Julia Conley, Common Dreams

Days after his own supporters organized 142 demonstrations against artificial intelligence data centers in 42 states, President Donald Trump claimed that “smart communities” across the U.S. “really want” the facilities known for raising electricity bills, consuming millions of gallons of water daily, and creating few permanent job opportunities.

At an event promoting his “Ratepayer Protection Pledge”—a plan to secure deals with major tech companies to keep household utility bills down in communities with data centers, which experts say is unlikely to produce meaningful savings for families—the president suggested that recent polls showing 7 in 10 Americans oppose data centers in their towns are the result of “propaganda... trying to convince everybody that this isn’t a positive thing.”

“You have some communities that really want this,” said Trump. “And frankly those are the smart communities, because it means a tremendous number of jobs... They’re begging for them.”

Faiz Shakir, founder of the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union and an adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has called for a moratorium on data centers, said the comments showed how Trump is “detached from the feelings of working-class communities, in many ways.”

The Tennessee Holler pointed to a recent survey showing that even “cherry red areas” like Johnson City, Tennessee oppose the construction of the facilities that store and process massive amounts of data, for which Trump has pushed to slash regulations.

Trump’s comments came as the climate advocacy group 350.org issued a call for a moratorium on new data center construction.

“Right now, ordinary families are paying more on their electricity bills so that data centers can get artificially cheap power, negotiated in secret with almost no accountability for the real costs,” said Candice Fortin, US campaigns manager at 350.org. “That’s backwards.”

According to Consumer Reports, at least 1,489 new data centers are currently being planned or are under construction in the US.

But with grassroots protests in communities in Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states, about 100 data center projects were cancelled last year “or hit major roadblocks, and the rate of cancellations has quadrupled since 2024,” said 350.org.

The group, like hundreds of others, has recently, called on Congress to pass a national moratorium on data center construction. Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) unveiled a bill in March to halt construction of the facilities. Last week, New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, signed an executive order imposing a one-year state-level ban on the construction of “hyperscale” data centers that can consume 50 megawatts of power.

“A moratorium isn’t about being anti-technology, it’s about refusing to let communities and ratepayers be steamrolled into deals that benefit billionaires while everyone else pays,” said Fortin. “Data centers are driving up our bills today and locking in fossil fuels for decades to come. That’s not innovation. That’s a bad deal being forced on every ratepayer in America.”

“Yet again, the Trump administration has sold out our endangered wildlife to the highest bidder,” said one biodiversity advocate after the US Department of Interior, in a Friday news dump, issued two new policy changes that would weaken the Endangered Species Act and make it easier for corporate polluters to prioritize their own bottom lines over habitat protection.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) rescinded a policy that has been known as the “blanket rule” since 1975, which has given threatened species the same protections from illegal killing, trapping, harassment, and other forms of “take” under the ESA, as species that are officially designated as endangered.

The rollback would apply to species that have been newly declared as threatened, including the Florida manatee, the Pygmy rabbit, the Aztec Gilia, and Clover’s Cactus—which could now go for years without protections despite their habitat loss and declining populations.

“Today’s decision represents a profound failure by Interior Secretary [Doug] Burgum and his department, and it amounts to an utter abdication of the federal government’s responsibility to protect America’s wildlife,” said Sara Amundson, president of the Humane World Action Fund. “The department’s role is to faithfully implement—and certainly not to dismantle—the Endangered Species Act.”

The other policy change will require the FWS to consider the economic impact on various industries of designating areas as “critical” habitats in order to protect threatened and endangered species. The agency has previously had discretion over whether to consider economics when making habitat protection decisions.

Under President Donald Trump’s new rule, said the Center for Biological Diversity, the FWS will be forced “to accept at face value claims by corporations and landowners of economic impacts from designating critical habitat, which could greatly limit the amount and quality of habitat protected for imperiled wildlife.”

“The way this is written, a landowner could falsely claim they planned to build the next Disneyland on their property, so designating critical habitat would supposedly cost them tens of millions of dollars,” said Noah Greenwald, CBD’s endangered species co-director. “This rule is clearly intended to prevent the protection of the wild places that endangered animals and plants need to survive. It’s a despicable move that cheapens the value of our most imperiled wildlife so corporations can make more money. Anyone can make outrageous claims about how much their property is worth, but that shouldn’t be taken as gospel.”

Advocacy groups said both policy changes amounted to giveaways to the logging, mining, drilling, and cattle ranching industries. The latter industry has long lobbied against land being designated as a critical habitat for the ‘I’iwi bird in Hawaii, Clay Samford, an attorney with the environmental legal group Earthjustice, told The Washington Post.

“It’s part of this administration’s push to reduce protections for public lands and wildlife that are enjoyed by all Americans, in favor of narrow business interests,” Samford told the newspaper.

A senior attorney for the group, Elizabeth Forsyth, said in a statement that “the Trump administration is turning the law on its head by letting extractive industries dictate where critical habitat can be destroyed.”

“This prioritization of industry interests over science is fundamentally at odds with the clear purpose of the Endangered Species Act,” said Forsyth. “We won’t let this dangerous giveaway go unchallenged.”

There is currently a backlog of more than 500 species awaiting consideration for listing as threatened or endangered, and the rule changes, along with the Trump administration’s 18% reduction in the FWS workforce, are expected to leave imperiled species waiting even longer for protections.

“In the midst of an extinction crisis, with hundreds of species like the Florida manatee and the wolverine desperately needing stronger protections for their habitats, the Trump administration is gutting protections to benefit industry interests,” said Ryan Shannon, a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. “Where we see our nation’s irreplaceable wildlife, they see dollar signs. But our federal lands and waters, and the species they support, belong to all Americans, not to the logging, drilling, and mining industries that oppose all limits on maximizing their private profits.”

In a statement, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asserted that the ESA has long been “weaponized to stop almost any new project in America, driving up costs for families, weakening our competitiveness, and undermining our national security,” continued Secretary Burgum.

He added that the endangered species list has “fallen short,” with 97% of listed species remaining designated as endangered, and called for “species recovery and delisting.”

But Defenders of Wildlife noted that the ESA “has succeeded in preventing extinction for 99% of listed species.”

“Public support for protecting our native wildlife remains overwhelmingly high, with 84% of voters supporting the ESA, according to nationwide polling conducted by Defenders of Wildlife,” said the group.

The rules announced on Friday came days after the Interior Department proposed a new rule under which management of threatened grizzly bears would be transferred from the federal government to the states, where Republican leaders have pushed to end protections for the species.

The administration also exempted oil and gas companies from having to protect endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico, and earlier this month changed the regulatory interpretation of the word “harm” in the ESA.

