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Working People Are Fighting Back, Because That's What We Do
We need to hold lawmakers who make working people suffer to enrich the already wealthy accountable.
Sep 07, 2026
My mom worked harder than anyone I know. She wanted a good life for us. It was a hard life—I remember the Christmas she had to pawn our gifts to pay the light bill—but she made it special for us.
Now I have two kids of my own, and I want them to have every opportunity that other children have.
The landscape is tough out there. Like many Americans, I can’t afford childcare, and finding work that accommodates my need to care for my young children is hard. With inflation, the little income I have doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to.
I’m grateful to have assistance with food, housing, and healthcare through our social safety net programs.
Food programs like SNAP (also known as “food stamps”) and WIC (that’s the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) have literally saved our lives when we’ve been hungry. I wouldn’t be able to feed my children without them. And thanks to Medicaid, we have healthcare.
But I’m sick with worry about the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid that are barreling my way. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” slashed these programs last year so lawmakers could slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and some of the worst cuts will take place after this year’s midterms.
The uncertainty is causing so much stress. The first change I noticed is they cut off my eyeglasses subsidy. What’s next? Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps going up and up, outpacing wage gains for me and countless others. Our SNAP benefits cover much less than they did a year ago, and that’s before potential cuts take effect.
I feel like I’m waiting for a bomb to drop on me and my kids, and I’m not the only one.
“The average minimum-wage worker must work nearly 116 hours per week, nearly three full-time jobs, to afford a two-bedroom rental home,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports. That’s the truth—my own sister works three jobs and still has to live with roommates.
Lawmakers are telling us we can’t have healthcare now unless we work, even in areas with low wages. Yet those making the laws enjoy free government-socialized healthcare and high wages.
They say SNAP benefits can’t be used for a cake or soda for my child’s birthday. Yet no one would stop the wealthy from using their $1 trillion in tax cuts under the “Big Beautiful Bill” to buy their kid a yacht.
Poor and low-income people deserve to be happy too. We deserve healthcare, food, housing, and even a child’s small birthday party. It feels like we’re being punished for working regular jobs—and like lawmakers want to keep us down so we don’t fight back against this inequality.
But we are fighting back.
I’ve started attending our local town hall meetings and hearing the stories of injustice and poverty. I started volunteering with a non-profit organization in my community. I help get goods to people in need, even as I am also in need, because that’s what we do. Poor and low-income people help each other out, because we understand what it’s like to see our kids go without while we work our fingers to the bone.
But we can’t do it alone. We need to demand from lawmakers that instead of cutting our healthcare, food, and housing benefits, we need to expand them to meet the great need in this country. We need a livable wage so we can afford market rent and rising food prices.
And we need to hold lawmakers who make working people suffer to enrich the already wealthy accountable.
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Tyrant Trump Is Lucky in the Cowardice of His Enemies
Democratic leadership's refusal to pursue impeachment signals to Trump that he has two-plus unchallenged years to ravage the lives and livelihoods of millions of people here and abroad.
Sep 05, 2026
What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses? Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck.
Start with the House’s two impeachments of Donald Trump, while Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was Speaker, in 2019 and 2021. The first was over Trump’s trying to bribe or extort Ukraine into going after Hunter Biden—an investor and Board member of a Ukrainian business. Pelosi knew there was no chance of getting the required two-thirds vote required for Senate conviction, but went for the House vote anyway. At the same time, Pelosi declined to pursue numerous other "slam dunk" kitchen table impeachable offenses we and others presented to her. (See Congressional Record, December 18, 2019).
In 2021, after the January 6 Trump-incited violent insurrection involving attack on the Capitol and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, Pelosi did the same thing: impeached Trump in the House. Unfortunately, the Senate fell short of the two-thirds vote required to convict and remove him from office because most Senate Republicans cowardly failed to hold Trump accountable for these treacherous actions.
Come the Second Trump term, after criminal indictments, a felony conviction, and civil litigation brought by women accusing him of sexual misconduct, on Day One, January 20, 2025, Trump began issuing illegal executive orders. Many of them were impeachable offenses as he boastfully implemented them, with the aid of Elon Musk’s criminal enterprise—DOGE.
Trump continues to commit “high crimes and misdemeanors,” brazenly, taunting the so-called leaders of the Democrats by saying, “This is just the beginning."
Trump probably anticipated a much more vigorous impeachment drive by the Democrats, even though they were in the minority in the House. His luck continued. The Democratic Party’s so-called leadership decided against this excellent galvanizing get-out-the-vote initiative for their voters, 90% of whom wanted Impeachment yesterday. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-Calif.) staffers told inquirers that they didn’t know how it would play out.
Jeffries himself told a reporter that “he didn’t want to get ahead of that discussion.” What? Ahead of 90% of his party’s voters!!?
Trump, who called for the execution of six Congressional Democrats for reminding soldiers of their obligation not to obey an illegal order that is contrary to the Constitution or the laws of the United States (as in described in the Army Manual for Courts-Martial [MCM] along with international law) must be privately dumbfounded. The more violently extreme and erratic he gets, the less interested the Democratic Party is in an Impeachment Drive. (See “Statement from Medical Professionals” in the April 30, 2026 Congressional Record.)
