Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

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.”

Close to half of the children in the United States—more than 33 million kids—live in counties with dangerously high levels of toxic air pollution, according to the American Lung Association’s annual air quality report out Wednesday.

The 27th iteration of the ALA’s report examines “two of the most widespread and dangerous air pollutants”—fine particles and ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog—and assigns grades to counties and cities based on pollution levels, both daily and annually. In what the report describes as a “grim indication of the deterioration of air quality nationwide,” just one city—Bangor, Maine—was “ranked on all three cleanest-cities lists by earning an ‘A’ for ozone and short-term particle pollution and being listed among the 25 cities with the lowest year-round particle levels.”

“Last year, there were two (the other metro area being San Juan-Bayamón, Puerto Rico),” the report notes. “Past reports have been graced by as many as half a dozen metro areas meeting these criteria.”

The report, which uses air quality data collected between 2022 and 2024, estimated that 46% of all children in the US live in counties that received a failing grade on at least one measure of air pollution analyzed by the ALA. More than 7 million children—10% of all kids in the country—live in an area with failing grades for all three of the ALA’s measures.

Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the ALA, said at a time when the federal government should be strengthening air quality standards, President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “is doing the opposite,” despite Trump’s campaign promise to deliver “the cleanest air.”

“In the last year, EPA has weakened enforcement and rolled back rules that would have protected kids from power plant and vehicle pollution,” said Wimmer. “Children need clean air to grow and play, and communities need clean air to thrive. Leaders at every level must act to improve and protect America’s air quality.”

For the seventh consecutive year, Bakersfield, California ranked as the US metropolitan area with the worse year-round particle pollution. Fairbanks, Alaska ranked as the city with the worse short-term particle pollution, while Los Angeles topped the list of cities with the worst ozone pollution.

The Trump administration has gleefully taken an ax to climate regulations—including air pollution standards—and the legal finding underpinning environmental rules while aggressively promoting the oil, gas, and coal industries, threatening decades of progress toward cleaner air and water.

The Guardian noted Wednesday that “since returning to office last year, the Trump administration has initiated at least 70 actions to roll back environmental and climate protections. Among them is the loosening of regulations on power plants that limit mercury and other hazardous air toxins.”

“Other rollbacks include overturning limits on major air pollution sources, disbanding EPA advisory committees on air quality, and ending the practice of estimating the monetary value of lives saved by limiting fine particulate matter and ozone while still calculating costs to companies,” the outlet added.

The Trump administration is considering enacting a policy that would automatically funnel seniors into for-profit Medicare Advantage plans—which critics say would set Medicare on the path to full-scale privatization.

Chris Klomp, the Trump administration’s director of Medicare and deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told STAT last month that enrolling seniors in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans by default “is something that we’re thinking through.” MA plans are funded by the federal government and run by private insurance companies such as UnitedHealthcare and Humana, both of which have been accused of improperly denying necessary care to patients and overcharging taxpayers.

The default enrollment scheme was floated in the far-right Project 2025 agenda that President Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to disavow. Currently, older Americans who have received Social Security benefits for at least four months before they turn 65 are automatically enrolled in traditional Medicare, and they can choose to enroll in an MA plan as an alternative.

“Another bad idea straight from Project 2025,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said in response to Klomp’s comments on the proposed default enrollment change. “Medicare Advantage is private, for-profit insurance that overcharges American taxpayers by billions every year and regularly denies seniors the care they need.”

“Making Medicare Advantage the default option hurts patients and taxpayers,” Pocan added, “but it will make insurance execs a lot of money.”

“With Mehmet Oz running the agency, they can move incredibly quickly to make that happen, and they are.”

Klomp said no plans have been finalized, but defenders of traditional Medicare warned that CMS—headed by Mehmet Oz, who during his 2022 US Senate run backed a plan entitled “Medicare Advantage for All”—could try to swiftly ram the change through without public input.

