Brad Reed, Common Dreams

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday delivered a speech commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America that drew a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump’s vision for the country.

Speaking from New York City Hall, Mamdani recounted how his city had long served as a refuge for people from across the globe who came seeking a new life an opportunity.

It was these immigrants who ultimately shaped New York and made it into what it is today, said Mamdani—who is an immigrant and among the rising number of democratic socialists who have recently won at the ballot box.

The mayor then moved to the present day, where he took aim at the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies emanating from Trump and his MAGA movement.

“The story of America has been written by those who have so often been told by those with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional,” Mamdani said. “For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best.”

Mamdani took aim at the ideology espoused by many rich and powerful people who see America as “an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.”

“America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes,” the mayor continued. “America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.”

“How small they are,” Mamdani remarked. “How weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power for themselves by turning us against one another.”

The mayor then pivoted to a more hopeful tone by arguing that “time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.”

Mamdani insisted that the greed shown by American oligarchs and the division sown by its current political leadership are “not all we see when we look for America.”

“We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on her ailing neighbor,” he said. “Yes, we see in America corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed in a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work, and who still believes this country can do better by his family.”

In his conclusion, Mamdani paid tribute to “those ideals upon which our nation was built,” which he described as “strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.”

“Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived,” he said. “A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America: The striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection. What a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape.”

Right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel is accusing Pope Leo XIV of doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party with his criticisms of artificial intelligence.

According to a Thursday report from CNN, Thiel told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Tuesday that the pope was inadvertently serving as a “Chinese communist agent” when he released a 42,000-word encyclical that called for strict regulation of AI, a technology that the pontiff said heightens the “risk of dehumanization” throughout the world.

Thiel argued that this sort of thinking was dangerous, CNN reported, because it could result in the US losing the “race” to build more advanced AI to China. Because of this, Thiel continued, the pope is essentially “working for the Chinese communists” by trying to tap the brakes on AI development.

Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has long decried AI critics in harsh terms. Over the last year, he has been delivering a series of lectures in which he has said that opponents of AI development are working as agents for the Antichrist.

Journalist Christopher Hale, who writes the Letters From Leo newsletter, noted on Friday that Thiel in the past has even speculated that Pope Leo could be “a manifestation of the Antichrist.”

Thiel has said that he instructed Vice President JD Vance, a longtime political ally who received major funding from the tech billionaire for his 2022 Senate campaign, to ignore the pope’s moral guidance despite influencing Vance to convert to Catholicism, Hale added.

“Thiel seeded the vice president’s Catholic faith,” Hale wrote, “and he now tells wealthy festival audiences that the leader of that faith works for a communist government.”

In addition to his attacks on the pope, Thiel also warned about “a democratic-socialist takeover of the Democratic Party,” pointing to recent victories in New York and Colorado of candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Thiel said that this “takeover” would doom the US, arguing that “when the Democratic Party goes, this country is over,” according to CNN.

The New York Times reported in May that Thiel has grown so concerned about the political situation in the US that he’s created a “foothold” for himself in Argentina, which is currently being governed by ideologically likeminded libertarian President Javier Milei.

“Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B,” the Times reported. “Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022.”

A report published Friday reveals how President Donald Trump’s policies have jacked up prices for a host of potential Father’s Day gifts this year.

Overall, the analysis by Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic think tank and advocacy group, finds that prices for popular Father’s Day gifts have risen by nearly 19% on average over the last year, highlighted by a 30% increase in the price of Remington electric shavers, a 16% jump for Blackstone electric griddles, and barbecue tools up by 11%.

The analysis traces price increases of popular personal care products to Trump’s global trade war, which he began last year with his “Liberation Day” tariffs levied on practically every nation in the world.

“Many shavers and trimmers are imported from China, which has faced multiple layers of tariffs,” notes the report, “in addition to containing steel and aluminum components, which are also subject to additional tariffs.”

The report also points out that electric shaver manufacturer Braun “increased the price of its Series 9 All-in-One Beard Trimmer by $50” last year after Trump’s big tariff announcement, and that the price has since gone up by another $10.

