The following statement issued by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council in response to the MAGA president’s two-week “ceasefire” was published by Press TV on April 7. “Good news to the dear nation of Iran! Nearly all the objectives of the war have been achieved. * “The noble people of Iran . . .
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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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Parliamentarians and bereaved families will come together in Parliament on 28 April to mark Workers’ Memorial Day. And they’ll remember those who have lost their lives because of work.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Occupational Safety and Health will host the event. It will include contributions from:
- Prof Julia Waters, sister of the late headteacher Ruth Perry, who took her own life following an Ofsted inspection.
- Fiona and Barry, who worked alongside murdered transport worker Jorge Ortega.
- Anne Davies, widow of firefighter Jeff Simpson, who died from cancer caused by chemicals he was exposed to in burning buildings.
- Kate Bell, assistant general secretary, Trades Union Congress.
Workers’ Memorial Day is an international day of remembrance, backed by the United Nations, for those who have died due to work-related injury or illness.
The parliamentary memorial will bring together MPs, peers, trade unions, families and workers affected by preventable workplace deaths.
MPs and peers in the All-Party Parliamentary Group have raised serious concerns about the capacity of the Health and Safety Executive. This department has seen its funding reduce by almost half since 2010.
These cuts have limited its ability to carry out proactive inspections and enforcement. And this is increasing the risk that unsafe employers go unchecked.
At the same time, work-related mental ill health is rising, yet there are significant gaps in how the system responds. The Health and Safety Executive does not currently investigate work-related suicides, meaning potential systemic causes go unexamined.
Policymakers are calling for this to change, so that work-related suicides are treated with the same seriousness as other workplace deaths.
They are also calling for restoration of the regulator’s pre-2010 budget. This would help it respond to modern workplace risks, including the growing crisis of violence at work.
Workers’ Memorial Day a chance to ‘confront failures’
Ian Lavery, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Occupational Safety and Health, said:
Workers’ Memorial Day is about remembering those who have lost their lives because of work, but it is also about confronting the failures that continue to put workers at risk today.
There is a growing crisis of violence at work. When 8 in 10 public-facing workers are experiencing abuse, it is clear that far too many workers are being left without the protection they deserve.
We are also seeing rising levels of work-related mental ill health, yet work-related suicides are not even investigated by the Health and Safety Executive. That cannot be right. These deaths must be recognised, properly investigated, and used to prevent future tragedies.
At the same time, the Health and Safety Executive has had its funding cut in half over the last decade. That has real consequences: fewer inspections, weaker enforcement, and less capacity to deal with growing risks like stress and violence.
If we are serious about protecting workers, government must act — by restoring funding to the regulator and expanding its capacity. No one should lose their life or their health simply for doing their job.
Julia Waters will say:
Work-related suicides are not treated with the same seriousness as other workplace deaths. Until they are recognised, investigated and acted on, the risk of future deaths remains.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
With the manosphere back in the headlines, we’re republishing our 2024 interview with the authors of Clown World, the book that exposed Andrew Tate’s cult-like grip on young men around the world. Jamie Tahsin and Matt Shea explain how they infiltrated Tate’s inner circle and what they found inside.
Ash and Moya will be back from their well-earned break next week. Get your dilemmas in: ifispeak@novaramedia.com
Remember our show in Sheffield is coming up on 4th July. Get tickets now from Crossed Wires.
Music by Matt Huxley.
From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.
The coalition behind a plan to tax California billionaires on Monday announced it's reached a major milestone in its efforts to get its proposed wealth tax on ballots this fall.
The California Billionaire Tax coalition revealed it has now filed more than 1.5 million signatures, or nearly twice the 875,000 signatures required to make the California Billionaire Tax Act an official state ballot initiative.
The proposed tax, which has drawn opposition from Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and support from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), will hit the state's billionaires with a one-time 5% wealth tax that proponents say will be used to fund local hospitals, food aid, and public education.
Mayra Castañeda, an ultrasound technologist and a member of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), which proposed the ballot initiative, said that the tax was essential to preserve quality of healthcare in California.
"When funding is cut, it brings a world of pain," said Castañeda**.** "It means longer ER waits, fewer healthcare workers, rural hospitals shutting down, delayed care, and lives lost that could have been saved. It's clear that most Californians and most billionaires recognize how reasonable and necessary this proposal is—both to keep emergency rooms open and to save California businesses from closing."
