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We Must Pull Back From the Brink of War
Win Without War Executive Director Stephen Miles released the following statement regarding the U.S. military's assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds force:
"Tonight, Donald Trump has driven us to the brink of war with Iran -- and possibly further.
WASHINGTON
Win Without War Executive Director Stephen Miles released the following statement regarding the U.S. military's assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds force:
"Tonight, Donald Trump has driven us to the brink of war with Iran -- and possibly further.
"Make no mistake: Donald Trump is responsible for this crisis. Trump entered office with some of the most promising inroads to peaceful relations with Iran in decades. Instead, he proceeded to fill his cabinet with warmongers, abandon the successful, multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and launch a systematic campaign of "maximum pressure," placing the US and Iran on a collision course to conflict. Now, he has chosen to assassinate, without congressional authorization, one of Iran's most powerful leaders.
"War with Iran would be disastrous and wholly unnecessary. Military and diplomatic leaders have warned it could bring costs, in both blood and treasure, greater than the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We now face a stark choice: continue down the current path, with its catastrophic consequences, or immediately de-escalate: walk back aggressive rhetoric, end the cycle of military retaliation, and engage meaningfully in a diplomatic process for peace.
"Only Congress has the power to decide whether U.S. forces should be put into harm's way. In fact, bipartisan majorities in both chambers, backed by vast grassroots support, sought to block this type of offensive military action against Iran in the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Even this most basic level of congressional oversight was too much for the Trump administration, and much of the Republican party, which stripped the language in the bill's final negotiations. Sadly, we're now seeing the results of that dereliction of duty.
"Escalatory tit-for-tat military actions, incendiary rhetoric, military brinkmanship, and Donald Trump's recklessness have brought us to the edge of a war with unthinkable human consequences. Now is the time for a massive, immediate diplomatic intervention, backed by overwhelming people-power to help prevent the worst."
Win Without War is a diverse network of activists and organizations working for a more peaceful, progressive U.S. foreign policy. We believe that by democratizing U.S. foreign policy and providing progressive alternatives, we can achieve more peaceful, just, and common sense policies that ensure that all people--regardless of race, nationality, gender, religion, or economic status--can find and take advantage of opportunity equally and feel secure.
LATEST NEWS
Israel Escalating Ethnic Cleansing in West Bank 'Before the Eyes of the Entire World': Amnesty
"This is not the work of rogue actors," said the human rights group's secretary general. "What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation."
Jun 10, 2026
The international community is allowing the Israeli government to carry out an explicit policy of "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians in the West Bank that is rapidly accelerating, according to a report out Wednesday from Amnesty International.
The human rights group said the world must intervene to stop what it described as a campaign of forcible displacement, rampant state-backed violence by Israeli settlers, demolitions of Palestinian homes, and tightening restrictions on Palestinian access to land and water.
Using United Nations data, Amnesty determined that at least 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding communities faced full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026, with about 45 communities totally depopulated.
Nearly 6,000 people were forced from their homes during that time, roughly 17% of the Palestinian population in the Israeli-controlled Area C's Bedouin and herding communities.
Amnesty found that Israeli authorities demolished more than 3,400 Palestinian homes and structures in Area C during that time, displacing more than 3,000 Palestinians.
The group describes this systematic displacement as explicit Israeli state policy. The government advanced plans for more than 50,000 settler housing units from 2023-25 and authorized 102 new settlements by April 2026, the largest number ever approved by an Israeli government.
This has coincided with a dramatic increase in violence by armed Israeli settlers, who have set fire to homes and farmlands, vandalized schools and agricultural equipment, cut electricity lines and dumped water tanks, and beaten and killed Palestinian residents.
The UN's Office on the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calculated that four settler attacks have occurred per day on average in the roughly two years following October 7, 2023, and have only grown more frequent this year, particularly after Israel and the US's joint attack on Iran, which was followed by an invasion of Lebanon that has also entailed mass destruction of homes and the forced displacement of over a million residents.
In several documented cases, armed settler attackers have been escorted or accompanied by Israeli soldiers, who have at times taken part in the destruction.
“Over the past three and a half years, Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing, and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities," said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.
"This is not the work of rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labeled as extremist settlers, organizations or one or two ministers," she said. "What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world."
The report comes just a day after a group of Western nations—including the UK, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway—announced coordinated sanctions against Israeli individuals and organizations accused of financing and enabling settler violence in the West Bank.
However, Amnesty argued that these measures were too narrow.
"These limited measures are woefully insufficient to address the state campaign of ethnic cleansing and the systemic violations that have been rapidly increasing before the eyes of the international community,” Callamard said.
