President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have requested a truly shocking $1.5 trillion war budget for FY 2027, a nearly 50 percent increase over the current $1 trillion war chest. Any increase to the war budget will greenlight continued U.S. war crimes in Iran — killing thousands of civilians and raising gas and food prices for U.S. families during the worst affordability crisis in recent history — and will be paid for with more cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and rural hospitals. 

Nearly 300 humanitarian, labor, and environmental organizations from across the country have signed a letter urging Congress to reject this excessive war spending and reinvest in meeting basic needs in our communities at home. 

GOP members of Congress want to pass the $1.5 trillion war budget through multiple legislative vehicles: a $1.15 trillion base war budget passed through the regular process, and a potential “reconciliation” bill that could pass on a simple party-line majority in both the House and Senate and would add another $350 billion, to total $1.5 trillion. 

On top of this, the Trump administration has asked for an additional supplemental spending bill for the Iran war, which would provide another $73 billion to the U.S. military as soon as it passes. 

The good news: a $1.5 trillion war budget is far from assured. Legislators in both parties are pushing back on this outrageous request and the unpopular war on Iran that it will enable. Below are three charts explaining why the $1.5 trillion topline is a disaster for working families, and why every vehicle for higher Pentagon spending must be defeated. 

CHART 1: Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion war budget will starve our communities of the resources they need, fueling endless violence and war profiteering instead.

Chart 1 source: National Priorities Project analysis, based on data published by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

What will this budget do? Fuel endless violence and war profiteering at the expense of our communities. The massive human and financial costs of Trump’s wars are already hurting working people at home and globally, and will continue to climb for years to come. The proposed $1.5 trillion budget would mean close to 70 percent of the total $2.15 trillion discretionary budget is dedicated to war — robbing domestic programs and regulatory agencies of resources they need to function. On top of record-high wealth inequality, the gutting of public services is contributing to a decreasing quality of life for the majority of U.S. taxpayers. 

(A small aside for those paying very close attention: the $350 billion in reconciliation funds, if passed, would technically be mandatory, not discretionary funds — see here for the difference. But since this is happening entirely as a political workaround and not for any substantive reason, we’re reassigning those funds back to discretionary funds where they should be. We’re still excluding about $30 billion in Pentagon funds that are ordinarily considered mandatory. Including those brings the total war budget to $1.53 trillion.)

The $1.5 trillion request comes on the heels of last year’s H.R.1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which pushed the annual Pentagon budget over a trillion dollars for the first time while cutting critical services to millions of families. The Pentagon hasn’t even been able to spend all that money, yet they are now asking for even more. 

If passed, allocating $1.5 trillion for war would mean:

• 19 times more tax dollars are spent on war than on Education, as U.S. student reading and math scores continue to decline; 
• 69 times more tax dollars are spent on war than on discretionary Energy & Environment programs (like the Environmental Protection Agency), even while the U.S. lags behind in clean energy technologies that would make utilities greener and more affordable; and  
• 105 times more tax dollars are spent on war than on discretionary Food & Agriculture programs (like the National School Lunch Program and WIC), even while childhood hunger is increasing and 1 in 5 kids across the country do not currently have enough to eat.

CHART 2: The majority of the $1.5 trillion war chest would be spent on costly weapons systems that enable war crimes — from the U.S. war on Iran, to Hegseth’s illegal boat strikes, to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Chart 2 source: FY 2027 Department of War Budget Overview, Table A-1 available at https://comptroller.war.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2027/FY2027_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf 

What is the majority of the proposed budget for? Weapons, many of which might be used to commit war crimes. Of the $1.5 trillion total for the military, the vast majority, $1.45 trillion, is for the Department of Defense/War (DoD/W). The majority of Trump’s proposed DoD/DoW budget is for weapons development and purchases — and most of the non-DoD/DoW spending goes to the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons and related costs. 

Together, the DoD/W’s Procurement (purchases of major weapons) and RDT&E (Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation, and weapons development) categories together constitute 

52 percent of the total funding requested for the Department of War. That includes purchasing and developing new aircraft, warships, killer robots, and munitions used in the illegal U.S. war on Iran, to support Israel’s genocide and war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon, and to facilitate the administration’s unconstitutional, deadly strikes in the Carribean and Eastern Pacific. Each missile the Pentagon buys to commit war crimes abroad could fund critical services at home. 

If the administration and war hawks in Congress get their way, Trump’s record-setting weapons budget would be accompanied by a new policy that will further integrate the Pentagon’s military technology within Israeli firms, further enabling Israel’s war crimes out of sight of the American public. 

And since these budgets are often justified as supporting the troops, everyone should know that only 14 percent of the total requested $1.5 trillion budget would go toward the troops via spending on Military Personnel (paychecks and benefits) and military family housing. As of this writing, at least 18 U.S. troops have died in the U.S. war on Iran, and hundreds injured — all in a war that the U.S. never should have started in the first place. 

CHART 3: A $1.5 trillion war budget benefits corporate war profiteers — not troops or the American people.

Chart 3 source: FY 2027 Department of War Budget Overview, Table A-1 available at https://comptroller.war.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2027/FY2027_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf 

Who will benefit most from this budget? Corporate war profiteers. A $1.45 trillion DoD/DoW budget would be $441 billion above FY 2026 spending levels, a 43 percent overall increase in one year. Major weapons systems alone account for 74 percent of the total increase. By far, the largest dollar increase is for weapon systems that benefit war profiteers, not troops or the American people.

If enacted, this budget will be a boon to war profiteers who already receive more than half of all Pentagon spending. In fact, if Pentagon contracts were a federal agency, they would already be the biggest federal agency. Trump’s proposed budget would increase total spending on major weapons systems (Procurement and RDT&E) by 77 percent from FY 2026 levels, while spending on troops (Military Personnel and Family Housing) would increase by only 5 percent. 

A report from Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) shows we could actually cut $500 billion from major weapons systems while strengthening national security. 

Rather than subsidizing weapons contractors who are already raking in record profits by helping the U.S. government commit war crimes around the globe, Congress could reallocate funding from the Pentagon to solve the national teacher shortage, build high-speed rail, expand healthcare services, or a myriad of other efforts to address the worsening cost of living crisis. This would be in line with what the majority of Americans on both sides of the aisle want: our tax dollars spent supporting families at home, not bombing them abroad.

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This fact sheet can be downloaded as a PDF here.

The post FACT SHEET: Trump’s Proposed $1.5 Trillion War Budget in Three Charts  appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

A small segment of the state’s 200 plus billionaires has stepped up to oppose Prop 40, contributing millions to opposition groups and vocally speaking out against the one-time fee.

In a brief report, “California’s Billionaire Wealth Surge: Meet the Twenty-Two California Billionaires Opposing Prop 40 Billionaire Wealth Tax,” we identified twenty-two California billionaires who are active funders and outspoken opponents of Prop 40. Together they have given over $150 million to oppose the initiative — with more rolling in every day.  These twenty-two include a prince, several private jet flying chums of Jeffrey Epstein, and a bunch of crypto and tech bros designing the AI future for the rest of us.

On January 1, 2025, these twenty-two billionaires had a combined wealth of $439.8 billion. By September 1, 2026, their wealth had grown to $722.1 billion.