“With Mehmet Oz running the agency, they can move incredibly quickly to make that happen, and they are,” Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, told Common Dreams on Friday. “They will not explain it to the people, because the people hate the idea. Instead, they say ‘change the default option’ and other policy jargon to try and hide the fact of what they are doing, privatizing Medicare.”

“They want to remove the guarantee of Medicare,” warned Lawson, “and replace it with the same private insurance giants that make billions denying healthcare, especially to those who need it the most.”

Experts say making Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment option for seniors would likely decrease traditional Medicare enrollment dramatically.

Given massive overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans—potentially $1.2 trillion over the next decade, according to one independent estimate—a large increase in MA enrollment would be sure to drive up costs and monthly premiums across the board. A report released last month by the congressional Joint Economic Committee estimated that MA overpayments led to premium hikes of $212 per Medicare Part B enrollee last year.

“Since 2016, MA overpayments have added an estimated $82 billion to Part B premiums,” the congressional report found. “[Traditional Medicare] beneficiaries, who are not enrolled in MA, bore roughly $6 billion of that burden.”

Under one scheme floated last year by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), eligible Medicare recipients would be automatically enrolled in the “MA plan with the lowest premium available,” unless they actively decide to opt out. Once enrolled in an MA plan, individuals would be unable to switch plans for three years.

Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who now champions Medicare for All, warned Friday that under Schweikert’s plan, “seniors would be locked in a plan that the government chose for them, that has a limited network of doctors and hospitals, that makes them pay the entire bill for services they might receive outside of that network, and that denies coverage for medically necessary care far more than traditional Medicare—for three years.”

In addition to weighing the default enrollment change, the Trump administration has recently delivered smaller-scale but significant victories to MA insurers, including by boosting federal payment rates—bowing to a massive industry lobbying blitz—and easing rules around the marketing of MA plans.

David Lipschutz, co-director of law and policy at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said Thursday that the latter move represents “a rollback of consumer protections, which gives in to pressures from the insurance industry and those who sell their products.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday welcomed news of a two-week ceasefire in Iran as a step back from the brink of catastrophe, but said the war’s aggressors—the US and Israel—deserved no praise for the temporary reprieve.

“Ceasefires are always good news. Especially if they lead to a just and lasting peace,” Sánchez wrote on social media. “But this momentary relief cannot make us forget the chaos, the destruction, and the lives lost. The government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.”

“What’s needed now: diplomacy, international legality, and PEACE,” the prime minister added.

Drawing US President Donald Trump’s ire, Spain’s government has opposed the US-Israeli war on Iran from the start, calling it a “cruel, absurd, and illegal” assault and closing off Spain’s military bases and airspace to American forces involved in the attack.

“Remaining silent in the face of an unjust war is an act of cowardice and complicity,” Sánchez said last month.

Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said Wednesday that the government supports “the crucial work of the mediators,” including Pakistan, in preventing further escalation of the conflict that the US and Israel launched in late February.

“Diplomacy, negotiation, and international law are the only path to the lasting peace that the citizens of the Middle East deserve,” said Albares. “All parties must show responsibility and commitment to ceasing attacks and de-escalating, which Spain will continue to support.”

The foreign minister went on to stress that the ceasefire “must extend to Lebanon,” which Israel has invaded and bombed relentlessly in recent weeks, displacing 20% of the country’s population, devastating its healthcare system, and killing more than 1,500 people. On Wednesday, the Israeli’s unleashed a massive bombing blitz of Beirut, the nation’s capital and largest city.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following Trump’s announcement of the two-week ceasefire deal with Iran that the agreement “does not include Lebanon.”

“Spain will not spare any efforts in supporting the Pakistani mediation efforts in the war in the Middle East and in paving the way for diplomacy,” Albares said Wednesday. “Today is a day of hope that we hope will culminate in a definitive peace that must include Lebanon.”

