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US military investigators have said it is likely its forces were responsible for a strike on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and has been condemned as a war crime, according to a report by Reuters.
The attack on the Minab girls’ school in southern Iran on Saturday is believed to have killed at least 165 people, mostly children under the age of 12.
The UN’s education agency, Unesco, said the attack was a “grave violation of humanitarian law”.
US war secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the military was investigating the incident. Investigators have not reached a final conclusion and it is still unclear what evidence contributed to their assessment, Reuters reported, citing two unnamed officials.
It was also unclear what type of munitions were used and who was responsible, the outlet said.
An investigation by news outlet Middle East Eye determined that the attack on the school was a “double tap” strike – where a target is hit a second time in order to kill rescuers who come to the aid of the injured.
“When the first bomb hit the school, one of the teachers and the principal moved a group of students to the prayer hall to protect them,” a Red Crescent medic told the outlet, citing conversations he had with survivors.
“The principal called the parents and told them to come and pick up their children. But the second bomb hit that area as well. Only a small number of those who had taken shelter survived.”
The UK has joined the war on Iran – which is illegal because it was not approved by the UN or US congress – by allowing the use of its bases for strikes against the country.
Prime minister Keir Starmer has claimed the UK’s involvement is an act of self-defence, despite the fact the US and Israel started the war.
From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.
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In the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, up to 175 young children and school staff were blown to pieces at an elementary school. Others were maimed and burned, and will be suffering from their injuries for the rest of their lives. Even any comparatively fortunate ones with minimal injuries will surely experience permanent trauma from having witnessed something so horrific. Witnesses describe scenes of unfathomable horror, with limbs and blood strewn across classrooms. "People were pulling out children's arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads," said a woman whose child was killed. The Guardian cites verified videos that show "children's bodies lying partly buried under the debris":
In one video, a very small child's severed arm is pulled from the rubble. Colourful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams can be heard in the background.
Drop Site News spoke to the father of a six-year-old girl, Sara Shariatmadar, who was killed in the attack. "I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this," he said. "We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price."
The United States and Israel have not denied responsibility for the attack, although it is still unclear which country fired the missile. The U.S. said that it does not "target" schools, which does not mean that it does not bomb them. ("We take these reports seriously," a spokesman said.) Israel's spokesperson said the government was not "aware" of such an attack, which does not mean its military did not carry one out. Photos supposedly showing that a misfired Iranian missile caused it were debunked, although they spread widely online among Americans and Israelis desperate to believe that only the Bad Guys do things like this.
Domestic coverage of this horrible crime against humanity has been muted. U.S. media has a policy of not showing gruesome images of violence---the Guardian explicitly stated that it was concealing the photos and videos it had "due to their graphic nature." As a result, war is always sanitized, so that Americans can read that 150+ schoolgirls were killed without having to confront the full horror of what it means for their country to drive a missile into a crowded school in the middle of the day. (Saturday is a school day in Iran, a fact that the U.S. government would easily have been able to know when deciding how to time its attacks, but Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been open about the fact that he regards such niceties as rules of engagement and international law as meddlesome hindrances that can be ignored, lambasting those who "wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.")
I suspect that this attack is also difficult for U.S. media to cover because the basic facts of the situation are so twisted, so depraved, so evil, that they shatter the comforting narrative that the U.S. has the moral high ground over the Ayatollah. In fact, the U.S. government is on the moral level of the Sandy Hook school shooter, a fact that even president Trump's critics may have a hard time fully accepting.
And this was not the only massacre carried out by the U.S. and Israel in a war that has been going on just a few days. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that there have already been over 1,000 civilian deaths in Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, with thousands more civilians injured. Drop Site reports on the nauseating scene in a middle-class Tehran neighborhood following a "double tap" strike (dropping one bomb first, and then dropping another on the survivors and emergency responders, a favorite war crime of the U.S. and Israel). Warning, the following description is extremely graphic and may undermine any love you may have for your country:
Videos of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed several individuals dead and wounded as well as massive destruction on the street outside. In Cafe Ahla, next to the square, blood and debris soaked the floors. Several patrons who had been sitting there when the attack struck could be seen dead on the floor or with their mutilated bodies still sprawled across their seats. "We were sitting here around 8:00-8:30 p.m. and suddenly there was the noise and explosion. We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone's hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor," said Shahin, a witness who had been at the cafe and asked to be identified by first name only. "There were scalps torn off, hands severed, a few people were laying here all cut up and two people were martyred."
I will get to the many ways in which the Iran war is illegal, making us less safe, founded on lies, strategically insane, unbelievably costly, etc. But let us dwell for a moment on what we are doing to these people. The right-wing Telegraph newspaper reports that in Tehran, "millions of civilians are trapped under relentless bombardment as food and medical supplies dwindle and the death toll mounts," and the city is an "'apocalypse' of hospitals in flames and children buried beneath rubble." The paper records a total humanitarian disaster, with sick people lacking medicine, children going hungry, diabetics running out of insulin, and the repeated bombing of residential areas. While Americans pat themselves on the back for assassinating Iran's repressive head of state, everyday Iranians (even those with little love for their theocratic government) are facing the prospect of being killed at any moment, or watching their children be ripped to pieces. I realize that in the U.S., the devaluation of Middle Eastern lives means that little Iranian girls will receive a fraction of the compassion and concern that has arisen around, say, Nancy Guthrie. But if we apply our morality consistently, I cannot see how we can be anything other than completely revolted by the carnage our president is choosing to inflict (and will apparently soon be further escalating, according to Marco Rubio, who is promising an increased use of force to come, and Pete Hegseth, who is salivating about delivering "death and destruction all day long").
We are all complicit. If you are an American, you paid your government to murder those little girls and those Tehran cafe-goers. Money was withdrawn from your paycheck in the form of federal income taxes. If the attack was conducted with a Tomahawk missile (of which 400 were fired in 72 hours), that money would have been paid to the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon). Each missile fired costs somewhere between $1.3 million and $2.2 million, of which approximately $200,000 would be pure profit. Thus the killing of the Iranian schoolgirls, which left their bloody backpacks and tiny severed limbs scattered across classroom floors, transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from us (the American taxpayers) into RTX's bank accounts. It also boosted the GDP. And the stock market.
Stock price of RTX (formerly Raytheon)
It is hard for me to write about this war, because I am so sickened every time I contemplate the full dark reality of the country I live in. I realize that not only are there people who will drop a bomb on a school without losing a wink of sleep, but there are people who get rich when we bomb schools, who have a direct financial stake in ensuring we keep dropping as many bombs as possible. (And that's just the weapons companies. Others are getting rich from betting on the atrocities on prediction markets.) The fact that many Congressional Democrats implicitly or explicitly supported this war (whether by outright goading Trump into it, as Chuck Schumer did, dragging their feet on opposing it, or raising meek procedural objections) further adds to my disgust. Many Democrats apparently declined to try to stop the war, reasoning that if it achieved U.S. foreign policy goals it would be embarrassing to have opposed it, but if it went south Trump would own it anyway. When I open the New York Times op-ed page, and I find resident foreign policy guru Thomas Friedman cautioning against adopting any "black and white narrative" about what goes on in "a complicated, kaleidoscopic region," I want to vomit. The moment calls for moral clarity: our country is engaged in a mass murder campaign. It must be stopped. It is depressing to see so many debates around strategic end-goals, congressional authorization, or the consistency of the justifications. They take us away from the basic fact that our president, with the blessing of his party and many members of the so-called opposition, is gruesomely murdering children by the dozen. Every day this continues, we are paying our government to commit some of the worst crimes humans are capable of.
Of course, the war is also based on a pack of lies. The Trump administration can't even get its story straight on why the war is being waged and has produced no justification beyond vague invocations of National Security. (Trump says Iran was a "bad seed.") Some Republicans won't even admit that this is a war. (Perhaps they might want to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Putin: "special military operation.") House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to have it both ways, saying that while the Iranians "have declared war on us," we're "not at war right now." Others are tying themselves in pretzels trying to explain how this differs from the "regime change" wars that Trump has so vocally opposed. (Pete Hegseth: "This is not a so-called 'regime change war.' But the regime sure did change.") Sometimes there are direct self-contradictions within a single sentence, as with Tom Cotton declaring that "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." This was too much for right-wing commentator Matt Walsh, who accused Republicans of "gaslighting" for suddenly discovering that Iran has been waging a half-century of war against the U.S. Even leading Iraq war hawk Bill Kristol is confused about the reasoning behind the war, saying there is "no coherent rationale." (Of course, Kristol's own favorite Middle East war was equally illegitimate, but that's an argument for another day.)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. attacked because it knew Israel was going to attack, and needed to defend itself against the inevitable Iranian retaliation for Israel's attack---perhaps the most tortured and unpersuasive case for self-defense ever made. Perhaps because this seemed like an admission that Israeli choices dictate U.S. policy, Trump subsequently denied that Israeli decision-making had anything to do with the attack, although it's clear that Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied heavily for this, as he has been salivating at the prospect of a major war with Iran for decades, and has been scheming for a way to get the U.S. involved.
The idea that Iran was a threat to the United States was always laughable. U.S. intelligence has consistently assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. The Trump administration itself declared that it had destroyed Iran's nuclear program with last year's bombings. Iran has in fact consistently shown itself very reluctant to engage in military confrontation with the U.S., often carefully limiting its retaliation after U.S. provocations. To the extent that Iran did want to become a nuclear threshold state, with at least the capacity to pursue a weapons program if it wanted to, credible analysts believe that Iran mainly wanted an insurance policy against potential U.S. and Israeli attacks. North Korea has shown that the possession of nuclear weapons is enough to make the U.S. think twice about forcible regime change, and there is a good argument that it would have been rational for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons for the sake of its own self-protection. As Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld observed, the world "witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy." (Van Creveld is wrong that Iraq was attacked for "no reason," however. It was attacked for the same reason Iran is being attacked: the establishment of U.S.-Israeli dominance over the Middle East.) While U.S. commentators often talk as if Iran would pursue nuclear weapons mainly in order to destroy the U.S. or Israel (which would, of course, be suicidal given both countries' superior nuclear forces), there's no evidence that Iran would want nuclear weapons for any reason beyond deterring potential external attacks. (A fear that recent events have proven to be well-founded.)
In fact, the entire prevailing narrative about Iran is completely backwards. It's the U.S. that has been a threat to Iran, not the other way around. It was the United States and Britain that overthrew Iran's legitimately elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. (The New York Times was elated by the coup, commenting that "underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.") Since 1979, when the Iranians ousted the dictator (the Shah) that the U.S. had helped install and maintain in power, the U.S. has had a virtually unremittingly hostile attitude toward Iran. This is not because of the government's (very real) human rights abuses, since the U.S. is happy to support human rights abusing states that are pliant and servile (see, e.g., Saudi Arabia and Egypt). But Iran is viewed as a threat to U.S. dominance in the Middle East. Thus, in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein as he waged a ruthless war of aggression against Iran, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians including with chemical weapons. (The U.S. concealed evidence of Hussein's chemical weapon use from the UN, because it wanted him to go on killing Iranians.) More recently, the U.S. and Israel have tried to destabilize the country through devastating cyberattacks, economy-wrecking sanctions, and assassinations. The sanctions have been explicitly aimed at harming civilians, with Mike Pompeo boasting in 2019 that "things are much worse for the Iranian people" thanks to sanctions and hoping that their suffering would lead them to overthrow their government.
