Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

Tom Barrack, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, faced backlash Monday after arguing that US-backed Middle Eastern monarchies—most of which are ruled by prolific human rights violators—offer the best model for governing nations in the tumultuous region.

Speaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar on Sunday, Barrack, who is also a billionaire real estate investor, cautioned against trying to impose democratic governance on the Middle East, noting that efforts to do so—sometimes by war or other military action—have failed.

“Every time we intervene, whether it’s in Libya, Iraq, or any of the other places where we’ve tried to create a colonized mandate, it has not been successful,” he said. “We end up with paralysis.”

“I don’t see a democracy,” Barrack said of the Middle East. “Israel can claim to be a democracy, but in this region, whether you like it or not, what has worked best is, in fact, a benevolent monarchy.”

Addressing Syria’s yearlong transition from longtime authoritarian rule under the Assad dynasty, Barrack added that the Syrian people must determine their political path “without going in with Western expectations of, ‘We want a democracy in 12 months.’”

While Barrack’s rejection of efforts to force democracy upon Middle Eastern countries drew praise, some Israelis bristled at what they claimed was the suggestion that their country is not a democracy, while other observers pushed back on the envoy’s assertion regarding regional monarchies and use of what one Palestinian digital media platform called “classic colonial rhetoric.”

“The reality on the ground is the opposite of his claim: It is the absence of democratic rights, accountable governance, and inclusive federal structures that has fueled Syria’s fragmentation, empowered militias, and pushed communities toward separatism,” Syrian Kurdish journalist Ronahi Hasan said on social media.

Ronahi continued:

When an American official undermines the universal principles the US itself claims to defend, it sends a dangerous message: that Syrians do not deserve the same political rights as others and that minority communities should simply accept centralized authoritarianism as their fate.

Syria doesn’t need another foreign lecture romanticizing monarchy. It needs a political system that protects all its people—Druze, Alawite, Kurdish, Sunni, Christian—through genuine power-sharing, decentralization, and guarantees of equality.

“Federalism is not the problem,” Ronahi added. “The problem is denying Syrians the right to shape their own future.”

Abdirizak Mohamed, a lawmaker and former foreign minister in Somalia, said on social media: “Tom Barrack made public what is already known. The US labels dictators and monarchies benevolent when their behavior is aligned with US interest, and when their behavior isn’t aligned with US interest they are despots. Labeling dictators benevolent is [an] oxymoron that shows US hypocrisy.”

For nearly a century, the US has supported Middle Eastern monarchies as successive administrations sought to gain and maintain control over the region’s vast oil resources. This has often meant propping up monarchs in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran (before 1979), the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar—regardless of their often horrific human rights records.

While nothing new in terms of US policy and practice in the region, the Trump administration’s recently published National Security Strategy prioritizes “flexible realism” over human rights and democracy and uses more candid language than past presidents have in explaining Washington’s support for repressive monarchs.

“The [US] State Department will likely need to clarify whether Barrack’s comments represent official policy or personal opinion,” argued an editorial in Middle East 24. “Regardless, his words have exposed an uncomfortable truth about US foreign policy in the Middle East: the persistent gap between democratic ideals and strategic realities.”

“Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this episode is what it reveals about American confidence in its own values,” the editorial added. “If US diplomats no longer believe democracy can work in challenging environments, what does this say about America’s faith in the universal appeal of its founding principles?”

A leading nuclear safety expert sounded the alarm Tuesday over the Trump administration’s expedited safety review of an experimental nuclear reactor in Wyoming designed by a company co-founded by tech billionaire Bill Gates and derided as a “Cowboy Chernobyl.”

On Monday, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that it has “completed its final safety evaluation” for Power Station Unit 1 of TerraPower’s Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming, adding that it found “no safety aspects that would preclude issuing the construction permit.”

Co-founded by Microsoft’s Gates, TerraPower received a 50-50 cost-share grant for up to $2 billion from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The 345-megawatt sodium-cooled small modular reactor (SMR) relies upon so-called passive safety features that experts argue could potentially make nuclear accidents worse.

However, federal regulators “are loosening safety and security requirements for SMRs in ways which could cancel out any safety benefits from passive features,” according to Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear power safety director Edwin Lyman.

“The only way they could pull this off is by sweeping difficult safety issues under the rug.”

The reactor’s construction permit application—which was submitted in March 2024—was originally scheduled for August 2026 completion but was expedited amid political pressure from the Trump administration and Congress in order to comply with an 18-month timeline established in President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14300.

“The NRC’s rush to complete the Kemmerer plant’s safety evaluation to meet the recklessly abbreviated schedule dictated by President Trump represents a complete abandonment of its obligation to protect public health, safety, and the environment from catastrophic nuclear power plant accidents or terrorist attacks,” Lyman said in a statement Tuesday.

Lyman continued:

The only way the staff could finish its review on such a short timeline is by sweeping serious unresolved safety issues under the rug or deferring consideration of them until TerraPower applies for an operating license, at which point it may be too late to correct any problems. Make no mistake, this type of reactor has major safety flaws compared to conventional nuclear reactors that comprise the operating fleet. Its liquid sodium coolant can catch fire, and the reactor has inherent instabilities that could lead to a rapid and uncontrolled increase in power, causing damage to the reactor’s hot and highly radioactive nuclear fuel.

Of particular concern, NRC staff has assented to a design that lacks a physical containment structure to reduce the release of radioactive materials into the environment if a core melt occurs. TerraPower argues that the reactor has a so-called “functional” containment that eliminates the need for a real containment structure. But the NRC staff plainly states that it “did not come to a final determination of the adequacy and acceptability of functional containment performance due to the preliminary nature of the design and analysis.”

“Even if the NRC determines later that the functional containment is inadequate, it would be utterly impractical to retrofit the design and build a physical containment after construction has begun,” Lyman added. “The potential for rapid power excursions and the lack of a real containment make the Kemmerer plant a true ‘Cowboy Chernobyl.’”

