Congress should oppose any increase in Pentagon spending, which is fueling the immoral, illegal, and unpopular war on Iran and ongoing genocide in Gaza. On top of the devastating human costs, excessive war spending worsens both the affordability and climate crises, fuels data center expansion, and empowers billionaires and oil executives who profit from endless war and climate collapse. More money will not fix a bad foreign policy strategy; it only throws more gasoline on our already burning world. Here are ten better investments than adding $250 billion to the endless war chest:

10 Investments Totaling $250 Billion that Would Address the Affordability and Climate Crises Instead of Fuel Endless War

A $250 billion investment in solutions for working families instead of war profiteers would transform millions of lives. This isn’t just a moral imperative; investing in climate solutions results in greater economic benefits and job creation than dollar-for-dollar investment in the Pentagon. It’s also about the integrity of our democracy. Voters want Congress to invest in making life better for our families, our environment, and our futures on this planet – not bombing families abroad.

How does unaccountable military spending worsen the affordability and climate crises?

• Military-related operations – from combat, to daily training, to manufacturing – are environmentally devastating. The military’s degradation and pollution of water, land, and air is a leading cause of public health crises near military sites at home and globally.
• The Pentagon is the world’s largest institutional oil consumer and fossil fuel emitter. The U.S. is already a global outlier, responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our world – and doing the least about it. Instead of investing resources as the world’s wealthiest nation into  transitioning away from oil, the Trump Administration is now using ‘national security’ as a justification to drill and burn even more climate-destroying carbon. Military-related carbon pollution will likely worsen as carbon-intensive data centers become more integrated into the U.S. national security apparatus.
• The Pentagon budget eats away at investments that would make our communities less susceptible and more resilient to climate crises. In 2025, the average U.S. taxpayer paid $4,049 for weapons and war vs. just $394 for the Environmental Protection Agency, our National Parks, and Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy programs combined. That’s 10 times more taxpayer dollars going towards endless war than to protecting our environment and ensuring a livable future for our children and the planet.

For questions, please contact Hanna Homestead (hanna@ips-dc.org). Special thanks to Basav Sen for his generous feedback. Download a PDF of this analysis here.

Sources and Methodology

Transition jobs from the war economy to a green economy: Heidi Peltier’s policy brief, De-Militarizing the Federal Budget and Recalibrating the Labor Market, lays out a $100 billion plan for a just transition for military workers and communities that invests in jobs, green energy, and public infrastructure.

Install solar panels on 3.5 million homes, boosting residential solar installation by more than 50%: We use cost benchmark data from the Department of Energy (table 2) to calculate that the average cost of installing residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems is $23,600 per household. Given that in 2026, approximately 6 million homes have residential PV, installing 3.5 million more systems would boost overall installation by more than 50%. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the residential housing sector accounts for about 20% of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.

Expand green affordable housing: Homelessness in the United States is at a record-high. A Climate and Community Institute (CCI) report, Green Social Housing at Scale, proposes the creation of a Green Social Housing Development Authority (Green SHDA) that would tackle housing insecurity and the climate crisis by delivering 1,390,000 affordable, climate-resilient, fossil fuel–free housing units (and creating more than 300,000 jobs). The proposal requires $30 billion in annual appropriations.

Ensure public transit remains safe by fulling-funding its maintenance budget: Functioning public transit is critical to millions of people’s lives and their ability to access workplaces and education. Investing in public transit is also essential to decarbonizing our economy. The maintenance budget for the nation’s public transit system is facing a $152 billion budget gap over the next 10 years that could lead to greater delays and unsafe conditions. An additional $15.2 billion per year would close that gap, ensuring public transit remains functional.

Fully fund the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Instead of slashing the EPA budget by 52%, Congress should fully fund $12 billion that advocates say the agency needs to protect our air, land, and water.

Restore electric vehicle (EV) tax credit to 500,000 people: The clean vehicle credit (CVC) was an essential mechanism to transition away from fossil-fuel based vehicles and towards cleaner, more affordable transit options. It provided a credit of up to $7,500 for individuals purchasing new electric vehicles (EVs), subject to restrictions. In 2023, 488,000 households claimed the clean vehicle credit. However, Congress allowed the program to expire in 2025, leaving individuals who would like to purchase an affordable, fossil-fuel free vehicle without assistance as gas prices continue to hit record highs. For $3.75 billion, Congress could provide the full CVC tax credit to another 500,000 people.

Fully-fund the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP): LIHEAP is an essential program that provides federally funded assistance to lower-income individuals and families to reduce the costs of home energy bills and weatherization efforts to improve energy efficiency. The program is more important than ever, as gas prices rise due to the US war on Iran, extreme weather events become more common due to climate change, and more and more people across the country fall into poverty due to increasing wealth inequality and affordability challenges. The National Energy Assistance Directors Association has testified that adequate spending on LIHEAP would be $7 billion in FY 2027. However, the Trump Administration has proposed cutting LIHEAP funding to $3.6 billion – about half of what’s needed. We proposed doubling this budget to bring spending up to where it belongs.

