Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

Public health and environment defenders on Friday condemned the Trump administration’s announcement that it will no longer uphold Environmental Protection Agency rules that protect people from unsafe levels of so-called ”forever chemicals” in the nation’s drinking water.

In addition to no longer defending rules meant to protect people from dangerous quantities of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the EPA is asking a federal court to toss out current limits that protect drinking water from four types of PFAS: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.

The EPA first announced its intent to roll back limits on the four chemicals in May, while vowing to retain maximum limits for two other types of PFAS. The agency said the move is meant to “provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water.”

However, critics accuse the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former Republican congressman from New York with an abysmal 14% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters—of trying to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act’s robust anti-backsliding provision, which bars the EPA from rolling back any established drinking water standard.

“In essence, EPA is asking the court to do what EPA itself is not allowed to do,” Earthjustice said in a statement.

“Administrator Zeldin promised to protect the American people from PFAS-contaminated drinking water, but he’s doing the opposite,” Earthjustice attorney Katherine O’Brien alleged. “Zeldin’s plan to delay and roll back the first national limits on these forever chemicals prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country.”

Jared Thompson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that “the EPA’s request to jettison rules intended to keep drinking water safe from toxic PFAS forever chemicals is an attempted end run around the protections that Congress placed in the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

“It is also alarming, given what we know about the health harms caused by exposure to these chemicals,” Thompson added. “No one wants to drink PFAS. We will continue to defend these commonsense, lawfully enacted standards in court.”

PFAS have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.

Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, “including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards,” according to the NRDC, which added that “the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems.”

Betsy Southerland, a former director of the Office of Science and Technology in the EPA’s Office of Water, said in a statement Friday:

The impact of these chemicals is clear. We know that this is significant for pregnant women who are drinking water contaminated with PFAS, because it can cause low birth weight in children. We know children have developmental effects from being exposed to it. We know there’s an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer with these chemicals.

Two of the four chemicals targeted in this motion are the ones that we expect to be the most prevalent, and only increasing contamination in the future. With this rollback, those standards would be gone.

Responding to Thursday’s developments, Environmental Advocates NY director of clean water Rob Hayes said that “the EPA’s announcement is a big win for corporate polluters and an enormous loss for New York families.”

“Administrator Zeldin wants to strip clean water protections away from millions of New Yorkers, leaving them at risk of exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals every time they turn on the tap,” he added. “New Yorkers will pay the price of this disastrous plan through medical bills—and deaths—tied to kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and other harmful illnesses linked to PFAS.”

While Trump administration officials including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have claimed they want to “make America healthy again” by ending PFAS use, the EPA is apparently moving in the opposite direction. Between April and June of this year, the agency sought approval of four new pesticides considered PFAS under a definition backed by experts.

“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Civil Eats earlier this week. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”

A White House spokesperson suggested Tuesday that US President Donald Trump could use military force against Brazil as two of the country's Supreme Court justices said they would vote to convict former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of a coup plot involving the assassination of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other officials, including a leading member of the high court.

Speaking during a daily press briefing, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that Trump—a staunch Bolsonaro ally who has called the effort to bring him to justice a "witch hunt"—has "taken significant action with regards to Brazil in the form of both sanctions and also leveraging the use of tariffs."

In addition to imposing 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports, Trump has sanctioned Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes—who has led efforts to hold Bolsonaro accountable and who placed the former president under house arrest during his trial—while threatening further punitive action.

The alleged coup plot for which Bolsonaro and seven other defendants are being tried allegedly involved assassinating Moraes, Lula, and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin.

Leavitt dubiously couched her threat as a defense of "free speech," saying that "this is a priority for the administration, and the president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might of the United States of America, to protect free speech around the world."

In 1964, the US assisted a coup against the mildly reformist democratically elected government of Brazilian President João Goulart, ushering in two decades of military dictatorship that crushed dissent and free speech under the pretext of fighting communism. In a move similar to Trump's deployment of US warships to the coast of Venezuela, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson secretly deployed a naval task force to Brazil for possible invasion.

While there was no invasion, the US subsequently supported the 21-year dictatorship, including by sending specialists who taught Brazilian security forces more efficient torture techniques.

Bolsonaro, who was a young army paratrooper during the dictatorship, has infamously praised the brutal regime and pined for its return.

Tuesday's threat came as Moraes and fellow Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino voted to find Bolsonaro and the seven other defendants—who include senior military and intelligence officers—guilty of plotting a coup.

"The defendant, Jair Bolsonaro, was leader of this criminal structure," Moraes told the court in the capital city of Brasília.

"Brazil nearly went back to being a dictatorship... because a criminal organization made up of a political group doesn't know how to lose elections," the justice added. "Because a criminal organization made up of a political group led by Jair Bolsonaro doesn't understand that the alternation of power is a principle of republican democracy." s

In addition to attempting a coup, Bolsonaro is charged with involvement in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, violent damage of state property, and other charges. A coup conviction carries a sentence of up to 12 years' imprisonment under Brazilian law. However, if convicted on all counts, Bolsonaro and his co-defendants could face decades behind bars.

The former president and seven other defendants are accused of being the "crucial core" of a plan to overturn the results of the 2022 election, which Lula narrowly won in a runoff. Like Trump in 2020, Bolsonaro and many of his supporters falsely claimed the contest was "stolen" by the opposition. And like in the US, those claims fueled mob attacks on government buildings. Around 1,500 Bolsonaro supporters were arrested in the days following the storming of Congress and the presidential offices.