Importantly, while U.S. policymakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties constantly affirm that "Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons," they rarely state their implicit corollary to this proposition, which is that Israel must be allowed to have nuclear weapons. As it happens, Iran actually agrees that it shouldn't be allowed to have nukes, and has long supported turning the entire Middle East into an official nuclear weapons free zone, much as Africa and Latin America have done. The problem is that the U.S. and Israel demand a double standard, with Israel refusing to contemplate giving up its nuclear weapons. The entire nuclear disagreement, then, is not about whether Iran should have nuclear weapons, but about whether Iran should hold itself to a different standard to Israel. (Amusingly, Chuck Schumer recently accidentally declared that "no one wants a nuclear Israel," and had to correct himself, because he does want a nuclear Israel.)
Anyone who values human life should treat war as an absolute last resort, to be engaged in only once every diplomatic option has been exhausted. In this case, it was the Trump administration that sabotaged diplomacy. First, even though asking Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons means imposing an unfair double standard that imperils Iran's national security, Iran had agreed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to severely constrain its development of nuclear technology, and agreed to a detailed monitoring and compliance regime. It was confirmed to be adhering to that agreement until Donald Trump ripped it up in 2018, subsequently criticizing Iran for failing to adhere to the agreement that he himself had destroyed. Joe Biden declined to pursue the revival of that agreement, even though Iran signaled that it was open to it. But to this day, Iran has shown that it is willing to consider even highly unfavorable agreements in order to avoid war---it has never shown any sign of launching an unprovoked strike, only deploying military action in response to violence by others, such as an Israeli attack on its embassy or the assassination of its allies' leaders.
Iran has long wanted to keep a war with the U.S. from breaking out, which is why its responses to U.S. and Israeli attacks have previously been notably measured and cautious. (This time around, Iran reasons that unless it inflicts major damage, it will be perceived as weak and attacked further, since previous restraint only encouraged the U.S. and Israel to press their advantage.) Diplomatic talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing, and Oman, mediating talks, saw "the most promising diplomatic opening in years" and thought "diplomacy was producing tangible results and that a negotiated settlement was imminent." The U.S. and Israel decided to sabotage diplomacy and assassinate the Iranian head of state, possibly because they felt they just couldn't forgo the opportunity to kill as many high-ranking Iranians as possible in one fell swoop. (They killed so many Iranian government officials that Donald Trump admitted the U.S. had killed all of the people who had been considered likely candidates to take Khamenei's place.) Iran professed itself baffled as to why the U.S. attacked. "I do not know why the U.S. administration insists on beginning a negotiation with Iran and then attacking Iran in the middle of talks," said the country's foreign minister. He told NBC: "We were able to address serious questions related to Iran's nuclear program. We obviously have differences, but we resolved some of those differences, and we decided to continue in order to resolve the rest of [the] questions."
Because mass civilian casualties are a predictable consequence of intense airstrikes, to choose to unnecessarily end diplomatic engagement and start bombing is unconscionable depravity. But it's clear that the Trump administration didn't really care whether Iran was genuinely willing to engage in diplomacy, because Trump's position is that Iran should simply do what we say, period. There is nothing to negotiate, because for Trump, the only choice is whether a country is willing to comply with U.S. demands, or whether we will have to use force to ensure their compliance.
I haven't even gotten to the illegality of the war. Leaving aside the ridiculous Republican denials that this is a war (if a country assassinated our head of state and bombed our cities, would anyone doubt that they were waging war?), it's plain that all of this is unconstitutional. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress, not the president. Congress didn't declare war, therefore the war is illegal. Case closed. I know presidents have stretched their powers as far as possible (Obama's drone strikes, etc.) but if a president has the power to wage a relentless bombing and assassination campaign without Congressional approval, the Constitution simply ceases to mean anything. Congress has plainly failed in its responsibility to ensure that Trump complies with the Constitution, but the failure of our politicians to enforce the law doesn't change what it says.
Of course, it virtually goes without saying that the war violates international law. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force (or even the threat of force) except in response to an armed attack. Iran had not attacked the U.S., nor was there any evidence Iran was going to attack the U.S. Propagandists assert that Iran (and its "proxies") have killed "hundreds" of Americans over the years, but they decline to specify who these Americans are or discuss the Iranians killed by the U.S. and our own "proxies." There's no real point discussing international law, because Trump has made it clear he simply doesn't care about it, saying he doesn't need it and is unconstrained by it. Unfortunately, other countries have been just as pathetically weak as members of the U.S. Congress, with countries like Britain and France issuing statements that were de facto supportive of the assassination of a foreign head of state. (Canada issued a supportive statement and then appeared to regret it after noticing that letting the U.S. and Israel tear up the last vestiges of international law might be unwise.) Germany's chancellor has even made the stunning statement that Iran shouldn't be protected by international law, waving away the obvious illegality of the attacks by saying that "now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies." The killing of a head of state is a major crime, the normalization of which would open a horrible Pandora's box of lawless state action, and the world should be unified in condemning U.S.-Israeli lawlessness, but even among the Arab states there is a reluctance to antagonize the U.S.
None of the long-term consequences of this war will be good. The Trump administration does not appear to have any kind of strategic plan for what will happen next in Iran. (Lindsey Graham says it's "not [Trump's] job" to have a plan for what happens to the country's government next.) We could see the country's collapse into civil war, Libya-style. (Obama adviser Ben Rhodes recently admitted that Obama's decision to topple Libya's dictator without a plan for the country was a major error.) We could simply see the hard-line theocrats be replaced by more hard-line theocrats who are more convinced than ever that there can be no negotiating with the U.S., that the only language this country understands is force, and that the best thing for Iran's safety would be for it to obtain a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. What we are unlikely to see is a pro-American government emerging, and this war puts Americans everywhere in considerable danger. (Ask yourself: if what happened to Sara Shariatmadar happened to someone you love, would you see the country that carried out the bombing as a liberator? Or would you want revenge?) Although plenty of Iranians are justly celebrating the end of the Ayatollah's rule, like the Iraqis who celebrated in 2003, they will soon find out that the U.S. has no interest in their well-being, and will happily watch their country slide into civil war if this serves America's perceived "national security" interest.
Six Americans have already died in addition to the 1,000 Iranians. Because this is a war of choice, totally unnecessary and unjustifiable, their blood is on Donald Trump's hands, and he (as well as Congress) should be treated no differently than we would treat someone who murdered these Americans with their bare hands. But the costs to this country are only just beginning. Of course, if you're an RTX shareholder this may be a bonanza, but the rest of us are likely to see major economic disruption, in addition to all the resources that are put into the production of weapons. Eisenhower famously tried to warn Americans that war spending is an act of "theft" from the public, because it's money not spent on schools and hospitals, and the "opportunity cost" is therefore enormous. But Eisenhower's warning has largely been ignored.
Worse, as Abby Martin notes in the terrifying and important new film Earth's Greatest Enemy, military action has catastrophic climate consequences, since the U.S. war machine is the world's biggest polluter and the carbon emissions of our vast, brutal empire are driving us toward ever-worsening climate catastrophe. Unfortunately, that's just fine with some in the administration and the military---terrifying recent reporting suggests that some evangelical Christian officers are celebrating the war as hastening the apocalypse, claiming Trump was "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth." These people would sacrifice the rest of us to the inferno to fulfill their delusional prophecies.
Of course, the war reveals that Trump and his coterie were complete frauds when they pledged to keep the U.S. out of senseless Middle East wars. Trump fooled a lot of people with this stuff, although hopefully their illusions will now be hard to maintain. (Former hardcore MAGA types like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes are now admitting they were duped.) If there is one silver lining here, amid all of the horror, it is that because this war is deeply unpopular and Trump has no idea how to deal with its consequences, perhaps we will finally see the MAGA movement collapse politically. Trump's approval rating was already in the toilet, and while I sadly have no illusions that public opinion will be especially moved by the bombing of a school, when the fallout in cost, lives, and global chaos begins to come home, perhaps Americans will turn once and for good against their warmongering president.
But it is hard for me to think hopefully right now, as I see pictures of the remnants of former schoolchildren, schoolchildren whose lives were brutally extinguished with the help of my tax dollars. All I can feel is horror and rage at the sociopaths willing to do such things, who claim to want peace while ensuring that humanity will be consigned to a future of endless, senseless conflict.
PHOTO: Graves being dug for the elementary school girls killed in the bombing of the Minab school. Iran Foreign Ministry.
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RAMALLAH — Traffic was at a standstill outside of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, as sunset neared and hungry residents were forced to trickle through an Israeli checkpoint to get home and break their fasts.
The Israeli military had sealed the city off from the outside world. Just over a week after the U.S. and Israel launched their joint war on Iran, Israeli settlers have ramped up their violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israeli forces have imposed a near-total closure of municipal centers, shutting gates and restricting crossings without warning or perceptible logic.
“It’s so unpredictable,” said Shadya Saif, 40, a Palestinian mother of three who teaches at a private school in Ramallah. The Intercept rode alongside Saif as she traveled back to Ramallah from Nablus on Saturday, when the Israeli military closed all but one checkpoint out of the city, putting it under an effective blockade and forcing all traffic through a checkpoint called Shavei Shomron.
The unannounced closures left Palestinians scrambling. Many were visiting Ramallah to see family members during Ramadan, and they hoped to reach their destinations in time for iftar, the fast-breaking meal enjoyed at sunset. Others needed to enter the city to receive medical treatment they cannot obtain elsewhere. Saif had risked the journey to see her dying uncle and, knowing the risks of crossing, she’d left her chronically ill daughter in Nablus with him.
“I was worried I would get stuck here,” Saif told The Intercept inside a yellow “service” taxi, the only form of public transportation widely available in the West Bank. Even though nearly all of her family lives in Nablus, she has tried to avoid visiting since October 7, 2023, after which the Israeli military clamped its ubiquitous yellow gates over entry points throughout the West Bank.
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Israeli soldiers stopped each car to inspect Palestinians’ IDs. At their limit, drivers began pulling their cars onto roundabouts and driving the wrong way down the street, but the final say lay with Israeli forces, who allowed only one car at a time to approach the military installation. Some abandoned their cars to walk through checkpoints and reach their families on foot. An elderly Palestinian woman prayed aloud, saying that all she wanted was to make it safely to her family in Ein Yabrud, a village on the outskirts of Ramallah.
“I was worried I would get stuck here.”
As we sat waiting at the checkpoint, Saif’s face was filled with worry. She opened her phone to show pictures of her daughter, dressed in pink and smiling at the camera.
Saif’s daughter has muscular dystrophy and requires specialized treatment and 24-hour supervision. Saif took a big risk visiting Nablus to see her dying uncle in the hospital, she said, because if she were to get stuck there due to a checkpoint closure — which did happen for three days last week — her daughter’s health would be put in jeopardy.