Examining the increase in grilling product prices, the report pins the blame not only on Trump’s tariffs, but also his illegal war of choice with Iran.

“The Middle East is a major producer of the petrochemical used to make plastics and synthetic fibers,” the report explains. “Trump’s reckless war on Iran has increased the price of these petroleum-derived products, helping drive up the cost of items like grilling tools, which cost nearly 22% more this year.”

Elizabeth Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, summarized the report’s findings by warning that “Dads are in for disappointment this Father’s Day” thanks to Trump’s economic policies.

“While dads across the country should be able to relax and enjoy the day with loved ones,” Pancotti added, “they’re instead forced to worry about how they’ll make ends meet in Trump’s economy.”

Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war have sent inflation in the US to its highest levels in three years. As data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last week showed, overall prices in May posted a yearly increase of 4.2%, highlighted by a 23.5% yearly increase in energy prices.

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said last week that inflation has now grown “so high that it’s erasing all wage gains” being made by American workers.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire last week, and now a prominent economist is warning that his unprecedented wealth poses a grave threat to human freedom in the US and across the globe.

In a column published by The Guardian on Tuesday, Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman argued that Musk’s enormous fortune is fundamentally at odds with a democratic system of governance because it gives him “the power to stifle competition, the power to shape public discourse, the power to influence policymaking, the power to buy elections, the power to stall social progress,” and much else.

Zucman noted that wealth concentration is even greater now than it was during the original Gilded Age, as the top 0.00001% now have fortunes large enough to “buy 14% of everything produced in a given year in the US.”

The economist added that while Musk—whose infamous destruction of the US Agency for International Development is projected to kill millions of people in the coming years—makes a particularly compelling villain, trillionaires would be a major problem for democracy even if they were of a more benevolent variety.

“No one should want to live in a society where one single individual can be worth $1 trillion, no matter their personal virtues,” Zucman emphasized. “Such levels invariably skew power, distort markets, and sap our democratic ideals.”

The best solution to this crisis, Zucman said, is to “create an unavoidable minimum tax on their wealth” that will “make it impossible for the super-rich to pay less tax than middle-class workers—a matter of basic equality before the law.”

“It is time to break decisively with the perverse logic in which retirees, the poor, or immigrants are expected to balance the budget,” Zucman concluded, “while the rich are to be allowed to live tax-free in their own parallel society. There cannot be a law more lenient for the rich and powerful than for the rest of us. If ever there was a time to act, it is now.”

Zucman’s thoughts on extreme wealth and democracy were echoed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who on Tuesday published an essay on his Substack page where he likened President Donald Trump’s White House cage-fighting matches to the kinds of spectacles put on by Roman emperors before noting ominous similarities between the US today and the Roman Empire.

“While the causes of the decline of republican government and Rome’s eventual transition to one-man rule were doubtless complex,” Krugman wrote, “there is broad consensus among historians that a key factor was the emergence of extreme inequality. A handful of men became incredibly wealthy from the spoils of Rome’s eastern conquests, and their wealth and power eventually became too great for the rules of constitutional, republican government to contain. Sound uncomfortably familiar?”

Gautam Mukunda, a professor at the Yale School of Management, similarly warned that Musk’s newly minted trillionaire status was bad news for American self-governance.

In a Monday column published by Bloomberg, Mukunda pointed to the vast sums of money being spent by billionaires in US elections, which he noted “dwarf what candidates can raise themselves.”

And like Krugman, Mukunda saw disturbing parallels between the US today and Ancient Rome.

“Marcus Crassus was the richest man in ancient Rome,” he explained. “So rich that, by Plutarch’s account, he thought no man truly wealthy unless he could pay an army from his own purse. He spent that fortune bankrolling Julius Caesar and building the triumvirate that sidelined the Senate and, in fact if not in name, overthrew the republic.”

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.

US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Thursday reiterated his threat to remove Customs and Border Protection agents from airports at so-called “sanctuary cities” that bar local police from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement operations.

During a Fox News interview, co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Mullin whether this plan would essentially halt all international flights to major US airports in travel hubs such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.Mullin responded by saying DHS wasn’t “going to halt the flights,” but rather “won’t be able to process them because we won’t have officers there.”