The proposed reactor still faces additional hurdles before construction can begin, including a final environmental impact assessment. However, given the Trump administration’s dramatic regulatory rollback, approval and construction are highly likely.

Former NRC officials have voiced alarm over the Trump administration’s tightened control over the agency, which include compelling it to send proposed reactor safety rules to the White House for review and possible editing.

Allison Macfarlane, who was nominated to head the NRC during the Obama administration, said earlier this year that Trump’s approach marks “the end of independence of the agency.”

“If you aren’t independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident,” she warned.

A report published Wednesday by Greenpeace exposes the plastics industry as “merchants of myth” still peddling the false promise of recycling as a solution to the global pollution crisis, even as the vast bulk of commonly produced plastics remain unrecyclable.

“After decades of meager investments accompanied by misleading claims and a very well-funded industry public relations campaign aimed at persuading people that recycling can make plastic use sustainable, plastic recycling remains a failed enterprise that is economically and technically unviable and environmentally unjustifiable,” the report begins.

“The latest US government data indicates that just 5% of US plastic waste is recycled annually, down from a high of 9.5% in 2014,” the publication continues. “Meanwhile, the amount of single-use plastics produced every year continues to grow, driving the generation of ever greater amounts of plastic waste and pollution.”

Among the report’s findings:

• Only a fifth of the 8.8 million tons of the most commonly produced types of plastics—found in items like bottles, jugs, food containers, and caps—are actually recyclable;
• Major brands like Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Nestlé have been quietly retracting sustainability commitments while continuing to rely on single-use plastic packaging; and
• The US plastic industry is undermining meaningful plastic regulation by making false claims about the recyclability of their products to avoid bans and reduce public backlash.

“Recycling is a toxic lie pushed by the plastics industry that is now being propped up by a pro-plastic narrative emanating from the White House,” Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director John Hocevar said in a statement. “These corporations and their partners continue to sell the public a comforting lie to hide the hard truth: that we simply have to stop producing so much plastic.”

“Instead of investing in real solutions, they’ve poured billions into public relations campaigns that keep us hooked on single-use plastic while our communities, oceans, and bodies pay the price,” he added.

Greenpeace is among the many climate and environmental groups supporting a global plastics treaty, an accord that remains elusive after six rounds of talks due to opposition from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other nations that produce the petroleum products from which almost all plastics are made.

Honed from decades of funding and promoting dubious research aimed at casting doubts about the climate crisis caused by its products, the petrochemical industry has sent a small army of lobbyists to influence global treaty negotiations.

In addition to environmental and climate harms, plastics—whose chemicals often leach into the food and water people eat and drink—are linked to a wide range of health risks, including infertility, developmental issues, metabolic disorders, and certain cancers.

Plastics also break down into tiny particles found almost everywhere on Earth—including in human bodies—called microplastics, which cause ailments such as inflammation, immune dysfunction, and possibly cardiovascular disease and gut biome imbalance.

A study published earlier this year in the British medical journal The Lancet estimated that plastics are responsible for more than $1.5 trillion in health-related economic losses worldwide annually—impacts that disproportionately affect low-income and at-risk populations.

As Jo Banner, executive director of the Descendants Project—a Louisiana advocacy group dedicated to fighting environmental racism in frontline communities—said in response to the new Greenpeace report, “It’s the same story everywhere: poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities turned into sacrifice zones so oil companies and big brands can keep making money.”

“They call it development—but it’s exploitation, plain and simple,” Banner added. “There’s nothing acceptable about poisoning our air, water, and food to sell more throwaway plastic. Our communities are not sacrifice zones, and we are not disposable people.”

Writing for Time this week, Judith Enck, a former regional administrator at the US Environmental Protection Agency and current president of the environmental justice group Beyond Plastics, said that “throwing your plastic bottles in the recycling bin may make you feel good about yourself, or ease your guilt about your climate impact. But recycling plastic will not address the plastic pollution crisis—and it is time we stop pretending as such.”

“So what can we do?” Enck continued. “First, companies need to stop producing so much plastic and shift to reusable and refillable systems. If reducing packaging or using reusable packaging is not possible, companies should at least shift to paper, cardboard, glass, or metal.”

“Companies are not going to do this on their own, which is why policymakers—the officials we elected to protect us—need to require them to do so,” she added.

Although lawmakers in the 119th US Congress have introduced a handful of bills aimed at tackling plastic pollution, such proposals are all but sure to fail given Republican control of both the House of Representatives and Senate and the Trump administration’s pro-petroleum policies.

Republicans on Tuesday invoked drone strikes during then-President Barack Obama’s tenure in a dubious effort to justify what experts say is the Trump administration’s illegal boat bombing campaign against alleged drug traffickers, while falsely claiming that Democrats and the media ignored airstrikes ordered by the former president.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was asked during a Tuesday press conference about a so-called “double-tap” airstrike—military parlance for follow-up strikes on survivors and first responders after initial bombings—that killed two men who survived a Sept. 2 attack on a boat in the southern Caribbean Sea.

Although US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has denied it, he reportedly gave a spoken order to “kill everybody” in the boat, which was supposedly interpreted by Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley as a green light for launching a second strike after the discovery that two of the 11 men aboard the vessel were alive and clinging to its burning wreckage.

Responding to the question concerning the strike’s legality, Johnson pointed to upcoming congressional consultations on the matter and said that such attacks are “not an unprecedented thing.”

“Secondary strikes are not unusual,” he noted. “It has to happen if a mission is going to be completed.”

“It’s something Congress will look at, and we’ll do that in the regular process and order,” Johnson continued, referring to a classified briefing with Bradley and some lawmakers scheduled for Thursday. “I think it’s very important for everybody to reserve judgment and not leap to conclusions until you have all the facts.”

“One of the things I was reminded of this morning is that under Barack Obama... I think there were 550 drone strikes on people who were targeted as enemies of the country, and nobody ever questioned it,” he said.

The lack of attention to Obama’s strikes claimed by Johnson is belied by congressional hearings, lawsuits, and copious coverage—and condemnation—of such attacks in media outlets including Common Dreams.

