November, 08 2023, 03:07pm EDT

80+ Organizations Urge Biden to Reject Inhumane Cuts to Critical Programs in Upcoming Spending Bills
The ProsperUS coalition issued a letter, as covered in HuffPost, calling on the White House to protect funding for critical domestic programs as shutdown looms
In a letter to President Biden today covered exclusively in HuffPost, the 87-member ProsperUS coalition representing movement groups, labor organizations, think tanks, experts, and advocates across the country urged the White House to reject any spending bills that cut funding for critical programs, including Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Head Start, housing assistance, and more.
The push comes ahead of another possible government shutdown, fueled in part by an extreme minority in the House continuing to push for cuts to critical domestic programs. House Republicans have signaled they are willing to make even more draconian cuts in a potential stopgap bill, which would have devastating, long-term consequences for workers, families and our economy. These cuts are also wildly out of step with the American public. Recent polling shows that voters overwhelmingly oppose proposed cuts to social security, nutrition assistance, education, clean drinking water, and more.
Key excerpts from the letter and quotes from coalition members are below. You can read the full contents of the letter submitted to President Biden here.
To speak to a member of the coalition, contact press@prosperus.org.
Excerpts from letter
“Our coalition, which represents communities across the country fighting for a just and inclusive economy, expects you to reject any funding vehicle that cuts a penny more from the critical programs that enable our economy to thrive.
For decades, Congress has failed to adequately fund non-defense discretionary (NDD) programs, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Head Start, housing assistance, and the administration of Social Security, as well as K-12 and higher education, scientific research, and infrastructure. This chronic underfunding undermines the impact of these life-saving, economy-building programs.
Polls consistently show that Americans oppose cuts to essential programs and support reinvesting our tax dollars back into our communities, whether it’s for teacher’s salaries, clean drinking water, or ensuring that every child has enough healthy food to succeed. These public investments make our economy more stable, families more secure, and our nation safer.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act will already force painful cuts to many of the programs that Americans rely on for their economic stability.
With another threat of a government shutdown looming, we urge you and members of Congress to brush aside the threats of a small group of extremists and prioritize delivering appropriations bills that invest in workers, families, and communities, and keep this strong, inclusive economy humming.”
Quotes from ProsperUS coalition members
- “Cutting critical programs and failing to invest more in our communities undermines our economic progress,” said Bilal Baydoun, Director of Policy and Research at Groundwork Collaborative. “The president must reject any proposal that cuts the public investments that pushed unemployment to record lows and restarted our economic engine. There is no room to negotiate when it comes to our communities.”
- “It’s way past time for our policymakers to give programs that help feed, educate and care for American families the value they deserve,” said Jhumpa Bhattacharya, Co-President and Co-Founder of the Maven Collaborative. “If we can find money to fund war and destruction internationally, we should be able to also fund programs that save lives domestically. All Americans deserve to have a roof over their heads, food on the table and their children educated and cared for. We should never let extremist, racist ideology take that away from us.”
- “Moms and families have a lot at stake in the funding vehicle Congress is about to pass. It’s essential to avert a painful and unnecessary government shutdown, and we need to ensure that we can continue to feed our kids, that the child care programs we rely on will be able to keep their doors open, and that the domestic programs we rely on can continue to support the nation’s families,” said Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director and CEO of MomsRising. “Moms are counting on our leaders to reject efforts by an extreme minority in the U.S. House of Representatives to cut critical programs.”
- "I work with impacted mothers across the country whose families' lives were positively transformed by the investments from the American Rescue Plan," said Karen Dolan, Director of the Criminalization of Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. "Heartbreakingly, they and their children have been immensely harmed by the end of these critical investments. We are failing our children. Nothing short of a restoration and expansion of investments in the lives of our nation's children is acceptable, as poverty and hardship are on the rise."
ProsperUS is a coalition of movement groups, labor organizations, think tanks, experts, and advocates that believes government should invest in people.
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UN Program Out of Food in Gaza as Israel Maintains Blockade
"No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for more than seven weeks as all main border crossing points remain closed. This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced," said the World Food Program.
Apr 25, 2025
As Israel continues to bomb and impose a total blockade on the Gaza Strip, the United Nations World Food Program announced Friday that "WFP delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meals kitchens" in the Palestinian enclave, which "are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days."
"For weeks, hot meal kitchens have been the only consistent source of food assistance for people in Gaza. Despite reaching just half the population with only 25% of daily food needs, they have provided a critical lifeline," the U.N. program said in a statement. "WFP is also deeply concerned about the severe lack of safe water and fuel for cooking—forcing people to scavenge for items to burn to cook a meal."
This is just the latest troubling update from the group since Israel began its total blockade on March 2—following months of severely restricting aid and commercial goods—and then ditched a fragile cease-fire with Gaza-based Hamas that had been in effect since mid-January. Last month, all 25 WFP-supported bakeries closed due to lack of wheat flour and cooking fuel, and program parcels with two weeks of rations for families were exhausted.
