LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

2026-09-25T12:37:30.405-07:00

Turkish forces to withdraw from strategic military base in northern Iraq

By Burcu Basaran

Published on 25/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Turkey will gradually hand over the Bashiqa-Zilkan camp, where it has had troops since 2015, to the Iraqi government.

Turkey has reached an agreement with Baghdad to gradually transfer control of the strategic Bashiqa-Zilkan military base in northern Iraq to the Iraqi government.

The deal follows an understanding between the two countries over the progress Iraq has made with regard to strengthening security measures in the area as well as reasserting Iraqi state authority there.

The decision was announced in a joint statement issued after a meeting in New York between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi on the margins of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.

According to the statement, Turkey will hand over the camp in stages, in line with an agreed timetable.

However, no specific date has yet been set for the withdrawal of Turkish troops.

The United States Ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria and Iraq, Tom Barrack, has welcomed the agreement.

"History rarely announces its turning points; it stitches them quietly," he wrote in a post on X. "Ankara returning Zilkan to Baghdad by agreed mechanism and timeline is one such thread: Iraqi sovereignty and Turkish security, both served. What looks like chaos from afar is a region weaving its own order".

The deal

Turkey and Iraq have agreed on fully establishing the authority of the Iraqi state in Sinjar and ending the presence of "banned foreign armed elements" in the region.

In the joint statement, it was also stated that the two countries had agreed to deepen their security cooperation.

Turkey has long been calling on the Iraqi government to curb the activities of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)-linked groups other non-state armed actors operating in Sinjar.

Earlier this month, the Iraqi government announced that the Sinjar Resistance Units, a Yazidi armed group affiliated with PKK, had agreed to lay down their arms and that fighters who met the conditions would be integrated into the Iraqi security forces.

The group, which is reported to have played a role in the fight against ISIL, is regarded by Turkey as a security threat because of its ties to the PKK.

Why is Bashiqa-Zilkan important?

Bashiqa-Zilkan is one of several Turkish military facilities that have long been a point of contention between Turkey and Iraq.

Turkey established a military presence in the area in 2015 to support operations against ISIL and assist local security forces.

Turkey maintains other military bases in northern Iraq, where it conducts operations against the PKK. The Bashiqa-Zilkan camp is the furthest from the Turkish border.

Iraq has previously called on Turkey to withdraw its troops from the area. Ankara, however, has insisted that its military presence is necessary to carry out operations against the PKK and to protect Turkey's national security.

The Bashiqa-Zilkan agreement comes as Turkey's latest effort to end its long-running conflict with the PKK continues.

As part of this new peace process, the PKK announced last year that it was dissolving itself and would cease armed actions against Turkey.

US withdrawal from Iraq

The United States is also in the process of winding down its military presence in Iraq.

US officials say a plan is in place for the hundreds of American troops stationed in the north of the country to leave by 30 September.

2026-09-25T12:33:43.475-07:00

Finland and Sweden scramble Quick Reaction Alert jets to intercept Russian aircraft

By Gavin Blackburn

Published on 25/09/2026 - EURONEWS

European countries have been on high alert for any Russian interference, with fears that Moscow could target Kyiv's Western backers as the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine drags on into its fifth year.

Finland's air force said on Friday that Swedish and Finnish fighter jets had been scrambled to identify Russian fighter jets flying over the Gulf of Finland.

The air force said that the two Nordic countries' Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) jets had been scrambled on Thursday.

They had identified a Russian detachment consisting of a Tu-134 transport aircraft, MiG-31 fighter jets and Su-30 fighter jets "in international airspace over the Gulf of Finland."

According to the military it was the first joint operational "identification mission" for the two air forces.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson commented on the operation on X, saying that "the Baltic Sea has never been as vulnerable as it is now - but it has also never been better protected than it is right now."

Tensions over the Baltic Sea have risen sharply in recent years and Nordic jets are regularly scrambled to intercept Russian aircraft.

In the wake of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland both dropped decades of military non-alignment and joined NATO.

A MiG-31 fighter of the Russian air force takes off at an air base during military drills in Tver region, 14 February, 2022 AP Photo

The incident came on the same day that the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) said that the risk of Russian military action against NATO countries was growing and an outright invasion was "highly unlikely" but possible.

"There is a low but growing risk that Russia will launch a limited military attack against one or several NATO countries bordering Russia," Thomas Ahrenkiel, the head of the DDIS, told a press conference at which he presented an updated assessment of the threat from Russia.

He said that the agency still considered it "highly unlikely that Russia would see any interest in invading a NATO country, but we cannot rule it out".

In the DDIS assessment, the agency said that Russia would likely carry out more so-called "hybrid attacks" against targets in the West.

It noted that in the past such attacks had "mainly been aimed at creating fear and weakening public support for aid to Ukraine".

But they had now started to include actions meant to stop support from reaching Ukraine, such as sabotage against defence companies or railway transports carrying military equipment, the agency said.

The DDIS said it thought Russia would intensify such attacks, which could also include "destructive cyber attacks that cripple critical societal functions."

Europe on alert

European countries have been on high alert for any Russian interference, with fears that Moscow could target Kyiv's Western backers as the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine drags on into its fifth year.

In November, NATO military officials said a new US anti-drone system had been deployed to the alliance’s eastern flank.

And following a violation of Polish airspace, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced the formation of the Eastern Sentry programme, which aims to deter further Russian incursions.

Some European officials described the incidents as Moscow testing NATO’s response, which raised questions about how prepared the alliance is against potential threats from Russia.

The Kremlin has dismissed allegations that Russia is behind some of the unidentified incursions in Europe as "unfounded."

2026-09-25T12:28:31.182-07:00

Trump makes 'final decision' to grant Ukraine Patriot licence, Zelenskyy says

By Nathan Rennolds & Gavin Blackburn

Published on 25/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Kyiv has been pushing for a licence to produce Patriot interceptors domestically, arguing that they are crucial to its ability to defend against Russian ballistic missile attacks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that US President Donald Trump told him he would allow Ukraine to produce advanced Patriot air defence missiles, after a series of reversals on the issue.

Kyiv is facing a shortage of the missiles, needed to counter Russia's increasing drone and missile attacks on the country, the latest of which killed a 14-year-old boy in the capital on Friday.

During his latest visit to the United States this week, Zelenskyy renewed calls for air defence support, and for the Patriots, which remain the only system reliably able to counter Russia's powerful ballistic missiles.

"At our last meeting, President Trump emphasised to me that yes, I have made a final decision. Ukraine will receive licences for the production of Patriot missiles," Zelenskyy said in a voice note to journalists.

In July, Trump said it would be "pretty cool" to grant Ukraine the licences, before backtracking, saying the United States should be "very careful" before granting Ukraine authorisation.

Ukraine has reported an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors since the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February, diverting supplies of the advanced systems.

Even if the licences are granted, establishing industrial capacity would require more than a year and would not meet Kyiv's immediate needs.

And Kyiv, preparing for winter, has renewed calls for urgent support.

It needs 5% of the United States' Patriot interceptor missiles to get through the winter and 10% to destroy all of Russia's ballistic projectiles, Zelenskyy said last month.

'Savage and sickening strike'

Moscow has also been aiming at the capital with newly developed jet-powered drones, which have succeeded in bypassing some of the drone interception systems developed by Ukraine.

While it used to target Kyiv mainly during the hours of darkness, Moscow now often attacks in broad daylight.

As people were making their way to work on Friday morning, a drone struck a residential building in the city, killing a 14-year-old boy.

Zelenskyy denounced the attack, calling it "an absolutely savage and sickening strike, devoid of any military logic."

AFP journalists on the spot saw residents gathering around a multi-storey building, with apartments on the ninth and 10th floors left charred by the attack.

Police officers stand in front of a hospital damaged in a Russian drone strike in Zaporizhzhia, 25 September, 2026 AP Photo

Mykyta Sysoyev, a 23-year-old IT specialist, said he was woken up by an explosion but only realised the strike had hit his own building when he checked the news.

"My jaw dropped a bit," he said. "It's strange: on the one hand, I've got used to it, but on the other, people are constantly dying."

Asked about the increase in drone strikes, he added: "This is a technological race and a technological war...Unfortunately, people will suffer while we're searching for solutions."

In the southern region of Odesa, another person was killed in a repeated strike on a postal facility, authorities said.

EU countries agree to release long-stalled €6.6 billion in military aid for Ukraine

By Jorge Liboreiro

Published on 25/09/2026 - EURONEWS

The decision to release €6.6 billion through the European Peace Facility comes at a critical juncture for Ukraine, which is grappling with a significant shortfall in its Ministry of Defence budget that could jeopardize drone deliveries.

European Union countries have agreed to release a €6.6 billion programme of military aid for Ukraine that had stalled since spring 2023, when Hungary imposed a controversial veto that paralysed the initiative.

The agreement at the political level was reached on Friday during a meeting of the Political and Security Committee in Brussels.

"That's good news for Ukraine and bad news for Russia," High Representative Kaja Kallas wrote on social media, announcing the news.

"Moscow's hybrid attacks try to intimidate Europe into scaling back its support for Ukraine. Europe is doing the opposite."

The so-called European Peace Facility (EPF) was designed to partially reimburse weapons and ammunition that member states donate to Ukraine.

In the early years of the war, the EPF was considered one of the bloc's central lines of assistance and was regularly topped up with fresh money.

But in May 2023, Hungary, under then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, slapped a veto that stopped the scheme dead in its tracks.

Budapest complained about Kyiv's decision to add OTP Bank, Hungary's largest commercial bank, to its list of "international sponsors of war". The name-shaming catalogue was discontinued in 2024 after pushback from Western allies.

Still, Hungary kept its veto in place, angering other capitals. The EPF eventually fell off the radar as Brussels set up new assistance programmes.

The deadlock was broken only this year when Orbán lost the parliamentary elections in April, and Prime Minister Péter Magyar came to power. Since then, member states have been negotiating the terms for the release of the €6.6 billion.

According to Kallas, the agreement reached on Friday splits the pot into three strands:

€4.7 billion for reimbursements
€1 billion for joint procurement of military equipment
€900 million for the EU mission that trains Ukraine's armed forces

Some countries will wire their share of €4.7 billion in reimbursements directly to Ukraine, Kallas said without naming them.

Several legislative acts need to be adopted before the money is actually released.

The news comes at a precarious time for Ukraine, which is staring down a $27 billion (€23.67 billion) shortfall in its Ministry of Defence.

The European Commission and the International Monetary Fund are in talks with the Ukrainian government to determine a possible solution.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned the budget crunch needed to be resolved between October and November to pay for drone deliveries scheduled for the first three months of 2027.

"Everyone understands that Ukraine cannot be left on its own and that more must be invested in Ukrainian-made drones and missiles, because most of this deficit is precisely the funding needed for weapons," Zelenskyy said.

"Everyone understands how difficult it is to get through this period amid constant strikes. Ukraine will not be left alone."

2026-09-25T12:24:00.586-07:00

Ukraine's steel industry stops for the first time in 100 years

Lost Donbas coking coal, a blockaded Odesa and Russian missiles on the blast furnaces have shut down the industry that earned almost a quarter of Ukraine's export revenue before the war. / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin September 25, 2026

Ukraine went a whole week in September without smelting a single tonne of steel, the first time in 100 years, as Russian missiles and a closed Black Sea shut down its second-biggest export industry.

Oleksandr Vodoviz, head of the office of Metinvest's chief executive, speaking at an earlier Kyiv International Economic Forum. Source: Military Summary

"In September there was a week when Ukraine, for the first time in 100 years, did not smelt a single tonne of steel," Oleksandr Vodoviz, head of the office of Metinvest's chief executive, told the Economic Resilience Forum hosted by Forbes Ukraine in Kyiv on September 23, Interfax-Ukraine reported.

All of the country's big steelmakers - ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, Metinvest, the Petrovsky works in Dnipro and pipe and wheel maker Interpipe - have been hit and are not working, he said.

"Absolutely all plants are destroyed," Vodoviz said. "There were multiple hits at each. Many people have lost their lives. We are not operating."

That is going to be a big problem. While Ukraine famously was, together with Russia, the world’s biggest grain exporter, in 2021 the biggest export category was metals, which earned $15.98bn against $15.55bn for crops that year. Since then total exports have almost halved from $68.2bn in 2021 to $40.3bn last year and metals only brought in $4.7bn in 2025, with their share in exports was halved to 11.7%. Now that will fall to zero

Ukraine's exports 2021-2025

Total goods exports

2021
$68.24bn

2025
$40.3bn

Metals exports
2021
$15.98bn

2025
$4.7bn

Metals' share of exports

2021
23.40%

2025
11.70%

Everything else
2021
$52.26bn

2025
$35.6bn
Sources: Economy Ministry via the Cabinet of Ministers, State Customs Service via Mezha

Fortress plants under attack

The Kremlin has been targeting Ukraine’s main factories and plants as part of its economic war, but as steel mills are also very effective as fortresses for Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) fighters to hold up in in the battles with Russia’s invading troops, many plants have also been the scene of intense battles and been destroyed in the process.

The most famous was the siege of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the port city on the Sea of Azov in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian defenders led by the Azov Regiment, alongside marines, border guards and police, held out in the plant's tunnels for weeks after Russian forces had surrounded the city, sheltering civilians until they were evacuated in early May.

Cut off from supplies and with hundreds wounded, the garrison was ordered by Kyiv to lay down its arms after 82 days of fighting, in its commander Denys Prokopenko's count. The last defenders surrendered on May 20, 2022, and Mariupol has been under Russian occupation ever since.

More than 2,000 went into captivity by Russia's count. At least 50 were killed in July 2022 when the prison at Olenivka where many were held was blown up. 188 came home in the September 2022 prisoner swap, which Kyiv paid for by handing over Viktor Medvedchuk, and others have followed in later exchanges. But more than 600 Azov fighters remain in Russian captivity, 270 of them convicted of terrorism, according to Azov commander Colonel Bohdan Hrishenkov, United24 Media reported in August. The owner of the plant, Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, says the plant is beyond repair and worth a reported $1.4bn. Now all his metallurgical plants have gone offline, the basis of his fortune.

IntelliNews has a ledger tracking the attacks and production status of Ukraine’s leading metallurgical plants in its metallurgy ledger that posts a full list of the is updated every day and is included in the IntelliNews Missile War Monitor.

Destruction of Ukraine’s economy

Metals were Ukraine's biggest source of hard currency before the war, and the industry has stopped just as Kyiv needs every dollar it can earn. The draft 2027 budget leaves a $32.6bn hole to be filled by foreign partners, the hryvnia hit a record low against the euro in August and the National Bank of Ukraine raised its key rate to 16% on September 17. Losing steel on top of the grain trapped by the port blockade of Odesa takes out the country's two biggest export earners at once.

And the destruction of the metallurgical sector comes on top of the more recent Russian effort to systematically destroy Ukraine’s retail infrastructure, following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s launch of a warehouse war that Russian President Vladimir Putin said had opened a “Pandora’s box” and transition from a war of attrition that has been running for the last four years to the start of a total war.

Rebuilding the metal plants after the eventual end of the conflict will be extremely difficult and require many billions of dollars of investment. Five of Metinvest's blast furnaces and two at ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih have been destroyed, Vodoviz said. Restarting a furnace costs about $50mn and building a new one about $500mn. Metinvest restarted one furnace at Zaporizhstal, and it ran for about 10 hours before the plant was hit again by Russian missiles. The company asked ministries for help and was offered UAH2mn-5mn ($44,000-$111,000), he said, and the government has no plan for dealing with the wrecked plants. Metinvest can plan only about a month ahead.

From a quarter of exports to almost nothing

In 2021, the last year before the full-scale invasion, Ukraine exported $15.98bn of base metals and metal products out of $68.24bn of goods, the Cabinet of Ministers said, about 23% of merchandise exports and about 8% of that year's GDP of $199.8bn, on World Bank data. Adding iron ore, the mining and metals complex earned $22.2bn, a third of all exports, according to industry think tank GMK Center. The country made about 21.4mn tonnes of steel that year.

