We continue that legacy today with our work on the crisis in Iran. You’ll find some of our most relevant work on the conflict below, which we’ll keep updated as new resources are developed. Please read it and share what you find helpful with your friends, family, movement groups, and policy makers.

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IPS reports and resources

FAQ: Why Is the U.S. Attacking Iran? And What Happens Next? | Phyllis Bennis and Khury Petersen-Smith

What movements, advocates, and ordinary people need to know about the U.S. war on Iran. 

FACT SHEET: Medicaid and SNAP vs. $200b for War on Iran: State-by-State Impact | Lindsay Koshgarian
The $200b the Pentagon wants for Iran would be enough to restore and expand safety net programs in every state.

Articles by IPS experts

The U.S.-Israeli War on Iran Is Illegal. Here’s Why That Matters. | Phyllis Bennis
If this war continues without accountability, it threatens even more dire consequences in years ahead.

Our Tax Dollars Should Be Funding Our Communities, Not Trump’s War | Lindsay Koshgarian
For what the Pentagon wants for this war, we could easily restore SNAP and Medicaid benefits to struggling Americans.

The Iran War Is a Disaster for Young People | Chisom Okorafor
For Generation Z, the war in Iran is clouding the future we already worried would be bad.

Americans Are United Against Trump’s War | Karen Dolan

Americans agree that we want quality and affordable health care, housing, child care, and education. The Trump Administration is ignoring all of this to continue a profoundly unpopular war.

Israel Didn’t ‘Drag’ the U.S. Into War — American Hawks Have Wanted This for Decades | Khury Petersen-Smith

Blaming Israel alone for this catastrophe lets US leaders off the hook for their actions. 

Hegseth’s Request for $200 Billion for Iran War Should Go To Needy Americans | Lindsay Koshgarian

Pete Hegseth would rather the U.S. bomb Iranian families than feed American families.

Donald Trump’s “Whenever Wars” | Khury Petersen-Smith

The administration is drawing from an earlier, cruder era of U.S. imperialism to assert Washington’s unrestrained, unaccountable power. 

It’s Already a World War | John Feffer

Ruthless authoritarian leaders — Putin, Trump, Netanyahu — have declared war on international law.

Not Another Dollar for the U.S. War on Iran | Hanna Homestead

Congress must not permit a dollar more of public money to be spent on this catastrophic war of choice. 

$1 Billion a Day for War in Iran Could Help Every Family Who Needs Healthcare and Food Stamps | Alliyah Lusuegro and Lindsay Koshgarian
The Trump administration is cutting healthcare and food assistance for millions while spending $1 billion a day on this war.

Five Things Americans Need to Know about the U.S. and Iran | Khury Petersen-Smith

Whatever criticisms one may have of Iran’s government, the Trump administration is the aggressor in this illegal war.

The U.S. Attacks Iran in a War of Aggression | Phyllis Bennis and Khury Petersen-Smith

The U.S. has waged many wars — but this is one of the most senseless we’ve ever seen. 

Interviews with IPS experts

• The Las Vegas View Journal quoted Lindsay Kosgharian on April 2 about the war in Iran’s tradeoffs for human needs. The conflict, Lindsay said, is “not necessary” and diverting funds from programs that “make life more affordable for Americans.”
• Khury Petersen-Smith talked to Rising Up With Sonali on April 1 about the war on Iran. The Trump administration “overestimated U.S. power,” he said. “I really think that Trump and Hegseth are convinced by their own sense of arrogance and hubris, frankly.”
• In Truthout on March 19, Lindsay Koshgarian warned that if Congress passes a $200 billion Iran war supplement, it will be “taking food and healthcare from struggling families here and using it to bomb families in Iran that were already struggling under that country’s authoritarian regime and U.S. sanctions.”
• March 17, Phyllis Bennis gave a lecture to the People’s Academy with deep background on the run-up to the war in Iran, international law, and the movement to stop the war.
• In a series of live updates for Al Jazeera on March 14, Phyllis Bennis emphasized that the U.S. and Israel launched into a war with Iran without any clear objectives, further deepening the risk of regional conflict. “Both sides [the U.S. and Israel vs. Iran] seem to be internationalizing the effort right now, which does not bode well,” she warned.
• On March 13, Common Dreams cited IPS’s analysis that the estimated cost of $1 billion per day for the Iran war is “higher than the appropriated budget of any federal agency except the Pentagon itself.”
• In two interviews with Al Jazeera on March 11, Phyllis Bennis discussed how the U.S. invasion of Iran constituted a crime of aggression that violates both domestic and international law — and the potential consequences of wider regional involvement in the conflict.
• Also on March 11, Phyllis Bennis joined the Tavis Smiley podcast to discuss how Americans can stay hopeful and build a movement against a war mired in confusion.
• On March 10, the American Prospect cited our finding that the estimated $1 billion/day for the Iran war could instead provide SNAP and Medicaid benefits for millions at risk of losing them due to funding cuts. They quoted Lindsay Kosgharian: The war “is not protecting Americans, but it is preventing Americans from having enough resources.” 
• Hanna Homestead joined KFPA Flashpoints on March 10 for a radio segment on some early estimates about the cost of the war, as well as the long-term environmental costs.
• In an in-depth interview with TRT World on March 9, Phyllis Bennis discussed the disastrous consequences of the war, how the U.N. could respond to the violation of international law, and how the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa could serve as a potential model for opposition to the war with Iran.
• “This is highly unpredictable and so we won’t know the cost of it until it’s over,” Lindsay Koshgarian told CNN on March 6, warning that the conflict is “not necessary” and is taking away from other policies that could “make life more affordable for Americans.” 
• On March 5, Phyllis Bennis spoke with KPFA about what could come next in the war.