Jared Hamil, a member of Teamsters Local 396, said gathering more than 1.5 million signatures in favor of the tax means "we are one step closer to the California we deserve."
"We deserve to be able to afford to see a doctor when we’re sick," Hamil emphasized. "We deserve to know our local hospital will be open and ready to treat you in an emergency. In a nation as rich as ours, that’s the least we deserve."
A poll of California voters conducted last month by the University of California, Berkeley found that the proposed billionaire tax is broadly popular, with support outweighing opposition by a roughly two-to-one ratio.
An analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that the tax will raise $100 billion in revenue over the next five years, which would be enough to fill the hole in California's state budget caused by the Republican-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that takes an ax to spending on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday unveiled his plan to unconstitutionally gerrymander the Sunshine State's congressional map amid pressure from the Trump administration, a move GOP officials hope will help their party retain control of both houses of Congress after November's midterm elections.
DeSantis handed state lawmakers a proposed map that would dramatically redraw the districts of several House incumbents, giving legislators less than 24 hours to review the redistricting plan ahead of a special session on Tuesday during which the Republican-controlled Legislature is expected to approve the gerrymandering.
Republicans currently hold 20 of Florida's 28 US House seats. The new map is projected to increase that number to 24. Four Democrat-held seats will be most affected, with Reps. Kathy Castor, Lois Frankel, Darren Soto, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz facing markedly different maps and Rep. Jared Moskowitz in a new district.
🚨Florida voters are being denied any say on the new electoral maps. Ron DeSantis knows they won’t go for it, which is why he’s bypassing them — just like they did in Texas. This is actually ILLEGAL. In California and Virginia, voters got to decide.#StopIllegalFloridaMaps
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— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) April 27, 2026 at 12:19 PM
However, the mid-decade partisan redistricting is expressly illegal under Florida's Constitution, which states in Section 20 of Article II that “no apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party.”
While Republicans claim the new maps are racially neutral, state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-42) called that assertion "obvious horseshit."
"The map goes out of its way to split up the growing Puerto Rican population in Central Florida between multiple districts. It's racial cracking at a textbook level," she said, referring to the practice of drawing maps so that minority communities are spread across multiple districts, depriving them of the opportunity to form effective voting blocs.
Republicans lost a HUGE special election in Florida and now they're determined to CHEAT in the November election by rigging the maps in a back room deal. Florida voters banned partisan political maps 15 years ago.DO NOT STANDBY AND LET THEM.#StopIllegalFloridaMaps
— Grant Stern (@grantstern.bsky.social) April 27, 2026 at 1:38 PM
US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) warned last week that Florida's move could backfire.
"If Florida Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pick-up opportunities for Democrats," Jeffries said. "We are prepared to take them all on, and we are prepared to win.”
National and state Democrats are already vowing legal challenges to Florida's plan.
“If DeSantis forces this unconstitutional gerrymander forward in Florida, it won’t be because the voters asked him to,” National Democratic Redistricting Committee president John Bisognano said Monday. "Republicans will only have themselves to blame when they face resistance in the courtroom and at the ballot box for this egregious power grab.”
"Poll after poll has shown that the overwhelming majority of Floridian voters do not want a mid-decade gerrymander," Bisognano added. "They aren’t alone. Local editorial boards across the state are slamming this blatantly partisan power grab."
The gerrymandering war kicked off last year when, under pressure from President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature redrew the state's congressional map in a bid to eliminate all Democratic districts. The right-wing US Supreme Court gave Texas its blessing to use the rigged map in a ruling last December.
Texas' move was countered last November when California voters approved redrawn districts favoring Democrats.
Since then, Republican-controlled legislatures in states including Missouri and North Carolina and Democratic-controlled states like Virginia, Maryland, and Washington have redrawn or are in the process of redrawing their congressional maps.
Last week, a district court judge subsequently blocked Virginia's new map a day after it was approved, setting up a battle in the state Supreme Court.
Responding to last week's voter-approved redistricting in Virginia, former US Attorney General Eric Holder noted major differences between the bottom-up redraws in Democratic states and top-down rigging by Republicans.
“The mere existence of this special election stands in stark contrast to the gerrymanders forced on constituents in Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina and shows that voters are tired of Republican attempts to silence their power at the voting booth," Holder said.