The DHS secretary said that the CBP officers needed to be sent to protect DHS employees at the Delaney Hall migrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey, which has been targeted in recent days by protesters demanding humane treatment of immigrants.

“If things don’t change, we’re going to have to make this step pretty quick,” Mullin emphasized. “I’m not going to put my employees and my [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents at risk going to and from this [facility].”

Critics were quick to point out that Mullin’s plan would lead to massive chaos at major international airports and would be a significant economic disruption at a time when Americans are already under financial pressure from the rising price of food and energy.

“This would be deliberately stabbing the US economy in the back,” argued Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “It would cause enormous economic damage and disrupt air travel nationwide, as airlines would be forced to cancel flights en masse. That he’s even contemplating this publicly is a sign of madness.”

Minneapolis-based attorney Will Stancil questioned whether Mullin had fully gamed out how his plan would play out politically for his boss, President Donald Trump, whom polls show is historically unpopular.

“If I’m sitting at 35% approval,” Stancil mused, “the thing I definitely want to do is to cause apocalyptic levels of chaos at all of America’s largest airports.”

Retired air traffic controller Vivian Lumbard similarly marveled at the self-destructive consequences that would come from enacting Mullin’s plan.

“If customs isn’t there processing international flights, US citizens won’t be permitted to re-enter the United States either,” she wrote. “Do any of these people have a working brain or understand how life works in the real world?”

Mullin’s threats appear to be more than bluster, however. The Atlantic reported last week that the DHS chief recently “convened a small group of airline and travel-industry executives at DHS headquarters in Washington and told them he may reduce [CBP] staffing at major airports that serve sanctuary jurisdictions,” including airports in New York, Washington, DC, and Portland, Oregon.

A super political action committee with a progressive-sounding name but with Republican financial backers that has been meddling in Democratic primaries was further exposed Wednesday by independent journalist Judd Legum as a clear example of a “dirty tricks operation.”

Legum’s new reporting on the funding behind a mysterious super PAC called Lead Left, which recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to benefit Maureen Galindo, a failed Democratic candidate for US Congress in Texas who has been broadly condemned for antisemitic rants.

According to Legum, Lead Left is linked to Republican operative Caleb Crosby, treasurer of the House GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) super PAC.

“Several pieces of evidence point to Crosby’s involvement,” explained Legum. “First, of the roughly 48,500 distinct political committees that have filed with the FEC since 2016, only two others share an address with Lead Left — the Staples at 2241 North Monroe Street in Tallahassee. Both of those committees are connected to the Crosby Ottenhoff Group, the political compliance firm founded by Crosby.

Legum also documented what he said were “substantial similarities” in messages run against Democratic candidates by both CLF and Lead Left.

“In Nebraska, the American Action Network, the affiliated non-profit of the CLF, sent mail and ran digital ads seeking to damage House Democratic candidate and John Cavanaugh by linking him to Trump,” explained Legum. “Before the Democratic primary, Lead Left then ran television advertisements with a nearly identical message.”

In addition to spending money to boost Galindo, who lost to Democratic rival Johnny Garcia on Tuesday by more than 20 points, Lead Left this month also spent over $1 million in an attempt to derail the candidacy of retired firefighter Bob Brooks, who last week won the Democratic congressional primary in Pennsylvania’s 7th congressional district and will now face off against incumbent Rep. Ryan MacKenzie (R-Pa.).

Elected Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have accused GOP-backed interests of funding Lead Left, which they say is misleadingly posing as a progressive organization to boost the prospects of fringe candidates and hurt the party’s chance of retaking the House in 2026.

A report from Groundwork Collaborative reveals how fossil fuel companies are not merely scoring windfall profits from President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran, but also using that money to reward shareholders rather than providing relief to consumers.

The price of gas has soared since Trump attacked Iran without any congressional authorization in late February, going from an average of under $3 per gallon at the start of the war to $4.49 per gallon as of Tuesday. As US drivers have paid more at the pump, however, fossil fuel firms have been concerned with paying out dividends and conducting stock buybacks, expanding production to lower prices, Groundwork Collaborative’s report finds.