The war cut that down in stages. By 2025 exports of the mining and metallurgical complex had fallen to $6.2bn, or 15.2% of exports, and the sector's share of GDP had slipped to 5.5% from 7.2% a year earlier. On a narrower count of metallurgical products alone, exports were $4.7bn in 2025, about 9% of the total and roughly 2% of GDP, and fell to $1.7bn in the first five months of 2026, about 7% of exports and more than two-thirds below pre-war levels.

Steel output fell 57.3% y/y in August to 277,000 tonnes and pig iron 65.6% to 257,100 tonnes, according to the Ukrmetalurgprom industry association, LIGA.net reported on September 9. By mid-September Russian strikes had idled 90% of steel output and Metinvest had declared force majeure on some contracts. In the week Vodoviz described, it was zero.

The coal went first

The first big blow came from the front line rather than the air. As IntelliNews reported, taking out the Pokrovske coal mine in Donetsk region, owned by Metinvest, very effectively brings Ukraine’s metal production to a halt without touching any of the plants themselves.

The mine was the only source of the coking coal Ukraine's blast furnaces need - the country's other mines in government-held territory produce thermal coal of the wrong grade for steelmaking. Metinvest shut it on January 13, 2025 as Russian troops closed in on Pokrovsk, and the steel industry had to import about 2.5mn tonnes of coking coal a year, Dragon Capital analyst Denys Sakva said at the time – a lot of it from Russia, the only local source of coking coal.

"With its loss, Ukraine's steelmakers are now completely dependent on foreign coal supplies," Sakva said at the time.

Metinvest began shipping coal from its US mines under its United Coal Company, adding sea and rail freight to the cost of every tonne of steel, and by September 2025 was planning to sell the loss-making US unit. The mine had supplied about two-thirds of domestic coking coal demand in 2023, and its loss followed the destruction of Mariupol's Azovstal and Illich works in 2022, which had left the sector working at 15-20% of capacity by early 2023.

Then the ports

The second blow was the closure of the Odesa ports since the missile war escalated in July. Russia's strikes on merchant shipping and the Greater Odesa terminals from late July, part of a wider drone war crippling ports on both sides of the Black Sea, shut the route that carried about half of Ukraine's steel exports, 95% of its pig iron and half its iron ore in the first half of 2026. Industry estimates put the loss at $150mn-200mn a month in export revenue, and the same blockade that set off a global food price shock by trapping Ukraine's grain could cost the economy 5.3% of GDP by 2027 on one estimate.

Ironically it is overflowing warehouses that brought the iron ore producers to a halt, not Russian bombs. Pivdennyi GZK in Kryvyi Rih, controlled by Akhmetov and Vadym Novynskyi, stopped mining at the end of July because shiploads of ore had piled up in warehouses and ports with nowhere to go. Ferrexpo halted its Poltava plant, Ukraine's biggest pellet producer, from August 3 while the plant itself remains largely untouched thanks to three of four planned vessels stuck in port and one struck by a Russian drone. Metinvest's southern ore plant stood idle for the same reason.

And finally the missiles

Now things have gone up a notch and the plants themselves are taking damage. The strikes on the steelworks themselves began in August. A ballistic missile hit Zaporizhstal in mid-August, killing seven workers and stopping the plant, and on the night of August 16 a missile hit ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, forcing a partial shutdown. The two works make about 70% of Ukraine's steel. Kamet Steel in Dnipropetrovska oblast followed, and repeated barrages in early September disabled blast furnaces at all three works.

"The margin of safety is almost exhausted," Ukrmetalurgprom president Oleksandr Kalenkov said in August, warning that further escalation could cost the country half its foreign-currency earnings from mining and metals.

Even before the missiles, EU tariff quotas and the carbon border adjustment mechanism were set to cut exports by 1.3mn-1.5mn tonnes a year, pushing the industry into a "perfect storm", and Metinvest warned in August that EU trade curbs threatened half of Zaporizhstal's capacity. Vodoviz listed the same three problems on September 23: the strikes, the blocked ports and EU restrictions on Ukrainian metal.

Ukraine's economy has been shutting down since Russia turned on its power grid last winter, and Kyiv halved its 2026 growth forecast to 0.5% in August, before the worst of the strikes on the steel mills. Steel survived the loss of Mariupol, the loss of Donbas coal and four years of blackouts. What finally stopped it was a closed sea and a campaign of missiles aimed at its furnaces.

Russia's own mills lifted output 3.3% in July on strong demand from the military industrial sector.

2026-09-25T12:23:23.236-07:00

Euronews explains: What would a US diesel export ban mean to European countries?

By Marta Pacheco

Published on 25/09/2026 - EURONEWS

The EU has deepened energy ties with the US while seeking to reduce its exposure to geopolitical shocks. Yet US plans to limit diesel exports expose how quickly commercial dependence can become a strategic vulnerability.

A United States ban on diesel exports would not necessarily leave Europe’s fuel stations empty overnight, but it could push up prices, forcing European governments into another round of emergency intervention just as households, farmers and hauliers are feeling the effects of the wider energy crisis.

The prospect of Washington keeping those barrels at home is especially uncomfortable for Brussels, which acknowledged the bloc’s dependency on US diesel after ditching Russian energy. The Commission said the issue was being discussed with EU countries and the industry.

The bloc is already facing a fuel shortage after the war with Iran disrupted supplies from the Middle East, while Russia has also restricted diesel exports.

Meanwhile, European diesel prices have more than doubled since the beginning of the year and were about 38% higher year-on-year in mid-September, while refineries around the world are operating close to full capacity.

Analysts argue that a potential US ban would remove a crucial supply source from an already exceptionally tight global market.

“For Europe, the immediate effect is higher prices. North-West Europe would have to bid up to pull in replacement cargoes, and it would be bidding against the Mediterranean, Latin America and West Africa for the same limited pool of barrels,” Zameer Yusof, an energy analyst at market intelligence platform Kpler, told Euronews.

The EU has become far more reliant on US diesel since the loss of Russian supplies. The US has supplied around 180,000 barrels a day (b/d) of the EU’s roughly 580,000 b/d of extra-EU diesel imports this year — about 32%, up from 17% in 2025.

The dependence is even more striking in North-West Europe, where US supplies account for around 200,000 b/d out of 350,000 b/d from outside the region — roughly 57%, compared with 37% last year, according to Kpler figures.

That concentration means a partial US export ban could still have a sizeable impact on prices.

However, removing 30% of US supplies would not necessarily mean European diesel prices rise by 30%, or by a corresponding fraction, Kpler argues. Buyers would be forced to compete aggressively for replacement barrels, potentially pushing prices sharply higher.

The Feyzin Total oil refinery is seen outside Lyon, France, Friday, April 17, 2026. AP Photo / Laurent Cipriani

France hit first

Within the EU, France appears to be the most vulnerable country. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that the proposed ban would be “catastrophic”. The country is heading to the polls in 2027, with the energy crisis fuelling far-right rhetoric.

Before the Trump administration touted a diesel ban, the French leader asked the Commission to temporarily relax fuel specifications so European refineries could produce more diesel and jet fuel. He also urged Brussels to coordinate a second release of emergency oil reserves.

A US export ban would strengthen that argument: if Europe cannot count on imported refined fuel, it needs to squeeze more output from its own refineries. However, European refineries cannot manufacture hundreds of thousands of additional barrels overnight.

Paris imported about 63,000 b/d of US diesel this year, around 36% of its diesel imports. Its dependence is compounded by refinery closures at Grandpuits and Donges, leaving the country structurally short of diesel, Kpler warned.

The UK is also heavily exposed, importing about 50,000 b/d from the US, or 26% of its diesel imports, Kpler said. The closure of the Grangemouth refinery has increased its reliance on imports.

However, there is one cushion. Diesel is among Europe’s most heavily stored oil products, meaning inventories could absorb at least part of an initial disruption. That could prevent an immediate shortage, although it would not eliminate the underlying price pressure if the ban were to last.

Southern European markets have somewhat more protection from domestic and Mediterranean refining. Italy gets only around 4% of its diesel imports from the US, while Spain gets about 19%. Portugal is barely exposed. Spain’s Cartagena, Bilbao and Huelva refineries provide an important domestic supply buffer.

Europe has few obvious replacements

The bigger problem is what happens after the initial stocks are used. Europe cannot simply replace American diesel with another major supplier.

“India is the only credible substitute, but its export availability has been affected sharply,” Yusof said.

Indian exports have already fallen sharply — from around 582,000 b/d last year to 352,000 b/d this year. Indian diesel shipments to Europe have declined even more dramatically, from about 163,000 b/d to roughly 50,000 b/d.

Indian refiners are instead finding better returns in East Africa and Southeast Asia, while questions over Russian crude used in some Indian refineries also complicate European trade.

China and South Korea cannot realistically fill the gap either. Their diesel shipments to Europe this year were tiny — roughly 1,000 b/d from China and 2,000 b/d from South Korea

China faces EU restrictions on products made from Russian crude, while South Korea’s exports are tied up by established contracts in Asian markets and its overall export availability has declined.

An aerial view of the Martinez Refining Company is seen during sunset in Martinez, Calif., Wednesday, April 22, 2026. AP Photo / Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle

Time to rethink the definition of energy security

The diesel episode exposes a deeper weakness in Europe’s energy strategy.

The EU’s current predicament raises questions about whether the bloc needs larger strategic stocks of refined fuels, more resilient European refining capacity and stronger mechanisms for coordinating fuel supplies during a crisis.

Asked whether it was considering a second release of strategic oil reserves, the International Energy Agency had not responded at the time of publication.

The Commission’s decision to discuss the issue through its oil coordination group suggests Brussels is already treating it as an energy security question rather than a mere commercial dispute.

Meanwhile, the proposed US diesel ban appears to be driven in part by domestic political pressure. US diesel prices are nearly $7 a gallon, creating pressure on the Trump administration to demonstrate that it is doing something about the cost of living ahead of the November midterms.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been sounding out refiners about a voluntary restriction on exports as an alternative to a blanket 90-day ban.

A briefing from the Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRF) argued that a US diesel export ban would likely backfire, since refiners are already running at full capacity and cannot produce more without new capacity.

“Cut off from export markets, Gulf Coast refiners would see storage fill and margins fall, and many would reduce runs to catch up on maintenance postponed during the crisis. Because gasoline and diesel are produced together, the result would be less gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, and higher pump prices,” the EPRF briefing said.

2026-09-25T12:23:11.808-07:00

Russia's fuel crisis hits third wave as diesel shortage goes global

Ukrainian drones have idled up to half of Russia's refining capacity, Moscow is keeping its diesel at home and Washington is weighing its own export ban, leaving Europe most exposed. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin September 25, 2026

Russia is in the third wave of a fuel crisis that began in May, as Ukrainian drones keep hitting its refineries and Moscow hoards diesel just as the rest of the world runs short.

Drones damaged eight Russian refineries in the first three weeks of September, some of them more than once, and regional authorities are now having to steer petrol to filling stations "in manual mode", Forbes Russia reported on September 24. There were 12 strikes on refineries between September 1 and 23, after a record 29 in August, 17 in July and 14 in June, according to Sergei Selin, director of market analysis at the Russian consultancy Seala AI.

Russia is normally one of the world's biggest diesel exporters, with a surplus of more than 30mn tonnes a year, and its absence, on top of the disruption in the Gulf, has sent diesel prices to records from Iowa to Paris. That has left US President Donald Trump, heading into November's midterm elections, pressing Kyiv to stop hitting Russian refineries while his own administration debates a ban on US diesel exports. Europe, which buys more than half its diesel from the US, would take the heaviest blow.

Half the refining capacity idle

Seala AI estimated that as of September 24 about 477,000 tonnes a day of primary refining capacity was idle for unplanned repairs, roughly 53% of Russia's standard capacity, before counting mothballed units brought back into service and plants running above their design limits. That is below the peak of the first wave, 575,000 tonnes a day in mid-July. In barrels, about 3.5mn b/d of Russia's 6.6mn b/d of primary distillation capacity is offline, against typical pre-crisis throughput of 5.5mn b/d, the Russian Oil & Gas Monitor said, citing the consultancy.

The refinery damage ledger compiled by IntelliNews, which tracks every plant hit since the campaign began, counts 27 refineries struck in 201 dated attacks. Plants reported halted or cut in September account for about 108.5mn tonnes a year of capacity, about 33% of Russia's 327mn tonnes a year of nameplate capacity, rising to about 159.2mn tonnes a year (49%) if earlier halts at Tuapse, Salavat, Perm, Orsk and Tyumen still hold. Only four large refineries - Achinsk, Angarsk, Komsomolsk and Khabarovsk - have not been hit. Russian officials put the damage far lower: Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in early September that about 10% of refining capacity was under repair, and President Vladimir Putin gave a similar figure at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 3.

Rosneft has taken the worst of the September strikes. Its Ryazan refinery, with capacity of 17.1mn tonnes a year, was hit on September 6, Saratov (7mn tonnes) on September 8 and 11, Syzran (8.5mn tonnes) on September 15 and Kuibyshev (7mn tonnes) on September 22. Sibur's Nizhnekamskneftekhim and the Slavyansk ECO refinery were struck on September 13, Slavneft-YANOS in Yaroslavl on September 17 and Gazprom Neft's Moscow refinery on September 20. The plants attacked this month have combined capacity of 95.6mn tonnes a year, about 36% of the 266.5mn tonnes of crude Russia processed in 2024, the last year for which an official figure was published, Forbes Russia calculated.

Daniil Tyun, head of DA-Consulting, cautioned that adding up nameplate capacity overstates the loss, because a drone strike usually damages one or more units while the rest of the plant keeps running. Companies do not disclose which units have been hit, so analysts read the damage from indirect signs. Fuel from the Moscow refinery, which processed about 11.6mn tonnes of crude in 2024 and turned out 2.9mn tonnes of petrol and 3.2mn tonnes of diesel, vanished from the St Petersburg exchange from September 21 to 23 after the strike.

Two fuel markets

Moscow itself should avoid a physical shortage, Tyun said, because the capital has first call on supplies and can draw on refineries in the Urals and Siberia and on imports from Belarus, as it did when the Moscow plant stopped in June.

"Today I would already talk about two different Russian fuel markets," Tyun told the magazine. "In Moscow and a number of the largest cities, thanks to the redistribution of supplies, the situation outwardly remains relatively stable. But in some remote regions the physical availability of fuel is worse and its cost is significantly higher."

At a meeting on the fuel market chaired by Novak on September 21, officials named Tyva, Khakassia, Yakutia, the Novosibirsk region and the Krasnoyarsk territory as problem areas. A week earlier St Petersburg and the Leningrad region had topped the list, and deliveries to Yekaterinburg and the Chelyabinsk, Arkhangelsk, Tver, Belgorod, Perm and Krasnodar regions had to be organised by hand, with the energy ministry identifying gaps, oil companies finding extra volumes and Russian Railways moving them. The Kaluga and Zabaikalsky regions have since reimposed caps on petrol sales, and jet fuel is rationed at 26 airports.

Pump prices keep climbing. AI-95 petrol cost RUB80.78 ($0.96) a litre in the week to September 14, up 21% since the end of December, according to Rosstat. Exchange prices have gone the other way: AI-92 fell 3.6% on the St Petersburg exchange between September 1 and 23 to RUB69,887 ($828) a tonne, because traders and independent filling stations have stopped buying new contracts when they cannot be sure the fuel will be shipped, Tyun said.

Diesel stays at home

Moscow banned diesel exports by refiners from July 8, after earlier restricting sales by traders and small plants, and decided on September 15 to extend that ban to the end of October rather than let it lapse on September 30, the business daily Vedomosti reported. A wider ban on petrol exports, and on diesel exports by non-producers, runs to January 31, 2027. Exemptions for intergovernmental deals let Russia more than double diesel deliveries to Central Asia and Mongolia in August, but little else is leaving the country.