Progressive lawmakers and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky were among the numerous US officials who criticized Obama-era drone strikes.

Trump administration officials have reportedly cited the Obama administration’s legal rationale for bombing Libya to justify the boat strikes to members of Congress.

Other Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures noted on Tuesday that Obama—who bombed more countries than his predecessor, former President George W. Bush and was called the “drone warrior-in-chief”—ordered strikes that resulted in massacres of civilians at events including funerals and at least one wedding.

At least hundreds of civilians were killed in such strikes, including 16-year-old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who, according to an Obama administration official, was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was slain in Yemen in 2011. This, after al-Awlaki’s father—an accused terrorist who was also American—was assassinated by a drone strike ordered by Obama.

Asked by a reporter about the legality of assassinating US citizens without charge or trial, then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs infamously asserted in October 2012 that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki should have had “a far more responsible father.”

Buried deep in a New York Times article published earlier that year was the revelation that Obama’s secret “kill list” authorized the assassination of US citizens, and that his administration was counting all military-age males in a strike zone as “combatants” regardless of their actual status in an effort to artificially lower the reported number of civilian casualties.

“Turns out I’m really good at killing people,” Obama once boasted, according to the 2013 Mark Halperin and John Heilemann book Double Down. “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”

A third member of the al-Awlaki family, 8-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki—also an American citizen—was killed in a US commando raid in Yemen ordered by President Donald Trump in early 2017.

Tens of thousands of civilians were killed by US airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the decadeslong so-called Global War on Terror, in which more than 900,000 people were slain, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

At least thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded by US bombs and bullets in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during Trump’s first and second terms, during which rules of engagement aimed at protecting noncombatants have been loosened.

At least 83 people have been killed in 21 strikes on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September, according to Trump administration figures. Officials in Venezuela and Colombia, as well as relatives of victims, claim that some of them were civilians uninvolved in narcotrafficking.

While critics fumed at the prospect of Republican US senators suing to collect $1 million or more each in taxpayer money as part of a bizarre provision slipped into the government funding bill, one senior GOP lawmaker said Wednesday that he’s all in on the proposal—and won’t stop at a mere million.

Tucked away in the Senate plan to end the longest federal government shutdown in US history is legislation compelling telecommunications companies to notify lawmakers if their phone records were subjected to seizure as part of former Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection and effort to illegally remain in power after losing the 2020 election.

The bill allows senators who were not informed that their records were accessed to sue the government for $500,000 each time their data was subpoenaed or reviewed without notification. Just eight Republican senators would qualify.

Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) slammed the proposal as a “million-dollar jackpot” paid for by taxpayers.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) also weighed in, saying on the House floor Wednesday that “it is unconscionable that what we are debating right now is legislation that will give eight senators over $1 million a piece and we are robbing people of their food assistance and of their healthcare to pay for it.”

“How is this even on the floor?” she asked before the House sent the bill to Trump’s desk. “How can we vote to enrich ourselves by stealing from the American people?”

However, on Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) embraced the proposal.

“Oh, definitely,” Graham replied when asked if he would sue. “And if you think I’m going to settle this thing for a million dollars? No. I want to make it so painful, no one ever does this again.”

“If I’m subject to a criminal investigation, then the rules apply to me like they would any other citizen, but this wasn’t about investigating me or other senators for a crime. It’s a fishing expedition,” Graham asserted. “It will also cover any Democrats in this Senate this term that may have something happened to them.”

But Democrats—and many Republicans—have expressed staunch opposition to the proposal, with Congressman Gabe Amo (D-RI) writing on X, “Hard not to see this as a corrupt politician collecting on his legislatively permitted bribe.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called the provision “a really bad look.”

At least one GOP House lawmaker has vowed to vote against the continuing resolution unless the provision is rescinded:

However, the proposal was not removed, and Steube was one of 209 House lawmakers who voted against the bill—which passed with 222 “yes” votes and was subsequently signed by Trump.

Raskin ripped Graham on X Thursday, saying, “Sir, you were treated like every other American who gets caught up in a massive criminal event or conspiracy.”

“Do you now want to ban all grand jury subpoenas of phone records,” he added, “or just vote yourself a million-dollar taxpayer jackpot because you got one and you think senators should have special privileges over everyone else?”

Advocates for hemp on Wednesday decried a provision of the Republican government funding law signed by President Donald Trump that tightens restrictions on the versatile plant—a move critics say will devastate a $30 billion industry.

The new restrictions set a stricter limit on the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the psychoactive chemical in cannabis—in order to close a loophole that allowed for the sale of unregulated food and beverages containing intoxicating hemp-derived compounds.

Twenty-two Democratic senators—including advocates for legal recreational or medical marijuana—joined almost all Republicans in voting against an amendment introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to strip out the restrictions from the final bill. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was the only other Republican to back Paul’s effort.

“Our industry is being used as a pawn as leaders work to reopen the government,” Jonathan Miller, general counsel for the US Hemp Roundtable, an industry group, warned ahead of the vote. “Recriminalizing hemp will force American farms and businesses to close and disrupt the well-being of countless Americans who depend on hemp.”

Hemp—which is used in a wide range of products from clothing to construction materials to fuel, food, and biodegradable plastics—was legalized under the 2018 farm bill signed by President Donald Trump during his first term.

But lawmakers including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—who backed the 2018 legislation—argued that cannabis companies are exploiting a loophole in the farm bill to legally manufacture products with enough THC to get consumers high.

Paul, however, ripped the provision, arguing in a Thursday Courier Journal opinion piece that it “destroys the livelihood of hemp farmers.”

“This could not come at a worse time for our farmers,” Paul wrote. “Costs have increased while prices for crops have declined. Farm bankruptcies are rising.”

“For many farmers, planting hemp offered them a lifeline,” he continued. “Hemp can be used for textiles, rope, insulation, composite wood, paper, grain, and in CBD products, and growing hemp helped farmers to mitigate the loses they’ve endured during this season of hardship.”