Among other things, the report notes that ExxonMobil is on pace to deliver $20 billion worth of stock buybacks in 2026, even as CEO Darren Woods has insisted that the company’s decisions on production will be “grounded in value, not volume.”

Additionally, the report documents how Shell recently announced “another 5% dividend increase and more than $3 billion in buybacks,” with CEO Wael Sawan describing the company’s commitment to paying shareholders as “sacrosanct.”

Chevron has pledged roughly $3 billion in quarterly stock buybacks, while also saying increasing dividends for shareholders is its “first and foremost” priority.

Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner, the report adds, recently revealed that the company has no plans to boost output in response to high energy prices, stating that “capital spending and production outlooks are consistent with previous guidance.”

Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, accused Big Oil of using Trump’s illegal war as cover to keep prices high without taking any steps to reduce pain at the pump.

“These companies want Americans to believe price spikes are simply the unavoidable result of global events,” said Owens, “but their own executives are openly telling investors that volatility, conflict, and supply disruptions are good for business. They are choosing buybacks over production, shareholder payouts over affordability, and corporate profiteering over the economic security of working families.”

The high fuel prices aren’t being felt just in the US, but across the world.

Karthik Sankaran, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explained in a Tuesday analysis how oil prices are hitting nations in the Global South particularly hard.

“A recent story in The New York Times described how the price for transporting corn into refugee camps in Somalia had doubled or even tripled, as had the price of water at diesel-powered public tubewells,” Sankaran wrote. “Meanwhile, protests this week in Kenya against fuel price hikes have led to four deaths, and political and financial stresses are mounting across the continent.”

Sankaran also pointed to problems in India, where “sharp jumps in the price of liquid petroleum gas have hit urban households hard, particularly those whose breadwinners work in small-scale industrial establishments.”

Despite the actue global economic pain, energy experts who spoke with CNN on Tuesday expressed skepticism that the crisis would abate anytime soon, despite Trump’s regular hyping of a deal to end the conflict.

Rory Johnston, an oil market researcher and founder of Commodity Context, told CNN that he wasn’t buying optimism from commodities futures markets after Trump claimed to have made significant progress on an agreement with Iran.

“Nothing has fundamentally changed,” Johnston said. “The strait remains closed.”

Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, said that a deal to end the war wouldn’t instantly bring energy prices back to where they were before the war began, estimating it could take months just to get 80% of the pre-war oil supply flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.

A Sunday report in The New York Times revealed how the Trump administration is using a key government agency to shut down any efforts to regulate online betting markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket.

According to the Times, the administration has stacked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with industry insiders who have systematically “mowed down” staffers at the agency who have expressed interest in providing oversight on prediction markets.

Among other things, the report documented how multiple officials at CFTC have been put on leave simply for asking questions about the betting markets’ ties to members of President Donald Trump’s family or for having past experience enforcing regulations related to cryptocurrencies.

What’s more, the Times found that even being an industry insider isn’t enough to guarantee good standing in the agency. Brian Quintenz, who was tapped by Trump to lead CFTC last year, saw his nomination withdrawn after he drew the ire of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss for refusing to support their cryptocurrency exchange’s complaint against the agency.

Revelations about industry insiders rolling over regulators at CFTC come as the Trump administration is fighting any attempts by states to regulate prediction markets.

As explained in a Thursday report from CNBC, the Trump administration is “fighting a multi-front battle to stop the state actions and assert its regulatory authority,” with CFTC arguing that it is “the only entity that can regulate” betting platforms.

Sixteen different states are engaged in legal proceedings against the platforms, and Minnesota last week passed a law to ban them outright, which immediately drew a lawsuit from the administration.

The new Minnesota law, which is scheduled to take effect in August, bans prediction markets “from hosting, creating or advertising in the state,” according to ABC News.

In an interview with ABC, Minnesota state Rep. Emma Greenman (D-63B) said she authored the legislation because she has grown increasingly concerned about young people in the state seeing their finances drained from placing online bets.

“We’re seeing studies come out that say [the companies] are targeting 18- to 21-year-olds,” said Greenman, “and we are seeing gambling starting younger and younger.”