“I left her with my uncle just for the day, but I have to be there to care for her,” Saif said. “I know her medications and how to ensure she doesn’t get sick.”
Saif made it back to Ramallah, but she said it would not have been possible a few days earlier.
A roadblock Israeli settlers installed on the main road between Sebastia, a Palestinian village south of Nablus, and Route 60, which connects the city to the central and southern West Bank, seen on March 7, 2026. Photo: Theia Chatelle
The day after the U.S. and Israel started attacks on Iran, the prevailing sentiment in Ramallah was anxiety. People wondered if there would be road closures and food and fuel shortages like during last year’s Twelve Day War, and whether the Israeli government would impose what Palestinians describe as collective punishment in the West Bank, even though they were not involved in the conflict.
“It has nothing to do with anything Palestinians in the West Bank are doing or not doing,” said Aviv Tatarsky, who leads an Israeli protective presence collective that organizes watches to deter settlers from invading Deir Istiya, a village outside Ramallah. “And still, there’s an Israeli decision, and life comes to a stop.”
“There is no money, no work. We are in debt, and I have four mouths to feed. What am I to do?”
Ramallah, which has long functioned as a relatively insulated bubble from the effects of Israel’s occupation, is also dealing with a struggling economy. Paired with the war, the economic downturn has muted Ramadan celebrations, according to residents who spoke with The Intercept.
“We are suffering,” said Faisal Taha, who drives taxis in Ramallah. “There is no money, no work. We are in debt, and I have four mouths to feed. What am I to do? I have been driving my taxi all day, and I have forty shekels.”
Unemployment in the West Bank is hovering around 40 percent — up from 13 percent two years ago — and GDP has contracted by 13 percent since October 7.
Dror Etkes, founder of Kerem Navot, an Israeli NGO that monitors settlement construction in the West Bank, said he was not surprised by the restrictions imposed by Israel.
“They always use instances of violence to perpetuate more violence,” Etkes said. “This is what we have seen for years, since October 7, and now it is worse than ever.”
As during the Twelve Day War last year — after which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a “historic victory” that would “stand for generations” against the Islamic Republic of Iran — there are already the beginnings of flour and fuel shortages in the West Bank as the Israeli Civil Administration, which runs the military occupation of the territory, imposes import restrictions.
“This is not something new. It happened in June during the Twelve Day War, and it’s kicking off again,” Tatarsky said. “But what’s different this time is that Israel is also blocking roads — not only disconnecting Palestinians from Area C, but also blocking roads between Palestinian villages.”
A week later, on March 7, there was still only one checkpoint out of Ramallah open, forcing all traffic through a bottleneck that passes by the Beit El settlement and through the Jalazone refugee camp. This is the only route for Palestinians living in Ramallah to access Route 60, the main thoroughfare connecting Palestinian communities in the south to those in the north.
“They always use instances of violence to perpetuate more violence.”
Driving up the highway and passing village after village that had been closed off by the Israeli military, Etkes said it was clear the war with Iran was being used as a pretext for “a system that is meant to reduce as much as possible the area where Palestinians can move freely,” part of the settlement movements’ goal to alter the facts on the ground regarding de facto annexation.
Nabih Odeh, 63, who has been driving public transit taxis in the West Bank for more than 30 years, has watched what he describes as the slow annexation of the West Bank unfold. As he drove up Route 60, he pointed to village after village sealed off by the Israeli military.
“There, that’s Aqraba, closed,” Odeh said. “If you want to get in or out, you must walk. That’s Turmus Ayya — very wealthy — still closed.”
Eighty percent of Turmus Ayya’s residents have U.S. citizenship, yet the town was closed off, its yellow gate locked. Service taxis pulled up to drop residents off, leaving them to walk to the town center or be picked up by relatives. Its status as a wealthy American Palestinian village has no bearing on Israel’s decision.
At the same time, Israeli settlers have used the war with Iran as an opportunity to launch further attacks on Palestinian communities, largely in Area C — the roughly 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli civil and military control — working in tandem with movement restrictions in Areas A and B, the Palestinian-administered population centers and villages created under the 1995 Oslo Accords.
Messages circulating in settler WhatsApp groups have called for violence against Palestinians to match Israeli airstrikes in Iran. One graphic depicting a roaring lion, to match the Israel Defense Forces’ name for the military operation against Iran, reads: “It is time to launch a preemptive attack in all arenas, until the enemy is expelled from the country and subdued outside it. This time we win, once and for all.”
“I mean, generally, when you’re speaking about Israeli society, it is torn apart in so many ways,” said Orly Noy, editor at Local Call and chair of B’Tselem’s executive board. “But there’s one thing that always unifies, and I’m speaking about the Jewish section of society, of course, and this is war.”
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Netanyahu is willing to do anything to stay in power, Noy added, and during his time in office, he has worked effectively to paint the Iranian regime as an existential threat to Israel, working in tandem with the U.S. “He has taken advantage of it very well,” Noy said.
During Operation Rising Lion, this rally-around-the-flag effect has not only served Netanyahu’s interests but also those of settlers living in the West Bank.
WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, estimates that settler attacks have increased 25 percent since the start of the conflict. Israeli settlers have killed six Palestinians since the start of the war with Iran, including three in one incident in the West Bank community of Khirbet Abu Falah, east of Ramallah.
Israeli settlers shot Fare’ Hamayel and Thaer Hamayel, and a third man, Mohammad Murra, died of suffocation from tear gas deployed by Israeli forces.
As the world’s attention remains on Iran, solidarity activists said that Israeli settlers appear to feel they have additional impunity to conduct attacks.
“They will be treated as heroes by their supporters, by their society,” Etkes said. “And the government will do nothing about it.”
The post With World’s Eyes on Iran, Israel Locks Down the West Bank appeared first on The Intercept.
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Black People 48 Times More Likely to Be Stopped and Searched in Richest Parts of London
(novaramedia.com)
Black Londoners are up to 48 times more likely to be stopped and searched in some of London’s richest and whitest areas.
The grounds used to justify stop and searches were vaguer than those used for white Londoners, with one officer stopping a black Londoner because he gave a “furtive glance”.
The study, conducted by the mayor’s office for policing and crime and King’s College London, analysed every single stop and search carried out in 2023 and totalled over 150,000 records.
In 24 wards of London, including Richmond-on-Thames, black people were 48 times more likely to be stopped and searched, whilst in Dulwich Village they were 40 times more likely.
In Hampstead, north London, black people were 38 times more likely to be stopped.
Across England and Wales, black people are four times more likely to be subjected to stop and search, whilst they are 3.7 times more likely in areas policed by the Met. Around two-thirds of stops lead to no action.
The data also shows that around 80% of people stopped and searched each month is male and people aged 18-24 are most often targeted.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: “This major new research shows significant and unacceptable levels of disproportionality that we must act on.
“That’s why along with the other steps to support and hold the Met to account, I am introducing a mandatory annual report of how stop and search is being used in London. The use of stop and search must be more transparent and accountable to deliver a safer and fairer London for all.”
Sophia Sheera is a journalist in Novara Media’s social media team.
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5
Labour is in deep trouble with Black voters. Operation Black Vote (OBV) chair David Weaver warns the party is ‘accepting the normalisation of racism’. This isn’t just a polling dip, it is a fundamental collapse of trust from its voters.
Weaver highlights how to government’s plans to restrict jury trials will ‘heighten, normalise and embed’ racial disproportionality. This is not a new concern for those watching the party’s trajectory. We’ve long been aware of how the current leadership has prioritised pro-business optics over the safety of marginalised communities.
Labour have a hierarchy of racism
We’ve all long known of the hierarchy of racism within Labour. In the 2022 *Forde Report,*commissioned by the party itself, confirmed this toxic culture. It found that Labour was failing to treat all forms of racism with equal seriousness.
Martin Forde KC detailed how Black and Asian MPs and members faced specific, targeted abuse which was often ignored or downplayed by Labour’s own bureaucracy. The reported stated that antisemitism was being used as a factional weapon while other forms of racism – specifically anti-Black racism and Islamophobia – were being systemically ignored.
The *Labour Files*and subsequent investigations revealed a judiciary as well as a party structure which often treats Black and Brown voices as disposable when they conflict with the party’s central narratives. This hierarchy means that whilst some forms of prejudice are rightly tackled, others are normalised, creating an environment where Black voters feel increasingly ignored and alienated.
Juries are out on justice
Restricting juries means moving the UK towards judge-only trials, removing a massive safety net for Black people. In England and Wales, only 1% of judges are Black and removing the public oversight of a jury hands total power to an overwhelmingly white judiciary.
In drug offenses the odds of getting a custodial sentence are 140% higher for Black people than for white offenders with similar histories. Juries act as a filter for prejudice that single judges simply do not provide.
This reform ignores the racial reality of the UK justice system. Juries often act as the last line of defence for Black people against state overreach. By gutting this right, the Labour party is intensifying this systematic bias that already sees Black people given longer sentences.
We are not protecting Black people from the prejudices of biased white judges. A University of Manchester study, Racial Bias and the Bench found that 95% of legal professionals believe racial bias plays a role in the justice system. Furthermore, 56% of those professionals reported witnessing a judge show racial bias towards a defendant.
At a time when racial tensions are growing and white supremacy is on the rise in the UK, it’s fucked up to think that Labour thinks removing juries is going to be a good idea.
The Race Equality Act betrayal
Confidence is also eroding because of the lack of urgency surrounding the Race Equality Act. Labour promised a landmark Race Equality Act to mandate ethnicity pay gap reporting for large employers. However, the legislation has faced repeated delays.
Campaigners have accused Labour of stalling out of a fear of political pushback, with the party’s promises being nothing more than performative bollocks. Labour seems to love using Black struggles for campaign photo-ops but slows the actual legislation progression behind the scenes.
This stalling is a material failure. Closing the ethnicity pay gap could add £37bn to the UK’s annual GDP. Labour is failing to act on these promised protections whilst simultaneously fast-tracking racist jury reforms, sending a clear message about whose safety and financial stability it actually values.
The marginal seat risk
Black voters backed Labour more than any other group in 2024, yet that loyalty is not reflected in the party leadership. Weaver warns that support is now wavering in key marginal seats.
We saw how the 2024 elections produced a surge in marginal seats, with 115 being won by a margin of 5% or less. In constituencies such as Hendon, where the winning margin was a tiny 0.04% – just 15 votes – a small shift in Black voter turnout is enough to change the result. Especially when the white population of places such as Hendon only equate to 50%. So why the fuck are Labour spitting in the face of their most loyal voter demographic?
By betraying Black voters, Labour risk putting marginal seats on the line.
Labour’s strategy of putting people of colour in high positions without changing the underlying systems is failing. It gives legitimacy to institutional racism rather than dismantling it. If Labour continues to ignore these warnings it will lose more than just votes. It will lose its moral authority to stand for equality.
Will the party finally stop taking Black people’s votes for granted? Or will it let its most loyal voter demographic walk away?
