Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

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.

The number of young children without health insurance in the US rose sharply between 2022 and 2024 and is set to continue surging as the Trump administration implements work reporting requirements and other changes expected to kick millions—adults and kids—off Medicaid.

A report published Monday by the Center for Children and Families (CCF) at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy found that nearly 220,000 additional children under the age of six were uninsured in 2024, a 23% increase from 2022. During that period, the total share of young children without health insurance rose to 5.3%—the highest rate in almost a decade.

The new report argues the rising uninsured rate among young children is “at least in part” attributable to the unwinding of pandemic-era protections that allowed people to remain on Medicaid without undergoing routine eligibility checks. The analysis found that Texas, Florida, and Georgia accounted for more than half of the increase in young children without insurance between 2022 and 2024.

Elisabeth Wright Burak and Aubrianna Osorio, researchers at CCF, wrote that “these data provide a major warning sign for what’s to come, as states grapple with the onslaught of Medicaid cuts from [the 2025 Republican budget law] and new coverage restrictions.”

“One in 4 children in the US have at least one parent who was born abroad,” the researchers wrote. “For these children, the vast majority of whom are citizens, harsh anti-immigration policies and rhetoric are already leading to missed doctor appointments, on top of the ongoing fear, uncertainty, and overall stress that can compromise healthy development of young children. Fears of safety and separation have made more parents afraid to enroll their eligible, citizen children in programs like Medicaid and [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], exposing children and families to additional financial risk and food insecurity.”

“Many more parents of young children enrolled in Medicaid themselves will be at higher risk of losing coverage as work reporting requirements and added red tape come along in 2027,” they added. “We know as parents lose coverage, their children are also at grave risk of losing access to health care through the ‘unwelcome mat’ effect.”

CCF’s report came as the Trump administration rolled out a new rule that will dictate how states implement Medicaid work reporting requirements included in the 2025 Republican budget law, which contains around $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.

Advocates warned the rule will result in millions of people, including many children, losing coverage by creating onerous bureaucratic barriers to obtaining and keeping Medicaid coverage. CCF estimated last week that, as of April 2026, roughly 2 million fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program compared to January 2025, the start of President Donald Trump’s second White House term.

“This is terrible news because when child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP goes down, the child uninsured rate goes up,” wrote Joan Alker, CCF’s executive director. “And the child uninsured rate was already going up when President Trump took office, yet we have heard nothing about this from them. Federal officials should be scrambling to figure out the root cause of this coverage loss for children as income eligibility levels did not change and the unemployment rate has been inching upward since President Trump took office.”

A pair of leading humanitarian groups warned Tuesday that millions of people will soon be “at risk of an avoidable loss of healthcare coverage” as states move to implement new Medicaid work requirements, which were at the center of the reconciliation package enacted by congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump last year.

Oxfam America and Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned in a joint letter to top federal health officials that the work requirements—which mostly target adults in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act—will result in a massive surge in the uninsured population if concrete steps aren’t taken to mitigate coverage losses.

The groups point to a Congressional Budget Office analysis projecting the Trump-GOP budget law “will cause roughly 10 million people to lose health insurance coverage by 2034,” increasing “the number of uninsured people in the US by nearly 50%, exposing millions of people to high drug and hospital costs, and forcing many to forgo or ration healthcare.”

Under the 2025 law, people subject to the work requirements must document 80 hours per month of work or another qualifying activity.

“Work requirements are sold as sensible, pragmatic reforms, but the lived reality couldn’t be more different.”

Analysts have warned that the new work reporting mandates—which account for around $326 billion of the Trump-GOP law’s total cuts to Medicaid—will create massive administrative hurdles and burdens for Medicaid recipients and for states. Given that most Medicaid recipients already work, experts say coverage loss from the new mandates will largely be attributable to enrollees’ failure to comply with byzantine reporting procedures.

“Work requirements are sold as sensible, pragmatic reforms, but the lived reality couldn’t be more different,” said Jackson Gandour, senior policy advisor for economic justice at Oxfam America. “In practice, evidence shows they can create unfair and effectively insurmountable barriers for people who need coverage and are making every effort to meet the requirements.”

The federal work requirements are set to formally take effect in most states by January 2027—though some states are rushing forward with the mandates ahead of schedule, heightening fears of chaos and large-scale coverage loss. By June 1, federal agencies must issue guidance to states on how to implement the new Medicaid work requirements.