Bolsonaro is already banned from running for any office until 2030 due to his abuse of power related to baseless claims of electoral fraud.

Members of Lula's Workers' Party (PT) and other leftist lawmakers applauded Tuesday's conviction votes.

"Our expectation is that justice will be done," Federal Deputy Nilto Tatto (PT-São Paulo) said outside the court. "It was, clearly, an attempted coup. They tried to discredit the electoral system and even set up a scheme to assassinate President Lula."

Leftist lawmakers also condemned the White House's threat, with Federal Deputy Lindbergh Farias (PT-Rio de Janeiro) calling it "a blatant attempt to interfere with our sovereignty and judicial independence."

"This has nothing to do with 'freedom of expression': It is external pressure, blackmail, and intimidation to sabotage Brazilian justice," Farias asserted. "Brazil is neither a backyard nor a colony of anyone. And the trial of the coup plot, which already has two votes in favor... will continue to the end, because here the Constitution decides, not Donald Trump."

Federal Deputy Erika Hilton (Socialism and Liberty-São Paulo) called Leavitt's "free speech" justification "ridiculous."

"First of all, no one is restricting Bolsonaro's freedom of speech," she said. "He can say whatever he wants, from inside his house, where the ineligible individual is serving house arrest due to the risk of flight."

"It's also important to remember that US legislation does not apply to Brazil," Hilton continued. "Instead of protecting absolute freedom of speech to shield groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the right of murderers to enter schools with rifles, our Constitution addresses issues relevant to our country, our democracy, and our people. And in this Constitution, made after the end of a military dictatorship, there is provision for... punishment against those who attempt a coup d'état."

"Of course, besides not caring, Trump isn't even capable of understanding all this," she added. "He's too busy planning his defense for the next public accusation of child sexual exploitation, his next round of golf, or his next dip in a pool of Doritos-flavored sauce. And with his brain in an advanced state of degeneration, Trump was only capable of an empty threat."

After years of lobbying from US weapons makers, President Donald Trump is reportedly set to implement his first-term reinterpretation of a Cold War-era arms control treaty in order to sell heavy attack drones to countries including Saudi Arabia, according to a report published Friday.

In July 2020, Trump announced that his administration would reclassify unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with flight speeds under 500 miles per hour—including General Atomics' MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper and Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk—as exempt from certain restrictions under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

Signed by the United States in 1987 during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the 35-nation MTCR "seeks to limit the risks of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by controlling exports of goods and technologies that could make a contribution to delivery systems" for such weapons, as the US State Department website explains.

The end of Trump's first term limited his first administration's implementation of the MTCR policy shift, which was not continued under former President Joe Biden, who adopted a somewhat stricter stance on arms exports to some gross human violators, including Saudi Arabia, but not others—most notably Israel.

Now, a US official and four people familiar with the president's plan tell Reuters that Trump is preparing to complete the MTCR revision, a move that "would unlock the sale of more than 100 MQ-9 drones to Saudi Arabia, which the kingdom requested in the spring of this year and could be part of a $142 billion arms deal announced in May."

As Reuters reported:

Under the current interpretation of the MTCR, the sale of many military drones is subject to a "strong presumption of denial" unless a compelling security reason is given and the buyer agrees to use the weapons in strict accordance with international law.

The new policy will allow General Atomics, Kratos, and Anduril, which manufacture large drones, to have their products treated as "Foreign Military Sales" by the State Department, allowing them to be easily sold internationally, according to a US official speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

This effort is the first part of a planned "major" review of the US Foreign Military Sales program, the official said.

The US State Department did not respond to Reuters' request for comment on the policy shift.

Trump's move comes as US arms makers face stiff competition from Chinese, Israeli, and Turkish drone manufacturers. Neither China nor Israel are signatory to the MTCR, and Turkey, which did sign the agreement, features lighter and shorter-range UAVs not subject to the same restrictions as the heavier Reaper.

The US official who spoke to Reuters said the new guidelines will allow the US "to become the premier drone provider instead of ceding that space to Turkey and China."

Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association—a longtime critic of MTCR revision—warned that Trump's planned reinterpretation "would be a mistake."

Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."

"Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day-one executive order designating drug cartels, including the Venezuela-based group, as foreign terrorist organizations.

Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.

"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar contended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."

Omar continued:

They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.

The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."

"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."

"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.

Echoing critics, including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."

"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.

"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."

Critics of US imperialism on Tuesday responded with skepticism after President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a deadly military strike on what they claimed was a boat linked to a drug cartel off the coast of oil-rich Venezuela.

Trump said on his Truth Social network that 11 people were killed by a US attack in "international waters" on a boat "positively identified" as being used by the Tren de Aragua gang. Rubio said the "lethal strike" targeted "a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela."

On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Last month, the president reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat drug cartels abroad, sparking fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US attacks, invasions, occupations, and other interventions since the issuance of the dubious Monroe Doctrine in 1823.

Trump has deployed numerous US warships and thousands of sailors and Marines off the coast of Venezuela, a country he has repeatedly threatened with regime change in the face of defiant anti-imperialist resistance from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

On Monday, Maduro responded to the US escalation during a press conference, telling reporters that he would declare a "republic in arms" in the event of any attack.