Featured image via National Diversity Awards
By Antifabot
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26
As US Slaughters Iranian Kids, Iran Says It Does Not Want to Hurt Americans
(www.commondreams.org)
As US and Israeli forces continued to bomb 30 of Iran's 31 provinces, killing more than 1,300 people including hundreds of women and children, the top Iranian diplomat said Monday that his country does not want to hurt American civilians.
"Iran does not want to harm ordinary Americans who overwhelmingly voted to end involvement in costly foreign wars," Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on social media. "Blame for surging gas prices, costlier mortgages, and pummeled 401(k)s lies squarely with Israel and its dupes in Washington."
Araghchi was responding to a previous post by US petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan noting that gasoline prices have spiked by more than 50 cents per gallon in at least 18 states as a result of the US-Israeli war of choice.
"Nine days into Operation Epic Mistake, oil prices have doubled while all commodities are skyrocketing," Araghchi posted earlier on Monday, mocking Operation Epic Fury, the official US moniker for the war. "We know the US is plotting against our oil and nuclear sites in hopes of containing huge inflationary shock. Iran is fully prepared. And we, too, have many surprises in store."
Araghchi's remarks came as Iranian officials said that more than 1,300 people—including at least 198 women and 190 minors—have been killed over nine days of US-Israeli attacks, including massacres like the missile strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab that left around 175 people dead, most of them children.
Hundreds of civilians, including 42 women and 83 children, have also been killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
Retaliatory strikes by Iran and its Hezbollah ally in Lebanon have killed at least 11 Israelis, seven US troops, and at least 15 people in Gulf Arab nations.
Araghchi's comments stood in stark contrast with US President Donald Trump's cavalier public attitude toward potential American casualties from Iranian attacks.
Asked last week if American civilians should expect terror attacks in retaliation for the war, Trump replied, “I guess."
“We expect some things," the president added. "Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
7
Right-wing warhawks have been doubling down on calls to slash Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) welfare to fund imperialistic warmongering against Iran.
Naturally, it’s the usual suspects spearheading the charge, namely opaquely-funded think tanks, the billionaire press, and of course, their co-conspirators in parliament.
And once again, these rich colonial capitalist assholes all want to make poor and disabled people cannon fodder for their illegal invasions.
Slash DWP welfare to fund illegal war: here we go again
First to the welfare cut chest beating was the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) on 3 March. As the US and Israel heinously massacred close to 800 people in Iran, unprovoked, including 168 children at a girl’s school, the CSJ slipped out a comment on chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget with a not-so subtle militaristic subtext. Predictably, policy director Joe Shalam lambasted the “spend on health benefits” compared to the “defence budget”, calling it a:
monumental waste of human potential.
Translation: disaster capitalists are ogling the opportunity to exploit disabled people for war profits.
Next came former Tory MP Dehenna Davison on Jeremy Vine spouting the same worn rhetoric. And incidentally, she drew on CSJ research:
Nobody gets PIP for "low level anxiety and depression". The criteria does not allow it and 62% of PIP claims are rejected as there has to be evidence of severity. So Im afraid zero bombs could be made by stopping this as it isnt happening. CSJ talking shite as usual. https://t.co/Z1FC4txS9E
— Spin Decoder (@leith1076) March 6, 2026
Meanwhile, leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch was at Conservative spring conference maxing out the jingoism. She was banging on about bringing back the two-child limit to benefits. According to the Independent, a Tory policy wonk somewhere has totted up the numbers. The party calculated that un-abolishing the cap would spare the government £3.2bn worth of annual spend.
Instead of lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty, the Tories want to use half that to recruit 20,000 new troops. And doubtless the majority of them will be from working class households the cap has trapped in poverty to boot.
Reporting on this, vile shitrag the Daily Mail prefaced its headline “Bullets over benefits”. Because that’s the kind of clickbait late-stage capitalist hellscape we now live in. It’s one where major political party leaders would literally rather the government spend taxpayer cash to buy bullets to murder kids in cold blood abroad, than fund social security to stop kids from starving in one of the richest nations in the world.
The Centre for Social Justice pushing warfare over welfare
Then, over the weekend, the right-wing press – including the Express and the Telegraph – went into further overdrive.
The culprit was once again Iain Duncan Smith’s brainchild, the CSJ.
Specifically, it published research utilising Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimations that welfare spending will increase by £18bn this year. By the CSJ’s maths, it said this could finance:
15 advanced Royal Navy frigates, 220 fighter jets, or 250,000 soldiers’ salaries, more than three times the size of the regular British Army.
However, even the war-frenzied Labour government came out critical, calling it a “deeply disingenuous report”. Notably, it pointed out that “well over half” of this will be spent on pensions. Of course, it was quick to then highlight its defence budget increases. And consequently, it undid any good work it did debunking the CSJ analysis.
And as is the ego-massaging nature of think tanks, both the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance reared their ugly warmongering, welfare-snatching heads here too, backing the CSJ.
The kids aren’t alright – so let’s stop state support and send them to war?!
The CSJ also snuck into its press release on the research that it had:
called on ministers to follow through with proposals to scrap certain benefits for under 22s to instead fund a scheme helping employers take on British young people not in work, education or training.
So of course that scheme it’s referring to is the government’s flagship ‘Youth Guarantee’. That’s the one hellbent on shunting young people into low-paying or below minimum wage labour. And naturally, as the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has pointed out, it’s about kicking them off Universal Credit as well.
Unsurprisingly, the vicious CSJ wants the government to fund the Youth Guarantee by literally banning “certain benefits” for under 22s. In March 2025, (now former) DWP boss Liz Kendall actually announced its disgraceful plan to do just that with the limited capability for work related activity (LCWRA) part of Universal Credit (UC).
At the time, the Canary’s HG noted how a callous Kendall told ministers her depraved plan for tackling youth unemployment involved pushing more young people to join the armed forces.
Now it appears, in just under a year, we’ve already come full circle. At the end of February the DWP held its first Youth Guarantee jobs fair. Behemoths of the military industrial complex stacked it to the rafters. As Charlton-Dailey reported:
the Royal Air Force and the UK Armed Forces were there to seduce working-class kids with the promise of a stable income, a roof over their heads and “duty”.
What’s more, arms manufacturers propping up Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and now undoubtedly the attacks on Iran, were out recruiting in force.
National security over social security: the same old story
One happened to be F-35 fighter jet parts supplier Teledyne. The electronics manufacturer had a seat at the table in a cosy 16-company discussion with DWP boss Pat McFadden. And just who has been vociferously sounding the battle cry to cut welfare to increase military spending? That would be, former paid Teledyne advisor and retired “general for hire” – ex-army chief and currently suspended peer, one Lord Richard Dannatt.
Ultimately, when the right-wing establishment calls for cuts to welfare for warfare, it means serving up working class and disabled people to its necro-capitalist war-machine.
The narrative of slashing social security to beef up supposed ‘national security’ is certainly nothing new. It’s an abhorrent time-honoured tradition that UK governments collaborate in militaristic colonial resource-grabbing with the US and other imperialistic warmongers. And there’s a pattern of governments using it to redirect the public’s attention away from their own corruption and failures. The ‘enemy’ abroad distracts from and justifies austerity at home.
In the coming days and weeks, we can likely expect many more calls like this from greedy imperialistic grifters – let’s be honest, mostly wealthy white men – whose kids the DWP won’t be forcing to the frontlines or production houses of another illegal war.
Featured image via the Canary
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9
20
Federal Judge Rules Aetna's Blanket Denial Of Facial Surgery For Trans Women Is Sex Discrimination
(www.erininthemorning.com)
Montgomery County Planning Commission // Creative Commons
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On Sunday, a federal judge ruled that Aetna's categorical denial of facial feminization surgery for transgender women constitutes sex discrimination under the Affordable Care Act. The landmark ruling, handed down in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, is believed to be the first federal court order requiring a major private insurer to make individualized coverage determinations for gender-affirming facial surgery rather than automatically rejecting every claim as "cosmetic." The case was brought by six transgender women who sought coverage for facial feminization surgery to treat severe gender dysphoria but were denied under Aetna's Clinical Policy Bulletin 0615, which categorically excludes all gender-affirming facial procedures from coverage. Though the preliminary injunction applies to only two of the six plaintiffs, the class action is pending, and the court's legal reasoning will serve as a powerful precedent for transgender women denied facial surgery coverage nationwide.
“To be clear, the issue is not whether Aetna’s policy exclusion prohibits this type of gender-affirming care, but rather that Aetna’s policy exclusion prohibits only transgender individuals, the only individuals who can experience gender dysphoria, from receiving this type of gender-affirming care. Thus, when Aetna decided that facial gender-affirming procedures “performed as a component of a gender transition [were] not medically necessary and cosmetic,” Aetna prohibited only transgender individuals from seeking this medical care, and thus discriminated on the basis of sex,” wrote Judge Bolden in his ruling.
The ruling was made on behalf of two patients, Dr. Jamie Homnick and Dr. Gennifer Herley, both transgender women seeking gender-affirming facial surgery. Both reported severe depression, suicidality, and intensifying gender dysphoria related to facial masculinization—the result of not having access to puberty blockers or hormone therapy early in life. Both were denied categorically under CPB 0615, which does not evaluate requests for gender-affirming facial surgery on the basis of medical necessity but instead denies them altogether, regardless of a patient's individual medical circumstances or whether their treating physicians have deemed the procedures medically necessary.
The court leaned on the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County and Title IX, as incorporated into Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, to find that Aetna's exclusion constitutes sex discrimination. The court reasoned that to deny a facial surgery claim under CPB 0615, Aetna must first determine whether the patient is transgender—which necessarily requires considering their sex assigned at birth. If a person assigned male at birth seeks facial reconstruction to treat a congenital condition or traumatic injury, Aetna evaluates the claim for medical necessity. If that same person seeks the same procedures to treat gender dysphoria, Aetna denies it automatically. Change the reason for the surgery—which is inextricable from the patient's sex assigned at birth—and the coverage determination changes. That, the court held, is textbook sex discrimination. Notably, the court also addressed the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for minors under the Equal Protection Clause, finding that it did not disturb Bostock's application to insurance discrimination claims under the ACA.
Gender-affirming facial surgery can be a critical part of a transgender person's care. A UCLA study published in the Annals of Surgery found that transgender patients who received facial feminization surgery reported significantly better outcomes across several measures of psychosocial health, including reduced anxiety, depression, and social isolation. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health recognizes FFS as medically necessary for many transgender women. Some states, including Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, explicitly prohibit insurers from categorically excluding facial feminization surgery and require that claims be evaluated on a case-by-case basis for medical necessity. Most states, however, leave it up to individual insurers—and many, like Aetna, have maintained blanket exclusions. This ruling may change that calculus, giving transgender women denied coverage a legal framework to challenge categorical exclusions nationwide.
Though the ruling applies to only two patients for now, the plaintiffs are seeking class certification, which could broadly impact every transgender woman on an Aetna plan who has been denied coverage for facial surgery. Members of the same legal team—Advocates for Trans Equality, Wardenski PC, and Cohen Milstein—successfully challenged Aetna's categorical exclusion of breast augmentation for transgender women in 2021, resulting in a settlement that changed the insurer's general policy. If this case follows the same trajectory, it could force Aetna to add facial feminization surgery to its list of potentially covered gender-affirming procedures. More broadly, the court's holding that categorical exclusions of gender-affirming facial surgery constitute sex discrimination under the Affordable Care Act gives transgender women across the country a legal framework to challenge similar denials from other insurers.