Oxfam and HRW urged the Trump administration to do all it can to mitigate coverage loss, including by “reducing documentation requirements, broadly interpreting exemptions, and recognizing a wide range of qualifying activities that reflect real labor conditions, including gig work, unpaid caregiving, and seasonal employment.”

A 36-year-old woman in Atlanta, Georgia—which has state-level work requirements that predate the Trump-GOP mandates—told the humanitarian groups that she lost Medicaid and nutrition assistance after her child was born late last year, despite working sufficient hours to comply with Georgia’s requirements.

“After I had the baby, my Medicaid and food stamps were turned off,” she said. “[They] said that I failed to report that I was working.”

The woman said she’s spent months trying to restore her coverage, encountering chaos and administrative barriers.

“It’s hectic,” she said. “You’re not able to reach anybody.”

The Urban Institute has estimated that even if strong mitigation measures are put in place, around 3 million people could lose Medicaid coverage due to the new federal work requirements.

“These work requirements address a problem that doesn’t exist since most Medicaid recipients are already working,” said Matt McConnell, economic justice and rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They won’t fix the budget. They just strip healthcare from millions of low-income people by making it harder for them to prove they qualify.”

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that former private prison executive David Venturella will lead US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an acting capacity after the agency’s current director departs at the end of the month.

Venturella has been a senior adviser to ICE since February 2025 and previously worked at the private prison giant GEO Group for more than a decade, most recently serving as the company’s senior vice president of client relations until 2023. GEO Group is a major beneficiary of federal contracts, running immigration detention centers for ICE.

The Washington Post noted that GEO Group also “owns the only company with an ICE contract to track immigrants through GPS ankle monitors.”

“A federal ethics rule generally bars government employees from working on contracts awarded to their former employers for one year, but the administration granted him a waiver from this rule,” the Post observed.

GEO Group’s PAC donated heavily to President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and has seen a hefty return on its investment. The company reported $254 million in profits for fiscal year 2025—a 700% increase compared to the previous year—and boasted “record-setting new contract wins totaling up to $520 million.”

As an ICE adviser, Venturella has advocated for the use of warehouses to detain immigrants, a practice that has drawn nationwide outrage. NBC News noted that “after he retired from GEO, Venturella was a consultant for the company, advising on new and existing contracts, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

The Trump administration’s decision to elevate Venturella to the head of ICE comes as congressional Republicans are working to approve tens of billions of dollars in additional funding for the agency, even as deaths in detention rise and immigration officers unleashed by the president continue to face backlash for fatal abuses across the country.

The GOP’s budget reconciliation proposal, according to an analysis by the American Immigration Council, includes over $38 billion for ICE to “expand and sustain enforcement operations by hiring and equipping personnel across its divisions, supporting detention and removal transportation, upgrading technology and facilities, and expanding 287(g) agreements with local law enforcement.”

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), a lead sponsor of legislation that would terminate all existing federal contracts for immigration detention, said Tuesday that Venturella’s appointment as acting ICE chief “is to ensure Trump’s corporate bosses continue profiting from our communities’ pain.”

“But Americans demand oversight and accountability,” said Ramirez. “We must Melt ICE, end detention, and dismantle [the Department of Homeland Security].”

US President Donald Trump’s Justice Department moved Thursday to settle a Biden-era antitrust lawsuit against the analytics firm Agri Stats, proposing an agreement that critics say would effectively give the stamp of federal approval to meat industry price-fixing schemes.

The Justice Department—now headed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal lawyer—hailed the proposed settlement as a “historic” win over a company whose “business model directly raised the price of chicken, turkey, and pork in local grocery stores across our nation.” But critics said the agreement, which must undergo review by a federal judge, would do nothing substantial to rein in price-fixing in the meat industry.

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, said the deal “stinks of rotting meat,” noting that the settlement was proposed just days before the case was set to go to trial.

“No way does it address the harms,” Hepner said of the 79-page settlement. “Agri Stats spent decades hiking prices on over 90% of processed meat in the country. Now they’re being told to exercise some discretion going forward.”

“It’s a gut punch to those who worked on this case for four years thinking it might actually deter these price fixing services from cropping up in every other industry,” Hepner added.