The budget document that President Donald Trump’s White House is set to release Friday calls for $1.5 trillion in military spending for the coming fiscal year, an unprecedented sum that—if approved by Congress—would add nearly $7 trillion to the US national debt over the next decade.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which got an early look at the president’s fiscal year 2027 budget, reported that the plan includes roughly $1.15 trillion in baseline US military spending as well as $350 billion in supplemental funding “that Republicans could pass in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.” The Journal doesn’t specify the purpose of the proposed supplemental funding, but the Pentagon has asked Congress for at least $200 billion for the Iran war.

The budget, which would boost total US military spending by more than 40% compared to the current fiscal year, also reportedly calls for investments in Trump’s so-called Golden Dome missile defense system, a project that critics have derided as an absurd boondoggle.

Earlier this week, Trump suggested the US federal government can’t afford to fund childcare and other domestic social programs because it is “fighting wars.”

William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in an analysis of the budget proposal ahead of its official release that “whatever vehicles the administration chooses to promote this huge increase, it will be doubling down on a failed budgetary and national security strategy.”

“If passed as requested, $1.5 trillion in Pentagon spending—in a single year–will make America weaker by underwriting a misguided strategy, funding outmoded weapons programs, and crowding out other essential public investments,” Hartung argued. “The Pentagon doesn’t need more spending, it needs more spending discipline. Spending billions of dollars on a Golden Dome system that can never achieve the President’s dream of a leak-proof missile defense system is sheer waste, as is continuing to lavish funds on overpriced, underperforming combat aircraft like the F-35, or multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers that are vulnerable to modern high-speed missiles.”

“The truth is, there are not enough factories, or skilled workers, or materials to effectively spend such a huge increase,” he added. “It will be a recipe for waste, fraud, and abuse.”

In anticipation of the White House proposal, a broad coalition of nearly 300 advocacy organizations sent a letter to members of Congress on Thursday demanding that they reject Trump’s request and any other proposed budget increases for the Pentagon, which recently failed its eighth consecutive audit.

“We must invest in critical human needs programs in our communities. Instead, we have cut those programs massively,” the groups wrote, pointing to the record Medicaid and nutrition assistance cuts that Trump and congressional Republicans approved last year.

“The Pentagon is unaccountable to American taxpayers, having never passed an audit, while more than half of its budget (54 percent) is paid to corporate military contractors, whose profits are rising. Further gigantic increases would be grossly irresponsible,” the groups continued. “Funding an unaccountable Pentagon by more than $1 trillion while underfunding human needs programs undermines our security by preventing us from investing in the shared prosperity that comes from more housing, health care, climate and public health protections, ending hunger, and providing quality public education.”

The US-Israeli war on Iran and the resulting regional conflict have unleashed a wave of deadly attacks on healthcare workers and infrastructure across the Middle East, from paramedics in southern Lebanon to medical facilities and ambulances in Tehran.

The international humanitarian group Save the Children estimated on Tuesday that, since the US and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28, the Middle East has seen an average of one attack on healthcare every six hours. Overall, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded at least 120 attacks on healthcare since the start of the Iran war—86 in Lebanon, 28 in Iran, and six in Israel.

The head of the WHO said nine paramedics were killed in five separate Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon this past weekend.

“We cannot accept a world where those who save lives are targeted,” Nora Ingdal, country director at Save the Children Lebanon, said Tuesday. “Governments have long championed international humanitarian law that protects aid and health workers, and now is the time to act to prevent continued harm in Lebanon and across the wider region.”

Iranian officials have said that dozens of hospitals and other healthcare facilities are among the tens of thousands of civilian buildings damaged or destroyed by US-Israeli bombing over the past month, along with dozens of ambulances. Iran’s Emergency Medical Services Organization said Tuesday that at least 24 of the nation’s healthcare workers have been killed by US-Israeli attacks since late February.

In southern Lebanon, the Israeli assault has been devastating for the country’s healthcare system and workers. According to Save the Children, at least 55 of the country’s health facilities have been forced to close due to airstrikes and forced displacement orders from the Israeli government.

MedGlobal said Wednesday that Lebanon’s “already fragile health system is buckling under relentless pressure” of “systematic and severe” attacks, which the group emphasized are violations of international law.