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) introduced H. Res. 537 on June 24, 2025. It was treated as a privileged impeachment resolution and Rep. Al Green took to the floor for debate and a prompt vote to educate the public about the necessity of ordering Trump, “You’re Fired.” Jeffries and his cohorts opposed it! Trump must have been stunned.
After all, people and their children are feeling, seeing, and hurting in the tens of millions from Trump’s wrecking, endangering, and weakening America. (See my column last week, “Open Letter to Representative Hakeem Jeffries.”)
Under the Jeffries and Schumer anti-impeachment bans, thus agreeing with Trump, the news media has little activity to cover in Washington, DC. Also, it’s not keeping up with the civic activity around the country demanding Impeachment. (See nader.org/impeachment.)
More puzzling is the refusal of editorial writers to urge impeachment. They regularly make the Impeachment case against Trump but decline to tell their readers the obvious conclusion: that the House should begin an impeachment inquiry and approve articles of impeachment. Congress also has an important role under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Congress, by statute, may appoint itself—in lieu of the principal officers of the Executive Branch—to determine whether the president is disabled and should be temporarily removed until the disability lapses.
Despite the many detailed editorials in The New York Times, such as one showing how Trump is harming the health of the American people and another “Autocracy Index” titled “Trump’s Election Meddling Erodes Our Democracy,” the editorial writers limped off their pages without answering the alarmed readers’ question, “What do you want done about this?”
The Times Sunday columnist Jamelle Bouie relentlessly documents Trump’s impeachable crimes, but not once has he moved to recommend this Republic-saving mechanism given to us by our Founding Fathers. Same for other Times columnists, Michelle Goldberg and EJ Dionne.
The Times’ reluctance to employ the “I” word is typical of the mass media. What about the independent progressive media? The Nation, In These Times, Progressive Magazine, and The Washington Monthly have all mentioned impeachment, but few have made a sustained, prominent editorial demand for an impeachment drive. Also, they do not report on the rising citizen activities behind Impeachment around the country.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to commit “high crimes and misdemeanors,” brazenly, taunting the so-called leaders of the Democrats by saying, “This is just the beginning.” He provides the Democrats with daily evidence that should prompt SHADOW CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS organized by Democratic members of Congress and designed to build a public factual record. Such hearings could attract substantial media attention, particularly if they focused on specific alleged abuses and featured affected witnesses, legal experts, and former public officials. Nonetheless, Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) block any shadow hearings by dissenting House members.
What explains this historic cowardice? Is it fear of Trump retaliating? Is it smugness over Trump’s low polls, and a belief they can win in November by lying low, raising AIPAC and corporate campaign money, mumbling about affordability, and avoiding heavily poll-favored Pledges or Contracts for the American people showing specifically what they stand for? (See, Compact for American Workers and Robert Reich’s 10-Point Plan To Make America Affordable.) Or is it just trying to avoid Trump accusing the Democrats of having done similar things when they controlled the White House, such as starting or backing unconstitutional wars?
Whatever explains their inhibitions, the result is to signal to Trump that he has two-plus unchallenged years to ravage the lives and livelihoods of millions of people here and abroad, oppose preparedness for climate and pandemic catastrophes, to suppress renewable energy and favor omnicidal fossil-fuel combustion, invade our cities with his stormtroopers, and treat children with unsurpassed cruelty. It also leaves unanswered serious questions about his personal financial enrichment while in office—estimated to be $1.1 million per working hour. All this invites the demand that they resign. The people need fresh, stand-up leaders to take over the Democratic leadership and its party committees. (See RootsAction: “Tell Democrats in Congress to Insist That Schumer and Jeffries Step Aside”.)
The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week.
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Ro Khanna Demands End to Trump's Iran War 'Before the Midterms'
"Right now, all of the political incentives are there to bring this war to an end," Khanna said, warning it could become "endless" if it goes on past November 3.
Sep 04, 2026
Rep. Ro Khanna said President Donald Trump's war with Iran must end before the November 3 midterms, or it may become "another endless war."
"Right now, all of the political incentives are there to bring this war to an end," Khanna (D-Calif.) said in a video posted to X on Friday. "Food prices are high, gas prices are high, the American people are demanding that the war end before they cast their votes in November."
A Reuters/Ipsos poll out Friday shows that just 25% of Americans view the war as worthwhile, compared with 54% who do not and 21% who were unsure or did not answer.
Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Trump aides were seeking to stop the war from escalating for now to keep it out of the headlines and prevent Republicans from losing even more support before November. But once the votes are cast, they said Trump—who won't have to deal with concerns about reelection—may ramp up military action.
For this reason, Khanna—a leading advocate in the House of Representatives for restricting Trump's war powers—said the next two months are crucial.
"If we don't end this war now," he said, "then there will not be the same political pressure to bring it to a close."
Khanna said Democrats in Congress need to form an "unconventional coalition" with Republicans to force Trump's hand. He said he'd reached out to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), with whom he's co-sponsored multiple war powers resolutions, as well as other Republicans.
"If you believe that we need to be for America First, if you voted for Trump on the promise of no new wars," he urged, "then please let us work together to bring a ceasefire to the war in Iran, to have diplomacy and negotiation, and prevent America from getting into another forever war."