She said states, "particularly those with influence over Israel," including the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, and other European Union and Arab States, needed to "ban all trade, investment, and any form of cooperation or financial assistance that contribute to Israel’s unlawful occupation, system of apartheid, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."
Callamard added that states "must impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against Israeli officials directly implicated in these acts." She included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right settler politicians like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as settlers who have allegedly committed acts of murder, like Yinon Levi, who was filmed last year shooting and killing human rights activist Awda al-Hathaleen and was released from custody after a day.
Callamard said, "Without accountability, Palestinian communities across the West Bank will vanish before our eyes."
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As the World Cup Begins, Voters Say Trump Is Torpedoing United States’ Global Reputation
Republican voters were the only political faction who believed Trump has improved global views of the US since beginning his second term in office.
Jun 10, 2026
As soccer fans from across the world travel to the United States this month to cheer on their countries' teams at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a poll released Wednesday by Data for Progress suggests Americans don't believe many visitors have warm feelings toward the host country after a year-and-a-half of President Donald Trump's leadership.
Overall the poll found that 62% of American voters think the country's reputation has deteriorated under Trump, with just 32% saying it's gotten better.
Republicans were the only political faction to believe Trump has improved global views of the US, while Independents and Democrats overwhelmingly said the president has made them worse.
The poll also found 52% of US voters believed Trump's mass deportation policies have hurt the country's image in the world, with just 34% saying the deportations have helped.
Trump's immigration policies collided with the World Cup earlier this week when Somali referee Omar Artan, who was selected by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) to work at the celebrated event, was barred from entering the US despite having a valid visa.
A Trump administration official claimed Artan had an "association with suspected members of terror organizations," but provided no evidence for the allegation. US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) called his treatment by the US "a disgrace."
Polling data published last year by Pew suggests that Democrats and Independents are more accurately measuring global public sentiment of the US under Trump's leadership than Republicans.
Specifically, Pew found that net positive perceptions of the US dropped by 10 percentage points or more among residents in a dozen countries between 2024 and 2025, including in key allies such as Canada, Mexico, Germany, and France.
What's more, Pew found only five countries where the United States' reputation has improved since Trump's election: South Africa, India, Israel, Nigeria, and Turkey.
Trump during his second term has taken a number of actions that have sparked anger from foreign governments, including making repeated threats to seize Greenland as a US territory, invading Venezuela and abducting its president, imposing an oil blockade on and threatening to take over Cuba, launching a global trade war, and waging an illegal war of choice on Iran.
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Lawsuit Aims to Halt Trump Giveaway of Wildlife Refuge to Appease Elon Musk's SpaceX
"We’re not letting Trump and his political cronies lock the American people out of Texas’ cherished public lands just to give Elon Musk another payday.”
Jun 10, 2026
Several environmental organizations are suing the US Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the agency from handing over hundreds of acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to Elon Musk's company SpaceX.
The complaint—which was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and South Texas Environmental Justice Network—alleges that the government is violating federal law that requires any transfers of wildlife refuge lands to private ownership to result in net conservation benefits.
Instead, the complaint says the proposed deal with SpaceX would lead to a loss of more 715 acres of wildlife refuge land in exchange for 683 acres of private land.
Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, expressed particular concerns about SpaceX building facilities on the land given that the company's rockets regularly cause environmental damage by exploding.
"Elon Musk has built his explosive SpaceX facility in the middle of a major wildlife corridor home to endangered and threatened species like ocelots and wetlands," said Hinojosa. "There was never supposed to be space rockets blowing up here."
Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, accused President Donald Trump's administration of handing over vital public lands to "the world’s richest man, who could trash them while playing with his exploding rockets."
"We’re not letting Trump and his political cronies lock the American people out of Texas’ cherished public lands," added Jordahl, "just to give Elon Musk another payday.”
Mary Angela Branch, board member at Save RGV, said that SpaceX's presence in the area has already been an "unmitigated disaster" for the local environment, and she warned the land transfer plan would "permanently sever the very heart of the wildlife corridor established by Congress in 1979."
"This corridor, running along the Rio Grande... is prime wildlife habitat, and nothing gained in this ‘swap’ will be equal," Branch emphasized. "This will be a huge loss."
In addition to opposition from the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the proposed transfer to SpaceX has drawn significant opposition from some local residents. According to a report published last week by the San Antonio Express-News, more than 3,400 letters have been submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service expressing opposition to the transfer.
Musk, who on Wednesday was accused by politicians in the UK of stoking racial hatred that led to violent pogroms in the city of Belfast, is aiming to become the world's first trillionaire ty making SpaceX a publicly traded company this month.
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