“Attacks on healthcare workers are not collateral damage. They are alarming, unacceptable violations of international law,” said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and co-founder of MedGlobal. “The international community cannot remain silent while Lebanon’s health system is targeted and dismantled—just at the moment when it is needed more than ever to save lives and help the vast numbers of internally displaced people.”

US Sen. Bernie Sanders said Thursday that it is absurd for the Trump administration to demand another $200 billion from Congress for an illegal war on Iran after lawmakers already approved $1 trillion in military spending for the year—and while millions of people across the nation are struggling to afford basic necessities.

“You got people all over this country, 20% of households, spending 50% of their income on housing,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an appearance on MS NOW. “People can’t afford healthcare. People can’t afford childcare. And this guy, in addition to giving tax breaks to billionaires, now wants to spend another $200 billion on a war that should never have been fought.”

The senator’s remarks came as President Donald Trump, who has not yet formally requested the funds from Congress, suggested another $200 billion would be a “small price to pay” as the US-Israeli war on Iran heads toward its fourth week with no end in sight.

“I think the Trump people are in a bit of panic,” Sanders said Thursday. “They’re losing ground. Gas prices are soaring. There is massive discontent against this war. It’s got to end, and we’ve got to make sure that Trump is neutered in 2026.”

With the Trump administration considering a plan to deploy thousands of additional troops to the Middle East amid widespread fears of a ground invasion of Iran—which would explode the price tag of an already costly war—the National Priorities Project (NPP) released an analysis highlighting where the $200 billion requested by the Pentagon could be better spent.

The group estimated that $200 billion would be enough for all of the following this year:

• Medicaid for the 17 million people who will lose it due to budget cuts and other policies;
• Food stamps for the 22 million people who will go hungry due to Trump’s budget cuts;
• Medical care for the 1.8 million veterans of the last forever war who still live with disabilities; and
• Tripling the number of kids in Head Start, from just over 700,000 to 1.4 million kids.

“Pete Hegseth would rather the US bomb Iranian families than feed American families,” wrote NPP’s Lindsay Koshgarian, referring to the Pentagon secretary. “We should remember the lies that led us into war in Iraq a generation ago. That war ultimately cost nearly $3 trillion. We must not go down that path again. Our tax dollars should be helping struggling Americans, not feeding new forever wars.”

US President Donald Trump launched TrumpRx last month with a bold promise to the American public: “dramatically lower prices on dozens of common, high-cost, brand-name prescription drugs.”

But an analysis released Tuesday by the Center for American Progress (CAP) found that of the 54 medications listed on TrumpRx.gov as of March 16, “exactly one” drug—the fertility medication Cetrotide—is available at a “genuinely new lower price” not available elsewhere.

The CAP analysis emphasized that TrumpRx—touted by the administration as a path to “immediate relief” for consumers in the country with the highest drug prices in the world—is extremely limited by design, listing just 0.2% of all federally approved medications in the US.

Additionally, the terms that site users must accept before gaining access to coupons for discounted prices state that beneficiaries cannot be “enrolled in insurance from any government, state, or federally funded medical or prescription benefit programs.”

Patients also must have a prescription to use TrumpRx for discounts. “According to a KFF analysis,” CAP noted, “nearly half (46.6%) of uninsured adults ages 18 to 64 reported not seeing a doctor or other health professional in 2023.”

“Applied to the estimated 27.9 million adults without insurance in 2026, this means that approximately 13 million Americans will never reach the most basic prerequisite for using TrumpRx: a visit with a clinician who can write a prescription,” CAP added.

The think tank’s analysis found that 17 of the drugs on TrumpRx—or over 30% of them—have genetic equivalents that are available at a lower cost elsewhere, something that the Trump-branded platform doesn’t tell users.

“Among the remaining 37 drugs without lower-cost generics, GoodRx offers comparable or lower prices for 20,” CAP found. “That leaves 17 drugs where TrumpRx appears to offer a better deal. But in 16 of those cases, the same or lower prices were already available through manufacturer coupons and patient assistance programs. After accounting for all existing discount channels, just one drug—Cetrotide, a fertility medication—offers a price that was not previously available to cash-paying patients.”

