Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams

University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers on Friday joined a growing number of economists and other critics casting doubt on what he called “the Pentagon’s lowball $25 billion estimate” for the cost of President Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran.

While testifying before Congress last week alongside US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Pentagon comptroller Jules “Jay” Hurst offered the $25 billion figure. However, experts have responded with raised eyebrows. Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, estimated that the government spent at least $71.8 billion during the first two months of the war, or around $1.2 billion each day.

Although Trump told Congress last Friday—a key deadline under the War Powers Act—that his assault on Iran had been “terminated,” citing the ceasefire deal reached a month ago after his genocidal threat, the administration has maintained its naval blockade and on Thursday bombed what it claimed were “Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces.”

As the threat of more US bombings of Iran loomed, Wolfers wrote Friday in a New York Times opinion piece that “the Pentagon’s stated number reflects only a narrow accounting of the tab that Operation Epic Fury is running up. It’s the price of the more than 2,000 Tomahawk and Patriot missiles already fired, the warplanes already flown and in some cases lost, and the rest of the gear already chewed through. It does not measure the true cost of the war—including the human toll.”

“Since the start of the war, oil markets have been disrupted, consumer confidence has cratered, the global economy is groaning, and military budgets are growing,” the economist continued. “The toll from this upheaval must be counted in lives disrupted, jobs lost, companies shut down (see: Spirit Airlines), and the income and output sacrificed. The less easily quantified costs—death, disability, and mental health—could become much more dramatic should President Trump send troops into Iran, which still can’t be ruled out.”

As David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, detailed Friday, the war seemingly hasn’t achieved any of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shifting objectives:

The US and Israel said they wanted to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program and change its regime. The regime is now composed of more hard-liners than before, and Iran’s nuclear capability has not budged since last summer. Now the two sides are negotiating the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the conflict, and the terms of Iran’s nuclear program, which they were negotiating before the conflict. Moreover, the compromise being contemplated involves Iran pausing uranium enrichment in exchange for the US lifting sanctions and unfreezing Iranian funds. That sounds suspiciously like the deal President Obama struck in 2015 that Trump ripped up when he took office, complete with the “bags of cash” sent to Iran that Trump flipped out over back then.

All this war has done is killed thousands of people, opened a new front for Israel in Lebanon, damaged most US military sites and most energy production facilities in the region, led to oil spills that are visible from space, created a shipping bottleneck that will take at least a year to fix, raised domestic gas prices to a record for this time of year, cost American consumers $34.3 billion and counting, ended the life of one US airline with more likely to come, and led us down an imminent path to physical shortages of critical commodities like oil, including in the United States.

I have never in my life seen a war that achieved literally none of its objectives while directly causing this many devastating costs, and I lived through Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that the Central Intelligence Agency has privately warned the Trump administration that “Iran can survive the US naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship,” and its “analysis might even be underestimating Iran’s economic resilience if Tehran is able to smuggle oil via overland routes.”

The reporting heightened concerns about how long the war may drag on. The International Monetary Fund warned last month that a prolonged conflict could cause a global recession.

Already, the war has “pushed the Federal Reserve Bank into a corner,” and “Wall Street is worried, despite the market touching new highs,” Wolfers wrote Friday. “My estimate—based on the movement of oil prices, along with the S&P 500—is that stocks are about 5% lower than they otherwise would be, suggesting that the war has wiped about $3 trillion off the value of these companies.”

The economist also cited recent research showing that elevated “geopolitical risk leads to lower investment and employment.”

Shortly after launching the war in February, the White House signaled it would need $200 billion for the operation. However, it is now seeking a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the next fiscal year—which Hegseth tried to frame as a fiscally responsible plan that puts “the American taxpayer first” in a widely ridiculed video this week. Wolfers highlighted that the budget request is “a roughly 40% boost over this year. That’s a massive $600 billion increase, or roughly $4,000 per household.”

Like Dayen, Wolfers also pointed to the Iraq War, which economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz estimated cost the US around $3 trillion, after factoring in expenses such as “lifetime medical care and disability benefits for veterans, and the higher recruitment and retention costs that follow a bloody war—all compounded by a rising interest bill.”

“The best any economist can do right now is get the order of magnitude right, and my math suggests the Iran war will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and very possibly trillions,” Wolfers concluded. “War is hell. And hell comes with a hefty price tag.”

Just hours before the Trump administration conducted what it claimed were “self-defense strikes” against “Iranian military facilities,” The Washington Post reported Thursday that the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that “Iran can survive the US naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship.”

Citing four unnamed officials familiar with the analysis, the newspaper highlighted that “the CIA analysis might even be underestimating Iran’s economic resilience if Tehran is able to smuggle oil via overland routes.”

Militarily, “Iran retains about 75% of its prewar inventories of mobile launchers and about 70% of its prewar stockpiles of missiles,” the Post added. “There is evidence that the regime has been able to recover and reopen almost all of its underground storage facilities, repair some damaged missiles, and even assemble some new missiles that were nearly complete when the war began.”

Drop Site News’ Murtaza Hussain responded that if this assessment along with a previous one from the Center for Strategic and International Studies about “remaining US munitions and interceptor capacity are even approximately correct, it goes a long way to explaining why Trump seems so eager to end the war whereas the Iranians have either dug in or escalated their negotiating positions. The missile math of continuing the conflict would be much more favorable to the Iranians, especially if the war continued for a significant time.”

“Prior to the war, interceptor capacity compared to the size of the Iranian missile stockpile seemed like the most rationally incontrovertible reason to avoid fighting such a conflict, even for people who found it politically desirable,” he added. “This also might explain why the US and Israel pivoted towards the end to threatening countervalue strikes against civilian targets if attempts to destroy the underground missile cities by air were ineffective.”

The Post’s reporting came one month into a fragile ceasefire and starkly contrasts the recent framing of conditions in Iran from President Donald Trump and others in his administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) responded to the Post’s reporting by quoting Hegseth, who said in March that “never before has a modern, capable military, which Iran used to have, been so quickly destroyed and made combat ineffective.”

Murphy declared: “They lied through their teeth. Just straight up fabricated shit.”

Still, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly stuck to the administration’s framing in a Thursday statement to the Post.

“During Operation Epic Fury, Iran was crushed militarily,” Kelly said. “Now, they are being strangled economically by Operation Economic Fury and losing $500 million per day thanks to the United States military’s successful blockade of Iranian ports. The Iranian regime knows full well their current reality is not sustainable, and President Trump holds all the cards as negotiators work to make a deal.”