In a little under 20 months, their combined wealth increased $282.6 billion, a gain of over 64 percent.

Just to be clear, these “snowflake billionaires” are whining, wailing, and donating money to fight a tax that would effectively require them to part with one-eight of the wealth they’ve gained since January 1, 2025.

This group includes Google’s Sergey Brin who has been the single largest opposition donor, chipping in over $102 million to fight Prop 40. Brin has seen his wealth grow a whopping 70 percent in the last 20 months, from $148 billion on January 1, 2025 to $253 billion on September 1, 2026. Brin’s wealth is 83,498 times the median wealth of a Californian household, which is $303,000.

Palantir’s Peter Thiel gave $3 million to the No on 40 campaign and has called on other billionaires to move out of California. In the last 20 months, Thiel’s wealth increased a whopping 120.27 percent, from $14.8 billion on January 1, 2025 to $32.6 billion on September 1, 2026 (Forbes). Thiel’s wealth is 10,759 times the median wealth of a Californian household.

Chris Larsen, founder of cryptocurrency firm Ripple has given over $5 million to the No on Prop 40 Campaign, along with another $5 million from Ripple and $12 million to Building a Better California. His personal wealth increased 23.5 percent, from $10.2 billion to $12.6 billion in the last twenty months. His wealth is 4,158 times the wealth of the median California family.

Venture capitalist John Doerr gave $10 million to No On 40. In the last 20 months, Doerr’s wealth increased 47.97 percent, from $14.8 billion on January 1, 2025 to $21.9 billion on September 1, 2026. Doerr’s wealth is 7,227 times the median wealth of a Californian household.

Three of the twenty saw their wealth decline over this 20-month period: Tony Xu, Marc Pincus, and Marco DeGeorge. But most have experienced substantial gains.

California Billionaires vs. the Median California Household

The number of billionaires in California has grown, with their average wealth remaining roughly between $9.1 to $9.4 billion. As of September 1, 2026, the 231 billionaires identified as living in California have a combined wealth of $2.117 trillion. Just twenty months ago, there were 178 billionaires in California with a combined wealth of $1.685 trillion.

To show how quickly billionaire wealth has accelerated since the pandemic, let’s go back in time six years. In early 2020, all 815 billionaires residing in the United States had a combined wealth of $2.9 trillion, only slightly more than what the 231 California billionaires have today in 2026.

Meanwhile, the median net worth of a California household has risen a marginal 5.2 percent increasing $15,000 from $288,000 in 2025 to $303,000 in 2026. A Californian with $1 billion dollars in wealth has 303 times the wealth of the median California household. 

Under Prop 40, this billionaire will pay a one-time tax of $50 million to support healthcare, education, and food assistance for their fellow Californians leaving them $950 million to survive on.

The Under-Taxed California Billionaire

In California, the state’s 231 billionaires (as of Sept 1, 2026) hold approximately $2.117 trillion in wealth ($2.3 trillion as of Sept 22, 2026) and pay incredibly low taxes on their riches.

According to an analysis published by economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, from 2019 to 2025, while California billionaires’ wealth grew an average of over 15 percent per year, they paid, on average, just 0.26 percent of their wealth annually in state income taxes. Sergey Brin and Larry Page paid just 0.07 percent of their wealth annually in California income tax during that period. I guess we can see why they don’t want anything to change.

This analysis prepared by the Institute for Policy Studies and Tax the Ultra-Rich Now (TURN). More detailed dossiers available soon. Press release HERE.

The post Billionaire Bankrollers: Meet the 22 California Billionaires Opposing Prop 40 appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Legacy Vulcan recently won their case at the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a secretive arm of the World Bank that rules over cases brought by foreign investors who charge that governmental actions have unfairly reduced their expected profits. But while the ruling was technically a Vulcan victory, the ICSID tribunal awarded the firm only 1 percent of the compensation it had demanded — $15 million instead $1.5 billion.

The Mexican government should be commended for their strong defense in this case. Civil society activists also played a critically important role. Communities near Legacy Vulcan’s CALICA quarry, located very close to touristy Playa del Carmen, have been fighting this mine for decades because of its environmental and health effects on the population, notably children.

Quetzal Tzab González, a Mayan leader, filed an amicus brief that brought the perspective of affected communities into the closed-doors deliberations in the ICSID tribunal.

“What is clear to us is that it was the community mobilization, both inside and outside the country, that ensured the communities’ voices would reach the court and be formally included in the arbitration record,” said Araceli Domínguez, in a press statement by the Peninsular Maya Indigenous Movement and the Mayab Environmental Group.

A lawsuit against Mexico brought by the U.S. sea-bed mining company Odyssey Marine Exploration had a similar outcome in 2024. In that case, the tribunal awarded $37.1 million to the company, less than 3 percent of their original demand of more than $1.3 billion.

The reduced awards in these two cases are better than nothing, but a defeat is still a defeat. By finding Mexico at fault, these international tribunals have tarnished the government’s reputation. And in fact, in this investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS), governments never really win.

This is a one-way system, in which companies can sue governments but governments cannot sue companies. Even if an ICSID tribunal rules against the foreign investor, defending against these lawsuits costs public treasuries significant sums that could instead be invested in public services.

The best governments can hope for is to not lose or to settle for a small fraction of the original claim.

As part of a corporate siege against Mexico, additional lawsuits are piling up, making Mexico the third-most sued country in the world under the investor-state regime. According to research by the Transnational Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies, Mexico is facing dozens of pending lawsuits totaling several billions of dollars.

Cadence Minerals and REM filed the most recent case on July 29. The British company held a 30 percent stake in the Sonora Lithium project, which the Mexican government canceled when it decided to nationalize all lithium. The remaining 70 percent belonged to the Chinese company Ganfeng, which had already sued Mexico. The amounts they are demanding are not known.

In the meantime, U.S.-based Access Business Group, which owns brands like Amway and Nutrilite, has also recently filed a lawsuit against Mexico for the alleged expropriation of lands in which they operated in the state of Jalisco. In reality, these were lands that were finally returned to the peasants who owned them, in accordance with a 1939 agrarian reform of President Lázaro Cárdenas.

This is Access Business Group’s second lawsuit against Mexico. In the first, the firm demanded the astronomical amount of $2.7 billion, but ICSID dismissed that case because of lack of jurisdiction. Access had sued Mexico under the old rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which were revised in the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

In the face of these rising threats, Mexico should push for the total elimination of investor-state dispute settlement during the current review of the regional trade pact and re-examine all of its other international investment and trade agreements that give corporations the right to file these lawsuits.

Unfortunately, the Ministry of Economy made a troubling statement regarding the Vulcan case, affirming Mexico’s commitment to “foreign investment that brings innovation, good wages, and environmental protection, as well as to respecting the rules and procedures contained in international treaties as a fundamental element in providing the legal certainty that makes economic development possible.”

It is a staggering contradiction to pretend that foreign investment will bring “good wages, innovation, and environmental protection” when existing treaty rules allow corporations to evade those positive objectives.

In the alternative world that we need, the legal certainty of governments and of the communities to defend their territories, their water, and their environment must be put before the “legal certainty” of foreign investors.