CFTC Chair Michael Selig last month warned states against trying to regulate prediction markets, which he said would “circumvent the clear directive of Congress.”

“Our message to Wisconsin is the same as to New York, Arizona, and others,” said Selig. “If you interfere with the operation of federal law in regulating financial markets, we will sue you.”

President Donald Trump revealed on Saturday that he is mulling a deal that would end his illegal war with Iran, and some hawks within the Republican Party are expressing alarm.

According to a Sunday report in The New York Times, many details of the agreement to end the war remain murky, with the fate of Iran’s enriched uranium up in the air. US and Iranian officials have also given contradictory messages about the proposed deal’s contents, suggesting there is much work still to be done before any agreement is finalized.

Regardless, three hawkish GOP senators on Saturday raised major concerns about the contents of the deal, warning against accepting any agreement that will leave Iran in a stronger position than before Trump illegally launched a war against it without any authorization from Congress in late February.

“If it is perceived in the region that a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful over time, we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who lobbied Trump to attack Iran repeatedly before the start of the war. “A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the [Strait of Hormuz] in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another longtime Iran hawk, said he was “deeply concerned” about what he’s been hearing about the deal and expressed particular worry about Iran getting relief from US sanctions while still maintaining the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

“If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’—now receiving billions of dollars,” Cruz wrote, “being able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) was even blunter in his condemnation of the reported agreement.

“The rumored 60-day ceasefire—with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith—would be a disaster,” Wicker wrote. “Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!”

Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for President Barack Obama, challenged Wicker’s claims that Trump’s illegal war had achieved anything of value.

“Nothing was accomplished by Operation Epic Fury,” Rhodes wrote, “except putting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in charge of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.”

Rhodes’ criticism was echoed by Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who wrote that “everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury is already for naught.”

Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, accused the Iran hawks of being delusional for thinking further bombing would force Iran to capitulate.

“DC’s Iran hawks got two wars, nearly every conceivable sanction designation, a blockade, threw a wrench in global economy,” Vaez wrote, “and will still claim that just a little more pressure and a touch more bombing will magically yield the concessions they still won’t be satisfied with.”

Conservative commentator Dave Rubin, who for months has been a top booster of President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran, was inundated with mockery on Sunday after a viral video exposed months’ worth of his failed predictions about the conflict.

The video, which was posted on social media Saturday, begins with Rubin telling viewers to not listen to any of the prognostications being made by critics of the war, which Trump launched in late February without any authorization from Congress.

“I’m pretty good with predictions,” Rubin says. “And my prediction here is that everything the media is now going to say about Iran—it’s going to close the Strait of Hormuz, and energy prices are going to go crazy—none of this is going to come to pass.”

The video then cuts to Rubin wrongly predicting that gas prices during the conflict “will continue to come down,” before switching to claims that Iran lacks the military capability to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed in the face of US military power.

“If the United States wants to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, which it does,” says Rubin, “and Donald Trump says we’ll escort ships through if we have to, it’s going to stay open.”

From there, the video shows Rubin hyping up the prospect of Iranian dissident Reza Pahlavi swooping in to take over the country after the war, and then getting fooled by a fake artificial intelligence-generated video of Iranians giving thanks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for bombing their country.

The video compilation of Rubin’s failed predictions drew immediate ridicule from critics.

“He’s the Jim Cramer of Iran war predictions,” joked Krystal Ball.

Commentator Adam Mockler wrote of Rubin that “it’s brutal watching him make failed predictions week after week.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald argued that the video should be the last nail in the coffin of whatever credibility Rubin had left.

“Imagine having sat through and listened to all of this Israeli propaganda, which turned out to be (predictably and completely) false,” commented Greenwald, “and then thinking there was some value in continuing to listen to this person.”

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller said that while he knew Rubin was “a smooth-brained hack,” he still “couldn’t even fathom how bad these war takes would be.”

Political analyst Omar Baddar, meanwhile, said the video should erase any doubt that Rubin is “the dumbest man on the internet.”

A landmark study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operations are actually costing Americans jobs, contrary to the White House’s frequent claims that its anti-immigration agenda is helping US workers.