Farmers and the army both need the diesel Russia is keeping at home. Demand peaks through the harvest and autumn sowing, and fuel shortages were already hitting agriculture at the start of the harvest in July, while military demand has grown with every year of the war. Refiners also have to build up winter-grade diesel stocks, and the Russian Fuel Union, which speaks for independent retailers, lobbied Novak in August to keep the ban because diesel bought on the exchange was not being delivered.

Before the drone campaign Russia refined about 81.6mn tonnes of diesel a year against domestic demand of about 51mn tonnes, and seaborne diesel and gasoil loadings averaged about 817,000 b/d in 2025. Its diesel shipments fell to 504,600 tonnes in August from 743,000 tonnes in July. Together with the loss of Middle Eastern product exports behind the disrupted Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's key chokepoints, that has left between 2mn and 3mn b/d of diesel missing from world markets and sent diesel cracks to a record, on S&P Global data.

Trump's diesel problem

The shortage has reached American pumps. Average US retail diesel hit a record $6.528 a gallon on September 21, according to the American Automobile Association, against $3.76 in late February, just before the US and Israel attacked Iran. Trump said on September 22 that he had encouraged officials to consider curbing diesel exports, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright told oil executives in calls that evening to prepare for possible restrictions, Bloomberg* reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The administration is divided. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins backs a ban and Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Dan Sullivan have pushed for one, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is cool on the idea. Wright said on September 23 that "nobody wants a full blanket ban or zero exports of diesel" and that officials were working with refiners on a "simpler, voluntary, cooperative" way to get more diesel into the US market. A White House official called a Politico report that the administration was drafting a 90-day ban "fake news".

Trump has leaned on Kyiv as well. He urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on September 15 to stop hitting Russian diesel production, and before they met at the UN General Assembly on September 22 called Ukraine's strikes "a serious hit on the Russians" and "a serious hit on the price of diesel". Zelenskiy refused to stop on his own.

"President Trump asked me not to respond on Russian diesel refineries, oil. We don't want this game, and I suggest neither side plays it. Putin attacks us, we respond," Zelenskiy said after the meeting, according to a translation of his remarks by economist Tymofiy Mylovanov.

He offered instead a reciprocal energy truce, halting strikes on refineries if Russia stops attacking Ukraine's power grid, the target of its campaign to freeze Ukraine into submission. Washington agreed to carry the offer to Moscow, but the Kremlin has rejected it, and a truce Trump announced on September 13 never took hold. Putin has already warned that Kyiv opened a Pandora's box by hitting Russia's economy.

Europe is most exposed

A US ban would push the pain on to America's customers. The US exported an average 1.4mn b/d of distillates, mostly diesel, between March and June, about 5% of global demand of 28mn b/d, economist Robin Brooks wrote in "Will There Be an Export Ban on Diesel?" on September 24. Latin America would be "absolutely hammered", he wrote, and the Netherlands, Europe's energy logistics hub, and the UK would also be hit. Mexico, which depends on US imports for more than 40% of its diesel, is already on alert.

"In fact, there's a chance a diesel export ban could tip Europe into recession, which could then spill back to the US," Brooks wrote.

The EU imports more than half its diesel from the US, and those imports have risen to replace barrels lost to the war in the Middle East, Politico* reported on September 24. Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate in France's presidential election, warned that a US ban would have "incalculable" consequences for French people, and French President Emmanuel Macron said he had pressed Trump not to go ahead. Governments are already spending to shield drivers: Hungary has brought in targeted diesel compensation, Slovakia has capped fuel margins, and Europe faces a jet fuel deficit of 510,000 b/d in the fourth quarter.

A ban could backfire in the US too. With exports blocked, US storage tanks would fill within weeks and refiners would have to cut runs by about 2mn b/d, reducing gasoline output by about 650,000 b/d even if they maximised petrol yields, Morgan Stanley analysts including Martijn Rats wrote in a note on September 23, Bloomberg* reported. US diesel would get cheaper and fuel abroad dearer, with Europe "the most exposed", the bank said. Brooks expects no ban unless diesel prices "spike a lot further".

China is the one large supplier with room to add barrels. Beijing loosened fuel export restrictions in June, and Chinese fuel exports have risen to their highest level in more than three years as refinery runs recover, Capital Economics said in a note on September 24, though it listed reimposing export restrictions among the ways Beijing could cut its own crude imports if prices keep rising. Brooks doubts China would bail out Washington before the midterms: "China won't be helping the US."

The squeeze has been building for more than a year. Ukraine began to escalate its refinery attacks in the autumn of 2025, and by May drones had knocked out 25-30% of Russia's downstream capacity, forcing Moscow to turn to Belarus and India for petrol. A second wave in August brought rationing back to Moscow and saw oil companies default on 60% of exchange contracts. The third has arrived with the harvest still under way, winter stocks to build and every other big diesel exporter already stretched.

2026-09-25T12:16:33.086-07:00

Indonesia’s wildfire disaster risks a banking-sector hangover

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By IntelliNews - Surabaya Bureau September 24, 2026

Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK) has issued a formal warning regarding the systemic impact of environmental hazards on Indonesia's banking and economic sectors, the Indonesia Business Post reports. In an official statement from the body, OJK Chief Executive of Banking Supervision Dian Ediana Rae pointed to widespread forest and land fires across Kalimantan and Sumatra, amplified by the El Niño dry spell, as posing severe physical climate risks to financial institutions with high credit exposure in the affected regions.

At present, strong capital buffers help stabilise national credit metrics. However, the regulator emphasised that localised disruptions in climate-vulnerable sectors could impair borrowers' repayment capacities, potentially driving up non-performing loan (NPL) ratios.

Ecological and public health crisis

Driven by extreme drought, the independent forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas detected approximately 734,000 hotspots across Indonesia in mid-September, a figure over 30% higher than in the infamous 2019 season, the BBC reports. Since January, at least 895,657 hectares of land (nearly six times the size of Greater London) have been burnt. As of September 24, the physical impacts of the 2026 wildfire season have escalated into a major public health and environmental crisis.

As recorded in a Wildfire & Public Health Impact summary carried out from August to September 2026, the total number of respiratory illness cases have reached 175,000, including more than 40,000 toddlers, now suffering from pneumonia and bronchitis.

More than 54,000 personnel have been deployed as part of emergency operations with Indonesia receiving international support from Malaysia and Japan. Dozens of water-bombing aircraft have been deployed as have joint cloud-seeding operations alongside Japan's Self-Defence Forces to combat the fires across challenging peatland terrains.

Toxic smoke has also forced widespread school closures, and has caused disruption to local commerce while degrading air quality across Indonesia, as well as in the neighbouring countries of Malaysia (Sarawak), Singapore, and parts of the Philippines. The haze has devastated local biodiversity, highlighted by the death of a critically endangered orangutan rescued from a palm oil plantation in West Kalimantan. Reports also show protected proboscis monkeys or long-nose monkeys as being burned alive. In response, indigenous and civil society groups have filed a class-action lawsuit against central and regional government authorities, alleging negligence in preventing recurring wildfire disasters.

From real sector disruptions to NPL spillovers

OJK classifies these extreme weather events as physical climate risks that directly disrupt real-sector supply chains, operational costs, and corporate revenues. According to Dian Ediana Rae, the economic shock from land fires and prolonged El Niño dry spells spans multiple key industries, which includes vulnerable economic sectors. These can include agriculture, palm oil and forestry plantations, livestock, fisheries, food and beverage processing, trade, tourism, and education.

Commercial and retail borrowers are also experiencing diminished cash flow from production halts, rising operational expenses, school and business closures, and crop failures. This situation impairs their ability to service debt and spills over into the banking sector as asset quality deteriorates. Banks and rural banks (Bank Perekonomian Rakyat or BPRs) with concentrated lending portfolios in fire-prone or agrarian-dependent regions face higher NPL pressures than institutions with geographically diversified exposure.

Despite these localised pressures, OJK routinely conducts rigorous stress tests to evaluate banks' capital adequacy and liquidity reserves against environmental disasters. The latest results confirm that capital levels across commercial banks remain sufficient to absorb potential climate-induced losses.

The climate warning comes against the backdrop of solid overall banking performance. National credit quality remains within safe regulatory parameters, with the banking sector's gross NPL ratio standing at 2.09% in June 2026 (net NPL at 0.82%). Furthermore, overall bank lending in July 2026 accelerated to 13.58% year-on-year, reaching IDR9,135 trillion ($510.6bn), up from 12.67% growth in June.

However, growth in micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) lending remained subdued at just 1.62%, underscoring the acute vulnerability of smaller, agrarian-based borrowers who lack the financial buffers to weather severe climate events and health crises.

To safeguard regional financial institutions, particularly rural banks with balance sheets that are deeply tied to local agricultural economies, OJK is enforcing strict compliance under OJK Regulation (POJK) No. 9/2024. This regulatory framework seeks to mandate that institutions implement sustainable finance strategies, formulate Sustainable Finance Action Plans, and explicitly incorporate climate-related risk assessments into their core risk management and capital allocation strategies.

Economic loss all over the country

The broader economic fallout from the 2026 wildfire crisis, however, extends far beyond destroyed timber and physical land damage, Tempo reports. According to a recent impact study by the Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios), total potential economic losses from January to August 2026 alone are estimated between IDR39.29 trillion ($2.2bn) and IDR123.1 trillion with the upper bound representing nearly half (49.1%) of Central Kalimantan’s projected regional GDP. Direct asset destruction and disrupted business operations in trade, agriculture, hospitality, and food services accounted for at least IDR29.54 trillion (roughly 0.23% of national GDP). While West Kalimantan suffered the highest nominal economic loss at IDR5.7 trillion, the crisis has expanded well beyond traditional fire hotspots in Kalimantan and Sumatra to hit eastern provinces like West Papua (IDR4.3 trillion) and East Nusa Tenggara (IDR2.8 trillion).

When incorporating the severe public health burden of toxic smoke exposure, the financial strain escalates dramatically. Celios projects that healthcare expenses for diagnosed acute respiratory infections (ARI) has already reached IDR9.75 trillion across 1.78mn patients.

However, under a broader epidemiological scenario accounting for an estimated 17.4mn individuals who have suffered symptoms but face financial or geographical barriers to medical care, health-related costs surge to IDR93.56 trillion, a staggering figure equivalent to 67.6% of Indonesia's total health allocation in the 2026 State Budget.

Driven by high population density rather than sheer burnt acreage, West Nusa Tenggara (IDR19.01 trillion), East Java (IDR13.65 trillion), and Riau (IDR10.31 trillion) absorbed the heaviest health-related financial losses, further tightening regional consumer spending and compounding long-term credit risks for the financial sector.

2026-09-25T12:13:27.624-07:00

China installs 59% of world's new industrial robots

Global installations of factory robots hit a record in 2025 and the number in service passed 5mn for the first time. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin September 25, 2026

China installed 354,000 industrial robots in 2025, 59% of all new factory robots worldwide, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said on September 24 in its World Robotics 2026 report.

New installations of industrial robots in 2025 by country and China's share of the global total. Source: IFR World Robotics 2026, chart by Statista (CC BY-ND 3.0).

Chinese installations rose 20% y/y, helping lift global installations 11% to a record of around 603,000 units, according to the IFR data as charted by Statista. China put in more than nine times as many robots as the US, which moved into second place with 38,500 units, up 12%.

China's lead keeps widening. Its share of global installations has climbed from 32% in 2016 to 52% in 2022 and 54% in 2024, when it installed a then-record 295,000 units. The robot build-out feeds Beijing's drive to automate its manufacturing base, which already counts more than 43,000 smart factories. Chinese suppliers sold 195,000 of the robots installed at home last year, a 55% share of their domestic market, slightly below the 57% of 2024.

The other big industrial economies fell further behind. Japan's installations dropped 19% to 36,200 units, pushing it into third place, while South Korea installed 30,000 (down 1%) and Germany 25,000 (down 8%). India was the fastest-growing large market, up 15% to 10,500 units.

Europe had a weak year. Installations across the EU fell 11% to 60,500 units, with the car industry cutting its orders by a quarter, The Next Web reported, citing the IFR figures. Germany alone accounted for 41% of EU installations, while Italy fell 11% to 7,800 units, France 8% to 4,500 and Spain 15% to 4,300. Japan's Yaskawa has nonetheless been betting on the continent's east, opening its largest European robotics facility in Slovenia in June.

Global operational stock of industrial robots, 2010-2025. Source: IFR World Robotics 2026, chart by Statista (CC BY-ND 3.0).

The number of robots working in factories worldwide rose 9% to 5.08mn by the end of 2025, more than double the level of seven years earlier and almost five times the 1.06mn in service in 2010. Asia accounted for 76% of last year's installations.

"Industrial automation is progressing at high speed. The new mark of five million robots operational in factories worldwide is more than double the number seven years ago," Heffner said.

The IFR expects installations to grow 9% to 655,000 units in 2026 and reach 806,000 a year by 2029, citing supply-chain resilience, labour shortages driven by demographic change and advances in AI, machine vision and easier programming.

2026-09-25T12:09:54.128-07:00

DP World signs draft deal on $7bn Nigerian port and industrial zone

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By bne IntelliNews September 25, 2026

Nigeria's Ogun State has signed memoranda of understanding with DP World MEA FZE, the Middle East and Africa arm of Dubai-based ports and logistics operator DP World, to develop the proposed Gateway Deep Seaport and Ogun State Blue Marine Special Economic Zone.

The agreements envisage more than $7bn in initial investment and project more than 50,000 direct jobs if the projects reach full development, according to the Nigerian Presidency. The statement did not disclose how the investment would be divided between the projects, the amount DP World would contribute, or the eventual ownership, financing and operating structures.

The MoUs were signed in Paris on September 24 in the presence of President Bola Tinubu, Marine and Blue Economy Minister Adegboyega Oyetola and Nigerian Ports Authority Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Abubakar Dantsoho.

The federal government would provide regulatory and institutional support to move the projects towards implementation, Tinubu said, urging Ogun State and the investors to proceed while complying with regulatory requirements. The statement did not announce final construction or financing agreements.

Governor Dapo Abiodun said Ogun's deep-seaport vision had remained largely unrealised for more than three decades. Tinubu credited Abiodun's administration with securing the land and structuring the investment framework for the projects.

The proposed Gateway Deep Seaport at Ogun Waterside would have a four-kilometre berth and an 18-metre draught, allowing it to accommodate larger, deeper-draught vessels. It is intended to ease pressure on Lagos's Apapa and Tin Can Island ports and reduce logistics costs and delays.

The proposed Blue Marine Special Economic Zone would cover 10,000 hectares and is intended to accommodate manufacturing, processing, logistics and export-oriented industries.

Tinubu said the integrated port-and-zone development was intended to allow imported inputs and Nigerian raw materials to be processed into finished products for domestic and export markets, including trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area.

He said the federal government would facilitate road, rail and power connections for the projects. The 28-kilometre Ogun section of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway was scheduled for completion before the end of 2026 and would provide a transport link between the proposed port and industrial zone, Lagos and inland markets.

Abiodun said the development would form part of a wider multimodal network linking the Gateway International Airport, dry ports, the coastal highway and the deep seaport. Tinubu said the broader corridor would also include a proposed Nigerian Navy operating base and dockyard and the long-delayed Olokola, or OK LNG, project, which Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL) has been seeking to revive.

The corridor is also attracting separate port investment. IntelliNews reported in May that Dangote Industries had begun preliminary work on a separate deep-sea port at the Olokola Free Trade Zone in Ogun Waterside, intended to support its refining, fertiliser and other industrial exports.