Meanwhile, some experts were unsurprised that the CIA privately delivered a “sober” assessment contradicting the administration’s public commentary on the conflict—which it now claims is no longer an active “war,” seemingly to dodge a key congressional deadline.

“Nice to know that a confidential CIA analysis is confirming what close observers of the Iranian economy have been saying publicly for weeks! Intelligent policymakers rely on intelligence. But Trump jeopardized diplomacy by instigating a blockade that was never going to work,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Europe and founder of the think tank Bourse & Bazaar Foundation.

Sharing the reporting on social media, Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at the think tank Defense Priorities, wrote: “As I argued a week into the U.S. blockade, Iran can hold out for months without economic collapse. The costs for the US and the world are increasingly unsustainable, however.”

Earlier this week, Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, estimated that the US government spent $71.8 billion on the Iran War during its first 60 days, an average of $1.2 billion daily. The International Monetary Fund warned last month that the conflict could cause a global recession.

Last Friday, Trump responded to the War Powers Act’s 60-day deadline by claiming to Congress that his war—which already violated US and international law—had been “terminated.” The White House said at the time that no fire had been exchanged since April 7, when a ceasefire deal was reached just hours after the president issued a genocidal threat against the Iranian people.

However, on Thursday evening, United States Central Command announced that Iran “launched multiple missiles, drones, and small boats” at American warships. CENTCOM added that it “eliminated inbound threats and targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces, including missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance nodes.”

Defenders of the planet took aim at President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday for transferring approximately 1.4 million acres of public lands along the Dalton Utility Corridor from the US Bureau of Land Management to the state of Alaska.

“This corridor encompasses some of Alaska’s most critical transportation and energy assets, including portions of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System corridor, the Dalton Highway, and proposed routes for the Ambler Road and Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects,” the US Department of the Interior noted in a statement, framing the move as part of DOI’s commitment to the Alaska Statehood Act, as well as orders issued by Trump and the agency’s secretary, Doug Burgum.

As Burgum and Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy cheered the development on Wednesday, Andrea Feniger, director of the state’s Sierra Club chapter, declared that “this is less a transfer to Alaskans than a massive giveaway to out-of-state corporations that don’t want to be burdened by the federal protections that safeguard our lands, waters, wildlife, and communities.”

“Gov. Dunleavy has repeatedly shown he is more interested in helping the Trump administration and fossil fuel executives exploit Alaska than standing up for the people who actually live here,” Feniger said. “These companies will not be satisfied until every corner of our state is opened to industrial development and short-term profit, regardless of the permanent damage done to the wild places, subsistence traditions, and communities that make Alaska unique. Alaskans deserve leaders who will protect these lands for future generations, not politicians willing to hand them over to corporate polluters.”

Bloomberg reported that “Alaska’s acquisition along the highway north of Fairbanks is part of 2.1 million acres” that Burgum offered earlier this year, after revoking a pair of decades-old orders. In March, a coalition of environmental groups, including Trustees for Alaska, filed a federal lawsuit over the secretary “unlawfully removing federal protections.”

While Alaska filed a motion to dismiss the case on Wednesday, Bridget Psarianos, senior staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska, told Bloomberg that the land transfer is illegal. She also said that “the interior secretary broke the law when removing federal protections for over 2 million acres of public lands in February without hearings in local communities, without a public comment period, and without addressing that decision’s impacts on land, water, and subsistence users.”

Other groups supporting that suit include the Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, and Sierra Club, whose director of conservation, Dan Ritzman, condemned Wednesday’s transfer.

“This action will only help corporate polluters transform Alaska into an industrial wasteland—destroying irreplaceable landscapes for the sake of expanding the portfolios of mining and oil and gas companies that will never have to live with the consequences of this destruction,” Ritzman stressed. “This decision completely ignores the wishes of local communities and tribes that depend upon these untouched areas for their livelihoods, cultures, and regional identities.”

“Alaska is home to some of the country’s last true wild places, and projects like Alaska LNG and the Ambler Road threaten irreversible damage to these precious landscapes, the wildlife that depend on them, and the communities that have stewarded them for generations,” he added. “These lands belong to all Americans, not corporate special interests looking to exploit them for short-term profit. We are fighting this in court and will continue opposing any other attempts to sacrifice Alaska’s public lands for the benefit of polluters and extractive industries.”

Rebecca Noblin, an Alaska senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, similarly told E&E News that “handing this incredible stretch of federal public lands over to the state puts the communities, fish, and wildlife who live there in danger.”

“Alaska officials envision bulldozing the area for a private industrial mining road and the LNG pipeline boondoggle,” Noblin said. “We’re fighting this transfer of our federal public lands in court, and we’ll keep standing up for Alaska’s wild places.”

Climate and conservation groups have also recently sounded the alarm about Interior’s forthcoming fossil fuel lease sale for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain, and warned—in the words of Kristen Monsell, the oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity—that that Trump’s “ridiculously reckless” plan to dramatically expand offshore drilling, including near Alaska, “could cause thousands of new oil spills, threatening almost every US coast.”

Democracy defenders sounded the alarm just over three months ago, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at a Georgia election hub. They expressed concerns again after a court filing revealed late Monday that President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is demanding the names of Fulton County’s 2020 election workers.

For years, the Republican president has “obsessively propagated the debunked conspiracy theory that Fulton County ‘stole’ the 2020 election from him. And he has made it clear that he seeks retribution against those who refuse to indulge his baseless claims,” notes the county’s Monday filing aimed at blocking the April 20 grand jury subpoena for election workers’ personal data.

The largely Democratic county—which includes most of Atlanta—argued that it should not have to turn over workers’ names, home addresses, emails, and telephone numbers due to federal overreach and First Amendment concerns, according to CBS News. It also suggested the subpoena is politically motivated and highlighted the statute of limitations for 2020 election crimes.

“After illegally seizing our election records in January, the federal government once again is attempting to misuse criminal process,” Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said in a statement announcing the motion.

“This is yet another act of outrageous federal overreach designed to intimidate and to chill participation in elections. This harassment should not be allowed, so we have asked the court to act,” he continued. “I will always stand up for our elections workers and for the truth. Let me be crystal clear. Fulton County will not be intimidated.”