Predictions from before the war

• This February, in an Al Jazeera segment on Iran’s recent arrest of reformist leaders in the country, Phyllis Bennis cautioned that military intervention would not be an effective curb against the Iranian government’s authoritarianism — and could lead to catastrophic results for Iranian civilians as well as the region. 
• Back in 2008 (!), Phyllis Bennis predicted the possible risks of a U.S. attack on Iran — including Iranian retaliation against nearby countries and U.S. military installations, as well as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — with eerie accuracy.

The post The IPS Iran Reader appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The richest 0.1 percent — the top one-thousandth of households, who are all worth over $50 million — have seen their wealth surge since the beginning of the 2020 Covid Pandemic. U.S. billionaires have seen their wealth double since 2019, with the top 19 U.S. billionaires adding $1 trillion to their wealth in 2024 alone.

Politicians and the public are waking up to the disruptive impact of billionaires, as chronicled in my recent book, Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet. But most policy prescriptions fall short of truly addressing the accumulated wealth and power of the richest 0.1 percent.

While Congress was busy passing an enormous tax cut for the ultra-wealthy, campaigners from Massachusetts to Washington State have put forward several state-level “millionaire taxes” that are essential ways for states to build fairer tax systems with or without federal participation.

Hiking top income tax rates collects more revenue from the “working rich” — those with high incomes like doctors, lawyers, and CEOs. Those with substantial asset wealth have found countless ways to play shell games and reduce their income taxes, including their capital gains tax burden. (Ray Madoff’s new book, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made An American Aristocracy, covers their crafty avoidance mechanisms).

California’s proposed emergency one-time 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires is the boldest of the state initiatives. It has the vulnerability of any progressive state level policy: The global billionaire class moves their money around the planet into tax havens that compete for business. Even mere threats billionaires make that they’ll  move have rattled state voters. (It’s important to note that post-millionaire’s-tax Massachusetts has seen notably low attrition — there was some bluffing going on.)

There is no taxation silver bullet because America’s wealthy hire phalanxes of “wealth defense industry” attorneys and money managers with ample tax avoidance tools at their disposal. (See my book The Wealth Hoarders for more.)

The U.S. needs an “ecosystem” of tax reforms including patches to the income tax, a robust inheritance tax (to replace the porous estate tax), and meaningful oversight enforcement — so billionaires can’t wriggle their way past borders to avoid paying their fair share.

An essential cornerstone of reducing extreme wealth inequality is a federal annual wealth tax with severe penalties for billionaires that renounce their citizenship to avoid taxation. Two bold proposals have been introduced in the last few weeks that should be celebrated and supported.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) have introduced the “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act” that would levy a 5 percent wealth tax on households with over $1 billion, mirroring the California billionaire tax initiative at the federal level. The tax would raise an estimated $4.4 trillion over ten years, though the conservative Tax Foundation estimates avoidance will reduce the revenue to closer to $3.3 trillion. The tax proposal invests 1 percent of revenue in strengthening enforcement and levies a 60 percent “exit tax” on billionaires renouncing their U.S. citizenship.

The bill includes a number of popular provisions including a $3,000 direct payment to every person earning less than $150,000 a year, in the first year (or $12,000 for a family of four). Other provisions include a reversal of Trump budget cuts to Medicaid, expanded health coverage, investments in affordable housing, and a minimum salary of $60,000 for all public school teachers.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has reintroduced an updated version of her 2021 “Ultra-Millionaire Tax”, with lead House sponsors Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA). This proposal would levy a 2 percent annual wealth tax on households and trusts valued at over $50 million.  It would add an additional 1 percent annual surtax on wealth and trusts over $1 billion.

While Sanders-Khanna wealth tax would focus entirely on the estimated 950 U.S. billionaires, the Warren tax proposal would levy taxes on the wealthiest 260,000 households, excluding 99.85 percent of taxpayers.  The Warren wealth tax would raise an estimated $6.2 trillion over ten years. As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, “Inequality has boomed so much in the 2020s that a 2 percent wealth tax on multimillionaires initially introduced in 2021 would yield more than twice as much revenue today.”

The revamped Warren-Jayapal-Boyle proposal responds to the aggressive tax avoidance by the wealthy and their “wealth defense industry” enablers, which our disinvested oversight systems struggle to respond to.  The legislators suggest levying taxes on wealth in trusts and assets held offshore, and modernizing the IRS to better catch evasion and track complex asset valuations of the ultra-rich. The proposal also includes a 40 percent “exit tax” on multi-millionaires and billionaires that renounce their U.S. citizenship.

While the revenue is not earmarked, the cosponsors of the legislation envision massive investments in affordable housing, universal childcare, expanded Medicare eligibility, and tuition-free community college.

Both these wealth tax proposals expand the national conversation and vision about what is possible if we tax oligarchic concentrations of wealth and power. They don’t seek to break up big fortunes as an end in and of itself — they directly outline the abundant opportunities and benefits Americans could reap from more revenue.