"In the face of this maximum military pressure, we have declared maximum preparedness for the defense of Venezuela," he said, calling the US action "an extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral, and absolutely criminal and bloody threat."

"Mr. President, Donald Trump," Maduro added, "watch out, because Mr. Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood."

Armed with the knowledge of more than a century of US meddling in Venezuelan affairs—a history that includes supporting coups and brutal dictatorships and policies of economic strangulation—anti-imperialist critics questioned the motives of Tuesday's attack.

"If Venezuela didn't have oil, none of this would happen," one user on the social media site X contended.

Another X user asked, "What happened to Trump campaigning on 'No New Wars?'"

"This has jack s--- to do with America First," they added. "Venezuela is zero threat to us. Just another attempt to divert attention away the Epstein files which implicate the rich and powerful across every strata of society."

The independent news site Venezuelanalysis responded to Rubio's announcement in a social media post asking, "Fake propaganda underway?"

"Lil' Marco claims the US military conducted a 'lethal strike' against a drug vessel," the post added, using Trump's old nickname for Rubio. "How did they know it had drugs before striking?"

In an opinion piece published Tuesday by Venezuelanalysis, former Italian parliamentarian and organized crime expert Pino Arlacchi called the latest US aggression against Venezuela a "great hoax" and "geopolitics disguised as 'War on Drugs.'"

"This is not about drugs, crime, or national security," Arlacchi asserted. "It is about oil that the US would rather not pay for."

Americans turned out across the United States on Monday for more than 1,000 demonstrations against President Donald Trump and other oligarchs "to reclaim worker power against billionaires who hoard unprecedented wealth and power."

The "Workers Over Billionaires" protests are being led by the May Day Strong Coalition, which is made up of dozens of organizations including the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, National Union of Healthcare Workers, and advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Fairness, Indivisible, Our Revolution, and Public Citizen.

Demonstrations took place or are set to happen in big cities, small towns, and communities in between all across the nation. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke at a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, where he vowed that "together, we will create an economy and government that work for all, not just the 1%."

May Day Strong said Monday's mobilizations aim "to build collective action against billionaires taking over the US government."

"Building upon momentum from May Day, Good Trouble Lives On, No Kings, and key impromptu actions in the streets and the workplace, Workers Over Billionaires will reach communities nationwide, tapping rural and city workers to stop the billionaire agenda that continues to burden everyone," the coalition said. "As the federal government continues to enable the ultrarich, working people are stepping onto pavement to stop their greed and protect their families."

"Working families want to live in a country that puts workers over billionaires," the coalition added. "Workers are fighting for a society where public schools take precedence over private profits, healthcare is prioritized over hedge funds, and affordable housing is valued more than homelessness."

In New York, actions included a rally outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, where demonstrators demanded a $30 an hour minimum wage. Members of groups including One Fair Wage (OFW) staged a "Restaurant in the Street" demonstration, "designed to highlight the struggle of working people and launch the New York Living Wage for All campaign."

"The action coincides with the release of a new OFW report, Making America Affordable Now: The Case for a Living Wage for All, which finds that nearly half of US workers—67 million people—earn less than $25 an hour," One Fair Wage said. "In New York, 41% of workers fall below that threshold.

OFW said that the demand for a living wage is the "next generation of the Fight for $15," warning that "past wage gains have been erased by historic inflation, skyrocketing rents, and cuts to Medicaid and SNAP," the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

"It also highlights how gimmicks like Trump's 'No Tax on Tips' proposal do little to address workers' needs, since two-thirds of tipped workers earn too little to benefit," OFW added.

AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said ahead of the protests: "Every single thing working people have won for ourselves in this country's history—it's not because we asked those in power. It's not because they were handed to us. It's because we fought for them relentlessly."

Saqib Bhatti, executive director of Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), told USA Today that "it's important to show that there is opposition to the Trump-billionaire agenda in every community, big and small; it's not just cities that are united against what's happening... it's all towns, it's small towns that voted overwhelmingly for Trump."

Monday also saw the launch of the Department of Class Solidarity (DOCS), "a permanent national war room tracking nearly 1,000 US billionaires, their wealth, corporate holdings, and political contributions."

"This Labor Day weekend, we are not resting," DOCS said on social media. "The oligarchs are snatching away our healthcare, our livelihoods, and our rights. Now is the time to act."

DOCS and allied groups rallied for a "Hamptons Billionaire Shutdown" on Long Island.

"The Hamptons is where right-wing billionaires like Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb plot and plan in their hundred-million-dollar mansions, ensconced from the workers they exploit," DOCS said. "Time to give them a taste of their own medicine."

The Trump administration said Friday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio "is denying and revoking visas from members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority" ahead of next month's United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The US State Department said Friday that "the Trump administration has been clear: It is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace."

"Before the PLO and PA can be considered partners for peace, they must consistently repudiate terrorism—including the October 7 massacre—and end incitement to terrorism in education, as required by US law and as promised by the PLO," the statement continues.

No US administration in modern times has ever demanded that Israel repudiate its generations-long illegal occupation and settler colonization of Palestine, its ongoing genocide in Gaza, or any other violation of international law or human rights.