"More than 116,000 metric tons of food assistance—enough to feed 1 million people for up to four months—is positioned at aid corridors and is ready to be brought into Gaza."
"No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for more than seven weeks as all main border crossing points remain closed," WFP said Friday. "This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced, exacerbating already fragile markets and food systems. Food prices have skyrocketed up to 1,400% compared to during the cease-fire, and essential food commodities are in short supply, raising serious nutrition concerns for vulnerable populations, including children under 5, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the elderly."
Over 18 months into a U.S.-backed military assault for which Israel faces a genocide case at the Interenational Court of Justice, WFP said that "the situation inside the Gaza Strip has once again reached a breaking point: People are running out of ways to cope, and the fragile gains made during the short ceasefire have unravelled. Without urgent action to open borders for aid and trade to enter, WFP's critical assistance may be forced to end."
While conditions are dire, WFP is prepared to keep feeding people, if Israel will allow aid into the besieged Palestinian enclave. The program highlighted that "more than 116,000 metric tons of food assistance—enough to feed 1 million people for up to four months—is positioned at aid corridors and is ready to be brought into Gaza by WFP and food security partners as soon as borders reopen."
The program called on "all parties to prioritize the needs of civilians and allow aid to enter Gaza immediately and uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law."
The Associated Press reported that "COGAT, the Israeli military agency in charge of coordinating aid in Gaza, declined to comment on the amount of supplies remaining in the territory. It has previously said Gaza had enough aid after a surge in distribution during the cease-fire."
The WFP statement came after an Israeli drone strike that hit a food distribution center in central Gaza on Thursday and Israel's Tuesday airstrikes that destroyed several bulldozers used to clear streets and remove bodies from beneath rubble.
While humanitarian organizations have shared fresh warnings about conditions in the enclave this week—Oxfam's Clemence Lagouardat said Tuesday that "it's hard to explain just how terrible things are in Gaza at the moment"—Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, shared violent rhetoric.
Ben-Gvir claimed that "senior Republican Party officials" whom he met at U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence "expressed support for my very clear position" that Gaza "food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages" taken during the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel.
While Trump—like his Democratic predecessor—has supported Israel's military assault, he also claimed to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday that during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week, "Gaza came up and I said, 'We've got to be good to Gaza... Those people are suffering.'"
According toReuters.
When asked whether he raised the issue of opening up access points for aid into Gaza, Trump replied, "We are."
"We're going to take care of that. There's a very big need for medicine, food and medicine, and we're taking care of it," he said.
Asked how Netanyahu responded, Trump said: "Felt well about it."
As for cease-fire negotiations,
Drop Site News obtained a draft proposal for a 45-day "bridge" deal that is "being pushed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators." The outlet reported Friday that "while the current proposal largely aligns with the one that Hamas agreed to on March 29 and which Israel rejected, the new terms related to disarmament and no clear path to complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will likely meet stiff resistance from Hamas' negotiators."
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'Serious Disregard for Human Life': Dem Senators Press Hegseth on Yemen Civilian Casualties
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians."
Apr 25, 2025
A trio of Democratic senators on Thursday demanded answers from embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth regarding U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, which have reportedly killed scores of civilians including numerous women and children since last month.
"We write to you concerning reports that U.S. strikes against the Houthis at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week killed dozens of civilians, potentially more than 70," Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote in a letter to Hegseth.
The lawmakers noted that "the United Nations Protection Cluster's Civilian Impact Monitoring Project has... assessed that March 2025 marked the highest monthly casualty count in Yemen in almost two years, tripling the previous month, with a total of 162 civilian casualties."
"If these reports of civilian casualties are accurate, they should come as no surprise," the senators said. "Using explosive weapons in populated areas—as these intense strikes appear to do—always carries a high risk of civilian harm."
"Further, reports suggest that the Trump administration plans to dismantle civilian harm mitigation policies and procedures at the Pentagon designed to reduce civilian casualties in U.S. operations," the letter notes. "And the Trump administration has already dismissed senior, nonpartisan judge advocates, or JAG officers, who provide critical legal counsel to U.S. warfighters, especially when it comes to the laws of war and adherence to U.S. civilian harm mitigation policies."
"The Defense Department also recently loosened the rules of engagement to allow [U.S. Central Command] and other combatant commands to conduct strikes without requiring White House sign-off, removing necessary checks and balances on crucial life-and-death decisions," the senators added. "Taken altogether, these moves suggest that the Trump administration is abandoning the measures necessary to meet its obligations to reducing civilian harm."
The senators asked Hegseth to answer the following questions:
- Has the Department of Defense (DOD) assessed the number of noncombatant and combatant casualties in each of its strikes inside Yemen?
- What has DOD's process been for assessing the acceptable civilian casualties for individual strikes inside Yemen, and assessing estimated levels of civilian harm and collateral damage?
- What role have legal advisers, including JAG officers, played in reviewing the legality of U.S. strikes in Yemen?
- What DOD instructions or orders currently govern department civilian harm mitigation and response actions?