It’s almost certain that taxing wealth will be at the heart of 2028 presidential election discourse. The policy is incredibly popular across political parties and feels like common sense to hundreds of millions of people across the nation. Those who oppose new taxes should consider why they’re so out of step — and get on board fast.

The post Two Bold Proposals to Tax Wealth Across the Land appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

This March, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued its third “red flag” warning about the risk of “anti-trans genocide” in the United States, warning about laws and policies designed to “criminalize” the entire trans community “based solely on its existence.”

In February, Kansas invalidated the IDs of all trans people in the state with a single day’s notice. Finally, just recently, the International Olympic Committee mandated that all persons competing in women’s events must submit to genetic screening — which will also ban all trans women and many intersex people from participating in Olympic sports.

As a trans person trying to walk my dog, pay my bills, and answer work emails in time to fold the laundry and make dinner, it’s profoundly stressful to say the least.

But it’s been this way for years. The tide of contemporary anti-trans legislation has grown from 2016’s famous (and failed) “bathroom bill” in North Carolina to a wave of speculative legislation funded by conservative billionaires creating division by stoking manufactured mass hysteria.

The numbers are staggering: a 668 percent increase in anti-trans legislation from 2021 to 2025, according to the Lemkin Institute. Since we all huddled down on our couches and started a sourdough hobby in 2020, the Institute says, we’ve had six consecutive record-breaking years in anti-trans bills introduced across the country.

But the horrors don’t stop in the legislatures.

A recent executive order banning trans people from the military calls trans people inherently dishonest and dishonorable. The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that states can legally compel trans adults like me to “appreciate [our] sex” by banning our access to gender-affirming health care. And when a Texan politician called billionaires a more dangerous 1 percent of the population than trans people, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s pastor said he hoped the man would be crucified.

For all the hate we’re getting these days, you’d think trans women were scooping up Olympic gold medals and firebombing suburban dog parks.

The reality is much less exciting, underwhelming even. We remain, by and large, humans with less money, less political power, and maybe more opinions on animation, philosophy, and colored hair dye than the average bear.

It’s estimated that there are less than 10 trans athletes of any gender in the entire NCAA. Only one openly trans woman has competed in the entire history of the Olympic games, and she didn’t place. In fact, the British Journal of Sports Medicine recently found no scientific evidence that trans women have a single competitive advantage over cisgender women in sports.

But dozens and dozens of peer-reviewed, scientifically valid studies in dozens of countries and contexts show that letting people make their own choices about how they live their own lives in their own bodies is very good for their well being.

The American Medical Association, the largest association of physicians in the United States, just affirmed that hormone therapy, sex-reassignment surgeries, and other procedures that change a person’s physical sex characteristics are successful and medically necessary. These procedures have some of the lowest regret rates around: lower than hip replacements, lower than cosmetic surgeries, perhaps even lower than Harry Potter tattoos.

The people telling you to fear your trans neighbors are lying to your face and inventing a scary fantasy. Mostly, they’re hoping you won’t notice the precedents they’re setting to take away your health care, invade your privacy, and send you on a surprise trip to the DMV.

And if you’re a woman in sports, they’ll want your genetic data. I haven’t looked at a history book in awhile but I’m pretty sure that’s a red flag.

The post Attacks on Trans People Are Attacks on Everyone appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

This 2009 finding by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the increase in public health and safety risks caused by climate change — such as extreme heat, wildfire smoke, ozone pollution, and catastrophic weather events such as hurricanes and flooding — justified regulating greenhouse gases as pollutants.

That’s the legal underpinning for everything from vehicle fuel economy standards to the requirement for power plants and factories to measure and report their emissions. Since 2009, the scientific basis for these rules has only grown stronger. This is borne out by successive studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative global climate science institution.

The most recent report by the IPCC working group assessing the state of knowledge on climate science, a collaboration of 234 prominent scientists from across the world, found overwhelming evidence that the earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land have warmed rapidly since the start of the industrial era — and that the warming is attributable to emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases.

Another IPCC working group, consisting of 330 of the world’s leading scientists, found that more frequent and severe weather and climate extremes attributable to climate change, such as heat waves on land and on oceans, droughts, and wildfires, have already resulted in “widespread adverse impacts” on “ecosystems, people, settlements, and infrastructure.”

In recent years, other studies have found that climate change made many severe weather events in the U.S. and across the world likelier and more destructive, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the U.S. in 2024, deadly flooding in Pakistan and a record-breaking heatwave in Iceland and Greenland in 2025, and devastating flooding in Southern Africa earlier this year.

The Trump regime has attempted to counter this overwhelming body of rigorous, peer-reviewed science with government-sponsored misinformation. It has published a report written by five hand-picked scientists, purporting to show that there is too much uncertainty about human-caused climate change. Large numbers of scientists from a wide variety of disciplineshave condemned this report as methodologically flawed and relying on cherry-picked evidence, and have provided a detailed rebuttal.

In typical fashion, however, the Trump regime has ignored mountains of incontrovertible evidence to race ahead with repealing the Endangerment Finding, giving themselves a legal fig leaf for their actions to enable expansion of polluting industries and dismantle environmental protections.