Restore funding for renewable energy and climate resilience projects on Tribal lands: Last year, the Trump Administration cut approximately $1.5 billion in federal funding earmarked for tribal renewable energy and climate resilience projects. We propose restoring that funding.

Fully fund land conservation assistance for farmers and rural communities: USDA conservation programs are utilized by farmers and small-landowners across the United States to adopt conservation practices that enhance water quality, increase resilience, and reduce harmful emissions. These programs are highly impactful and in high demand, with more than half of eligible recipients turned away due to lack of adequate funding. Hundreds of farm coalitions and conservation groups have advocated for fulling funding conservation assistance, which they say requires at least $1.05 billion. Despite this, the Trump Administration has zeroed-out the budget for Conservation Technical Assistance for the second year in a row. We suggest restoring it to at least the requested amount of $1.05 billion.

Restore $1 billion for International Climate Finance: International climate finance is a morally, financially, and politically imperative investment. As the world’s wealthiest country and largest historical emitter, the United States is most responsible for ensuring less economically-advanced nations can prepare for and respond to climate disasters as they become more frequent and extreme. Unfortunately, the United States has failed to pay its fair share in climate finance, while spending more on the military than the next 6-9 countries combined. Over the past decade, Congress has approved roughly 40 times more taxpayer dollars on financing to subsidize weapons companies than finance that supports the Green Climate Fund. Trump cut the entire U.S. contribution for international climate finance. We suggest restoring the U.S. allocation to Biden levels – at least $1 billion annually.

The post Ten Ways Congress Could Defund War to Fund Climate Solutions appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

It’s hard to overstate the scale of Democratic victories in this year’s midterm elections.

Voters broke for Democratic candidates by margins scarcely anticipated by even the party’s rosiest polls — often in deep red states and congressional districts that few seriously thought were competitive. Democrats will now control a commanding House majority and hold a significant edge in the Senate as well.

This was a decisive rejection of Trumpism — and it happened on a significantly tilted playing field.

Before the election, Trump-aligned justices on the Supreme Court gutted what remained of the Voting Rights Act, only the latest in a series of rulings limiting fair access to voting and representation. At Trump’s urging, Republican-led statehouses unleashed an unprecedented flurry of mid-decade gerrymanders designed to maximize their partisan advantage and disenfranchise their critics. Billionaires poured vast sums into races — and trillionaire Elon Musk spent over $400 million alone, more than George Soros has spent on elections his entire life.

And that’s not even getting into the concerns, often stoked by leading Republicans themselves, that the administration would try to cancel results, deploy National Guard or ICE agents to cities, or otherwise meddle in the election.

None of it was enough for voters who’ve spent years now watching events in their lives spin out of control.

Trump’s tariffs made life miserable for farmers, manufacturers, and consumers while his allies slashed safety net programs to fund tax breaks for billionaires. The war in Iran, which Trump launched shortly after promising no new wars, sent the price of fuel skyrocketing.

Lawless ICE agents terrorized immigrants and citizens alike and shocked the conscience of people across the political spectrum. And a data center boom spiked power bills and disrupted communities across the country, all to power a technology CEOs vowed to use for replacing people’s jobs and surveilling their day to day life.

In the races that mattered most, populist candidates spoke to these concerns directly.

Candidates who backed data center restrictions and moratoria flipped red governorships and/or Senate seats in Ohio, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and beyond — while voters directly passed their own local moratoria in dozens of communities.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed defeated a shockingly Islamophobic opposition by focusing relentlessly on taking U.S. foreign and domestic policy alike back from billionaires. In Maine, Troy Jackson toppled longtime U.S. Senator Susan Collins by embracing his working class identity and supporting Medicare for All. And in a state that became emblematic of ICE’s abuse, Peggy Flanagan ran away with a victory in Minnesota calling to “rip ICE apart.”

But to sustain these gains, these winners — and the leaders of their party — will need to follow through on the promises voters entrusted them with.

In the two years Trump has left, Democrats will need to be held accountable to claw back the enormous funds Trump and the GOP have set aside for ICE and Pentagon and put them back into programs to make sure struggling Americans have food and health care — areas which are only set to see further cuts as more provisions of the “Big Beautiful Bill” take effect.

They should embrace their powers of investigation not only to crack down on the administration’s unprecedented corruption, but also to make tech CEOs answer for foisting AI and data centers on Americans and to hold corporate price gougers accountable for raising the cost of groceries, health care, and rent. And they’ll need to rapidly repair our civic infrastructure to get money out of politics and put ordinary people back in it.

If our next leaders can’t deliver as promised, the politics of scapegoating will come roaring back. It won’t be easy, but the voters are watching. And this November they spoke loud and clear.