In the meantime, the impoverished communities of indigenous and working people from the ritzy Mayan Rivera are continuing to seek reparations for the damages done by Legacy Vulcan. They are also demanding that any payments from the Mexican government to Vulcan be conditioned on the requirement that the company be prevented from re-opening the mine or any new extractive projects in Mexico.

These communities had real impact on the outcome of the Vulcan case, showing once again that the power of the people in defending their livelihoods must not be underestimated.

A Spanish version of this article originally appeared in La Jornada.

Earlier this year, IPS collaborated with the Transnational Institute (TNI) to produce a short documentary on the struggle of the communities of Torres de la Paz against the U.S. company Vulcan discussed in this article. To watch the video, just click below.

The post American Mining Corporation Wins Partial Victory in Lawsuit Against Mexico appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Until recently, AI agents remained within the virtual spaces where they’d been developed. Rather than free range, they were confined to their “sandboxes.” But there have been a number of cases of these AI agents lying, cheating, and hacking their way out of their designated spaces. Now, even AI experts are talking about the not-insignificant odds that the technology they designed will run amok and kill all of humanity.

Putin, too, was at the beginning of his reign confined to his Russian sandbox. Then he intervened in Georgia. He lied and cheated his way into Crimea and the Donbas. In 2022, he expanded Russian operations significantly when he tried to take over all of Ukraine.

Still, from the European point of view, Russia was flexing its muscles within the post-Soviet space. Now, Russian agents are increasingly operating outside this sandbox as well to launch attacks elsewhere in Europe. They have hired single-use operatives to commit arson, which would likely include such recent attacks as the one on WB Electronics, a Polish manufacturer of drones for Ukraine. An attack drone, which failed to detonate, was found last month at the Leipzig airport near a Ukrainian transport plane. There have been an estimated 150 Russian-linked cases of sabotage throughout Europe between 2022 and 2026, and the pace of the attacks is accelerating.

Russia is already involved in what NATO calls “out-of-area operations.” So far, however, these operations remain within a grey zone of sort-of plausible deniability. But European leaders are concerned that Putin, too, has the capacity to run amok and trigger a world war, if not a nuclear apocalypse.

The most recent cause for concern was the military exercise that Belarus conducted last week near its borders with Poland and Lithuania. This is the infamous Suwalki Gap, the narrow wedge of territory that separates Belarus from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and that connects the Baltic countries to the rest of NATO. During the Cold War, NATO ran various war games in anticipation of a Soviet attack on Poland through this 65-mile gap. Now, NATO leaders worry that Russia, perhaps alongside Belarus, will manufacture some excuse to “defend” Kaliningrad by occupying part of Lithuania or Poland.

After that, as former presidential envoy Brett McGurk imagines the scenario, “Russia would also claim through non-official channels that a NATO response risked nuclear war. The purpose is less about the Gap and severing NATO’s Baltic flank, than undermining NATO and its mutual defense commitments altogether.”

European leaders are freaking out. Polish leader Donald Tusk has reported on intelligence assessments that Russia is planning an attack on NATO in the next months. Emmanuel Macron recently brought together all French party leaders and prospective presidential candidates to discuss this threat. Finland has tested its civil defense shelters for the first time in 30 years (though the Finnish prime minister has also cautioned his European colleagues not to overreact to Russian actions).

Even the otherwise Russia-friendly Trump administration is getting a little worried.

Though Trump has threatened to pull U.S. troops out of European countries for their failure to support his various military ventures—and removed 5,000 troops from Germany in the spring—he is moving forward with establishing a new U.S. military base in Poland, which the Poles tout as vital for countering Russia. One reason for the dispatch of CIA chief John Ratcliffe to Moscow last month was reportedly to warn the Kremlin not to attack NATO members. And the Justice Department has charged five Russian intelligence operatives with belonging to a network that “paid and attempted to pay individuals within the United States and elsewhere to conduct pre-operational surveillance and carry out targeted killings, and commissioned associates to commit and attempt to commit acts of terrorism against civilian and military infrastructure in European countries that are aligned, or perceived to be aligned, with Ukraine.”

Putin’s Plans

At a certain level, none of this makes sense.

To date, Russia has scrupulously avoided any engagement with NATO forces for fear that the latter, if they intervened directly in the conflict, would tip the war in favor of Ukraine. Now more than ever, Russia can’t afford such a confrontation. The war inside Ukraine is not going well for Russian forces. So far in 2026, Ukraine has clawed back 375 square miles, which includes 60 settlements. Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure is having a serious impact on the Russian economy, with refining capacity cut nearly in half, billions of dollars in lost export revenues, and gas prices soaring at home. The war is now having a direct impact on Russian wallets, and that could mean political problems (at some point) for Putin.

The Russian president doesn’t harbor ambitions to take over Europe. Nor does he want to reconstitute the old Soviet Union. Even reestablishing control over the relatively small Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia—would pose enormous challenges either in the form of a NATO response or guerrilla resistance to Russian military rule.

Instead, what Putin wants is to control the fates of the regions surrounding Russia. In the Kremlin’s best-case scenario, Russian incorporates the predominantly Russian-speaking areas of the “near abroad,” like parts of eastern Ukraine and eastern Latvia. Putin has also drawn together semi-autonomous regions like Transnistria in Moldova and Abkhazia in Georgia into a League of Unrecognized Territories. He has locked down the allegiances of fully independent governments—Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and the current government in Georgia—that look to Russia for trade and protection. The Kremlin invested a lot of money and time into backing a pro-Russian party in Moldova that, if it had won in the election this year, could have dragged the country in that same direction.

But Putin would also be content with dividing, politically paralyzing, and economically devastating the recalcitrant states on its borders to make sure that they aren’t cohesive enough to join NATO or, more importantly, the European Union. Putin is currently pursuing that fall-back option in Ukraine.

Ukraine hasn’t yet knuckled under. So, Putin is simultaneously pursuing another option. If Ukraine can’t be divided and conquered then perhaps pressure can be brought to bear on the other side of the equation. And so, Putin is testing the cohesion of both NATO and the EU. The grey-zone attacks against NATO targets is one way of testing how resolute the alliance really is, especially now, when the Trump administration has expressed doubts about the Article 5 collective defense mechanism.

The recent victories of the Alternative for Deutschland in the Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern regional elections—and the party’s commanding lead in national polling—point to another way for Putin to compromise the EU now that his finger puppet Viktor Orban is no longer in charge in Hungary. The AfD has not been shy in touting its pro-Russian policies. It is already preparing for talks with the Russian government in early 2027 to lay the groundwork for restarting German imports of natural gas.

Putin, meanwhile, has consolidated his power on the home front. In elections this month, Putin’s United Russia party won a record number of seats in the Duma. Putin has sidelined—silenced, arrested, exiled, killed—all serious political opposition. Like Stalin, he has gone after critics on the left and the right. He has also rejected all ceasefire proposals and appears to be on the verge of calling up another several hundred thousand new recruits for the war in Ukraine.

Despite Ukrainian successes on the battlefield and its drone war against Russian infrastructure, Putin feels fully in control. At least until 2027, he is likely to continue to wage war in Ukraine to secure all of the Donbas, and he will also continue to pursue grey-zone operations in Europe.