Congress has already passed a war powers resolution directing Trump to end unauthorized hostilities with Iran, but he has so far ignored it, with his administration arguing that it does not have binding force.
In July, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced a resolution that would compel House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to sue Trump and enforce the will of Congress to end the war.
Other Democrats have introduced bills that would forbid funding for military force in Iran without congressional authorization.
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'Things Are Getting Even More Insane': Another Major AI Breakout Revealed
"How much more is there that we don't know about?" asked one historian after it was revealed that OpenAI had buried reports that its AI agents had hijacked a German website without the company's knowledge.
Sep 04, 2026
Calls for artificial regulation are growing louder following a report Friday that OpenAI hid evidence from the public about another incident in which its AI agents went rogue.
The company is already dealing with the fallout from the catastrophic security breach that occurred over the summer, in which a swarm of agents autonomously hacked the tech platform Hugging Face during an internal cybersecurity test.
Now Reuters reports that months earlier, another potentially even more concerning attack took place that went undisclosed. According to the report:
A swarm of rogue OpenAI agents hijacked a German website this spring and transformed it into a bulletin board for other AI agents, according to new research published Friday and two people familiar with the matter.
OpenAI officials learned of the incident weeks ago but kept it under wraps as executives grappled with the fallout from the July breach of the open source repository Hugging Face, the people said.
The activity was uncovered in late August by researchers at an AI safety organization called the Nightingale Collective, who were searching the web for cases of AI programs disobeying their human users.
As they detailed in a report shared with Reuters, they found that OpenAI's agents had taken over the German-language wiki site DseWiki.
"The agents used this wiki to communicate information with each other, primarily to help them succeed at their task," the researchers explained. "They asked for answers, pooled results, and shared techniques for bypassing their restrictions. This allowed them to use the work of others to cheat on their task."
The researchers described it as "another example of a 'swarm' of internally deployed OpenAI agents using the internet in unintended ways."
But unlike the Hugging Face cyberattack, which occurred as part of a security test to measure agents' capabilities, the attack on DseWiki seems to have occurred without any prompting from OpenAI.
"It seems extremely unlikely that OpenAI wanted them to do this,” Sydney Von Arx, the CEO of Nightingale, told Reuters. “I doubt they’re supposed to be coordinating with each other. I doubt they’re supposed to be writing on the open internet.”
The researchers found messages in which the agents plotted to evade detection, using the dark web platform Tor to maintain communication after being shut down, creating backup pages as the originals were cleaned up, and tampering with the website itself.
Maurice Chiodo, a researcher at Cambridge University’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk, told Reuters their behavior resembled "the operation of some sort of underground network, hell-bent on achieving a task or mission.”
OpenAI has denied the characterization that its agents engaged in hacking. It says it was not able to respond thoroughly to the Nightingale report because it was not given access to the report before Reuters released it to the public.
However, the Nightingale report indicates the company became aware of the agents' activity and apparently attempted to intervene as far back as June 21, leading the agents to stop posting the following day—this is weeks before news of the Hugging Face attack was first reported.
Reuters reported that some investigators within OpenAI had wanted to scrutinize behaviors like that which led to the hack of the German website more closely, but that these efforts "met resistance from others inside OpenAI, including legal advisers."
A spokesperson for OpenAI said, "Claims that our legal team discouraged investigation of the incident are false."
Another of the researchers who uncovered the breach, Thomas Larsen of the AI Futures Project, said he was "pretty sure OpenAI did know about this."
"I'm in favor of much more transparency so that we can prevent future incidents with much more capable AIs and existential stakes," he said.
"I really hope OpenAI didn't know about this," said AI research engineer Elie Bakouch, who previously worked at Hugging Face. "It might be the worst decision in the history of this field if they deliberately chose not to disclose it. The impact on trust would be very hard to recover from."
For some, that trust is already deteriorating.
"The Hugging Face incident was probably just the tip of the iceberg. OpenAI has lost control, and they're hiding important facts from the public—it's as simple as that," said Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman in a post to X. "How much more is there that we don't know about?"
News of this incident comes as lawmakers demand more transparency and restrictions on the development of "superintelligent" AI that can surpass the capabilities of humans.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) sent letters to OpenAI and Anthropic earlier this week, chastising executives for failing to answer his questions about security lapses resulting from rogue AI behavior.
On Thursday, he joined Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to introduce legislation that would halt the development of superintelligent AI and create new federal regulatory authorities for the technology.
"If the leaders of the major AI companies acknowledge that they are losing control of their extremely dangerous technology, it is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced," Sanders said in a post to X on Thursday. "Let me be clear: A superintelligent AI that escapes human control will not be an American problem. It will not be a Chinese problem. It will be humanity’s problem."
Bregman said the incident showed the public, lawmakers, and the developers themselves were not taking the threat AI posed nearly seriously enough.
"Things are getting even more insane now," he wrote in a post to X, noting a safety evaluation out Thursday from OpenAI which found that its newly released model Astra was dramatically better than previous iterations at evading human monitoring and lying about its reasoning to users.