“These rules are a one-way ticket to extinction for our most imperiled animals and plants, from monarch butterflies to giraffes to alligator snapping turtles,” said Greenwald. “Trump is bending over backward for corporate polluters by ripping away the blanket that protects so many struggling wildlife species as well as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the natural places where we seek peace of mind. This is the last thing we need in the middle of an extinction crisis, and we’ll fight it with everything we’ve got.”

About 10,000 people in nearly two dozen villages in southern Iran were without drinking water while the region was under an excessive heat warning on Saturday, after the US struck a water desalination plant in the village of Bonji in one of its latest attacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure.

Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting said the drinking water supply was expected to be restored within a week, and emergency supply operations had begun.

Drop Site News reported comments from the deputy governor for political and security affairs in Hormozgan province, who said several missiles had hit power infrastructure and water desalination plants in the region near the Strait of Hormuz, which President Donald Trump has demanded control over as he’s ramped up attacks on Iran in recent days, despite a ceasefire and a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end hostilities that was agreed to in June.

On Saturday, Iranian officials said the country was suspending its commitments to the MOU after the US violated the agreement repeatedly over the past week.

“The US has violated and suspended all its commitments within the framework of the Islamabad MOU,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi. “We also likewise have suspended all of our commitments as a result; we are no longer implementing those commitments.”

He added that Tehran is now “busy defending the country.”

A representative for Hormozgan province, Ahmad Moradi, told Iran’s Tasnim news agency that over the past two nights, “about seven to eight people” have been killed in US attacks, all of whom were civilians. One attack targeted a bridge and hit two family cars. The neighborhood of Tappeh Allaho Akbar in Bandar Abbas was also hit, killing a woman and injuring a one-year-old, whose wounds required doctors to amputate.

At least 116 telecommunication towers were out of service in southern Iran Saturday, Al Jazeera reported.

The Iranian Embassy in India posted a video of the destruction of a bridge and also condemned the US attack on a maritime surveillance tower at the Chabahar Port, which US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth boasted about on social media on Thursday.

“For a state that once cast itself as the global champion of order, liberalism, and the war on terrorism, proudly displaying images of destroyed bridges and civilian infrastructure has become its only remaining ‘victory,’” said Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Saturday. “Yet with the collapse of every bridge, every tower, and every civilian facility, it is not merely steel and concrete that is being reduced to rubble. It is America’s moral standing—along with the entire architecture of international law and the civilizational claims of the West—that is crumbling before the world’s eyes.”

According to Drop Site, US attacks have targeted nine bridges, two airports, a railroad junction, and a road tunnel since Wednesday. At least 41 Iranians have been killed and 408 have been wounded in US attacks so far this month, with Iranian authorities reporting that at least three women and one child are among those killed.

In a letter to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent UN representative, wrote on Saturday that US attacks had “targeted and caused extensive damage to ports, transportation networks, communications facilities, logistics hubs, radar installations, coastal defense systems and other infrastructure indispensable to the civilian population, and to the functioning of the national economy.”

“The continued commission of these unlawful armed attacks poses a grave threat to international peace and security, freedom of navigation, regional stability, and the security of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” wrote Iravani.

Iran has retaliated against the US this week by striking American allies, including Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. Kuwait’s government Saturday said a power plant and water treatment plant had been attacked for the second time in two days, as well as an oil facility.

Two US soldiers were killed and a third was missing after an Iranian attack on a US military base in Jordan—the first American service members to be killed from hostile fire since an initial ceasefire was brokered in April.

Roxane Farmanfarmian, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Cambridge, told Al Jazeera that Iranian forces are “using Kuwait, in particular, as an example of what they can do in retaliation.”

“The US is clearly hitting the south in Iran and hitting airports, desalination plants, and bridges, and so the same kinds of things are being hit now in Kuwait to show what kind of effect Iran really can have on those countries that are hosting American bases,” she said.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, echoed Iranian officials’ condemnation of the US attack on the southern water desalination plant on Saturday, saying it was “not a legitimate military target.”

“It is a war crime to target it,” he said.

As the Trump administration announced a new round of sanctions on Cuba’s tourism ministry, energy companies, and other entities on Monday, four Democratic members of Congress returned from a trip to the island and described how the oil blockade the US has imposed there for nearly six months “is producing indiscriminate pain for the most vulnerable Cubans.”

“As elected lawmakers tasked with oversight of US foreign policy, we traveled to Havana to meet with Cubans of all walks of life and political perspectives to hear about the hardships the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policies are creating for Cuban citizens,” said Reps. Delia Ramírez (D-Ill.), Teresa Leger-Fernández (D-NM), Mark Pocan, (D-Wis.), and Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.). “In our meetings with religious leaders, entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, humanitarian groups, medical professionals, and farmers, everybody we heard from... agreed on one thing: that they are being strangled to death under the current executive orders and longstanding economic blockade.”

The four Democrats traveled to Cuba last Thursday and spent several days meeting with local leaders, touring the streets of Havana, and speaking with President Miguel Díaz-Canel as the country grapples with the effects of President Donald Trump’s January executive order that baselessly claimed Cuba poses an “extraordinary” threat to US national security and threatened tariffs against any country that provides oil to the communist country.

The president had already cut off Cuba’s main energy supply by invading Venezuela, abducting its president and charging him with drug trafficking, and taking control of its vast oil reserves.

The lawmakers described how the energy blockade is “contributing to nationwide electrical blackouts—including one during our trip—buildups of trash on street corners; severe shortages of food, medicine, and public transportation; and widening inequality on the island.”

Dexter, a physician, noted that Cuba’s lauded healthcare system “is buckling under sanctions that the White House has unleashed on the Cuban people. This is creating a humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Cuba created a free, universal healthcare system that millions of Cubans and others around the world have come to expect and depend on,” said Dexter. “I will be using all the tools at my disposal to remove the barriers to delivering healthcare to the Cuban people.”

As Common Dreams has reported, the blockade has left hospitals struggling to provide care, with 96,000 people, including 11,000 children, on waitlists for surgeries.

“Over 300 pediatric surgeries per week are compromised by shortages of drugs, oxygen, anesthetics, and consumables,” wrote more than 8,000 Italian medical and scientific professionals in an open letter in June.

Leger-Fernández called Trump’s policy in Cuba, which has intensified sanctions that have been in place for years, “a siege.”

“We’re blocking medical supplies, fuel, and other essential inputs, leading its infant mortality rate to rise nearly 150% in recent years, from 4 to 9.9 per 1,000 live births,” said the congresswoman. “I doubt any American wants innocent Cuban babies to die due to our policies.”

Pocan told The Associated Press that one person he spoke to in Cuba called the crisis a “silent Gaza.”