"The PA must also end its attempts to bypass negotiations through international lawfare campaigns, including appeals to the [International Criminal Court] and [International Court of Justice], and efforts to secure the unilateral recognition of a conjectural Palestinian state," the State Department added. "Both steps materially contributed to Hamas' refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks."

The ICC last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and the forced starvation of Palestinians, which is driving a famine that has killed at least hundreds of Palestinians and is starving hundreds of thousands more. The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa, not the PA.

As for ceasefire talks, Matthew Miller, who served as a State Department spokesperson during the Biden administration, recently admitted that Israel habitually torpedoed ceasefire agreements each time they were nearing a conclusion in what he called a sustained effort to "try and sabotage" a deal. Miller repeatedly stood at his podium and told reporters that Hamas was to blame for thwarting a truce.

Miller added that Netanyahu openly admitted to US officials that he wanted to continue the Gaza war for "decades."

It is not clear which Palestinian officials will have their visas denied or revoked. The office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement responding to the US announcement that "this decision stands in clear contradiction to international law and the UN Headquarters Agreement—which effectively shields UN member-state officials from US immigration policies—particularly since the state of Palestine is an observer member of the United Nations."

This isn't the first time the US has blocked Palestinian officials from attending a General Assembly. In 1998, the Regan administration denied then-PLO Chair Yasser Arafat a visa and the General Assembly was convened in Geneva instead of New York. There have already been numerous calls to relocate this year's General Assembly to the Swiss city following the US move.

The US announcement comes as more and more countries formally recognize Palestinian statehood or move to do so amid Israel's genocidal assault, siege, and famine in Gaza, which, combined, have left more than 230,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and the strip in ruins.

Approximately 150 of the UN's 193 member states have officially recognized Palestine. Since October 2023, countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, and Spain have either recognized Palestine or announced their intent to do so.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday proposed the systematic annexation of Gaza over the coming months if Hamas keeps fighting, as well as the implementation of US President Donald Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian enclave.

Smotrich, who leads the far-right Religious Zionism party, announced his plan to "win in Gaza by the end of the year" during a press conference in Jerusalem.

Israel "must completely hold control of the entire strip, forever," he said.

The minister explained that "an ultimatum will be presented to Hamas between two options," surrendering, disarming, and returning all hostages kidnapped during the October 7, 2023 attack, or "gradual annexation of areas of the Gaza Strip and reduction of the enemy's territory, and implementation of the Trump plan for voluntary emigration of the strip's residents."

"Voluntary emigration" is widely viewed as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given most Palestinians' unwillingness to voluntarily abandon their homeland. Most Gazans are descendants of survivors of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. Some are actual Nakba survivors.

Smotrich also called for a tightening of the siege on Gaza—which has caused the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—in order to "starve and dehydrate Hamas fighters to death."

The minister's remarks followed comments last week in which he said that "whoever doesn't evacuate, don't let them. No water, no electricity; they can die of hunger or surrender. This is what we want."

Earlier this year, Smotrich said: "We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed. On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."

Last month, the Israeli Knesset hosted an annexation conference at which Smotrich declared that "we will occupy Gaza and make it an inseparable part of Israel."

Smotrich's annexation plan comes as the Israel Defense Forces carries out Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer and occupy Gaza and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians. Trump said earlier this year that he wants to transform Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East."

Some critics, including the Israeli jurist Itay Epshtain, said Smotrich's comments will surely be noticed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—and International Criminal Court (ICC), which last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.

The ICC has also reportedly prepared arrest warrants for Smotrich and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for the crime of apartheid related to their Trump-backed plans to expand illegal settler colonies in the West Bank and annex the occupied territory.

Last year, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion that Israel's occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible.

Over the past 693 days, Israeli forces have killed at least 63,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. However, experts say the actual death toll is likely much higher. More than 158,600 Palestinians have been wounded, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. A growing famine engineered by Israel has claimed at least hundreds of lives and is threatening hundreds of thousands more.

Seven current and former Microsoft workers were arrested Tuesday after occupying the office of president Brad Smith to protest the company's complicity in "the first AI-powered genocide" as Israel kills and ethnically cleanses hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

The protesters gathered at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, and declared a "Liberated Zone" inside Building 34, which they renamed the Mai Ubeid building in honor of a Palestinian software engineer killed by Israel in Gaza in 2023. Demonstrators sounded noisemakers, draped banners, and delivered a "People's Court Summons" to Smith. They chanted, "Microsoft, Microsoft, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!"

Seven protesters who locked themselves inside Smith's office were arrested by Redmond police. Other current and former Microsoft workers joined community members at a rally outside the building.

"Microsoft continues to militarize its campus to harass, brutally attack, and violently arrest its workers and community members," No Azure for Apartheid organizer and former Microsoft worker Abdo Mohamed told the Seattle Times.

The arrests came on the same day that Bloomberg revealed that Microsoft asked the FBI for intelligence on pro-Palestinian protesters targeting the company, worked with local law enforcement in a bid to thwart demonstrations, and deleted internal emails containing protest details and words like "Gaza."

Tuesday's action followed a protest last week at which around 20 No Azure for Apartheid activists were arrested after setting up an encampment on the grounds of Microsoft headquarters. Earlier this month, protesters staged a demonstration at a Microsoft data center in the Netherlands that is reportedly being used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to plan airstrikes on Gaza.

