Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee voted Thursday to block a Democratic amendment that would have prohibited the Internal Revenue Service from giving sweeping tax audit immunity to President Donald Trump, his family, and their businesses.

If passed, the amendment would have nullified a central element of the deal that the US Justice Department cut with the IRS in May to settle Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the tax agency. Experts have argued that such broad audit immunity is unlawful, and Democrats have warned the agreement could leave the IRS with no recourse if Trump decided to dodge taxes on the billions of dollars he has pocketed during his second stint in the White House.

Democrats on the Finance Committee sought to attach their amendment to bipartisan legislation aimed at streamlining tax administration. The amendment failed in a 13-14 vote along party lines, and the bipartisan bill passed out of committee 26-1—with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) the lone opponent. Warren told Politico that she “cannot support a bill that rubber stamps Donald Trump’s corruption.”

“Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ proposal to end Donald Trump’s IRS sweetheart deal,” Warren wrote on social media following Thursday’s vote. “This deal gives him FULL IMMUNITY from audits on tax returns he’s filed. It’s corruption on steroids.”

The vote on the Democratic amendment came as Trump’s attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche, remained stalled in the Senate, in large part due to the Justice Department’s failure to commit to sufficient limitations on the IRS audit immunity deal, which Blanche signed.

Blanche, who is currently the acting attorney general, testified during a Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month that the IRS audit immunity deal is “not forward-looking,” but a key Republican said this week that the Justice Department has not yet provided sufficient written commitments to limit the immunity agreement.

Blanche reportedly met with the two Senate GOP holdouts—John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—on Thursday in an effort to hash out a deal to advance his nomination. Trump, who has aggressively avoided taxes throughout his career and broke with political tradition by refusing to voluntarily release his federal income tax returns, threatened on Thursday to pull Blanche’s nomination until Cornyn and Tillis leave the Senate next year, having lost reelection.

The New York Times summarized the IRS immunity deal, should it survive legal and political scrutiny:

First, the IRS has to drop any inquiries, whether civil audits or criminal investigations, it was pursuing into Mr. Trump, his family members, their companies, or ‘affiliated individuals.’ Second, the IRS can’t start any new investigations into tax returns that this potentially large pool of people and companies has already filed.

That means that any tax maneuver the Trumps have already used, whether the IRS was already auditing it or not, is now off limits. The agency typically has three years after someone files a tax return to assess more in taxes. So there are potential audits of Mr. Trump and his family that the IRS could have initiated—claims that ‘could have been asserted,’ in the language of Mr. Blanche’s order—that it is now not supposed to. But the next tax return that Mr. Trump files could, theoretically, still be eligible for an audit.

“Trump’s sweetheart audit immunity deal is perhaps the most brazenly corrupt action taken by a president in American history, and Congress must permanently put a stop to the unchecked greed on display,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said earlier this week. “Elected officials cannot look taxpayers in the eye and ask them to play by a set of rules that the president of the United States is exempt from.”

US Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth late Thursday gloatingly posted a photo of an Iranian tower collapsing due to the Trump administration’s massive, illegal assault on the Middle East country’s infrastructure, including bridges, railways, and power facilities.

The photo Hegseth posted to social media appeared to show the surveillance tower at Iran’s Chabahar Port enveloped in smoke and crumbling to the ground amid US forces’ aggressive bombing campaign. Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), called Hegseth’s post “disgusting online revelry in the bombardment of Iran and its infrastructure.”

The Associated Press reported that US strikes on bridges and other infrastructure in southern Iran overnight into Friday killed at least eight people.

“The highway and railway bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, from roads leading into the Islamic Republic’s central region onward to Tehran, the capital,” AP noted.

US strikes, authorized by President Donald Trump, also targeted Iranian power infrastructure amid extreme heat.

The latest wave of US attacks came days after Trump threatened to “knock out all of [Iran’s] power plants” and bridges “unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

Deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Friday that while “there may be some nominal military use of the bridges,” the US attacks “potentially disrupt the movement of goods needed for Iran’s 90 million people.”

“Trump doesn’t care, but military commanders, who could face prosecution, should,” Roth added.

NIAC said Friday that “the distinction between military and civilian infrastructure has become increasingly blurred,” as “bridges, ports, airports, railways, power networks, and communications facilities sustain civilian life and economic activity, even if they at times are used for military purposes.”

“Their destruction produces civilian casualties, isolates communities, interrupts emergency services, restricts food and fuel distribution, and leaves civilians without electricity during extreme summer heat,” the group added. “As the campaign expands, the humanitarian consequences are therefore likely to grow even if Washington continues to classify the targets as militarily relevant.”

On Thursday, NIAC released a report detailing the “civilian catastrophe” inflicted by the US-Israeli war on Iran, which began in late February. Estimates indicate that the civilian death toll from the war on Iran could be over 2,000—including hundreds of children, a majority of them killed in a US strike on an elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war.