You can see the full decision here:
Gordon Order Granting Pi Denying Mtd
419KB ∙ PDF file
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‘Astonishing Stat’: Billionaires Gave Nearly 20% of Donations in 2024 US Federal Elections
(www.commondreams.org)
Billionaires exerted an unprecedented amount of influence over the 2024 US federal elections, accounting for almost one-fifth of the nearly $16 billion spent to elect candidates during that cycle, according to a New York Times analysis published Monday.
Just 300 billionaires and their immediate families poured an unprecedented $3 billion into the election, either giving directly to candidates or through political action committees.
These individuals represent just about 0.0087% of the 3.46 million people who donated more than $200 to one or multiple candidates during the election cycle.
And yet, with an average donation of $10 million apiece—equivalent to what 100,000 typical donors would give—they amounted to about 19% of all spending, allowing their interests to be pushed to the center of major races.
The Times highlighted the extraordinary role that billionaire fundraisers played in pushing Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) over the finish line in his bid to unseat the three-term incumbent Democrat, then-Sen. Jon Tester.
Sheehy's long shot campaign was given a boost by Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who donated $8 million to his super PAC after previously investing $150 million in the candidate's struggling firefighting business, which helped seed his campaign.
As the report explains, Schwarzman "was not the only financial heavyweight in Mr. Sheehy’s corner":
At least 64 billionaires and 37 of their immediate family members donated directly to his campaign, a New York Times analysis found. When also accounting for money that flowed through political committees that support Mr. Sheehy, an analysis shows that billionaires contributed about $47 million in the race that Mr. Sheehy went on to win.
Sheehy's campaign drew support from a who's who of GOP power brokers: Jeff Yass, the founder of the Pennsylvania-based trading firm Susquehanna International Group and a major funder of Trump's massive White House ballroom project; the Uihlein family, which owns Uline shipping and has been central to backing anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, and election-denialist causes; and Florida hedge fund founder Ken Griffin, who spent $12 million to stop an initiative in the state to legalize marijuana.
In installing Sheehy, the ultrawealthy bought themselves "a key ally on tax policies that benefit the wealthy" who "cosponsored a proposal to eliminate the estate tax," the Times reported.
While billionaires still have their talons in both political parties, the Times noted a distinct shift toward Republicans in 2024—for every one dollar given to Democrats, five went to the GOP in the election.
Trump, who openly begged for donations from oil tycoons on the campaign trail, was the single largest beneficiary of this avalanche of spending.
According to a study by Americans for Tax Fairness in October 2024, less than a month before election day, Trump had already received $450 million from 150 billionaire families, 75% of their $600 million total to major candidates, and three times Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris's $143 million.
By the end of the campaign, Trump and his affiliated PACs would amass more than $250 million from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and more than $100 million from both the pro-Israel megadonor Miriam Adelson and the banking heir Timothy Mellon, according to OpenSecrets.
Trump has since appointed more than a dozen billionaires to administration positions, including Musk, who was tasked with eviscerating public spending as the de facto head of the so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE).
But as the Times reported, "Many of those billionaires are not only hoping to reshape the federal government... but to win influence in state legislatures, city councils, school boards, and courthouses."
"Ultrawealthy donors... have helped overhaul political leadership and policy in states across the country, expanding private charter schools, restricting abortion rights, advancing artificial intelligence in government, and blocking laws that would make it harder to evict tenants," the report explained.
As the 2026 midterm cycle begins, another spending blitz is coming. As the Timesreported last month, the artificial intelligence industry, crypto industry, the pro-Israel lobby, and Trump's super PAC have each amassed war chests of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to help elect their allies to Congress.
Silicon Valley billionaires, including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, meanwhile,have collectively dumped tens of millions into stopping a proposal in California for a one-time 5% tax on billionaires in the state, which would replace Medicaid funding slashed by Republicans' massive budget law last year.
The explosion in spending by the ultrarich has come quickly. Where billionaires spent just $16.6 million to influence the 2008 election cycle, that number has steadily ballooned up to $3 billion in 2024, a more than 12,000% increase when adjusted for inflation.
Daniel Weiner, the director of the Brennan Center for Justice's elections and government program, said that the "astonishing stat" was a "legacy of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision" in 2010, which allowed billionaire-funded dark money groups to spend unlimited amounts of cash on political communication advocating for candidates.
"The resulting collapse of campaign finance rules has combined with a resurgence in the sort of high-level self-dealing that was pervasive during the Gilded Age, when bribery and graft were common, and corporations used their wealth to secure monopolies, government subsidies, and other benefits," Weiner wrote for TIME on Monday.
"As in the past, the question now is who will offer Americans a real alternative, including a commitment to stamp out self-dealing in all three branches of the government," he said, recommending a constitutional amendment to restore campaign finance limits tossed aside by the Supreme Court, a ban on spending by government contractors seeking contracts, and bans on congressional stock trading.
"For a representative democracy like ours to work, citizens must have some confidence that, through voting and other forms of political engagement, they have a fighting chance to turn their priorities into government policy," he concluded. "Far too many Americans have lost that faith, and they identify pervasive corruption at the top of our government as a big part of the reason. But cycles of corruption followed by reform are an enduring feature of American history. A new round of ambitious reform is overdue."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
11
Over 100 Labour MPs have co-signed a letter to the CEO of Travelodge to request a meeting to discuss a sexual assault that occurred in the hotel chain. According to the letter, a woman was sexually assaulted after making a solo booking at the hotel – only for staff to give her attacker a key to her room. The perpetrator of the sexual assault, Kyran Smith, told staff he was her boyfriend and needed another key card. Despite not being present on the booking, the hotel gave him that key which enabled his abuse.
Smith has since been convicted and sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. Nevertheless, the letter addressing this serious incident also refers to a woeful response from Travelodge in light of their security error was to offer a measly £30 compensation to the victim.
Travelodge have serious questions to answer
However, as these Labour MPs highlight, the Travelodge played an intrinsic role in enabling this abuse and their remedial response should be far stronger. Once again, corporates have little compassion for ordinary people even whilst they play a hand in their very real trauma.
A woman was sexually assaulted in a Travelodge. Staff gave her attacker the key to her room after he pretended to be her boyfriend. She was offered £30 in compensation. Appalling.
Along with 100 Labour colleagues, I've written to Travelodge's CEO & asked to meet. pic.twitter.com/1pxjVqZvn3
— Anneliese Midgley MP (@anneliese_midge) March 8, 2026
This letter paints an appalling image of this corporate hotel company. It details how the abuse was able to have taken place, and highlights how little safeguarding is present for women, or frankly anyone, staying at Travelodge’s across the country. Apparently, despite the victim of assault having made a solo booking, the hotel staff didn’t think it was appropriate to double-check the abusive man’s claim by speaking directly to the guest. No, a man walking in and laying claim to her is enough to invade her privacy without question, according to shady-as-fuck Travelodge.
The MPs listed four areas of focused discussion:
We would also welcome the opportunity to discuss:
- Travelodge’s security policies and procedures relating to providing a key card and/or room number to someone not named on a booking
- Travelodge’s safeguarding training processes
- Any training relating to Violence Against Women and Girls that Travelodge provides for staff
- Changes that Travelodge will make to the above to ensure the safety of women staying at your hotel chain
I'm a signatory.
This case is sickening. My thoughts are with the victim following this sexual assault.
We need urgent answers from @TravelodgeUK who did not take VAWG seriously.
What are their security procedures? How do we stop this happening again? https://t.co/kCE2ImnOmP
— Dawn Butler
(@DawnButlerBrent) March 9, 2026
‘We want to apologise to the victim’
Travelodge have said that they recognise the £30 compensation offer was ‘inappropriate’. Since, they have told the BBC:
The safety and security of our guests is our priority and we were deeply concerned to hear of this distressing incident and our sympathies are with the victim.
We want to apologise to the victim for the way this incident has been handled.
Travelodge adopts industry standard security procedures which were followed at the time of the incident in 2022.
We will carry out a full review of our room security policies to learn from this incident and further strengthen our procedures.
We covered the rising fear in women and girls as figures continually rise back in October, pointing out how men are seemingly more emboldened than ever. Discussing this terrifying rise, we wrote:
Domestic abuse is a serious issue, accounting for 54% of rape crimes between April 2024 and March 2025, with the remaining being committed by men over the age of 16. There is also a marginal difference between the likelihood of being attacked by a stranger or an acquaintance, making it a minefield for vulnerable women and girls.
In the last 20 years, sexual offences have increased: from 970 against young girls under-13, and 8,192 against women over 16 to 5,067 and 49,075 respectively. When looking at all rapes, crimes have increased by 511%.
In fact, rape offences doubled between 2014 to 2019, rising from 29,420 to a horrifying 59,999. There is a slight reduction seen in 2020/2021 down to 55,685, during COVID and lockdown periods, before shooting up to 70,031 the following year.
Women have enough to fear without fearing our safety and security in hotels
Privacy and security are human rights and protected by civil law. Nonetheless, women and girls have continually suffered abuse at some point, if not multiple times in their lifetimes. Abusive men have long believed they can do whatever they want to their victims, often getting off on the most invasive and traumatising ways they can do so.
This incident is horrifying and will spark fear in every woman across the country. Equally terrifying is the feeling that other men may see this and get ideas of their own, leaving more women in harm’s way. The fact Travelodge’s security procedure is supposedly ‘industry standard’ suggests this must be levelled across the hotel industry as a whole.
Therefore, Labour MPs are completely right to press this deplorable incident, but they must push further. We hope they push hard against the Travelodge to take action that truly shows they recognise the trauma inflicted by the sexual assault they played an essential role in making possible. As a woman myself, I know that I won’t feel safe until I hear all hotels have safeguarded against this life-changing risk of abuse.
Frankly, I’d have thought something as egregious as this could not be possible in the first place. More fool me, I guess.
Featured image via the Canary
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'The FBI Has the Records': 2020 Arizona Audit Info Subpoenaed by Grand Jury
(www.commondreams.org)
The FBI has served the Arizona State Senate a grand jury subpoena for voting records related to the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona, in the latest sign that the federal government is working to investigate an election that President Donald Trump lost more than five years ago.
As the New York Times reported on Monday, the grand jury subpoena "was issued in recent days to the Arizona State Senate, which oversaw a sprawling but partisan audit of the vote result that was ordered by Senate Republicans in Maricopa County" months after Trump lost the 2020 race to former President Joe Biden.
Warren Petersen, the Republican president of the Arizona Senate, confirmed that he had received and complied with the subpoena, and revealed in a social media post that "the FBI has the records" related to the post-2020 audit.
As noted by MS NOW reporter Vaughn Hillyard, the audit in question was conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a now-defunct online security firm that confirmed Trump's defeat in the Grand Canyon State.
"The Cyber Ninjas found that, in fact, Joe Biden had won the county, per their hand count, by 360 more votes than originally believed," Hillyard explained.