2026-09-25T12:08:22.664-07:00

Argentina and US launch $7bn infrastructure corridor linking Vaca Muerta to Atlantic ports

The scheme is intended to link US investors with opportunities in Argentina’s energy, mining, infrastructure and technology sectors while strengthening supply chains for critical minerals and energy, including lithium, copper, oil and gas. / CC/SflexasFacebook

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By IntelliNews Latam desk September 25, 2026

Argentina and the United States on September 23 launched the “Andes-Atlantic Infrastructure Corridor”, a framework that could mobilise up to $7bn in US financing through 2027 to connect Argentina’s mining regions and Vaca Muerta with Atlantic ports through railways, pipelines, energy projects, ports and digital infrastructure, La Nación reported.

The initiative was presented at a US-Argentina forum on supply chains, energy and infrastructure at the Argentine consulate in New York. Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno and US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau represented the two governments at the announcement.

Washington described the corridor as its first partnership of this kind for global infrastructure and investment in the Western Hemisphere. The programme is intended to link US investors with opportunities in Argentina’s energy, mining, infrastructure and technology sectors while strengthening supply chains for critical minerals and energy, including lithium, copper, oil and gas.

The most concrete financing proposal involves Argentina LNG, the liquefied natural gas project led by YPF with Italy’s Eni and the United Arab Emirates’ XRG. The US Export-Import Bank, known as EXIM, has submitted an indicative, non-binding proposal for up to $6bn in long-term financing for the project.

The proposed EXIM financing would support the purchase of US goods and services needed to develop Argentina LNG. The proposal still requires final approval from EXIM's board and therefore does not yet represent an approved loan or disbursement.

Argentina LNG’s first phase calls for two floating liquefaction units off the coast of Río Negro with combined capacity of 12 million tonnes of LNG a year. Operations are projected to begin in 2031.

The project's partners estimate investment of $29bn through 2031, including about $24bn for pipelines, port facilities, processing plants and liquefaction units and another $5bn to develop the gas supply. Total investment over the project's lifetime is estimated at $51bn.

“Investing in Argentina is strengthening the economic security of the United States. The benefits are achieved by both countries. US machinery can expand our installed capacity and create skilled jobs in its country of origin,” Quirno said.

Landau said the administration of President Donald Trump was “very focused on economic diplomacy”, adding that EXIM was one of its most important tools and that Washington was using it “decisively”.

The announcement also highlighted a contract worth more than $1bn awarded to a consortium comprising US company Pumpco, Bonatti and Contreras Hermanos for the export pipeline system, although the contract remains subject to Argentina LNG's final investment decision.

The wider $7bn commitment is not a single loan. EXIM and Argentina signed a cooperation framework known as the US-Argentina Build the Future Framework to provide financing for projects supporting the corridor through 2027. The US Development Finance Corporation could also participate alongside private investors, while the document does not yet specify how the remaining funds will be allocated.

Potential projects listed under the corridor include the AMBA I high-voltage transmission line, estimated at $800mn and backed by an Inter-American Development Bank guarantee, freight railway projects involving the Belgrano, San Martín and Urquiza lines, freight connections between Vaca Muerta and Bahía Blanca, port works and projects linked to the Paraná waterway.

The framework also covers digital infrastructure, including a planned concession to expand and modernise Arsat's fibre-optic network, as well as possible investments in submarine cables, data centres and satellite connectivity.

The initiative is intended to reduce transport bottlenecks affecting exports of gas, oil, copper, lithium and other commodities. A US State Department delegation including officials from the department, EXIM and DFC is due to visit Buenos Aires, Jujuy and Salta in October to identify projects and advance potential transactions.

The US government said its financing tools and commercial network would support projects meeting international standards and using “trusted technology”. Effective disbursements will depend on individual projects completing contracts, financing conditions and final investment decisions.

2026-09-25T11:56:35.282-07:00

Kazakhstan detains navy chief of staff after 14 sailors perish in Caspian Sea tragedy

Kazakh naval forces performed search and rescue operations on the evening of September 24 after the sailors were swept to sea during maritime exercises on the Caspian. Fourteen of 17 died. / Ministry of Defence, KazakhstanFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin September 25, 2026

Authorities in Kazakhstan on September 25 arrested five defence ministry officials including the first deputy ‌commander and chief of staff of the naval forces, one day after 14 of 17 servicemen who were swept out to sea died during a training exercise.

The Interior Ministry announced the arrests, with those detained taken into custody on suspicion of negligence and violations of navigation rules.

Among the dead were a senior lieutenant, a sergeant and 12 conscript sailors, Meduza reported.

Military personnel who were ⁠disembarking from a patrol boat on the Caspian Sea coast in Mangystau Region got into difficulties in rough weather after a sudden deterioration in conditions, the authorities said. The three who survived were thrown into the water and were rescued.

Investigators are assessing the decisions taken ‌by ⁠those arrested and planned to examine the technical condition of the boat. They will look at whether there was adherence to safety rules and proper consideration of weather conditions.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared ⁠that September 25 would be a nationwide day of mourning.

Tokayev said a government commission would investigate the tragedy.

Others arrested included two military unit commanders, a marine infantry company commander and the commander of the Qaisar boat that the men were disembarking from, Trend reported.

“Those whose actions or inaction led to this tragedy will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev said, according to The Astana Times. The families of the dead will receive financial assistance on top of statutory payments.

The search for survivors, led by Defence Minister Dauren Kosanov, involved 252 personnel, 37 military divers, 14 vessels and more than 20 aircraft at its peak.

The servicemen were taking part in the "Defence of the Caspian-2026" exercise, which the Defence Ministry said on September 22 involved more than 500 servicemen, warships and coastal units.

Kazakhstan’s small navy amounts to around 3,000 personnel based on the Caspian Sea with patrol and missile ⁠boats, according to Reuters. The navy protects the country’s maritime border and offshore energy assets.

2026-09-25T11:54:30.397-07:00

Kazakh billionaire Timur Turlov brings his chequebook to the battle for world chess

Kazakh billionaire is the front runner to take over as president of FIDE, the world chess federation, in a controversial and hard fought election. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Leon Aris in Samarkand September 25, 2026

Three businessmen are battling to become the new president of the global chess federation, and Kazakh billionaire Timur Turlov is campaigning with his personal chequebook open. In Samarkand, the annual Chess Olympiad has doubled as backdrop to the end of the campaign trail.

With days to go before FIDE's (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) delegates vote for a new president, the candidates have been working the halls of the biggest Olympiad ever staged. Some 400 teams - 208 in the Open section and 192 in the Women's - have come to Samarkand, beating the record of 380 set in Budapest in 2024, and nearly 2,000 players, around 240 of them grandmasters, are competing in the first Olympiad ever held in Central Asia. Turlov has made himself unusually easy for the press to reach, squeezing interviews in between a lunch with delegates, commission meetings and a string of one-on-ones. "He doesn't shy away from interviews," said his media adviser, Milan Denic, adding that this is why Turlov likes to call himself his own campaign manager.

"We're feeling, frankly, ourselves extremely strong now in terms of position," he told journalists in Samarkand, the legendary city in the middle of the ancient Silk Road.

For the first time in FIDE's history, according to former president Arkady Dvorkovich, all three candidates come from business rather than from the chess world or politics. With three wealthy businessmen in the field, finances are playing a bigger role than in past FIDE races. And Turlov brings the largest business of the three front runners: he is chief executive of Nasdaq-listed brokerage Freedom Holding Corp and president of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation. His wealth is also where his rivals aim their fire, arguing that his bid blurs the line between a corporation and a sporting body.

The backstop

One of the central pillars of Turlov's plans for FIDE is a financial guarantee. He told IntelliNews he has committed at least $8.5mn to FIDE development funds over a four-year term and expects the final sum to pass $10mn.

The money breaks down into roughly $7mn of core development money plus a further $1.5mn earmarked for media. The core fund is meant to pay for open tournaments, coaching and arbiter training, and to subsidise travel for young talent from federations with less resources. Turlov called $8.5mn a floor rather than a ceiling. "I think it will be more than $10mn for sure," he said.

Asked whose money it would be, his own or Freedom's, he answered: "I think it's both. My personal guarantee is there at the end of the day, but I'm almost sure Freedom will also join me," he told IntelliNews in an exclusive interview, adding that he would, "persuade my board".

The weakness of a personal guarantee is that it is personal. When asked whether the money would walk out the door with him if he lost a re-election bid in 2030, Turlov conceded that "nobody knows what will happen in the next few years". He said he expected to remain wealthy enough to keep giving. He also said he would be happy to stay involved and help a new team run FIDE, as he had with Dvorkovich's administration, the outgoing FIDE president.

Freedom Holding has been actively sponsoring chess events long before Turlov’s bid for the presidency, such as organising a world blitz chess tournament on Wall Street in New York in December 2024 as well as the first chess open in Kazakhstan last year.

Making rock stars

The most concrete part of his programme is $1.5mn a year, for at least four years, to build media operations at member federations. It would fund training and dedicated staff, which Turlov says many smaller federations cannot afford. FIDE's own central media team would get a separate and bigger budget.

His logic is commercial. He described chess as a club of smart, wealthy and powerful people, and said governments and corporations will pay to be associated with it. He pointed to FIDE's recent sponsorship deal with Salesforce, which he called the largest single sponsorship contract in the organisation's history. The missing piece, he argued, is visibility.

"If we make our chess players real rock stars, if we make our events attractive and popular for the media, we will definitely achieve much better financial sustainability and independence for each member federation," he said.

The approach has already worked at home, where the Kazakhstan Chess Federation has become one of the country's most popular sports bodies.

Where Freedom ends

His critics' sharpest question is how to separate FIDE from Freedom. The group already has a hand in digital chess: its customers can earn mobile data by solving chess puzzles, and it owns the chess software company ChessBase. Meanwhile, Turlov wants FIDE to take a bigger role in regulating online play. That would leave a Freedom-owned platform operating under rules set by a body its chief executive runs.

The overlap sits exactly where FIDE's reformers want change. Dvorkovich told IntelliNews in an interview in Samarkand that digital transformation is one of the two things FIDE most needs.

"Most of our systems are still based on the previous generation of digital technology, if not an even older one, and that hurts," he said. "We are not using all the potential we have with such a massive base of players and chess lovers.”

Asked whether he would publish every contract between FIDE and Freedom and step back from those decisions, Turlov said he would recuse himself from any deal involving ChessBase and "make things as transparent as possible". He stopped short of committing to publish the contracts but said he did not expect there to be many.

Any such deal would also be vetted from both sides. On Freedom's side, it would count as a related-party transaction at a listed company, so it would have to be approved by an audit committee made up entirely of independent members. "The same would happen on the FIDE side," he said.

On the wider question of wearing both hats, as FIDE president and as Freedom's chief executive, Turlov did not see much of a problem. He pointed to Freedom's existing sponsorship of sport at home.

"I've never seen much conflict of interest between Freedom and a chess federation, or other non-profit activities, such as football in Kazakhstan," he said, adding that he would follow best practice on related-party deals.

He described Freedom as "a financial ecosystem" with no major potential interests in chess. Asked whether keeping the two apart would be hard, he was emphatic: "I'm sure it won't be difficult.”

Dvorkovich's man?

His rivals also cast him as the machine candidate: Dvorkovich's system with a new name on the door. A former Russian first Deputy Prime Minister, some have worried that Dvorkovich is representing the Kremlin’s interests, but he left government service in 2018 and has held no public position since, focusing all his attention on chess since then. Nevertheless, he was added to the EU sanctions list in July, triggering his immediate step down from acting as FIDE’s president, with Viswanathan Anand becoming interim president. The EU sanctioned him on the grounds that his actions supported policies undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity – a characterisation Dvorkovich has disputed.

The former FIDE president doesn’t deny his support of Turlov’s bid and asked whether Turlov would get his vote, Dvorkovich said: "Yes, 100%.”

Dvorkovich said FIDE needs Turlov's commercial and digital skills, while the rest should change "evolutionarily, not revolutionarily". He also argued that Turlov's consumer-facing business suits a sport with a vast amateur following better than his rivals' work selling to other companies. His one caveat was that Turlov must surround himself with arbiters, grandmasters and trainers.

Turlov insists he is his own man. Asked to name one thing he would do completely differently from his predecessor, he pointed to presidential term limits, which were reversed under Dvorkovich.

"Yes, we'll consider reforming term limits in line with best practice in sports organisations," he said. It was a promise to look at the issue rather than a pledge to restore them.

He was firmer about who would be in charge. "I think I'm a strong leader with a strong reputation of my own. Regardless of what anyone wants, I'll build my own team and culture, and take a different approach to managing FIDE," he said.

Asked what that would mean in concrete terms, Turlov said he could not yet say, because he has never worked inside the organisation. "I know very well how I manage businesses, but I don't have a full understanding of how FIDE is managed," he said. "It's very difficult to judge an organisation if you've never been part of it.”

Once in, Turlov said, he would bring FIDE's culture into line with the one he runs at Freedom, and not everyone would survive the change.

"We'll start changing it to make it more like my management culture. Some people will fit; some won't," he said.

He said who stays would depend on how staff respond to his reforms, including the overhaul of the development funds, on relations and trust with member federations, and on how the team handles conflict. "These are natural management issues, not political ones," he said.

"I need an organisation that will allow me to run the programme I'm campaigning on now," he added. "I'm experienced enough to know that some things look different from the inside. I want to keep my commitments and reform FIDE effectively, but first I need to get inside.”

Rocks thrown

The race has been bruising. Well before the delegates gathered in Samarkand, the three camps were trading formal complaints to FIDE, calls for investigations and threats of legal action, World Chess reported in August. The contest was being fought through the federation's disciplinary machinery as much as on the campaign trail.

Turlov has been in the firing line. Buettner, the co-founder of Freestyle Chess who is running with British chess official Malcolm Pein, wrote to the FIDE Council in early August. His letter, headed "Cease and Desist", accused the federation of lending its staff and communication channels to Turlov's campaign and threatened legal consequences if it did not stop, according to the same report.

Dvorkovich, whose administration was the target of that complaint, called the campaign "very competitive" and, "in some aspects, unfortunately, dirty".

"I don't like it. Using all the tools to achieve the goal is not my style, at least," he said.

In public, Turlov has cast the fight as healthy. "We have a real competition in this election, which is also great," he told journalists in Samarkand. He argued that a hard race forces candidates to get to know the delegates and "start to trust each other".

Both men predicted a Turlov win, though Dvorkovich allowed that the race is close. The decision rests with FIDE's General Assembly, which votes on September 26. Each national federation gets one vote, cast by secret ballot.

"I truly believe we are now living in a moment of chess growth," Turlov said. "We see very strong support for our programme, and we're very confident in our ability to win.”

2026-09-25T06:33:41.417-07:00

Trump Greenland Deal Panned as ‘Largely a Rebranding of the Status Quo to Claim a Win’

“Trump did an incredible job negotiating for things we already had in Greenland,” said one US critic.

Demonstrators rally outside the US Consulate in Nuuk, Greenland on January 17, 2026 to protest President Donald Trump’s designs on the autonomous Danish territory.
(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 19, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Danish and international commentators dismissed President Donald Trump’s claim that the deal he announced Friday gives the United States “permanent control” over Greenland’s security as what one journalist called a “repackaging” of long-standing agreements spun as a foreign policy win.

Trump—who has repeatedly threatened to gain control of the autonomous Danish territory, including by military force—said on his Truth Social network: “I am pleased to announce that the United States of America has entered into an Agreement with The Kingdom of Denmark, and Greenland, that gives the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many US concerns. There will be NO COST to the United States!”

“Additionally, from now on, no US adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval,” the president continued. “This is an ‘Infinite Life’ Agreement, there is no end!”

“We look forward to working with the wonderful people of Denmark and Greenland toward a magnificent future with respect to this large, and highly strategic, parcel of land,” Trump added. “We will be very protective of it! This is a dream come true for the United States of America, one that is very important, historic, and special.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed what he called a “historic deal” and “a huge win for the United States and the American people.”

A joint statement released by the office of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen, who chairs the Naalakkersuisut—Greenland’s governing body—confirmed that “Greenland, Denmark, and the United States are expected to sign an agreement on strengthened security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic area next week” at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Frederiksen stressed that the agreement “recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom [of Denmark] and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination,” while Nielsen said the pact “is to the benefit of us all.”