All Voting Is Local Action Florida state director Brad Ashwell said in a statement Monday that "it is clear that the end goal in this state is to redraw maps in order to give one party an advantage over another, essentially putting partisan politics over the voters."
"What’s even more egregious is that this move is in direct conflict with the fair districts ballot amendments these same voters approved by a supermajority in 2010, meaning our governor and lawmakers are directly undermining our state Constitution and the will of the voters," he continued.
“This move is unnecessary, illegal, and a power grab, and it takes away time from addressing real issues, like passing a state budget, which hasn’t happened yet," Ashwell said. "Additionally, passing and implementing a new map will create new precincts right before the election, causing voter confusion and unnecessary work for local election officials who are already bogged down by frequent policy changes and new hurdles."
"For once, Florida should stand by its voters and election officials and shut this undemocratic move down," he added. "No new maps!”'
This isn't Desantis' first foray into gerrymandering. A state judge in 2022 invalidated parts of a previously redrawn congressional map, siding with plaintiffs in a lawsuit who argued that Republicans violated the state Constitution by racially rigging districts. However, in 2024 a federal appellate panel ruled that Florida could proceed with use of the map.
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Maryland will become the first US state to outlaw "surveillance pricing" for groceries after Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed a bill on Monday barring retailers and food delivery services from using customers' personal data to alter prices.
The practice has already become rampant in online commerce, with companies like Amazon, Uber, and Delta Air Lines accused of using everything from browsing history and location to demographic information to squeeze every possible cent from consumers.
The Protection from Predatory Pricing Act, which takes effect in Maryland beginning on October 1, targets the growing use of such tactics by grocery chains and delivery apps, which Moore has accused of using "new technologies to drive up the bill for working families."
These include electronic shelf labels, which advocates have warned could allow companies to instantly change grocery prices based on the time of day, weather, and other factors that influence consumer demand.
“Digital price tags are replacing paper ones. It’s happening because we are having cameras that are watching aisles, it’s happening because we have apps that are moving from search-based to predictive,” Moore said.
Moore has cited an investigation published in December by Consumer Reports and the Groundwork Collaborative, which found that Instacart was running a “pricing experiment” that charged some customers as much as 23% more for the same items than others based on shoppers' personal data.
Another investigation by Consumer Reports last May found that Kroger was collecting lengthy profiles of individual customers, including estimates of their household size, education level, income, and even perceived "loyalty" to the company, along with sometimes dozens of other pages of personal data.
"Surveillance pricing can drive up the price of food," said Grace Gedye, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. "Retailers have a lot of data about individual shoppers: how often we search for or hover over particular items, whether we live near competitor stores, inferences about our likes and dislikes, our dietary needs, our income, our family size, and more."
"Surveillance pricing," she said, "allows companies to take advantage of that information asymmetry and charge you as much as they think you’re individually willing to pay.”
To combat this, Maryland's new law requires that shelf prices remain steady for one full business day. It also bars retailers from using surveillance data, such as inferred income, ethnicity, family size, neighborhood, or purchasing history, to raise prices for individuals.
Companies that violate the law will receive civil penalties of up to $10,000 for first offenses and $25,000 for repeat offenses. They will also be given 45 days to correct violations before these fines apply.
Gedye said, "While it’s encouraging to see the Maryland Legislature take up this issue, this law has loopholes that will limit its real-world impact."
The law faced fierce opposition from industry groups, including the Maryland Retailers Alliance. The group ultimately withdrew its opposition, but only after several new provisions were introduced that Consumer Reports said "undercut" the law's effectiveness.
While the law bans the use of personal data to set higher prices, the group said there is no way to determine what constitutes a "baseline or standard price," meaning price fluctuations could easily be marketed as discounts. It also said companies could use loyalty and subscription programs—which are exempt from the law—to raise prices.
The group also warned that the law is too hard to enforce, since only the Maryland attorney general, not customers themselves, can bring suits, which it said is a "departure from Maryland’s primary consumer protection law."
Many other states—including California, New York, and Illinois—are considering similar bans, and legislation has been proposed at the federal level to outlaw surveillance and surge-pricing practices nationwide.