The post The Midterms Were a Populist Blowout appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Lula also defied the current trend in Latin American elections. In the last 18 months, right-wing candidates had won in seven countries, including Chile, Colombia, and Peru. The trend worldwide has been similar, with the far right winning in local elections in Germany, the extremist party of Marine Le Pen leading the polls in France, and the far right participating in governments in Italy, Finland, and the Czech Republic. Far right leaders remain in place in Russia, India, the Philippines, and, for now, Israel.

Is Lula the outlier? Or does he perhaps represent a political course correction?

For those eager to see a political wave in the making, Lula is not the only example of the electoral repudiation of the far right. On the same day as the Brazilian elections, students managed to oust the longtime autocrat Aleksandar Vucic in the equally surprising Serbian elections. Earlier this year, Viktor Orban also lost at the hands of a unified opposition. The massive “blue wave” rejection of Donald Trump in the midterm elections in the United States has continued the trend.

There is a natural feeling among voters in democratic societies to “throw the bums out.” In Latin America, a “pink” wave of progressive politicians like Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro has given way to a “brown” wave of ultra-conservative politicians. Voters, especially in today’s quicksilver environment of social media, respond positively to candidates who promise sweeping change. And thus, the political pendulum swings from left to right and back again.

But the far right is not just another conventional option on the political menu. It offers something radically different because it threatens to undermine the very democratic norms by which it has achieved power. In countries like Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and India, right-wing authoritarians have used democratic means—elections, constitutional changes, legal challenges—to weaken democracy. Other leaders have attempted to do away with democracy much more rapidly, as Jair Bolsonaro tried to do when he plotted to overturn the Brazilian elections that Lula won four years ago. Inspired by these rule-breakers, even traditional conservative politicians, like Yoon Suk Yeol in Korea, have attempted to suspend democracy.

And then there’s the case of Donald Trump. The U.S. president was reelected despite his efforts to overturn the 2020 elections that he lost. During his second term, he has attempted to unilaterally change the constitution. He has ignored court orders, bypassed Congress, and waged war against the mainstream media. He has repeatedly called into question the legitimacy of elections.

But Trump now has the lowest approval rating—31 percent—of his presidency. In the midterm elections, voters rejected Trump’s party. The Democratic Party has easily retaken control of the House of Representatives, and it now has a comfortable margin of control in the Senate as well.

Unlike in Brazil, American voters are prioritizing their pocketbooks. A narrow majority of Brazilians supported Lula despite the country’s problems with debt and inflation. American voters, on the other hand, are abandoning Trump because of the economy—rising gas prices, the impact of sanctions, the consequences of the Iran War. As they demonstrated by electing Trump to a second term, many American voters don’t seem concerned about his anti-democratic rhetoric or actions.

This, more than the specific victories of the far right, is the more distressing takeaway. After all, democracy is not exactly enjoying its finest hour at the moment. Global freedom, according to the latest Freedom House report, declined for the twentieth consecutive year last year, with the United States, Bulgaria, Italy, El Salvador, and Madagascar registering significant deterioration in political and civil liberties.

Voters are turning toward anti-democratic candidates in part because they are disenchanted with democracy itself. Democratic mechanisms just don’t seem up to the task of addressing the threats currently facing the globe. Democracies have proved incapable of slowing climate change or responsibly controlling technologies like AI. Democracies have utterly failed at ensuring broad prosperity in a globalizing economy. If democrats were more successful at dealing with these problems, the far right’s promises of top-down solutions and returning to mythic pasts would not be so appealing.

This deeper problem with democracy suggests that even if the far right loses elections—in Brazil last month, the United States this week, France next year—it will not gracefully surrender the stage. Figures like Yoon Suk Yeol and Jair Bolsonaro can be jailed for their transgressions—and perhaps Trump too will follow in their footsteps. But voters will keep turning to more authoritarian alternatives if democratic institutions don’t deliver and democratic values don’t appeal.

The far right does not offer any better answers to the world’s problems. Its general response to global threats has been to turn its back. The far right supports high tariff walls, more fossil fuel extraction, and stricter controls on immigration. It repudiates all forms of globalization, lumping together neoliberal trade policies with Green energy programs and sensible approaches to immigration. The far right despises democracy not just because it puts controls on autocratic leaders but because of its association with globalization.

This, then, is the essential task of both the left and the center—to devise a new, robust internationalism that provides concrete gains to the average person while also safeguarding the planet for the next generations.

Until this happens, far-right candidates will continue to win. They might lose this or that election. But they will continue to win support with their anti-global agenda, while remaining focused on their ultimate goal of destroying democracy. They don’t want to be subject to the pendulum swings of democratic politics. They want to rip out the pendulum so that they can remain in power indefinitely.

The post Is the Far-Right Wave Receding? appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

We highlight here six candidates who won tough races by offering a much bolder vision of an economy that works for all. These candidates promised to build working families’ power to tackle the extreme wealth concentrations that are driving up housing and healthcare costs, suppressing wages, squeezing consumers and small businesses, and distorting our democracy.