While the official text of the deal is not yet public, observers said it is unclear how it differs from the terms of a Cold War-era agreement that already gives the US broad military access to Greenland.

“In terms of rights, they were already allowed quite a lot under the original agreement,” Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen, said of the United States in a Saturday interview with The New York Times. “Is there anything here that one could not have achieved without this crisis?”

University of Maryland government and politics professor David Karol said on Bluesky that “this seems to be largely a rebranding of the status quo to claim a win.”

Karol likened the Greenland deal to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that replaced the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement—which Trump called the “worst trade deal ever made”—during the president’s first term. Critics noted that differences between the two pacts were “mostly cosmetic,” as one expert put it.

As the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran dragged on with no end in sight, the US president also pursued a deal to end the conflict that observers noted was broadly similar, and even more favorable to Tehran, to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—better known as the Iran nuclear deal—signed during the Obama administration and unilaterally abandoned by Trump during his first term, despite Iranian compliance.

Sofie Pultz, an international policy research fellow at the progressive UK think tank Institute for Public Policy Research, told LBC on Saturday that “it does sound like the Americans have accepted a repackaging of all deals and agreements, maybe with Denmark footing some of the defense bill. But overall, there’s not a lot of new stuff in here.”

Some Danish commentators were more blunt in their assessment of the deal. Henrik Højgaard Sejerkilde wrote for Jyllands-Posten that “everything suggests that Donald Trump’s agreement on the military presence in Greenland is a flea market find, found in diplomatic recycling.”

Other Danish observers expressed relief that what many viewed as an utterly unnecessary clash between two NATO allies has seemingly been defused.

“One can hope that the crisis of Greenland ends here—but one can never be sure,” Jacob Heinel Jensen of the Danish daily newspaper Berlingske said. “There is reason to be cautiously optimistic that this nonsense of taking over Greenland is now over. But with Trump, you can never be sure.”

2026-09-25T06:20:58.605-07:00

Weighing 2028 White House Run, AOC Says Stakes of Race Would Be ‘All or Nothing’

“Life doesn’t wait for you to be ready for things,” the Democratic congresswoman said amid nationwide progressive political momentum. “Sometimes life just makes things ready for you.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) attends a news conference with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the US Capitol on March 25, 2026.
(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Sep 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighs whether to run for president in 2028, there are numerous factors that complicate her decision: her identity as a Latina woman, her role as a leader in a progressive movement on the verge of unprecedented power, and her considerations about raising a family in the future.

Whatever decision the 36-year-old Democratic congresswoman makes, however, it will be “all or nothing,” she said in an interview published Tuesday by The New York Times, in which she spoke candidly about the stakes of what would be a historic and potentially transformative bid for the nation’s highest office.

Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 2018 in a victory over the Democratic Party establishment that became a model for the wave of progressive momentum that has defined this year’s cycle.

Amid what she described as the “ascendance” of her movement—marked by the insurgent victories of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed over opponents with establishment support and big money behind them—Ocasio-Cortez is now wondering aloud whether her own moment has arrived.

“There’s an argument that some make that this is a very unique political window and, oftentimes in politics, you do only get one shot,” she said. “And you don’t—and just in life in general—life doesn’t wait for you to be ready for things. Sometimes life just makes things ready for you.”

But she is well aware of the obstacles and sacrifices, both personal and political. Having recently opened up publicly about receiving fertility treatments, she wondered aloud what a potential candidacy might mean for her life, including a possible future pregnancy.

She is also well aware that she would be up against the weight of very recent history. Two of the last three Democratic candidates for president, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris, were women, and they both lost to President Donald Trump after campaigns in which sexism—and, in Harris’ case, racism—featured prominently in attacks against them.

“Pretty candidly, I think about my identity,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I’m not naïve to the fact that we are living under a very regressive administration, and I happen to be a woman, and I, you know, happen to be Latina. And I think that there’s a lot of conversation about electability, and I don’t kind of shy away from those realities.”

Those realities are indeed hard to ignore, especially in contrast to her mentor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who ran two formidable Democratic primary campaigns for president in 2016 and 2020 and with whom Ocasio-Cortez embarked on a wildly successful “Fight Oligarchy” rally tour last year, speaking to large crowds in both red and blue districts.

Though they have long campaigned together and advance a platform centered on the same signature policies of Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and a tax on billionaire wealth, Sanders consistently ranks among the most well-liked politicians in office, while a New York Times/Siena poll this month showed AOC with just 30% favorability, compared with 41% unfavorability among likely voters.

There are other paths in front of AOC that could put her on a more traditional long-term trajectory to the White House, which has never in modern history been occupied by a president who ascended straight from the US House.

She also said she was considering a primary bid against the Democratic Party’s current Senate leader, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), whom many Democratic voters have come to see as the embodiment of all that is sclerotic and unchanging about their party’s entrenched elite.

At a time when backing from corporations and other powerful special interests plays an unprecedented role in achieving political power, Ocasio-Cortez emphasized her near-exclusive backing from small donors, which she said makes her one of “very few people who are financially independent from special interests that are able to advocate directly for the needs of working people.”

Regardless of the decision she makes, she recognizes the enormous stakes.

“It’s very all or nothing,” she said. “If I were to run in this cycle, and not win, I would be done.”

“And I am not opposed to that,” she added. “That, in and of itself, does not exclude the decision... But it has to make it worth it.”

Ocasio-Cortez has previously emphasized that her “ambitions” have less to do with achieving the highest possible seat for herself than with helping her movement succeed.

“My ambition is to change this country,” she said during a forum in May. “Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go, but single-payer healthcare is forever, a living wage is forever, workers’ rights are forever, women’s rights, all of that.”

She told the Times that the question that will ultimately determine her path forward is: “Where can I do the most good?”

2026-09-25T06:13:07.940-07:00

‘Corruption of the Highest Order,’ Says Troy Jackson After Explosive Susan Collins Report

“We deserve answers about every contract and every conversation that Collins and her team facilitated on the backs of taxpayers. The jig is up.”

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson speaks at a town hall on September 13, 2026 in Biddeford, Maine.
(Photo by Joseph Prezioso/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Sep 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Maine Democratic US Senate candidate Troy Jackson pounced on Tuesday after ProPublica published a damning story putting incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins at the center of what the publication described as a “sprawling pay-to-play operation.”

In a statement released shortly after the ProPublica story dropped, Jackson accused Collins of engaging in “corruption of the highest order.”

‘Time We Send Her Packing,’ Troy Jackson Says of Collins Voting to Confirm 2 Anti-Abortion Judges in a Week

“Susan Collins delivered millions in taxpayer dollars for a corrupt donor bankrolling her campaign,” said Jackson, “and then [President] Donald Trump helped her cover it up.”

The ProPublica report unearthed internal records revealing an FBI investigation into defense contractor Navatek, now known as Martin Defense Group, for making campaign contributions to politicians in exchange for federal contracts.

According to ProPublica, former Navatek CEO Martin Kao told a group of FBI agents and federal prosecutors in 2022 about a 2019 meeting he’d had with the head of a pro-Collins super political action committee where he committed to cut a big check to the Maine Republican’s campaign if she steered federal cash to his company.

After the meeting, ProPublica wrote, Kao “sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company” and then told Navatek executives in an internal email two months later that “Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts.”

The alleged corruption outlined in the report went far beyond Collins, as Kao also provided FBI agents with a 50-page document that named “dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers, and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts.”

However, the probe into Kao’s alleged efforts to bribe politicians was shut down shortly after Trump returned to the White House in 2025, which Jackson said may explain why Collins “voted with him 96% of the time and has rubber-stamped his agenda to hurt Maine.”

“Susan Collins doesn’t care,” Jackson added, “that we’re losing our healthcare that ICE is killing people on the streets, and that we’ve been dragged into a pointless war—as long as her donors get their contracts and her coffers get filled. We deserve answers about every contract and every conversation that Collins and her team facilitated on the backs of taxpayers. The jig is up.”

Annie Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, disputed the allegations made in the ProPublica story, and accused the publication of wrongly lending credibility to Kao, whom she said “began making outlandish charges about the Collins office, deflecting blame from himself” for his own criminal behavior.

“The seven-year-old allegations made against Sen. Collins and her staff in this piece are categorically false,” said Clark. “There have never been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator campaign, and the campaign was never the target of the FBI investigation.”

‘Incredible Story of Corruption’: Bombshell Report Puts Susan Collins at Center of Massive Bribery Scheme

ProPublica reported that the US senator from Maine, now running for a sixth term, was the “most important patron” of a defense company accused of bribing members of Congress for federal contracts.

US Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) arrives for a Senate hearing on June 17, 2026.
(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Sep 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Explosive reporting published Tuesday by the investigative outlet ProPublica details how US Sen. Susan Collins was at the center of a “sprawling pay-to-play operation” under which the chief executive of a Hawaii-based defense contractor allegedly funneled campaign cash to lawmakers in exchange for lucrative federal contracts.

ProPublica’s story—based on internal emails, thousands of pages of legal records, interviews, and other evidence—reveals for the first time the existence of an FBI investigation into possible bribery of members of Congress, including Collins, by the defense contractor Navatek, a probe that was shuttered after President Donald Trump took office for his second term.

In late 2019, according to ProPublica, the head of a pro-Collins super PAC, Scott Reed, met with then-Navatek CEO Martin Kao and other executives at a Washington, DC bakery and asked them for a $500,000 donation to the longtime Maine senator’s 2020 reelection bid.

“If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding,” ProPublica reported. “After the Corner Bakery meeting, [Kao] sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email.”

In 2022, Kao pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions. The $150,000 check to the pro-Collins group, the 1820 PAC, was funneled through an entity titled “the Society of Young Women Scientist [sic] and Engineers.” The money flowed from Navatek’s account, violating the ban on federal government contractors making campaign donations.

ProPubulica revealed that Kao, facing years in federal prison, handed FBI agents “a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers, and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts.” Kao also told federal agents that Navatek’s federally funded research “was of no real value,” according to ProPublica.

“Of all the politicians Navatek courted under Kao’s leadership, Collins was its most important patron,” the investigative outlet reported. “The senator’s office steered government contracts worth millions toward the company while her campaign was pumping Kao and his network for donations, according to emails seen by ProPublica. Sometimes they cut checks within 24 hours of the annual defense spending bill, which funds military contracts, clearing a key Senate hurdle.”

Collins, who is currently running for a sixth Senate term, denied allegations of bribery through a spokesperson, who dismissed Kao’s claims as “outlandish” and said the Collins campaign “disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Kao had made without our knowledge.”

But ProPublica’s reporting details, with documentary evidence, Collins’ yearslong relationship with Kao, who first met the Maine senator face-to-face in 2018.

“In that first meeting with Collins and her staff, Kao pitched an $8 million boat hull research project for Navatek and [the University of Maine]. Collins seemed supportive,” the outlet noted. Kao funneled donations to Collins’ campaign, and the senator later included funding for Navatek’s project in the annual US military budget.

“Emails showed her staff made it clear to the Navy that it should send the money to Navatek,” ProPublica reported.

The outlet also revealed the details of a 2019 meeting between Kao, Collins, and Amy Abbott, who was then serving as the campaign finance director for the senator’s 2020 reelection campaign. The meeting took place before an event at Navatek’s Maine headquarters, where Collins posed for pictures with Kao.

“Before the event, Kao said, Collins, Abbott, and another staffer met with him in private,” ProPublica reported. “One of the staffers told Kao the campaign expected more donations. It was in this meeting that Collins said, ‘You’ve seen me deliver,’ he told the FBI.”

Martin Kao, second from left, was pictured with Sen. Susan Collins during an event in August 2019. (Photo: Sen. Susan Collins/Facebook)

Avi Asher-Schapiro, one of four ProPublica reporters who bylined the bombshell story, lamented that “we may never know the full story” of the large-scale bribery scheme alleged by Kao because the Trump administration “took a wrecking ball to the FBI teams and DOJ lawyers specializing in these cases—everyone who worked it is gone.”

“And as far as we know,” Asher-Schapiro added, “the FBI abandoned a witness who might have been able to expose a generational corruption scandal.”

The report was published just weeks before the November midterms, when Collins will attempt to retain her seat against former Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson, who has said that billionaires and corporate-funded super PACs “have her in their pockets.”

2026-09-25T06:03:33.607-07:00

Nobel-Winning Economists Say California Billionaire Tax Could Be ‘Turning Point in the Battle Between Democracy and Oligarchy’

“What will allow California to thrive in the future,” the economists said, “is not letting a handful of billionaires live tax-free: it is adequate public spending on health, education, and public infrastructure, key engines of economic growth.”

An attendee holds a sign before the start of a rally during the campaign kickoff for the California Billionaire Tax Act at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, February 18, 2026.
(Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Sep 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As California voters head to the polls this November, their vote on whether to enact a first-of-its-kind billionaire wealth tax may mark “a turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy,” says a group of Nobel Prize-winning economists.

The fight over Proposition 40—a ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of those with $1 billion or more in order to fund the state’s healthcare system—has heated up in recent weeks.

The initiative remains popular, with 52% of voters in the state supporting it, according to a poll out last week. But California’s elite have lined up at least $156 million behind an aggressive campaign to kill it, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin alone giving at least $102 million.

And while the proposal has strong backing from progressive politicians and labor unions, some prominent Democrats have tried to stop it, most notably Gov. Gavin Newsom.

As the rich flood the airwaves with ads warning that taxing their wealth would bring about economic ruin, six Nobel laureates, all of whom have won the prestigious prize for their work in economics, signed an open letter on Saturday endorsing Prop. 40.

They are inequality scholar Daron Acemoglu, global poverty researcher Abhijit Banerjee, labor and public finance economist Peter Diamond, anti-poverty economist Esther Duflo, trade economist and columnist Paul Krugman, and inequality and globalization economist Joseph Stiglitz.

“Proposition 40 would be the first-ever tax on billionaire wealth enacted anywhere in the world,” the economists wrote. “California is the right place to take this historic step.”

They explained that the growing number of billionaires in the state in recent decades has helped to make California “one of the most unequal places in America.” While the state’s richest 0.001% of residents were worth a combined $700 billion a decade ago, its 250 billionaires are now worth about $2.3 trillion—equivalent to the entire annual income of the state’s 20 million taxpayers.

“This extreme wealth has translated into extraordinary power,” the economists wrote, citing data showing that during the 2024 election, billionaires accounted for 19% of all federal election spending in the US and that these same billionaires are now marshaling huge sums of money to oppose a tax that would affect them.

While acknowledging that many of California’s wealthiest have “made important contributions, for which they have been amply rewarded,” the researchers noted their use of loopholes in the tax system to effectively pay a lower tax rate than the average Californian.

Most billionaire wealth is held in the form of stocks and other assets whose gains are not generally subject to income tax until they are sold.

As a result, billionaires in the state paid about $3 billion in state income taxes per year from 2019-25, while their fortunes increased by about $1.4 trillion over the period. Dividing total state income tax by that increase equals roughly 1.6%. Meanwhile, the average California family pays about 5-6% of their annual income in state income taxes.

The economists argued that enacting a wealth tax would allow the state to play “catch-up,” raising about $100 billion—enough to offset federal cuts to the state’s Medicaid program enacted in the Republican budget legislation last year, which have helped to fuel thousands of layoffs at hospitals around the state.

They also disputed a common counterargument that the tax will spur billionaire flight from the state and “doom” Silicon Valley.

Not only would the tax apply to any billionaire living in the state as of January 1, 2026, meaning most would not have had time to relocate; they also pointed out that in 2026, after Prop. 40 was announced, California has attracted 80% of the nation’s venture capital funding, compared to just 50% prior to 2025, according to data from PitchBook’s Venture Monitor.

“What will allow California to thrive in the future,” the economists said, “is not letting a handful of billionaires live tax-free: It is adequate public spending on health, education, and public infrastructure, key engines of economic growth to which it is only fair to ask the ultrawealthy to contribute.”