The Biden administration brought the antitrust lawsuit against Agri Stats in September 2023, accusing the company and its subsidiary EMI of “collecting, integrating, and distributing competitively sensitive information related to price, cost, and output among competing meat processors.”

“While distributing troves of competitively sensitive information among participating processors, Agri Stats withholds its reports from meat purchasers, workers and American consumers, resulting in an information asymmetry that further exacerbates the competitive harm of Agri Stats’ information exchanges,” the Biden DOJ said.

“This settlement legalizes meat price-fixing—it just says you have to bring the giant retailers and distributors in on the game.”

The Trump Justice Department’s settlement would require Agri Stats to “make the vast majority of information” it distributes “available to all interested domestic purchasers on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms,” along with several other conditions.

But the settlement states that EMI is not otherwise “prohibited... from continuing to provide EMI Price Reports in substantially the same manner as it did as of April 24, 2026.”

Agri Stats noted in a statement Thursday that it “denied all allegations” of illegal conduct and “has admitted no wrongdoing” as part of the settlement. Agri Stats’ lead counsel in the case called the deal “a win” for both the company and consumers—a claim that antitrust advocates rejected, calling the agreement blatantly one-sided in the corporation’s favor.

“This settlement legalizes meat price-fixing—it just says you have to bring the giant retailers and distributors in on the game,” wrote Basel Musharbash, managing attorney at Antimonopoly Counsel. “Get ready for even higher prices for chicken, turkey, and pork.”

The proposed Agri Stats settlement is the latest favorable deal that Trump’s Justice Department—which is in the grip of lobbyists with ties to the president—has cut with a major corporation accused of illegal price-fixing.

Last November, as Common Dreams reported, the Justice Department agreed to settle a Biden-era lawsuit filed against the real estate software company RealPage, which was accused of an “unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing and to monopolize the market for commercial revenue management software.”

RealPage welcomed the settlement, noting that the agreement included “no financial penalties, damages, or findings or admissions of wrongdoing.”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said during a public conference this week that the so-called Trump Accounts established under the GOP’s 2025 budget law represent a viable path toward Social Security privatization—something the Texas lawmaker described as a “dirty little secret.”

During a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California, Cruz said that “conservatives in America, for 50 years... have been trying to do Social Security personal accounts.” Cruz, who lamented the failure of Bush-era efforts to privatize Social Security, described such personal accounts as vehicles into which the payroll taxes that finance current Social Security benefits could be diverted.

In the not-too-distant future, Cruz envisioned, “we’re going to be able to go to parents and say, ‘Hey, you know that Trump Account your kid has? ... Wouldn’t you like to be able to keep a portion of your tax payments that you’re paying already and, instead of sending it to Uncle Sam, wouldn’t you like to have a Trump Account just like your kid does?’'’

“My prediction is, within five years, that is going to have a really compelling constituency,” the Texas Republican added.

Linda Benesch, vice president of communications at the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams that Cruz’s comments laid bare the “two-pronged strategy to push Social Security privatization: Creating the Trump Accounts with one hand and gutting the Social Security Administration with the other.”

Benesch pointed to the remarks of an anonymous Social Security Administration (SSA) worker, who warned in comments to The New Yorker earlier this week that privatization advocates plan to point to the decimated agency and declare, “Look how Social Security sucks.”

“They’ve been trying to privatize it for decades,” said the SSA worker. “Now this will give them the excuse.”

Benesch said Friday that Cruz is “giving away the other half” of the Republican scheme by promoting the eventual expansion of Trump Accounts, investment vehicles under which children born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028 are eligible for $1,000 in “seed money” from the federal government. Parents of eligible children can contribute up to $5,000 per year to the accounts.

Cruz’s comments are not the first time a Republican official has openly characterized Trump Accounts as a potential avenue for Social Security privatization.

“In a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last summer. “Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out that—to the extent that if all of a sudden these accounts grow, and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement—then that’s a game changer, too.”

Axios reported Friday that “the idea that Trump Accounts could replace or augment Social Security is something that has been talked about behind closed doors with lawmakers.”

“But no one has wanted to touch that third rail, at least publicly,” the outlet added, citing a person familiar with the private conversations.

Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, noted in a Friday statement that polling has found little support for privatizing Social Security, with a 2022 survey finding that just 15% of American voters back the idea.