Voting rights advocates echoed the concerns noted by the filing and Pitts. Lauren Groh-Wargo, who leads Fair Fight Action, told The New York Times that election workers across the United States now face heightened threats and harassment.

“Roughly a third of election officials are threatened on the job, and more than half worry it’s making it harder to hire and keep election workers,” Groh-Wargo said. “They’re trying to break our democracy by attacking the infrastructure, but we are fighting back hard.”

All Voting Is Local Georgia state director Kristin Nabers stressed in a statement that “the conspiracy theories and lies that dictate White House policy have real-world consequences beyond appeasing the president’s fragile ego—they are being weaponized to target the people from our communities who run our elections and ensure our votes are counted.”

“This is a clear attempt to seize and hold power over our elections by sending a message that any county or state that doesn’t vote in favor of the president or his preferred candidates may be subjected to a harassment campaign like that of Fulton County,” she continued. “This intimidation tactic is a slap in the face to the millions of county election workers and volunteers around the country who work tirelessly to make sure our elections run smoothly.”

Nabers added that “the all-out assault on Fulton County and its poll workers creates a blueprint for the administration to see what it can get away with during the midterm elections when results in key counties and states don’t go its way. Election workers in Fulton County and beyond will not be intimidated by this desperate bullying.”

The fight in Fulton County—where Trump and others initially faced criminal charges for their effort to overturn his 2020 loss—comes as some primary elections are underway across the country, and amid mounting concerns about what the president may try in November, particularly if the GOP-controlled Congress passes the attack on voting rights that the White House is pushing.

Michael McNulty, policy director of the group Issue One, said Tuesday that “Americans should be furious” about Trump’s demands in Georgia, which “are based solely on debunked conspiracy theories from 2020 that courts and post-election audits have repeatedly rejected.”

“Targeting these heroic election workers does nothing to strengthen our democracy—it puts ordinary public servants at risk in an attempt to erode trust in elections,” he warned. “The Trump administration’s goal is to make Americans feel distrust and cynicism about the election process. While the administration is framing its actions using the 2020 elections, it is proceeding with this year’s midterms in mind.”

As McNulty detailed, Trump’s “election takeover playbook” includes:

• Spreading false claims to undermine confidence in elections;
• Installing loyalists within the executive branch willing to act on those claims; and
• Using executive power to pressure and intimidate those who actually run our elections.

“If this playbook is left unchecked, the Trump administration will continue to abuse its power and attempt to meddle in elections like authoritarian leaders in other countries,” he said. “Congress must stop this.”

“It should use oversight and funding authority to halt the executive branch from weaponizing federal power against the heroes who run our elections,” McNulty argued. “Members of Congress swore an oath to the Constitution when they agreed to serve, and now is a test of whether they are willing to live up to that oath and protect the American people.”

Some members of Congress joined voting rights advocates in speaking out against the subpoena this week. Sharing the Times report on social media Tuesday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) declared that “Trump’s attacks on our free and fair elections won’t stop.”

The US Supreme Court on Monday temporarily restored access to mifepristone, a medication commonly used for abortion and early miscarriage care, through the mail while the justices review a decision requiring it to be dispensed in person by a medical provider.

Justice Samuel Alito, who is part of the high court’s right-wing supermajority, oversees the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. He issued a one-week stay for the appellate court’s Friday dispensing decision, which critics had condemned as “sweeping and dangerous.”

“This is not particularly surprising from Alito. He’s the circuit justice here, acting—in essence—until the full court can act,” explained Law Dork’s Chris Geidner. He noted that both Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, another right-winger, “have issued administrative stays in the past until the full court can rule in similar circumstances, regardless of their ultimate votes on the matters.”

The drug companies Danco Laboratories, which makes the brand-name version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, and GenBioPro, which makes the generic pill, asked the country’s top court to intervene following Friday’s ruling, which threatened patients nationwide.

“Even this Supreme Court can see that this 5th Circuit decision is reckless,” declared Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, on Monday. “While mifepristone access returns to where it was on Friday morning, the whiplash and chaos that patients and providers are navigating have already had real consequences for real people’s lives and futures.”

Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation, similarly highlighted how “this back-and-forth has created confusion and chaos,” but welcomed that the high court’s “decision provides critical, if temporary, relief for patients and providers and ensures that people can continue to access this essential medication through telehealth while the court considers the case.”

“The lower court’s ruling disregards the well-established safety and efficacy of the use of mifepristone via telehealth, and any future restriction will create medically unnecessary barriers to care for patients across the country,” Fonteno added. “Mifepristone has been safely used for more than 25 years, and is essential to abortion care and miscarriage management in the United States. For many patients, especially those in rural areas or facing financial and logistical barriers, access to telehealth is a critical component of holistic reproductive healthcare.”

Since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the anti-choice movement and right-wing politicians have ramped up attacks on reproductive freedom at the state level. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permanently lifted mifepristone’s in-person dispensing requirement in early 2023, allowing doctors in pro-choice states to serve patients across the country via telehealth and the mail, regardless of local laws.

Louisiana responded to the eased restrictions on mifepristone—which is generally taken with another drug, misoprostol, for abortions—by suing, which led to the battle that has now reached the Supreme Court. Prior to Friday’s decision by the infamously far-right 5th Circuit, a district judge in the state paused the case due to what the ACLU on Monday called “a sham FDA review announced by the Trump administration,” which is ongoing.

“While this is a positive short-term development, no one can rest easy when our ability to get this safe, effective medication for abortion and miscarriage care still hangs in the balance,” Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, stressed Monday. “The Supreme Court needs to put an end to this baseless attack on our reproductive freedom, once and for all.”

“We know that if this project goes through, our land and our water are in danger. Our future is in danger,” warned Krystal Two Bulls, one of many community, conservation, and Indigenous group leaders speaking out after President Donald Trump granted a cross-border permit to what critics called “nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the unpopular Keystone XL pipeline.”

Trump’s permit for the Bridger Pipeline Expansion Project authorizes various “petroleum products, including gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gas,” The Associated Press reported Thursday, but Bridger spokesperson Bill Salvin said the company is currently focused on crude oil—550,000 barrels of which could flow daily from Canada, through Montana, to Guernsey, Wyoming, if the pipeline is completed.

“Water protectors are standing up again, like we have always done against all those who threaten Mother Earth,” Two Bulls, an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne organizer from Lame Deer, Montana, and executive director of Honor the Earth, said Friday. “We fought against the Keystone XL pipeline proposed for these very same lands and won back in 2021. We will fight and win again against the Bridger pipeline.”