They added that passing Prop. 40 “isn’t just critical for Californians,” but could “kickstart a movement to tax ultra-high-net-worth individuals in other states—and eventually at the federal level and in other countries.”

The six Nobel laureates who signed Saturday’s letter are not the first prominent economists to publicly advocate for the wealth tax. University of California, Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez helped draft the proposal, while Gabriel Zucman, a chaired professor at the Paris School of Economics, has conducted research underpinning it. Paris School professor Thomas Piketty and former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich have also come out in support of the ballot initiative.

Responding to the letter from the Nobel laureates, Dutch historian and wealth tax advocate Rutger Bregman—whose School for Moral Ambition has worked alongside Zucman to promote similar initiatives around the world—said it was “really great to see” more celebrated economists speaking up in favor of the proposal.

“You don’t have to be a radical leftist to see why it’s a good idea,” Bregman wrote on social media. “This is not going to be some kind of socialist revolution. The proposal is about restoring balance to a mixed economy. You could even argue it’s about saving capitalism itself from oligarchs like Sergey Brin. I think that’s exactly why Nobel Prize-winning economists are coming out in favor of this tax.”

2026-09-25T05:59:58.067-07:00

UN Expert Says Trump ‘Murder’ Spree at Sea May Constitute ‘Crimes Against Humanity’

“International humanitarian law cannot authorize the United States’ attacks,” wrote human rights expert Ben Saul.

President Donald Trump, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, mimics firing a rifle while speaking to reporters at a briefing on Monday, April 6, 2026 at the White House in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 21, 2026

COMMON DREAMS

In a report on the Trump administration’s bombing of dozens of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean over the past year, a top United Nations rights expert dismissed President Donald Trump’s claim that the military campaign has been in “self-defense” against “designated terrorist organizations,” and warned that the evidence collected about the strikes could point to crimes against humanity being committed by the United States.

Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, concurred with numerous human rights experts as he said Monday that even if the boats targeted by the US had been engaged in drug trafficking—the central claim of Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as they’ve defended the operation—there are no “international legal rights to unilaterally use military force” to counter drug cartels or other organized crime groups.

He noted that Trump last October notified Congress that the strikes were part of a “non-international armed conflict,” governed by the law of armed conflict, as his administration highlighted the threat of “narco-terrorists.”

“The United States military attacks are, however, contrary to international law, violate the human right to life, and plausibly constitute crimes against humanity,” wrote Saul.

He added that the killings could reasonably constitute “crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law,” noting that such crimes generally require “that murder (or attempted murder) was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.”

Saul compared the bombings to the alleged crimes of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose own “war on drugs” included the state killings of thousands of Filipinos accused of trafficking narcotics. Duterte, noted Saul, “is on trial for alleged crimes against humanity of murder for targeting suspected criminals, or criminals having criminal propensities, including drug offenders.”

The special rapporteur’s report pertains to attacks up until August, but came days after the US military said it had killed four more people aboard a vessel in the Caribbean. At least 234 people have been killed in the attacks by US Southern Command so far, in at least 70 strikes.

As with its previous bombings, US Southern Command did not release any evidence in its latest attack that the target was a boat involved in drug trafficking. US Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) emphasized at a hearing in June that the “targeting criteria” the military has used in the boat bombing campaign has never included “evidence of narcotics on the boat,” and data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has shown little to no evidence that the flow of drugs into the US has decreased since the bombings began more than a year ago.

In addition to some people who may have been involved in narcotics trafficking, the report reads, “some victims have reportedly included fishermen, migrants, and victims of human trafficking.” The families of some victims have filed legal complaints over their killings.

Moreoever, said Saul, “even assuming that the vessels and crew attacked were members of the criminal groups listed as terrorist, such organizations have not mounted any ‘armed attack’ on the United States so as to trigger a right of self-defense.”

“Deaths from illicit drugs are not assimilable to an armed attack under international law,” he wrote, despite Hegseth’s insistence that the US aims to protect the country from “the drugs that are killing our people.”

Instead of being legitimate attacks in self-defense, wrote Saul, the bombings “amount to serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life, being unjustified in national or personal self-defense or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotics suppression conventions, or international counterterrorism law.”

“International humanitarian law cannot authorize the United States’ attacks,” he added.

Saul said the military campaign, which the Trump administration has recently expanded to include land attacks in Latin American countries, may violate Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by the US in 1992.

The report was filed as world leaders gathered in New York for the UN General Assembly and weeks after US Southern Command announced its campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific was expanding to include operations inside countries in Latin America, with leaders who are aligned with Trump hosting joint military operations. The US has particularly deepened military ties with Ecuador in recent months, with the partnership reportedly resulting in torture, arbitrary detentions, and disappearances.

“International law on the right to life,” wrote Saul, “applies to any extraterritorial military or law enforcement action against criminal groups.”

2026-09-25T05:59:35.566-07:00

Van Hollen Says ICC Members Would Sanction Trump and Rubio If They ‘Have Any Self-Respect’

In what the Democratic senator called an effort at “obstructing investigations of Netanyahu’s war crimes,” the Trump administration is planning a dramatic escalation of its sanctions against the court.

Stephen Prager
Sep 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As the United Nations General Assembly prepared to meet, a US senator said President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should face sanctions for their role in trying to destroy the International Criminal Court in order to protect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“If European countries and other signatories to the International Criminal Court (ICC) have any self-respect, they’d sanction Rubio and Trump for obstructing investigations of Netanyahu’s war crimes,” wrote Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) Monday on social media.

Abbas Barred From US by Trump While Netanyahu, Wanted by ICC for War Crimes, Gets Welcome Mat

He was responding to a report from the Wall Street Journal detailing “a sharp escalation” in the Trump administration’s efforts to, in Rubio’s words, “dismantle” the ICC, which issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024. The body accused the prime minister and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war.

The ICC has also reportedly launched investigations into two other far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for their roles in aggressively expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.

The Trump administration had already aggressively sanctioned ICC officials involved in efforts to prosecute Americans or Israelis, including then-chief prosecutor Karim Khan and several judges and prosecutors. It had also sanctioned UN special rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese and several Palestinian human rights organizations that had brought evidence of alleged Israeli crimes before the tribunal.

Now, The Journal reports that:
The Trump administration is preparing to impose sweeping sanctions on the [ICC]...

The sanctions would forbid most transactions with the ICC after a grace period of six to seven months... That could potentially cripple the court by prohibiting it from conducting transactions in US dollars, cutting it off from much of the global financial system.

It is unclear when a final decision and announcement might come, though some US officials said the move could be finalized as soon as this week during the United Nations General Assembly meeting or in the following days.

Several world leaders have been vocally critical of the US attack on the ICC, though they’ve stopped short of calling for sanctions against US officials.

Responding to Rubio’s sanctions in August, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa said that the ICC’s “judges and officials must be able to act independently and without external pressure.”

Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen, whose nation is home to the ICC, said the Netherlands disapproves of efforts to sanction the court, adding that Dutch officials were actively working with the EU to protect the court from institution-wide US sanctions. Possible protective measures reportedly include alternative banking and payment arrangements outside the US dollar system.

There have also been calls within the European Parliament, including from Spanish socialist politician Iratxe García Pérez and others, to activate the EU’s so-called “blocking statute,” which would prohibit European companies from complying with the US sanctions.

2026-09-25T05:58:51.037-07:00

‘The Billion Dollar Deal’: Senate Democrats Detail How Trump Serves Fossil Fuel Industry

“Our new report exposes this old-fashioned corruption, by a thuggish government and a desperate industry, that is squeezing every last dollar out of Americans’ pocketbooks while they still can.”

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) speak at a press conference on the fossil fuel industry’s connections to the Trump administration at the Capitol in Washington, DC on September 24, 2026.
(Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

While running for president in 2024, Donald Trump told oil and gas executives that he would pursue their policy priorities if the industry raised $1 billion for his campaign—and after returning to office last year, the Republican did just that, enriching those invested in fossil fuels, including himself, at the expense of the public and planet.

That’s according to “The Billion Dollar Deal: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Bought the Trump Administration, Cashed In, and Left Americans to Pay the Price,” a report released Thursday by US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Committee on Environment and Public Works Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

“The fossil fuel industry and their allies bought their way into the Trump White House with hundreds of millions of dollars in political donations, after Trump promised fossil fuel bigwigs at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that he’d do anything and everything they wanted, for the right price,” Whitehouse said in a statement.

“Now, their minions run the government from the inside, driving up energy bills to deliver payouts to the donors that put Trump back in office,” he continued. “Our new report exposes this old-fashioned corruption, by a thuggish government and a desperate industry, that is squeezing every last dollar out of Americans’ pocketbooks while they still can.”

The report is based on 19 investigations into Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory rollbacks, 13 probes of nine other agencies, and 13 investigations into 88 separate polluters. Investigators from Schumer’s Anti-Corruption Working Group examined campaign finance filings, corporate earnings, and investor communications.

The document details how, in the aftermath of Trump’s quid pro quo offer at the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser in 2024, fossil fuel executives, along with their corporate political action committees (PACs) and dark money groups, contributed an estimated $201 million to support Trump and allied Republican lawmakers—plus $19 million toward the inaugural fund.

“These figures capture only traceable donations,” the report emphasizes. “Other substantial sums flowed to candidate Trump through 501(c)(4) organizations that are not legally required to disclose their contributors. Dark money groups—nonprofits and shell companies that do not reveal their donors—contributed over $1.9 billion into the 2024 elections, up from $1 billion in 2020.”

The report names key figures from “the fossil fuel donor class” and includes their estimated contribution to Trump’s latest election:Oil and banking heir Timothy Mellon: $151.5 million
Energy Transfer executive chair Kelcy Warren: $11 million
Elliott Management co-CEO Paul Singer: $8 million
CrownQuest Operating CEO Tim Dunn: $5 million
Continental Resources executive chair Harold Hamm: $4 million
Midland Energy founder and CEO Syed Javaid Anwar: $2 million
GeoSouthern Energy CEO George Bishop: $2 million
Alliance Resource Partners CEO Joseph Craft III: $2 million
Hilcorp Energy executive chair and founder Jeffery Hildebrand: $1.7 million
Sunoco board chari Ray Washburne: $611,000

There’s also former Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, who is now Trump’s energy secretary and gave an estimated $795,000. According to the report, “Lobbyists say that many CEOs now keep Secretary Wright’s personal phone number on speed dial.”

Wright is among at least a dozen former oil executives and lobbyists Trump installed at the EPA and departments of Energy, the Interior, and Justice to systematically dismantle “the regulatory architecture built over decades to protect American families from pollution and climate change,” the publication points out. “Those captured agencies delivered for the fossil fuel industry.”

The report calls out not only Wright but also Trump’s other “polluter worker bees,” including EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and various other officials at their agencies who have ties to polluting industries.

It also calls out the GOP-controlled Congress, which last year sent to Trump’s desk the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a law that includes “tens of billions in new and expanded direct subsidies to fossil fuel companies through tax breaks, royalty cuts, a suspension of the charge on methane pollution, and other giveaways. Combined with the subsidies already on the books, independent analysts estimate the industry will collect some $190 billion in tax breaks and subsidies over the next 10 years.”

“The costs of these gifts to the fossil fuel industry fall on everyone else,” the report stresses. “Climate-related disasters cost the United States at least $115 billion in direct damages in 2025 alone. Each year, the damages to public health from fossil fuel air pollution run at about $820 billion, or $2,500 per American, and contribute to approximately 91,000 premature deaths and 216,000 new cases of childhood asthma. Homeowners’ insurance has become unaffordable or unavailable across many parts of the country. These are just some of the existing costs associated with fossil fuel production and combustion.”

“The Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks will drive them higher, as air and water pollution as well as climate change will all get worse,” the document warns, as the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency worsens, with deadly consequences worldwide.

The report notes that “canceled and delayed wind and solar projects are also raising electricity prices for consumers in multiple states, sending billions to fossil fuel plants. And the EPA itself has estimated that the elimination of tailpipe emission standards will cost Americans a minimum of $580 billion in added fuel costs alone over the next three decades. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost as the United States cedes its industrial competitiveness in clean energy technologies to China and Europe.”

Trump also partnered with Israel to launch an illegal war on Iran—which has responded by restricting ship traffic through the the Strait of Hormuz, sending global fuel prices soaring. The publication highlights that “the 100 biggest oil and gas companies collectively earned an extra $30 million per hour in the first month of the Iran conflict alone—amounting to $23 billion in windfall profits—with $234 billion projected by year’s end if oil prices remain near $100 a barrel.”

“As the Trump administration’s war in Iran drives up gas prices—with analysts warning crude prices could reach $200—American
consumers pay directly for the chaos that Big Oil’s political investments helped purchase,” the report warns. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates the higher diesel and gasoline prices have so far cost Americans $115.7 billion, or $883 per household.

Trump’s war is also filling his own pockets. CNBC estimated earlier this month that the president has made up to $4.4 million from his investments in fossil fuel companies—and as Common Dreams reported earlier this week, he continues to make related trades.

“Donald Trump will always choose self-enrichment over helping American families, and as this report reveals, his fossil fuel corruption is costing Americans billions,” said Schumer. “Instead of using the presidency to address the affordability crisis, lower costs, and protect Americans’ health and safety, Trump has used his power to deliver for his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry. The message from this administration is clear: Big Oil gets the profits, and American families get the bill.”

Released less than six weeks away from the midterm elections, Senate Democrats’ report not only lays out a range of issues, but offers some fixes, including demands to tax the windfall profits of Big Oil, as well as legislation that would “shine a light behind the dark money front groups and shell organizations that fossil fuel interests use to hide their spending.”

The report also calls for making polluters pay for planet-heating emissions and empowering lawsuits to hold them accountable. It further advocates for ending fossil fuel subsidies and directing that money to clean energy, consumer relief, and infrastructure resilience.

“The Trump administration is pumping public money into the fossil fuel industry and stripping public protections to pad the profits of some of the wealthiest corporations in the nation,” David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program, said in response to the report. “The campaign contributions to Donald Trump by Big Oil have paid dividends and have allowed the fossil fuel industry to continue to pollute our communities.”

“This administration has ceded our nation’s clean energy future to dirty energy and is doing its best to sacrifice the economy, public health, and the environment to Big Oil’s profits,” he added. “Every American family struggling with high costs is suffering because of the corrupt relationship between Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry.”

2026-09-25T05:25:45.658-07:00

Intensified by Fossil Fuel-Driven Climate Crisis, ‘Godzilla-Level’ El Niño Smashing Records Ahead of Peak

“As long as we continue to burn fossil fuels,” said one scientist, El Niño “occurs on an increasingly hotter baseline, making it much more difficult for communities to deal with the consequences.”

A firefighter douses flames as they push toward homes during the Creek Fire in the Cascadel Woods area of unincorporated Madera County, California on September 7, 2020. The El Niño event of 2026 is expected to cause a variety of extreme weather, including dry conditions in some regions and extreme rainfall in others, in 2027.
(Photo by Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Although “El Niño comes and goes,” as one climate scientist said of the naturally occurring warm-weather phenomenon on Monday, experts are in agreement that this year is different—with meteorologists already recording a temperature rise of 3.07°C in the Pacific Ocean, putting it at a statistical tie with November 2015, when El Niño caused the ocean to warm by 3.08°C.

The temperature rise is not expected to peak until November and December, when an average of 14 models examined by Zeke Hausfather of Carbon Brief and Berkeley Earth found that a temperature rise of 4.1°C is forecast.

The event has been underway since June, Hausfather wrote, and has been gathering strength “faster than any previous event on record.”

Scientists typically track the strength of El Niño—which leads to heavy rainfall, higher global temperatures, and other extreme weather as warmer Pacific waters are pushed to the south—using the Niño 3.4 anomaly, or ONI, which determines how much hotter the central Pacific is compared with a 30-year rolling average.