“Turning over Americans’ hard-earned benefits to Wall Street would expose future retirees to unnecessary risk while lining the pockets of the financial elites who donate to Republicans,” said Richtman. “Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and their Republican allies should realize that the people will not stand for privatization of their hard-earned benefits, and we in the advocacy community will continue to ensure that it never happens.”

The Pentagon’s official estimate of the direct financial cost of the US war on Iran is a nearly threefold undercount of the actual price tag of the war, according to an expert analysis published Wednesday.

Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, produced the new cost estimate for the Popular Information newsletter. Accounting for armament use, troop deployments, and other factors, Semler estimated that the US government spent $71.8 billion on the Iran war over the course of 60 days—an average of $1.2 billion per day.

“Like the estimates from Pentagon leadership and unnamed officials, this figure refers only to direct war costs—near-term expenses for military operations, munitions, and the like—and not indirect costs, which include broader economic impacts, interest on the national debt, and longer-term expenses like veterans’ care,” explained Semler, who argued that the Pentagon’s $25 billion cost estimate suffers from “incomplete accounting of damaged or destroyed military assets, the exclusion of costs outside the department (including billions of dollars in State Department-funded military aid to Israel), and a flawed method for tracking munition expenditures.”

Semler, who detailed his methodology in a separate post, accused top Pentagon officials of attempting to deliberately mislead lawmakers and the American public about the true cost of the war, which is historically unpopular.

“The $25 billion war cost given by Pentagon Secretary [Pete] Hegseth and acting Comptroller [Jules] Hurst before Congress was a lie,” Semler wrote Wednesday. “It was a denial of the Iran war’s spiraling costs, one of several foreseen consequences of the Trump administration’s decision to go to war. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz is another predictable consequence.”

Semler’s analysis was released days after unnamed Trump administration officials told CBS News that they believe the actual US cost of the Iran war is roughly double the estimate offered under oath by Pentagon leaders.

“US officials familiar with internal assessments suggested the war’s price tag is closer to $50 billion so far,” CBS News reported. “Much of the gap is accounted for by munitions that have been used and need to be replaced. For instance, the Pentagon has lost 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones—sophisticated unmanned aircraft that can cost $30 million or more apiece—underscoring how quickly the financial toll has mounted. Taken together, the higher estimate reflects not only the tempo of operations but also the often unseen costs of attrition, as material lost in the field reshapes the ledger.”

Ongoing efforts to calculate the costs of US-Israeli war—which has killed thousands, displaced millions, sent global energy markets into chaos, and sparked fears of a worldwide food crisis—come as Trump continues to threaten Iran with an even more aggressive bombing campaign, which would send the conflict’s price tag soaring further.

In a Truth Social post early Wednesday, Trump said that if Iran doesn’t agree to US terms to end the war, “the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.”

Iran’s foreign minister on Friday accused the Pentagon of deliberately misleading the American public with its formal estimate that the war on Iran has so far cost the US $25 billion—a number that the chief Iranian diplomat said was a fourfold undercount of the conflict’s true price tag.

“The Pentagon is lying,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media. “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s gamble has directly cost America $100 billion so far, four times what is claimed. Indirect costs for US taxpayers are FAR higher. Monthly bill for each American household is $500 and rising fast.”

The Iranian diplomat’s comments came days after the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, Jules Hurst, told US lawmakers under oath that the Trump administration has thus far spent $25 billion on the historically unpopular war of choice. The New York Times observed that Hurst “did not elaborate on the figure, which was strikingly smaller than the $200 billion the Pentagon had initially requested for the conflict and suggested a major slowdown in expenditures since the start of the war, when officials estimated it had cost more than $11 billion in its first six days.”

Outside analysts’ estimates of the illegal war’s total cost to American taxpayers have varied widely, but most put the number higher than the $25 billion offered by the Pentagon.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, estimated earlier this month that the Pentagon was likely to have spent more than $33 billion during the first 39 days of the conflict. An April 10 assessment released by the conservative American Enterprise Institute after the ceasefire began put the war’s cost between $25 billion and $35 billion.

Independent policy analyst Stephen Semler has estimated that the US spent nearly $29 billion on the Iran war during just the first two weeks of the conflict—an average of $2.1 billion per day.

“Hegseth lied to Congress when he said the Iran war has cost $25 billion,” Semler wrote Thursday on social media. “It cost more than that in the first two weeks.”