The NBER study, which was published last month and reported on by The New York Times Tuesday, claims to provide “the first national, causal empirical evidence on the labor market impacts of immigration enforcement in the second Trump administration,” and finds that mass deportations have not resulted in more job offers for native-born Americans.

In fact, the study identifies “a negative and significant impact on employment of US-born male workers with at most a high-school education” who are working in industries that employ the most undocumented immigrants, including construction, agriculture, and manufacturing.

The study finds that instead of hiring more US-born workers in the absence of available undocumented workers—who may have been deported, left the country to avoid deportation, or have stayed home out of fear of immigration raids—employers are more likely to simply slow down economic activity altogether, which has a cascading impact on related industries.

“We see no evidence that employers increase wages to attract US-born workers to fill these jobs in the face of immigration enforcement,” the researchers explain. “Instead, our results are consistent with employers reducing labor demand overall, including for jobs more often taken by US-born workers.”

The NBER researchers also say that undocumented workers are more often than not complements to US workers, as they “are more likely than US-born individuals to work in jobs that are less desirable due to lower pay, on the job hazards, and irregular schedules.”

University of Colorado, Boulder economist Chloe East, who co-authored the NBER study, told the New York Times on Tuesday that construction firms “view it as easier to reduce production, reduce the construction of new homes and new buildings in general, rather than try to increase wages for US-born workers.”

East said that this would likely hurt efforts to build more housing in the US, telling the Times that “I assume we’re going to see... a long-term shock to the construction sector” due to Trump’s mass deportations.

Anirban Basu, chief economist at the Associated Builders and Contractors national trade organization, told the Times that he wasn’t surprised by the finding that aggressive immigration raids shut down projects rather than open up new work for native-born Americans.

“Given high interest rates, given rising material prices and fewer people available to provide roofing, tiling, carpeting, and other flooring services,” Basu said, “it renders fewer projects financially viable.”

NPER’s study echoes an analysis released last month by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which found that unemployment for US-born workers has increased since the start of Trump’s second term, as the federal government has carried out its draconian deportation operations.

“Claims that mass deportations have helped US-born workers are simply inconsistent with the data,” EPI wrote. “This is no surprise, given that economic research has repeatedly shown that increased immigration enforcement harms everyone in the labor market, including US-born workers.”

One of Wall Street’s most recognizable gurus, Jim Cramer, became notably tongue-tied on Monday after President Donald Trump’s recent stock-trading spree entered into a televised conversation with his colleagues on CNBC.

Disclosures published by the US Office of Government Ethics last week revealed that Trump, in the first quarter of 2026, carried out over 3,700 stock transactions, including over 30 stock purchases worth $1 million or more.

As noted by The Financial Times, Trump’s investments included transactions involving Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Visa, Citi, Boeing, Qualcomm, and GE Aerospace, whose executives all accompanied the president on his trip to China last week.

When CNBC co-host Carl Quintanilla brought up these trades during Monday’s edition of “Squawk on the Street,” Cramer spent 10 straight seconds mumbling incoherently.

This promoted co-host David Faber to reassure viewers that “we’re not having technical difficulties here,” even as Cramer appeared to short-circuit.

Journalist Ryan Grim said that Cramer’s reaction to mention of Trump’s trades was understandable given that some of the companies whose stocks he traded have been direct beneficiaries of the president’s illegal war with Iran and other policies.

“Cramer here is having what should be the normal reaction to Trump actively insider trading on his own decisions,” remarked Grim. “Just sputtering speechlessness.”

Journalist Judd Legum on Monday published an analysis of the Trump stock trades in which he identified multiple instances where the president purchased stocks of companies shortly before—or in some cases, on the exact same day—that he publicly singled them out for praise.

Specifically, Legum found that Trump bought tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in biotech firm Thermo Fisher Scientific on the same day he took a tour of one of its manufacturing facilities, and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in Apple on the same day he delivered a speech calling it “a great company,” while saying then-CEO Tim Cook has “done a good job.”

Trump also bought up shares in Micron Technology and then described it as “one of the hottest companies” during an interview with Fox News just one day later.