Additionally, millions of Iranians have been displaced by the US-Israeli bombardment and more than 125,000 “civilian units”—including residential housing—have been damaged or destroyed,“ NIAC observed in its report.

“The evidence compiled in this report, independently corroborated across UN agencies, human rights organizations, and satellite analysis, points to a pattern of harm to civilians, homes, schools, and medical infrastructure that warrants urgent international attention,” NIAC said.

Conservationists warned on Tuesday that a new proposal by President Donald Trump’s Interior Department would permit more killing of grizzly bears, which are a threatened species in the lower 48 states of the US.

The Interior Department’s proposed rule would transfer management of grizzly bears from the federal government to states where Republican leaders have sought to strip the species of protections. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the new proposal—with little specific detail—alongside Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, and Republican members of Congress.

Jenny Harbine, managing attorney for the Northern Rockies office at Earthjustice, said it is “extremely concerning that the Trump administration is seeking to hand over more management of the species to hostile Northern Rockies states.”

“While we need to see the details of this proposal, it could put grizzly bears at greater risk at a time of record mortality for the species,” said Harbine. “Anti-science political maneuvers should not be allowed to thwart grizzly bear recovery. If this proposal will further harm the species, we are prepared to take the administration to court.”

Andrea Zaccardi of the Center for Biological Diversity said that with its new proposal, “the Trump administration is trying to make it easier to kill imperiled grizzly bears.”

“Grizzlies shouldn’t be killed at the whim of the livestock industry while it exploits our public lands for its own personal profit,” said Zaccardi. “The science is clear that grizzlies need full federal protection to recover, not a rule that will lead to more grizzly bear mortality. We’ll be reviewing the rule and considering next steps.”

Fewer than 2,000 individual grizzly bears remain in isolated populations in the lower 48 states.

The Interior Department said its new proposal wouldn’t alter the bear’s listing status under the Endangered Species Act, which the Trump administration is trying to weaken. Opponents of the new proposal cautioned that giving more management to GOP-controlled states could be disastrous for the species, rejecting Republican officials’ claim that the bears have sufficiently recovered.

“This is a decision being made for political reasons, it is not based on science, in the best interest of the survival of the species, or in compliance with the requirements of the Endangered Species Act,” Greg LeDonne, Idaho director of Western Watersheds Project, said in a statement.

Major American corporations that benefited from tax cuts enacted last year by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are donating to the campaigns of GOP lawmakers who made the windfall possible.

A report published Friday by Unrig Our Economy spotlights seven House Republicans who voted for the sprawling and unpopular GOP budget package, which extended tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Americans while inflicting unprecedented cuts on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance—with disastrous consequences for millions of low-income families across the country.

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), one of the lawmakers featured in the new report, has received campaign donations from corporate PACs representing 3M, Amazon, Walmart, AT&T, and other companies that collectively received billions of dollars in tax breaks from the Republican law, which restored a provision allowing businesses to immediately write off new investments.

Amazon saw its US income taxes fall by more than half last year due to the GOP law, even as the company’s profits grew. Unrig Our Economy noted that Amazon, whose PAC donated thousands to the Republicans spotlighted in the new report, has an effective federal tax rate of 1.37% following enactment of the budget law.

Miller-Meeks, who has received at least $57,000 in donations from the PACs of companies that benefited from the 2025 law, issued a statement Thursday bragging about supporting “the largest tax cuts in American history,” not mentioning that the benefits will disproportionately flow to profitable corporations and the richest people in the country.

“Thanks to the Republican tax law, corporations are receiving tax breaks, House Republicans are getting campaign cash, and working families are getting stuck with the bill,” the report states.

Another Republican lawmaker featured in the report, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, received $2,500 in campaign donations from the PAC of FirstEnergy, which reaped $500 million in depreciation deductions thanks to the GOP tax law.

“Bresnahan voted to give FirstEnergy hundreds of millions in tax breaks even after the company raised utility prices for his constituents,” Unrig Our Economy’s report observes.

The report also points out that Bresnahan “owned stock in every single one” of the companies who contributed PAC money to his campaign following passage of the Republican budget package last summer.

“This comes after Bresnahan has already faced scrutiny for dumping stock in Medicaid providers and selling off bonds in Pennsylvania hospitals before voting to slash Medicaid and put rural hospitals at risk,” the report notes.

Leor Tal, Unrig Our Economy’s campaign director, said in a statement that “one year ago, House Republicans ripped away healthcare and food assistance from millions of Americans, so that corporations could get massive tax breaks.”

“Now, many of those companies are dishing out PAC money to the Republicans listed in this report,” said Tal. “Republicans in Congress sold out many of their own constituents to help corporations get even richer. It’s time that House Republicans step up, do the right thing, and start fighting for working Americans—not giant corporations.”