This is a direct attack on communities throughout the country who have lost their loved ones, their homes, and their livelihoods because of fossil-fueled wildfires, storms, and floods, and communities who will inevitably suffer similar disasters as a consequence of the regime’s refusal to address the threat of climate change.

It’s also an attack on communities experiencing, or increasingly likely to experience, similar disasters worldwide. It is nothing short of a declaration of war against humanity.

The regime’s decision wasn’t driven solely by ignorance or stupidity. Fossil fuel oligarchs have essentially bribed the president (in response to his open solicitation, no less), and penetrated the highest ranks of government. They’re getting the policy outcomes they want, enriching themselves at the expense of people and the planet.

The U.S. government is refusing to fulfill its fundamental obligation to protect public health and safety at home, and showing open disdain for the lives and well-being of people worldwide. This is occurring in the broader context of a government that is practically at war with its own population, flagrantly violating basic human rights in pursuit of an extremist ideological agenda.

A government that refuses to fulfill its most basic responsibilities even as it assaults citizens and knowingly exposes people worldwide to serious harm is not a legitimate government. Governments worldwide need to recognize this reality, and do everything in their power to protect their own people, and stand up for human rights in the U.S.

This op-ed may be republished with attribution to InsideSources.com. 

The post A Declaration of War Against Humanity appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

That changed in 2012 when Peet’s was acquired by JAB Holding Company, a secretive firm based in Luxembourg. Peet’s wasn’t the only locally-loved chain integrated into what is now a global empire that sells more coffee than Starbucks.

In the last few decades, JAB has spent billions acquiring Caribou Coffee, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Noah’s New York Bagels and more. It also now supplies beans to independent coffee chains like La Colombe, Stumptown, and Green Mountain.

The corporate consolidation of coffee has been mirrored across the American food industry. Here are just a few statistics compiled in Austin Frerick’s book Barons: two companies sell 74 percent of all milk, four beef-slaughtering firms control 85 percent of the industry, and one firm handles over 25 percent of the world’s grain trade.

Frerick makes this staggering corporate consolidation digestible by telling the stories of eight barons dominating distinct parts of our shared food industry from hog farms, to berry production, to food distribution.

These monopolies have been bad news for American families, Frerick argues, raising food prices, lowering quality, and leaving a trail of environmental destruction in their wake.

Inequality.org spoke with Frerick about how this corporate consolidation came to pass and what we can do to revitalize family-owned farming. Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry is now available in paperback from Island Press.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Chris Mills Rodrigo: What inspired you to start researching and writing about consolidation in the food industry?

Austin Frerick: A lot of this goes back to my time at the Treasury Department, where I worked in the tax analysis office until 2017. While there, I co-wrote an academic article for the National Tax Journal that explored the growth of monopoly profits in the corporate tax base. Looking at the different industries, it’s one thing to see them in pharmaceuticals — that’s kind of the deal: you do research, you get monopoly profits for a few years — but I didn’t understand it showing up in food and agriculture.

This was at the same time that I was grappling with the 2016 moment in America as someone who had supported Bernie Sanders. I had a lot of Trump supporting family members and was realizing that a lot of people didn’t understand what was going on in this country. I also stumbled on an article about chicken monopolies written by a journalist who was in law school — that was Lina Khan — which got me on the antitrust bandwagon. It really explained a lot of what I had seen in my lifetime.

That’s the intellectual genesis. This whole book started from an article in Vox on the hog barons. I teamed up with my buddy Charlie Hope-D’Anieri to write it because I was intellectually curious. He’s more of a journalist, I’m more of a researcher. The process helped me realize that people need narrative, a story, beyond the evidence to understand these things. So I started to think about how you tell this deregulatory story through a punchy narrative, and that’s how the book came about.

CMR: This book covers barons across very different parts of the food industry. What are the common threads that link them?

AF: A common thread I’ve seen is that they’re willing to cross ethical lines that most people are not willing to cross. Most people aren’t willing to treat workers, animals, and the land in this way. We live in a moment that rewards the worst actors, it’s a race to the bottom. That’s what neoliberalism is to me. All these dark things we did in the past that we kind of fixed or dealt with are coming back and showing their ugly heads.

CMR: Are there particular examples of that tendency that you’d point to?

AF: I go back to the dairy barons. Visiting farms, it’s clear that dairy farmers have a special relationship with their animals — they see them twice a day, they really know their personalities. Most of those kinds of dairy farmers weren’t willing to adopt the industrial production model because they saw the cruel things it did to the animals. It just feels wrong to put a cow in a metal shed and have it stand on concrete all day.

CMR: One thing that struck me reading this book is how a lot of these monopolies got off the ground around the same time. What are the regulatory and economic conditions that have enabled these giants to get rolling?

AF: Since the 1980s we’ve been living in a Second Gilded Age where, as these firms amass power, they have been able to corrupt the system more and more to pad their bottom line. I think it says so much that Trump’s largest inauguration donor was my slaughter baron, JBS. 

I should also say that I’ve been thinking a lot about how much we failed in 2008. This whole era could have ended at that moment, but we didn’t do structural remedies. We didn’t actually rein in power. We didn’t confront power, so everything just got worse.

CMR: What are the top-line policies that the government could adopt to start addressing consolidation?