On top of direct war spending, lawmakers and experts have pointed to indirect costs of war in the form of higher gas and food prices paid by American consumers.

US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on the House floor on Thursday that the Iran war has cost Americans over $630 billion—or $5,000 per household on average—“because of the increase in the price of food, the price of gas, the price of electricity.”

“We need to end this war now, and help the American people reduce costs,” said Khanna.

Linda Bilmes, a public policy expert at the Harvard Kennedy School, said in early April that the Iran war’s cost to the US is likely to exceed $1 trillion in the long-term, when accounting for veterans’ care and other outlays.

“It is hard to measure the exact cost,” said Bilmes. “But based on what we know now, it is costing about two billion dollars a day in short-term, upfront costs, which is the tip of the iceberg.”

Reporters Without Borders warned Thursday that the United States is facing a “press freedom crisis” as President Donald Trump and his subordinates wage an aggressive assault on the media that has included threats of treason charges and imprisonment against journalists.

The Trump administration’s active disdain for press freedom has pushed the US to its lowest-ever rank on Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, which ranks countries based on numerous indicators including legal protections for journalists, reporter safety, and overall political hostility toward the press. The US landed at 64th out of 180 countries on the latest version of the index, falling seven spots compared to last year.

“The US has experienced a steady decline in the RSF Index over the past decade, but President Trump is pouring gasoline on the fire,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF’s North America section. “Trump and his administration have carried out a coordinated war on press freedom since the day he took office, and we will live with the consequences for years to come.”

“The index shows that this decline is measurable and ongoing, but preventable,” Weimers added. “Our message is clear: Protect legal rights, ensure accountability for attacks on media professionals, and support independent media to restore American press freedom.”

RSF specifically cites Trump’s efforts to dismantle public broadcasters, weaponization of government agencies to punish media outlets and figures critical of his administration, and lawsuits against “disfavored outlets” as factors contributing to the erosion of press freedom in the US.

The index also points to rising violence against journalists during Trump’s second term in the White House. “According to the US Press Freedom Tracker,” RSF notes, “there were more than 170 attacks on journalists in 2025, nearly double the previous year, driven by an increase in violence against journalists while covering protests and law enforcement activity.”

The precipitous decline of press freedoms in the US comes in the context of growing attacks on and criminalization of journalism worldwide. For the first time in the 25-year history of RSF’s index, more than half of the world’s countries currently fall in the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedoms.

The country that ranked last on the index for 2026 was Eritrea, a nation that is “sadly notorious for detaining journalists longer than any other country in the world,” said RSF.

Norway ranked first on this year’s index, with RSF praising the country’s “robust” legal safeguards for press freedom, “vibrant” media market, and “extensive editorial independence” for publishing companies.

Anne Bocandé, RSF’s editorial director, said that “current protection mechanisms” for journalism worldwide “are not strong enough” to withstand escalating attacks by “authoritarian states, complicit or incompetent political powers, predatory economic actors, and underregulated online platforms.”

“How much longer will we tolerate the suffocation of journalism, the systematic obstruction of reporters and the continued erosion of press freedom?” Bocandé asked. “The ball is in the court of democracies and their citizens. It is up to them to stand in the way of those who seek to silence the press. The spread of authoritarianism isn’t inevitable.”

House Republicans on Wednesday passed a budget resolution that sets the stage for GOP lawmakers to draft and approve more funding for immigration enforcement without any support from Democrats, who condemned the proposal as another “blank check” for rogue agencies.

The resolution, which cleared the GOP-controlled Senate last week, gives Republicans the ability to allocate up to $140 billion total to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), agencies that President Donald Trump has unleashed on American cities with deadly consequences. Republicans have said they plan to allocate roughly $70 billion total to the immigration agencies, which Democrats have refused to fund through the normal appropriations process without reforms.

The new GOP legislation will proceed through the budget reconciliation process, which is exempt from the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster, enabling Republicans to fund ICE and CBP without Democratic backing.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement that the GOP’s proposal “does nothing to protect healthcare, help families struggling with groceries, gas prices, and everyday expenses, or make our communities safer.”

“House and Senate Republicans just paved the way to hand ICE and CBP another $70 billion without any reforms or accountability,” said Boyle. “Republicans keep telling working families we cannot afford healthcare or relief from the cost-of-living crisis they continue to make worse, but they never seem to have a problem writing massive checks for these out-of-control agencies. I will keep fighting every step of the way to stop this reckless bill.”