None of these candidates went into Election Day with a “solid Democrat” or even a “likely Democrat” rating from the Cook Political Report. Their hard-fought victories are signal that American voters are ready for inequality-fighting, transformative change.

House seats

Brian Poindexter (Ohio-7)

Poindexter crushed Republican incumbent Max Miller by nearly 10 points, becoming the first non-Republican to represent Ohio’s 7th District since 1939. The union organizer and ironworker won over Rust Belt voters with a strong pro-worker agenda.

“When tax cuts are debated in Washington, they seem to flow easily to the wealthiest and most powerful,” Poindexter wrote in his economic platform. “When subsidies are discussed, large corporations are first in line. But when the conversation turns to deficits, debt, or ‘tough choices,’ it’s working families who are asked to give more, wait longer, or accept less.”

Drawing on his 20-plus years in the labor movement, Poindexter is vowing to strengthen collective bargaining rights so workers can fight for better wages and benefits. He also aims to increase the minimum wage and expand access to affordable health care.

Will Lawrence (Michigan-7)

Lawrence’s race was closely watched because it was seen as a test of whether campaigning against Big Tech and unregulated AI could be a vote-getter in a red district. Turns out it was.

Lawrence ran ads denouncing the tech billionaires driving the AI data center boom, vowed to put a pause on advanced AI development, and blasted privacy-invading surveillance technologies like Flock cameras.

A co-founder of a youth-led climate group called the Sunrise Movement, Lawrence also mobilized huge support from Michigan State University students. His campus rallies drew large crowds to discuss his proposals to get money out of politics, increase taxes on the wealthy, end corporate landlord price-gouging, and guarantee universal health care.

Last night the millennial activist garnered 51 percent of the vote to oust Republican incumbent Tom Barrett.

Rebecca Cooke (Wisconsin-3)

Cooke grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm that has suffered the same fate as thousands of others in the state. Because of unfair competition with large corporate producers, her family has had to sell their cows.

“I want to take on the corporate monopolies that have robbed us of our farming traditions and our heritage,” Cooke said in a campaign trail interview with More Perfect Union. On top of breaking up Big Ag, she wants to pass the PRO Act to strengthen union rights, raise the minimum wage, and protect communities from “unchecked hyperscale data centers.”

In between waitressing at two Eau Claire restaurants, Cooke ran a grassroots-powered campaign that beat incumbent Republican Derrick Van Orden by a four-point margin.

Senate seats

Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota)

Flanagan wasn’t expected to have a tough race after winning the primary to replace Democrat Tina Smith. But she wound up with a “vulnerable” rating in the face of rampant disinformation about welfare fraud during her time as the state’s lieutenant governor and an opponent who happened to be a smooth-talking former TV sportscaster.

As someone who grew up in poverty, Flanagan prevailed by drawing on that experience to deliver a compelling vision of an economy in which everyone can thrive – not just the ultra-wealthy. She vowed to work for inequality-fighting policies such as Medicare for All, scrapping the income cap on Social Security contributions, and banning large corporate landlords from purchasing single-family homes.

Flanagan refused corporate PAC money and called for banning all corporate and “dark” money in future elections. In the end, she won by double digits. And when she enters the U.S. Senate in January, she’ll be making history. That body has never had a Native American woman member and Flanagan belongs to the White Earth Band of Ojibwe.

Troy Jackson (Maine)

After the flameout of the first Democratic nominee, Jackson entered the race with only three months to campaign against teflon Republican Susan Collins.

Growing up, Jackson had formative experiences watching his dad and other loggers stand up to wealthy landowners to demand basic fairness. He carried that working class fight into his own logging career and then into Maine’s state legislature.

On the campaign trail, Jackson signed a “Pledge to Working Mainers” demanding a billionaire tax, a congressional stock trading ban, and a ban on AI surveillance to prevent “robots deciding your paycheck, hiring and firing you, or monitoring your work.”

Heading into Election Night, the Cook Political Report had the Jackson-Collins race as a total “toss-up.” In the end, Jackson ousted the 30-year incumbent by an eight-point margin.

Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan)

Ending with a big one here. El-Sayed had to put up with grotesque racism and Islamophobia throughout his campaign. He prevailed with one of the strongest inequality-fighting economic platforms of any candidate in 2026.

The native Michigander boiled his agenda down to three alliterative pledges: money in your pocket, money out of politics, and Medicare for All.

With his medical degree and public health experience, El-Sayed projected a particularly strong vision of guaranteed healthcare for every American, regardless of what they do for work. He also called for abolishing medical debt, banning the use of AI to allow health insurers to second-guess doctors’ decisions, and preventing Medicare privatization.

El Sayed did not shy away from overtly arguing for wealth distribution.