“There may not be bombings, but there are certainly conditions that prevent people from going about their daily lives,” said Pocan. “They can’t go to work, they can’t preserve their food, they can’t access medical supplies, or live as they did before.”

Since imposing the blockade, Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to take over the island by force and has doubled down on claims that Cuba poses a national security threat to the US.

On Sunday, United Nations Ambassador Michael Waltz claimed in a Fox News interview that China and Russia are “collecting information around our military bases in Cuba.” In May, an anonymous White House official told Axios that Cubans were “discussing plans” to launch drones at the US—even as the reporting acknowledged the country was thought to be preparing defensive, not offensive, capabilities.

As the members of Congress returned to the US and reported on the suffering they witnessed in Cuba on Monday, the administration announced a new round of sanctions on the country’s Ministry of Tourism, energy firms, a state-owned financial services company, a major foreign trade firm, and a maritime transportation company. Foreign banks, insurers, and companies will be exposed to potential penalties if they work with the entities under the sanctions.

The Trump administration, said Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, “continues to intensify the war against the people of Cuba, their living conditions, and their sources of livelihood.”

“The announcement on July 13 of additional coercive measures is a clear manifestation of the criminal and genocidal intent with which US rulers are determined to punish the entire population of the country,” he said.

The sanctions demonstrated the Trump administration’s “zeal to strangle our economy,” added Díaz-Canel. “They reinforce the aggression in search of greater harm to the people. We are facing a genocidal design plan.”

With state lawmaker Mallory McMorrow having suspended her US Senate campaign, progressives on Monday were looking ahead to the final weeks of a primary race in which Michigan Democrats have a clear choice to make about who should run in the general election as the party hopes to wrest control of the chamber from Republicans: a candidate backed by the pro-Israel lobby or one who has focused his campaign largely on the broadly popular Medicare for All proposal.

US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said in a video for the grassroots advocacy group Our Revolution that “the contrast could not be clearer” ahead of the August 4 primary as voters decide between Rep. Haley Stevens, who is backed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and former Detroit health official Abdul El-Sayed, who’s been endorsed by progressive leaders including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

With early voting already underway in parts of Michigan, said Tlaib, voters are choosing between “a people-powered movement versus the establishment pick.”

“Abdul is on the ballot right now to be our next US senator, the only candidate that is unapologetic in supporting Medicare for All,” said Tlaib, urging supporters to canvass for the progressive candidate, who has also spoken out against military funding for Israel and abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“All of us know the importance of direct human contact. That’s how we get elected, especially someone like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is unbought and doesn’t take corporate [political action committee] money,” she said.

Our Revolution emphasized that with McMorrow out of the race, “the numbers show this is winnable.”

As El-Sayed has faced Stevens and McMorrow in the three-way race in recent months, the progressive candidate has surged in several polls following his opponents’ attacks on his campaigning with vocal anti-Israel critic and streamer Hasan Piker and as he has remained focused on what he says are his top three priorities: “money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All.”

The most recent polling, from Quantus Insights, showed El-Sayed with 41% support compared with Stevens’ 36% and McMorrow’s 8%. Other surveys, like one from Tulchin Research for the pro-El-Sayed Fighting for Michigan PAC, found the candidate up 19 points over Stevens, with McMorrow in a distant third place.

A poll by a super PAC that supports El-Sayed also asked voters ahead of McMorrow’s suspension of her campaign how they would vote if El-Sayed and Stevens were the only two candidates, and found the progressive up 54-34.

El-Sayed has argued during the campaign that Stevens’ support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as well as for-profit health insurance companies is emblematic of a corrupt political system that’s been worsened in recent years by the US Supreme Court Citizens United ruling.

As Common Dreams reported in May, AIPAC has appealed to its direct donors to send contributions of Stevens during the campaign, as well as spending $10 million to boost the candidate.

“I’m the only candidate today who didn’t ask AIPAC for their support,” said El-Sayed at a debate in May. “I don’t think that our taxpayer dollars which we pay every April ought to be going to bomb children, to fund bombs and tanks for other countries, when we got kids who can’t afford basic things in our own.”

Before suspending her campaign, McMorrow cast herself as a candidate who could be seen as a midway point between Stevens’ establishment connections and El-Sayed’s demands for bold changes to the US political system and the Democratic Party’s priorities.

But Lever News founder David Sirota pointed to McMorrow’s dismissive comments about Medicare for All as evidence that she was far out of step with voters.

She claimed in an interview and a debate that public support for a government-run universal healthcare program “isn’t there yet,” despite the fact that the proposal was backed by 78% of Democratic voters and 65% of overall voters in one recent poll.

New York Times politics reporter Reid Epstein also pointed to McMorrow’s decision to join in a weekslong smear campaign against El-Sayed, over his appearances with Piker, as a move that “backfired quickly.”

“Her remarks helped burnish Dr. El-Sayed’s claim that he was the lone progressive candidate in the race and the one most willing to criticize American funding of the Israeli military,” wrote Epstein.

While Stevens supporters have suggested she’s likely to appeal to more Michigan Democratic voters, recent public polling regarding AIPAC and Israel tells a different story following Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza, which has been called a genocide by top Holocaust scholars and human rights groups.

Last October, nearly half of Democrats in competitive primary districts said they “could never” vote for a candidate backed by AIPAC, and another survey in March showed a double-digit decline in support for Israel among US voters.

One campaigner for El-Sayed said Monday that interactions with voters have suggested Stevens’ AIPAC ties are seen as a liability, even among people who haven’t yet heard of her opponent in the primary.

Following McMorrow’s announcement that she was suspending her campaign, El-Sayed thanked the state senator and said the race has been and remains a fight against “a politics that rigs the system against too many of us.”

“The same party insiders she had the courage to challenge have been bullying anyone who opposes their chosen candidate,” said El-Sayed. “After spending $30 million to drown Sen. McMorrow and me out, they’re now spending even more to attack me. It’s everything we stand against.”

“I welcome her supporters to our movement to stand up against money in politics, to put money back in pockets, and pass Medicare for All,” said El-Sayed. “We cannot allow the establishment to decide our nominee for us.”

European astronomers on Wednesday urged the US Federal Communications Commission to block a plan led by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to launch a total of 1.7 million satellites into the Earth’s orbit, warning that the use of so many extremely bright satellites—partially to support artificial intelligence data centers—would have “devastating consequences for astronomy.”

SpaceX’s Starlink telecommunications program has already rapidly increased the number of satellites orbiting the Earth, with the total now exceeding 14,000 since 2019.

Now the space exploration company led by Musk—a former special government employee under the Trump administration—has plans to send 1 million more satellites into space, which would “significantly alter the appearance of the sky,” according to a new study by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Scientists found that 100,000 is the maximum number of satellites—ones that are faint enough to be invisible to the naked eye—that can orbit the Earth in order to allow astronomers to continue observing the sky with modern telescopes.