Gedye said, "We urge other state legislatures considering personalized pricing legislation to build in stronger consumer protections and avoid loopholes that weakened this bill.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
The publication Monday of another report showing that President Donald Trump's tightening of the 65-year US embargo of Cuba over his two terms in office is "likely the primary cause of a major increase in infant mortality" on the economically besieged island prompted renewed calls for the lifting of deadly sanctions.
The report by Alexander Main, Joe Sammut, Mark Weisbrot, and Guillaume Long of the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) found an "unprecedented increase" in Cuba’s infant mortality rate (IMR), which soared 148% between 2018 and 2025.
In the early-to-mid 2010s, Cuba’s IRM was typically around 4–5 deaths per 1,000 live births, with the country regularly ranked in the top 10-15 nations with the lowest infant mortality. By 2025, the figure had soared to 9.9 deaths out of every 1,000 infants born alive.
The report's authors said that had Cuba's IMR remained unchanged since 2018, roughly 1,800 fewer babies would have died.
“The blockade has had a particularly dire effect on Cuba’s healthcare infrastructure, with frequent power outages interrupting the use of critical equipment for the treatment of patients, including incubators for premature babies, and ventilators to help sick newborns breathe,” said Sammut, CEPR's senior research fellow.
The report examines the social and economic consequences of Trump's tightened sanctions regime, focusing on the impact of the embargo on Cuba’s healthcare sector.
According to CEPR:
Trump administration pressure on Cuba has included restrictions that have sharply diminished the island’s important tourism sector; severely limited exports of goods to Cuba—including essential medication and medical equipment; cut Cuba’s access to international financial markets by putting the country back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list; curbed remittances; pressured countries to end their partnerships with Cuba’s medical missions; and notably imposed a recent fuel blockade that prevents Venezuelan oil from reaching the island.
Trump has recently ratcheted up military threats and economic pressure on Cuba, which was already reeling from decades of US sanctions and the inefficiencies of centralized state control. His tightened embargo has severely restricted fuel imports, exacerbating an energy emergency characterized by blackouts and deadly suffering among the most vulnerable Cubans, including sick people and children.
“The Trump policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Cuba has killed a lot of babies—and, although we don’t yet have data for the last few months, it’s highly likely that more babies are dying now, and at an even higher rate than last year as a result of the current US fuel blockade targeting Cuba,” said Main, CEPR's director of international policy. “The question is how many more babies will have to die before the current economic siege against Cuba is lifted.”
It's not just babies. As Common Dreams reported last month, nearly 100,000 Cubans—including 11,000 children—werer waiting for surgery. Childhood cancer survival rates have also fallen significantly.
"The sanctions on Cuba starkly illustrate how these economic sanctions work: They target the civilian population, often with the goal of provoking regime change,” said Weisbrot, CEPR's co-director. “This can dramatically increase death rates."
During his first term, Trump began rolling back the Obama administration’s diplomatic normalization with Cuba's socialist government. He activated a provision of the Helms-Burton Act allowing lawsuits over property confiscated after the Cuban Revolution, and on his last day in office he redesignated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.
Critics denounced the move as absurd, especially given that Cuba has never carried out any acts of terrorism—unlike the United States and the militant Cuban exiles it harbors, who have a decadeslong record of terrorist bombings and other attacks, as well as numerous failed or aborted attempts to assassinate former revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the blockade—which Cuba's government says has cost the island more than $1 trillion—33 times.
“The collective punishment of civilians is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention when there is armed conflict, and can be prosecuted as a war crime," Weisbrot noted. "This would appear to be applicable now that the current naval blockade involves the US military.”
Previous reports have sounded the alarm on Cuba's rising IMR, including a United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation published in February that put the 2025 infant mortality rate a 7.4, considerably lower than the CEPR analysis. The British Medical Journal Pediatrics Open in February reported a 9.9 IMR for Cuba.
The IMR surge comes amid reporting that the Pentagon is “quietly ramping up” preparations to wage war on Cuba, which would be the 11th country attacked by Trump, the self-proclaimed president of peace, the most of any US leader ever.
US Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced a war powers resolution aimed at preventing Trump from attacking Cuba without congressional authorization as required by law. The resolution could be put to a vote as soon as Tuesday.
Numerous war powers resolutions related to Iran, Venezuela, and Trump’s extralegal high seas boat bombings have failed to pass.