“I’d rather have an economy that makes 1,000 millionaires than one billionaire,” El-Sayed said in a social media clip. “If you’re serious about building the most productive possible economy, take that excess money that would have been parked into the S&P 500 and invest it in good schools, good infrastructure, health care, child care, which by the way, all make jobs, a ton of jobs, most of which are very difficult to automate,” El-Sayed argued.

Last night, El-Sayed demolished Republican opponent Mike Rogers by an eight-point margin. As he heads to Washington, he is vowing to “fight against corporate tax breaks and the capture of our economy by billionaires and wanna-be oligarchs.”

Look out.

The post Six Inequality-Fighting Candidates Who Won Tough Midterm Races appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

“Isabel modeled bravery combined with compassion,” said IPS Senior Advisor and former Director John Cavanagh. “She used this potent combination to turn a brutal international terrorist attack into a force for justice — not only for her husband, but for human rights victims around the world.” 

On September 21, 1976, agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet assassinated Isabel’s husband, Orlando Letelier, and his Institute for Policy Studies colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt in a car bombing in downtown Washington, DC. The assassins had targeted Orlando, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and a prominent critic of the dictatorship. 

Shortly after this horrific act, IPS co-founders Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet hired Isabel to carry on the fight for justice in Chile. She ran the Institute’s Human Rights program and Third World Women’s project until she returned to Chile after that country’s transition to democracy in 1990. 

Isabel leaves countless lasting legacies. 

Through the IPS Human Rights program, Isabel pursued justice for the victims of Chile’s dictatorship and established the Institute’s annual Letelier-Moffitt awards program, which has lifted up more than 100 human rights champions in the United States and Latin America over the past 50 years. (A full list of honorees can be found here.)

To educate Americans about the human impacts of U.S. foreign policy, Isabel’s Third World Women’s project brought over three dozen women leaders from Chile and other Global South countries to tour the United States — from Capitol Hill to communities across the country. 

As part of her education and organizing work, Isabel curated the Institute’s priceless collection of “arpilleras,” tapestries Chilean women sewed by hand during the dictatorship to express their suffering and to document the struggle for democracy. IPS has continued to exhibit these political artworks in universities and other venues over the past several decades to inspire new movements for justice and accountability. 

To build international solidarity for the Chilean cause, Isabel mobilized support from diverse audiences, from a Church Women United gathering in Nebraska and a labor conference in Calgary to the U.S. Senate and the UN Commission on Human Rights. 

“At first, I felt embarrassed all the time that people were giving me help,” Isabel told The Guardian in 1979. “Now I ask for it without hesitation, because I know that when we get our liberation we will do the same for others. It’s something that you don’t keep. You have to give it back.” 

Working with bold lawyers and relentless investigators, Isabel also used her moral authority to help achieve a number of measures of justice, including the prosecution of several perpetrators in the car bombing that killed her husband, a successful civil suit against the Republic of Chile, and the indictment of Pinochet in his home country. 

In 1979, shortly before a U.S. trial of three men charged in the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, Isabel returned to her homeland for the first time since the 1973 coup and granted interviews with right-wing Chilean media. 

“They wanted me to say I was embittered,” she told a reporter after her return to the United States. “They never got me to say that. I said that people who have suffered on their bodies or by losing their loved ones do not hate. They are seeking justice so this does not happen again.” 

The legal efforts Isabel supported continue to bear fruit. Just this past June, a Chilean judge sentenced three former secret police agents for their role in the murder of Ronni Karpen Moffitt, the young American IPS colleague who also died in the 1976 attack. 

In 2024, IPS honored Isabel at the annual Letelier-Moffitt Memorial Program at Sheridan Circle, the site of the assassination on Washington’s Embassy Row. While she was not able to travel to Washington for this event, IPS leaders presented Isabel’s family members with a book of tributes from many of her friends and fans. A video of the program is available here and the written tributes here.

A common theme of these tributes: Isabel’s relentless strength and optimism. 

“When you develop negative feelings, you become something very dark,” she explained to the Times News Service in 1982. “I do believe strongly in a better society. Without being a romantic, I know that each of us can do something.” 

Isabel passed on her positive approach to life and her commitment to human rights to her four sons — José, Cristian, Francisco, and Juan Pablo. After more than a half century of struggle, they and their families continue to walk hand in hand with IPS in the pursuit of justice. 

The post Remembering Isabel Letelier, Who Turned a Tragedy into a Global Movement for Human Rights appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Voters in California, for example, are considering a ballot initiative called Prop 40 — a one-time, 5 percent wealth tax exclusively on the state’s 200 plus-billionaires. But a few dozen billionaires are ponying up tens of millions to fight the tax and threatening to run away if they lose.

In an analysis for Tax the Ultra Rich Now (TURN), the Institute for Policy Studies identified 22 Golden State billionaires who have contributed substantial funds or been outspoken opponents of Prop 40. This group has seen their combined wealth increase 64 percent in the last 20 months. Yet you’d think from their reaction the sky was falling.