International condemnation of Russia hasn’t been even a speed bump for Putin. Military assistance to Ukraine has leveled the battlefield, to an extent, but it also hasn’t stopped the Russian leader. Sanctions have wreaked havoc on the Russian economy, but they haven’t brought down the country’s military industrial complex.

Trump, meanwhile, has tried maximum appeasement, from the red-carpet treatment in Alaska extended to Putin to the incorporation of Russian talking points in the peace plan presented by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Ukraine has refused to go along with this strategy.

That leaves three options.

Western Options

The West could maintain its current policy of refusing to provide Ukraine with a significant military advantage. The war will continue to take its terrible toll without either side able to declare definitive victory. Maybe that will produce an armistice, along the Korean War model. Maybe it will just produce a forever war along with an uptick in mysterious attacks on European targets.

Or the Trump administration could put maximum pressure on Ukraine to buckle diplomatically and accept Russian terms in an unequal peace deal. This would not be a just solution and, given Ukrainian obstinance to date, it probably wouldn’t work either.

The last option is not very palatable. In response to grey-zone attacks, NATO could present Putin with an ultimatum backed by a credible threat of force (for instance, a no-fly zone over Ukraine). I’m no fan of NATO, and I worry about escalation to the nuclear level. But given that Putin seems to understand only the language of power, some show of force by the West could make the Russian leader think twice about further expanding his war. It might also push Russia to the negotiating table.

Putin thinks that he has time on his side. He has near-absolute control over his country and can sacrifice pretty much everything to the war effort. If he waits long enough—and continues to use his asymmetric advantage to bomb Ukrainian infrastructure—the West might succumb to its many divisions and lose both the will and capacity to support Ukraine. Or Putin’s out-of-sandbox operations, like the recent misdemeanors of AI agents, has the potential to unite the world against the rising threat.

The super-intelligence of AI, the middling intelligence of Putin, and the sub-intelligence of Trump: the world now faces an unholy trinity of supervillains.

The post Russia Expands Its War appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Some unsurprisingly want to see these territories returned. The U.S. military played a key role in seizing indigenous lands after overthrowing the Hawaiian monarchy in the 19th century. The military still occupies around 25 percent of the most populated island, O‘ahu, and a larger proportion of the state of Hawai‘i – 5.6 percent – compared to any other state.

The state of Hawai’i and the Trump administration have engaged in discussions about the future of these lands. Hawai‘i’s Congress members and the official indigenous-led state agency, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, have gotten involved in the debates..

…

Read the full article on The Diplomat.

The post Busting the Myths of the US Military’s Presence in Hawai‘i appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

It is incredible to me that it has been 50 years since the call I received in the morning from my father — the call that no parent could imagine ever having to make. 

“Michael, we have a problem, a big problem. Ronni was killed.” 

He knew very little at that time about what had happened, other than saying something about Ronni being killed with a colleague on the way to work by a bomb — and that somehow the government of Chile was involved. Those words, that event, were so incredible to me, so bizarre, that I had to be dreaming. 

As it turned out, it was not a dream, but my family’s nightmare that lasted for years and that changed our family forever. 

I’m not going to say much about the subsequent events, other than to say that my parents, Hilda and Murray, in the face of the most horrific event that parents could endure, were true heroes, traveling to Washington to meet with State Department officials, speaking their minds to power, never accepting “no” for an answer when the answer should have been “yes, and we are so sorry for your loss,” attending marches and protests seeking justice, and helping persuade our government to change its policy and finally helping to bring some semblance of justice (perhaps not peace for themselves) for the loss of their 25-year-old daughter when the perpetrators were finally found guilty and democracy restored to Chile — and all while they were running their deli in New Jersey.

There has not been one day over these years that I haven’t thought about Ronni, and I still consider her to be my big sister. Sadly, for my family there was more than the loss of a daughter and sister that day. My parents lost grandchildren. My brother and I lost nephews and nieces. My kids lost cousins. And with my sister as a moral guide, who knows what else we all lost? 

Much has of course changed in the world, good and bad, over these 50 years. My father and brother have passed but my mother, at 98, has not lost the beauty and grace that made her so special. In the Jewish religion, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon the dead is to name a child after them. There are eight people named after Ronni, including my granddaughter, Skylar Ronni Karpen. 

So in the end, those people who sought to silence the fight for justice and freedom for all that Ronni fought for during her short life have only succeeded in increasing eight-fold who Ronni was and what she stood for.

Ronni was killed along with Orlando Letelier, a man who had been the Chilean foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, who was placed in prison by Pinochet because of his opposition to the dictatorship and his belief in democracy and human rights — and who might have been elected president of Chile when democracy returned to that country. 

On behalf of my family, I would like to thank the Institute for Policy Studies and the folks who worked there, who for 50 years fought to make sure that Ronni’s achievements and memory were given equal respect and dignity. Through their efforts and the efforts of numerous Chileans (including one of Orlando Letelier’s children), this summer a Chilean court found three former members of Pinochet’s secret police guilty of the murder of my sister and sentenced them to prison. Whether it took a day or was delayed for 50 years, we always knew that there could never be justice for Ronni’s death. So after so many years, we are only left with accountability, which sadly must suffice.

I know after so many years there aren’t many who knew Ronni personally. In 1986, at the 10th anniversary of her death, I was asked to talk about my big sister. My hope in printing it below is that it might help folks understand or remember just how special Ronni was.

Comments from the 10th Anniversary Sheridan Circle Ceremony

Michael Karpen, September 1986 

On behalf of my family, I would like to thank you for coming here today to take a few minutes out of your schedule to remember the events that took place here 10 years ago, and to reflect upon the lives of two people whose loss leaves a void that time seems unable to fill.

I have been asked to say a few words about my sister, Ronni, whom my memory of and love for cannot be diminished by the years. If you don’t mind, I would like to take the opportunity to share a few personal memories and thoughts with you.

I know that many of you knew and respected Ronni, and some loved her. Some of you knew her as a friend or a relative, some as a co-worker, and others as a political compatriot. But I knew, respected, and loved her, as no one else could. I knew her and loved her as my big sister.

It has been 10 years since I touched my sister’s hand, kissed her cheek, laughed at her dumb jokes. And I miss these things and I am angered and saddened that they were taken away from me, but I am also angered and saddened that they were taken away from you, also, and that those of you who never knew Ronni will never have the privilege to do so. But, although I can never physically touch Ronni again, not one day passes that I don’t think about her, and speak with her; that I don’t ask for, and receive, her guidance.

She is, as she always has been, my moral, ethical, and political mentor, as well as my personal guidance counselor on life. You see, she is my big sister.

Ronni was six years older than I, and as a result was often given the job of taking care of me.

When we were growing up, she was my protector. I remember when I was five or six, my brother, who is a few years older than me, would pick a fight with me, and invariably end up on top of me. All I had to do was shout Ronni’s name. No matter what she was doing, she would drop it, and in a matter of seconds, there she would be, coming to my rescue, yelling “Supergirl” and throwing my brother off of me. He never had a chance.