Paul noted that “the provision that was inserted into the government funding bill makes illegal any hemp product that contains more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container.”

“That would be nearly 100% of hemp products currently sold,” he said. “This is so low that it takes away any of the benefit of the current products intended to manage pain or other conditions.”

Charles and Linda Gill have grown hemp on their family farm in Bowdoinham, Maine, since the plant was legalized in 2018.

“We are not in the business of these intoxicating hemp products on the market, which are the ones that are screwing it up for everybody,” Charles Gill told Maine Morning Star‘s Emma Davis on Wednesday. “They’re abusing the system.”

“All our current products would be banned,” Gill said of the new restrictions. “It would pretty much put us out of business.”

Hemp defenders vowed to contest the new law.

“The fight isn’t over,” Hemp Industry & Farmers of America executive director Brian Swensen said on X after the law’s passage.

“In 2018, President Trump and Congress legalized hemp, delivering more jobs and opportunities to American farmers and small businesses,” Swensen said, adding that the restrictions “will devastate American farmers, business owners, veterans, and seniors.”

“The hemp ban will also open up dangerous black markets for hemp and allow China to take over the entire hemp market,” he added, claiming “it kills over 325,000 American jobs and destroys the industry.”

More than a dozen US senators on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump to abort plans for a resumption of nuclear weapons testing, a call that came as Russian President Vladimir Putin directed his senior officials to draft proposals for possible new nuke tests in response.

“We write to you today to express grave reservation about any action to resume nuclear weapons testing,” 14 Democratic senators led by Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a letter to Trump.

“We request that you personally provide clarification,” the lawmakers added. “The decision to resume nuclear weapons testing would be geopolitically dangerous, fiscally irresponsible, and simply unnecessary to ensure the ability of the United States to defend itself.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—who signed the letter—also introduced emergency legislation last week aimed at preventing Trump from resuming nuclear weapons tests.

Although no country is known to have tested a nuclear weapon since North Korea last did so in 2017, Trump last month ordered the Pentagon to prepare for a resumption of reciprocal testing.

“The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” Trump falsely wrote on social media. “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”

TASS reported Wednesday that Putin instructed the Russian Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry, intelligence agencies, and civilian bureaus to submit proposals “on the possibility of preparing for nuclear weapons tests” in the event that other countries resume testing.

Russia has not tested a nuclear weapon in its modern history. The former Soviet Union’s final nuclear test took place in 1990 and the successor Russian state has adhered to a moratorium ever since.

Last week, Congresswoman Dina Titus (D-Nev.) introduced a bill to prohibit new US nuclear weapons testing. Titus accused Trump of putting “his own ego and authoritarian ambitions above the health and safety of Nevadans.

”Supporting Titus’ bill, Tara Drozdenko, director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement Wednesday that “there is no good reason for the United States to resume explosive nuclear testing and it would actually make everyone in this country less safe.”

“We have so much to lose and so little to gain from resuming testing,” she continued. “New explosive testing by the United States would be to make a political statement, with major consequences: It would shatter the global freeze on nuclear testing observed by all but North Korea and give Russia, China, and other nuclear powers the green light to restart their own nuclear testing programs.”

“The United States has not conducted a nuclear detonation test since 1992,” Drozdenko noted. “Even those advocating for testing acknowledge there is no scientific need to test to maintain the US nuclear arsenal. In fact, Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently said that the updated systems can be tested without conducting full nuclear detonations.”

“To limit new weapons development in China or Russia, one of the best things the US can do is maintain the taboo on testing and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,” she added. “This treaty with on-site verification measures would be the best way to ensure that countries are not clandestinely testing nuclear weapons.”

The United States and Soviet Union came dangerously close to nuclear war on multiple occasions during the Cold War, most notably amid the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and, later, during then-President Ronald Reagan’s first administration in the early 1980s.

Weeks after becoming the first country to develop nuclear weapons in 1945, the United States waged the world’s only nuclear war, dropping atomic bombs on the defenseless Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killing hundreds of thousands of people, mostly civilians.

According to the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, Russia leads the world with 5,449 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, followed by the US with 5,277 warheads, China with around 600, France with 290, and the United Kingdom with 225. Four other nations—India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—also have nuclear arsenals of between 50-180 warheads each.

Following Israel’s 125 reported violations of the October 10 Gaza ceasefire in attacks that have killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday ordered “powerful strikes” in response to an alleged Hamas breach of the deal in which no one was physically harmed.

Netanyahu’s office said the right-wing prime minister instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to immediately carry out the attacks on the flattened strip, where two years of genocidal war and siege have left at least 248,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, hundreds of thousands of others starving; and the vast majority of Gaza’s more than 2 million people forcibly displaced.

Israel said the decision to escalate came after IDF invaders—none of whom were reportedly harmed—came under fire in southern Gaza, and amid Israeli anger over alleged Hamas subterfuge regarding the return of bodily remains from an Israeli hostage abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Netanyahu’s announcement also came on the same day that the prime minister appeared in a Jerusalem court to continue his testimony in his ongoing trial for alleged fraud, breach of trust, and bribery. His testimony was cut off three hours early due to unspecified “security developments.” Critics, including relatives of hostages, have accused Netanyahu of unnecessarily prolonging the war in order to further delay his trial. The prime minister denies any wrongdoing.

Hamas said it would respond to Israel’s escalation by delaying the handover of the remaining 13 dead hostages it either holds or is trying to locate. The armed resistance group, which governs Gaza, said Tuesday it had recovered the body of another hostage.

The Gaza Government Media Office responded to Israel’s accusation of Hamas ceasefire violations by noting what it said are 125 incidents in which Israeli forces broke the truce, “resulting in the killing of 94 Palestinians and the injury of more than 344 others.”

Israeli violations of the current ceasefire include several massacres, such as the Oct. 18 bombing of a bus that killed at least 11 members of the Abu Shaaban family, who were trying to return to inspect their home in Gaza City. Among the victims were three women and seven children ages 5-13.