Shortly after entering office in 2021, then-President Joe Biden revoked the presidential permit for Keystone XL—which Trump had signed during his first term—as part of the Democrat’s efforts to combat the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

While Biden faced criticism from climate advocates for the oil and gas projects he did allow, Trump took a swipe at him on Thursday, telling reporters: “Slightly different from the last administration. They wouldn’t sign a pipeline deal, and we have pipelines going up.”

Trump—who campaigned on a pledge to “drill, baby, drill” and returned to the White House last year with financial help from Big Oil—also dismissed safety concerns about pipelines, saying: “By the way, they’re way underground. They’re not a problem. Nobody even knows they’re there. It’s so crazy. But they wouldn’t approve anything having to do with a pipeline.”

As the AP detailed:

Bridger Pipeline and other subsidiaries of True Company have been responsible for several major pipeline accidents including more than 50,000 gallons (240,000 liters) of crude that spilled into the Yellowstone River and fouled a Montana city’s drinking water supply in 2015, a 45,000-gallon diesel spill in Wyoming in 2022 and a 2016 spill that released more than 600,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) of crude in North Dakota, contaminating the Little Missouri River and a tributary.

Subsidiaries of True agreed to pay a $12.5 million civil penalty to settle a federal lawsuit over the North Dakota and Montana spills.

Salvin said Bridger Pipeline in the years since the Yellowstone spill developed an AI-based leak detection system that allows it to be notified more quickly when there are problems. It also plans to bore 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) beneath major rivers including the Yellowstone and Missouri to reduce the chances of an accident. The 2015 accident occurred on a line that was constructed in a shallow trench at the bottom of the river.

A public comment submitted to the Trump administration by the legal group Earthjustice on behalf of Honor the Earth, Sierra Club, WildEarth Guardians, and a dozen other organizations acknowledges concerns about this pipeline’s potential impacts to water, land, the climate, air quality, cultural resources, recreation, and more—and called for an intense federal review of the project.

“We know how this system works: More pipelines mean more drilling, more waste, and more spills. And when spills happen, it’s communities, landowners, and tribes who are left dealing with the contamination, not the companies profiting from it,” Rebecca Sobel, climate and health director at WildEarth Guardians, said Friday. “Oil and gas infrastructure fails every day in this country, and expanding that system only increases the likelihood of spills and long-term contamination.”

Sierra Club Montana chapter director Caryn Miske stressed that “while the Trump administration kills affordable energy projects and jobs across the country, it is continuing to side with wealthy corporations and oil executives looking to increase profit regardless of the risks to Montana’s treasured waterways and to families and businesses struggling with high energy costs. These policies aren’t about fair or free markets, it’s welfare for corporations and pollution for everyone else.”

Earthjustice is also representing 350 Montana, Center for Biological Diversity, Families for a Livable Climate, Montana Environmental Information Center, Montana Health and Climate, Mountain Mamas, Red Medicine LLC, Western Environmental Law Center, Western Organization of Resource Councils, Western Watersheds Project, Wild Montana, and Wyoming Outdoor Council.

“The proposed Bridger tar sands pipeline is an environmental disaster waiting to happen,” declared Jenny Harbine, managing attorney with Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies office. “The Trump administration appears more than willing to limit public engagement to force this project through.”

“Communities and tribes in the Northern Rockies have a right to know how this could impact their water sources, historic resources, and ways of life,” Harbine added. “If the administration attempts to sidestep that legal obligation, we’ll see them in court.”

Separately on Friday, Anthony Swift, a longtime leader in the fight against the pipeline and current senior strategist for global nature at Natural Resources Defense Council, said that “no matter what you call the project, the environmental concerns that animated the fight over Keystone XL are no less acute today. Keystone Light will threaten water supplies and exacerbate climate change. This is the moment to get off the oil roller coaster, not double down on the dirtiest oil on the planet.”

“The Trump administration has been lobbing gifts to Big Oil since its first day in office. This is the latest in a long, long, long list of favors that show the oil industry is getting a great return on its billion-dollar investment in the president’s campaign,” Swift added. “President Trump has repeatedly said that America does not need Canada’s oil, so we certainly don’t need Keystone Light.”

“The State of America’s Libraries” report “is in a very real way a report on the state of our nation,” American Library Association executive director Dan Montgomery wrote in the introduction of the annual publication, released Monday.

“Unsurprisingly, then, there is much to be deeply concerned about in these pages, and much to bring hope,” the ALA leader acknowledged. “Ultimately, this report can serve as a clarion call to those who love libraries and our republic.”

Published at the beginning of National Library Week, the report explores a range of topics, including threats to intellectual freedom. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) found that last year at least 4,235 unique titles were challenged—the association’s term for an attempt to have a resource removed or restricted—the second-highest ever documented, just short of 2023’s record.

OIF also found that at least 5,668 books were banned from libraries—66% of those challenged—and 920 books faced restrictions such as relocation or a parental permission requirement. The ALA noted that “this is both the highest number of titles censored in one year and the highest rate of challenges resulting in censorship” dating back to 1990.

“In 2025, book bans were not sparked by concerned parents, and they were not the result of local grassroots efforts,” explained Sarah Lamdan, executive director of the OIF, in a statement. “They were part of a well-funded, politically driven campaign to suppress the stories and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals and communities.”

Specifically, OIF found that 92% of all book censorship efforts were initiated by “pressure groups, government officials, and decision-makers,” and fewer than 3% came from individual parents. Additionally, 40% of the unique titles challenged last year—1,671 works—were about the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and people of color.

“Libraries exist to make space for every story and every lived experience,” stressed ALA president Sam Helmick. “As we celebrate National Library Week, we reaffirm that libraries are places for knowledge, for access, and for all.”

The most-targeted titles in 2025 were:

1. Sold by Patricia McCormick

2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

3. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

4. Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas

5. (tie) Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

5. (tie) Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

7. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

8. (tie) A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

8. (tie) Identical by Ellen Hopkins

8. (tie) Looking for Alaska by John Green

8. (tie) Storm and Fury by Jennifer L. Armentrout

The ALA publication also features sections on library services for people who are incarcerated or in reentry, how libraries can “approach literacy in a community-driven, responsive way to meet today’s rapidly evolving and growing literacy needs,” and “intensified debates over access to information and shifting fiscal priorities.”