AF: That’s what I’m focusing on in my next book. I think no one is articulating a positive vision of the food system, which is needed so that people can rush through the gates. The solution to me is about confronting power.

What I find really interesting, and what I think is actually underappreciated in U.S. history, is how much of the New Deal actually started at the local level. Like, a lot of the New Deal came from Wisconsin. So I’m looking at what are the cool things being done right now locally in America, but also internationally, that we can just copy. What are cool programs out there we can scale?

CMR: Are there any you’ve seen that make sense for the federal government to adopt in that vein?

AF: My favorite has to do with Kerrygold butter. People love Kerrygold butter, the Irish butter in the gold wrapper. It’s now the number two butter in America. And what we can take from them is the importance of putting animals back on the land. It’s one of the best things we can do to revitalize and stabilize rural America. That part of the country thrived when there was a thriving middle-class family farm system.

I want us to transition away from industrial metal sheds and put animals back on farms. I use Kerrygold as an example because the only difference between American butter and Irish butter is what we feed the cows. Most American butter is coming from Bakersfield, California, where cows feed on ethanol byproduct on dirt lots next to oil rigs. Because they’re eating corn, the butter they produce is fibrous, they’re not eating grass so it’s white and doesn’t spread well. It also doesn’t taste good. I love this example because it really reinforces the point that a lot of these reforms are practical and proven. Like, that’s what butter used to be for my grandparents.

CMR: I appreciated that framing throughout this book, that while not everything was perfect — you acknowledge indigenous land theft — a lot of the solution here looks like returning to the farming system that we used to have.

AF: I think it’s really easy to dismiss all old policies as bad, but there are nuances to history. With the food system, we did make a lot of progress. I think the best example here is meat packing workers. We made policy choices as a society at the turn of the century, after what we saw in The Jungle and other investigations into the cruelty of that industry, that took a low wage job and elevated it to a solid middle-class living. What we’ve seen essentially from the onset of the Reagan era is a systematic assault on that profession, reverting it to its low wage origins. History shows us that we can make different choices.

CMR: What does corporations buying up all these parts of the food supply chain mean for American families? How does it affect how much money they’re spending on food and the quality of that food?

AF: It simply means they’re paying more for lower quality food. To me the best silver lining for hope here is that everyone is seeing that the system does not work. There’s even the cliche of the yuppie that lives in Manhattan who visits Europe and comes back saying that the food just tastes better and is cheaper. A thing I didn’t expect is how strong of opinions older Americans have about how bad tasting food is now.

My first few times talking about this book I could see people agreeing with me but then in the back of their minds thinking I was asking them to pay more for their food. So now one of the first things I show — and this is something I added in the paperback version — is how much more the average American spends on groceries than their western peers. And that’s not just because we’re not subsidizing good food but also because these concentrated markets price gauge. I want people to understand that they’re paying more for lower quality things.

The post Naming and Shaming Food Barons: A Q&A with Austin Frerick appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Reports indicate that the Pentagon will soon request $200 billion for its unjust, unpopular, and illegal war on Iran.

Even one dollar of additional funding for this war is too much. Last year’s H.R. 1 — the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” — cut Medicaid and SNAP and, at the same time, added $156 billion for the Pentagon and war, bringing the Pentagon budget to more than $1 trillion for the first time since World War II. 

Now, nearly half of Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities, and the U.S. attack on Iran is pushing gas prices higher. Because of H.R. 1 and other policies, more than 14 million people are at risk of losing health insurance, and 4 million people risk losing food assistance. New and cumbersome paperwork to meet “work requirements” means that even many people eligible under the new rules are likely to lose food assistance. 

Instead of prolonging this war — or enabling the next one — with more funds, Americans deserve a government that supports them when times are tough. 

Instead of spending $200 billion to continue the war on Iran, the United States could:

• Cover Medicaid for all 14 million people at risk of losing insurance, 
• AND cover SNAP for all of the 4 million people at risk of losing food assistance, including 3.5 million due to new work requirements for older people and caregivers, 
• AND expand Medicaid to an additional 10.3 million people. 

The cost of covering Medicaid and food assistance for those at-risk people totals $118 billion. That leaves $82 billion, enough to expand Medicaid by 10.3 million people — or to fund any other policy that would actually help people in need.

The table shows how each state’s taxpayer contribution for $200 billion could cover that state’s population at risk of losing insurance, and food assistance for the vast majority of those at risk. In 43 states and the District of Columbia, taxpayers’ share of $200 billion is more than enough to cover everyone at risk — with enough leftover to cover those at risk in every single state, and still expand programs to help people in need.

A table for congressional districts can be found here.

What every state’s share of the Pentagon’s $200 billion could cover instead

The post FACT SHEET: Medicaid and SNAP vs. $200b for War on Iran: State-by-State Impact appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The legal consequences go beyond specific violations. Washington and Tel Aviv’s breaches of the UN Charter and other legal frameworks also undermine the very foundations of the rule of law. Even while international legal institutions too often lack sufficient capacity to enforce their decisions, they still provide a crucial framework for protest, for pressure on individual governments, and for the hope of a future world where the rule of law is paramount.

Now, however, that future is in more danger than any other time in recent memory. Right now, Iranian civilians are paying the highest price. But the collapse of the rule of law makes the future more dangerous for everyone else, too.

What Are the Laws of War?