The Trump administration's subpoena of the audit records comes at the same time that it is demanding Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes hand over his state's voter registration data.
As explained by the Brennan Center for Justice last week, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is "seeking access to highly sensitive voter information, including partial Social Security numbers," as part of its subpoena.
The Brennan Center also said it teamed up with the Campaign Legal Center to file a brief to oppose the Trump administration's lawsuit against Arizona, which it described as "part of an unprecedented nationwide effort to force states to turn over private voter data."
The FBI in January executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center that allowed federal agents to seize 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data, and voter rolls.
Shortly after the raid, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory predicted that this kind of operation would likely be spreading to other counties and states.
“Fulton County is right now the target,” Ivory said. “But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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By Talk World Radio, March 10, 2026
AUDIO:
Talk World Radio is recorded on Zoom.
Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.
VIDEO:
This week on Talk World Radio, we’re speaking with the wonderful playwright Karen Malpede about her new book, Last Radiance: Radical Lives, Bright Deaths.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music: Brush Strokes by texasradiofish (c) copyright 2022 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. Ft: billraydrums
Download from LetsTryDemocracy.
Download from Internet Archive.
Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
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Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!
Past Talk World Radio shows are all available free and complete at
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and at
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Please encourage your local radio stations to air the Peace Almanac.
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The post Talk World Radio: Karen Malpede on Radical Lives and Bright Deaths appeared first on World BEYOND War.
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Islamophobic Think Tank Helped Prosectors Write Terror Indictment Against ICE Protesters
(theintercept.com)
A researcher at a far-right think tank helped Justice Department prosecutors craft their indictment for terror charges against an alleged “north Texas antifa cell,” the researcher testified Monday. The charges were brought in relation to a protest outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center outside Dallas.
Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy said under questioning from a defense attorney that he provided language that prosecutors used in the first-ever domestic terrorism case against a purported antifa cell.
The decision to use the language was the government’s, Shideler said.
“I told them what I believed to be an accurate definition of antifa, and they used it,” Shideler said.
The courtroom testimony provided a window into the extraordinarily close cooperation between federal prosecutors and a Washington advocacy group that has regularly argued for government action against left-wing activists.
Shideler himself was the author of a September article titled “How to Dismantle Far-Left Extremist Networks: A Roadmap for the Trump Administration” that called on the Justice Department to take more aggressive action against left-of-center activists. He said he conferred with prosecutors in October, a month before they obtained an indictment in the Texas case.
[
Related
How Many Members Does Antifa Have? Where Is Its Headquarters? The FBI Has No Answers.](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/11/fbi-antifa-terrorist-location/)
Defense lawyers raised questions about Shideler’s professional home, the Center for Security Policy. The nonprofit think tank was founded by Frank Gaffney, a former Defense Department official under President Ronald Reagan who has routinely been described as an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist. Gaffney’s views on Islam are commonly espoused at Center for Security Policy events.
The center itself has been branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a designation Shideler bristled at in court.
“Yes sir, the Southern Poverty Law Center has mislabeled many people as a hate group,” he said in response to questioning from defense lawyer Phillip Hayes.
The nine defendants on trial this month face years or life sentences in prison for a noise demonstration outside ICE’s Prairieland Detention Center on July 4 of last year.
[
Related
Texas “Antifa Cell” Terror Trial Takes On Tough Questions About Guns at Protests Against ICE](https://theintercept.com/2026/02/11/prairieland-antifa-trial-pretty-ice-protest/)
After demonstrators used fireworks in a show of solidarity for the detainees held inside the Alvarado, Texas, facility, local police arrived to confront them. One of the responding officers was shot in the neck.
Shideler testified as an expert witness for the government over the objections of defense attorneys, who were overruled by U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump appointee.
In lengthy testimony, he provided a recounting of the history of antifascist organizing that ranged from 1930s Germany to 1980s U.K. activism to the present-day United States. Various tactics used by the Prairieland demonstrators to protect their identities — such as Signal chats, “black block” clothing, and a general “security culture” — were all consistent with antifa practices, Shideler said.
Under questioning from prosecutors, Shideler sought to tie the ideas laid out in anarchist zines recovered from the defendants’ possession with their actions outside the detention center.
Several cooperating defendants have testified that they did not consider themselves members of antifa, defense attorneys pointed out during cross-examination.
They also went on the attack over Shideler’s professional qualifications and his conclusions. Shideler acknowledged that he does not use academic social science methods, does not submit his research for peer review, and relies largely on open-source materials whose authenticity is difficult to verify.
Shideler called Signal a “hallmark of antifa” before adding that he uses it himself.
Shideler called Signal a “hallmark of antifa” before adding that he uses it himself.
The antifa trial is Shideler’s first time testifying as an expert witness in a trial, he said. One defense lawyer noted that Shideler was invited to testify about antifa before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October and asked whether his courtroom appearance this week would provide a further boost to his career.
“I guess it will depend how it goes,” he said.
His testimony is set to continue Tuesday.
The post Islamophobic Think Tank Helped Prosectors Write Terror Indictment Against ICE Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.
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Video Suggests Trump's ICE Lied About Its First Known Killing of a US Citizen Last March
(www.commondreams.org)
Materials released over the weekend by the Texas Department of Public Safety regarding a homeland security officer's killing of 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez last March in Texas appeared to provide the latest evidence that federal agents have misled the public about the circumstances surrounding fatal shootings.
American Oversight, a government watchdog group, revealed last month that nearly a year before the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Martinez was the first known US citizen to be killed by an agent of the Trump administration who was carrying out official duties.
Since then, a grand jury has declined to indict the accused officer, Homeland Security Investigations agent Jack C. Stevens, and American Oversight as well as Martinez's family and lawyers have demanded that state authorities release the findings of their investigation into the killing, with the watchdog filing a Freedom of Information Act request.
The body camera footage released on Saturday called into question statements that were made by the Department of Homeland Security after Martinez's killing was publicly revealed, when a DHS spokesperson said the young man "intentionally ran over" an agent.
Internal documents also claimed officers commanded Martinez to get out of his car after he approached the scene of a vehicle accident and that he "accelerated forward, striking a HSI special agent who wound up on the hood of the vehicle."
The video that was released came from a body camera worn by a South Padre Island, Texas police officer who was one of a number of local, state, and federal agents securing an area after a car accident.
South Padre Island, TX🚔
⚠️Ruben Ray Martinez - ICE⚠️
•According to the passenger, Ruben was worried about being arrested for DUI & panicked🍺
•Ruben accelerated his vehicle towards an officer.
•The officer fired 3 shots…killing Ruben.*Was the officer in imminent… pic.twitter.com/YtgS66fAc1
— police.law.news (@policelawnews) March 7, 2026
About 21 minutes into the officer's footage, someone can be heard saying, "Keep going" as Martinez's car approaches the scene. The car briefly stops for some pedestrians, and officers soon appear to become concerned, running toward the vehicle and shouting, "Stop him" and, "Get him out."
Martinez's car appears to be moving slowly, with the brake lights on, as three gunshots are heard and just after.
The video then shows an officer removing Martinez from the car and throwing him on the ground while his friend who was in the car with him, Joshua Orta, is taken into custody.
The internal DHS documents said a second HSI agent Hector Sosa, was struck by the car in his legs, falling over the hood. The footage is taken from behind the car, making it unclear whether Sosa was hit—but it does not show Martinez accelerating.
If an officer was hit, University of South Carolina criminal justice professor Geoffrey P. Albert told the Washington Post, based on the footage of the car it would have been a case of "officer-created jeopardy."
“The contradictory orders are confusing and may have been a strong influence,” Alpert told the Post. “The speed is slow and doesn’t appear threatening. Could the officer have moved away? At worst, all he has to do is step aside."
He added that the body camera video raises "a lot of red flags."
Lawyers for Martinez's family, Charles M. Stam and Alex Stamm, said in a statement that the videos confirm the 23-year-old's car "was barely moving when he was shot."
"He was shot at point-blank range through his side window by an ICE agent who was in no danger," said the attorneys.
Orta, who was killed last month in an unrelated vehicle accident in San Antonio, provided a witness statement after Martinez was killed, saying "I state clearly and without hesitation that Ruben did not hit anyone,” Orta wrote. “The trooper seemed to be trying to get in front of the car, like he wasn’t moving out of the way when we tried to turn around and leave like the police officer told us to do.”
More than a dozen people have been killed by federal immigration officers since President Donald Trump took office for his second term in January 2025.
In the case of Good, an independent autopsy was conducted as part of a civil investigation into her killing and found "strong evidence" against the agent who shot her, calling into question the Trump administration's claim that the officer had killed the 37-year-old in self-defense.
A preliminary government investigation into Pretti's killing did not find that the legal observer had threatened or attacked the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents who fatally shot him, as the administration had first claimed.
Both Pretti and Good were immediately denounced as "domestic terrorists" by administration officials.
DHS also claimed that Marimar Martinez, a Chicago resident who was shot several times by a federal agent but survived last October, had "rammed" officers' vehicles. Body camera footage and text messages from officers later undermined those claims. Federal prosecutors abruptly dropped their criminal case against Martinez weeks after she was shot.
The video of Martinez's killing in Texas, said columnist Nicholas Kristof, suggests that the DHS account of that incident "may be a lie" as well.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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San José State University Sues Trump Admin Over Anti-Trans Threats—Refusing to Capitulate
(www.erininthemorning.com)
San Jose State University // California.com
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
San José State University in California has filed a scathing lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s Department of Education, rejecting the regime’s attempts to use the crisis it manufactured over transgender athletes as a vessel for even more repressive and consequential anti-LGBTQ crackdowns.
San José State, a college about an hour’s drive south of San Francisco, became a flashpoint of the right’s obsession with trans youth after a student athlete was outed on the national stage. The Trump regime investigated SJSU for supposed civil rights violations, arguing that the athlete’s mere presence on the team infringed on the rights of the other women and Title IX.
The “resolution” proposed by the Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) would have the university ban trans women from women’s sports teams, bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorm rooms, in violation of state law; strip trans women of their athletic medals and honors; issue apology letters to any presumed-cisgender woman who competed with a trans athlete; and adopt the GOP’s definition of “sex” in every aspect of campus life going ahead. If they don’t comply, they could lose federal funding.
Instead, San José State went on the offense. They’re suing.
Federal agencies have cajoled countless institutions of higher education into some form of capitulation since the beginning of Trump’s renewed term. UPenn, Brown, Northwestern and other elite colleges have made bargains sacrificing anything from trans athletes to life-saving care for trans youth to preserve their federal funding.
In SJSU’s lawsuit, filed late last week, the university emphasized it would follow all applicable laws, but that the law is not the basis of Trump’s investigation; transphobia is.
According to Iris, a San José State graduate student and president of the student-led campus group Trans Talk, the unapologetic lawsuit represents much-needed support for trans students—especially at a time when other universities are bending the knee to Trump’s anti-trans agenda.
“Appeasement doesn’t work,” Iris told Erin in the Morning. *“*They just come back for more. So standing up now is really important.”
(Iris requested her last name be omitted due to safety and privacy concerns.)