In addition to Musk’s launches, the US startup Reflect Orbital has proposed launching a constellation of 50,000 “very large mirror-like satellites to provide sunlight at night,” said ESO.

“These satellites would be the brightest ever in orbit, with damaging consequences for dark skies on Earth,” said the observatory. “Seen from within a reflected beam, the satellite delivering sunlight would appear four times brighter than the full Moon. Even if no satellite points its beam directly at an observer, each would be as bright as the planet Venus, the ‘morning star.’ From a light-polluted city, like Munich, Germany, these hundreds of satellites would be the only ‘stars’ visible in the night sky.”

The startup E-Space and two Chinese constellations, CTC-1 and 2, would also add hundreds of thousands of satellites into orbit.

The companies’ satellite project could hinder scientists’ ability to observe far-away galaxies, Earth-like planets near other stars, and asteroids that could potentially endanger the planet.

“Satellites, illuminated by the sun, are much brighter than distant galaxies. When a satellite crosses what we observe, it makes a bright streak on our image, zapping whatever is behind it,” said ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut, who led the study.

Hainaut noted that the planned launches could have economic and ecological impacts on the planet and humankind as well as harming astronomy.

Extreme light pollution from the bright satellites could disrupt people’s biological clocks and ecosystems across the planet, and the satellites could also directly impact air quality due to the numerous launches required to send them into space and the “atmospheric pollution caused as they burn up on reentry at the end of life.”

ESO conducted the research as the FCC considers applications from SpaceX and Reflect Orbital regarding the satellite launches

“The FCC received over 1800 comments regarding Reflect Orbital and nearly 1,500 comments on the application by SpaceX,” said ESO institutional affairs officer Betty Kioko. “The ball is now in the FCC’s court, and we wait to see the determinations they make on both filings. For optical astronomy, this is an existential threat, and we hope that the regulators will share that view.”

Darializa Avila Chevalier, the progressive organizer whose primary victory over five-term Democratic Congressman Adriano Espaillat last week stunned the party’s establishment, was among those calling for the expulsion of New York City Council member Vickie Paladino Tuesday night after the Republican issued “a thinly veiled call” for the government “to kill” democratic socialists.

On the social media platform X, Paladino posted an image of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) 2025-27 National Political Committee, including national co-chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer, and mused that in the past, government agencies may have mobilized to kill the 27 people in the picture to stop their left-wing activities.

“There was a time in our history, not too long ago, when the CIA/FBI would’ve made sure unabashed revolutionaries like this were neutralized one way or another,” said Paladino (R-19). “In fact, that was basically the entire point of having them.”

Paladino appeared to be referring to the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which surveilled, infiltrated, and tried to disrupt groups and movements that fought for civil rights and against the US war in Vietnam. COINTELPRO was involved in the 1969 raid in Chicago in which police killed Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

“This is insane,” said US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) after Paladino suggested the US government should use the FBI and CIA to “neutralize” DSA organizers, who are working to elect advocates for Medicare for All, universal childcare, and abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, among other increasingly popular progressive proposals.

Chevalier, a member of the DSA’s New York City chapter, called for Paladino to be “expelled.”

“We need public leaders who will fight for a politics of life and the council member has shown time and time again that she does not,” said Chevalier.

Paladino’s call to “neutralize” left-wing organizers came a day after she urged New York City police to “run over” protesters who were blocking officers on bikes. Last December, Paladino said the US should “take very seriously the need to begin the expulsion of Muslims from Western nations,” and last June she suggested New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who was then a primary candidate, should be deported.

The Brooklyn Young Democrats also accused Paladino of “encouraging political violence” and called on the City Council to condemn her comments “and consider appropriate action—including expulsion.”

Ryan Deitsch, co-founder of the gun control group A March for Our Lives, addressed the New York Police Department and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, asking whether Paladino’s threat raised any “red flags.”

The council member’s comments came less than a week after a number of progressive primary victories in New York City, including Chevalier’s. The election results led centrist Democrats to quickly mobilize against democratic socialist candidates, warning that progressive contenders are “bomb-throwers, not problem solvers”—even as Mamdani secured a two-year rent freeze that will affect roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, as New Yorkers and people across the country struggle with rising costs.

One DSA organizer said in response to Paladino, “Imagine if Zohran Mamdani said something about having the [Republican National Committee] chair and co-chair ‘neutralized one way or another’ with a secret police force.”

“Expel Vickie Paladino from the NYC Council,” they added, “and have her arrested and charged for making a terrorist threat.”

After the Republican Party’s decision to terminate subsidies that had significantly reduced healthcare costs under the Affordable Care Act for 22 million people, the White House is considering a new way to—officials claim—“help” Americans who face massive medical bills, either due to high-deductible plans that don’t cover routine costs or because of emergency expenses.

The proposal, though, could just shift “who [the patients] owe the debt to,” as one doctor and researcher told The New York Times, which reported Thursday on the Trump administration’s proposal to allow people to take out loans directly from their health insurance companies when they can’t afford to pay a hospital or doctor’s office out of pocket—and then pay the insurance company back, likely with interest.

“Hard to top this level of dystopia,” said one writer in response to the Times report. “Have health insurance through the ACA? The Trump administration is going to turn your health insurer into a loan shark you borrow money from if you can’t afford to pay your portion of medical procedures.”

As the newspaper was reported, the provision is buried in a 1,121-page final rule issued last month regarding how the ACA will be regulated next year.

The Trump administration is planning to significantly expand the number of Americans who are eligible for high-deductible “catastrophic” health insurance plans that provide no coverage for day-to-day medical expenses.

“We note that multiyear and 1-year catastrophic plans may be able to offer relief from the high deductible and maximum annual limitation on cost sharing through other mechanisms,” reads the final rule. “For example, issuers of catastrophic plans could consider financing the deductible by providing enrollees a loan.”

Currently, the average annual deductible for people insured under the ACA is nearly $4,000, and about 40% of enrollees this year have “Bronze” plans, which have an out-of-pocket maximum that’s over $10,000 for an individual, likely leaving many people having to pay thousands of dollars in medical expenses despite having coverage.

By 2028, as Common Dreams reported earlier this year, catastrophic plans with lower premiums could have deductibles as high as $31,000 for families.

The plan to shift more people onto expensive plans that provide less coverage for day-to-day medical care—and to push patients to take out loans from their insurers—comes as about one-third of Americans, even those with insurance, report skipping meals or cutting back on other expenses to afford their medical bills.

The Times reported that at least one major health insurer—UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest—is already equipped to start lending patients money to cover unexpected medical bills. The company operates a bank that administers loans to doctors and offers health savings accounts.

Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) said the latest proposal from the White House shows that President Donald Trump “is destroying healthcare from all sides.”

The advocacy group Protect Our Care said the “suggestion” buried in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ final rule “is not only out of touch, it is cruel—accruing medical debt only adds to families’ financial burdens.”

“While working families drown in the high cost of living, the Trump administration’s answer to the healthcare affordability crisis they created is to throw people an anchor made of medical debt and call it relief,” said Leslie Dach, chair of Protect Our Care. “Trump and Republicans had a simple, popular fix sitting right in front of their faces—extending the ACA tax credits—but they killed it anyway, triggering premiums to double, triple, or even quadruple for millions of working families, all to make billionaires and big corporations even richer.”

“Americans are being bankrupted by crushing medical debt, and this administration isn’t lifting a finger to help—it’s busy shoveling more people into that hole,” said Dach. “Voters will remember this foolishness at the ballot box in November, just you wait.”

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, which advocates for a universal, single-payer healthcare system for New York state, suggested the proposal makes the latest case for a federal, government-funded healthcare program similar to those in other wealthy countries, which would end the healthcare profit motive by expanding the existing Medicare system to the entire US population.

“Letting Americans take out loans to afford healthcare forces Americans deeper into debt and drives up profits for the health insurance industry,” said D’Arrigo. “Abolish the health insurance industry. Demand Medicare for All.”

The antiwar group CodePink it has yet to be served with any subpoenas after it was reported over the weekend that the Trump administration has opened an investigation into a recent humanitarian trip it helped organize to Cuba, but vehemently denied wrongdoing and said any government probe, if there is one, would only show that “this administration is beyond grotesque.”

“Taking medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in Cuba is now a crime?” asked co-founder Medea Benjamin on social media on Saturday after Fox News reported that organizers had been served subpoenas. “Saving the lives of babies is a crime?”

Fox reported that Benjamin and left-wing commentator Hasan Piker had been subpoenaed by federal investigators two months after they were among 40 Americans who sailed to Havana on the Nuestra America Convoy, which carried 20 tons of humanitarian aid to the island nation.

The Fox reporting claimed the subpoenas issued to Benjamin and Piker seek to obtain financial, logistical, and communications information related to the trip, which was organized in response to the Trump administration’s decision in late January to threaten to impose tariffs on any country that provided Cuba with oil.

The administration cut off Cuba’s main source of fuel at the beginning of the year when it sent US troops into Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and took control of the country’s vast oil supply.

White House officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, have long desired regime change in the communist country, and rights advocates have warned the administration appears to be moving toward just that as it strangles the island’s oil supply—causing frequent blackouts and impacting the healthcare and food systems—and claims the Cuban government poses a threat to the US.

In organizing the Nuestra America Convoy, said Benjamin on Sunday, the advocates were acting “as moral US citizens trying to bring some relief to a population being deliberately starved by the cruel policies of our own government.”

“This policy has contributed to catastrophic shortages of medicine and electricity, massive blackouts, transportation collapse, and a public health crisis that has hurt the most vulnerable, especially children and the elderly,” said Benjamin. “It is a policy that is, literally, killing babies, as we have seen in the recent tragic doubling of the infant mortality rate. This is why we focused our donations on medical supplies for pediatric hospitals.”

The blockade is compounding the suffering caused by the trade embargo the US has imposed for decades, said Benjamin.

The Cuban Assets Control Regulations law prohibits US citizens from conducting unlicensed travel-related transations with Cuba, but the law makes exceptions for humanitarian endeavors and other activities aimed at supporting the Cuban people.

“We traveled to Cuba under the US government-authorized category of providing humanitarian aid to the Cuban people. We brought desperately needed medicines and medical supplies at a time when Cuba is suffering catastrophic shortages caused by the crippling US blockade,” said Benjamin.

Benjamin, Piker, and Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim emphasized that the group stayed in Spanish-owned hotels that are “explicitly permitted under” the US law—while right-wing influencer Nick Shirley allegedly stayed in a sanctioned hotel on a recent trip to Cuba.

“It is outrageous that the US government would target people for bringing humanitarian aid to suffering Cuban children,” Benjamin said. “But even more disturbing is the cruel and deeply immoral policy the United States continues to impose on Cuba—a policy designed to strangle the island economically, deprive people of food, fuel, medicine, and basic necessities, and make daily life unbearable.”

Piker said the reports of the investigation indicate that “the American government would rather try to criminalize delivering aid to a country we’ve starved, than punish the Epstein class.”

Benjamin emphasized that the reports of the probe come as the administration intensified its threats against Cuba, having indicted former President Raúl Castro last week on charges related to the shooting down of a plane operated by Cuban-American exiles in the 1990s. Trump and his allies have repeatedly mused about invading the country following his military attacks on Venezuela and Iran.

“President Trump already has his hands full trying to disentangle himself from the disastrous US war with Iran,” said Benjamin. “He should not start another one in Cuba. The American people are tired of endless wars, interventions, sanctions, and suffering imposed in our name.”

Meta employees reported Wednesday that in the company’s offices on the day mass layoffs hit thousands of their colleagues, fliers were taped to walls urging workers to sign a petition in support of stopping the company’s new artificial intelligence data tracking program—which CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted late last month as a way for its new AI models to “learn from watching really smart people do things.”

A day before about 8,000 Meta employees began receiving emails notifying them that they were being laid off—a process that began in Singapore at 4:00 am local time Wednesday and continued in European and US offices in their respective time zones—the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union shared a leaked audio file in which Zuckerberg was heard explaining how the AI training program worked.

“The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks,” said Zuckerberg. “So if we’re trying to teach the models coding, for example, then having people internally build tools or solve tasks that help teach the model how to code, we think is going to dramatically increase our model’s coding ability faster than what others in the industry have the capability to do, who don’t have thousands and thousands of extremely strong engineers at their company.”

He assured the company’s 78,000 employees that “no human is looking at or watching what people are doing on their computers... None of the data is being used for looking at what people are doing or surveillance or performance tracking or anything like that. It’s purely just that we are using this to feed a very large amount of content into the AI model so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks.”

Zuckerberg explained how the employees have been used to train the model that could potentially replace many of them days after Meta announced it was planning to lay off about 10% of its workforce as the company invests heavily in AI, spending $125 billion to $145 billion on the technology—more than double what it spent last year.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that employees “revolted” when they learned about the AI tracking program, and expressed fears that they had unknowingly been training a model that would ultimately replace them.

An engineering manager asked on the company’s internal communication platform how workers can opt out of having their computer activity monitored to train the AI model, only to be told by chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, “There is no option to opt out on your corporate laptop.”