The 22 billionaire snowflakes include a bunch of tech bros and crypto barons making billions off developing an AI future for the rest of us.

Several are chums of Jeffrey Epstein, including Palantir’s Peter Thiel. In the last 20 months, Thiel’s wealth increased a whopping 120.27 percent, from $14.8 billion to $32.6 billion. That puts his wealth at 11,319 times the median wealth of a Californian household, which is $303,000. To protect his gains, Thiel has given $3 million to the No on 40 campaign and has called on other billionaires to move out of California. (Thiel himself recently moved to Argentina.)

Venture capitalist John Doerr, an early investor in Google, Amazon, and DoorDash, 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 that of the median Californian.

Google’s Sergey Brin has been the single largest opposition donor, chipping in over $102 million to fight Prop 40. From the deck of his $450 million yacht, the Dragonfly, Brin has seen his personal wealth grow a whopping 70 percent in the last 20 months, from $148 billion to $253 billion. Brin’s wealth is a stratospheric 83,498 times the median wealth of a Californian household.

Not all the billionaires are cowering in the corner.

Billionaire Tom Steyer said he would vote for the billionaire wealth tax and wished it went further to reduce inequality. Jensen Huang, the cofounder and CEO of Nvidia, is worth an estimated $190 billion and supports the one-time wealth tax. He told CBS News that “it’s a privilege, it’s a responsibility” to pay taxes — and that “nothing would give me more joy” than to pay more.

California’s 231 billionaires held approximately $2.3 trillion as of Sept 22, 2026, and pay incredibly low taxes on their riches. According to 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 his fellow Google co-founder Larry Page paid even less — just 0.07 percent of their wealth annually.

We can see why these billionaire snowflakes don’t want anything to change. Still, the one-time wealth tax would be just a small fraction of their gains in the last few years — and nevermind of their overall wealth, which will remain massive.

When you hear their baleful cries, echoing from the superyachts and private jets, you want to take their hands and reassure them: “It’s all going to be OK. You’ll have 95 percent of your billions and tens of thousands of your neighbors will have health care. You will get over this one quickly.”

Californians will decide their fate in November: a vote for oligarchy or a first step toward rebalancing our democracy? And Americans elsewhere will be watching.

The post What Are Billionaires So Afraid Of? A 5 Percent Tax, Apparently appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Voters also have negative views, by an over 20-point margin, of private jet use for politicians, big tech execs, ICE, and vacation/leisure, and oppose jets “to transport the children of wealthy Americans to summer camp,” by 38 points.

“While many Americans are not sure where they stand on the issue of private jets, voters report that they want billionaire jet setters to pay a fair share of taxes, to stop spewing planet-killing CO2 gases, and for some accountability for the private jet culture that enabled the Epstein scandal and its myriad rich and powerful participants,” said Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies.

From October 23-26, Data for Progress surveyed a national sample of likely U.S. voters on attitudes about private jets and the private jet industry, which has surged since the pandemic. Private jets and charter services account for roughly 16% of FAA-handled flight operations and 7% of airspace activity, yet contribute less than 0.6% of the taxes flowing into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund that helps finance FAA operations, according to The High Cost of Private Jet Excess report from IPS. Full poll results are available from Data for Progress.

Key poll findings include: 

• 72% of voters support cracking down on tax evasion by private jet owners (an issue the private jet lobby is fighting in Congress right now through the ALERT Act, a bipartisan airline safety bill).
• 69% want more airport fees for private jets to improve airport infrastructure.
• A vast majority of respondents have a positive opinion of private jet use for medical transport and disaster relief and 50% support jets for sports teams, but over half of respondents have a negative opinion of jet setting for celebrities (51%), politicians going to campaign events (53%), big tech execs (54%), and ICE deportation flights (55%). 62% oppose flying children of billionaires to summer camp in private jets.
• The most concerning aspects of private jet travel for respondents are:
  • The current tax system forces average commercial flyers to subsidize wealthy private jet owners
  • Private jets contribute significantly to climate pollution (they emit 10-14 times more CO2 per passenger than commercial flights, per the IPS report).
  • Private jets helped billionaires like Jeffrey Epstein break the law and abuse children for decades.

“Americans have made it clear that they’re fed up with the rising cost of living, and this survey shows they have little patience for wealthy elites who evade taxes on their private jets,” said Grace Adcox, Senior Climate Strategist at Data for Progress. “Voters strongly support new regulations on the private jet industry, including taxes to offset the climate impact of private jet emissions. They also disapprove of political candidates using private jets on the campaign trail by a 21-point margin, and that margin is nearly twice as large among Independents.”

Private jets on the campaign trail have been electoral issues in the Georgia and Ohio governors campaigns and in the Nebraska Senate race.

Finally, the Institute for Policy Studies, which hosts Tax Private Jets, has a new report out on the hidden costs of private jet travel: 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. Private jet operations and greenhouse gas emissions in two U.S. states alone, Florida and Texas, are greater than the 27 member countries of the European Union combined. See the report for more facts on the private jet industry. 