Trump administration officials reportedly believed that the Israeli government intended to assassinate Iran’s top negotiators—including the country’s foreign minister—during peace talks with the US in an effort to sabotage diplomatic progress.

The New York Times reported Thursday that “American concerns about the targeting of two particular Iranian officials—Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament—spiked during delicate ceasefire negotiations that began in April.” In response, the US “went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials,” according to the Times, which cited unnamed current and former American officials.

The US and Israel have killed dozens of top Iranian officials since launching their illegal joint war in late February. But the allied countries reportedly removed Araghchi and Ghalibaf from their target list in late March, opening the possibility of high-level negotiations to end the war.

But Israel remained bent on targeting the negotiators, according to the Times, whose reporting was later corroborated by The Washington Post.

The Times detailed one dramatic incident in April, when Ghalibaf was planning to travel to Pakistan’s capital to meet with US Vice President JD Vance:

Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.

But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.

Iran’s security forces notified the plane carrying Mr. Ghalibaf back to Tehran that they had picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Mr. Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his social media page. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, and the Iranian delegation traveled some eight hours by land back to Tehran, Mr. Mohammadi and the two officials said.

The Post reported that “cracks emerged” between the US and Israeli approaches to the war following Israel’s assassination of top Iranian national security official Ali Larijani in March.

“They’ve wiped out everybody,” Trump told reporters in late March, suggesting Israel’s assassination campaign was making it difficult to find potential negotiating partners.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to the new reporting that “Israel is a state that, on paper, is a US partner, but in reality is so extreme in its obsession to undermine US diplomacy that it even tries to assassinate those the US engages with in crucial negotiations.”

“I can’t recall a government as terrified of peace as the one running Israel,” Parsi added.

At present, the Israeli government—led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—is endangering tenuous US-Iran peace talks with its continued occupation of and assault on Lebanon, which Iran has highlighted as a key factor in the negotiations.

Visiting occupied southern Lebanon earlier this week, Netanyahu declared to Israeli troops that “our insistence is that we will not leave... until the threat is removed.”

Parsi wrote earlier this week that “beyond his long-standing desire to use American force to subjugate Iran to Israeli domination and achieve a regional balance favorable to Israel,” Netanyahu “now also has stark political and personal reasons to restart the war” with Iran.

“The [US and Iran’s memorandum of understanding] has come at a steep political cost for Netanyahu,” wrote Parsi. “His prospects for reelection in October are weaker than they have been in months. Once seen as the Israeli leader uniquely capable of delivering President Trump, he now confronts the prospect that both the war and the ensuing diplomacy will leave Israel in a strategically weaker position—undermining the very case he has made for his leadership.”

“And of course,” Parsi added, “if he loses the elections, he will likely spend the next few years in jail, as he will lose his immunity as prime minister and face trial over corruption charges.”

The story was published in partnership with Common Dreams, read the original here.

A Republican-controlled House panel on Monday refused to allow a floor vote on a bipartisan amendment to prevent closer integration of the American and Israeli militaries, which human rights organizations say would deepen US complicity in Israeli war crimes.

“This is unconscionable,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who led the proposed amendment alongside Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), said in a video posted to social media on Tuesday. “They’re not even giving us a vote on the amendment.”

Khanna vowed that “Thomas and I will continue to fight to make sure we don’t compromise American sovereignty.”

Watch:

The Khanna-Massie amendment would have removed the US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative from annual military policy legislation currently moving through Congress. The initiative, laid out in Section 219 of the House’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), instructs the Pentagon to “designate an executive agent... responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.”

On Monday, the House Rules Committee unveiled a list of NDAA amendments that it decided would get a full House vote, and the Khanna-Massie proposal was absent. Ben Freeman noted at Responsible Statecraft that the rules panel made its decision “after no debate” on the amendment.

“By rejecting the Khanna and Massie amendment, the Rules Committee on Monday ensured the American public would not even get to see how their representatives would vote on this pivotal issue,” Freeman wrote. “This is despite unprecedented levels of public distrust in the Israeli government and widespread public outrage directed at these proposals.”

The fight to block the US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative—which is enthusiastically backed by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC—is not necessarily over.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said earlier this month that lawmakers “must” strip the initiative from the NDAA, signaling a possible fight over the provision in the upper chamber. A summary of the Senate version of the NDAA states that the legislation would establish “the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative to expand and accelerate bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, coordination, and industrial cooperation between the US and
Israel.”

Leading human rights organizations, including Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch (HRW), have urged lawmakers to reject the cooperation initiative, with the latter group warning that the proposal would “deepen US military cooperation with Israel while walling that cooperation off from further congressional oversight.”

“Israeli forces’ widespread war crimes, crimes against humanity, and its ongoing acts of genocide in Gaza should give the United States pause about closer military association,” said Akshaya Kumar, HRW’s director of crisis advocacy. “Instead, Section 219 proposes to deepen entanglement, in a way that makes the risks of complicity ongoing. Legislators still have a chance to strip this damaging proposal out.”

Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner on Thursday unveiled a sweeping anti-corruption agenda featuring a plank named after incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, accusing the Maine Republican of using the power of public office to direct money to her husband’s firm and enrich herself.

Platner’s proposed “Collins Rule” would require senators to “recuse themselves from any vote, decision, or oversight activity involving an agency from which their spouse’s firm receives government contracts.” Underlying the proposal is the Platner campaign’s allegation that Collins “funneled more than $76 million in federal contracts to her husband’s lobbying firm”—a claim that Collins’ campaign denounced as “a lie.”

In a social media post on Thursday after Platner announced his proposed “Corruption Crackdown,” Collins wrote that “a man I have never met held a press conference and accused me of criminal conduct,” referencing the Platner campaign’s claim about the federal contract dollars flowing to her husband’s firm.

“That is outrageous and false,” Collins added.

Platner responded with a social media post of his own. “I didn’t say what Susan Collins did is criminal,” he wrote. “I said it SHOULD be criminal.”

In a nine-page document outlining its anti-corruption agenda, Platner’s campaign writes that “no existing law” prevents the spouse of a US senator from “being enriched through winning contracts from agencies the senator oversees.”

“Hiring your spouse is banned. Arranging for your spouse’s firm to receive millions from agencies you oversee is, apparently, fine,” the document states. “This is plain corruption, and we will not stand for it.”

“We’re taking this fight directly to Susan Collins and her billionaire donors, and we won’t stop until power is returned to the working people of Maine.”

Collins’ campaign manager rejected Platner’s characterization of the senator’s record and said she “has not funneled any money to Tom Daffron,” her husband.

Daffron, who married Collins in 2012, was a registered lobbyist in 2006-2007 and, for the subsequent decade, served as chief operating officer for Jefferson Consulting Group, the firm that Platner’s campaign says benefited from Collins’ votes to the tune of $76 million.

News Center Maine noted that, “in its accounting, Platner’s campaign pointed to a list, compiled by searching the USA Spending website, of contracts awarded to Jefferson Consulting by the US Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, State, Interior, and Veterans Affairs. Fifty-five million dollars came from two contracts with USAID, the Agency for International Development, roughly three-quarters of that $76 million.”

“The Collins campaign did not dispute the total amount in contracts,” News Center Maine added, “but said it was the Obama administration, not Congress, that was responsible for doling out those funds between 2009 and 2016.” (The executive branch awards federal contracts that are funded through congressional appropriations.)

During a press conference on Thursday, Platner rejected the notion that Collins’ support for appropriations that ultimately benefited the firm that employed her husband was innocuous because she wasn’t responsible for awarding the contracts.

“My entire life, I have heard from the political system that all of these very obvious mechanisms of corruption aren’t actually corruption,” he said. “That when we see people appropriating funds, when we see procurement systems in place, that the money comes from appropriations from the Senate and from the House, that somehow these things are entirely divorced, and it’s just sheer coincidence that people who are connected to those in power wind up receiving lots of extra money.”

“Obviously that’s false,” Platner added. “Any normal person can see that if you are directly tied to the power of the United States senator and you yourself benefit from it, and that senator’s household benefits from it, that there’s obviously some form of connection there.”

In addition to the “Collins Rule,” Platner’s anti-corruption agenda calls for barring members of Congress and their spouses from trading stocks, “under penalty of imprisonment.”

“As long as sitting members of Congress are allowed to hold and trade stock connected to the industries they have a hand in regulating, the public will keep asking whether their policy decisions serve our best interest—or their own bank accounts,” the agenda reads.

Collins has opposed bipartisan legislation that would ban congressional stock trading, arguing for better enforcement of existing laws such as the STOCK Act—which the Maine Republican has violated dozens of times by missing the 45-day deadline to report her husband’s trades.

NOTUS reported earlier this year that Daffron “purchased a Pfizer corporate bond worth from $15,001 to $50,000 on February 3, but Collins didn’t disclose the purchase to the Senate” until late March. Collins, whose net worth skyrocketed following her marriage to Daffron, says she has never owned or traded individual stocks during her three-decade Senate career.

Platner’s agenda calls for “dramatically” increasing penalties for STOCK Act violations, which typically amount to a minuscule $200 fine. The Democratic candidate argues that “criminal prosecution—including imprisonment—[must be] on the table for the worst offenses, not a $200 parking ticket.”

The Platner campaign’s “Corruption Crackdown” also calls for overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, shuttering the revolving door between Washington and corporate America by permanently banning former lawmakers from lobbying Congress, prohibiting candidates for federal office from receiving corporate PAC money, and requiring the Pentagon to pass an audit before it receives any additional funding.

