request, or makes a random mistake," the report explains. "Such failures can often be reduced by improving competence or correcting a specific fault."
"A harder problem arises when a capable system's actions consistently work together to achieve a goal that conflicts with the user's intentions (called misalignment)," the brief continues. "In this case, improving the AI system's planning and problem-solving does not address this failure and can instead strengthen the unwanted behavior because the system can better optimize a bad objective which would otherwise be extremely unlikely to result from random mistakes due to AI incompetence."
OpenAI's Hugging Face incident "provides a documented example of this second pattern," the publication notes. "The agents collectively pursued a goal that developers had not assigned: 'cheating' on an evaluation and going to extreme lengths to conceal the evidence. In doing so, they pursued intermediate goals such as escaping their restricted testing environment to access the internet. As a consequence, these agents gained access to real-world systems."
Yoshua Bengio, the panel's co-chair, highlighted in a statement that "researchers have long warned that three conditions could lead to loss of control: a misaligned goal, the capability to pursue it, and an environment that allows it."
"This summer, all three came together in a real system, not a laboratory," he said. "Since this is not an isolated observation of misaligned goals, this raises serious questions about the way AI agents are currently trained."
This incident, the brief says, "exposed failures in several layers at once: network isolation, credential handling, monitoring, and response. The incident illustrates why several layers of safeguards need to be combined."
The good news is, "we are not starting from zero," said panel member Qinghua Lu. "Aviation, medicine, and cybersecurity learned to manage high-risk systems through incident reporting, independent scrutiny, and layered safeguards. But those practices may not be enough as AI agents become more capable, autonomous, and difficult to monitor."
"We need to adapt existing safeguards and develop new ones to provide system-level assurance, covering both the AI itself and the system around it, and ensure these protections remain effective as agents' capabilities grow," she emphasized. "We need to adapt existing safeguards and develop new ones to provide system-level assurance, covering both the AI itself and the system around it."
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UN Expert Says Trump 'Murder' Spree at Sea May Constitute 'Crimes Against Humanity'
"International humanitarian law cannot authorize the United States’ attacks," wrote human rights expert Ben Saul.
Sep 21, 2026
In a report on the Trump administration's bombing of dozens of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean over the past year, a top United Nations rights expert dismissed President Donald Trump's claim that the military campaign has been in "self-defense" against "designated terrorist organizations," and warned that the evidence collected about the strikes could point to crimes against humanity being committed by the United States.
Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, concurred with numerous human rights experts as he said Monday that even if the boats targeted by the US had been engaged in drug trafficking—the central claim of Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as they've defended the operation—there are no "international legal rights to unilaterally use military force" to counter drug cartels or other organized crime groups.
He noted that Trump last October notified Congress that the strikes were part of a "non-international armed conflict," governed by the law of armed conflict, as his administration highlighted the threat of "narco-terrorists."
"The United States military attacks are, however, contrary to international law, violate the human right to life, and plausibly constitute crimes against humanity," wrote Saul.
He added that the killings could reasonably constitute "crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law," noting that such crimes generally require "that murder (or attempted murder) was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population."
Saul compared the bombings to the alleged crimes of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose own "war on drugs" included the state killings of thousands of Filipinos accused of trafficking narcotics. Duterte, noted Saul, "is on trial for alleged crimes against humanity of murder for targeting suspected criminals, or criminals having criminal propensities, including drug offenders."
The special rapporteur's report pertains to attacks up until August, but came days after the US military said it had killed four more people aboard a vessel in the Caribbean. At least 234 people have been killed in the attacks by US Southern Command so far, in at least 70 strikes.
As with its previous bombings, US Southern Command did not release any evidence in its latest attack that the target was a boat involved in drug trafficking. US Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) emphasized at a hearing in June that the "targeting criteria" the military has used in the boat bombing campaign has never included “evidence of narcotics on the boat," and data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has shown little to no evidence that the flow of drugs into the US has decreased since the bombings began more than a year ago.