Another employee told Bosworth, “Your callousness to the concerns of your own employees is concerning.”

On Monday, The New York Times reported, employees learned that in addition to the layoffs, another 7,000 workers will be reassigned to help develop AI tools.

About 2,000 employees began working this month on a new Applied AI and Engineering team, which is set to use the data gathered by the AI tracking program Zuckerberg described to build AI tools. Those who volunteered to join the group would not be included in this week’s layoffs, the Times reported.

“Every company is training AI on their employees,” said Chen Avnery, an independent adviser on AI governance and data platforms. “Meta just said it out loud. The question stopped being, ‘Will AI replace you?’ a year ago. Now it’s whether you’re building the agents or generating their training data.”

More than 1,000 people in the company have signed the petition calling to halt the AI data program, according to the newspaper.

Software engineer Mack Ward urged his colleagues to sign on earlier this month, telling them in an internal post that “AI is a freight train, but the future is not a foregone conclusion.”

“It’s not too late to pump the brakes and consider how we, society, want to go about this,” Ward said. “Speaking up is never easy, but ‘easy’ isn’t what you were hired to do.”

The 57 confirmed bombings of boats that the Trump administration has carried out so far since last September have shattered families and communities across Latin America, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US Southern Command never acknowledging the identities of the at least 192 people they’ve killed, beyond declaring them “narco-terrorists.”

But despite the concerted effort to keep the names and any information about the victims hidden—their identities “blown away over vast stretches of ocean,” as a new report states—20 journalists led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) managed to identify 13 of the men whose killings have been called “murders” by legal experts and rights advocates.

The journalists and researchers represented CasaMacondo, Verdad Abierta, 360-grados.co, and NGO El Veinte in Colombia; Alianza Rebelde Investiga in Venezuela; the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian; and Airwars in the UK.

The investigation, titled “Bombed, Without the Right to a Defense,“ was completed despite widespread fears of speaking out about the bombings in the affected communities.

“Some relatives of victims in Venezuela and in Santa Marta, Colombia, say they have received threats, as sources confirmed to journalists in this alliance,” reads the report. “Authorities have remained largely opaque, and the officials willing to talk do so only off the record, wary of dragging their countries into conflict with [US President Donald] Trump.”

Three people named in the report had already been identified publicly in legal complaints—Trinidadians Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, whose families filed a complaint in the US federal court; and Colombian Alejandro Carranza Medina, whose family filed a petition with the US-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The men identified for the first time by CLIP include:

• Juan Carlos Fuentes, a bus driver who told his family he was “going to have to do something risky to see if I can make ends meet” after his bus broke down, and who left behind three children and a grandson;
• Luis Ramón Amundarain, a motorcycle taxi driver and fisherman with a wife and five children;
• Eduard Hidalgo, a fisherman who had been deported from the US in December 2025;
• Jesús Carreño of Venezuela;
• Eduardo Jaime, a “beloved indoor soccer player” in his hometown of Güiria, Venezuela;
• Dushak Milovcic, a student at the National Guard Academy in Venezuela who became involved in drug transporting, starting as “a lookout for smugglers”;
• Ricky Joseph, a well-known fishmerman in Savannes Bay, Saint Lucia, whose family lost contact with him after a bombing on February 13 and who is believed to be one of the victims;
• Pedro Ramón Holguín Holguín, who was registered as a fish and seafood wholesaler in Ecuador;
• Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Solórzano, who was rescued by Costa Rican authorities but died following an attack on his boat;
• Luis Alí Martínez, who had a criminal record for drug trafficking and other crimes;
• Ronald Arregocés of Riohacha, Colombia;
• Adrián Lubo, of Riohacha, Colombia, who was called “a great captain” by a person who knew him; and
• Robert Sánchez, who was traveling with his cousin, Amundarain, when the boat they were on was bombed.

Another man was identified by his nickname, and two unnamed people, including an Ecuadorian man who helped survivor Jonathan Obando escape a bombing and later died, were included in the report.

“It’s a double tragedy—not only because of the unlawful killings, but because the victims are erased, reduced to anonymity,” John Walsh, of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told CLIP and the reporting alliance.

The report emphasizes that all of the victims it identified came from poor families and communities. In Uribia, Colombia, where at least two bodies washed ashore after a boat attack, 92% of residents “lack adequate education, healthcare, or basic public services.”

“In those conditions, recruiting young men to transport cocaine is easy work—and the pay can be good,” reads the report.

A boatman in Uribia told CLIP that “most people here aren’t the owners” of vessels or the drugs they carry. “The people who own the cargo are almost always outsiders—even international players.”

María Teresa Ronderos, director and co-founder of the CLIP, told The Guardian the report affirms that despite the administration’s repeated claims that the military is defending “our nation’s interest” and protecting Americans from those who are “trafficking deadly narcotics” like fentanyl and cocaine, “the US is not taking down any Pablo Escobar or Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.”

“Despite the US claim that the strikes are fighting narco-terrorism, what is actually happening is that young people living in extremely precarious conditions, doing whatever work they can to support their families, are being targeted,” Ronderos said.

The boat that Fuentes and Amundarain, who had both gone to Trinidad and Tobago to work, were on was traveling from the Caribbean country to Venezuela, calling into question the claim that the vessel was trafficking drugs.

“Boats carry drugs from South America northwards, not the reverse,” Ronderos told The Guardian.

Legal experts have emphasized that even in the cases of victims who were involved in the drug trade, the bombings still legally qualify as extrajudicial killings, or even murder. Trump informed Congress in October that the White House views the US as being in an armed conflict with drug cartels in Latin America, claiming a rationale for carrying out the boat strikes. But no conflict has officially been declared, and rights experts warn that the military has clearly violated international law by targeting the survivors of some of the boat attacks in “double-tap” strikes.

“The deaths of Joseph and Samaroo were clearly extrajudicial killings,” Steven Watt, an attorney with the ACLU who is working on the case brought by the two Trinidiadian families, told CLIP. He added that “the Trump administration’s argument—that a ‘war on drugs’ justifies violent strikes like these—cannot legally excuse the killings.”

Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group told CLIP that “the law of war permits violence otherwise prohibited, but only during genuine armed conflict—a threshold the Trump administration has failed to meet, as it has not even identified who the US is supposedly fighting.”

“Beyond that foundational problem, the administration’s suggestion that vaguely defined ‘enablers’ may be targetable raises further concerns that it is violating the rules of its own bogus legal paradigm,” Finucane said.

Ronderos added that “there is no death penalty for cocaine trafficking.”

“So the fact that they were killed without even having the chance to defend themselves is deeply troubling,” she told The Guardian.