“The establishment has rigged the system with legalized corruption and poisoned our elections with billionaire money and a politics that enriches the powerful at the expense of working people,” Platner said Thursday. “We’re taking this fight directly to Susan Collins and her billionaire donors, and we won’t stop until power is returned to the working people of Maine.”

Senate Republicans unveiled annual farm legislation this week that would do nothing to address the worsening nationwide hunger crisis spurred by President Donald Trump and the GOP’s unprecedented assault on federal food aid.

The draft bill introduced Tuesday by Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, omits a Democratic proposal to delay a provision of the 2025 Republican budget law that will require states to pay a share of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for the first time in the program’s history, while also increasing states’ share of administrative costs. State leaders have warned of massive budgetary impacts that could result in even deeper cuts to food aid—and potentially force states to withdraw from the SNAP program entirely

Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), said it was “unconscionable” for Republicans to do nothing in the face of large-scale loss of food aid—including among children—and a looming budgetary disaster for states across the country.

“The harm unfolding across the country is already far greater than many anticipated, with more than 4 million people losing SNAP through March,” Cox said in a statement Tuesday. “Even more people will lose the vital food assistance they need to afford groceries unless Congress immediately delays HR 1’s unprecedented shift of significant new SNAP costs to states.”

Without congressional action, the SNAP cost-shifting provision of the Republican budget law will take effect on October 1, 2027. Survey data released this month shows that nearly 30% of US state governments believe they could be forced to narrow SNAP eligibility to cope with the new costs, which are expected to average $218 million per state. Eleven percent of states “identified withdrawing from SNAP as a potential risk,” according to the poll conducted by the American Public Human Services Association.

Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, said Tuesday that the Republican farm bill “ignores the needs of tens of millions of people, including families with children, older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans, who are finding it increasingly difficult to put food on the table.”

“By shifting program costs to states, expanding time limits, and putting a cap on future benefit adjustments, HR 1 has undermined SNAP, the stability of families, communities, and local economies, and weakened state budgets,” FitzSimons warned. “The SNAP benefit cost shift to states and increase in states’ administrative costs will force states to make impossible choices: reduce education funding, delay infrastructure investments, cut public health programs, constrain Medicaid spending, raise taxes, or reduce access to SNAP itself.”

Senate Republicans unveiled their farm legislation amid a growing hunger and affordability crisis that experts say is directly attributable to Trump-GOP policies, from blanket tariffs to the war on Iran to SNAP cuts that the new bill—like the House version—does nothing to reverse.

Survey data released Tuesday by the No Kid Hungry campaign found that 55% of low-income families with children have had to cut back on groceries recently to make ends meet. The poll also found that 90% of families surveyed reported that they “would have to cut back significantly on food” if they lost SNAP benefits.

“Rising prices are making it harder for families to afford basic necessities,” George Kelemen, senior vice president of the No Kid Hungry campaign, said in a statement. “That’s why SNAP’s grocery benefit, which helps feed about 40 million Americans including nearly 16 million children, is a vital support for helping them put food on the table.”

“This SNAP crisis is too dangerous to ignore,” Kelemen added. “Reasonable steps must be included in this farm bill to delay the cost-sharing until states have the time they need to implement all the complex changes handed to them.”

US Sen. Susan Collins on Monday faced backlash, including from the Democratic candidate trying to unseat her, for falsely stating that the Supreme Court ruling overturning the federal right to abortion was decided 6-3 and that Justice Brett Kavanaugh was not a pivotal vote.

In a newly aired Fox News interview, Collins (R-Maine) said she “disagreed with the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but the fact is, whether Justice Kavanaugh were confirmed or not, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned, given the 6-3 vote.” The vote to overturn Roe, ending the constitutional right to abortion, was in fact 5-4, with Kavanaugh joining the majority despite Collins’ repeated insistence during the judge’s Senate confirmation process that he would not support toppling critical precedents.

“Susan Collins is lying through her teeth,” Graham Platner, the Republican incumbent’s Democratic challenger, said in a statement.

“Roe v. Wade was not overturned 6-3. That is a lie. It was 5-4. Brett Kavanaugh was the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, and Susan Collins was the deciding vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.”

“And let’s be very clear: Everyone knew that Brett Kavanaugh would overturn Roe,” Platner continued. “She can lie and say she was misled. She can claim she’s disappointed. But the reality is, she knew exactly why Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh—and she voted to confirm him anyway.”

Collins said last week that she doesn’t regret voting to confirm Kavanaugh in 2018, despite the devastating impact of the high court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. A new analysis by the National Partnership for Women & Families found that “more than 47 million women of reproductive age live in states with clinic closures” or “states that have attacked access to medication abortion” in the aftermath of Dobbs.

Earlier on Monday, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF) endorsed Platner’s campaign to deny Collins a sixth Senate term, noting that “in the four years since the Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion, the Trump administration and its backers in Congress and the states have repeatedly weaponized Dobbs and attacked reproductive healthcare.”