In addition to some people who may have been involved in narcotics trafficking, the report reads, "some victims have reportedly included fishermen, migrants, and victims of human trafficking." The families of some victims have filed legal complaints over their killings.
Moreoever, said Saul, "even assuming that the vessels and crew attacked were members of the criminal groups listed as terrorist, such organizations have not mounted any 'armed attack' on the United States so as to trigger a right of self-defense."
"Deaths from illicit drugs are not assimilable to an armed attack under international law," he wrote, despite Hegseth's insistence that the US aims to protect the country from "the drugs that are killing our people."
Instead of being legitimate attacks in self-defense, wrote Saul, the bombings "amount to serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life, being unjustified in national or personal self-defense or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotics suppression conventions, or international counterterrorism law."
"International humanitarian law cannot authorize the United States’ attacks," he added.
Saul said the military campaign, which the Trump administration has recently expanded to include land attacks in Latin American countries, may violate Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by the US in 1992.
The report was filed as world leaders gathered in New York for the UN General Assembly and weeks after US Southern Command announced its campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific was expanding to include operations inside countries in Latin America, with leaders who are aligned with Trump hosting joint military operations. The US has particularly deepened military ties with Ecuador in recent months, with the partnership reportedly resulting in torture, arbitrary detentions, and disappearances.
"International law on the right to life," wrote Saul, "applies to any extraterritorial military or law enforcement action against criminal groups."
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Nobel-Winning Economists Say California Billionaire Tax Could Be ‘Turning Point in the Battle Between Democracy and Oligarchy’
“What will allow California to thrive in the future," the economists said, "is not letting a handful of billionaires live tax-free: it is adequate public spending on health, education, and public infrastructure, key engines of economic growth."
Sep 21, 2026
As California voters head to the polls this November, their vote on whether to enact a first-of-its-kind billionaire wealth tax may mark "a turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy," says a group of Nobel Prize-winning economists.
The fight over Proposition 40—a ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of those with $1 billion or more in order to fund the state's healthcare system—has heated up in recent weeks.
The initiative remains popular, with 52% of voters in the state supporting it, according to a poll out last week. But California's elite have lined up at least $156 million behind an aggressive campaign to kill it, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin alone giving at least $102 million.
And while the proposal has strong backing from progressive politicians and labor unions, some prominent Democrats have tried to stop it, most notably Gov. Gavin Newsom.
As the rich flood the airwaves with ads warning that taxing their wealth would bring about economic ruin, six Nobel laureates, all of whom have won the prestigious prize for their work in economics, signed an open letter on Saturday endorsing Prop. 40.
They are inequality scholar Daron Acemoglu, global poverty researcher Abhijit Banerjee, labor and public finance economist Peter Diamond, anti-poverty economist Esther Duflo, trade economist and columnist Paul Krugman, and inequality and globalization economist Joseph Stiglitz.
"Proposition 40 would be the first-ever tax on billionaire wealth enacted anywhere in the world," the economists wrote. "California is the right place to take this historic step."
They explained that the growing number of billionaires in the state in recent decades has helped to make California "one of the most unequal places in America." While the state's richest 0.001% of residents were worth a combined $700 billion a decade ago, its 250 billionaires are now worth about $2.3 trillion—equivalent to the entire annual income of the state's 20 million taxpayers.
"This extreme wealth has translated into extraordinary power," the economists wrote, citing data showing that during the 2024 election, billionaires accounted for 19% of all federal election spending in the US and that these same billionaires are now marshaling huge sums of money to oppose a tax that would affect them.
While acknowledging that many of California's wealthiest have "made important contributions, for which they have been amply rewarded," the researchers noted their use of loopholes in the tax system to effectively pay a lower tax rate than the average Californian.
Most billionaire wealth is held in the form of stocks and other assets whose gains are not generally subject to income tax until they are sold.
As a result, billionaires in the state paid about $3 billion in state income taxes per year from 2019-25, while their fortunes increased by about $1.4 trillion over the period. Dividing total state income tax by that increase equals roughly 1.6%. Meanwhile, the average California family pays about 5-6% of their annual income in state income taxes.