She was my Saturday morning partner. I remember waking her up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons in our pajamas, eating marshmallow cookies together.

She was my friend. When I was 8 years old and didn’t make the little league, she was there to soothe my bruised ego, and more importantly, to take me out to eat.

She was my confidante. When I was a teenager and gave a party, Ronni was given the chore of acting as chaperone. She never complained and never, never squealed.

She was my chauffeur on my first date, having to wait outside in the car as my date and I ate ice cream inside the local ice cream store.

Because both my parents worked, she at times was my cook, making lunch for me after school.

When my parents went on vacations, she was a surrogate parent. I remember one time when my parents were away, I decided to sleep at a friend’s house without calling to tell her. The next day when I came home, I received a scolding from her that was so loud and so extensive that to this day, I never even walk around the block without telling someone where I am going.

In school, she helped me with my homework and prepared posters when I ran for school office. She helped teach me what clothes to wear, and how to wear my hair. She taught me about girls, about music, about drugs.

Ronni was more than a child of the ‘60’s for whom political activity was merely something to do between classes. She began college at the University of Maryland, being the subject of panty raids. She ended it participating in political protests, some of which were the subject of police raids. As her mind expanded and she was made aware of certain inequalities and injustices that existed in our society, she was moved to try to change society. 

She was motivated not out of a sort of intellectual curiosity that change could come about by standing on the sidelines, merely reading political theory, or by shouting slogans, and certainly not through violent means. She was not a violent person and frankly she didn’t have a mean bone in her body. It was said of my sister that when the revolution came, she would most certainly be a part of it; maybe not on the front lines, but she would be there giving support and guidance to those who needed it, and probably serving chicken soup to the injured and the ill. Ronni was moved by the simple fact that she was a good and kind human being.

Ronni knew that the only way inequality could become equality, the only way injustice could become justice was by reaching out to those who needed help or assistance, and together determining what their needs were, and working together to fill those needs. Although she was a brilliant student, my sister was not a theorist — she was a doer, someone willing to wear overalls and build solid change, brick by brick.

As I matured, I began to appreciate what a truly exquisite and talented human being Ronni was. She was an accomplished musician and artist. My home, as well as the home of our parents, are adorned with her work. In Passaic, our hometown, she had been a counselor for underprivileged children. She loved children, and believing that any lasting change must begin with education, she became a teacher in a public school in Maryland. 

In the Adams Morgan section of Washington she helped create the “Music Carry-Out,” teaching music to those who could not afford it and providing a place where musicians of all types of music, from classical, to jazz, to rock, to Latin, to African could go and practice and share their joy of music, and through that sharing begin to understand that all people, like all music, share certain undeniable bonds and qualities. And I am, as she was, most proud of her work at the Institute for Policy Studies of which I know many of you are familiar.

There are many more things that I would love to say about my sister but time will not allow it. She was a wife, daughter, friend, co-worker, musician, artist, political activist, protector, cartoon watcher, cookie eater, confidante, chaperone, chauffeur, cook, teacher, and big sister. If that seems like a lot to do in 25 years of life, it is because every moment of my sister’s life was filled with the joy of living.

I hope that I have given you a bit of a look at the human being Ronni was and what she has done. And I guess that it is time for me to take a look at myself and look at the type of human being I am and ask what have I done, and what else can I do?

It has now been 10 years since Ronni’s death, and I hope I have become the type of person of whom she would be proud. I miss her now as much as I ever have. But I know that when I need her, when those around me who are bigger and stronger decide to pick a fight with me and end up on top, all I have to do is yell for Ronni and she will drop whatever it is she is doing. And in a matter of seconds, in the background will be heard her voice yelling “Supergirl,” and I know there will be no need to worry.

The post Reflections on the Loss of My Big Sister to International Terrorists 50 Years Ago appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

For many years, progressive movements and activists have longed for the moment when we could imagine a real foreign policy rooted in true internationalism and solidarity.

But in our efforts to influence actual policy decisions, we’ve settled for important but smaller asks — ending specific wars, blocking the transfer of certain weapons to Israel, reducing military aid, cutting the military budget. That made sense — our movements’ view of the world was rarely fully reflected in Congress, the State Department, or the White House.

Now some of those limitations are fading. There are new possibilities rising as we see new candidates with incredibly progressive politics win their campaigns — and even more importantly, we see in recent years the extraordinary shift in public discourse about the U.S. role in the world, especially (though not only) throughout the almost three years of U.S.-enabled genocide in Gaza.

The escalation of global crises — especially those caused, exacerbated, and sponsored by the United States — means we need to do more as movements, and to demand more from our elected representatives. Israel has lost the battle of legitimacy. U.S. credibility and influence around the world are crumbling, not only as a result of President Trump and his MAGA movement extremism but also because of the foreign policy failures of discredited establishment Democrats like President Biden.

The flailing White House and its hollowed-out State Department are stumbling through the huge failures of Trump’s insatiably wealth- and ego-driven foreign policy. They face an unending war with Iran that has spread across the region and is threatening the entire global economy, Ebola exploding across parts of Africa, poverty and unprecedented inequality shattering lives around the world, and a genocide in Gaza visible globally in real time. The U.S., long the wealthiest, militarily strongest country in the history of humanity, is certainly still powerful, but is increasingly losing its ability to impose its will.

The new cohort of progressive candidates and the movements supporting them face a huge challenge of not only defeating the current foreign policy but also creating the beginnings of an entirely new approach. And for candidates, electeds, and campaigns who have focused overwhelmingly on progressive domestic issues, nothing about that challenge will be easy.

Starting from First Principles

Many countries around the world — from Spain to the Philippines, South Africa to Greece, and Brazil to Uruguay and beyond — have a legacy of powerful left movements morphing into more formal organizations, and from there transforming into political parties. Eventually the parties choose candidates to run for political office, in more or less democratic multi-party systems, and ultimately some of those candidates even reach, at least for a while, the highest levels of government.

That path provides not only a clear arc from organizing to power, but also a set of consistent political principles and policies on which left candidates can ground their campaigns for office. But the left and even the broad progressive movements here in the United States have not been able to claim that particular arc of history for a very long time. As a result, we are operating, in this unusually electorally focused year, without a clear set of unifying principles.

Those principles are not completely missing. Policy initiatives once sidelined as positions only of the left have instead unified broad movements and become part of mainstream discourse. The most prominent probably include Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, the Fight for Fifteen, and the Dream Act/DACA. A generation of young people came of political age mobilizing on those issues alongside the crucial struggles against racist police violence, and many turned towards various strands of socialism to support and build those campaigns.

The central mobilizing issues of today’s Trump era — including ending ICE, rejecting AI/data center construction, housing for all, and challenging authoritarianism and the billionaires — emerged on the scene alongside those earlier priorities. Today’s arguably most influential democratic socialist leader, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, cut his political teeth on those issues.

What we still don’t have is a clear set of foreign policy principles, let alone specific policies responding to particular global crises, around which progressive movements will unite. The one exception, paid for with Palestinian blood, is Gaza. The most massive mobilizations in the country responding to Israel’s live-streamed genocide in Gaza took place during the Biden years. Those mobilizations and the movement behind them animated politics, and shaped big new majorities for ending Washington’s military support of Tel Aviv. Following decades of elite adulation and broad public support, Israel is now widely reviled as a pariah state.