The lawsuit itself challenges Trump’s anti-trans threats on the grounds that it constitutes government overreach, that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, and that it is downright unconstitutional. It attempts to retroactively punish SJSU over Trumpian policies it did not break, in part because the supposed violations pre-date the President’s current term.
In fact, San José State was not just permitted to, but legally obligated to follow trans inclusive policies.
“[T]here is no question that SJSU’s conduct was required by Ninth Circuit law and the federal government’s own guidance at the time,” the complaint reads. California also retains some of the strongest equal rights laws in the country for transgender Americans. Therefore, Trump’s threat to hold critical funding hostage over trans athletes is “not because SJSU violated the law,” the complaint reads, “but because SJSU followed the law.”
Yet the goal posts keep moving, and the Department of Education is threatening to pull funding from any college or university that doesn’t adhere—at times, retroactively—to its contortion of Title IX. Its “proposal” seeks to force the school to redefine “sex,” and Title IX itself, based on unscientific, arbitrary, and politically-charged rhetoric:
An excerpt from the proposal by the Department of Education, which SJSU rejected.
This proposal would target trans people “in all practices, policies and procedures” at the university. This includes “intimate facilities, such as locker rooms, bathrooms, student housing, and overnight accommodations,” which would have to be divided “strictly on the basis of sex,” the proposal says.
Proposed settlement agreement rejected by SJSU
In response, the lawsuit takes a bold stance in challenging the very premises of Trump’s anti-trans crusade, pulling back the curtain on the right-wing smear campaign against trans people. In this case, for example, anti-trans activists pearl-clutched about the necessity of separating teams by “sex” on the basis of “safety,” positioning women as so much weaker than men that their mere co-presence on the court is a physical danger.
In reality, the men’s and women’s teams often play against each other for practice at SJSU and other colleges, the complaint says. Like many of these high-profile clashes over trans athletes, the issue was never gender parity or sex separation. It was always about pushing the needle further and further to the right and sequestering trans people from public life.
This lawsuit comes after over a year of legal back-and-forth, culminating in the OCR’s “Proposed Resolution Agreement,” which—among other provisions—requires SJSU to publicly agree that it violated Title IX, discriminate against trans athletes moving ahead, rebuke trans-inclusive language, and send out apology letters to presumed-cisgender athletes expressing “remorse” for welcoming trans student athletes.
It’s the same playbook federal officials used at the University of Pennsylvania against champion swimmer Lia Thomas, who is trans, and whose fifth-place tie at a swim meet led to the anti-trans activism career of Riley Gaines.
Among other infringements, SJSU argues this is a brazen violation of the Constitutional right to free speech.
“The First Amendment forbids such compelled speech, except when it survives strict scrutiny,” the lawsuit reads. Trump’s proposal demands that SJSU “express[es] certain sentiments, like remorse” with “particular individuals of the government’s choosing [...] in the way the government wants.”
In a statement to the press, the California State University system, which oversees SJSU, made clear its commitment to standing up for its students. “The federal government may not punish the CSU for conduct that complied with binding federal law and the government’s own guidance at the time,” it reads.
“Therefore, the CSU will not agree to accept the terms of the Proposed Resolution Agreement,” it continued. “The CSU remains unwavering in its commitment to fostering an inclusive, respectful, and safe environment for all students, faculty, and staff—including members of our LGBTQ+ community.”
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
Editors Note: Erin Reed, who owns and runs Erin In The Morning but did not write this piece, recently took a paid speaking engagement at SJSU.
From Erin In The Morning via This RSS Feed.
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‘While No One’s Looking,’ Trump DOJ Settles Antitrust Case With Live Nation-Ticketmaster
(www.commondreams.org)
The Trump Justice Department on Monday reportedly reached a tentative deal with Live Nation—the owner of Ticketmaster—to settle a Biden-era antitrust lawsuit that aimed to break up the company, accusing it of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry.
News of the settlement, which would not require a breakup of Live Nation, came days after the trial began, with a lawyer for the Trump Justice Department's decimated antitrust division saying last week that the company abuses its market power and earns its massive profits "through illegal action." The antitrust division's counsel in the case, David Dahlquist, was apparently not made aware of the settlement until he appeared in court Monday morning.
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said it is "highly unorthodox for the Justice Department’s lead litigator to be left out of the loop on the settlement and highly prejudicial to the jury’s deliberations."
“According to every observer, this trial was already going well for the Justice Department and states," said Hepner. "They had just won summary judgment and a jury had already heard evidence of Live Nation’s longstanding pattern of retaliation against venues who had attempted to open the market to competition. State AGs are once again left to clean up the mess left by this Administration’s incompetence.”
Under the settlement, which must be approved by a judge, Live Nation "would pay a fine of up to $280 million and divest itself of at least 13 amphitheaters across the country as it opens up its ticketing processes so that competitors can share in the sale of tickets," the Associated Press reported.
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), a trade group representing thousands of independent live entertainment venues, festivals, and promoters, noted in a statement that the reported $280 million settlement amount "is the equivalent of four days of [Live Nation's] 2025 revenue, which means they could potentially make it back by this Friday."
"The reported settlement does not appear to include any specific and explicit protections for fans, artists, or independent venues and festivals," said Stephen Parker, NIVA's executive director. "Reported details also indicate that ticket resale platforms could be further empowered through new requirements for Ticketmaster to host their listings, which would likely exacerbate the price gouging potential for predatory resellers and the platforms that serve them."
"If these facts are true," Parker added, "NIVA views this as a failure of the justice system."
And Trump pardons Ticketmaster while no one’s looking. pic.twitter.com/ZEFcSomb05
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 9, 2026
The antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation was filed in 2024 after a nearly two-year investigation launched amid mounting public outrage aimed at Ticketmaster, spurred in part by its botched presale of Taylor Swift concert tickets in 2022. Then-President Joe Biden's Justice Department filed the complaint in partnership with 30 state attorneys general, most of whom vowed Monday to continue the fight without the Trump administration's support.
"For years, Live Nation has made enormous profits by exploiting its illegal monopoly and raising costs for shows," said New York Attorney General Letitia James. "My office has led a bipartisan group of attorneys general in suing Live Nation for taking advantage of fans, venues, and artists, and we are committed to holding Live Nation accountable."
The settlement deal comes weeks after Gail Slater, the former head of the Justice Department's antitrust arm, was pushed out by DOJ leadership. Prior to Slater's removal, Live Nation executives and lobbyists had reportedly been negotiating the terms of a possible settlement with senior Justice Department officials outside of the antitrust office, heightening corruption concerns.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, policy director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement that "this settlement amounts to a slap on the wrist that tinkers around the edges of the real problem: Live Nation’s monopoly."
"Instead of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, Live Nation will now get to continue forcing the vast majority of live venues to use Ticketmaster," said Peterson-Cassin. "Following the ousting of Gail Slater and the gutting of the government’s antitrust enforcement capabilities, this settlement is the clearest sign yet that this administration serves big business, not the people."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
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**
**
WFTU Solidarity Week with Cuba
There is no doubt that the aggressive and warmongering nature of imperialism is manifested in its most stark and most undisguised way today.
The massacre and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by the murderous Israeli state with the open support of the US, NATO, and the EU, and their allies, the attacks against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the aggressive war against Iran, the invasion of Venezuela by the US army and the kidnapping of President Maduro and Cilia Flores are actions that remind us once again how ruthless imperialism can be in order to promote the economic and geostrategic interests of monopoly capital and the dominant circles of capitalism.
In this framework of imperialist hysteria, the US is also escalating its attack on socialist Cuba. Despite repeated decisions of the overwhelming majority by the UN General Assembly and global outcry, the USA not only does not lift the illegal and immoral embargo aimed at strangling the Cuban economy, but it is escalating it. Under the ridiculous pretext that Cuba is a country that supports terrorism, they are imposing a total blockade on oil supplies and condemning the Cuban people to conditions of absolute energy poverty, with all the harsh consequences that this has on the living and working conditions of Cuban workers.
The working class and the people of Cuba face with pride and dignity the economic strangulation and unbearable challenges, refusing to submit to the will of the imperialists. They refuse to abandon the revolutionary path they have freely chosen.
The people of Cuba are resisting and are not surrendering. But now more than ever, they need the solidarity and support of all progressive people and, first and foremost, they need the solidarity and support of the international class-oriented trade union movement.
Solidarity in today’s circumstances cannot be limited to statements and demonstrations of support and condemnation of US imperialist aggression. Cuba also needs the immediate practical and material support of the international progressive movement in order to withstand and overcome the difficulties created by the imperialist blockade.
The Secretariat of the WFTU, in a recent joint meeting with the leadership of the heroic CTC of Cuba and the Regional Office of Latin America, discussed the situation in Cuba and was informed of the measures being taken by the leadership and the popular movement in Cuba to address the difficulties. Taking into account the situation, the WFTU Secretariat decided to issue an urgent appeal to all members and friends of the WFTU around the world to intensify to the maximum extent possible their actions of solidarity and support for the Cuban people in their difficult struggle for survival.
It is particularly important to ensure that the message of class solidarity and support for socialist Cuba reaches workers in factories and worksites, offices and shops, everywhere in workplaces, and becomes a priority for workers.
To better coordinate solidarity actions so that they are as effective as possible, the WFTU has decided:
-
To declare an International Week of Action from April 6 to 12 in solidarity with and in support of the people of Cuba. During this week, we call on all members and friends of the WFTU in all countries around the world to organize events and demonstrations of solidarity and condemnation of US aggression. These events should, as far as possible, be organized outside US embassies.
-
Calls on all members and friends of the WFTU to participate in an international campaign to collect money or other useful materials, such as medicines and medical supplies, to provide material support to the people of Cuba.
The money and other materials collected by WFTU member organizations will be channeled through CTC Cuba to provide relief to Cuban workers in businesses and workplaces where the lack of electricity and fuel has created very serious problems.
For practical issues that may arise in the context of this campaign, WFTU members and friends can contact the WFTU Central Offices for coordination and assistance.
Hands off Cuba!
Cuba is not alone!
Semana de Solidaridad de la FSM con Cuba
No cabe duda de que la naturaleza agresiva y belicista del imperialismo se manifiesta hoy de la manera más cruda y descarada.
La masacre y el genocidio de los palestinos en Gaza por parte del estado asesino de Israel con el apoyo abierto de los EE.UU., OTAN UE y sus aliados, los ataques contra el Líbano, Siria, Yemen, y la guerra de agresión contra Irán, la invasión de Venezuela por el ejército estadounidense y el secuestro del presidente Maduro y Cilia Flores son acciones que nos recuerdan una vez más cuán despiadado puede ser el imperialismo para promover los intereses económicos y geoestratégicos del capital monopolista y de los círculos dominantes del capitalismo.
En este marco de histeria imperialista, los EE. UU. también están intensificando su ataque contra la Cuba socialista. A pesar de las repetidas decisiones de la abrumadora mayoría de la Asamblea General de la ONU y del clamor mundial, los EE. UU. no solo no levantan el embargo ilegal e inmoral destinado a estrangular la economía cubana, sino que lo están intensificando. Bajo el ridículo pretexto de que Cuba es un país que apoya el terrorismo, están imponiendo un bloqueo total a los suministros de petróleo y condenando al pueblo cubano a condiciones de pobreza energética absoluta, con todas las duras consecuencias que esto tiene para las condiciones de vida y de trabajo de los trabajadores cubanos.