The No Azure for Apartheid protesters are calling on Microsoft to "cut ties with Israel, call for an end to the genocide and forced starvation, pay reparations to the Palestinians, and end the discrimination against workers."

"We are here because Palestine must be free, the genocide must end, the apartheid must end, and everything that's happened to the Palestinian people over the past 75 years must end," declared one No Azure for Apartheid organizer in a video of Tuesday's occupation that was posted online. "It must end and this is how we must end it. We must occupy the people who are letting it happen."

"We are here today not because we want to be here, it's because we need to be here," he said. "Brad Smith is the face of human rights at Microsoft. And yet Microsoft every day continues to abet this genocide."

"Every Palestinian phone call in the last few years has been stored on Microsoft servers," he continued as the other protesters shouted, "Shame!"

"That is a disgrace! That is untenable! There is no way to justify that," the protester said. "Every time we have come with these problems... Microsoft has dragged their feet."

The activist also pointed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the IDF's largest intelligence unit.

"Satya has dragged his feet. Brad has dragged his feet. Satya met with the head of Unit 8200 and that led to this plan to store Palestinian phone calls on Microsoft servers," he said.

A joint investigation published earlier this month by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call revealed that Unit 8200 is storing 11,500 terabytes of data containing roughly 200 million hours of Palestinians' phone call recordings on the Azure servers in the Netherlands. According to the article, former Unit 8200 head Yossi Sariel traveled to Microsoft headquarters in 2021 to meet Nadella.

"What happens as a result is that every phone call is recorded, it is transcribed from Arabic, it is translated, and it is used for targeting," the protester said.

Earlier this year, an Associated Press investigation detailed how Israeli forces are using artificial intelligence and cloud computing systems sold by US tech giants, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI—which makes the popular ChatGPT chatbot—for the mass surveillance and killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

In addition to US tech, the IDF uses its own AI system called Habsora to automatically select airstrike targets at an exponentially faster rate than ever before. A November 2023 investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call cited an Israeli intelligence source who said that Habsora has transformed the IDF into a "mass assassination factory" in which the "emphasis is on quantity and not quality" of kills.

Following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, IDF officers were told they could order any number of strikes as they believed were legal, with no effective limits on civilian harm. This led to massacres in which dozens or more civilians were killed in single strikes, often using US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs.

Microsoft said earlier this month that it has launched an investigation into how Unit 8200 is using Azure. This, after the company said in May that an internal review "found no evidence to date that Microsoft's Azure and [artificial intelligence] technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza."

Big Tech's profiteering from Israel's annihilation of Gaza and occupation, settler colonization, and apartheid in the West Bank has sparked numerous protests, including by employees of complicit companies. At least dozens of workers at companies including Google, Meta, and Microsoft have been fired for Palestine advocacy. Others have resigned in protest.

Hossam Nasr, a former Microsoft software engineer, was fired after organizing an October 2024 "No Azure for Apartheid" vigil. Microsoft engineer Ibtihal Aboussad and another worker, Vaniya Agrawal, were fired after interrupting speeches by company executives.

Responding to Tuesday's protest, Smith said, "Obviously, when seven folks do as they did today—storm a building, occupy an office, block other people out of the office... that's not okay."

"There are many things we can't do to change the world, but we will do what we can and what we should," Smith added. "That starts with ensuring that our human rights principles and contractual terms of service are upheld everywhere, by all of our customers around the world."

Tuesday's protest came as the IDF ramped up Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—the US-backed campaign to conquer and occupy Gaza and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians—and amid a worsening famine that has killed hundreds of people, many of them children.

US President Donald Trump said Friday that Chicago is the next city in his crosshairs for the kind of federal invasion and occupation currently underway in Washington, DC—a threat that sparked defiant pushback from officials in the Windy City and beyond.

"After we do this, we'll go to another location, and we'll make it safe also," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to his federalization of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department and deployment of National Guard troops from the district and five Republican-controlled states.

"We're going to make our cities very, very safe. Chicago's a mess. You have an incompetent mayor. Grossly incompetent and we'll straighten that one out probably next," the president said, referring to progressive Brandon Johnson. "That will be our next one after this. And it won't even be tough."

On August 11, Trump dubiously declared a public safety emergency in Washington, DC, despite violent crime being down 26% from a year ago, when it was at its second-lowest level since 1966, according to official statistics. Critics have noted that Trump's crackdown isn't just targeting criminals, but also unhoused and mentally ill people, who have had their homes destroyed and property taken.

On Friday, Trump threatened to completely take over Washington and oust Mayor Muriel Bowser if she does not stop pointing out that crime has decreased in the city, which the president called a "crime-infested rat hole."

In addition to Chicago, Trump has threatened to send federal forces into cities including Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland, and San Francisco. Violent crime is trending downward in all of those cities—with some registering historically low levels.

Unlike in Washington, DC, where home rule laws allow the federal government to take control of local police, Trump would face greater obstacles to intervention in other cities.

"President Trump can't seize control of the Chicago police or any other local department outside of DC," Congressman Raja Krishnamoorth (D-Ill.) noted on social media Friday. "The military cannot and will not patrol the streets of Chicago, and I will work with state and local officials to ensure that doesn't happen."

Mayor Johnson said in a statement that "the problem with the president's approach is that it is uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound."