# # #

The post National survey: Voters support increased regulations on private jets appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

There is no major difference between the likely prime minister candidates, Phyllis says, on “whether there should be genocide in Gaza, whether there should be ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, whether there should be continued land theft and dispossession in Lebanon, or land theft in the Golan Heights.”

Yet because current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “symbolized, not inappropriately, the extremism of Israeli policy in recent years,” the election of a new leader might make it easier for U.S. lawmakers to continue enabling the same policies under a new face.

“Some of them may be swayed by the notion that this is no longer Netanyahu. So we can end our rhetorical criticism,” Phyllis warns. A new leader could be “welcomed with open arms, open wallets, open armories,” from Washington. “‘What do you need? More weapons? Sure. More money? Of course. More protection? Absolutely.’”

Phyllis also draws a parallel between Netanyahu’s legal jeopardy in Israel, where he is facing corruption charges, and President Trump’s use of elections to evade accountability in the United States. Netanyahu “is facing the possibility of going on trial in a serious way and facing serious consequences if he loses this election. In that way, he’s very much like Trump, who sees the election as a way of maintaining power when he is under attack in court cases all across the United States.”

On the possibility of a renewed U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Phyllis warns that a weakened Trump administration after the midterms could make military escalation more, not less, likely: “The possibility that he will change his reluctance to go back to war directly with Iran may be reversed, and he would be prepared to go right back with Netanyahu into another major assault on Iran, which would have devastating consequences not only for human beings in Iran and the rest of the region, but also for the regional sets of politics that are in shifting motion.”

Watch the full interview here:

The post VIDEO: What Israel’s Fractured Election Results Mean for Gaza, Iran, and the U.S. appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

You can read the speech from Unidos MN, our 2026 domestic awardees, here.

My name is Julio César Flores López, I have been a worker at the Goodyear company for 7 years. I serve as general secretary of the Mexican Workers’ Union League and its section in my company, the Independent Union of Goodyear Mexico Workers.

It is a great honor for me to receive on behalf of all my colleagues in the League the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, which has been presented to great personalities, organizations and movements defending human rights.

This award is a recognition of thousands of workers in Mexico, for their courage, commitment and dignity, to organize an independent and authentic union, which is truly a tool to defend the rights and change the lives of people and their families.

With the League, workers are learning to be part of a real union, which holds assemblies, freely elects its representatives, participates in collective bargaining, always putting the defense of workers’ rights at the center.

The League has also been able to make use of legal tools at the national and international level, to ensure respect for the rights of workers. Indeed, we have resorted to the Rapid Response Labor Mechanism, with great success, in most cases. In Goodyear, one of the most important remediation plans was achieved, due to the weight of the economic remuneration that we receive as a sanction to the company, for not applying the Sectoral Contract that should govern us.

But above all we have resorted to international solidarity, to unity with the unions of the United States, especially with the AFL-CIO and the Steelworkers, to whom we are very grateful for their support and with whom we share this award, because without their support our progress would not have been possible.

We hope that this award will serve to strengthen the conviction to continue building the League, that it will be an inspiration for many more workers in Mexico to organize and defend their rights and learn to use the national and international mechanisms that are within their reach.

We hope that this award will serve to make visible the struggle of workers in Mexico, because injustice continues to be a constant in companies in our country, and unions like ours are needed to end it.

Long live the struggle of the working class!

Long live international solidarity!

My name is Adriana Barbosa Carranza, I have been a worker at the 3M company for 12 years. I have the responsibility of being the secretary of organization of the League and general secretary in the section at 3M, San Luis Potosí plant.

As a mother, I am very proud to be here to receive the Letelier-Moffitt Award, because the fight that we have started in Mexico, to build a real union, is a fight for our families, for our daughters and sons. It is a fight for our own safety, for justice.

The 3M factory in San Luis Potosí has been operating for more than 20 years, during most of that time, we had corrupt union representation, which did not defend the interests of workers. Therefore, as soon as we had the opportunity to vote against that representation, we did so and we ended it.

There had to be a labor reform that forced the corrupt CTM union to submit its collective agreement to consultation. But there should also have been a labor chapter in the trade agreement, which allowed us to go to the representatives of the United States government, on a visit they made to San Luis Potosí, to ask them to pay close attention to the process that we were going to develop, to have a new independent union and a new, fairer collective agreement.

At 3M, the first Collective Bargaining Agreement of the League was signed. It is very gratifying to know that colleagues from other companies decided to follow our same path.

We are the proof, as are the sections of the League in other companies, that it is better to have a real union, a union of workers, our wages have grown like never before, our benefits have also been improved. The company no longer does what it wants, against the workers, now there is a union that defends them.

Of course, there is much to be done, but recognitions such as this award inspire us and encourage us to move forward.