A temperature rise above 2.0°C is considered a “very strong” El Niño, and scientists and policymakers are already calling this year’s event a “super El Niño,” with some experts using the terms “Godzilla-level” and “jaw-dropping” to describe the weather conditions that can be expected in the coming months due to the warmer climate.

As Common Dreams reported late last month, planetary heating driven by fossil fuel emissions is intensifying El Niño, while the naturally occurring phenomenon can in turn worsen the impacts of the climate emergency.

In the last 40 years scientists have recorded a 16% increase in the strength of El Niño events, according to a study published in Science last month. They’ve also gotten 36% stronger than they were before industrialization began.

The “double whammy,” as The Guardian called it, could make 2027 the hottest year ever recorded, blowing through heat records that have just been set this year—and that have been linked to the deaths of people around the world from extreme heat and flooding.

“This event is a huge redistribution of energy in the climate system and is dangerous because it is unfolding on top of a much warmer, human-influenced climate system,” climate scientist Friederike Otto of Imperial College London told The Guardian. “So, in many places around the world we will see never-before-experienced heat extremes, with all their consequences on health, food security, and water stress.”

Despite the fact that El Niño predates the human-caused climate emergency, Otto said, “as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels, it occurs on an increasingly hotter baseline, making it much more difficult for communities to deal with the consequences.”

This year’s event is likely to be the most intense El Niño in 1,000 years, reported to The Guardian, with hotter and drier conditions already linked to deadly wildfires in Indonesia and crop losses in Central America and the Caribbean region due to drought conditions. Rice production this season is expected to fail in Indonesia, according to the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University.

As the Southern Hemisphere’s summer months approach, southern Africa and Australia are at heightened risk of wildfires and droughts as well. Meanwhile, cocoa production could be damaged by extreme rainfall in parts of South America.

“All strong El Niño events on record have continued to strengthen well into the winter—and the models are in near-unanimous agreement that this one will, too,” wrote Hausfather at Carbon Brief. “If the forecast holds, the current event will peak between November and January at a level far beyond any event previously observed in the instrumental record.”

In California on Monday, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in an effort to prepare communities for El Niño’s impacts in the coming months, which could include coastal flooding and heavy snow in mountain regions.

Hausfather noted that strong El Niño events like those that occurred in 1997 and 2015 were also “associated with hundreds of billions of dollars in damages globally.”

“This event,” he told The Guardian, “is leaving those past ones in the dust.”

‘The Diagnosis Is Unambiguous’: 2026 Planetary Health Report Finds Pressure Mounting on Earth Systems

“Seven of nine planetary boundaries are transgressed, and pressure on all seven is at its highest recorded level,” said one scientist.

A protester is seen in Los Angeles during a climate change demonstration holding a placard that says, “There is no Planet B.”
(Photo by Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Like other recent warnings from climate scientists, the message sent by the latest Planetary Health Check report on Monday was clear: “We need to move fast,” as the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the group behind the report, said.

“Seven of nine planetary boundaries are transgressed, and pressure on all seven is at its highest recorded level,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute (PIK).

The report finds that seven measures of the Earth’s health are no longer within the “safe operating space”: ocean acidification, freshwater change, land system change, climate change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities, and change in biosphere integrity.

Just two markers, stratospheric ozone depletion and the increase in atmospheric aerosol loading, have shown improvement over the last decade, said the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at PIK.

“The diagnosis is unambiguous,” said Boris Sakschewski, the lead author of the report. “Pressure is rising across every planetary boundary already outside the safe operating space. It means that the risk of large-scale, persistent, and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking.”

The scientists behind the report emphasized that with recent news regarding the state of the planet’s crucial coral reefs, forests, and extreme weather events like heatwaves and flooding, it should come as no surprise that the Earth’s boundaries have been transgressed, as continued fossil fuel emissions have caused runaway planetary heating.

Earlier this month, United Nations scientists said the planet can no longer avoid at least a temporary temperature rise above 1.5°C over preindustrial levels.

Oceans have also become so warm that stressed coral reefs have less and less time to recover from climate damage, as Common Dreams reported last month, and a UN report last year found that the world’s governments are not moving fast enough to end the destruction of forests.

Last month and the summer of 2026 both set heat records, with extreme heat killing more than 1,000 people across Europe, and wildfires spreading across the continent and Canada. Record-breaking heat was also recorded in parts of Asia and the Middle East.

In June, the UN Children’s Fund found that nearly every child on Earth is now exposed to at least one climate hazard driven by fossil fuel emissions, including flooding, heatwaves, and drought.

“Pakistan’s 2025 monsoon floods affected more than 6.9 million people,” said PIK. “Global ocean heat content reached a new record in 2025, with Hurricane Melissa rapidly ramping up to a Category 5 hurricane and striking Jamaica after passing over exceptionally warm seas. From January 2023 to September 2025, bleaching-level heat stress impacted about 84.4% of the world’s coral reef area, making it the largest global coral-bleaching event observed to date.”

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, chair of Planetary Guardians, implored readers of the Planetary Health Check report to “read that list again: Pakistan, the Caribbean, Europe, the reefs beneath our oceans. These are not separate emergencies; the planet is telling us, in every region at once, that it is out of balance.”

“As chair of Planetary Guardians, I hear this same story wherever I go, whether from a pastoralist watching the rains fail season after season or a coastal community watching the sea rise,” said Ibrahim. “The 2026 Planetary Health Check puts data behind what communities on the frontlines already know from living it. We do not have the luxury of treating these as separate crises any longer.”

Rockström emphasized that while “we do not have the luxury of time... we do have the knowledge, capacity, and solutions to change course.”

“Accelerating action to return to the safe operating space across all planetary boundaries is essential to protect lives and livelihoods,” said Rockström, “and to deliver on the promise of shared future prosperity.”

2026-09-25T05:25:11.143-07:00

Guterres Hailed for Fiery Outgoing Speech Demanding Polluters Pay for Climate Crisis

“We know that fossil fuel interests won’t step aside on their own,” said the UN chief. “When the harms of Big Tobacco became undeniable—governments acted. The climate crisis demands the same determination.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the opening of the general debate of the UN General Assembly’s 81st session in New York City on September 22, 2026.
(Photo by Loey Felipe/UN)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

With United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres set to leave his post at the end of this year, he used his final address to the UN General Assembly on Monday to share a familiar call: “Polluters must pay” for fueling the global climate emergency.

Since the Portuguese politician began his first five-year term leading the world body nearly a decade ago, he has repeatedly called for international action to rapidly phase out the coal, gas, and oil that are heating up the planet. In late 2023, he emphasized that “the science is clear. The 1.5°C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce. Not abate.”

The UN chief announced at the end of 2024 that “the top 10 hottest years on record have happened in the last 10 years,” and declared: “This is climate breakdown in real time. We must exit this road to ruin.” Last year, he argued that fossil fuels represent “the greatest threat to energy security today,” and countries clinging to them are “sabotaging” their own economies and futures.

Earlier this month, after a UN report found that at least temporarily surpassing the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels is now inevitable, Guterres stressed that “this summer’s scorching heat, raging wildfires, and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead,” and called for making the overshoot “as small and short as possible.”

Speaking to the General Assembly on Tuesday, he cited that recent finding: “Now we face a near-certain breach of the 1.5-degree limit, with a supersized El Niño speeding straight for humanity. The dangers are real. But so is the hope.”

“The sun belongs to no one. The wind cannot be embargoed. Innovation can come from everywhere,” he said. “Renewables are now the cheapest source of new electricity in most of the world. And the most viable path to energy security, independence, and sustainable growth... A future beyond fossil fuels is in sight. The question is how.”

“Will it be a just and orderly transition built on international cooperation—or chaotic and costly, leaving people and countries behind?” he asked, urging every government to adopt a Paris Agreement-aligned national plan to transition away from fossil fuels.

“We know that fossil fuel interests won’t step aside on their own. For decades, Big Oil has treated the atmosphere as an open sewer—and cashed in on the consequences,” he acknowledged. “We have seen this kind of abuse of power before. When the harms of Big Tobacco became undeniable—governments acted. The climate crisis demands the same determination.”

According to the UN chief: “Those who polluted the most—and profited the most—must do far more to repair the damage they caused. Polluters must pay. And to the leaders, cities, civil society and citizens working to hold them accountable: I say, you are on the right side of history. Keep going.”

“And governments must keep going on all fronts: To end deforestation. Invest in grids and storage. Cut methane emissions,” he continued. “But these actions are not enough: We need climate justice with a focus on adaptation and finance. Developed countries must respect their commitments. They must triple adaptation finance.And make the Loss and Damage Fund work at scale.”

“We must also ensure that the mining of critical minerals does not dig deeper into the inequities of the past,” he added. “Producing countries and affected communities must retain a far greater share of the value created from their resources. No more plundering. No more exploitation.”

While Guterres’ speech didn’t just focus on “the power fueling climate chaos and the war on nature”—it also addressed peace and security, inequality, and artificial intelligence in detail—climate campaigners welcomed the time he devoted to the crisis.

“When the UN secretary-general calls for fossil fuel companies to pay, you know this demand has become impossible to ignore,” said Louise Hutchins, co-convenor of the Make Polluters Pay International Coalition, in a statement. “Millions of people around the world are calling for it, and governments are starting to listen.”

His address came just a day after campaigners from groups around the world delivered over 2 million petition signatures calling on governments to make polluters pay to Selwin Hart, the UN’s assistant secretary-general for climate action, in New York City.

“For years, campaigners and communities on the frontlines have been saying the same thing: The companies that profited from fossil fuels must pay their fair share of the costs of the crisis they helped create. Today, that demand is moving into the mainstream,” 350.org executive director Anne Jellema noted after Guterres’ remarks. “The voices of more than 2 million people are now being brought to the UN. Governments have the power to make polluters pay, and they must use it.”

Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, highlighted that “the people who have contributed least to the climate crisis are paying the highest price. They are losing homes, livelihoods, and access to food and facing an increasingly uncertain future, while fossil fuel corporations and their billionaire backers continue to profit. The call to make rich polluters pay is about justice. It is about ensuring that those who have benefited most from the fossil fuel economy pay for the damage it has caused.”

Greenpeace International executive director Mads Christensen pointed out that “Guterres has spent years warning leaders where fossil fuel dependence leads, and this year proved him right. From deadly heat to devastating fires and floods, the very dependence driving these disasters is shaking entire economies and leaving families exposed to volatile energy and food prices, while the companies behind it keep raking in the profits.”

“New rules forcing governments to align their taxes and spending with global climate goals would raise hundreds of billions of dollars to support the countries and communities least responsible, while incentivizing money out of fossil fuels and into secure, renewable energy that actually protects people,” he argued. “As long as destruction stays profitable, the transition to a safer, fairer future will keep being held back. Guterres has named the solution, governments must now act on it.”

2026-09-25T05:04:00.746-07:00

‘Mamdani Moment’ in Germany as Leftist Elif Eralp in Line to Be Next Mayor of Berlin

A Left Party official said its strategy for the Berlin election was “explicitly inspired... by Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.”

German socialist Left Party’s lead candidate for Governing Mayor of Berlin, Elif Eralp, makes statements alongside party officials on election results at the state parliament in Berlin, Germany, on September 21, 2026.
(Photo by Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Sep 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Germany’s Left Party on Sunday made history by winning the 2026 Berlin state election, putting its lead candidate, socialist Elif Eralp, in position to become mayor of the country’s largest city.

In all, the Left Party won 26% of the overall vote in the election, with the center-right Christian Democratic Union capturing 19% and the far-right Alternative for Germany winning 16% of the vote.

Far-Right Alternative for Germany Thanks Elon Musk After Regional Election Win

The two other center-left parties—the Greens and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)—won 14% and 12% of the vote, respectively.

A Sunday report from Bloomberg News described the Left Party’s victory in Berlin as a “Mamdani moment,” in reference to democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s upset 2025 win in the New York City mayoral race.

Like Mamdani, Eralp and her party put affordability at the center of their campaign, with a particular emphasis on the rising cost of housing in the city.

As described by Euronews in a Monday report, Eralp “called for tighter regulation of rents, more social housing, and further moves towards bringing large housing portfolios into public ownership.”

The Euronews report also noted the connection to Mamdani, citing a quote from Eralp last year arguing that “if a left-wing candidate can win in New York, then there’s no reason it can’t happen in Berlin.”

According to a Saturday report in The Washington Post, the Left Party recently sent a delegation to New York City to learn about Mamdani’s campaign and even met with some of the mayor’s advisers to talk political strategy.

Liza Pflaum, the head of digital communications for the Left Party and a member of the delegation, told the Post that while her party had already embraced “a clear focus on issues relevant to affordable living” two years ago, it also was “explicitly inspired... by Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.”

While the Left Party received the most votes in the election, it did not receive enough to form an outright majority, meaning it will need coalition partners to form a government.

The Greens and SPD have indicated they are willing to form a coalition with the Left Party, but have claimed the party has allowed antisemitism to flourish in its ranks—an allegation that conservatives have made against left-wing candidates and political leaders in the US as well.

Progressives have warned against the conflation of antisemitism and criticism of Israel.

Eralp has disputed accusations of antisemitism in her party, which have focused on comments about the Israel Defense Forces at a campaign event and the presence of “an allegedly militant activist” at an election victory party.

“I will do everything to ensure that Jewish people—just like Muslims, queer people, and everyone in our city—can feel safe,” said Eralp.

2026-09-25T04:53:33.841-07:00

‘Good Luck With That’: Critics Mock Trump for Hyping ‘Deal’ With Belarus to Replace Canadian Fertilizer

“Canada exports more potash to the US than Belarus produces.”

Brad Reed
Sep 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

President Donald Trump drew ridicule on Monday when he announced he was working on an agreement to import potash, an important fertilizer for US farmers, from Belarus.

In a social media post, Trump claimed that the “massive deal” with Belarus would let the US import potash for “substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada,” which he described as “very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers.”

‘Misled’ and ‘Strung Along’ by Trump, Financial Pain of Farmers Grows as Costs Continue to Skyrocket

Canada supplies roughly 80% of all potash used by US farmers, and Trump’s trade war against America’s largest trading partner has been putting upward pressure the prices of all Canadian imports.

However, even if Trump’s deal to buy potash from Belarus comes to fruition, it is unclear how much relief it would provide to US farmers, who have been also been paying a heavy price his illegal war with Iran, which has led to record-high diesel fuel prices.

As noted by a Monday report from Bloomberg, Belarus in 2021 only shipped around 700,000 tons of potassium fertilizers to the US before trade with the nation was restricted following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Canada, meanwhile, supplied the US with more than 10 million tons of such fertilizers last year.

Bloomberg also pointed out that “Belarus doesn’t have enough capacity to supply large volumes to the US” at the moment “because production for the year is already under contract.”

There are also several logistical challenges to shipping large quantities of fertilizer from Belarus.

Oil market researcher Rory Johnston observed in a social media post that Belarus is a landlocked country with no easy way to export its products to the west after Lithuania terminated its transit agreement with the country at the start of the Ukraine conflict.

Canada, Johnston added, is “right next door.”

Journalist Diana Henriques offered a similar assessment of the challenges of importing potash from Belarus.

“It is 5,080 miles from Nebraska to Minsk,” Henriques wrote. “It is about 700 miles from Nebraska to Saskatchewan, the source of most Canadian potash. That’s gonna have to be one heckuva discount to cover the transportation differential.”

Ross O’Connor, former foreign affairs and national security advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was openly dismissive of Trump’s Belarus gambit.

“Good luck with that,” O’Connor wrote. “Canada exports more potash to the US than Belarus produces.”

David Ryan Miller, professor of government at American University, offered a satirical summary of Trump’s latest geopolitical maneuver.

“We are spurning our longtime democratic ally directly to our north in favor of an autocratic regime aligned with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that is 4,000+ miles away,” Miller wrote. “We are very smart, serious people!”