“President Trump and his allies are using every lever of power at their disposal to make it harder for people to get the care they need, including by attempting to permanently ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, PPAF’s president and CEO. “Mainers deserve a senator they can trust to have their backs at every turn. It is clear that is not Susan Collins.”

The Trump administration accelerated its assault on the US Education Department on Tuesday by announcing that the agency’s work defending civil rights and students with disabilities will be placed under the authority of other federal departments, a move that teachers, Democratic lawmakers, and advocacy organizations condemned as illegal and disastrous for vulnerable children.

Linda McMahon, the billionaire education secretary who has enthusiastically advanced the destruction of her own agency, announced the transfer of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services—which oversees the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—to the US Department of Health and Human Services, headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Additionally, the Justice Department will oversee the work of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, McMahon said, claiming the changes would “break down the bureaucratic barriers and strengthen the coordination of resources to improve programs that serve infants, toddlers, children, and adults.”

Critics argued the moves would do the opposite, scattering crucial programs across departments that lack the expertise and resources to fulfill the education offices’ mandates, ultimately depriving children and their families of support.

“Moving IDEA out of the Department of Education is not an administrative adjustment—it is an attack on the educational and civil rights foundation of the law,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. “It would drag us backward by treating disability as a medical issue instead of an educational right and by unraveling decades of progress. The Department of Education is the only federal agency with the expertise, infrastructure, and specialists needed to protect students’ rights and ensure they receive the services they are guaranteed.”

“Relocating the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice as part of this scheme would further erode federal oversight and endanger disability-rights enforcement nationwide,” Pringle added.

The Arc of the United States, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said that “moving special education to HHS and civil rights enforcement to DOJ would split apart the offices responsible for making disability rights real in schools, leaving families chasing answers across the federal government instead of getting accountability from one education agency.”

“Moving IDEA oversight into HHS pushes students with disabilities toward a medical model, where disability is treated as a diagnosis to manage instead of a natural part of human life,” said Katy Neas, the group’s CEO. “When that mindset drives education decisions, students are more likely to be segregated, underestimated, or treated as separate from the school community.”

“It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades of hard-won progress for students.”

The changes that McMahon announced Tuesday are part of the Trump administration’s effort to completely dismantle the Education Department, which cannot be legally abolished without congressional approval. The Washington Post noted that the newly targeted offices were among the last Education Department segments to “outsource major functions,” underscoring that the administration’s assault “has advanced far more than most observers predicted would be possible.”

In addition to displacing agency functions, the Trump administration has gutted the Education Department’s staff, firing nearly half of its workers in what opponents say is an obvious effort to decimate public education.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the transfer of critical functions out of the Education Department is unlawful, “usurping the power of the purse while the Republican majority stands idly by, forfeiting their authority as a co-equal branch of government.” DeLauro pointed to language in a 2026 appropriations measure enacted earlier this year that prohibits the Education Department from transferring responsibilities to other federal agencies without congressional approval.

“This is a disgraceful violation of the law,” DeLauro said Tuesday. “By moving special education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, the administration is taking us back to a dark period in American history. One where individuals with disabilities were viewed not as whole persons deserving of an education, but as medical patients whose education is not a priority.”

The top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, Patty Murray of Washington, warned that “the Trump administration is abandoning kids with disabilities and its most basic legal responsibility to protect the rights of every student in the classroom.”

“Instead of helping kids get a great education, this administration is spending its time, energy, and taxpayer resources fixated on where employees sit and illegally trying to shutter the Department of Education,” said Murray. “It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades of hard-won progress for students.”

A group of Democratic US senators warned Monday that congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump could be gearing up for a push for raise the retirement age as part of a broader—and deeply unpopular—effort to slash Social Security benefits after the 2026 midterm elections.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a letter to Trump that they have “renewed concerns” that his administration is “considering raising the retirement age, cutting the earned benefits of millions of Americans,” despite the president’s repeated vows to shield the program.

“Republicans have a history of attempting to increase the retirement age, privatize Social Security, or otherwise cut Social Security benefits, and some congressional Republicans have called to raise the retirement age or means-test benefits,” the lawmakers wrote, emphasizing that GOP lawmakers “are not alone.”

“In an interview this past fall, [Social Security Administration] Commissioner Frank Bisignano said—and later attempted to retract after public outcry—that your administration was considering this idea,” the Democratic senators wrote of raising the retirement age, which would cut Social Security benefits across the board.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of a 2024 Republican proposal to raise Social Security’s full retirement age found that doing so would cut benefits by an average of 13% for people born after 1971.

The Democratic senators sent their letter to Trump days after Social Security’s trustees said in their annual report that the program will be unable to pay out full benefits by the end of 2032—a quarter earlier than projected last year—unless Congress takes action. The finding was seen as evidence of the damage inflicted by Trump’s policies, including his tariffs and tax cuts for the rich.