That report notes that if the technology continues to improve, OpenAI researchers would soon have "significantly reduced confidence" in their ability to monitor unauthorized, dangerous, and potentially illegal behaviors.
"Many people still think we're discussing future sci-fi scenarios. But all of this is really happening, right now," Bregman said drawing a comparison to the Covid-19 pandemic. "It's like March 2020. So many people are still in AI denial. What will it take to wake everyone up? How big does the disaster need to be?"
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50+ Rights Groups 'Strongly Urge' Congress to Reject US-Israeli Military Integration in NDAA
"The American people do not want American military integration with a country responsible for war crimes, international law violations, and mass killings amounting to genocide."
Sep 04, 2026
A coalition of over 50 rights groups on Thursday wrote to leaders in Congress to "strongly urge" them to reject not only specific proposals in each chamber's version of the next Pentagon budget, but also "any legislation seeking to intertwine US and Israeli defense or intelligence capabilities."
The provision in the House-approved National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 (HR 8800) is Section 219—previously titled Section 224—and the related but slightly different proposal in the pending Senate bill (S. 4784) is Section 1217. Congressional leadership is expected to negotiate a version of the full NDAA that can pass both GOP-controlled chambers.
"The provisions would establish a new US Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative aimed at accelerating joint research, development, and integration of Israeli-origin and jointly developed defense technologies into US military systems and programs of record," says the new letter to the chairs and ranking members of both Armed Services committees: Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-RI) and Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
"This would expand US-Israeli military integration across some of the most sensitive domains of emerging technology, including quantum computing, AI and autonomous systems, cyber and electronic warfare, directed energy, and defense industrial base co-production, while expediting pathways from R&D into procurement," notes the letter, first reported by Reuters.
Congressional consideration of the provision comes nearly three years into US-armed Israeli forces' campaign in the Gaza Strip—decried as genocide by many activists, experts, and governments around the world—in response to the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel. The violence has claimed over 73,000 Palestinian lives and continues, despite a nearly year-old ceasefire.
"Israel's grievous violations of US and international law and its other human rights violations include the use of US-supplied weapons in killing Palestinian civilians, extrajudicial killings by Israeli soldiers, the systemic use of torture and sexual abuse by Israeli security forces, and policies such as the withholding of humanitarian assistance, other forms of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide," the coalition highlighted in its letter to lawmakers.
"These facts alone should prevent even the discussion of deepening military ties, especially given the complete inability of the United States to apply existing laws, such as the Foreign Assistance Act or the Arms Export Control Act, that would require the suspension of US military aid and arms transfers to Israel," the groups argued. "The American people do not want American military integration with a country responsible for war crimes, international law violations, and mass killings amounting to genocide."
Pointing to polling that has shown growing opposition to US military aid to Israel "across the political spectrum," the coalition wrote that "Section 219/1217 works to hide continuing US military support to Israel from public scrutiny and congressional oversight and involvement. Far from working to shift the US-Israel relationship in line with American public opinion, this section encourages the direct use of Israeli-manufactured technology into the US' systems, which may render the United States dependent on Israel’s provision of such technologies, and make disentangling the relationship in the future ever more difficult."
"At a time in which American interests are increasingly diverging from those of Israel, and American public opinion is turning increasingly against unconditional support to Israel, creating new points of influence for Israel in the U.S. defense-technology ecosystem is exceptionally dangerous," stresses the letter.
It also sounds the alarm about Section 622 of the 2027 Intelligence Authorization Act, which was introduced in May by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and "would limit the president's ability to restrict America's intelligence-sharing and military collaboration with Israel by requiring the president to identify and document a specific national security concern that necessitates any changes, and expand intelligence sharing and cooperation with countries that have normalized relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords."
"Governments have an obligation to ensure the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms when advancing their national security interests, including countering threats to their populations' right to privacy or other freedoms," the letter declares. "Intertwining US and Israeli information-gathering and defense raises significant concerns given the recent evidence of Israeli espionage against people in the US, including government officials."
Signatories include A New Policy, Amnesty International USA, Demand Progress, IfNotNow Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, Just Foreign Policy, National Lawyers Guild, National Nurses United, Peace Action, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, RootsAction, Win Without War, and dozens of other organizations.
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2026 is THE Social Security Election
The future of this critical program will be determined by the midterm election.
Sep 04, 2026
The future of Social Security, the government program that touches the lives of more Americans than any other, will be determined by the results of the November elections. Let us explain. The Social Security program faces a funding shortfall. As ABC News reported back in June:
Social Security's trust fund that pays retiree and survivor benefits is expected to begin running low on money earlier than previously expected, leading to questions from Americans who rely on the benefits for their living expenses. Without congressional action, the fund is now expected to begin depleting by the fourth quarter of 2032, according to a report issued Tuesday by Social Security's trustees, the body that manages the trust fund.
This does not mean that, as some who for their own political purposes argue, Social Security is going “bankrupt.” Those who depend on Social Security (roughly 68 million Americans) do not have to worry about their checks stopping. Instead, they need to be concerned about a very significant cut to their benefits.
But know this: The reduction can be avoided with courageous political action. Congress and the president can make adjustments that will close the gap and pay out promised benefits. Back in 1983, Congress and President Ronald Reagan hammered out a solution to do just that.