The report highlights ALA’s Show Up For Our Libraries campaign, launched in the face of attacks from Republican President Donald Trump—who has issued executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to effectively dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He also fired the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, and the register of copyrights, Shira Perlmutter.

While the report sounds the alarm on the state of US libraries—and the nation more broadly—it also emphasizes, as Lamdan wrote in one section, that “the story of library censorship in 2025 is... not only about the challenges libraries faced, but also about the resilience of the people who stood up for them.”

“Legal victories and new state-level protections emerged in several regions, reinforcing longstanding principles of intellectual freedom and reaffirming libraries’ role as institutions that serve all members of their communities,” she noted. “Coalitions of library workers, authors, educators, and community members successfully advocated for right to read laws in Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island that protect intellectual freedom, libraries, and library workers.”

“Courts across the nation held that censorship legislation was unconstitutional,” Lamdan continued. “Judges declared that laws including Florida’s HB 1069 and Iowa’s SF 496, which provide for the removal of books containing certain viewpoints, were unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. Courts also affirmed the First Amendment right to read in libraries. Voters in states including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas rejected censorship-focused school and library board candidates, electing board members who promised to protect people’s right to read and learn.”

She added that “2025 was also a year of coalition-building. Grassroots activists, advocacy organizations, writers, authors, publishers, teachers, parents, and library workers came together to celebrate libraries and the joy of reading.”

The report was released less than three months ahead of the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence.

“As we look toward the next 250 years, the choice is ours,” said Helmick. “We can let our libraries fade, viewed as charming relics of a bygone era. Or, we can choose to invest in them as a bedrock of our future. Let us decide, right now, that they are not optional. They are the very breath of a free society, and they are worth fighting for.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed Thursday that last month—which featured a heatwave that cooked the US West and caused a snow drought—was the hottest March in the 132-year record for the contiguous United States.

The average temperature “was 50.85°F, 9.35°F above the 20th-century average, marking the first time any month’s average has exceeded 9°F above that baseline,” according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. NCEI also said April 2025-March 2026 was the warmest 12-month span observed for the Lower 48 since recordkeeping began in 1895, and over half of the area had its hottest single March day on record, dating back to 1950.

“Maximum daytime temperatures were especially high, averaging 11.4°F above the March average and 0.9°F above the April long-term average,” NCEI noted. “Ten states recorded their warmest March on record: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Across all of these states, average temperatures exceeded their respective April averages, with California also eclipsing its average May temperature by 0.7°F.”

(Image by NOAA NCEI)

In a social media thread about the findings, Shel Winkley, the senior engagement specialist and meteorologist at Climate Central, stressed that “our overheating planet played a major role.”

“Out of 192 cities analyzed by Climate Central, 111 experienced at least one week of heat made [more than two times] more likely by human-caused warming,” he noted. “The Southwest averaged 25 out of 31 days with heat made at least two times more likely.”

The “most staggering” statistic, he said, is that “on March 20, 29% of the Lower 48 saw heat made [more than five times] more likely by our warming atmosphere. Put simply: Heat that would be virtually impossible without that fingerprint.”

Winkley told The Associated Press that “what we experienced in March across the United States was unprecedented,” while Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters said that the new batch of broken records “tells us that climate change is kicking our butts.”

The “January through March period was the driest on record for the contiguous US. So not only was it hot, it was record dry as well,” Masters said. “And that’s a bad combination for water availability, for agriculture, for river levels, for navigation.”

Looking ahead, NOAA warned that “drought is expected to persist and expand across much of the interior West, Southwest, Rockies, and High Plains, as well as parts of the South, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic... Significant wildland fire potential is above normal across portions of the Southwest, southern Plains, and central High Plains, and much of the Deep South and Southeast.”

The AP also pointed out that both the US agency and Europe’s Copernicus are “forecasting a ‘super’ strong El Niño to form in a few months and intensify into the winter. Meteorologists expect that to increase already warm temperatures across the globe, likely pushing past the hottest year mark set by 2024.”

Already, as governments across the globe, including the Big Oil-backed Trump administration, refuse to take the actions that the scientific community argues are necessary to address the climate emergency—most notably, swiftly shift away from planet-warming fossil fuels—humanity is contending with deadly conditions during heatwaves.

For a study published last month in the journal Nature Communications, researchers examined heatwaves in Mecca, Saudi Arabia (2024); Bangkok, Thailand (2024); Phoenix, Arizona, the United States (2023); Mount Isa, Australia (2019); Larkana, Pakistan (2015); and Seville, Spain (2003). During each, they found spans of “nonsurvivable” conditions for people ages 65 and older in direct sun.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh shit’—I really didn’t expect to see that, especially when you zoom in to individual cities,” Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, the study’s lead author and a professor at the Australian National University, told The Guardian in reporting published Wednesday. “If it’s already happening now, then what does a future that is two or three degrees warmer hold?”

Sharing the report on social media, Bill McGuire, a volcanologist and emeritus professor at University College London, said, “As some of us have been saying for quite a while, dangerous climate breakdown is already here, and killing people—now, today.”

Continuing the assault on transgender people that President Donald Trump launched as soon as he returned to power last year, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights rescinded portions of settlements intended to protect trans students at five school districts and one college.

The department framed the move as “freeing schools” from the Biden and Obama administrations’ “illegal and burdensome enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,” a landmark civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.

According to The Associated Press, “One of the school systems, Delaware Valley School District in rural eastern Pennsylvania, received notice of the change from the Trump administration in February and has since voted to roll back its antidiscrimination protections for transgender students.”

The administration also rescinded provisions of resolution agreements with Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware and Fife School District in Washington, as well as California’s La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified, and Taft College.

“The Trump administration has opened at least 40 civil rights investigations into educational institutions that provide protections for transgender students,” and filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota, The New York Times reported. However, “Education Department officials said there was no precedent for the federal government terminating previously negotiated civil rights settlements with schools. Civil rights lawyers who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations said they were unaware of previous examples of such a move.”

Advocates for trans people sharply condemned the rollback, which came on the heels of last week’s International Transgender Day of Visibility.

“This sends a chilling alarm that trans students really are a target of this administration,” Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the California-based Transgender Law Center, told the Times. “It’s extremely concerning. Students should be safe to go to school and get an education.”

Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement that “there is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel. Title IX exists to ensure that students are protected from discrimination and treated with dignity so that they can learn and thrive in our schools. It’s always been about that. It’s what students, families, lawmakers, and advocates fought for when Title IX was passed decades ago. But the Trump administration’s Department of Education has spent its limited resources to strip Title IX of that very purpose.”