The forthcoming reconciliation package marks the second time Republicans have used the filibuster-proof budget process to ram through their agenda. Last summer, Republicans passed a sprawling budget reconciliation measure that included unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance as well as tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

The previous legislation also contained $75 billion for ICE—making the agency’s budget larger than that of the militaries of Canada, Australia, Spain, and other nations.

“Last year, Republicans gave ICE a $75 billion slush fund, transforming the agency into Donald Trump’s personal army in essence,” Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said Wednesday. “We have seen agents execute US citizens in the streets, snatch mothers from their children in our communities, and use excessive force against peaceful protesters. Now, they want to pass another $70 billion for this cruel and lawless agenda—holding up pay for our hard-working TSA officers and Coast Guard until ICE gets another blank check. I have opposed ICE since its inception.”

“They don’t need more funding—they need to be disbanded,” Larson added. “Congress should focus on paying our civil servants and troops and taking on the high prices squeezing families thanks to the failed Trump agenda, not billions for ICE.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) echoed that message in floor remarks criticizing the Republican plan:

House Republicans passed their budget blueprint as new data showed that their first reconciliation package has spurred the steepest decline in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation in decades.

An analysis released Wednesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) shows that SNAP participation fell by more than 3 million people across the US between July 2025 and January 2026. The think tank noted that “it took over three years for the caseload to drop by over 3 million people (or 7%) between its peak in December 2012 and February 2016, during the recovery following the Great Recession.”

The new Republican budget reconciliation package would do nothing to ameliorate the damage inflicted by the previous bill. The GOP is also already considering what House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has described as “reconciliation 3.0,” a new package that could include additional cuts to safety net programs.

Meanwhile, in the regular appropriations process, House Republicans voted to advance government funding legislation that would take food aid from millions by cutting the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

“Parents are already making impossible choices at the grocery store—skipping meals, stretching food, and worrying about how to feed their kids,” said Ailen Arreaza, executive director of the advocacy group ParentsTogether. “Cutting WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefit means taking fresh, healthy food off the plates of new mothers, babies, and young children at a time when families need more support, not less.”

“You can’t say you want to make America healthy again while reducing access to the very foods that help children grow and thrive,” Arreaza added.

The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that his organization has submitted evidence of US-Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court and other global bodies, seeking accountability for massive attacks on civilian infrastructure and other violations.

“The ICC prosecutor announced that the documents provided by the IRCS are accepted as official evidence,” said Pir-Hossein Koulivand, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society. “All cases of attacks on civilians are being legally pursued based on the Geneva Conventions.”

The IRCS estimates that US and Israeli airstrikes have destroyed more than 132,000 civilian structures throughout Iran, including hospitals, apartment buildings, universities, research facilities, and bridges. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to destroy all of Iran’s bridges and power plants if the country’s leadership does not succumb to his administration’s demands in negotiations to end the war.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, the founding chief prosecutor of the ICC, said earlier this month that Trump could be indicted if he follows through on his threats.

“My suggestion: You read the indictment of the Russians, change the name, and it is very similar,” said Ocampo, referring to ICC arrest warrants issued against senior Russian officials in 2024 for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

In a series of social media posts on Saturday, the IRCS provided video footage and photographic evidence of what the group described as war crimes committed by the US and Israeli militaries.

“Among the most bitter war crimes of America and Israel in Iran is the attack on the home of 19-month-old Helma in Tabriz, in which four members of her family were martyred,” the IRCS wrote Saturday. “The only survivor of this family is Helma.”

The ICC is tasked with investigating and prosecuting individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other grave violations of international law. Iran is not currently a party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC—so the court does not have jurisdiction over war crimes committed on Iranian territory.

Human rights organizations and advocates have implored Iran to grant the ICC jurisdiction to pursue justice for war crimes committed during the illegal US-Israeli assault that began on February 28. On the first day of the war, the US bombed an elementary school in southern Iran.

“From the killing of over 150 students and teachers to strikes on hospitals full of newborns, every day more and more evidence emerges pointing to the commission of grave war crimes in Iran since the start of the war,” said Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN. “Victims deserve justice. The mechanisms exist, and the US has no veto over them.”