In accordance with international and domestic laws, the US has historically treated drug trafficking on the high seas as a criminal offense and has ensured those who are found trying to bring drugs to the US are brought to justice in court.

A spokesperson for US Southern Command told the reporters that the bombings have been “deliberate, lawful, and precise, directed specifically at narco-terrorists and their enablers,” and that the US has “full confidence in the operations and intelligence professionals who inform our missions.”

But the administration has not released any evidence showing the strikes have targeted major drug trafficking operations, and as Common Dreams reported last month, data from US Customs and Border Protection shows little evidence that the strikes are stopping the flow of illicit substances.

“CBP’s seizures of fentanyl at the US-Mexico border had been declining, often sharply, since mid-2023. But since early 2025, the declines stopped,” said Adam Isacson of WOLA at the time. “Halfway into fiscal 2026, seizures are almost exactly half of 2025’s full-year total: a flat trendline.”

Finucane told The Guardian that the boat strikes have never been “a serious counter-drug operation.”

“I think this was in part a military spectacle to give the illusion of the administration doing something ‘macho’ about drugs,” Finucane said.

Walsh said Hegseth and Trump “want to impress the public, to make Americans believe that they, unlike previous governments, are finally ending the terrible problem of drug trafficking.”

“The profound cruelty and indifference with which they order these systematic and intentional killings allows them to project this menacing image of faceless ‘narco-terrorists,’” he added. “In doing so, they shock many Americans while numbing their sense that the US officials responsible for these murders should be held accountable.”

As the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence approaches, a government watchdog group is warning that the Trump administration has refused to release key documents regarding President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 project, in which the White House has partnered with corporations including Palantir and ExxonMobil to organize what it’s called “a celebration of America like no other.”

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a lawsuit Monday against the Department of Interior (DOI) in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday, more than two months after the group filed multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the funding of the “controversial and secretive” Freedom 250 initiative.

As the agency that oversees the National Parks Service, DOI and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are playing a major role in the organization of Freedom 250, with the celebration including projects like the National Garden of American Heroes, the proposed Freedom 250 Grand Prix at the National Mall, and the proposed Independence Arch.

In late February, PEER’s FOIA requests sought information from DOI on reports that public funds are being directed to Freedom 250 through the congressionally chartered National Park Foundation, “with no transparency, no accountability, and no guardrails.”

“America’s 250th anniversary celebration is supposed to be an occasion for strengthening public trust in our democratic institutions, not eroding it,” Tim Whitehouse, PEER’s executive director, said late Monday. “In contrast, Freedom 250 is a privately managed slush fund... It epitomizes what is wrong with politics today.”

In its lawsuit, PEER said the DOI “has failed to make a final determination on any of PEER’s FOIA requests and has failed to disclose any of the requested records within the time stipulated under FOIA.”

The department has failed to respond to the requests as reports have mounted that Trump is using Freedom 250 to:

• Divert $100 million in taxpayer funds from America 250, the congressionally mandated 250th anniversary entity, without congressional approval;
• Sell access to the president for up to $2.5 million;
• Seek foreign donations, including at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where Freedom 250 CEO Keith Krach was seen promoting the project to foreign state actors in a leaked video;
• Use public employees to promote the private entity, including by pressuring DOI employees to include Freedom 250 logos and links in their official email signatures—a possible violation of the Hatch Act as well as workers’ First Amendment rights; and
• Use taxpayer funds to push a partisan agenda, with DOI removing a slavery exhibit from Independence Park in Philadelphia as well as references to the internment of Japanese Americans and the oppression of Native Americans from other National Park Service sites ahead of the anniversary.

In its lawsuit, PEER noted that the DOI was required to respond to the FOIA requests by March 20, but communications from the department have indicated officials plan to respond no sooner than August 3—after the main 250th anniversary celebrations occur.

Whitehouse said DOI’s failure disclose information about the funding mechanisms for Freedom 250 continue “a pattern of Secretary Doug Burgum dispensing with a variety of legal safeguards to improperly facilitate Trump projects—particularly around the nation’s capital.”

“Just look no further than his more than $1 billion ballroom or vanity projects, such as the arch,” said Whitehouse.

Burgum has pushed for the construction of a 250-foot arch in Washington, saying it “embodies American freedom.” Trump has said the project could be paid for by private donors, while veterans groups and historians have filed legal challenges over the proposed project, arguing Congress needs to approve its construction.

With just over seven months to go until the midterm elections, the US-Israeli war on Iran pushing gas prices past $4 per gallon, and the rising cost of living bringing consumer confidence to an all-time low, political observers marveled on Monday at Republican senators’ decision to center President Donald Trump’s demand for a new $400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom at the White House as a top legislative goal.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) held a press conference late Monday to announce their intention to expedite a bill to the Senate floor to use public funds to pay for the construction of a secure ballroom, joining Trump in insisting that a shooting at the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) dinner on Saturday proved the project is a national security priority.

Trump has demanded the construction of the ballroom for months, ordering demolition work to begin last year as he insisted the project would be paid for entirely by private donations from companies with government contracts like Amazon, Lockheed Martin, and Google—a plan that has raised alarm over significant conflicts of interest.

The construction was halted recently after a federal court ruled the project must be approved by Congress, but an appeals court this month allowed the building to continue while it reviews the ruling.

On Monday evening, the US Department of Justice also filed a motion—which observers noted appeared to be written in the same style the president frequently uses in his social media posts—demanding that US District Judge Richard Leon dissolve his previous injunction blocking the project.

The motion started by claiming the name of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the nonprofit that sued over the ballroom construction, is “FAKE.”

“They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly referred to as TDS,” reads the filing.

Graham said Monday that the ballroom should be paid for with $400 million in taxpayer funds collected in the form of national park fees and customs fees, with the private funding Trump secured going to extra costs like fine china.

The senator insisted the American public, whose approval of the president stood at 40% in one monthly survey in March, would support the bill.

“If you don’t think $400 million of taxpayer money is a good investment to create a secure facility at the White House, then I disagree. I bet you 90% of Americans would love to have a better facility,” said Graham.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal responded: “Nope. Ninety percent of Americans would love to have affordable healthcare, housing, and childcare. Or lower gas prices. Or lower grocery prices. Not a frigging illegally constructed ballroom.”

Graham explained that beneath the ballroom there would be “a lot of military stuff” and “infrastructure that is national security-centric,” and suggested the construction of the facility would allow Trump and future presidents to stay on the White House grounds instead of leaving for public events.

The WHCA has held its annual dinner at the Washington Hilton for decades, and it’s unclear whether it would ever change the venue to the White House in order to hold the event in a “secure” ballroom.