"If the Trump administration is serious about driving down violence in Chicago, or anywhere else in America, then he should not have taken over $800 million away from violence prevention," he added.

Other elected officials in Illinois also expressed anger and alarm at the prospect of a Trump intervention in Chicago.

"Trump’s goal is to incite fear in our communities and destabilize existing public safety efforts—all to create a justification to further abuse his power," the governor continued. "He's playing a game and creating a spectacle for the press to play along with."

"We don't play those games," Pritzker added. "Our commitment to law and order is delivering results. Crime rates are improving. Homicides are down by more than 30% in Chicago in the last year alone. Our progress in lowering crime has been made possible with [community violence intervention] programs that they’re defunding."

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, a Democrat running for US Senate, said that "if Trump wants to take his ego trip on tour, he picked the wrong city."

"Chicago doesn't bow down to kings or roll out the red carpet for dictators," she added. "As a Black woman from the South Side, I can assure you... your political circus isn't welcome here."

Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) wrote on social media, "President Trump: You are not welcome in Chicago."

"Sending the National Guard endangers Black communities already overpoliced and under-invested in," she added. "If you cared about saving lives, you'd pass gun safety laws and fund community violence intervention."

This article was published in partnership with Common Dreams. Read the full story here.

Teachers from California and New York seeking work in Oklahoma will be required to pass an "America First Test" designed to weed out applicants espousing "radical leftist ideology," the state's public schools chief affirmed Monday.

Oklahoma—which has a severe teacher shortage, persistently high turnover, and some of the nation's worst educational outcomes—will compel prospective public school educators from the nation's two largest "blue" states to submit to the exam in a bid to combat what Superintendent for Public Instruction Ryan Walters calls "woke indoctrination."

"As long as I am superintendent, Oklahoma classrooms will be safeguarded from the radical leftist ideology fostered in places like California and New York," Walters said in a statement Monday.

Walters told USA Today that the test is necessary to vet teachers from states where educators "are teaching things that are antithetical to our standards" and ensure they "are not coming into our classrooms and indoctrinating kids."

However, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten warned in a statement Monday that "this MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage."

The exam will be administered by Prager University—also known as PragerU—a right-wing nonprofit group which, despite its name, is not an academic institution and does not confer degrees.

While all of the test's 50 questions have not been made public, the ones that have been published run the gamut from insultingly basic—such as, "What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?"—to ideologically fraught queries regarding the "biological differences between females and males."

PragerU's "educational" materials are rife with false or misleading information regarding slavery, racism, immigration, the history of fascism, and the climate emergency. Critics note that the nonprofit has received millions of dollars in funding from fossil fuel billionaires.

PragerU materials also promote creation mythology over scientific evolution and attack LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender individuals, calling lifesaving gender-affirming healthcare "barbaric" while likening its proponents to "monsters."

In one animated PragerU video, two children travel back in time to ask the genocidal explorer Christopher Columbus why he is so hated today. Columbus replies by asserting the superiority of Europeans over Indigenous "cannibals" and attempting to justify the enslavement of Native Americans by arguing that "being taken as a slave is better than being killed."

Closer to home, PragerU's curriculum aligns with so-called "white discomfort" legislation passed in Oklahoma and other Republican-controlled states that critics say prevent honest lessons on slavery, the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, and enduring systemic racism.

The law has had a chilling effect on teachers' lessons on historical topics including the 1921 Tulsa massacre, in which a white supremacist mob backed armed by city officials destroyed more than 35 city blocks of Greenwood, the "Black Wall Street," murdering hundreds of Black men, women, and children in what the US Justice Department this year called a "coordinated, military-style attack."

Responding to Oklahoma's new policy, University of Pennsylvania history professor Jonathan Zimmerman told The Associated Press that "instead of Prager simply being a resource that you can draw in an optional way, Prager has become institutionalized as part of the state system."

"There's no other way to describe it," he said, adding, "I think what we're now seeing in Oklahoma is something different, which is actually empowering Prager as a kind of gatekeeper for future teachers."

Oklahoma is not the only state incorporating PragerU materials into its curriculum. Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and Texas have also done so to varying degrees.

Weingarten noted Walters' previous push to revise Oklahoma's curriculum standards to include baseless conspiracy theories pushed by President Donald Trump that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. Walters also ordered all public schools to teach the Bible, a directive temporarily blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in March. The court also recently ruled against the establishment of the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school.

"His priority should be educating students, but instead, it's getting Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians to notice him," Weingrarten said in her statement.

Cari Elledge, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, called the new testing requirement "a political stunt to grab attention" and a distraction "from real issues in Oklahoma."

"When political ideology plays into whether or not you can teach in any place, that might be a deterrent to quality educators attempting to get a job," she added. "We think it's intentional to make educators fearful and confused."

California Teachers' Association president David Goldberg told USA Today that "this almost seems like satire and so far removed from my research around what Oklahoma educators need and deserve."

"I can't see how this isn't some kind of hyper-political grandstanding that doesn't serve any of those needs," he added.

President Donald Trump's tariff whiplash has already harmed domestic manufacturing and could continue to do so through at least the end of this decade to the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars, a report published Monday by congressional Democrats on a key economic committee warned.

The Joint Economic Committee (JEC)-Minority said that recent data belied Trump's claim that his global trade war would boost domestic manufacturing, pointing to the 37,000 manufacturing jobs lost since the president announced his so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs in April.