La clase obrera y el pueblo de Cuba enfrentan con orgullo y dignidad el estrangulamiento económico y los desafíos insoportables, negándose a someterse a la voluntad de los imperialistas. Se niegan a abandonar el camino revolucionario que han elegido libremente.
El pueblo de Cuba resiste y no se rinde. Pero ahora más que nunca, necesitan la solidaridad y el apoyo de todos los pueblos progresistas y, ante todo, necesitan la solidaridad y el apoyo del movimiento sindical internacional clasista.
La solidaridad en las circunstancias actuales no puede limitarse a declaraciones y manifestaciones de apoyo y condena a la agresión imperialista de los EE. UU. Cuba también necesita el apoyo práctico y material inmediato del movimiento progresista internacional para resistir y superar las dificultades creadas por el bloqueo imperialista.
El Secretariado de la FSM, en una reciente reunión conjunta con la dirección de la heroica CTC de Cuba y la Oficina Regional de América Latina, analizó la situación en Cuba y fue informado de las medidas que están tomando la dirección y el movimiento popular en Cuba para hacer frente a las dificultades. Teniendo en cuenta la situación, el Secretariado de la FSM decidió lanzar un llamamiento urgente a todos los miembros y amigos de la FSM en todo el mundo para que intensifiquen al máximo sus acciones de solidaridad y apoyo al pueblo cubano en su difícil lucha por la supervivencia.
Es especialmente importante garantizar que el mensaje de solidaridad de clase y apoyo a la Cuba socialista llegue a los trabajadores en las fábricas y centros de trabajo, oficinas y tiendas, en todos los lugares de trabajo, y se convierta en una prioridad para los trabajadores.
Para coordinar mejor las acciones de solidaridad y que sean lo más eficaces posible, la FSM ha decidido:
- Declarar una Semana Internacional de Acción del 6 al 12 de abril en solidaridad y apoyo al pueblo de Cuba. Durante esta semana, pedimos a todos los miembros y amigos de la FSM en todos los países del mundo que organicen eventos y manifestaciones de solidaridad y condena de la agresión de los EE. UU. Estos eventos deben organizarse, en la medida de lo posible, frente a las embajadas de los EE. UU.
- Llamar a todos los miembros y amigos de la FSM a participar en una campaña internacional para recaudar dinero u otros materiales útiles, como medicinas y suministros médicos, para brindar apoyo material al pueblo de Cuba.
El dinero y los demás materiales recolectados por las organizaciones miembros de la FSM se canalizarán a través de la CTC de Cuba para aliviar a los trabajadores cubanos en las empresas y centros de trabajo donde la falta de electricidad y combustible ha creado problemas muy graves.
Para las cuestiones prácticas que puedan surgir en el contexto de esta campaña, los miembros y amigos de la FSM pueden ponerse en contacto con las Oficinas Centrales de la FSM para recibir coordinación y asistencia.
¡Manos fuera de Cuba! ¡Cuba no está sola!
wftucentral.org
From In Defense of Communism via This RSS Feed.
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As Trump Sends Mixed Messages, Markey Demands Honest Data on Economic Impact of Iran War
(www.commondreams.org)
While President Donald Trump on Monday made conflicting comments about ending the US-Israeli war on Iran, Sen. Ed Markey expressed "deep concerns about ongoing political interference in what should be nonpartisan offices, including the federal statistical system," and demanded urgent analyses of the bloody assault's economic consequences.
"History is repeating itself," the Massachusetts Democrat, who serves as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, began his Monday letter to acting Commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) William Wiatrowski.
"Crises spurred by American intervention in the Middle East in 1974, 1980, 1990, and 2003 led to price gouging at the gas pump and drains on American wallets, followed by broader economic effects as the price of energy skyrocketed," Markey noted. "President Trump's reckless, aimless, and illegal war with Iran is driving our nation into yet another self-inflicted energy and inflation crisis. American consumers should not be subjected to shakedowns every time they fill up their cars, just to pay for Donald Trump's Middle Eastern crusade."
"Unfortunately, at this moment we are flying blind," he wrote. "The president has neglected to provide coherent or consistent explanations for the scope and goals of his war, either to the Congress or the American people, and we have similarly received no information from the administration on the conflict’s expected duration or anticipated costs."
The senator asked the BLS to "immediately undertake and publish a comprehensive analysis of the likely consumer price impacts" over the next 6-12 months stemming from Trump's war on Iran.
Specifically, by March 24, he requested projections for:
- consumer price changes in electricity, gasoline, and home heating fuel, based on current levels of disruption to fossil fuel flows through the Strait of Hormuz;
- shifts in food prices that factor in elevated energy and transportation costs as well as disruptions to imports and exports, and the fertilizer supply chain; and
- pricing changes for goods including apparel and household products due to supply chain disruptions and higher energy and shipping costs.
Markey also requested answers about the agency's methodology, stressing that "the integrity and timeliness of BLS's work have never mattered more. American families making decisions about their budgets, their energy use, and their economic future deserve the best available government data and analysis."
The senator recalled Trump's August ouster of then-Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, which "appears to solely have been the result of BLS releasing factual jobs data that was viewed as unflattering to the administration."
"Baseless firings of ethical civil servants and manipulation of data reduce trust in what should be objective economic research grounded in data and evidence, rather than overt partisanship and blind allegiance," he wrote to the agency's new leader.
"In the face of this intimidation," the senator added, "I appreciate Dr. McEntarfer's assertions regarding the quality of your leadership and personal character, and I hope you will continue to ground economic analyses in objectivity and fact—no matter how many times the president inaccurately claims that BLS's statistics are 'rigged' and pressures officials to hide, alter, or otherwise change data to suit his political purposes."
Donald Trump is throwing gasoline on the flames of war in Iran, while at home, Americans are paying higher prices for gasoline at the pump. Take a walk with me to see how prices are skyrocketing as a result of this illegal war.
[image or embed]
— Senator Ed Markey (@markey.senate.gov) March 9, 2026 at 3:27 PM
As Common Dreams reported earlier Monday, Trump's war on Iran is having an obvious economic impact: The prices of both Brent crude oil and WTI crude oil futures soared past $100 per barrel, the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened trading down by more than 600 points, and the Nasdaq dropped by 300 points.
Then, Trump suggested in an interview with CBS News’ Weijia Jiang that the Iran war—which has already killed more than 1,300 Iranians, including hundreds of women and children—is "very complete, pretty much." After his remarks, Reuters reported, "Wall Street stocks clawed their way back from a steep selloff to close higher on Monday, notching a final-hour rebound."
However, Trump then seemed to walk back his comments about the war ending soon. According to the New York Times, during a speech to Republican lawmakers in Florida, he said that "we have won in many ways, but not enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all."
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Family courts legal changes to protect children from abusive parents are one step closer
(www.thecanary.co)
An overhaul of the family courts system means that children will be better protected from abusive parents under a new law that MPs are set to debate today at a second reading of the Courts and Tribunals Bill.
Under the new Courts and Tribunals Bill, the government will revoke the law that judged a child should have contact with both parents, which campaigners argued has put the rights of abusive parents over a child’s safety.
The move follows a decade-long campaign by Claire Throssell MBE, whose two sons — Jack, 12, and Paul, 9 — were both killed by their father despite her warnings he was a danger to them. She has since campaigned to prevent unsafe child contact with dangerous perpetrators of domestic abuse.
The Women’s Aid ambassador said:
For a decade, I have been campaigning with Women’s Aid to change the family courts system to make sure that no child is ever again placed at risk of further harm from abusive parents.
Seeing that the presumption of parental contact will finally be repealed, and in the memory of my sons, Jack and Paul, is deeply meaningful.
No child should have to hold out a hand for help in darkness, saying that they were hurt by someone who was meant to protect them. No parents should have to hold their children as they die from the abuse of a perpetrator, as I did 11 years ago.
Family courts dismantle ‘pro-contact’ culture
The Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, Claire Waxman OBE, paid tribute to Throssell’s “extraordinary bravery and determination in the face of unimaginable grief and pain”.
She welcomed the government’s landmark decision which marks a decisive shift away from a pro-contact culture in family courts that has historically placed children at risk of harm from abusive parents, Waxman explained.
She said:
[Throssell’s] success in removing this dangerous presumption from family law is a vital step in dismantling the dangerous ‘pro-contact’ culture that is so deep-rooted in our courts.
This is a hard-won victory for Claire, but more importantly, it is a lasting legacy for Jack and Paul — ensuring a new era of protection and justice for every woman and child seeking safety from abuse.
The presumption of parental involvement was introduced into the Children Act 1989 to help ensure children could maintain a relationship with both parents after separation.
However, evidence shows the current process can leave children at risk of harm from abusive parents.
The current law contains safeguards that allow involvement to be restricted where it harms a child’s welfare, but repealing this provision is what campaigners have advocated for.
Featured image via Unsplash/Suzi Kim
By The Canary
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Trump Declares Iran War 'Very Complete, Pretty Much' Days After Demanding 'Total Surrender'
(www.commondreams.org)
President Donald Trump signaled on Monday that he's nearly done with his unprovoked and unconstitutional war against Iran, despite declaring mere days ago that he would only accept the country's "unconditional surrender."
In an interview with CBS News' Weijia Jiang, Trump said that the Iran war is "very complete, pretty much," then falsely claimed that US and Israeli strikes had eliminated Iran's navy and even its ability to communicate.
Jiang's reporting on Trump's declaration that the war was nearly over came just one hour after the US Department of Defense (DOD) posted a message on social media declaring, "We have Only Just Begun to Fight."
Additionally, noted journalist Yashar Ali, CBS News' "60 Minutes" aired an interview with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday in which he said that the war was still in its early days.
The president's abrupt shift in rhetoric about the war came hours after the prices of both Brent crude oil and WTI crude oil futures surged past $100 per barrel, as countries across the Middle East announced production cuts in the wake of chaos and destruction caused by the Iran war.
The impact of the price surge on the US stock market was immediate, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened Monday trading down by more than 600 points, while the Nasdaq dropped by 300 points.
In the wake of Trump's statement about the war being "pretty much" complete, shares on the US stock market rallied and oil futures began to drop.
Trump administration officials said that the initial goal of the attack was ending Iran's uranium enrichment program—and while they claimed it wasn't a "regime change" war, the president last month urged Iranians to "take over" their government. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday outlined a more modest set of goals that included destroying its navy and its missile launch capacity.
Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, argued that this set of goals showed "the Trump administration is admitting that they have strategically failed and this has been a disaster."
Political scientist Ian Bremmer also took note of Rubio's revised goals and said they make "declaring victory and ending war with Iran much easier."
However, just because Trump is saying he thinks the war is almost over doesn't mean that it will end soon. Iran has still shut the Strait of Hormuz, and it maintains the ability to launch drone attacks on energy infrastructure throughout the Middle East.
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