To learn about the struggle of the comrades of Unidos de Minnesota, it is also a very great encouragement, because what it is about is defending all rights, it is about defending the community. That is what we do in our factories, because a real union is also a community.

Long live the struggle of the working people!

The post ‘Long Live International Solidarity!’ appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Bill proponents claim it will ease the buildout of renewable energy. However, peer reviewed studies have shown that most renewable energy projects do not face significant permitting delays, and that permitting delays under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are mostly attributable to staff shortages and communication delays between project developers and permitting agencies—not the stringency of the permitting process itself.

If bill proponents really wanted to expand renewable energy, they would focus on reversing the disastrous repeal of wind and solar tax credits in last year’s budget bill, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” Under that law, there are no remaining federal tax credits for households to put solar panels on their homes, stifling the growth of distributed solar energy. And most utility-scale solar or wind projects that commenced construction after July 4, 2026 will also be ineligible for tax credits.

Instead, the permitting bill limits the power of communities and state, local, and tribal governments to challenge fossil fuel and data center projects, stacking the deck in favor of project developers.

For example, Section 1202 of the bill limits the authority states and tribes currently have under the Clean Water Act to certify federally permitted projects as compliant with their own water quality standards. This would prevent states and tribes from requiring stronger standards than the federal government, allowing projects that they determine will harm water quality to go forward.

Additionally, the “project certainty” provisions in Sections 1401 through 1403 of the bill grant project developers the right to sue the government for “disparate treatment” if their project is denied a permit when similar projects have been approved in the past. This would effectively bar a future administration from denying permits for polluting infrastructure if this one greenlights them.

A Dream Bill for Data Center Developers and Fossil Fuel Companies

The proliferation of data centers is leading to a boom in fracked gas power generation, driving up greenhouse gas emissions and undoing progress in making the electric grid fossil fuel free. This is a giant step backwards happening at the worst possible time, with the Antarctic ice sheet collapsing, and drought and glacier loss threatening the world’s freshwater supply.

Backup diesel and gas turbine generators at data centers also emit toxic air pollutants such as particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, which are responsible for cancer, asthma and other respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular disease.

While families struggle with the high cost of living, massive (and growing) energy consumption by data centers is driving up utility bills for regular people. The permitting bill purports to address this problem by requiring data center developers to pay for the added cost of transmission to meet their demand, but that’s only one of the ways in which data centers impact utility bills. Increased demand for fracked gas from data centers is also driving up natural gas prices, and consequently household electricity and gas bills.

Direct water consumption by data centers for cooling servers, and indirect water consumption for fracked gas power generation to supply data centers, pose an additional threat to water availability in already water-stressed communities.

In spite of these serious concerns, the bill makes it harder for communities to use federal law to challenge proposals for data centers or their ancillary fossil fuel infrastructure (such as fracked gas pipelines and power plants).

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that fossil fuel infrastructure should not be built today, period. Bill proponents’ assumption that the increased buildout of renewable energy and transmission lines from deregulating permitting would more than make up for the simultaneous increase in fossil fuels is at odds with peer-reviewed science.

Easing permitting of fossil fuel infrastructure is discriminatory and contrary to environmental justice. Our environmental permitting system already allows for rampant race and class discrimination in the siting of polluting facilities. This racist bill will lock in protections for polluting corporations while depriving historically marginalized communities of even the limited rights they have today.

Speeding up infrastructure permitting will not lower energy bills either, contrary to bill proponents’ claims. It might increase the cost of living instead. In addition to data centers driving up demand for natural gas, natural gas prices could also rise if more liquid natural gas (LNG) is exported. Under the bill, LNG exports will get a boost from easier permitting of LNG terminals.

Despite greenlighting more fossil fuel infrastructure, proponents claim that the bill will reduce overall emissions. But that claim is based on seriously flawed modeling.

For one example, the models use the EPA estimates for leakage of methane, a short-lived but potent climate pollutant from oil and gas production, when accounting for the emissions impact of more fossil fuel infrastructure. But a number of independent studies have shown that the EPA seriously underestimates methane leakage.

For another, the models conveniently ignore emissions from US fossil fuel exports, because the emissions from burning the fuels occur in a different country. Ignoring emissions from exports is a bad faith shell game.

Assault on Democracy

This bill strips the public of their right to have a say in what gets built in their communities, in whose interest, and at what cost to human rights, air and water quality, public health, and culturally important places.

This is an end-run around democracy. Yes, bad faith actors sometimes misuse procedural protections for the wrong reasons, delaying or blocking good projects based on frivolous objections. But using that as a pretext to limit communities’ ability to have any say in projects institutionalizes the subordination of community rights to corporate interests.

That’s exactly why powerful industry groups such as the American Petroleum Institute (API) have come out in support of this bill. Senators who claim to care about addressing climate change should recognize that if they’re on the same side as API, they’re on the wrong side of the climate fight.

The post ‘Permitting Reform’ Is a Giveaway to Data Centers and Fossil Fuels appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.