Israel was also accused of nearly 1,000 violations of the previous ceasefire earlier this year—breaches that officials said left at least 116 civilians dead and nearly 500 others wounded.

There has been scant reporting of Israeli ceasefire breaches in the US corporate media. In a glaring act of apparently selective inattention, the Associated Press on Tuesday called Netanyahu’s strike order “a new test for the US-brokered ceasefire.”

Fourteen more people were killed and one survived three new US bombings of what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday claimed—again without evidence—were four boats transporting drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

“Eight male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessels during the first strike. Four male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the second strike. Three male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the third strike,” Hegseth said of the Monday attacks, which presumably occurred off the west coast of Mexico.

“A total of 14 narco-terrorists were killed during the three strikes, with one survivor,” he continued. “All strikes were in international waters with no US forces harmed.”

Hegseth said that US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) “immediately initiated search and rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue.”

He added that the Department of Defense “has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”

US forces have carried out more than a dozen strikes on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September, killing at least 57 people, according to Trump administration figures.

Earlier this month, a bipartisan US Senate war powers resolution aimed at reining in President Donald Trump’s ability to extrajudicially execute alleged drug traffickers in or near Venezuela failed to pass.

The latest boat bombings came amid the Trump administration’s mounting provocations against Venezuela. In addition to his earlier deployment of an armada of US warships and thousands of troops to the southern Caribbean and ongoing military exercises with neighboring Trinidad and Tobago, the Pentagon said last week that the president ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group off the coast of the oil-rich South American nation—a longtime target of US meddling.

“Somehow, the United States of America has found a way to combine two of its greatest foreign policy failures—the Iraq War and the War on Drugs—into a single regime change narrative... and sell it again to the mainstream media. Incredible,” Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler said Tuesday in response to US saber-rattling against Venezuela.

Venezuela said Sunday that it had “captured a mercenary group” aligned with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and had determined “that a false-flag attack is underway from waters bordering Trinidad and Tobago, or from Trinidad or Venezuelan territory itself.”

The claim comes less than two weeks after Trump publicly acknowledged his authorization of covert CIA action against Venezuela.

Latin American leaders, human rights defenders, and others have condemned the US boat strikes—which Venezuelan and Colombian officials, as well as victims' relatives, say have killed fishers—as extrajudicial murders and war crimes.

The 93-year-old great-uncle of Chad Joseph, a 26-year-old Trinidadian and Tobagonian killed along with compatriot Rishi Samaroo in an October 14 US strike, called the attack “perfect murder.”

“There is nothing they could prove that they are coming across our waters with drugs,” he said earlier this month. “How could Trump prove the boat was bringing narcotics?”

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Sunday that his country’s security forces captured a group of mercenaries aligned with the US Central Intelligence Agency, less than two weeks after President Donald Trump confirmed his authorization of covert CIA action against the South American nation.

Venezuela “reports that it has captured a mercenary group with direct information from the US intelligence agency, CIA, being able to determine that a false-flag attack is underway from waters bordering Trinidad and Tobago, or from Trinidad or Venezuelan territory itself,” the Venezuelan government said in a statement.

“This planned action perfectly evokes the provocation of the Battleship Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin, which gave rise to the war against Spain to seize Cuba in 1898 and allowed the US Congress to authorize involvement in an eternal war against Vietnam in 1964, from which they emerged defeated by the Vietnamese people after facing incalculable destruction and regrettable human loss,” the statement continues.

“The government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has renounced the sovereignty of Trinidad and Tobago to act as a military colony subordinate to US hegemonic interests, turning its territory into a US aircraft carrier for war throughout the Caribbean against Venezuela, Colombia, and all of South America,” Caracas asserted.

The statement continues:

By folding to Washington’s militaristic agenda, Persad-Bissessar not only intends to attack Venezuela, a country that has always maintained a policy of energy cooperation, mutual respect, and Caribbean integration, and break our historic bonds of brotherhood; she also violates the United Nations Charter, the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace approved by [the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States], and the principles of [the Caribbean Community], which protect all peoples of the Caribbean.

These are not defensive exercises: this is a colonial operation of military aggression that seeks to turn the Caribbean into a space for lethal violence and US imperial domination.

“Venezuela does not accept threats from any vassal government of the US. We are not intimidated by military exercises or war cries,” the statement says, adding that the country “will always defend its sovereignty, its territorial integrity, and its right to live in peace against foreign enemies and [their] vassals.”

Venezuela’s accusation came amid joint military exercises between the US and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean Sea and follows a string of deadly US attacks on vessels the Trump administration claimed—without evidence—were transporting drugs bound for the United States. According to the Trump administration, at least 43 people have been killed in the US boat strikes in the southern Caribbean and Pacific Ocean since early last month.

Trinidad and Tobago challenged Venezuela to provide proof of the alleged false-flag operation and said the joint military operation with the United States “aims to bolster the fight against transnational crime and build resilience through training, humanitarian activities, and security cooperation.”

The Trump administration—which had already deployed an armada of warships and thousands of troops to the southern Caribbean—said Friday that it ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group off the coast of Venezuela, which possesses the world’s largest oil reserves.

The US has been meddling in Venezuelan affairs since at least the late 19th century, going back to the 1895 border dispute between Venezuela and Britain. Since then, the United States has helped install and prop up brutal dictators and assisted in the subversion of democratic movements, including by training Venezuelan forces in torture and repression at the notorious US Army School of the Americas.

In the 21st century, successive US administrations, beginning with George W. Bush, have tried to thwart the Bolivarian Revolution that was launched by former President Hugo Chávez and continued under Maduro. During the first Trump administration, Venezuela foiled an attempt by a group of mercenaries, including two Americans, to invade the country and topple Maduro.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have also died as a result of US economic sanctions, according to research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Taunting the Venezuelan president during a Sunday appearance on CBS's “60 Minutes,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said, “If I was Maduro, I’d head to Russia or China right now.”

However, senior Venezuelan officials waxed defiant in the face of the latest US threat.