The economists argued that enacting a wealth tax would allow the state to play "catch-up," raising about $100 billion—enough to offset federal cuts to the state's Medicaid program enacted in the Republican budget legislation last year, which have helped to fuel thousands of layoffs at hospitals around the state.
They also disputed a common counterargument that the tax will spur billionaire flight from the state and "doom" Silicon Valley.
Not only would the tax apply to any billionaire living in the state as of January 1, 2026, meaning most would not have had time to relocate; they also pointed out that in 2026, after Prop. 40 was announced, California has attracted 80% of the nation's venture capital funding, compared to just 50% prior to 2025, according to data from PitchBook's Venture Monitor.
“What will allow California to thrive in the future," the economists said, "is not letting a handful of billionaires live tax-free: It is adequate public spending on health, education, and public infrastructure, key engines of economic growth to which it is only fair to ask the ultrawealthy to contribute.”
They added that passing Prop. 40 "isn’t just critical for Californians," but could "kickstart a movement to tax ultra-high-net-worth individuals in other states—and eventually at the federal level and in other countries."
The six Nobel laureates who signed Saturday's letter are not the first prominent economists to publicly advocate for the wealth tax. University of California, Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez helped draft the proposal, while Gabriel Zucman, a chaired professor at the Paris School of Economics, has conducted research underpinning it. Paris School professor Thomas Piketty and former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich have also come out in support of the ballot initiative.
Responding to the letter from the Nobel laureates, Dutch historian and wealth tax advocate Rutger Bregman—whose School for Moral Ambition has worked alongside Zucman to promote similar initiatives around the world—said it was "really great to see" more celebrated economists speaking up in favor of the proposal.
"You don't have to be a radical leftist to see why it's a good idea," Bregman wrote on social media. "This is not going to be some kind of socialist revolution. The proposal is about restoring balance to a mixed economy. You could even argue it's about saving capitalism itself from oligarchs like Sergey Brin. I think that's exactly why Nobel Prize-winning economists are coming out in favor of this tax."
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'Mamdani Moment' in Germany as Leftist Elif Eralp in Line to Be Next Mayor of Berlin
A Left Party official said its strategy for the Berlin election was "explicitly inspired... by Zohran Mamdani's campaign."
Sep 21, 2026
Germany's Left Party on Sunday made history by winning the 2026 Berlin state election, putting its lead candidate, socialist Elif Eralp, in position to become mayor of the country's largest city.
In all, the Left Party won 26% of the overall vote in the election, with the center-right Christian Democratic Union capturing 19% and the far-right Alternative for Germany winning 16% of the vote.
The two other center-left parties—the Greens and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)—won 14% and 12% of the vote, respectively.
A Sunday report from Bloomberg News described the Left Party's victory in Berlin as a "Mamdani moment," in reference to democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani's upset 2025 win in the New York City mayoral race.
Like Mamdani, Eralp and her party put affordability at the center of their campaign, with a particular emphasis on the rising cost of housing in the city.
As described by Euronews in a Monday report, Eralp "called for tighter regulation of rents, more social housing, and further moves towards bringing large housing portfolios into public ownership."
The Euronews report also noted the connection to Mamdani, citing a quote from Eralp last year arguing that "if a left-wing candidate can win in New York, then there's no reason it can't happen in Berlin."
According to a Saturday report in The Washington Post, the Left Party recently sent a delegation to New York City to learn about Mamdani's campaign and even met with some of the mayor's advisers to talk political strategy.
Liza Pflaum, the head of digital communications for the Left Party and a member of the delegation, told the Post that while her party had already embraced "a clear focus on issues relevant to affordable living" two years ago, it also was "explicitly inspired... by Zohran Mamdani's campaign."
While the Left Party received the most votes in the election, it did not receive enough to form an outright majority, meaning it will need coalition partners to form a government.