World leaders, activists, and academics are among those urging the US to lift the embargo on Cuba.
"Stop this damned blockade on Cuba and let the Cuban people live their lives," Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said last week in Barcelona. "Cuba has problems. But they are Cuba's problems. Not Lula's. Not Trump's. Not the empire's."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
As pesticide critics held a "The People v. Poison" rally outside the US Supreme Court on Monday, the justices heard arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, a case whose conclusion is expected to have sweeping implications for cancer patients trying to take on the Roundup maker—now owned by Bayer—in the country's legal system.
The case stems from John Durnell's 2019 lawsuit against Monsanto in Missouri state court, alleging that exposure to the herbicide Roundup—whose active ingredient is glyphosate—caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. A jury found that the company failed to warn users of the risks associated with the weedkiller, and awarded Durnell $1.25 million in damages.
Bayer argued before the Supreme Court on Monday that Durnell—and others like him—should not be able to bring such a suit because the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts state rules for labeling pesticides when the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't require a cancer warning. Bayer and the EPA continue to insist that glyphosate is safe, despite the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifying it as probably carcinogenic to humans over a decade ago.
As The Associated Press and Reuters reported, the justices appeared "divided" on Monday, with the AP noting that several "seemed sympathetic to the company's argument that it can't be sued under state law because federal regulators have found Roundup likely doesn't cause cancer. Others, though, grilled attorneys about whether that wrongly stops states from responding to changing research."
Patti Goldman, senior attorney at Earthjustice—which filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of farmworker organizations—said in a statement that "questions from the justices recognized that the Environmental Protection Agency approves pesticide labels based on the evidence before the agency at a single moment in time, but that evidence can become outdated as real-world exposure grows and scientific studies document resulting harms."
"Federal law requires the manufacturers to update their labels to provide sufficient warnings and directions to protect the public," Goldman stressed, "and state failure-to-warn claims reinforce that obligation—while ensuring children, families, and workers have a path to seek remedies for the harm they suffer."
Other groups that have submitted amicus briefs include Environmental Protection Network—which is made up of former EPA staffers—and the Center for Food Safety, one of the advocacy organizations that joined the rally outside the court. The event was also attended by members of Congress from both major political parties.
"This isn't left v. right—it's right v. wrong," said US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). "Big corporations and their lobbyists have captured both parties, putting profits over our families' health. I've fought Monsanto and Bayer for years, and just filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to protect our right to sue them for illnesses caused by their products."
Despite President Donald Trump's campaign promise to "Make America Healthy Again," the Republican recently issued an executive order mandating the production of glyphosate, and the US Department of Justice has sided with Bayer in this case—part of a broader trend of his administration serving the pesticide industry's interests.
"Monsanto Company v. Durnell will have enormous consequences for environmental health litigation," Food and Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen said Monday. "Bayer is intent on preserving its right to harm at all costs—a pursuit the Trump administration is all too willing to endorse. This case threatens to close the courthouse doors to the many Americans harmed by pesticides."
Heinzen argued that "should the Supreme Court hold that the Environmental Protection Agency's failed pesticide regulatory scheme preempts state failure to warn lawsuits, leaving tens of thousands of sick Americans without legal recourse, Trump and his industry-dominated EPA will be to blame."
"This high stakes case should be a wake-up call for Congress to act," the campaigner added. "Industrial agriculture's pesticide addiction is poisoning America. Congress must pass the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act to safeguard access to justice for all harmed by toxic pesticides."
As The American Prospect noted Monday in its "three-part series on Bayer's crusade for immunity from Roundup-related cancer claims," the company "is now aggressively lobbying Congress to permanently close the door" on the weedkiller's victims, and managed to get an immunity provision included in the 2026 Farm Bill that advanced out of the US House Agriculture Committee last month.
After joining the rally at the Supreme Court on Monday, Friends of the Earth (FOE) US led a protest outside Bayer's headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, delivering hundreds of thousands of petition signatures are calling on the company to phase out the production of toxic pesticides, including glyphosate and neonicotinoids.
"People are sick and tired of being exposed to toxic pesticides while pesticide corporations shirk responsibility," said FOE senior campaigner Sarah Starman, who spoke at the rally. "Bayer and other pesticide companies should not be allowed to profit from chemicals that threaten our health, harm our environment, and undermine the future of our food system. The hundreds of people who rallied outside the Supreme Court and the 200,000 people who signed comments to Bayer are demanding change."