“Once again, the empire and its accomplices seek to bend the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people through a criminal economic siege that flagrantly violates the Charter of the United Nations and international humanitarian law,” Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto said Monday.

“These actions are not only illegal,” he added, “they are an unconventional act of war that we are determined to face and defeat in all scenarios.”

Vermont state Sen. Sam Douglass is set to step down Monday after being exposed as a participant in a Young Republican group chat in which members—including at least one Trump administration official—exchanged hate-filled messages.

Douglass, a Republican, said in a statement Friday: “I must resign. I know that this decision will upset many, and delight others, but in this political climate I must keep my family safe.”

“If my governor asks me to do something, I will act, because I believe in what he’s trying to do,” the 27-year-old freshman lawmaker added, referring to Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s call for him to step down.

“I love my state, my people, and I am deeply sorry for the offense this caused and that our state was dragged into this,” Douglass added.

Douglass is the only known elected official involved in a leaked Telegram chat first reported by Politico on Tuesday in which members of Young Republican chapters in four states exchanged racist, anti-LGBTQ+, and misogynistic messages, including quips about an “epic” rape and killing people in Nazi gas chambers.

Group chat participants included Michael Bartels, a senior adviser in the office of general counsel at the US Small Business Administration.

The chat included one message in which Douglass equated being Indian with poor hygiene, and another exchange in which his wife, Vermont Young Republican national committee member Brianna Douglass, admonishes the organization for “expecting the Jew to be honest.”

Prominent Republicans have rallied in defense of what Vice President JD Vance called the private jokes of “young boys”—who are apparently all in their 20s and 30s.

The fallout from the group chat leak has cost a majority of participants in the Telegram chat their jobs or employment offers.

Most prominently, ex-New York State Young Republicans chair Peter Giunta—who posted “I love Hitler”—was fired from his job as chief of staff to New York Assemblyman Michael Reilly (R-62).

Many social media users had the same reaction to Douglass’ resignation: “Good riddance!”

The shaky Gaza ceasefire further frayed on Sunday as Israel launched at least 20 airstrikes and blocked all aid delivery in the obliterated Palestinian exclave, while Hamas rejected US allegations that it is preparing to violate the tenuous truce.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that it has “now begun a wave of strikes” in southern Gaza “following a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement earlier today” by Hamas, whose fighters are accused of killing two Israeli occupation troops and wounding three others in Rafah on Sunday morning.

Gaza officials said that at least 51 Palestinians, including numerous children, were killed across the strip on Sunday. Attacks include but are not limited to a double-tap drone and missile strike on a café west of Deir al-Balah that killed five people, all of them reportedly civilians; an airstrike on a the al-Bureij refugee camp that killed four civilians; an airstrike on the Sardi school that killed four displaced civilians; artillery shelling that killed six civilians on al-Zawaida Beach; and the bombing of a building housing journalists in al-Zawaida that killed two civilians.

The US State Department on Saturday accused Hamas of planning an attack on Palestinian civilians in Gaza “in grave violation of the ceasefire.” Hamas has been battling Israeli-backed criminal gangs that oppose its longtime rule of Gaza.

In a statement Sunday, Hamas slammed the US allegations as lies that “fully align with the misleading Israeli propaganda and provide cover for the continuation of the occupation’s crimes and organized aggression” against Palestinians.

Hamas urged the US to “stop repeating the occupation’s misleading narrative and to focus on curbing its repeated violations of the ceasefire agreement.”

According to the Gaza Government Media Office, Israel has violated the nine-day ceasefire at least 48 times, including by bombing residential areas and killing civilians approaching the so-called “yellow line” beyond which Israeli forces withdrew in accordance with the truce.

Scores of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since the ceasefire took effect on October 10.

On Friday, Israeli forces massacred 11 members of a Palestinian family attempting to return by bus to their home in Gaza City.

In response to what it said were Hamas ceasefire violations, Israel on Sunday closed off crossing points into Gaza, blocking the entry of desperately needed humanitarian aid into the strip, where famine conditions persist due to the siege imposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who are both fugitives from the International Criminal Court—at the start of the genocidal war two years ago.

Amjad Al-Shawwa, who heads the Network of Civil Society Organizations in Gaza, warned Sunday that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, especially pregnant women and children, are suffering severe malnutrition. At least hundreds of Gazans have died of malnutrition and related causes.

A senior Egyptian official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Guardian that “round-the-clock” talks were under way to salvage the ceasefire.

Responding to the renewed Israeli bombing, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said: “Since the start of the ceasefire, the Netanyahu regime has been itching to fully restart the genocide in Gaza.”

:The cruel and unnecessary mass bombing of civilians across Gaza constitutes a blatant violation of President [Donald] Trump’s ceasefire agreement and a resumption of the genocide,“ CAIR added. ”President Trump must rein in the Israeli occupation forces and stop sending American weapons and American taxpayer dollars to fund Israel’s war machine.“

President Donald Trump’s authorization this week of Central Intelligence Agency operations aimed at toppling Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro prompted warnings from foreign policy experts of yet another US war of choice and the introduction of a bipartisan Senate resolution aimed at blocking unauthorized military action against the South American country.

“Reports that the Trump administration has authorized covert efforts seeking to foment regime change in Venezuela are deeply concerning,” Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, a Washington, DC-based think tank, said Thursday in a statement.

“These reports follow on the administration’s unlawful and unauthorized use of military force against vessels and their crews in the Caribbean—which constitute extrajudicial killings,” added Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Trump said Wednesday that he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside the South American nation “for two reasons”—at least the first of which is a lie.

“Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”

There is no credible evidence that the Venezuelan government has systematically or deliberately released prisoners and sent them to the United States. The claim—which has been popularized by Trump and some Republicans—has been repeatedly debunked by experts and US officials.

As for drugs, while Venezuela is a transit point for cocaine—mostly produced in neighboring Colombia—the amount of narcotics entering the United States via the country is relatively insignificant compared with routes via Mexico, Central America, and the Pacific coast.