The Greens and SPD have indicated they are willing to form a coalition with the Left Party, but have claimed the party has allowed antisemitism to flourish in its ranks—an allegation that conservatives have made against left-wing candidates and political leaders in the US as well.
Progressives have warned against the conflation of antisemitism and criticism of Israel.
Eralp has disputed accusations of antisemitism in her party, which have focused on comments about the Israel Defense Forces at a campaign event and the presence of "an allegedly militant activist" at an election victory party.
"I will do everything to ensure that Jewish people—just like Muslims, queer people, and everyone in our city—can feel safe," said Eralp.
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‘Effectively a Boycott’: Major TV Networks Ditch Pool Coverage of Trump in Solidarity With CNN
"There will effectively be no TV coverage of Trump's UN visit or other presidential events," said one media reporter. "This is a very big deal."
Sep 21, 2026
The major US television networks launched what was described as a boycott against TV pool coverage of President Donald Trump on Monday after the White House dropped CNN from the network's scheduled pool assignment, escalating the administration's assault on the country's most prominent media organizations and press freedom.
CNN was set to act as the television pool network accompanying the president during his trip to the United Nations General Assembly this week, but the administration stripped the network of its assignment shortly after Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, prompting a retaliatory lawsuit from the three outlets.
The major television networks typically rotate responsibility for traveling video coverage of the president. Bryan Boughton, Washington, DC bureau chief for Fox News and current chair of the TV press pool, said Monday morning that "effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the president."
"This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties," Boughton added. "There will be no replacement pool put in place."
Scott Nover, a media reporter with The Washington Post, noted that "it's effectively a boycott by the fellow members—ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX."
"There will effectively be no TV coverage of Trump's UN visit or other presidential events, though I imagine smaller networks may take the White House's own feed," Nover wrote on social media. "This is a very big deal and one only possible because of solidarity from the whole pool."
The TV press pool developments unfolded as CNN, MS NOW, and Politico announced early Monday that they intend to sue the Trump administration for banning them from the White House. The outlets argued that the ban, which Trump announced late last week, endangers press freedom and "the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference."
CNN, MS NOW and Politico announced the lawsuit in a joint statement, describing the legal action as an effort to "protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes."
"Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists' credentials because it objected to our reporting," the news organizations said. "Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom."
The lawsuit came after journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were denied access to the White House grounds early Saturday, hours after Trump announced in a social media tirade that he was banning the outlets. Trump, without providing any examples, accused the three outlets of publishing "fiction and lies when they're covering the president of the United States"—and suggested other news outlets could also be banned in the near future.
When Politico reporter Cheyenne Haslett attempted to enter the White House on Saturday in the wake of Trump's social media post, Secret Service denied her access and confiscated her press pass. Journalists from the other two outlets reported similar experiences.
"We stand by her and all reporters here covering the White House," Jonathan Greenberger, Politico's global editor-in-chief, wrote in response to the incident involving Haslett. "We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights."
The media outlets' lawsuit is set to be filed Monday in a federal district court in Washington, DC. The suit aims to restore the outlets' White House access and alleges that Trump's ban violates free press and due process protections.
"The president's ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House is a direct assault on the First Amendment and a blatant violation of due process," said Ted Boutrous, an attorney for the outlets. "The president has been explicit that this ban is intended to punish reporting he doesn’t like and to intimidate journalists and news organizations covering him and his administration. This ban on the free press harms the American people, who are entitled to rigorous, fact-based coverage of the president of the United States. The law is on our side across the board, and we look forward to presenting our arguments to the court as soon as possible."
Jameel Jaffer, executive director, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, applauded the news outlets' lawsuit and said his organization would support them in court. The Knight First Amendment Institute has previously supported The Associated Press and other news outlets in successful legal fights against the president, who has shown blatant disdain for press freedom during his two terms in office.
"We’re glad to see that these news organizations are suing," said Jaffer. "The president’s decision to bar them from the White House for the content of their reporting is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. It’s an attack both on press freedom and the public’s right to independent information about the government."
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