In the leadup to the arguments before the nation's top court, the Environmental Working Group last week sued the Trump administration at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, accusing the EPA of unlawfully delaying its response to an EWG petition seeking stronger restrictions on glyphosate.
"The EPA's silence leaves families in the dark and falls far short of its responsibility to protect public health," declared EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook. "It's time for the agency to stop stalling and do its job."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading a coalition of Democratic senators pushing for the party's leaders to require candidates to swear off billionaire- and corporate-backed super PACs, or political action committees, in this year's primary elections.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) joined the independent senator from Vermont to send a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin on Sunday.
Five of the senators are members of a group of Senate Democrats known as the "Fight Club" that has formed to oppose Schumer's preferred candidates in contested Democratic primaries, many of whom are closely aligned with the party's traditional corporate backers.
While the senators applauded the DNC's resolution last month broadly condemning the influence of dark money in party elections, calling it an "important first step," they said Democratic leaders needed to take more "concrete steps to curb the influence of dark money," particularly the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency industries and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
"Corporate-funded super PACs are shaping the 2026 elections as we speak, and the scale of their resources is unprecedented," the senators said. "Crypto-aligned groups are preparing to spend $200 million, and AIPAC-affiliated groups already control more than $90 million. The AI industry has already spent over $185 million this year alone. These sums are being deployed to influence Democratic primaries and overwhelm candidates who rely on grassroots support."
April's broad anti-dark money resolution was passed by the DNC in lieu of one that directly singled out “the growing influence” of AIPAC, specifically over its more than $100 million spending blitz in 2024 to oust progressive candidates. Despite a dramatic shift toward opposition to Israel among Democratic voters over the past three years, that resolution was voted down by a DNC panel.
AIPAC continues to dump massive amounts of money behind its preferred candidates. The senators' letter notes that "in Illinois alone, outside groups spent over $50 million in recent Democratic primaries." Nearly half of that money was spent by AIPAC, which secretly funneled money to support its candidates using shell groups that appeared to be unaffiliated.
The group has used similar tactics in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Ala Stanford, a candidate for Pennsylvania's 3rd District in Philadelphia, was recently revealed to have received $500,000 worth of backing from AIPAC through a super PAC despite claiming to have received no support from the Israel lobby.
Meanwhile, in Maine, a clique of Republican billionaires who back Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)—including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Palantir CEO Alex Karp—also recently dropped $2 million to fund an ad campaign seeking to hamper the chances of the Democratic Senate primary front-runner Graham Platner.
"We cannot allow unlimited outside spending to distort our elections or drown out the voices of working people," the senators said in Sunday's letter.
The senators noted Schumer's past statement that overturning the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the door for the flood of corporate money into elections by allowing individuals to independently spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates, was "probably more important than any other single thing we could do to preserve this great and grand democracy.”
They said that while reversing the ruling remained a "critical long-term goal," the party "has the authority—and the responsibility—to act now with clear, enforceable rules."
"National and state parties should require all Democratic candidates to sign a pledge opposing billionaire- and corporate-backed super PAC spending on their behalf in Democratic primaries," they said. "The DNC, state parties, and committees working to elect Democrats to the House and Senate have many potential tools at their disposal to enforce that pledge, including withholding endorsements for those who make endorsements in the primary, and they should use whatever tools necessary to do so."
Sanders has said that simply requiring candidates to take a pledge is not enough and that party leaders need to be diligent about holding them to it.
“If the Democrats are going to be honest and consistent in terms of their concerns about money and politics, they’ve got to clean up, in my view, their own house immediately,” he said in an interview on Saturday. “That means getting super PACs out of Democratic primaries, congressional as well as presidential.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
The continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is once again raising concerns about a nucelar disaster in the region on the 40th anniversary of the catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl power plant.
Reuters reported on Monday that a Ukrainian drone the struck a transport department at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which has been under Russian control since March 2022, shortly after its armed forces invaded Ukraine.
The Russian government said that an employee at the Zaporizhzhia plant was killed in the attack, and International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi reiterated in a social media post that "strikes on or near [nuclear power plants] can endanger nuclear safety and must not take place."