Approximately 90% of US-bound cocaine enters the country via Mexico, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration and other government agencies. Venezuela is also not a significant source of fentanyl, which is the leading cause of overdoses in the US and is also trafficked primarily through Mexico.

“Using covert or military measures to destabilize or overthrow regimes reminds us of some of the most notorious episodes in American foreign policy, which undermined the human rights and sovereignty of countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean,” said Duss.

According to John Coatsworth, a historian specializing in Latin America, the US has launched at least 41 interventions that successfully overthrew governments in the hemisphere since 1898. The number of US military interventions in the region is much higher.

The US has been meddling in Venezuelan affairs since the 19th century, going back to an 1895 boundary dispute between Venezuela and Britain and possibly earlier. Since then, Washington has helped install and prop up brutal dictators and assisted in the subversion of democratic movements, including by training Venezuelan forces in torture and repression at the notorious US Army School of the Americas.

This century, successive US administrations beginning with George W. Bush have worked to thwart the Bolivarian Revolution launched by former President Hugo Chávez and continued under Maduro. Under Trump, the US has deployed a small armada of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of Venezuela, a rattling of proverbial sabers familiar to students of US imperialism in Latin America.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have also died as a result of US economic sanctions on Venezuela, according to research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

“The CIA has been sent to Venezuela for regime change,” Maduro said Thursday in Caracas. “Since its creation, no US government has so openly ordered this agency to kill, overthrow, or destroy other countries.”

“If Venezuela did not possess oil, gas, gold, fertile land, and water, the imperialists wouldn’t even look at our country,” he added.

Duss noted that the United States is “still dealing with many of the harmful consequences of these disastrous interventions in today’s challenges with migration and the drug trade.”

“Such interventions rarely lead to democratic or peaceful outcomes,” he stressed. “Instead, they exacerbate internal divisions, reinforce authoritarianism, and destabilize societies for generations.”

As Tim Weiner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of multiple histories of the CIA, said in a Friday interview with CNN senior politics writer Zachary Wolf, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro “survived covert action under presidents from [Dwight] Eisenhower onward and outlived them all.”

Weiner said that even operations considered successes created tremendous problems.

“The successes, for example, in Guatemala, ushered in dictatorships and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people,” he said, referring to the 1954 CIA overthrow of reformist Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz—codenamed PBSUCCESS—which led to decades of bloody repression and a US-backed genocide against Indigenous Mayan peoples.

Writing for Responsible Statecraft on Thursday, Joseph Addington, associate editor and Latin America columnist at The American Conservative, asserted that any US invasion of Venezuela “comes with a number of costs and risks American policymakers should bear in mind and carefully weigh against the potential benefits of intervention.”

“There is no free lunch in geopolitics,” he argued.

Addington cited an example of the US ousting a drug trafficking leader, who was an erstwhile ally and CIA asset:

The most obvious costs are those of the initial invasion. The American invasion of Panama in 1989, to overthrow the government of Gen. Manuel Noriega, was carried out by a force of some 27,000 US troops, 23 of which were killed and hundreds more wounded. Venezuela is vastly larger than Panama, and while its military is very poorly equipped, it likewise dwarfs the forces that were available to Noriega. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates an invasion of Venezuela would require nearly 50,000 troops, some of which will not return home. Any American government should be extremely conscientious about the causes on which it spends the lives of American soldiers.

“The real risks of such an operation, however, come after the invasion,” Addington said. “Toppling Maduro’s government is one thing; there is no real chance that the impoverished and corrupt Venezuelan armed forces can put up a serious fight against the American military. But occupying and rebuilding the country is another, as the US learned to its chagrin in the Middle East.”

Duss noted that “Trump ran as an anti-war candidate and casts himself as a Nobel Prize-worthy peacemaker,” and that “a majority of Americans oppose US military involvement in Venezuela.”

“Lawmakers must make clear that Trump does not have the American people’s support or Congress’s authorization for the use of force against Venezuela or anywhere else in the region,” he said.

On Friday, a bipartisan group of US senators—Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—introduced a war powers resolution that would bar US military action within or against Venezuela.

“I’m extremely troubled that the Trump administration is considering launching illegal military strikes inside Venezuela without a specific authorization by Congress,” Kaine said in a statement. “Americans don’t want to send their sons and daughters into more wars—especially wars that carry a serious risk of significant destabilization and massive new waves of migration in our hemisphere.”

“If my colleagues disagree and think a war with Venezuela is a good idea,” he added, “they need to meet their constitutional obligations by making their case to the American people and passing an authorization for use of military force.”

It’s the second time Kaine and Schiff have tried to introduce such a measure. Earlier this month, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman joined his GOP colleagues in voting down a Venezuela war powers resolution. Paul joined Democrats independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) in voting for the legislation.

A federal food program serving vulnerable women and children could run out of money next week due to the Republican government shutdown, a prospect that on Thursday spurred calls for Congress to pass a bipartisan funding bill that protects nutritional assistance for needy Americans.

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides free staples including fresh produce, milk, and formula vouchers for nearly 7 million pregnant and breastfeeding parents and children under the age of 5. The program currently benefits more than 1 in 4 young US children.

“We will have babies being born to low-income women who will not have any breastfeeding support, and they will have no way to get infant formula if they’re not breastfeeding,” Nicole Flateboe, executive director of Nutrition First, Washington state’s WIC association, recently told the Washington State Standard, calling the specter of defunding a “disaster.”

In Puerto Rico, 76% of children under age 5 rely upon WIC. In California, that figure is 38%, followed by 35% in New York and 34% in Delaware and North Carolina.

“WIC is a lifeline that helps new parents keep their babies fed. But thanks to Republicans’ government shutdown, WIC funds could run out in a matter of weeks,” Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said Thursday on social media. “Republicans must reopen the government NOW and stop playing with people’s lives.”

Food & Water Watch warned Thursday that over 5 million US children stand to lose food assistance, with many likely to go hungry, if the government shutdown is not resolved.