"Hiring in the manufacturing sector has dropped to its lowest level in nearly a decade," the Democrats on the committee wrote. "In addition, many experts have noted that in and of itself, the uncertainty created by the administration so far could significantly damage the broader economy long-term."

"Based on both US business investment projections and economic analyses of the UK in the aftermath of Brexit, the Joint Economic Committee-Minority calculates that a similarly prolonged period of uncertainty in the US could result in an average of 13% less manufacturing investment per year, amounting to approximately $490 billion in foregone investment by 2029," the report states.

"The uncertainty created by the administration so far could significantly damage the broader economy long-term."

"Although businesses have received additional clarity on reciprocal tariff rates in recent days, uncertainty over outstanding negotiations is likely to continue to delay long-term investments and pricing decisions," the publication adds. "Furthermore, even if the uncertainty about the US economy were to end tomorrow, evidence suggests that the uncertainty that businesses have already faced in recent months would still have long-term consequences for the manufacturing sector."

According to the JEC Democrats, the Trump administration has made nearly 100 different tariff policy decisions since April—"including threats, delays, and reversals"—creating uncertainty and insecurity in markets and economies around the world. It's not just manufacturing and markets—economic data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that businesses in some sectors are passing the costs of Trump's tariffs on to consumers.

As the new JEC minority report notes:

As independent research has shown, businesses are less likely to make long-term investments when they face high uncertainty about future policies and economic conditions. For manufacturers, decisions to expand production—which often entail major, irreversible investments in equipment and new facilities that typically take years to complete—require an especially high degree of confidence that these expenses will pay off. This barrier, along with other factors, makes manufacturing the sector most likely to see its growth affected by trade policy uncertainty, as noted recently by analysts at Goldman Sachs.

"Strengthening American manufacturing is critical to the future of our economy and our national security," Joint Economic Committee Ranking Member Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) said in a statement Monday. "While President Trump promised that he would expand our manufacturing sector, this report shows that, instead, the chaos and uncertainty created by his tariffs has placed a burden on American manufacturers that could weigh our country down for years to come."

The ACLU and a local branch of one of the nation's largest labor unions were among those who condemned Thursday's order by Washington, DC's police chief authorizing greater cooperation with federal forces sent by President Donald Trump to target and arrest undocumented immigrants in the sanctuary city.

Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith issued an executive order directing MPD officers to assist federal forces including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in sharing information about people in situations including traffic stops. The directive does not apply to people already in MPD custody. The order also allows MPD to provide transportation for federal immigration agencies and people they've detained.

While Trump called the order a "great step," immigrant defenders slammed the move.

"Now our police department is going to be complicit and be reporting our own people to ICE?" DC Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) said. "We have values in this city. Coordination and cooperation means we become a part of the regime."

ACLU DC executive director Monica Hopkins said in a statement that "DC police chief's new order inviting collaboration with ICE is dangerous and unnecessary."

"Immigration enforcement is not the role of local police—and when law enforcement aligns itself with ICE, it fosters fear among DC residents, regardless of citizenship status," Hopkins continued. "Our police should serve the people of DC, not ICE's deportation machine."

"As the federal government scales up Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, including mass deportations, we see how local law enforcement face pressure to participate," she added. "Federal courts across the country have found both ICE and local agencies liable for unconstitutional detentions under ICE detainers. Police departments that choose to carry out the federal government's business risk losing the trust they need to keep communities safe."

Jaime Contreras, executive vice president and Latino caucus chair of 32BJ SEIU, a local Service Employees International Union branch, said, "It should horrify everyone that DC's police chief has just laid out the welcoming mat for the Trump administration to continue its wave of terror throughout our city."

"The very institution that is supposed to keep district residents safe is now allowing ICE to jeopardize the safety and lives of hardworking immigrants and their families," Contreras continued. "Their complicity is dangerous enough but helping to enforce Trump's tactics and procedures are a violation of the values of DC residents."

"DC needs a chief who will not cave to this administration's fear tactics aimed at silencing anyone who speaks out against injustice," Contreras added. "We call for an immediate end to these rogue attacks that deny basic due process, separates families, and wrongly deports hardworking immigrants and their families."

The condemnation—and local protests—came as dozens of immigrants have been detained this week as government forces occupy and fan out across the city following Trump's deployment of National Guard troops and federalization of the MPD. The president dubiously declared a public safety emergency on Monday, invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Self-Government and Governmental Reorganization Act. Trump also said that he would ask the Republican-controlled Congress to authorize an extension of his federal takeover beyond the 30 days allowed under Section 740.

Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser—a Democrat who calls the occupying agencies "our federal partners"—has quietly sought to overturn the capital's Sanctuary Values Amendment Act of 2020, which prohibits MPD from releasing detained individuals to ICE or inquiring about their legal status. The law also limits city officials' cooperation with immigration agencies, including by restricting information sharing regarding individuals in MPD custody.

While the DC Council recently blocked Bowser's attempt to slip legislation repealing the sanctuary policy into her proposed 2026 budget, Congress has the power to modify or even overturn Washington laws under the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973. In June, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed Rep. Clay Higgins' (R-La.) District of Columbia Federal Immigration Compliance Act, which would repeal Washington's sanctuary policies and compel compliance with requests from the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE. The Senate is currently considering the bill.