Trump’s re-election changed much of the political picture, but the centrality of Gaza as the moral core of our movements — especially, though not only, among the young — represents a vitally important crack in that pro-Israel consensus. It has profoundly reshaped longstanding political assumptions, normalizing unflinching criticism of Israel and rejecting AIPAC funding as requirements for progressive candidates. As a result, Israel and the legitimacy of Palestinian rights are central issues in many races. Even in places where the assumed campaign focus would be domestic, candidates are inescapably being compelled to talk about it.

And yet Gaza is not enough. Certainly, ending the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran emerged quickly as another specific demand within the broad anti-authoritarianism/anti-fascist movement, and there are other foreign policy positions on which most progressives would agree. The easy ones (to agree on — not necessarily to achieve!) would probably start with cutting the military budget, abolishing nuclear weapons, opposing U.S. wars and military interventions, and working cooperatively with other countries on international crises including climate and global health.

But there is no clearly articulated set of principles, or of specific policy goals based on those principles, which represents a consensus position claimed by candidates and electeds, and upheld by the diverse progressive, left, and socialist activist constituencies across this country. We need to step up that process now, both in anticipation of the coming elections of this year and 2028, and to define what U.S. foreign policy could or should look like in the future.

Understanding that official U.S. positions will never completely match all that our movements fight for, what principles should undergird a progressive official U.S. foreign policy? What follows here is an attempt to identify some of those principles, with a few examples of what they might look like in practice.

Foreign policy should be based on diplomacy, not the use or threat of military force.

That means strengthening real diplomacy rooted in a serious commitment to international law and multilateral treaties​, diplomacy that aims to prevent and/or solve conflicts through genuine, good-faith negotiations. It means rejecting the use of “soft power” diplomacy designed merely to strengthen U.S. domination and supremacy.​

What might that look like in practice?

• End the Iran war, accepting that serious negotiations, not more force or more sanctions, will be required.
• Relatedly, prohibit any use of force against any country, including Iran, with whom the U.S. is negotiating a ceasefire or peace treaty.
• Recognize and engage with China as an economic and diplomatic rival, and a potential partner in solving global crises, not a military threat.
• Recognize that while Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was clearly illegal, past U.S. provocations, including NATO expansion, had raised tensions with Russia and made Ukraine a target for Moscow’s retaliation. Today the conflict must be approached with a far greater commitment to international diplomacy than we’ve seen so far.
• Begin rebuilding the foreign service with staff educated in and committed to using diplomacy and international law as real alternatives to war, not as “force multipliers” to achieve military goals. We must not see a return to earlier years of secretaries of state cheerleading for military force instead of diplomacy.

Foreign policy should end the U.S. war-based economy that has shifted resources away from social needs — especially damaging the lives of poor and low-wealth people across this country — and has destroyed people, societies, and the environment around the world.

That means massive reductions in the military budget and redirecting hundreds of billions of dollars saved to jobs, health care, environmental justice, education, child and elder care, and other social needs across the U.S., and to increased humanitarian and development needs around the world, especially in countries devastated by past and current U.S. wars.

• Challenge congressional assumptions that more and bigger weapons and “the most lethal military” will somehow keep people in the U.S. safe — they will not.
• Acknowledge that between the $1 trillion 2026 and proposed $1.6 trillion 2027 military budgets, the increase alone (about $600 billion) is more than twice the total military budget of China, ostensibly Washington’s biggest challenger.
• Move to cut the proposed 2027 military budget by at least half, making sure that the money saved goes to strengthening diplomacy, social needs at home, and support for impoverished, climate-threatened, and war-ravaged communities and countries around the world.

Foreign policy should reject the 250-year-old U.S. search for regional and global hegemony and empire.

That means abandoning efforts towards global military control and “full spectrum dominance,” including by shutting the 750-800 military bases and other installations outside the United States designed for projection of military force.

Other progressive demands stemming from this principle could include:

• Lift all economic sanctions regimes affecting entire countries or peoples, or that impose extraterritorial secondary sanctions on other countries, and reject any new such sanctions (which are themselves an act of war).
• Stop all attacks on civilian boats in or near Venezuelan or Ecuadoran territorial waters based on unproven claims of drug violations. End the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” and acknowledge that even if any of those boats contained smuggled drugs, murdering their crews is completely illegal.
• Recognize Venezuela as a sovereign, not a vassal, state by ending the U.S. seizure and withholding of Venezuela’s oil income and its control of Venezuela’s imports and overall economy, and return Venezuela’s right to solve its problems internally.
• Stop all threats of military attack or regime change against Cuba. Recognize how economic sanctions are creating enormous suffering on Cuba’s civilian population, end the “maximum pressure” campaign, and lift the trade embargo to allow free trade, tourism, cultural and people-to-people exchanges, and medical and health collaboration.
• Definitively end U.S. territorial claims to Greenland, Canada, Panama, Gaza, Mexico, the Strait of Hormuz, the moon, or elsewhere.
• End the pressure on NATO to increase purchases of U.S. weapons and escalate the militarization of Europe. Reduce NATO’s primacy in Europe in favor of diplomatic/human rights-focused multilateral organizations such as the Council of Europe and the OSCE.
• Officially end the Korean War with a lasting peace agreement to replace the 1953 Armistice.

Foreign policy should be rooted in the rule of law, rejecting all claims of U.S. exceptionalism.

That means recognizing U.S. accountability to international law, including joining the International Criminal Court as a full member and pledging to implement all decisions of both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Related steps would include:

• Recognize Israel’s settler occupation of Palestinian territory, the existence and expansion of settlements, and the separate and unequal legal systems applied to Israeli Jews and Palestinians (including Palestinian citizens of Israel) in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem as completely illegal under international law. Reverse all U.S. policies currently supporting the occupation, including ending all arms transfers, military aid, and efforts to integrate U.S. and Israeli military forces and producers, as required under the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion and Provisional Ruling, and the related UN General Assembly resolution passed in 2024.
• Lift all sanctions imposed on ICC staff, UN experts, and others for their work at the ICC, and abandon all threats to undermine, weaken, or destroy the international courts.
• End the U.S. pressure campaign against South Africa rooted in the country’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, including the exclusion of South Africa from participation in the G20, the denial of visas to South African officials, and U.S. support for the false claim of “white genocide” in South Africa and its resulting privileging of white South Africans as the only people allowed to claim refugee status in the U.S.
• Stop violating customary international law and the UN Charter Article 2 (4), which prohibit the arrest of a sitting head of state, and release Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.

Foreign policy should acknowledge and implement U.S. responsibility for reparations and repair for the lives of millions of people displaced and the thousands of communities destroyed by U.S. actions (whether military, economic, or climate-related).

That means creating and implementing laws to guarantee legal, social, and financial support for communities and people to rebuild their lives at home, and to recognize, respect, and implement the internationally guaranteed rights of refugees and asylum-seekers to seek and find better lives inside the United States.