2026-09-25T04:43:52.259-07:00

TRUMP GESTAPO

ICE Denounced for Enacting ‘Official Government Policy of Disappearing People’

“Hiding prisoners from the courts is unconstitutional,” said one expert.

Detainees stand by a window inside the federal immigration center at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is housing detained immigrants on May 26, 2026.
(Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Sep 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Critics reacted with horror to a Monday report from The Associated Press detailing how US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has abruptly ended its practice of disclosing the locations of thousands of detainees.

According to the AP, ICE “has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding... detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them.”

Immigration attorneys who spoke with the AP said that their clients had “vanished” from the system after ICE removed them from its online detainee locator system last week.

Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the AP that families of detainees “are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be.”

Chen added that the new policy has “serious implications” for attorneys’ ability to make contact with their clients.

Michelle Mendez, legal director at the National Immigration Project, told the AP that the new policy is “just another iteration of disappearing people.”

“Why would we do that in the United States of America?” Mendez asked. “It’s something we’d hear about in another country and be concerned about individual rights and due process.”

Tom Jawetz, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, echoed Mendez’s analysis, writing in a social media post that the AP report reveals “an official government policy of disappearing people,” as “systems for attorneys and loved ones to know where—even whether—a person with a final removal order is in ICE custody have been wiped clean.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, described the new ICE policy as “unprecedented” for US immigration enforcement.

“People who have been detained for months are suddenly disappearing from the locator system—even if they haven’t been moved anywhere,” Reichlin-Melnick explained. “And people newly arrested are not showing up at all, their location now hidden from view.”

Georgetown University political scientist Jonathan Ladd argued that the ICE policy was a fundamental violation of long-established rights in the US that date to before the country’s official founding.

“The government moving or hiding jailed people to avoid review by courts isn’t some loophole in our habeas corpus rights,” Ladd explained. “This government behavior has been considered a violation of the people’s habeas corpus rights since at least the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.”

Ladd further pointed out that “habeas corpus rights are guaranteed by Article I of our Constitution,” which means “hiding prisoners from the courts is unconstitutional.”

Journalist Gillian Brockell observed that the new ICE policy “will make it nearly impossible to file habeas petitions, because attorneys won’t even know what federal district their client has been moved to to stage for their removal.”

Among those sharing the AP report on social media was Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an attorney for Wilbur Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan shot by ICE in Austin, Texas on Sunday.

Initially, she and the immigrant’s wife could not make contact with him, because ICE moved him from the hospital “to an undisclosed location,” but Lincoln-Goldfinch said Monday afternoon that her client “is being held at Pearsall for interrogation.”

“We got Wilber on the phone live from detention at the press conference,” the attorney added. “He says he still has the bullet lodged in his shoulder. He says he is not doing well and has not received the medical care he needs.”

Federal Judge Blocks DHS From Deporting Austin Man Shot by ICE

“DHS must not obstruct or otherwise interfere with this investigation by removing Mr. Garces Perez from the country,” said lawmakers.

Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, who was shot by an immigration agent on September 20, 2026, is seen in an undated photo.
(Photo: family photo via X)

Julia Conley
Sep 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The attorney representing Wilber Rafael Garces Perez said Tuesday that a federal judge had granted her emergency request to block the Trump administration from deporting the 28-year-old delivery driver, who was shot by an immigration agent Sunday and has since been transferred multiple times between hospitals and a detention center—all while the officer’s bullet reportedly remains lodged in his back.

“We have filed a federal lawsuit, and the judge has ordered that he be present at the first hearing, which is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30,” said Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch. “And that means he won’t be deported in the meantime.”

Lincoln-Goldfinch applauded the rare piece of “good news” that has come out of Garces Perez’s case since he was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent while making DoorDash deliveries in his car Sunday afternoon.

As Common Dreams reported, Garces Perez was transferred from an ICE detention center in Pearsall, Texas to a hospital late Monday after reporting that he had lost feeling in the left side of his body, likely as a result of the bullet that remained close to his spine.

But Lincoln-Goldfinch and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said Tuesday that Garces Perez had again been taken back to the detention center.

Castro said he and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) plan to visit Garces Perez at South Texas ICE Processing Center on Wednesday, to “check on his condition and demand his release.”

“It is nothing more than a prison,” said Castro. “Wilber came to the United States legally. He had work permits and was an asylum seeker. None of this should have ever happened.”

Garces Perez arrived in the US in 2024 from Venezuela, using a government program for asylum seekers and the CBP One app that was introduced by the Biden administration to make an appointment for approval from immigration agents. He received a work permit and applied for asylum.

He mistakenly missed an immigration hearing after a notice was sent to an old address, The New York Times reported, which led to his deportation order. He has no criminal history.

Lincoln-Goldfinch had been planning to visit her client in the hospital Tuesday, where he was taken after he called in to a press conference the lawyer was holding Monday and said that he had not received medical treatment for his gunshot wound.

After speaking to Garces Perez via a video call Tuesday morning, Lincoln-Goldfinch reported on social media:
Wilber tells me that after he spoke publicly, guards at the Pearsall detention center forcibly took the tablet from his hands, revoked his communication privileges, and moved him out of the infirmary into an isolated room with a flat bed that cannot be adjusted like a medical bed.

[...]

At the hospital, Wilber says doctors finally spoke directly to him about his care and gave him IV morphine for his pain. We now understand that the gunshot fractured his clavicle and that he has significant swelling and is wearing a sling. We still do not have clarity about the cause or extent of the loss of movement he experienced.

He was discharged back to Pearsall around midnight. Today, he tells me he is receiving only Tylenol and ibuprofen for pain. He remains in isolation, on a flat bed, and without the tablet he previously used to communicate. We are asking for his communication privileges to be immediately restored and for him to be provided an appropriate medical bed and adequate medical care. Most importantly, we are continuing to advocate for Wilber’s IMMEDIATE release.

Also on Tuesday, it was revealed that the ICE agent who shot Garces Perez was not wearing a body camera at the time of the shooting—similar to the case of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Maine in July.

“Before we hear anything from ICE about, ‘We pulled him over, or he was fleeing, or he was aggressive,’ our response to any statements like that is, ‘We won’t believe you until you show us,’” said Goldfinch-Lincoln. “Show us your body cam footage, show us your dash cam footage.”

On Tuesday, more than 100 members of Congress signed a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting ICE Director David Venturella, spearheaded by Casar, calling on ICE to release Garces Perez and “abandon efforts to swiftly deport him or remove him from Texas.”

“ICE has provided no justification for this shooting, and there is no indication Mr. Garces Perez posed a threat to officers,” reads the letter, noting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “has a history of withholding information and attempting to obstruct active investigations into wrongdoing by its agency.”

“DHS must not obstruct or otherwise interfere with this investigation,” said the lawmakers, “by removing Mr. Garces Perez from the country or interfering with the release of footage, data, or other information by Texas state or local agencies involved in the operation.”

Austin Man Shot by ICE Facing Paralysis After Being Refused Medical Care

“This isn’t law enforcement,” said US Senate candidate James Talarico. “It’s lawlessness.”

People protest outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, on September 21, 2026, a day after Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was shot and wounded by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation.
(Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Democrats in Congress on Monday evening were demanding a full, independent investigation into US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s shooting on Sunday of Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, as it was reported that he had been held in an ICE detention center with a bullet still lodged in his back—close to his spine—and that he was finally being taken to a hospital only after he lost feeling in the left side of his body.

In a video posted on social media, US Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) recounted how Perez was initially hospitalized after ICE agents in an unmarked SUV sideswiped his car as he was making DoorDash deliveries in Austin, Texas, and then shot him through his windshield as he was trying to pull over.

But “only a few hours after being shot, he was forced out of the hospital,” said Castro, “and sent over to what is known as STIPC, in Pearsall, Texas, along I-35, the South Texas ICE Processing Center.”

Castro and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) spent Monday attempting to gain permission to visit with Perez and raising alarm over the fact that ICE’s bullet had not been removed from his back before he was taken to STIPC, where he was reportedly forced to sleep on a floor.

“He reported that he’s in incredible pain, that he’d not been given any medication,” said Castro. “It’s basically abuse that you would take somebody who has been shot and move them from a hospital to a prison, that kind of prison, within a matter of hours, and then also, it looks like, start the process to deport them immediately.”

Perez entered the country two years ago after using the CBP One application to set up an appointment with immigration agents. The app was introduced by the Biden administration, but President Donald Trump abruptly terminated it immediately after he took office last year. Perez was permitted to enter the country, applied for asylum, and received a work permit.

As Common Dreams reported Monday, Perez’s lawyer, Kate Goldfinch-Lincoln, and his wife were unable to make contact with him when he was first taken from the hospital on Sunday.

After Perez briefly called in from the detention center to a press conference held by Goldfinch-Lincoln on Monday, she said she received a call from another detainee who told her “that officers came in and handled Wilber roughly.”

“According to this detainee, Wilber then lost feeling on the left side of his body, including his arm and leg,” she said. “Wilber has a bullet lodged near his spine. I was told that he was handcuffed, shackled at the feet, placed in a waist chain, and taken to a hospital. I am waiting to find out how he is doing and what his current condition is. We need answers. We need to know that Wilber is safe and receiving appropriate medical care. So far, he has not.”

In response to the update on Perez’s condition, Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico said: “This isn’t law enforcement. It’s lawlessness.”

Casar called Perez’s transfer back to the hospital “a positive first step,” and credited immigrant rights advocates and community members for “speaking up.”

“Now, we have to make sure he fully recovers, is reunited with his family, and gets to tell law enforcement the full story of how he was shot in the back by ICE,” said Casar.

Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) were among the lawmakers calling for a full investigation into the shooting and ICE’s treatment of Perez.

“This is absolutely horrific,” said Frost. “ICE must be stopped. Their regime of cruelty will continue until they are held accountable.”

‘Huge Blow’ to ‘Lawless’ Practices of Trump DHS as Court Orders End to Warrantless Construction Site Raids

“By setting aside those unconstitutional policies, the court has restored the rule of law.”

A worker is seen at a construction in Santa Clarita, California
(Photo by Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A federal judge on Monday handed down a decision in a case brought by US citizen Leo Garcia Venegas, who was detained three times in the Trump administration’s immigration raids at construction sites—but the court’s order, said advocates, will protect workers across the country from federal agents’ warrantless, violent raids.

Chief US District Judge Jeffrey U. Beaverstock in the US District Court for the Southern District of Alabama temporarily blocked Department of Homeland Security officers from conducting raids at construction sites. He issued stays on three DHS policies while Venegas’ case proceeds and said agents had likely violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

The three practices Beaverstock blocked include DHS’ warrantless entry policy; its preemptive detention policy, which allows agents to detain a person simply based on suspicion, even without evidence, that they are an undocumented immigrant; and its continued detention policy, which permits officers to hold a person even after they show evidence of citizenship or lawful presence in the US.

Those policies have resulted in three arrests of Venegas since the spring of 2025, including one instance in which masked officers followed him home from the construction site where he worked, ripped him from his car, tackled him to the ground, and handcuffed and shackled him—all while he was trying to show them his REAL ID to prove his citizenship.

“They can suddenly show up and detain you without having done anything,” Venegas testified in May. “Now I don’t feel free to drive, to go to work, or go to the store.”

The Institute of Justice, which is representing Venegas, noted that the Trump administration has urged all Americans to get their REAL ID cards—which, in most states, have a symbol like a star on them to comply with new rules—and Venegas’ state of Alabama issues the cards only to citizens or those who are lawfully present. Yet a DHS official testified in Venegas’ case that REAL ID cards do not prove that someone is authorized to be in the US.

“Venegas was not promptly released following the production of his REAL ID to officers. Instead, the officers disregarded the veracity of his documentation and continued to detain him,” reads the court order. “A policy that permits such action is likely to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment.”

In the ruling, Beaverstock also noted that DHS last year had claimed Venegas tried to interfere with officers when he was first detained in May 2025—something that video of the arrest did not support.

DHS also claimed that the agency treats construction sites as “open fields” where agents do not need a warrant or even a reason to search the premises and make arrests—but Venegas works in closed construction sites that are posted with “No Trespassing” signs, and was working inside a house that was in the finishing stages of being built when he was arrested for a second time last June.

“Agents walked inside a house where Leo was working, surrounded him, and ordered him to follow them,” said the Institute for Justice last year when Venegas sued the Trump administration. “Again, Leo produced his REAL ID. Again, the agents refused to accept it. They marched him out of the development and detained him alongside other workers they had grabbed—only releasing him (and other lawful residents) 20 minutes later after confirming his citizenship.”

Beaverstock wrote that “the government has not convinced this court that the warrantless entry into a structure—which undisputedly occurred during the June encounter—does not implicate the Fourth Amendment.”

Jared McClain, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, called the judge’s decision “a huge blow to DHS’ lawless enforcement practices.”

“The government stood up in court and argued that they don’t need warrants to enter private construction sites and round up all the workers, and that they can’t trust government-issued IDs,” said McClain. “By setting aside those unconstitutional policies, the court has restored the rule of law. Construction workers like Leo can finally go to work in peace again.”

2026-09-25T04:25:34.175-07:00

As El-Sayed Champions Medicare for All, Michiganders Can’t Afford Basic Needs Due to Health Insurance Costs

“With everyday costs getting higher and higher, it is clear that we need a system like Medicare for All,” said the director of the group behind a new survey.

Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaks at Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) “Fight Oligarchy” tour on May 3, 2026 at Mumford High School in Detroit.
(Photo by Sarah Rice/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Nearly half of Michiganders surveyed for a poll published this week said they’re struggling to pay for groceries and gas because of the high and rising cost of health insurance, underscoring an affordability crisis that Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has cited as one of the reasons why the United States needs Medicare for All.

Forty-nine percent of Michigan voters queried by Progress Michigan and Public Policy Polling said the cost of health insurance affects their ability to afford basic necessities at least some of the time. Twenty-four percent said it happens “all the time,” while another 25% said it happens “sometimes.” Among Black Michiganders, the figures were substantially higher, with 34% reporting the problem occurs all the time and 31% saying it happens sometimes.

“Half of Michigan is already struggling with the cost of health insurance,” Progress Michigan executive director Justin Mendoza said Thursday in a statement. “With everyday costs getting higher and higher, it is clear that we need a system like Medicare for All to help Michiganders improve their health and afford their lives.”

El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health official, has made universal healthcare one of the three policy pillars of his campaign, alongside getting money “out of politics” and putting it “in your pocket.”

At a Monday “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, El-Sayed argued that healthcare should be treated as a basic public investment rather than a commodity.

“You need good healthcare. You need a good education. We need childcare. We need good roads and bridges,” he said. “We don’t need to send our money to big corporations to subsidize them, we need to be invested in people so they have the human capital to be able to do all the things as they graduate and come out. That’s how the system should work.”

El-Sayed has also repeatedly highlighted the plight of families who are insured but still cannot afford care because their deductibles are prohibitively expensive, and others who worry what will happen to their families’ healthcare if they lose their jobs—an increasingly likely prospect as artificial intelligence usurps human workers.

“Medicare for All would allow us to actually provide every single person cradle-to-grave insurance,” El-Sayed said in a recent CBS interview, “without having to worry about losing it” after changing jobs, losing employment, getting married, or reaching retirement age.

The health insurance affordability crisis is likely to worsen in 2027. Healthinsurance.org reports that insurers are proposing a median increase of roughly 15% for individual market premiums nationwide, with Michigan insurers seeking an average 14.2% increase. The final rates could change before approval.

“Imagine not having to pay that,” El-Sayed told CBS.

A new New York Times/Siena poll of Michigan voters found that 57% of respondents believe El-Sayed would do a better job on healthcare than Republican opponent Mike Rogers. Only 33% said Rogers would do a better job. Among all surveyed women, 67% said El-Sayed would be better for healthcare.

The overwhelming majority of voters ages 18-29 (86%) and Black voters (82%) agreed. Just 4% of Black respondents said Rogers would be better on healthcare. Among young voters, none—0%—said Rogers is the better choice for healthcare.