“Real complaints of discrimination and sexual assault are going unanswered by the Department of Education while conservative lawmakers continue to escalate their attacks on a small minority of students,” Patel noted. “Parents, teachers, and students need the department to focus on addressing real harms on campuses instead of rolling back policies that keep all students safe.”

“We should all be alarmed at the Trump administration’s cruel escalation of their anti-trans agenda,” she added. “When they push laws that explicitly target trans people or attempt to use scientifically inaccurate language to define sex, they are also inevitably targeting all women and girls. They want to control what we do, how we look, and how we act until we are pushed out of public life. But we are not going anywhere.”

The labor union leading the fight for California’s billionaire tax on Wednesday pointed to recent reporting about hospital layoffs to make the case for the ballot measure, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on state billionaires’ wealth to fund healthcare.

The Orange County Register reported last week that “the more than 400 hospitals statewide have already laid off more than 3,400 healthcare workers as of mid-March, with as many as 1,600 coming from Santa Barbara to Orange County and the Inland Empire area, according to a tally of layoffs provided by the state’s Employment Development Department and data collected by Paul Young, senior vice president of public policy and reimbursement with the California Hospital Association of Southern California.”

As the newspaper detailed, hospital executives “are hinting of a second wave of layoffs,” citing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or HR 1, that congressional Republicans passed and President Donald Trump signed last summer. The law will cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, which is expected to significantly impact the state’s Medi-Cal program that covers more than 15 million lower-income residents.

The Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley “estimates the Medi-Cal cuts could lead to a loss of 72,000 to 145,000 healthcare jobs throughout California, representing 3% to 5% of the state’s 2.65 million healthcare positions,” the Register noted. “These job losses include positions in hospitals, clinics, and home care.”

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the lead sponsor of the ballot measure that Californians are set to vote on in November, highlighted the reporting in a Wednesday statement. SEIU-UHW chief of staff Suzanne Jimenez declared that “this is a direct threat to patient care across California.”

“When hospitals lose funding, they lose staff,” Jimenez said. “And when they lose staff, patients face longer wait times, fewer services, and reduced access to lifesaving care. Without urgent action, communities across California will lose access to the care they depend on.”

In the union’s statement, Mayra Castañeda shared concerns about losing her job as an ultrasound technologist at a hospital in Lynwood, California. She said: “Every day I come to work thinking about my patients, making sure they get the care they need, that they feel safe, that they’re not alone. Now, I’m also thinking about whether I’ll still have a job next month.”

“We’re already stretched thin, and the idea that more staff could be cut is terrifying,” Castañeda continued. “It doesn’t just impact us as staff. It impacts every patient who walks through our doors. You can’t keep taking resources out of healthcare and expect people not to suffer.”

Experts estimate that, if passed, the billionaire tax ballot measure would raise about $100 billion from 2027-31 from California’s 200 richest residents. Recent polling suggests the proposal is on its way to success.

It’s drawn support from national progressive figures such as US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who last month partnered with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to introduce the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act. The bill would impose a 5% annual wealth tax and direct the revenue toward reversing GOP healthcare cuts from HR 1, expanding Medicare, building affordable houses, helping families pay for childcare, boosting teacher salaries, and sending direct payments to members of households making $150,000 or less.

Unlike the California ballot measure, that federal “tax the rich” bill and another introduced last month by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have no clear path to passage in the Republican-controlled Congress. However, hospital layoffs as a result of HR 1—which featured more tax giveaways for wealthy Americans—aren’t limited to California.

According to a Public Citizen report released Tuesday, 446 hospitals across the United States could close or reduce services due to HR 1’s cuts to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The publication notes that these “hospitals collectively have 68,986 beds and served approximately 6.6 million patients in 2024. They employ approximately 275,458 direct patient care workers (this does not include nonmedical workers, such as administrative staff).”

Public Citizen researcher and report author Eileen O’Grady stressed that “Trump’s cuts to Medicaid will hurt millions of low-income and disabled Americans, and will deepen financial strains that are already plaguing rural and safety-net hospitals—compromising their ability to deliver care, potentially leading many to close.”

“Congress should take urgent action to restore all Medicaid funding cuts enacted by Trump and Republicans in Congress,” O’Grady argued, “and should extend the enhanced premium tax credits for coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.”

One of the more than 200 Venezuelan men whom US President Donald Trump sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador last year, Neiyerver Adrián León Rengel, sued the United States of America in a federal court on Tuesday, seeking $1.3 million in damages.

León Rengel entered the United States at a port of entry in June 2023, during the Biden administration, for a pre-scheduled appointment, at which “he underwent screenings and provided his biometrics,” according to the complaint, filed in Washington, DC. He was released and scheduled to appear before an immigration judge in April 2028.

However, the filing details, after Trump returned to office, León Rengel “was wrongly identified as a member of the gang Tren de Aragua (TDA), repeatedly denied due process, falsely imprisoned, intentionally deceived, and—ultimately—illegally sent to El Salvador in blatant violation of a court order.”

León Rengel was sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), where Human Rights Watch found deportees were subjected to “systematic torture.”

He told CBS News in Spanish that “there came a point when I thought about hanging myself with the sheet they gave us... It was hell. Total hell.”

As CBS—which eventually aired an investigation into the prison despite interference from editor-in-chief Bari Weiss—reported Tuesday:

León Rengel was arrested once in the US after a traffic stop and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for possession of drug paraphernalia in Texas, documents show. León Rengel said the car where the material was found was not his. He said he paid a small fine.

Beyond that misdemeanor, León Rengel’s lawyers said he has no criminal history, and that he was deported despite having an active immigration case and lacking a deportation order. Justice Department records reviewed by CBS News do not list a deportation order for León Rengel and show he had an immigration court hearing scheduled for April 2028.

León Rengel said he was identified as a Tren de Aragua gang member because of a tattoo on his left hand of a lion with a hair clipper on its mouth. He said he has cut hair in the US and Venezuela, and denies having any gang ties. Other former CECOT prisoners have similarly said they were accused of gang membership because of their tattoos.

DHS told the network that “this illegal alien was deemed a public safety threat as a confirmed associate of the Tren de Aragua gang and processed for removal from the US.” The department declined to provide any evidence to support its claim that he is a TDA member, saying that doing so would “undermine” national security.