“Trump and congressional Republicans have driven America headfirst into a government shutdown,“ Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones said in a statement Thursday. ”It is poor women and children who will feel the impacts first and worst.“

Democrats in Congress have introduced a short-term appropriations bill that would fully fund WIC, a proposal that stands in stark contrast with Republican legislation that would maintain current funding levels for the program. The GOP proposal is the equivalent of a $600 million cut, due to inflation and price pressures, according to Food & Water Watch.

Making matters worse, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) signed by President Donald Trump in July stripped Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from more than 2 million people. The legislation contains the deepest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in history while slashing billions from other essential social programs to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.

The OBBBA ends health coverage and food assistance for millions of people at a time when more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 US children—are living in food insecure households.

The Trump administration’s staffing and funding cuts at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers SNAP, have also hamstrung the government’s ability to provide assistance to those in need.

“It’s a big mess,” Flateboe said. “We don’t have a lot of trust that the USDA is going to handle this real seamlessly.”

While Trump said this week that he would use tariff revenues to temporarily fund WIC, it is unclear how he could do so absent an act of Congress.

”Congressional Republicans need to put food back on the table for struggling families by passing a bipartisan spending bill that protects food access,“ Jones said.

Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) said on social media: ”Families shouldn’t pay the price for GOP dysfunction. We must protect WIC and the people who rely on it.“

Police in Texas—led by a county sheriff later charged with an unrelated felony sex crime—lied about their motive for using artificial intelligence-powered surveillance technology to search for a woman who allegedly self-administered a medication abortion, new documents obtained by 404 Media and Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed on Tuesday.

In May, 404 Media’s Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler reported that the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office tapped into 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras manufactured by Flock Safety while conducting a nationwide search for an unnamed woman who authorities said took abortion medication in alleged violation of a 2021 state ban that empowers anti-abortion vigilantes to sue anyone who “aids or abets” the medical procedure.

Since that law’s passage—and the right-wing US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization the following year—Texas has passed additional forced birth laws banning nearly all abortions as well as targeting providers who mail abortion pills from other states.

According to Cox and Koebler, Johnson County Sheriff’s deputies accessed Flock cameras in states where abortion is legal, including Illinois and Washington. Johnson County Sheriff Adam King told 404 Media at the time that his department searched for the woman because “her family was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital.”

“We weren’t trying to block her from leaving the state or whatever to get an abortion,” King said. “It was about her safety.”

King’s office, forced birth advocates, and Flock Safety subsequently attempted to gaslight those who reported that deputies searched for the woman as part of a probe into potential violations of state laws.

However, new documents and court records obtained by the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and shared with 404 Media show that Johnson County Sheriff’s deputies initiated a “death investigation” of a “nonviable fetus” and discussed prosecuting the woman for allegedly self-administering an abortion.

”To no one’s surprise, they were full of s—,” Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung wrote Tuesday for Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day Substack.

As EFF’s Dave Maas and Rindala Alajaji noted:

In recent years, anti-abortion advocates and prosecutors have increasingly attempted to use “fetal homicide” and “wrongful death” statutes—originally intended to protect pregnant people from violence—to criminalize abortion and pregnancy loss. These laws, which exist in dozens of states, establish legal personhood of fetuses and can be weaponized against people who end their own pregnancies or experience a miscarriage.

In fact, a new report from Pregnancy Justice found that in just the first two years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, prosecutors initiated at least 412 cases charging pregnant people with crimes related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth—most under child neglect, endangerment, or abuse laws that were never intended to target pregnant people. Nine cases included allegations around individuals’ abortions, such as possession of abortion medication or attempts to obtain an abortion—instances just like this one. The report also highlights how, in many instances, prosecutors use tangentially related criminal charges to punish people for abortion, even when abortion itself is not illegal.

”By framing their investigation of a self-administered abortion as a ‘death investigation’ of a ‘nonviable fetus,’ Texas law enforcement was signaling their intent to treat the woman’s self-managed abortion as a potential homicide, even though Texas law does not allow criminal charges to be brought against an individual for self-managing their own abortion,” Maas and Alajaji added.

Valenti and Cheung asserted that “this is what cruel, abusive men seeking to exert power over women do: harass them over their abortions.”

They were referring not only to the Texas woman’s “vindictive, controlling partner” who tipped off police—and was later convicted of pistol-whipping and choking her—but also to King, who, despite being recently arrested and indicted on four felony sexual harassment charges, was allowed to return to work part-time. King was also previously indicted in August for alleged sexual harassment and corrupt influence for allegedly retaliating against a witness.

“These are the kind of men who target women for their abortions,” Valenti and Cheung wrote. “It’s a trend that AED warned about in our 2025 predictions: that the anti-abortion movement would increasingly rely on aggrieved and abusive men to do their dirty work.”

They continued:

Since November, top Texas-based anti-abortion activists have bragged about recruiting men to sue over their partner’s abortions. Jonathan Mitchell is one of the anti-abortion attorneys leading that charge: after his client Marcus Silva sued his ex’s friends over her abortion, he tried to use the case to blackmail her into resuming a sexual relationship. At this point, even Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is reportedly recruiting men for this purpose.

”This isn’t about a few bad actors—but the predictable outcome of living in a reproductive police state bent on surveillance and punishment,” Valenti and Cheung said. “And in a moment when pregnancy criminalization is on the rise, it’s vital we understand how this police state operates.”

The willingness of Republicans, including US Vice President JD Vance, to embrace the tracking of women who have or are seeking abortions has raised alarms among reproductive rights advocates.

“Reproductive dragnets are not hypothetical concerns. These surveillance tactics open the door for overzealous, anti-abortion state actors to amass data to build cases against people for their abortion care and pregnancy outcomes,” Ashley Kurzweil, senior policy analyst in reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families, told 404 Media Tuesday.

“Law enforcement exploitation of mass surveillance infrastructure for reproductive health criminalization promises to be increasingly disruptive to the entire abortion access and pregnancy care landscape,” Kurzweil added. “The prevalence of these harmful data practices and risks of legal action drive real fear among abortion seekers and helpers—even intimidating people from getting the care they need.”