Right now, there are a number of steps that Congress can take that will strengthen Social Security’s finances for today and for future generations. One of the most talked about solutions is raising the cap on the amount of income subject to the Social Security tax—otherwise called “busting the cap.” The Economic Policy Institute points out that:
Earnings above a cap aren’t subject to the payroll taxes that fund Social Security. As a result, billionaires pay the same tax as someone earning $176,100 in 2025 (the cap is indexed to the average wage, so it changes every year). “Scrapping the cap” is a popular and effective way to address Social Security’s funding gap. Nearly three-fourths of Social Security’s projected long-term shortfall would be eliminated if the cap were scrapped without increasing benefits.
Believe it or not there is a bipartisan proposal out there from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio. Sens. Warren and Moreno argue that “instead of cutting benefits for the retirees who count on Social Security, we need to take bipartisan action to protect those benefits, reward work, and restore fairness. That starts with a common-sense solution: lifting the Social Security payroll tax cap.”
Other bipartisan members of Congress argue that the best way to address Social Security’s challenges is through the creation of a bipartisan commission made up of 13 members appointed by the president and congressional leaders in both parties. Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced the Bipartisan Social Security Commission Act which would create such a commission. Congress would then only be given an expedited up-or-down vote on the recommendations with no amendments—bypassing regular legislative order. How is public input included in this process? Hint: It isn’t.
It seems to us that raising the tax on income subject to Social Security is a much better step toward securing Social Security’s future than creating a commission that operates outside the public view. Supporters of the commission idea will argue that this is exactly what happened in 1983. This is true, but it ignores the political realities of 1983. An agreement came about because Democrats and President Reagan came together to hammer out an agreement. There is no leadership on this issue from our president.
Creating a commission may sound good to inside the beltway players like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget but to the millions of Americans who depend on Social Security, creating a commission to deal with the program’s fiscal challenges is just another way of Congress not doing its job.
There can be no doubt that the members of Congress elected this November will chart Social Security’s future. If you care about your retirement security and that of future generations, you have an obligation to ask some tough questions about Social Security. The two questions that we would put to members of Congress are:
- If we create a special commission to deal with Social Security, why do we need members of Congress?
- Should Elon Musk pay the same amount of Social Security tax that an IT manager earning $184,600 (one hundred dollars over the cap)?
During this election, ask your candidates where they stand on Social Security’s future, and what solutions they support to ensure that our benefits are not cut because of inaction or because of political fear. And tell them what Social Security means to you and to your families. Social Security is the only guaranteed inflation-protected retirement income source for millions of Americans—and that guarantee must be honored by our elected political leaders.
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33 Dems Help Pass House Bill That Would Strip Funds From Colleges That Boycott Israel
"The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel,” said one analyst.
Sep 03, 2026
The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed what critics say could be one of the most severe infringements on free expression in recent memory—a bill that could effectively require colleges and universities to do business with Israel or risk losing federal funds.
As Israel's genocide in Gaza and accelerating ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank continue to fuel protests, the bill is the latest piece of legislation aimed at punishing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which uses nonviolent economic tactics to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and human rights abuses.
HR 4795, introduced in July 2025 by Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), is known as the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act. But Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, described it as an "Orwellian" turn of phrase for what the legislation actually does.
"The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel,” she told Responsible Statecraft. “And if they're not doing that, they're pro-BDS and anti-Israel.”
As the outlet described:
[The bill] would bar colleges that receive federal funds from engaging in what it defines as a “nonexpressive commercial boycott” of Israel, including “refusals to deal” or terminating business relationships in order to limit commercial ties without a “valid business reason.” The law would require these institutions to submit annual certification that they were giving students and faculty access to academic programs in Israel on the same terms as programs in other countries.
In a brief opposing the bill, Friedman argued that it was not just forcing universities to do business with Israel, but with its settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. With backing from the Israeli state, violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has exploded to never-before-seen highs this year, according to the United Nations.
"This legislation," Friedman wrote, "sets up a situation in which the alleged absence of engagement with any Israeli partner/party, including in settlements, will become the basis for an accusation of boycott, putting universities in the position where, if they universities want to avoid being accused of boycotting Israel/settlements, they will need to adopt an affirmative policy of prioritizing maximal engagement/partnership with Israeli entities (including in settlements)."
The bill passed by a 237-169 vote, with support from all but two Republicans—Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). And although the vast majority of Democratic voters now hold negative views of Israel, 33 Democrats also voted in favor of the bill.
The legislation now heads to the narrowly Republican-controlled US Senate, where it would need 60 votes to advance.
Introducing the bill last year, Gottheimer said it was necessary because BDS was an "antisemitic, hate-fueled... movement" that "seeks to destroy Israel—and has no place on our college campuses."
But even critics of the BDS movement, like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chafed at its potential chilling effect on protected speech.
"No matter how strongly I oppose the BDS movement, I also believe that those who engage in BDS have a First Amendment right to do so," Nadler said before voting against the bill. "The First Amendment right to free speech does not apply only to agreeable speech."