León Rengel was ultimately freed from CECOT and returned to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap last summer. He is the first of the deportees to file such a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

“This case reveals an illegal and morally bereft plan of action at the highest levels of our government to defy a federal court, strip a man of his rights, and hand him over to a foreign government for torture to prove a political point,” said retired Amb. Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, in a statement.

“Adrián Rengel spent four months in abhorrent, inhumane conditions because senior officials chose to flout the rule of law,” he continued. “We are filing suit today to get justice for him. The rule of law applies no matter what the political aims of the administration.”

In addition to Eisen’s group, León Rengel is represented by the law firm Mariziani, Stevens & Gonzalez, with support from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

“What happened to Adrián Rengel is government-sanctioned torture and a failure to recognize his humanity because he happened to be an immigrant. He deserves his day in court,” said LULAC CEO Juan Proaño. “His four months of illegal confinement is the devastating outcome of a system designed to treat Latino immigrants as criminals simply because of where they were born or the color of their skin.”

“Rengel and others were stripped of due process, lied to about where they were being sent, and handed over to a foreign dictatorship to be tortured in America’s name,” Proaño added. “The United States government had the power to stop this, and they chose not to. The court should deliver the justice the executive branch intentionally denied him.”

Some Cubans got power back on Sunday after another nationwide blackout on Saturday—the second in less than a week and the third time the grid has collapsed this month after the Trump administration intensified the United States’ decades-long economic blockade, cutting off the island nation from Venezuelan oil.

“The Cuban Electric Union, which reports to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, reported that the total disconnection of the national energy system was caused by an unexpected shutdown of a generation unit at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camaguey province, without providing details on the specific cause of the failure,” according to The Associated Press.

Critics from around the world have condemned the US siege as “economic warfare,” which is notably occurring as President Donald Trump and his allies in Washington, D.C., repeatedly float a potential takeover of the country located just 90 miles south of Florida.

Saturday’s blackout came a day after The Washington Post reported that “the Cuban government this week refused a request by the US Embassy in Havana to import diesel fuel for its generators, calling the ask ‘shameless,’ given the Trump administration’s fuel blockade on the island, according to diplomatic cables” reviewed by the newspaper.

It also followed the arrival of some members of Nuestra América Convoy, which is bringing humanitarian aid to the island. The effort involves hundreds of people from over 30 countries and 120 organizations.

Highlighting the convoy on social media early Saturday afternoon, US Rep. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Ill.) declared that “Trump’s oil blockade in Cuba has caused a worsening humanitarian crisis—cutting Cubans off from power, food, healthcare, and clean water.”

“I am heartened by the solidarity and bravery of the courageous people on the Nuestra América Convoy, arriving in Cuba to bring critical aid directly to the people,” she said. “I stand with the global community demanding that the Department of State and Department of Defense ensure their safety and security.”

Another progressive in Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), similarly said later Saturday that “we must lift the US oil blockade on Cuba. This is economic warfare designed to suffocate an island. Food is spoiling. Water supply is compromised. Healthcare services are disrupted. End the blockade now. Grateful to all those helping deliver humanitarian aid!”

Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan Robinson is reporting on the convoy from Havana. On Sunday, he wrote that “when the power went, I was watching a concert held at the Pabellon Cuba, a delightfully strange Brutalist outdoor event space... People can live without music if they have to, I suppose. (The Cubans refuse to, though, and as I walked through the streets tonight I saw plenty of dancing in the dark.) What they cannot live without is healthcare, and the blackout is of course hitting hospitals hard. People aren’t able to get crucial surgeries, or even get to the hospital, which means Trump is simply killing the sickest Cubans. Late last night, a report came in that patients on ventilators at the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital have died.”

“It has been tragic and depressing watching the effects of the blockade. This is already a poor country. People didn’t have much to start with. But now they can’t take buses, they can’t afford to run their cars (I have been told gas costs anywhere between 10 dollars a gallon and 40 dollars a gallon, if you can find it—this in a country where a nice meal will cost you about $20),” Robinson explained. “Food in restaurants is starting to run out. Garbage is accumulating in the streets. I had to sprint to get through a city block where the flies were so thick it was a struggle to breathe without ingesting one. The entire supply chain appears to be breaking down. Tourism is drying up—few want to come and experience shortages and sanitation crises. Taxi drivers can’t drive their taxis.”

“With the evaporation of tourists comes greater despair, since so many depend on this influx of foreign money. Everyone in Cuba is warm and friendly, but you can tell they’re desperate. At the large San Jose art market, sellers had booths overflowing with souvenirs, and hardly anyone was there to buy. The merchants were outcompeting each other on pushiness—it was obvious many of them would not make a single sale all day,” the American journalist added. “I cannot believe how cruel what my country is doing is.”

The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog issued a fresh demand for restraint on Saturday after the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran announced that the Shahid Ahmadi-Roshan uranium enrichment complex in Natanz “was subjected to a renewed attack” as the United States and Israel continue to bomb the Middle Eastern country.

The Iranian agency said that “technical assessments indicate that no radioactive material leakage has occurred and there is no danger to residents of the surrounding areas,” but the attack was a “violation of international laws and commitments,” including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The International Atomic Energy Agency “has been informed by Iran that the Natanz nuclear site was attacked today,” the UN watchdog confirmed on social media. “No increase in off-site radiation levels reported. IAEA is looking into the report.”

“IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi reiterates call for military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident,” the agency added.

The Times of Israel reported that “in response to a query... the Israel Defense Forces said that it did not conduct any strikes in the area and that it could not comment on American activities.”

The Israeli newspaper also noted that “Israel’s Kan news reported that the US had indeed struck the facility, using ‘bunker buster’ bombs to target the site. It cited unspecified sources.”

Later Saturday, The Times of Israel reported that at least 20 people were wounded in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on the Israeli city of Dimona, home to Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center.

The United States previously bombed Iran’s Natanz facility last June. The Associated Press highlighted Saturday that satellite images also suggest the site was damaged during the first week of the current war, which President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched on February 28.

Condemning the Saturday strike on Iran’s complex, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that “this is a brazen violation of international law, the charters of the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and the agency’s General Conference.”

Russia has notably also generated fears of a nuclear accident with its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022.

Trump has sent mixed messages about the US-Israeli war on Iran, both sending thousands more troops to the region this week while also saying on his Truth Social platform Friday that “we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran.”