Trump's crackdown has also targeted Washington's unhoused population, with MPD conducting sweeps of encampments around the city.

"There's definitely a lot of chaos, fear, and confusion," Amber Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, told CNN Thursday.

David Beatty, an unhoused man living in an encampment near the Kennedy Center that Trump threateningly singled out last week, was among the victims of a Thursday sweep.

Beatty told USA Today that Trump "is targeting and persecuting us," adding that "he wants to take our freedom away."

EJ Antoni, President Donald Trump's controversial nominee to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was among the insurrectionist mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, NBC News revealed Wednesday.

Video footage archived from the right-wing social media site Parler and posted online by a Republican-led congressional subcommittee shows Antoni among the crowd about half an hour before the MAGA mob began breaching barricades, attacking police, and swarming the Capitol. He is also seen walking away from the crowd.

The White House attempted to downplay the news, with spokesperson Taylor Rogers saying that "these pictures show E.J. Antoni, a bystander to the events of January 6th, observing and then leaving the Capitol area."

"E.J. was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest E.J. engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal," Rogers added.

Other MAGA figures also defended Antoni. Felonious fraudster Steve Bannon, who pleaded guilty in a border wall fundraising fraud case this year, said Thursday on his War Room podcast: "They came up with a photo of E.J. Antoni in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6, and NBC went absolutely nuts over it. I think it makes E.J. even more based. I didn't know that about E.J.—makes us want him even more."

Critics, however, expressed alarm, given the important post to which Antoni was nominated.

"We just discovered a Trump [Department of Justice] official was at January 6, telling other traitors to 'kill' police," journalist and attorney Adam Cohen wrote on the social media site Bluesky, referring to Jared Wise, who was pardoned by Trump.

"Now we learn Trump's BLS nominee, E.J. Antoni—apart from being totally unqualified—was ALSO part of the insurrection," Cohen added. "The inmates are not only running the asylum. They're bringing in MORE inmates to help."

The West Virginia Federation of Democratic Women noted on the social media site X that "Trump fired the vetted woman who reported honest stats on job losses. His new guy was in the mob on January 6 and wrote Project 2025."

Journalist Ahmed Baba wrote on X: "So, E.J. Antoni is the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a contributor to Project 2025, and was literally outside the Capitol on January 6. This is who Trump wants to be in charge of the BLS data that shapes global decisions and moves markets—an extremist sycophant."

Trump nominated Antoni after firing former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom the president accused without evidence of manipulating employment statistics to discredit him and other Republicans.

Grok Imagine—a generative artificial intelligence tool developed by Elon Musk's xAI—has rolled out a "spicy mode" that is under fire for creating deepfake images on demand, including nudes of superstar Taylor Swift that's prompting calls for guardrails on the rapidly evolving technology.

The Verge's Jess Weatherbed reported Tuesday that Grok's spicy mode—one of four presets on an updated Grok 4, including fun, normal, and custom—"didn't hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless videos of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it, without me even specifically asking the bot to take her clothes off."

Weatherbed noted:

You would think a company that already has a complicated history with Taylor Swift deepfakes, in a regulatory landscape with rules like the Take It Down Act, would be a little more careful. The xAI acceptable use policy does ban "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner," but Grok Imagine simply seems to do nothing to stop people creating likenesses of celebrities like Swift, while offering a service designed specifically to make suggestive videos including partial nudity. The age check only appeared once and was laughably easy to bypass, requesting no proof that I was the age I claimed to be.

Weatherbed—whose article is subtitled "Safeguards? What Safeguards?"—asserted that the latest iteration of Grok "feels like a lawsuit ready to happen."

Grok had already made headlines in recent weeks after going full "MechaHitler" following an update that the chatbot said prioritized "uncensored truth bombs over woke lobotomies."

Numerous observers have sounded the alarm on the dangers of unchained generative AI.

"Instead of heeding our call to remove its 'NSFW' AI chatbot, xAI appears to be doubling down on furthering sexual exploitation by enabling AI videos to create nudity," Haley McNamara, a senior vice president at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said last week.

"There's no confirmation it won't create pornographic content that resembles a recognizable person," McNamara added. "xAI should seek ways to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation."

Users of X, Musk's social platform, also weighed in on the Swift images.

"Deepfakes are evolving faster than human sanity can keep up," said one account. "We're three clicks away from a world where no one knows what's real.This isn't innovation—it's industrial scale gaslighting, and y'all [are] clapping like it's entertainment."

Another user wrote: "Not everything we can build deserves to exist. Grok Imagine's new 'spicy' mode can generate topless videos of anyone on this Earth. If this is the future, burn it down."

Musk is seemingly unfazed by the latest Grok controversy. On Tuesday, he boasted on X that "Grok Imagine usage is growing like wildfire," with "14 million images generated yesterday, now over 20 million today!"

According to a poll published in January by the Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute, 84% of U.S. voters "supported legislation making nonconsensual deepfake porn illegal, while 86% supported legislation requiring companies to restrict models to prevent their use in creating deepfake porn."

During the 2024 presidential election, Swift weighed in on the subject of AI deepfakes after then-Republican nominee Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image suggesting she endorsed the felonious former Republican president. Swift ultimately endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

"It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation," Swift said at the time.