- Were the civilian harm mitigation and response experts at CENTCOM and/or at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence consulted in planning for these strikes?
- How does the department plan to engage with the families or communities affected by these strikes, including acknowledging civilian harm and exploring avenues for potential redress?
Last month, Hegseth
announced that the Pentagon's Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office and Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which was established during the Biden administration, would be closed. Hegseth—who has
supported pardons for convicted U.S. war criminals—lamented during his Senate confirmation hearing that "restrictive rules of engagement" have "made it more difficult to defeat our enemies," who "should get bullets, not attorneys," according to his 2024 book The War on Warriors.
Asked during his confirmation hearing whether troops under his leadership would adhere to the Geneva Conventions, Hegseth replied, "What we are not going to do is put international conventions above Americans."
During his first administration, President Donald Trumprelaxed rules of military engagement meant to protect civilians as he followed through on his campaign pledge to "bomb the shit" out of Islamic State militants and "take out their families." Thousands of civilians were killed during the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria as then-Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis announced a shift from a policy of attrition to one of "annihilation."
Meanwhile, noncombatant casualties soared by over 300% in Afghanistan between the final year of the Obama administration and 2019.
Overall, upward of 400,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen have died as a direct result of the U.S.-led War on Terror, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
In Yemen, the U.K.-based monitor Airwars says U.S. forces have killed hundreds of civilians in 181 declared actions since 2002. Overall, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing and blockade.
The U.S. bombing of Yemen has not received nearly as much coverage in the corporate media as the scandal involving Hegseth's use of Signal chats to share plans for attacking the Middle Eastern country with colleagues, a journalist, and relatives. However, critics say the mounting backlash over the high civilian casualties there is belying Trump's claim of an anti-war presidency.
"President Trump has called himself a 'peacemaker,' but that claim rings hollow when U.S. military operations kill scores of civilians," the senators stressed in their letter. "The reported high civilian casualty numbers from U.S. strikes in Yemen demonstrate a serious disregard for civilian life, and call into question this administration's ability to conduct military operations in accordance with U.S. best practices for civilian harm mitigation and international law."
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Journalist Sues to Secure Three Months Worth of Hegseth Signal Chat Messages
"And we are bringing this case to make sure that they can't just put national security at risk for their own convenience and then destroy all the evidence afterwards," said the head of the group that filed the lawsuit.
Apr 25, 2025
As the Trump administration faces a metastasizing controversy over reports of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's use of the commercial messaging app Signal, including to discuss U.S. strikes in Yemen, the legal group National Security Counselors on Friday sued on behalf of a journalist to secure three months worth of conversations that took place on the encrypted platform.
According to The Hill, which was first report the news of the lawsuit, the complaint requests Hegseth's Signal messages and the messages from other top Trump officials.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is journalist Jeffrey Stein, the founding editor of the outlet SpyTalk. Stein sought the three months worth of chat records via Freedom of Information Act request and is now taking legal action to obtain them, according to the complaint, which was filed in federal court.
News about my Signalgate iceberg lawsuit for @spytalker.bsky.social: it's OUT!
[image or embed]
— National Security Counselors 🕵 (@nationalsecuritylaw.org) April 25, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"The heads of at least five of the most powerful agencies in the national security community were freely texting over an app that was not approved for sensitive communications and setting it to automatically delete everything they said," Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, told The Hill. "Since then we've learned that we were right to be worried, thanks to the news about Hegseth's Signal chat with his wife and personal lawyer about bombing plans."
In what's now become known as "Signalgate," The Atlanticrevealed last month that its editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been accidentally included in a Signal group chat with top administration officials where they discussed forthcoming U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. The Atlantic later published messages from the chat.
Members of the chat, dubbed "Houthi PC small group," included Hegseth; National Security Adviser Mike Waltz; Vice President JD Vance; CIA Director John Ratcliffe; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The defendants listed in the lawsuit from the National Security Counselors are the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The New York Timesreported last week that Hegseth had shared information about impending U.S. strikes in Yemen in another Signal group chat included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer on March 15. The outlet cited four unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter.
In response to the Times' reporting, a spokesperson for the Pentagon wrote on April 20: The the newspaper "relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the secretary and the president's agenda. There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story."
The Times responded a day later saying that it stood by the reporting, that the Pentagon had not denied the existence of the chat, and that the story did not characterize the information in the chat as classified.
In yet another twist, The Associated Pressreported Thursday, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the situation, that Hegseth had an internet connection set up in his office at the Pentagon that bypassed government security protocols—also known as a "dirty" line—in order to use Signal on a personal computer.
The AP reported that the advantage of this kind of a line is that a user would be essentially "masked" and not show up as an IP address assigned to the Defense Department, but it would also leave that user vulnerable to hacking.
Speaking of the lawsuit filed by National Security Counselors, McClanahan toldThe Hill that "this administration has proven again and again that it is allergic to accountability and transparency."
"And we are bringing this case to make sure that they can't just put national security at risk for their own convenience and then destroy all the evidence afterwards," he added.
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