Related demands include:

• Stop detaining migrants in the U.S. who are not convicted of a violent criminal offense, and allow them to live and work legally in the U.S. while their immigration status cases go through the court system.
• Abolish ICE and end the collaboration between federal immigration enforcement authorities and local law enforcement agencies.
• Reinstate TPS protections including residency and work permits, ensure individual access to court hearings before TPS is withdrawn against anyone, and expand TPS to broader sectors of the global community.
• Recognize that rights guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, including the right to speak and protest, apply equally to all people in the country, whether they are citizens or not.
• Ensure that migrants forced from their homes because of circumstances caused by U.S. actions have full access to TPS or equivalent protections. This would include migrants from Haiti, Afghanistan, and Palestine, among others.
• Begin processes of investigation, apology, and reparations for U.S. crimes, including but not limited to wartime massacres, in Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere.
• Be prepared with War Powers Resolutions, specific budget prohibitions, and other means to prevent future military interventions and wars being attempted by current and future administrations.

Foreign policy should embrace democracy and not interfere (openly or covertly) in people’s efforts to build real democracy around the world, and repudiate the claim of “promoting democracy” as a cover for military intervention.

That means rejecting all efforts towards regime change of governments who disagree with the U.S., and ending all campaigns using claims of “democratization” as an excuse to escalate militarism.

• Stop demands on other governments to spend more of their own money on military weapons and forces, which undermines democracy in those countries and does not make anyone safer.
• Remove Cuba from the U.S. list of “state sponsors of terrorism” and move towards normalization of relations, including the repeal of all regulations aimed at extraterritorial enforcement of the embargo. Repeal the Helms-Burton Act to ensure a Congressional role in shaping new relationship with Cuba.

Foreign policy should recognize the obligations that come from being the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of humanity.

That means supporting multilateral institutions and creating new U.S. institutions designed to supply urgent and long-term humanitarian aid, speed green energy transition, provide development support and more, while rejecting the hegemony-driven goals of earlier aid systems.

• Rebuild and re-fund USAID or a replacement institution designed to coordinate global assistance — humanitarian, emergency and development-based — at scale, with the sole goal of aiding people, not to achieve “soft power” for political or strategic goals.
• Challenge the politicization of aid distribution to ensure that reaching people in need remains the goal rather than strengthening particular allies, factions, or other groupings.
• Ensure that longstanding crisis areas, such as Sudan, Yemen, DRC, Haiti, Afghanistan, and others are included in access to U.S. support regardless of political challenges inside.
• Provide political and economic support, to scale, for global projects under the control of multilateral and/or civil society organizations, designed to repair the environment and move towards environmental justice.

Foreign policy should aim to create new kinds of internationalism and global solidarity.

That means both creating multilateral institutions and coalitions, and providing support to civil society institutions (without imposing control over them) to address international crises including wars, endemic diseases, extreme inequality, and climate catastrophes (especially those caused or exacerbated by the United States).

Progressives should also support:

• Efforts towards complete nuclear disarmament, not just non-proliferation.
• Abiding by decisions of international courts and other institutions to guarantee universal human rights.
• Ensuring global access to existing and new vaccines, technologies, and more.
• Protecting and ensuring the rights of refugees and other migrants regardless of their point of origin.
• Committing to serious efforts to end fossil fuel dependency and repair the devastated environment.

Hopefully these principles can serve as a beginning reference point for what foreign policy could look like as more progressives, leftists, and socialists are elected to bring those new policy ideas to life in a much-changed — and far more open — political environment.

A second part will follow, focusing on some of the specific global crises and challenges that the new cohort of progressive candidates and electeds will need to address.

The post First Principles for a New Progressive Foreign Policy appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Press contacts below

The wealth explosion among the ultra-rich has led to soaring demand for luxury private jets and the infrastructure to serve them, including expanded private aircraft hangers and runway capacity at local and regional airports. Meanwhile, transnational corporations wanting to shield their top managers from interactions with the public are also expanding their private jet fleets, even as more shareholders are trying to rein in private jet excess.

A vital new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, High Flyers 2026, reveals just how much this private jet-setting is costing taxpayers and the planet. 

Key findings:

• Private jets and charter services account for roughly 16 percent of FAA-handled flight operations. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates noncommercial private jets account for 7 percent of the airspace activity yet contribute less than 0.6 percent of taxes that flow into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund that helps finance FAA operations.
• An estimated 256,000 people, or roughly 0.003 percent of the population, fly on private jets, including the ultrawealthy who use fractional ownership or private charter jets.
• Private jets are one of the most super-polluting forms of transportation, with direct carbon emissions 10 to 14 times greater per passenger than commercial aviation travel –along with additional contributions to global warming from  effective radiative forcing, which can be two to four times greater than those from CO2 emissions. 
• The National Business Aviation Association spent approximately $2 million on lobbying in 2025 in favor of legislation that gives massive tax breaks for private jet owners, like the permanent accelerated depreciation tax of 2025.
• Private jet ownership and use has accelerated as the number of ultra-high net worth individuals and billionaires has grown. There are 3,428 global billionaires as of this year. The median wealth of a private jet owner is $190 million, while the median wealth of a fractional owner of a private jet is $140 million.
• A luxury tax of 10 percent on used jets and 5 percent on new jets could have raised more than $3 billion in 2025, funds that could be invested in sustainable ground transportation.
• More than a third of all Airport Infrastructure Grants awarded through 2026 went to airport projects that may primarily benefit private jets, amounting to more than $1.13 billion in grant funds.
• Between 2019 and 2025, fractional jet ownership increased 65 percent.
• Substituting so-called “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) is a greenscreen distraction.  While there may be some potential for electrification of small scale short hop aviation, there is no scalable or cost-effective alternative to kerosene-based jet fuels developing at the speed of climate change. 

“The rest of us should not have to pay for the luxury excess of the private jet billionaire class. Our hard-earned tax dollars shouldn’t subsidize their reckless air travel habits that further harm our warming planet,” said report co-author Chuck Collins. “At a time when most ordinary people are struggling to afford groceries, rent, and healthcare, our report exposes how the ultra-rich and greedy corporations are private jet-setting at the expense of the rest of us, while trying to dodge accountability for fueling the climate crisis.” 

The Institute for Policy Studies worked with the worldwide community of 20,000+ open-source trackers to build a new tool (the Private Jet Emissions Tracker, or PJET) that analyzes the private-jet flights into and out of specific locations and times—like the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, or every game of the World Cup. 

One key solution: make private jet-setters pay their fair share.

For starters, Congress should strip a private jet tax avoidance provision from the pending air traffic safety legislation, the ALERT Act. “The private jet lobby is cynically and shamelessly inserting yet another tax break for private jets into legislation to respond to the Potomac river aircraft-heliocopter crash in January 2025,” said Collins.

Champions like Stephen Prince have publicly announced they have given up private jets. Meanwhile, high-profile jet-setters like Taylor Swift who have drawn scrutiny recently have yet to change their travel habits.

“Since we first released our analysis on the costs of private jet travel to taxpayers and the planet in 2023, we’ve seen a shocking and irresponsible rise in the use of private jet travel,” said report co-author Omar Ocampo. “Unfortunately, the private jet lobby has worked hard to lower the tax obligations of the ultrawealthy. Meanwhile, the aviation industry pushes false solutions on the climate crisis. It’s time to stop making taxpayers subsidize luxury private jet travel and use our resources to green other industries.” 