On the domestic front, the U.S. Constitution is very clear that only Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war. But President Trump did not even consult with Congress before attacking Iran, let alone receive a congressional declaration of or even authorization for war.

This is nothing new, of course. In recent years, successive Congresses have abandoned their constitutional prerogative, allowing various presidents of both parties to initiate and continue the use of massive military force without even the pretense of asserting their power to declare war.

Indeed, both houses of Congress voted, in overwhelmingly partisan votes, to reject War Powers Resolutions which could have prevented or at least constrained Trump’s reckless and illegal war. They didn’t even hold votes at all until the United States and Israel had already launched their war against Iran.

International law is equally clear. The Nuremberg trials following World War II determined that the “supreme international crime” was that of aggression. The International Military Tribunal ruled in 1946 that initiating a war of aggression differed from other war crimes because “it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” War crimes, crimes against humanity, and all the related international crimes, therefore, are understood to stem from that fundamental crime of going to war illegally.

The U.S. and Israel went to war illegally. They are waging a war of aggression against Iran. The UN Charter declares that no country may attack another country, and that “all Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.” It also prohibits UN member states from using “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

There are only two exceptions to that prohibition on the use of force. One is if the Security Council itself authorizes the use of military force. The other is for immediate self-defense, which applies only “if an armed attack” occurs and then only “until” the Council decides collectively how to deal with the crisis.

Neither of those happened here. The Council was never asked, and certainly had not authorized anything, and Iran had not attacked the U.S. or Israel. The U.S. claim that it “had to” attack Iran to prevent some potential imagined retaliatory attack at some unknown point in the future does not legitimize so-called “preventive” use of force when no such imagined future attack had occurred.

The Danger of International Lawlessness

Despite the dangerous trends toward international lawlessness in recent years, it wasn’t that long ago that U.S. leaders at least made a pretense of trying to follow them.

In 2002, George W. Bush officially won Congressional authorization for war against Iraq and grudgingly acknowledged the need for a UN Security Council authorization as well. For months he tried — using lies, threats, and pressure — to get a Security Council resolution passed that would authorize a U.S.-U.K. war. Those efforts failed.

The Council majority stood defiant, and the Bush-Blair team finally launched the war illegally, without UN approval, and without any “armed attack” by Iraq that might have justified a claim of self-defense. International law didn’t stop the war, but it lent moral and political weight to a global antiwar movement that the Bush administration was forced to contend with.

But today, Trump has consistently refused to acknowledge any need for either Congressional approval or UN authorization of his war against Iran. Trump himself dismissed international law entirely, saying that the only limit on his global power was “my own morality. My own mind….I don’t need international law.” Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, infamously said that his Pentagon would have “no stupid rules of engagement” to limit its killing.

Practically no one — not the UN, not Congress, not the mainstream press, and few among foreign governments too often cowed by Trump’s threats — seems to be even mentioning the UN Charter’s restrictions against launching new wars. And although Congress debated new War Powers Resolutions designed to prevent a rogue presidential decision to go to war, there were not enough votes to pass them.

In short, this U.S. war against Iran is deepening the on-going de-legitimation of the rule of law — something that must be taken seriously if future wars are to be averted. The weakness and lack of political will in both Congress and the United Nations have failed to prevent the U.S. and Israel from launching a destructive new war.

Their lack of enforcement capacity means that people — in social movements and civil society organizations in the U.S. and around the world — must step up to demand their governments actually follow the law. In the absence of global institutions able and willing to enforce international law, these popular movements are essential. Without them, there’s no one to hold the powerful to account.

The war in Iran has already killed thousands of people, displaced millions more, and put millions of others throughout the region at risk as it continues to expand. It’s created what some are calling the “Gazafication” of Tehran, causing a vast humanitarian and economic crisis that is continuing to spread. It’s undermining the very foundations of international law and the institutions created to uphold it.

And if this war continues without accountability, it threatens even more dire consequences in years ahead.

The post The U.S.-Israeli War on Iran Is Illegal. Here’s Why That Matters. appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Maybe you’ve just read the first three lines of this article three times without really registering them because your attention is absorbed elsewhere.

You’re not alone.

The modern age, with its multiple demands on a person’s time, seems to require multitasking. It’s not the kind of activity you read about in the classics. Surely that fellow who ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC didn’t carry along a couple papyrus scrolls to read along the way. Leonardo da Vinci didn’t paint Mona Lisa’s smile, stop to conduct a scientific experiment on gravity, and simultaneously jot down his thoughts on anatomy, going back and forth among those activities like a whirling dervish.

Though it promises greater productivity, multitasking is not a wondrous invention. Shifting between tasks, according to a number of psychological studies, actually reduces productivity and generates more errors. The result can be banal, as in, “I’m sorry, could you repeat what you just said to me?” Or it can be fatal, as in the thousands of deaths caused by drivers looking at their phones.

It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump multitasking, unless you count sleeping during cabinet meetings, lying and walking at the same time, or eating Whoppers while dispersing them on social media. And yet, his administration has been extremely effective its first year doing multiple things at the same time, if you define “effective” in terms of lives lost, reputations ruined, and institutions destroyed.