According to the AP: “Iran’s capital saw heavy airstrikes overnight and into the morning, residents said, as thousands of worshippers converged on Tehran’s grand mosque for prayers marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said attacks would ‘increase significantly’ next week.”

US Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Saturday that he is set to headline two major rallies next weekend “as part of a growing national movement challenging oligarchy and economic inequality,” including the flagship “No Kings” rally at the Minnesota State Capitol.

The Vermont Independent plans to join other progressive elected officials, labor leaders, and organizers in Minneapolis on the afternoon of Saturday, March 28, as Americans hold more than 3,000 related No Kings events across the United States.

President Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda previously sparked more than 2,100 No Kings demonstrations last June, followed by over 2,700 in October. Organizers announced the third round of protests in January, as the administration flooded the Twin Cities with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who took the lives of two US citizens and violated the rights of many more Minnesotans.

“The next No Kings protest will mark the largest collective exercise of free speech in American history—an undeniable indicator that Americans of all backgrounds support democracy and the Constitution,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, whose LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group is part of the coalition behind the protests, said in a statement earlier this week.

“The administration’s attacks on LGBTQ people, especially transgender Americans, spanning from healthcare to military service to accessing accurate IDs, are a threat to freedom for everyone and out of step with what millions of Americans care about,” she declared. “The power of our voices to oppose authoritarianism and recent gross government overreaches can never be overstated. America is for all of us, not some of us.”

The No Kings coalition also includes the ACLU, American Federation of Teachers, Common Defense, Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible, League of Conservation Voters, National Education Association (NEA), National Nurses United, Public Citizen, Service Employees International Union, United We Dream, 50501, and more.

“Across the country, educators and parents are standing up to the extreme overreach of Donald Trump,” said NEA president Becky Pringle. “His administration has attacked our students, undermined public schools, and used tactics like deploying ICE to intimidate and traumatize our communities.”

“In rural, suburban, and urban communities alike, people of all races and backgrounds are coming together to say, ‘Enough!’” Pringle added. “With more than 3,000 events already planned and new volunteers signing up every day, this growing, nonviolent movement will continue to protect our students, our communities, and our democracy from Trump’s authoritarianism and abuses of power.”

After the Minnesota event, Sanders plans to travel to New York, to headline a “Tax the Rich” rally at Lehman College in the Bronx.

During Trump’s first year back in the White House, Sanders led events throughout the nation, including in New York City, as part of his Fighting Oligarchy Tour. More recently, the two-time Democratic presidential primary candidate has visited California to meet with artificial intelligence leaders and to support a billionaire tax opposed by the ultrarich and Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat expected to run for president in 2028.

In the Bronx next Sunday afternoon, Sanders intends to call on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, another rising star in the Democratic Party, to impose higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans. The rally is scheduled just before the state’s April 1 budget deadline.

“From Trump’s authoritarianism, to the war in Iran, a corrupt campaign system owned by billionaires, attacks on voting rights, and an AI revolution with no guardrails, we are living in dangerous times,” Sanders said in a Saturday statement. “From Minnesota to New York, working people are standing up to demand a government that represents all of us—not just the 1%.”

With just a month until a key Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act spying power expires, US House Speaker Mike Johnson was planning to try to push through reauthorization legislation next week, but the Louisiana Republican leader is now reportedly delaying the vote while “still dealing with a dozen or so Republican members who want reforms.”

Privacy advocates and lawmakers across the political spectrum have long called for reforms to FISA’s Section 702, which empowers the US government to surveil electronic communications of noncitizens located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information, without a warrant.

Citing three unnamed sources familiar with discussions in the House of Representatives, Politico reported Friday that “with a GOP hard-liner revolt over warrantless surveillance threatening to tank the legislation,” Johnson “will instead work through the remaining issues over the upcoming two-week recess and try to put the extension on the floor the week of April 14.”

Welcoming the development, Demand Progress executive director Sean Vitka said in a statement that “Speaker Johnson is backing away from his plan to ram through a FISA reauthorization vote next week because he knows his members don’t want it and the American people don’t want it.”

“Republicans, Democrats, and independents all overwhelmingly want Congress to take serious action to protect privacy—in particular against AI and data brokers—and oppose any efforts to rubber-stamp the government’s warrantless mass surveillance powers as is,” Vitka continued.

“Before any vote on reauthorizing FISA,” he added, “Congress must first enact real protections for Americans’ privacy, in particular by closing the data broker loophole to prevent the government from circumventing the courts and independent oversight through the purchase of Americans’ private location, web browsing, and other sensitive information.”

Various bills, including the bipartisan Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act introduced last month by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), would close the loophole that agencies use to buy their way around the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which is supposed to protect Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Demand Progress has endorsed that bill, and on Thursday partnered with the Project On Government Oversight and over 130 other artificial intelligence and civil rights groups for a letter urging Republican and Democratic congressional leaders to impose “much-needed privacy protections against government agencies’ warrantless mass surveillance of people in the United States.”

President Donald Trump and his pro-spying deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, have fought for a “clean” reauthorization, but the GOP has slim majorities in both chambers of Congress. In the House, Johnson can only afford to lose two votes, and in the Senate, most bills require at least some Democratic support to get to the president’s desk.

The conduct of Trump’s second administration has fueled calls for reform. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a Thursday statement that “as the Trump administration continues to run roughshod over our Constitution, we cannot continue to give them a further opening to sacrifice our civil liberties in the name of national security. We cannot give Stephen Miller a blank check to conduct domestic surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

“I have been working on essential reforms to FISA across administrations, and I have not wavered—whether it is a Democratic or Republican president,” she noted. “This has always been a bipartisan issue for good reason. Americans across political parties care deeply about privacy and not being surveilled. Congress has a duty to protect those fundamental constitutional liberties. Any attempt to push forward a ‘clean’ reauthorization of Section 702 will put our private, sensitive data at risk.”

Jayapal stressed that “this Trump administration has been particularly brazen in its use of domestic surveillance to suppress our constitutional rights and dissent. In just the last six weeks, the administration has blacklisted Anthropic for refusing to stand down on its requirement that its technology not be used for the mass surveillance of Americans, and we learned that the Department of Justice surveilled me—and likely many other members—while reviewing the Epstein files, seeking justice for survivors.”

“In Minnesota, federal immigration agents have surveilled and intimidated US citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to document agents’ unlawful actions,” the congresswoman noted. “It is time to reform FISA, ensure our Fourth Amendment protections are guaranteed, and stop the government surveillance of Americans.”