Other key policy solutions: 

• Stop another pending private jet tax break.
• Repeal one-year accelerated bonus depreciation of private jet purchases and pass the End Subsidies for Private Jets Act.

• Increase tax on private jet fuel.
• Levy a luxury tax on private jet sales. 

• Roll back secrecy provisions.
• Stop funding and constructing new private jet infrastructure, just as some institutions have committed to no new fossil fuel infrastructure.

“At a time when billionaires and the ultra-wealthy get to avoid the enshittification of commercial air travel experience, taxpayers and the planet shouldn’t bear the costs of their luxury private jet-setting,” concluded Collins. 

Read the full report: https://ips-dc.org/report-high-flyers-2026

Press contacts:
Olivia Alperstein, olivia@ips-dc.org
Chuck Collins, chuck@ips-dc.org
Nathaniel Hoffman, nathaniel@paleo.media   

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About the Institute for Policy Studies

For over sixty years, the Institute for Policy Studies has served as a leading multi-issue research organization that provides key fact-based support for bold policy solutions to urgent issues from rising inequality to the climate crisis. Highlights from IPS’s programs and research can be found on Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram.

The Private Jet Accountability Project at the Institute for Policy Studies built, with help from a community of programmers, the Private Jet Emissions Tracker (PJET).  This enables researchers, journalists and the public to track private jet activity, especially around global events like Davos and elite sporting and cultural events. Email Nathaniel Hoffman at nathaniel@paleo.media for more info about private jet travel during high-profile events and accessing the private jet tracker.

The post New Report “High Flyers 2026” Reveals How Private Jets Costs Taxpayers and the Planet appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Luxury private jets are the most energy intensive, ecologically destructive, and anti-social form of transportation. But thanks to a powerful private jet lobby — advocating on behalf of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet — the rest of us subsidize the high-flying lifestyle of this tiny slice of humanity, the wealthiest 0.003 percent.

This report, the latest in our High Flyers series covering private jet excess, highlights the costs of private jets to taxpayers, the public, and the planet, and recommends reforms.

Much more detail is available in the full PDF. A summary follows.

Solutions

Global ecosystems will be severely disrupted by the reckless consumption of this wealthy 0.003 percent of the population. Some solutions will require voluntary actions to give up private jets or limit their use. But real behavioral change will require increased taxes and regulations to change and decarbonize private jet users’ indefensible behavior.

• Stop another pending private jet tax break. Lawmakers must immediately strip the ALERT Act, legislation to improve air traffic safety standards, of provisions to prohibit jurisdictions from using ADB-S tracking to levy use fees and taxes. This cynical move, which attaches a private jet tax avoidance measure to legislation responding to the January 2025 collision over the Potomac, should be publicized as overreach by the private jet lobby.
• Repeal the one-year accelerated bonus depreciation of private jet purchases. Pass the End Subsidies for Private Jets Act, introduced by Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA), and other members of Congress.
• Increase taxes on private jet fuel. Lawmakers should levy taxes on private jets and eliminate tax subsidies so that jet users pay their fair share. One legislative proposal is to increase taxes on private jet fuel nine-fold to cover the real costs of private jet travel and invest in sustainable transportation.
• Pass a luxury tax on private jet sales. A luxury transfer tax on pre-owned and new jets could raise billions of dollars in revenue that could be used to build green infrastructure and decarbonize our economy. A luxury tax of 10 percent on used jets and 5 percent on new jets could have raised more than $3 billion in 2025, funds that could be invested in a sustainable transportation system for everyone, not just the billionaires and ultrawealthy.
• Rollback secrecy provisions around private jet travel and protect the public right to know who is burning up our future.
• Stop funding and constructing new private jet infrastructure, just as some institutions have committed to no new fossil fuel infrastructure.

The post High Flyers 2026: The High Cost of Private Jet Excess appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Under the GOP’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” around 17 million people in this country will lose health care thanks to the law’s Medicaid cuts, failure to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies, and other changes. Those cuts accelerate after this year’s midterms.

Instead, that money is going toward tax cuts for the rich plus record budgets for ICE and the Pentagon. Immigrants — including well over 1 million who are lawfully present — will be especially hard hit.

Rosa Maria Carranza fled El Salvador’s civil war for the United States decades ago, working here and sending money home to support her three children. She missed their milestones as she worked overnight shifts babysitting and substitute-teaching. Later, she co-founded a preschool.

Now semi-retired and working part-time, her livelihood depends on the Medicare and Social Security benefits she earned by paying taxes into the system for decades. Yet Carranza is now expected to lose Medicare coverage, according to KFF Health News.

Carranza is just one of the 100,000 lawfully present immigrants who are expected to be cut out of Medicare — and one of 1.4 million projected to lose their health care overall from other changes under the law, the Kaiser Family Foundation calculates. Meanwhile, intensified ICE raids have led many immigrants to avoid getting care for fear of being detained by ICE.

President Trump and many other MAGA Republicans tried to justify these deep health care cuts by accusing immigrants of taking care away from citizens. This is a lie — instead, millions of citizens are losing their own health care in part to fund ICE’s crackdown on immigrants.

Undocumented immigrants are not allowed to enroll for Medicaid and Medicare, and they’re ineligible to purchase health care through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. Even before the Big Beautiful Bill, immigrants needed to have a “qualified” immigration status to be eligible for Medicaid — and most would still have to wait five years after gaining qualified status to enroll. While lawfully present immigrants can also qualify for Medicare, they first must have “sufficient” work history.

As a result of factors like these, lawfully present immigrants are more than three times as likely as U.S. citizens to be uninsured. And both lawfully present and undocumented immigrants use less health care due to higher uninsured rates, language barriers, and fear of ICE.

The Big Beautiful Bill will make this worse. The law restricts the definition of qualified immigrants who are eligible for Medicaid as well as Medicare, excluding legally present refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants on certain work visas, and others. And of course that’s alongside deep cuts to Medicaid itself that will cause millions of citizens to lose their coverage as well.

Even while immigrants are losing health care coverage, they continue to pay billions into the system. In 2022, immigrants paid $579 billion in taxes — including $96.7 billion from undocumented immigrants. Moreover, since immigrants are more likely to work in physically demanding jobs with lower wages and weaker benefits, they may have a greater need for the care they’re being systematically denied.

Cracking down on immigrants was never going to restore health care to U.S. citizens. In fact, since Medicaid cuts are helping to fund this ICE crackdown, it’s doing the opposite. Meanwhile, the extremely wealthy Americans who got their taxes cut by the same law can afford gold-plated health plans.

Addressing this country’s health inequities means closing our massive wealth gap, not scapegoating immigrants. There must be higher taxation on the wealthy so we can restore and expand health programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

Health care is a human right, rooted in the belief that every person deserves dignity and care, regardless of where they were born or what job they work. We must hold accountable those who promote harmful rhetoric that justifies the exclusion of immigrants, which ultimately only hurts all of us.

The post Immigrants Didn’t Take Your Health Care. ICE Did. appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.