He cited a letter sent to Congress by the ACLU opposing the bill's contention that schools should need a "valid business reason" to cut ties with Israel.
"Many of those engaged in boycotts of Israel do so not for commercial reasons, but because they wish to express their political opposition to the policies of the Israeli government—matters of overwhelming public concern and debate in the present moment. HR 4795’s labeling such boycotts as ‘non-expressive’ does nothing to change this reality," the letter said.
The bill comes as members of Congress, especially Democrats, are under increasing scrutiny for their support from pro-Israel lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose political spending arm has poured more than $104 million into supporting its preferred candidates this election cycle.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has spent more than six months embroiled in a costly war with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played a key role in persuading him to launch.
"We just got dragged into a war by Benjamin Netanyahu. He's bragging about it," Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) told Julian Andreone of Drop Site News. "That's about as embarrassing as you can get... So let's leave universities alone."
Aaron Regunberg, a contributing editor at The New Republic, described it as outrageous that Democrats who supported the bill were "actively joining the far-right's war on higher education in order to shield a genocidal ethnostate that most Americans increasingly want nothing to do with."
Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said the bill was "another effort to single out Israel for special treatment and erode Americans’ rights on its behalf."
"Will it be your child who can’t afford to go to college after 33 Democrats voted with Republicans to help Trump defund US universities? Because it certainly won’t be any of theirs," he said. "Shame on them for joining the attack on our schools and constitutional rights on behalf of Israel."
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Trump Condemned for 200+ Extrajudicial Killings After Yearlong Murder Spree at Sea
"This is a make-believe armed conflict, but these are very real killings," said one legal expert.
Sep 02, 2026
Wednesday marked one year since President Donald Trump began bombing boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean—a grim anniversary that sparked a fresh wave of condemnation from rights advocates across the United States and beyond.
"For a year now, the Trump administration has engaged in a terrifying, lawless killing campaign at sea and has yet to provide the public with anything beyond the most threadbare justifications," said Jeff Stein, staff attorney with ACLU's National Security Project, in a statement late Tuesday.
The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights are suing over the administration's refusal to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for a legal opinion authored by the US Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) attempting to justify the strikes.
"These strikes have devastated countless families, terrified communities, and, by the administration's own admission, failed to achieve their purported goal of stopping drugs from entering into the United States," Stein said. "We urge leaders in both Congress and the executive branch to put an immediate end to these strikes before anyone else is killed."
Despite mounting outrage over the bombings, which have killed at least 227 people and, as Amnesty International USA's national director for government relations, Amanda Klasing, highlighted Monday, "are illegal under both international and US law," the Republican-controlled Congress has failed to pass any war powers resolutions intended to stop the campaign.
"The Trump administration has summarily killed more than 200 people over the course of the past year, bragging about these killings online and facing no accountability," Ida Sawyer, crisis, conflict, and arms director at Human Rights Watch, said Wednesday. "The victims and their loved ones deserve a full accounting of these operations, and justice for the grave harm they have suffered."
After a two-month pause in the bombings, the administration revived them last week, launching a pair of attacks that killed at least six people, according to social media posts and aerial footage from US Southern Command. The strikes followed SOUTHCOM's early August announcement of an expanded operation across Latin America called Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere.
As MS NOW noted Wednesday:
In September and October 2025, when the strikes began, US Southern Command, known as SOUTHCOM, linked three of the strikes to the Tren de Aragua and Ejército de Liberación Nacional criminal organizations. Most later strikes were described as targeting "a vessel operated by designated terrorist organizations."
But the military's most recent two announcements of strikes simply stated that "confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking."
Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser who now advises the US Program at the International Crisis Group, told the outlet that "they are engaging in conduct that is widely regarded to be flagrantly illegal, criminal even, and have not offered anything approaching plausible legal rationale."
The OLC memo may be the administration's "permission slip," Finucane said, but it hasn't actually substantiated claims that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with cartels that traffic drugs.
"This war framing on the part of the administration is really bogus," he added. "This is a make-believe armed conflict, but these are very real killings."
I don’t think there’s really even a colorable argument that this isn’t mass murder.theintercept.com/2026/09/02/m...
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— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) September 2, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Several Democrats in Congress, from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) to Senate Minority Whip and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (Ill.), renewed their criticism of the boat bombings on Wednesday.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said that "the most recent strike was four days ago. A year of killing, and this administration has never once come to Congress to justify any of it. This cannot become the way our country goes to war."
"The American people are already paying for one war they didn't want in the first place," he continued, nodding to the illegal six-month assault on Iran. "I fought in Iraq. I know what these wars cost, and I know who pays them. I will use every tool I have as a United States senator to stop this and to defend the Constitution."
House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) noted that "it remains unclear whether these operations have made any real difference in stopping illegal drugs from reaching the United States."
"This is especially true for fentanyl," he noted, which Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "have repeatedly claimed is the reason for these extrajudicial killings even though we know that it is cocaine—not fentanyl—that is typically shipped via small boats from South America."
Smith also called out the Department of Defense for failing "to publicly provide the costs of these operations, both in terms of dollars and readiness," and declared that "never before in my over 20 years on this committee have I seen such a staggering lack of transparency on behalf of an administration and DOD to meaningfully inform Congress of the use of lethal military force."