The press conference came two days after a man armed with multiple guns and knives tried to break into the WHCA dinner and exchanged gunfire with Secret Service personnel before being tackled and disarmed. Just hours after being evacuated from the chaotic scene, Trump held a press conference with his top administration officials and declared the incident had proven that “we need the ballroom.”

Graham said Monday that the president talks about the ballroom “all the time” in his conversations with Republican senators. He said the White House supports the plan to pay for the project with $400 million in public funds.

“The Republican pitch to voters in an election year dominated by the crushing costs of living in this country should be the urgent need for a new marble and gold ballroom for members of the American ruling class to have safer banquets,” said one observer sardonically.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) told Pablo Manriquez of MeidasTouch that regardless of the GOP’s claims about national security, the ballroom is “about what Donald Trump wants and what makes him more money and puts his name on another edifice. That’s all the ballroom is, it’s nothing the American people asked for.”

“It’s nothing the American people need at a time where grocery prices continue to rise and are rising faster, gasoline costs are through the sky, and it’s harder for everyday Americans to make it through every day,” said Schneider. “The president’s always focused on himself.”

A new report by an economic think tank takes aim at the broadly accepted idea that Americans are divided on the major issues affecting millions of people every day—the question of how to ensure everyone can get the healthcare they need without going bankrupt, how the government can ensure working people make enough money to live, and whether the US should take more aggressive climate action.

As it turns out, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) suggested Monday, there’s far more agreement on those and more issues across the political spectrum than the corporate media and establishment politicians from both sides of the aisle would have the public believe.

Lawmakers who push for good, fair-paying jobs for all workers; raising the chronically stagnant federal minimum wage; guaranteeing healthcare for all Americans; clean energy investments; and ending the influence of corporations and billionaires on US elections would not be advocating for policies that are just popular on the left, the report says, but would actually be promoting a “Majority Agenda.”

“It may feel like Americans agree on nothing right now, but recent polling tells a different story,” said CEPR on social media. “From raising the minimum wage and strengthening Social Security to affordable housing and healthcare reform, these progressive policies are broadly popular despite the political establishment continuing to ignore them.”

The group pointed to one 2024 poll by the American Communities Project that showed more than 60% of Americans agreed that the economy “is rigged to advantage the rich and the powerful,” while 62% disagreed with the idea of cutting social programs to lower taxes.

Another 2024 poll by The Associated Press found that 91% of Americans supported equal protection under the law and 88% supported the right to privacy, while a 2020 poll by the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy School revealed that 89% of Americans expressed strong support for affordable healthcare, 85% felt people have the right to a job, and 93% thought the right to clean air and water is essential.

Analyzing those surveys and other data, CEPR advised policymakers to consider the Majority Agenda as a “roadmap” to passing policies that large majorities of Americans view as major priorities to improve their quality of life.

The report is divided into three sections: Good Jobs, Strong Infrastructure, and Fair Play.

To push for fair, well-paying employment, said CEPR, lawmakers should support policies including:

• Increasing unionization‚ supported by 68% of Americans in one recent poll, through the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, cracking down on retaliation against union members, and repealing or reforming the Taft-Hartley Act;
• Raising the $7.25 federal minimum wage, supported by 86% of Americans; and
• Setting a floor for paid time off from work by strengthening the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The section on strengthening US “infrastructure” looks beyond the traditional definition of the term regarding physical infrastructure projects, pushing for stronger policies that can help working people thrive by ensuring their healthcare, housing, and other basic needs are met.

A stronger infrastructure, said CEPR, would include:

• Guaranteed healthcare for everyone in the US through the passage of the Medicare for All Act, which has been introduced in the US House and Senate numerous times, and a corporate practice of medicine law to stop the corporatization of healthcare;
• A reversal of the trend of federal housing policy directing “too much funding to the wealthy and too little for everyone else,” by ending federal restrictions on the creation of new federal public housing instead of investing in mortgage interest deductions for wealthy homeowners and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, whose benefits are greater for wealthy investors than for low-income renters; and
• An investment in clean energy by reinstating Biden-era regulations and strengthening the Clean Air Act and other environmental protection laws in order to meet the demands of 59% of Americans who view the climate crisis as “very or extremely dangerous,” according to a 2021 poll by the University of Chicago.

CEPR pointed to three areas in which lawmakers could increase “fair play” for Americans:

• Strengthening and supporting Social Security, which Republicans frequently attack as rife with fraud and on the verge of going broke, by diverting some among of general revenue to the program and increasing monthly benefits modestly;
• Passing a constitutional amendment to allow the government to regulate campaign fundraising and spending both by campaigns and outside individuals and artificial entities; and
• Raising taxes on large businesses and the wealthy, as large majorities of Americans believe government should, and restoring funding to the Internal Revenue Service to ensure proper collection of taxes.

“That the US Congress is not debating or introducing bills to address the issues presented here represents a breakdown of democracy, one that comes at a considerable cost to the betterment of life for large swaths of Americans. At the same time, the access to and influence over our democratic processes by the monied class has upended our system of government, and all too often the tyranny of the wealthy minority has reigned,” reads the CEPR report.

“We hope this report stands as a reminder that even in a fraught political moment,” said CEPR, “there is a range of straightforward, broadly popular policy choices that could improve the lives of millions of people.”

A suspect was arrested in San Francisco Friday after being accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of Sam Altman, the CEO of the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI.

The 20-year-old man was found at the OpenAI headquarters about three miles away from Altman’s home, where he was threatening to burn down the building, San Francisco police said.

The device the suspect threw onto Altman’s property in the Russian Hill neighborhood caused a fire on the exterior gate. It was unclear whether Altman and his family were at home.

The suspect was in custody Friday, with charges pending.

Altman’s company and other companies have been under fire as AI has expanded rapidly at President Donald Trump’s urging, with the president issuing an executive order attacking states’ ability to regulate the industry.

Experts have warned the expansion of generative AI threatens jobs and democracy, with political campaigns already using the technology to create fraudulent media in advertisements.

Massive, energy-sucking AI data centers have also been blamed for higher household electricity bills and water consumption.

Protesters have rallied against Altman’s company for agreeing to provide its technology to the Department of Defense.

In November, The New York Times reported, a person who had once been associated with the anti-AI group Stop AI “expressed interest in causing physical harm to OpenAI employees,” causing the company to lock down its headquarters.

On Friday, Stop AI condemned the attack on Altman’s house and emphasized that the group “seeks to protect human life.”

“We do not condone any violence whatsoever,” said the group. “We pray everyone involved in this situation puts aside violence and finds peace, and we continue to hope the AI industry stops the development of frontier AI systems in the interest of public safety and the preservation of humanity. To the best of our knowledge, this incident did not involve anyone who has ever been associated with our group. And this action is wholly inconsistent with our values.”