Ahead of the trustees report’s release, House Speaker Mike Johnson declared that Social Security needs to be “adjusted and fixed” and said Republicans would release their plan “next year,” without specifying what the proposal would entail.

In their letter to Trump on Monday, the trio of Democratic senators demanded to know if the president is aware of “Republican plans to cut Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits” and whether he would veto GOP legislation that slashes those programs.

“Raising the retirement age—or otherwise cutting benefits—only worsens the looming retirement income crisis,” the lawmakers wrote. “Doing so hurts older Americans, cutting monthly benefits and forcing millions into poverty.”

A group of Democratic members of the US Congress on Friday condemned President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers’ attempts to influence the results of Colombia’s upcoming presidential runoff, calling it an “insult” to the Colombian people’s sovereignty.

“We see actions by US President Donald Trump and other members of Congress to endorse, advocate for, or otherwise tip the scales to a particular candidate as detrimental to the democratic rights of the Colombian people,” said the lawmakers, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). “The future of Colombia must be decided by the Colombian people—not American politicians with their own agenda.”

The statement came days after Trump publicly injected himself into Colombia’s presidential contest by endorsing far-right candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, a 47-year-old defense lawyer who has pledged to “disembowel the left.”

“The results of this Election are very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post earlier this month. “Because of his tremendous accomplishments in life, and his political support for me, personally, it is my Honor to give Abelardo my Complete and Total Endorsement.”

The US president said that if De la Espriella wins, he “will have the total support and strength of the United States behind him.”

The Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that “the implicit threat in Trump’s endorsement of De la Espriella is that Colombians will be punished—through reduced aid, tariffs, sanctions, etc.—if they vote for a political leader not backed by the United States.”

Two Republican lawmakers, Rep. María Salazar of Florida and Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, have also endorsed De la Espriella. The New York Times reported that “before Mr. Trump posted his full-throated endorsement of Mr. De La Espriella, Mr. Moreno held a call with reporters in which he said US officials had ‘vetted’ Mr. De La Espriella and found him to be ‘impeccable.’”

De la Espriella will face leftist Sen. Iván Cepeda, an ally of incumbent President Gustavo Petro, in the June 21 presidential runoff.

Petro has criticized his US counterpart for meddling in Colombia’s presidential race, urging Trump in a recent social media post to “not intervene in the campaign and allow the people of Colombia to decide freely.”

“Whoever wins will maintain the friendship of more than two centuries between Colombia and the US,” Petro added.

Earlier this week, Petro planned to meet with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani during the Colombian leader’s trip to the US, but “the Trump administration effectively nixed it in a behind-the-scenes effort,” The Washington Post reported.

“The Colombian government quietly called off the event following a meeting between US and Colombian officials in Bogotá in which State Department officials made clear that this week’s engagement was unacceptable, a move Colombian officials interpreted as a threat to arrest Petro on site if he proceeded,” the newspaper revealed. “A State Department official told The Washington Post that the visit would violate visa restrictions the US imposed against Petro following his comments last year criticizing US support of Israel’s war in Gaza and imploring US soldiers to disobey presidential orders to kill.”

A Trump White House plan to give political appointees more power over federal grant money has sparked alarm among scientists, public health organizations, environmental groups, and others who fear that the proposal amounts to an attempt to subordinate critical funds to the whims of the president and his far-right allies.

More than 300 organizations signed a joint letter on Friday calling on White House budget director Russell Vought, the proposed rule’s architect, to extend the public comment period that’s set to end on July 13, warning that the “scope and impact of [the Office of Management and Budget’s] rule is vast.”

“The rule will impact the entirety of government grant-making across the United States,” the groups warned. “OMB itself says the revisions suggested would relate to over $179 billion of funds to small entities.”

Politico, which exclusively obtained the letter, noted that the “proposed rule has already garnered over 15,000 public comments, with many expressing alarm that the changes could undermine research across fields.”

Under Vought’s rule, federal agencies would be required to perform “pre-issuance reviews” of federal grants—funds appropriated by Congress—to ensure their distribution is consistent with “applicable law, federal agency priorities, and the national interest.”

The rule lays out a number of standards that political appointees at federal agencies must screen for when deciding whether an organization can receive federal grant dollars. For instance, the rule would prohibit the distribution of federal grants to organizations that “promote anti-American values” or support “ideologies that deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans.”

The New York Times reported that the consequences of Vought’s rule “could fall hardest on health and science, a field in which [President Donald Trump] has pursued some of the steepest cuts in his second term.”

“In exchange for federal assistance, researchers would face limits on the subjects that they can explore, the foreign labs with which they may collaborate and even the conferences at which they can appear,” the Times noted. “Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association, a professional organization and advocacy group, said the policy could ‘devastate innovation, science, and research’ in the United States.”