Russia has also engaged in dangerous attacks around nuclear power infrastructure over the last four years, and a report released this month by Greenpeace Ukraine found that the New Safe Confinement (NSC) at Chernobyl, which contains the ruins of the plant's reactor unit 4, was significantly compromised after being struck by a high-explosive warhead from a Russian drone last year.
"The Russian drone strike... destroyed the main functions of the [NSC]," the report states. "The impact of the drone on the northwest side of the NSC caused an opening... which penetrated both the outside and inside arch shells. Critical structural elements of the NSC have been deformed and damaged including the Main Crane System, making their load-bearing capability impossible to assess."
The drone strike also burned the membrane layer inside the NSC, which has taken out the ability to control humidity at the site and could lead to accelerated corrosion of the NSC's steel components.
"The NSC was designed to last 100 years on the basis that its low humidity control was maintained," notes the report. "Accelerated corrosion may reduce the 100-year design life of the structure if humidity control is not restored by 2030."
Greenpeace Ukraine nuclear expert Shaun Burnie described the damage done to the NSC as "a Russian-made war crime," and lamented it will mean "years of repairs and further delays before the sarcophagus can be safely dismantled."
Polina Kolodiazhna, senior campaigner from Greenpeace Ukraine, said on Sunday that Russia's invasion of Ukraine had added new urgency for her country to end its dependence on nuclear power given the massive environmental and human risks.
"Nuclear power stations have inherent risks, and those risks are escalating," Kolodiazhna said. "Russia, for the first time in the history of warfare, has systematically attacked and occupied nuclear plants, showing how they can be used as military and political tools. In a world at war, with massive geopolitical tension and climate extremes, those risks are increasing."
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Folks,
Greetings from the Burgh, where we are preparing for a major week of tracking the growing movement for May Day Strikes.
54% Raised Towards May Day Strike Coverage
While many mainstream outlets are just starting to pick up on May Day coverage, Payday has been out covering the growing movement for months. But, unlike mainstream reporters, I gotta crowdfund my salary so I need your help.
We are currently 56% of the way to our crowdfunding goal. Can you donate to help us pay the bills?
[Donate to Help Track the May Day Strike Movement
Payday Report has tracked May Day strike in at least 85 cities & the list is growing!
Payday ReportMike Elk
](https://paydayreport.com/donate-to-help-track-the-may-day-strike-movement/)
May Day Actions in 100 Cities Sponsored by Unions
So far, Payday Report has tracked May Day actions in over 100 cities that are being sponsored by over 200 unions. (See our map here)
We started our map by tracking specific May Day actions backed by unions to get a sense of how unions were responding to the call for a May Day Strike. However, some unions are being slow to back May Day and many more actions are being sponsored by community and immigrants’ rights groups.
Check out May Day Strong Coalition’s Full Map Here
Madison School Districts to Close for May Day
Last week, Payday reported on how all the major school districts in North Carolina were shutting down at the request of the teachers union. Now, Madison, Wisconsin schools have also announced that they plan to shut down at the requests of unions. The move came after 70% of Madison Teachers Association members signed a pledge calling for a May Day walkout.
Speaking of the increasing involvement of unions in May Day actions, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the Wisconsin-based Voces de la Frontera, said that the shutdown is a very big deal.
"It represents a very important national escalation of resistance against the growing inequality between the ultra rich and working people," said Christine Neumann-Ortiz.
Palestinian Unions Call for May Day Support
Finally, while some U.S. mainstream unions are jumping on to support May Day actions, the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza is reminding U.S. unions about their obligation for solidarity with workers around the world. From their statement:
Our colleagues in the American Labor Movement:
The martyrs of this catastrophe are your colleagues - your peers in both profession and class. They must not be reduced to mere statistics, rather they were workers who produced, healed, taught, and saved lives. Consequently targeting them constitutes a direct assault on the very concept of labor itself, as well as on the values upon which the global trade union movement was founded. It is from this standpoint of shared struggle - and with a full appreciation of the significance and impact of your presence, particularly within the United States - that we reach out to you.
Accordingly, as we extend our greetings to you and to the working class worldwide, particularly the martyrs, prisoners, wounded, and bereaved, on the occasion of International Workers’ Day, we in the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions call upon you to transition from the stage of expression to the stage of action, and from symbolic solidarity to impactful solidarity.