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote earlier this month that “the Iranian government could join the court now and grant it retroactive jurisdiction, similar to what Ukraine did to allow prosecution of Russian war crimes.”

Last month, the IRCS formally requested that the ICC initiate “an investigation into war crimes arising from attacks by the United States of America and the Israeli regime against civilian objects.”

“According to field reports from relief workers, operational documentation, and data recorded by the Iranian Red Crescent Society, a wide range of residential areas, medical facilities, schools, humanitarian facilities, vital urban infrastructure, and public places were directly or indiscriminately targeted during the recent military attacks,” the group wrote in a letter to the ICC’s top prosecutor.

US President Donald Trump on Friday quietly fired every member of the independent board that governs the National Science Foundation, a move seen as an escalation of the administration’s destructive war on science.

Members of the National Science Board (NSB) were notified in a brief email “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump” that their “position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately.” One fired board member, chemist Willie May, told The New York Times that he was “disappointed” but not “entirely surprised,” adding, “I have watched the systematic dismantling of the scientific advisory infrastructure of this government with growing alarm, and the National Science Board is simply the latest casualty.”

The NSB sets the policies of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), approves major funding decisions for NSF, and advises Congress and the president on “policy matters related to science and engineering.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, said in a statement Saturday that “this is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation.”

“The NSB is apolitical,” said Lofgren. “It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the foundation. Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won’t stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries? A real bozo the clown move.”

Alondra Nelson, an academic who resigned from the NSB last May over concerns of political interference, wrote on social media that “history will not look kindly on this administration for many reasons, but the systematic silencing of independent expertise is particularly troubling.”

Since the start of his second term, Trump and his deputies have assailed science across the federal government, including by eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research arm and firing experts en masse.

In the coming fiscal year, Trump has proposed cutting NSF’s budget by nearly 55%. Additionally, the president’s budget would “eliminate funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research,” Scientific American reported. The White House plan, if approved by Congress, would also slash NASA’s budget by nearly 25%.

“This is how the US loses its scientific leadership—with a reckless budget line,” Leigh Stearns, a glaciologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told Scientific American.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam late Wednesday accused the Israeli military of war crimes after rescue workers recovered the body of journalist Amal Khalil from the ruins of a house in southern Lebanon that Israel bombed hours earlier.

“Targeting journalists, obstructing the access of relief teams to them—and indeed, re-targeting their locations after these teams have arrived—constitutes a clear-cut war crime,” Salam wrote on social media. “Israel’s targeting of media professionals in the south while they are performing their professional duties is no longer a matter of isolated incidents; rather, it has become a proven pattern—one that we condemn and reject, just as it is condemned and rejected by all international laws and norms.”

Khalil, who was reporting on Israel’s assault on southern Lebanon for the daily newspaper Al-Akhbar, took cover in a local house after an Israeli strike nearly hit her car. Israeli forces then attacked the house, trapping Khalil and fellow journalist Zeinab Faraj under rubble.

A Red Cross team granted access to the scene was able to evacuate Faraj, who was badly wounded, before coming under attack by Israeli forces. The Associated Press reported that Khalil “remained under the rubble for hours before the Lebanese army, civil defense, and the Lebanese Red Cross were able to get to the scene hours later.”

“Khalil’s body was retrieved shortly before midnight, at least six hours after the strike,” AP noted. The Israeli attacks were seen as flagrant violations of the 10-day ceasefire that took effect on April 16.

Paul Morcos, Lebanon’s minister of information, confirmed Khalil’s death and said she was “targeted by the Israeli occupation army while performing her professional duty” in southern Lebanon, which has been under intense Israeli assault since early March. Khalil is the fourth media worker killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon since March 2.

“Targeting journalists is a heinous crime and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, which we will not remain silent about,” Morcos said in a statement. “We reiterate our call to the world and supporting international organizations to take action to stop it and prevent its recurrence.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an organization that works to protect press freedom worldwide, pointed to “reports that Khalil had received a direct death threat attributed to the [Israel Defense Forces] in September 2024” as potential evidence that Israel deliberately targeted her.

“The repeated strikes on the same location, the targeting of an area where journalists were sheltering, and the obstruction of medical and humanitarian access constitute a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” Sara Qudah, CPJ’s regional director in the Middle East and North Africa, said Wednesday. “CPJ holds Israeli forces responsible.”