Earlier this month, Lawyers for Good Government and the Environmental Protection Network said that “if finalized, the rule would put senior political appointees in charge of approving and canceling individual grants, while stripping recipients of due process rights” while attaching “ideological conditions to nearly every federal dollar, raising First Amendment and equal-protection concerns.”

The two organizations published a fact sheet warning that the proposed rule has the potential to halt billions of dollars in funding that communities across the US depend on for “health, public education, scientific research, public safety, and economic development projects.”

“This is an executive power grab that would hand presidential political appointees unchecked control over more than a trillion dollars that Congress appropriated in the interests of all Americans,” said Jillian Blanchard, senior vice president for climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government. “Conditioning funding for critical programs on ideology and viewpoint discrimination, while erasing basic due-process protections, violates freedoms of speech, equal protection, and eviscerates Congress’ power of the purse.”

Democratic lawmakers have also sounded the alarm about Vought’s proposal. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Thursday that she has given her Republican colleagues two opportunities to denounce Vought’s rule—and they declined both times.

“Vought continues to attempt to steal from communities across the country. Now, he is trying to set a new political test on grants for a wide swath of the federal government,” said DeLauro. “The test will be a simple one: Are you sufficiently loyal to the president? If the answer is no, it will result in the denial of lifesaving disaster relief, funding for research into cures, the closure of Head Start offices, and more. If you are not loyal enough, if you speak out against this administration, the president and his cronies will take away resources Congress provided.”

Elon Musk’s net worth surged past $1 trillion on Friday as SpaceX—the rocket company he founded and controls—made its debut on the public market, prompting global revulsion and calls for an aggressive wealth tax to rein in out-of-control inequality.

“Musk became the world’s first trillionaire because our tax system shields the wealth of the ultra-wealthy from taxation while requiring working to people pay taxes on every paycheck,” said Igor Volsky, director of the Tax the Greedy Billionaires Campaign. “Today’s milestone should serve as a wake-up call to us all.”

“Unless we plan to cede control and agency over our future to a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals, lawmakers must pursue bold tax policies that actually meet this moment—not just slowing the accumulation of extreme wealth, but reversing it,” Volsky added. “That means passing taxes on billionaire wealth ambitious enough to make the ultra-wealthy less wealthy, reduce the stranglehold they have over our economy and democracy, and restore the ideal that no one in America gets to buy their way to unchecked power.”

Reuters reported Friday that “most of Musk’s wealth now rests with SpaceX, where ⁠he holds a stake worth roughly $866 billion.”

“Along with Tesla and the rest of his properties, his net worth will exceed $1.1 trillion when the stock begins trading Friday,” Reuters noted. “The tally includes stock components that would vest over time.”

While Musk’s on-paper fortune could drop below the trillion-dollar mark if SpaceX’s stock price drops below $135 per share—which is highly possible, as experts argue the company’s valuation is absurd—campaigners said Friday that the milestone is an appalling product of a society that has allowed the mega-rich to dictate policy, funneling immense wealth to the very top while millions worldwide face hunger, violent displacement, and preventable disease. Oxfam has estimated that just a 10% tax on Musk’s fortune could lift 800 million people above the extreme poverty line.

“Eighty-six of Americans are worried about the price of food. Elon Musk is a trillionaire. These two things are deeply, inherently connected,” said Erica Payne, founder and president of the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires. “The level of wealth that Mr. Musk has reached requires human exploitation, wage theft, wage suppression, anti-competitive markets, monopolistic control, price collusion, inadequate tax systems, and corruption. Mostly inadequate tax systems and corruption.”

Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, have relied heavily on and benefited massively from government contracts, subsidies, and research, while paying minimal taxes.

The New York Times reported last year that SpaceX “has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any, according to internal company documents.” As for Tesla, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found earlier this year that the company “avoided almost all federal income tax on over $12 billion of US income over the past three years.”

Musk, whose immense wealth is largely stock appreciation that is not taxed in the US unless shares are sold, paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2018, according to ProPublica. “Between 2014 and 2018, he had a true tax rate of 3.27%,” the investigative outlet noted.

Writer Elizabeth Spiers argued Friday that “trillionaires shouldn’t exist,” noting in a column for The Nation that “as Musk’s wealth multiplies, he continues to prosper on the public dime.”

“Musk’s cosmic-scale wealth-hoarding is particularly abhorrent when you place it against the backdrop of how much damage he’s done,” wrote Spiers. “It’s hard to quantify the scale of destruction and deprivation that he will never personally be held accountable for. How do you value the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who have died since Musk, in his words, gleefully ‘fed [USAID] into the woodchipper’? How do you value the lives of people who will die because DOGE cut major biomedical research funding?”

“Musk has enriched himself via a rigged investment economy ensuring that those with the most contribute the least—or in many cases, nothing at all,” Spiers added.