However, with Republicans holding narrow majorities in Congress and mostly still refusing to truly challenge the administration on the boat strikes—and various other violent actions around the world—some campaigners are also stepping up pressure on other governments.
"The Trump administration has had complete impunity for this campaign of unlawful killings for a year, and has stated openly that it has no intention of stopping," said Sawyer. "Other countries should refrain from any cooperation on these strikes, and Congress should urgently work to rein in the deadly actions of an administration bent on violating international law."
Jamil Dakwar, director of ACLU's Human Rights Program, said that "the international community must do everything in its power to hold the Trump administration responsible for these extrajudicial killings that are blatant violations of international law."
"No other country should provide any assistance that could contribute to these unlawful US government killings," Dakwar added, calling for an "independent international investigation into this lawless campaign."
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The USS Abraham Lincoln Is Coming Home—Congress Owes Its Crew the Truth
More than 4,000 veteran members of Common Defense and their families agree: This can never happen again, and the war against Iran needs to end.
Aug 26, 2026
The USS Abraham Lincoln is on its way home. This is welcome news after hearing of its abhorrent conditions. Yet, the situation lived by sailors and Marines aboard the carrier over the last nine months, the continued threats that troops still deployed in this unpopular war face, and the unpatriotic negligence both the president and members of his own party have demonstrated paint a grim, but unsurprising picture of how servicemembers are treated under this administration.
Donald Trump is the most hostile president to troops and veterans in modern American history. Look no further than his comments about the service members who have been at sea for more than 250 days—that they have not been deployed “nearly long enough”—or House Republicans parroting that line back to reporters. That’s how this administration treats its military members, and it should be a wake-up call for every American.
Yes, the USS Abraham Lincoln is on its way home, but with the USS George Washington replacing it, how many more troops must suffer until we end this forever war? That is why veterans of Common Defense, like myself, are demanding a full-scale congressional investigation into this case. More than 4,000 of our members and their families agree: This can never happen again, and the war against Iran needs to end.
The war these carriers are supporting has already killed at least 18 US service members and wounded roughly 500 more, alongside thousands of Iranian civilians killed. As an Iraq veteran, I’ve come to understand the costs of war begin long before the first shot is fired. Diplomacy is what keeps the world safe, and certainly not bombs that pad shareholder value at the expense of service members, and military families, who have everything to lose.
If a foreign adversary starved its own troops, kept them at sea for nearly a year, and left them in cramped showers and broken toilets, how would Washington react?
The USS Lincoln is carrying 5,000 sailors and Marines, 5,000 souls who have touched communities far and wide throughout our nation. They’ve played in our little leagues, attended school dances, walked college campuses, and have full lives waiting for them at home. Whatever reason each of them had for raising their right hand, that oath reflects a rare kind of commitment—to a mission, and to a country they intend to keep giving back to. War is the price many military families pay, and veterans carry its scars, visible and invisible, long after they take off the uniform. It is time for this administration to uphold its end of that bargain.
Instead, this White House has gutted the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); sent troops to a highly unpopular, illegal, unjust war; and used the military as a political prop. None of that improves troops’ or veterans’ lives. What would actually improve their lives? Ending the war, investigating what happened on the USS Lincoln, expanding the VA instead of hollowing it out, and making sure military and working families can actually thrive.
As the USS Lincoln returns home, it’s worth remembering what most Americans already sense: War doesn’t accomplish what makes a life worth living. It doesn’t keep your family safe, cover your healthcare, give you a good-paying job, or protect the freedoms our Constitution promises. That’s why most Americans oppose the war with Iran. Yet, we’re all paying for it—in a cost of living already at historic highs, in gas prices, and in the roughly $1,000 per household experts say Trump’s decision to go to war has cost every one of us. The more hawkish members of his party will argue that this is part of the mission: to spread freedom and to contain Iran’s power. So ask them if a foreign adversary starved its own troops, kept them at sea for nearly a year, and left them in cramped showers and broken toilets, how would Washington react? We already know the answer. These very politicians would be first in line, demanding that America intervene. What our service members experienced on the USS Lincoln is abysmal and should infuriate every single American whose tax dollars are funding Donald Trump’s war.
Let’s not forget this was a choice made by Donald Trump’s hostile administration and enabled by its congressional allies. Lawmakers must demand a full-scale investigation into what happened aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln so it never happens again. Veterans and military families see clearly how failed leaders and politicians who carry every whim of the president’s disastrous war put our troops in danger. We must demand an investigation now—and we won’t stop until this country ends its forever wars.
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Trump’s Legacy: An Unchecked Presidency and a War That May Outlast Him
The Iran conflict is testing whether Congress can still meaningfully constrain presidential war making—and what powers future presidents may inherit.
Aug 25, 2026
On August 18, President Donald Trump said no talks with Iran were underway or scheduled, while the US naval blockade remained in force and Tehran insisted the Strait of Hormuz would stay closed until Washington met the terms of the June interim agreement. The impasse sharpens the most consequential question surrounding Trump’s legacy: not whether he wins or loses this war, but whether he leaves behind expanded presidential power, weakened constitutional checks on war making, and a diminished commitment to a rules-based international order. A president can leave office. A war can outlive him.