Neda Ashtari, associate director of health policy at CAP and author of the new analysis, said in a statement that the Trump administration is “undermining the most powerful tool for lowering patients’ costs at the pharmacy counter—health insurance coverage—and replacing it with a government-branded coupon book.”

“For the 22 million Americans whose premiums have doubled, and the millions more who stand to lose coverage,” due to Trump and the GOP’s refusal to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, “a $56 discount on a fertility drug is not ‘immediate relief,’” Ashtari added.

CAP’s analysis was released a day before The New York Times and the German news organizations Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, and WDR debunked Trump’s claim last month to have delivered the lowest drug prices “in the entire world”—which would be news to the 1 in 3 US adults who say they’ve rationed medications, skipped meals, or made other painful tradeoffs over the past year to afford healthcare expenses.

“The drugs listed on TrumpRx can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars, while a patient walking into a German pharmacy pays next to nothing,” the Times observed on Wednesday. “The German health system foots the bill, and records show that, more often than not, it pays less than what the Trump administration negotiated for Americans.”

Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is reportedly trying to entice governments in the Middle East to invest billions in his private equity firm while he simultaneously works as “a special envoy for peace”—a role he appears to have used to help convince Trump to wage war on Iran.

The New York Times reported late last week that Kushner “has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm.”Citing five unnamed people with knowledge of the talks, the Times reported that “Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund,” Affinity’s largest investor. Saudi Arabia’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, reportedly played a significant role in the behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign urging Trump to attack Iran—Saudi Arabia’s top regional rival.

Bin Salman controls the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which pumped $2 billion into Kushner’s firm in 2022.

“Mr. Kushner’s fundraising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year,” the Times added. “The efforts show the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking during Mr. Trump’s second term. Only a few weeks ago, in his role as Mr. Trump’s ‘peace envoy,’ Mr. Kushner met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister. The US and Israeli bombing campaign in Iran began shortly after those meetings concluded without a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.”

Last week, Trump said he decided to attack Iran in coordination with Israel—whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a personal friend of Kushner’s—because the president “thought they were going to attack us,” a view he claimed to have reached after listening to “what Steve [Witkoff] and Jared and Pete [Hegseth] and others were telling me.”

US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in response to the Times reporting that “while US servicemembers die in another forever war in the Middle East, Donald Trump’s ‘peace envoy’ is raising money for his private equity firm.”

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, wrote in a social media post on Sunday that a “fair and equitable deal” between the US and Iran “was within reach” before Trump and Netanyahu started bombing.

“Those providing poor advice to POTUS are responsible for bloodshed,” Araghchi wrote, attaching a screenshot of the Times story on Kushner’s fundraising efforts. “This war is imposed on both Americans and Iranians.”Judd Legum, founder and author of the Popular Information newsletter, noted last week that Kushner’s participation in the Geneva diplomatic talks that preceded the US-Israeli assault on Iran “violated his pledge not to be involved in foreign policy in a second Trump administration.”

On Monday, Legum observed that Kushner also said in December 2024 that his private equity firm would not “have to raise capital for the next four years,” allowing him to “avoid any conflicts” of interest.

Trump formally named Kushner a “special envoy for peace” last month, a move that means the president’s son-in-law is now required by law to file a financial disclosure report. Kushner has just days left before the 30-day deadline to file the disclosure.

Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote in a letter to the White House last week that “Mr. Kushner’s history of financial gains resulting from his time as a White House advisor during President Trump’s first term raises serious concerns about potential conflicts of interest that must be addressed before Mr. Kushner participates in any additional matters that may relate to his own financial interests or those of his investors.”

“The risk of Mr. Kushner’s potential conflicts is particularly concerning because his private investment firm has very publicly done significant business with foreign partners who also have interests in the conflicts on which he has been assigned to work,” Sherman noted.