And nine days after buying millions of dollars’ worth of shares in Dell, Trump delivered a speech in Georgia where he told his audience to “go out and buy a Dell computer.”

In analyzing the trades, Legum explained how Trump has destroyed any remaining guardrails preventing US presidents from using their office to personally enrich themsleves.

“If Trump wanted to legally remove himself from investment decisions he could do so by creating a qualified blind trust,” Legum wrote. “Instead, before returning to the White House, Trump transferred his assets in a trust that is managed by his son, Donald Trump Jr. There are no legal or practical barriers preventing Trump from being involved in the management of his assets.”

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) warned Trump that details of his assorted stock trades would eventually come to light.

“This smells like blatant and criminal insider trading,” Goldman wrote in a social media post. “Even worse, Trump is personally profiting off of his illegal deportation dragnet. Since we know congressional Republicans will pretend like they never saw this and won’t do a thing, anyone involved in these trades should preserve their records for my investigation in January 2027.”

With no end in sight to the Strait of Hormuz crisis caused by President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran, the head of the International Energy Agency warned Monday that global energy supplies are running dangerously low.

IEA executive director Faith Birol told reporters in Paris that the world only has weeks’ worth of oil reserves left, raising the likelihood that energy prices will soar even higher in the near future.

Birol said that oil inventories are “declining rapidly” and added that there was “a perception gap in the markets between the physical markets and the financial markets,” as the price of oil in futures markets has not yet risen to a level that accurately reflects the coming supply crunch.

In his remarks to the press, given on the sidelines of a G7 gathering taking place this week in France, Birol warned that it’s only a matter of time before the supply shortage of fertilizer, which was also caused by the Iran War, leads to a surge in food prices that “might give a big push to inflation numbers.”

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that energy markets are approaching a “tipping point” where prices could see another upward surge that would throw the global economy into a recession.

Paul Diggle, chief economist at fund manager Aberdeen, told The Financial Times that he has been modeling the economic impact of oil hitting $180 per barrel, which he said would set off a global inflation crisis.

“We are taking that outcome very seriously,” Diggle said. “We are living on borrowed time.”

Oil prices briefly fell last month after the US and Iran announced a ceasefire agreement. However, the Strait of Hormuz has remained closed throughout that period, and Trump is reportedly preparing to restart attacks on Iran in the near future if no deal to reopen the strait is reached.

In a Sunday Truth Social post, Trump again threatened Iran with destruction unless it agrees to his demands.

“For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” the president wrote. “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

Tens of thousands of Argentines took to the streets on Tuesday to protest against cuts to public universities championed by right-wing President Javier Milei.

As reported by The Associated Press, demonstrators in Buenos Aires marched on the Plaza de Mayo toward the Casa Rosada to demand the government implement funding for public universities that was passed by Congress last year but that Milei’s administration is challenging in court.

The AP reported that university professors’ salaries have declined by roughly one-third since Milei came to power in 2023 due to the rising cost of living in the country, and education unions have rejected the government’s proposals for marginal funding increases as woefully insufficient.

A report from DW noted that “public university budgets been slashed by 40% since 2023 when Milei took power.”

Sol Muñíz, a law student at the University of Buenos Aires, told the AP that Milei’s cuts to the education system aren’t about saving the government money, but are part of a broader ideological project.

“It’s very clear this government is determined to defund public education,” said Muñíz. “University is a source of pride for us. It is the best thing we have.”

Student Renata López said in an interview with Agence France-Presse that Milei’s attacks on education reminded her of the society depicted in Ray Bradbury’s classic book Fahrenheit 451, in which government agents systematically burned their citizens’ books.

“Defunding education isn’t something alien, it isn’t dystopian,” said López. “It’s something that’s happening.”

A demonstrator identified only as Marcelo, a student at the University of Quilmes, told El País that he was demonstrating to “defend our public university, which isn’t a privilege but a right of all Argentinians.”

According to a report from Bloomberg earlier this month, Milei’s popularity in Argentina has been sinking in recent months, as his government has been beset by corruption scandals and economic setbacks that have harmed the image he has tried to cultivate as an anti-establishment reformer.