Don’t mistake all this destruction for multitasking. The effort to keep all the spinning plates aloft is something pursued, however spuriously, in the service of greater productivity. Instead, let’s call what the Trump administration is doing “multitrashing.” Imagine a bully that pushes the magician out of the way so that all the plates come crashing to the ground. Now multiply that a thousand-fold. Trump and his cohort are busy destroying things on multiple fronts, like a bull in a shopping mall full of fragile wares.

Just look at what the Trump team has done to the federal government: programs gutted, agencies disbanded, regulatory frameworks diluted to the point of disappearance. Just look at the destruction of science funding, the rollback of civil rights, the wrenching apart of immigrant families. Trump has approached domestic policy as if it were an axis of resistance—Bureaucrats, Academics, the Woke, and the Undocumented—that requires a multi-front war of assault and attrition.

Let’s face it: the frog of America is not in a pot of water coming to a slow boil. The frog of America is in the middle of a pile of rapidly accumulating rubble. What the poor frog can’t perceive is how high and how wide this pile of rubble actually stretches. The frog thinks: maybe it’s not a lot of damage and I can soon jump my way clear. Poor, deluded frog.

If multitrashing has been so egregiously successful at home, it pales in comparison with Trump’s actions in the international arena. The trash-talking and trash-acting president has discovered, in his second term, that the U.S. military arsenal is not just for deterrent purposes. Trump has been released in the FAO Schwarz of military toy stores, and he wants to use all the gadgets. This time around, the generals aren’t holding him in check.

The itinerary of destruction so far this term has involved the U.S. military in Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, along with two excursions to Iran. It’s been only a year, but what a long, strange, vindictive trip it’s been.

The Iran War

The Iranian government still stands. This is remarkable given the sheer amount of money and firepower the United States and Israel have devoted to toppling it. If Trump had focused on one task, rather than being engaged in multitrashing, he might have at least avoided some of the worst consequences of this war. Convinced of an easy victory, he did nothing to shock-proof the U.S. economy by, for instance, arranging for naval escorts in the Strait of Hormuz.

Vladimir Putin, for all his similar hubris, nevertheless prepared the Russian economy for the expected sanctions after his full-scaled invasion of Ukraine. Trump, by contrast, is the Alfred E. Neuman of presidents: “What, me worry?”

Iran, meanwhile, is focused on one thing: regime survival. It has caused destruction in turn, in multiple locations, but this has all served the purpose of increasing the pain for Israel and the United States. Closing down the Strait of Hormuz, bombing energy infrastructure throughout the Gulf, selecting hardliners to lead the new government: Iran wants not just to force a ceasefire but to win concessions such as a reduction in sanctions.

Trump, frustrated by a conflict that exceeds his attention span, has moved onto other tasks, like assisting drug operations in Ecuador, threatening NATO countries, and pursuing regime change in Cuba. There is method in his madness. All of this furious activity keeps Trump in the news cycle and in the hearts of his supporters. It keeps Congress out of the loop and adversaries (as well as putative friends) guessing.

Most importantly, it keeps potential successes rather than obvious ongoing failures in the public eye.

The Ultimate End

Other presidents have been vengeful, violent, imperialist. But their destructive campaigns were usually in the serve of constructing something. George W. Bush imagined a new democratic order in the Middle East. Richard Nixon dreamed of an anti-Communist bloc in Southeast Asia. Most presidents from Teddy Roosevelt on have attempted to position the United States as the world’s policeman atop a rules-based order that disproportionately benefits America.

In a recent New Yorker piece, Daniel Immerwahr notes that Trump has “liberated himself from the burdens of empire.” Ironically, horribly, this disburdening has freed the president to destroy at will.

Indeed, it seems that Trump is multitrashing for the sheer malicious joy of it. He didn’t build something new in Venezuela, simply destroyed his rival. He is planning something comparable for Cuba. As for Iran, he is not even sure what constitutes victory, other than a display of epic fury.

As in his domestic campaigns, Trump is up against what he imagines to be a global axis of resistance: the United Nations, all Europeans to the left of Nigel Farage, any rival autocrat who refuses to bend a knee. The international order is the creation of his hated liberals, so it too must go. He has absolutely no idea of what to replace the rules-based system with other than, perhaps, a reality TV show in which countries must submit to humiliating tasks while a single judge, Trump, decides who rises and who falls.

It is the nature of bureaucracy to break a task down to its smallest components, like a Ford assembly line, in order to produce things more efficiently. It is, in theory, a process of focus. In practice, as anyone who has had to deal with the Department of Motor Vehicles knows, bureaucracy is diffuse and unfocused. But again, in its way, bureaucracy has been created to keep a modern society functioning. It is the skeleton of order that keeps everything in place.

Multitrashing is the opposite of bureaucracy. It destroys without a thought to order, efficiency, results, consequences. Only the strong can survive the harrowing process of such destruction. Billionaires thrive in Trump’s America; superpowers dominate in TrumpWorld. Meanwhile, in a rage room of his own devising, Trump continues to flit from one activity to another, using a sledgehammer to destroy computers, a chain saw to cut through furniture, a howitzer to blow up heavy machinery.

It is theater of a sort, and Trump delights in performing on the world stage. But it’s not kabuki. It’s a visceral one-man show that reveals the sickening highs and lows of this new theater of cruelty.

The post Trump’s Terrifying Talent for Multitrashing appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

That’s the upshot of news that Hegseth is prepared to request $200 billion in funding for the Pentagon’s new war on Iran. That’s far higher than earlier reports that put the request at $50 billion or $100 billion. And all of these astounding sums would come on top of the $1 trillion already budgeted for the Pentagon, itself a record.