That is increasingly the danger confronting the United States. Trump’s confrontation with Iran has evolved from a military campaign into a constitutional and institutional test: Can an American president initiate and sustain major hostilities without explicit congressional authorization, and can Congress still meaningfully restrain him once the fighting has begun? The answer will shape far more than the remainder of Trump’s presidency. It will establish a precedent for every administration that follows.
The central issue is therefore not simply Trump’s foreign policy. It is the emergence of unchecked presidential power in the conduct of war. The United States entered the Iran conflict without a specific congressional authorization. Since then, the administration has advanced expansive interpretations of executive authority while Congress has struggled to reassert its constitutional prerogatives. The War Powers Resolution remains an important, if imperfect, mechanism for limiting the executive branch’s ability to sustain hostilities without congressional consent.
The danger becomes particularly acute when an administration can redefine the status of a conflict without ending the underlying military posture. The War Powers framework was designed to prevent presidents from converting temporary military action into an open-ended commitment: Absent congressional authorization, the law generally requires the president to terminate the use of US armed forces after 60 days. Yet the Trump administration has challenged the idea that this statutory clock should operate as an automatic constraint on presidential authority.
If lawmakers fail to reassert their authority, Trump’s most consequential legacy may be the normalization of a presidency capable of committing the United States to war without meaningful congressional authorization and leaving later administrations to deal with the consequences.
That creates a dangerous precedent. If a president can initiate hostilities, characterize them as limited or defensive, reinterpret the statutory clock, and then continue military operations without explicit authorization, the constitutional allocation of war powers becomes increasingly theoretical. The consequences are no longer hypothetical.
Congress has repeatedly attempted to invoke its war powers over Iran. In June, the House passed a measure directing the president to remove US forces from hostilities with Iran, and the Senate later adopted it. In July, the House again approved a war-powers resolution by 214-208, while the Senate rejected its own measure, 47-49. These votes expose the political problem: Congress is being asked to choose between institutional loyalty to the presidency and constitutional loyalty to the republic. For Republican lawmakers, the choice is especially consequential. Allowing a Republican president to expand executive authority without meaningful resistance establishes powers that a future Democratic president—or another Republican—could inherit in very different circumstances.
The question, therefore, is not whether Congress likes Trump. It is whether Congress is willing to allow presidential power to become self-expanding. Trump’s legacy also extends beyond the domestic constitutional order. His approach has placed pressure on the foundations of the liberal international system: predictable alliances, institutional constraints, multilateral diplomacy, and the assumption that American power operates within rules rather than merely according to presidential preference.
The Iran conflict demonstrates the problem with extraordinary clarity. The June agreement was intended to extend a ceasefire and create a pathway toward a permanent settlement, including negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. That framework has effectively collapsed. Trump has ruled out extending it; the confrontation around the Strait of Hormuz continues; and he has threatened military action against Oman, a US partner involved in efforts surrounding the strait. A mechanism meant to create a pathway out of war has become another stage in an unresolved confrontation.
Washington has even declared that it can maintain its naval blockade of Iran indefinitely. This is how wars acquire a life of their own. Once forces are deployed, enemies mobilize, allies become involved, economic interests are affected, and political credibility becomes attached to the outcome, withdrawal grows more difficult. The president who starts the war may eventually discover that ending it is politically more dangerous than continuing it.
And the president who inherits it may discover that he has inherited not merely a conflict, but an entire strategic architecture: deployed forces, military commitments, sanctions regimes, regional alliances, adversaries with incentives to retaliate, and political expectations that make disengagement appear equivalent to defeat.
Trump may therefore leave office, but the war may remain. This is the deeper paradox of his “America First” approach. A doctrine supposedly designed to reduce unnecessary foreign entanglements can instead produce new and potentially durable ones. The more Washington relies on military coercion without a clearly defined political end state, the more difficult it becomes to determine what victory actually means—and therefore what conditions would permit the United States to leave.
The consequences for American democracy are equally serious. Democracy does not depend solely on elections. It depends on institutions capable of constraining whoever wins those elections. If Congress becomes unwilling or unable to prevent reckless escalation without congressional consent, then the constitutional system has lost one of its most important safeguards.
This is why the current confrontation should not be reduced to a partisan dispute between Democrats and Republicans. The real issue is whether the United States still believes that war is a national decision rather than a presidential prerogative. Congress must therefore make a choice that transcends Trump himself: party loyalty or constitutional patriotism.
Republican lawmakers who defend Trump’s authority today should consider what they are actually defending. They are not merely protecting the foreign policy of one president. They are helping define the permissible scope of presidential power for decades to come. Once extraordinary powers become precedent, they rarely remain confined to the circumstances in which they were created.
The United States has survived presidents with radically different visions of executive authority. What allows the constitutional system to survive them is the willingness of institutions to impose limits on presidential power. If lawmakers fail to reassert their authority, Trump’s most consequential legacy may be the normalization of a presidency capable of committing the United States to war without meaningful congressional authorization and leaving later administrations to deal with the consequences. Trump will eventually leave the White House. The precedent he creates may not.
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