For their statement in Arabic click here
Alright folks, that’s all for today. Keep sending tips, comments, and complaints to melk@paydayreport.com
[Donate to Help Track the May Day Strike Movement
Payday Report has tracked May Day strike in at least 85 cities & the list is growing!
Payday ReportMike Elk
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Donald Trump speaks during a press conference after a shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 25, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Andrew Leyden/Getty Images
As more and more information is published about the suspect in the latest possible assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, commentators are in a typical scramble to assign an ideology or clear politics to the 31-year-old man.
There’s not a lot to glean so far about Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California. A since-deleted Bluesky account reportedly linked to the suspect included run-of-the-mill criticisms of the Trump administration; he lists himself as a self-employed video game designer and part-time teacher. According to reports, he studied mechanical engineering and computer science, was part of a Christian fellowship, and also a nerdy-sounding club for students to have battles with foam toys. He reportedly donated $25 to ActBlue in 2024 earmarked for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. He was a registered voter with “no party preference” in California. From the evidence available so far, the suspect seems to be a normie.
Trump’s regime can give rise to a normie suspected assassin because the brutality and violence it has so wholly normalized, and the impunity it has reveled in, is deranging. In a piece of writing Allen left behind before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, derangement peeks through between clear reasons for targeting administration officials.
He includes chirpy asides (“stay in school kids”), and bounces between formal and casual registers throughout. He lists as his targets “Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel),” without explaining why FBI Director Kash Patel is named for exemption. His final message is more a summary explanation than a manifesto.
But in his more lucid moments, Allen cites concerns that people from across the political spectrum share about Trump and his administration.
“I am a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects on me,” Allen wrote in the missive covered by multiple outlets. “I’m no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” he added, without specifically naming the president.
[
Related
Nothing Will Stop Trump From Weaponizing Charlie Kirk’s Killing to Attack the Left](https://theintercept.com/2025/09/11/charlie-kirk-killing-trump-left-political-violence/)
Republicans have, of course, been swift to blame Democrats for the shooting. Trump, who earlier this month threatened to annihilate the “whole civilization” of Iran and revels in his regime’s anti-immigrant violence, told CBS News on Sunday that he thinks the “hate speech of the Democrats … is very dangerous.”
The president described the suspect’s message as “anti-Christian,” though Allen identifies with Christian faith in his writing. “Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration,” Allen wrote. “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”
The reasons Allen cites for his fury are not conspiratorial or weighted with ideology. He points to crimes and acts of extreme violence that the administration has either committed or been complicit in, while seeming to fear no constraints or consequences.
The suspect appears to be no devotee of the Democratic Party and no committed leftist. Republicans haven’t even bothered to wheel out the antifa boogeyman; nothing points to any such identification. Allen expressed anger about the Trump administration’s crimes, its acts of oppression, alleged connections to Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile ring, and impunity. Such anger is not the preserve of the left, or even of liberals.
[
Related
America Tolerates High Levels of Violence but Suppresses Photos of the Slaughter](https://theintercept.com/2022/06/04/violence-america-school-shootings-covid-graphic-photos/)
Allen reportedly targeted Trump and members of his administration, whereas the three previous attempted attacks on Trump’s life appeared to aim only at the president. There is little uniting the suspects involved, except that they were all men in a country awash with guns and threadbare mental health care and support resources at a time of normalized deadly violence and U.S.-backed genocide.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, whose bullet scraped Trump’s ear at a Pennsylvania rally in 2024, was a registered Republican but not active in right-wing organizing. Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, convicted of plotting to kill Trump at his West Palm Springs resort in Florida in 2024, espoused eclectic anti-establishment politics, having voted for Trump in 2016 before becoming an ardent critic; he was also an obsessive supporter of Ukraine. Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was fatally shot by Secret Service agents after crashing his vehicle into the security perimeter of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in February of this year. His loved ones said he was never interested in politics.
There is no consistency in the varied and messy worldviews of Trump’s would-be assassins. If media commentators and politicians want to make banal points about the rise in political violence, there is only one consistently violent ideology to trace throughout these cases: the fascistic ideology of far-right Republicans and their leader.
After expressing gratitude for his family, friends, colleagues, and church, Allen ended his message, “I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.”
The post How Trump’s America Produces Normie Assassins appeared first on The Intercept.
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Pravda News!