It should be clear: funding this unjust, unpopular, and illegal war comes directly at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Less than a year after the passage of Trump’s signature “Big Beautiful Bill,” which made deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP — and right in the middle of an affordability crisis — this is the last thing the country needs. That same bill added $150 billion for the Pentagon, pushing the Pentagon budget over $1 trillion for the first time since World War II — and directly enabling the war on Iran.

Half of Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities like food, housing, transportation, and health care. Trump’s Big Bad Bill threatens to take health insurance from 17 million people and some or all food assistance from 4 million people.

The $200 billion that Hegseth now wants for his and Trump’s Iran war could instead feed and care for all of those people — plus medical care for the 1.8 million veterans of the last forever war who still live with disabilities, for an entire year. For good measure, we could also expand Head Start to serve six times as many kids next year — from just over 700,000 to 4.2 million kids — with what’s left over.

What’s more, it comes on the heels of more shocking news about waste at the Pentagon — a problem for generations, but especially under this administration.

News recently broke, for example, that Hegseth’s Pentagon blew nearly $100 billion last September alone. As they raced to use up funds in their budget, the Pentagon shelled out millions on luxuries like lobster, steak, and crab — all while working Americans were battling rising food prices and getting their SNAP benefits cut.

“In the last five days of September alone, the department blew through $50.1 billion on just grants and contracts,” The New Republic reported. “For context, only nine other countries spend that much on the entirety of their defense budget per year. It’s also more than the total military budgets of Canada and Mexico combined.”

Too many Americans are hungry, sick, and struggling to afford housing and other necessities. We should spend our tax dollars meeting those needs — not throwing more at our $1 trillion Pentagon for a pointless war most of us oppose. Secretary Hegseth can cut back on steak and lobster if he needs the extra cash.

This is a war of choice that is only making the world more dangerous and more expensive for Americans. We should remember the lies that led us into war in Iraq a generation ago. That war ultimately cost nearly $3 trillion, which cost a generation of investments that could have made life better for struggling Americans today.

We must not go down that path again. Our tax dollars should be helping our neighbors and our communities, not feeding new forever wars.

The post Our Tax Dollars Should Be Funding Our Communities, Not Trump’s War appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The Iraq War was predicated on a lie, but the Bush administration at least attempted to justify it. If anything, the war in Iran has been even more poorly justified — and lacking any coherent strategy.

And young people especially have a stake in seeing it end as soon as possible.

For Millennials, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq heralded the destruction of a future they had been promised. For Generation Z, the war in Iran is worsening the future we already worried would be bad.

Already, nearly 2,500 people have been confirmed killed in the region since the start of this war. The vast majority of those killed have been civilians in Iran and Lebanon — including over 180 people in a U.S. strike on a girls’ elementary school. American troops, the majority of whom are under 30, are also at risk. At the time of this writing, 13 have been confirmed dead, and hundreds have been injured.

The Trump administration has offered multiple explanations for this war, none of which are very coherent. Regime change? Iran’s nuclear enrichment program? Iran’s missiles and drones? The explanation changes by the day.

Sending young people to die in yet another forever war — without even telling them why — is a tragedy, especially with the president refusing to rule out a military draft. (My younger brother would be draft-eligible, so that hits close to home.)

This war has also been economically devastating. Oil prices have topped well over $100 a barrel and are expected to keep climbing — potentially to $200 a barrel, which would be apocalyptic for the world economy. Already, everything from gas to food to flights to fertilizer has been made more expensive.

For Gen Z, already less financially secure than previous generations, we face an economic shock greater than or equal to the 1970s oil embargoes — and during the prime years of our careers. We could also see hiring slow, making an already brutal job market worse.

What’s more, there are some common-sense investments we could be making in young people — like expanding health insurance, eliminating student debt, or erasing barriers to homeownership. Instead, we’re spending a billion dollars a day on this war, according to the National Priorities Project, and the Pentagon is requesting $200 billion more.

This war is also an ecological nightmare. Strikes on fossil fuel infrastructure by both sides have set refineries and gas fields ablaze, releasing millions of tons of greenhouse gases. Experts warn these pollutants could linger in the environment for decades to come.

Finally, this war is catastrophic because of the long-term implications for war and peace itself.

Throughout this war, we’ve seen the U.S. and Israel violate time-honored principles of engagement. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the U.S. will offer our enemies “no quarter,” which has been recognized in the U.S. as a war crime since the Civil War. It used to be taboo to talk about killing the civilian heads of foreign states, even ones we didn’t like, but now the U.S. and Israel brag openly about decapitation strikes in Iran.

And of course, this war is plainly illegal — a war of pure aggression, without any imminent threat, and with no approval from the UN Security Council or Congress.

When we disregard these rules, the world becomes a more violent place. This war might spell the destruction of the post-1945 system of international law, which — while flawed and unevenly applied — is far preferable to a world where might makes right.

It’s no wonder the public overwhelmingly disapproves of the war — and dissent is particularly strong among younger generations. In this time of uncertainty and tragedy, we must use every tool available to force this war to stop. Our futures depend on it.

The post The Iran War Is a Disaster for Young People appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.