With the midterm elections just weeks away, President Donald Trump announced on Friday that more than 20 million Medicare Part B beneficiaries will receive a one-time $90 payment this month.

Trump, who declared on Truth Social that his administration would send out "checks," said the money will come from the $2 billion Medicare Improvement Fund and is expected to appear in seniors' bank accounts around October 8.

The $90 payment is not even enough to cover half of the standard monthly Medicare Part B premium payment, which is about $202. But Trump described the comparatively small payment as proof that Americans could trust his promise of a much heftier windfall if Republicans prevail in next month's elections.

"Because I delivered on this very important issue for the American people, they can also rest assured the highly popular $5,000 Trump Dividend will be distributed to every U.S. Citizen if, and when, the Republicans win the Midterm Elections!" Trump said.

Americans have reason to be skeptical that they will ever see such a payout. Although roughly 1 million unsubsidized Affordable Care Act enrollees are currently receiving $500 payments, Trump has on several other occasions floated or promised Americans larger sums of free money that never materialized.

In February 2025, he proposed $5,000 "DOGE dividend" checks for Americans, purportedly funded by savings generated by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, but the payments were never authorized by the GOP-controlled Congress.

That November, he promised that most Americans would receive tariff payments of "at least $2,000 a person," but Congress has still not authorized them nearly a year later.

Sending all 240 million adult citizens a $5,000 check, as Trump has promised to do if the GOP wins the midterms, would cost an estimated $1.2 trillion.

"At this point Trump’s economic policy is starting to look less like governing and more like Publishers Clearing House with a campaign logo," remarked the Indiana-based political commentator Mike Young.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) described the payments as "Trump's latest attempt to bribe the American public," arguing that $90 amounts to a pittance compared with the higher costs seniors are facing under Trump's policies.

"This year, Trump handed seniors a $200 monthly Medicare premium for the first time ever, and he also shoveled $20 billion in extra payments to insurance companies selling private Medicare plans,” Wyden said. “This is another desperate attempt by a failed president to escape Americans’ revulsion with his failed agenda, amounting to one tank of Trump-inflated gas.”

Just two days before Brazil's closely watched presidential election, the campaign of its left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has asked the nation's top election court to examine the sudden shutdown of US consular services as part of a broader investigation into alleged election "interference" by the Trump administration.

On Friday night, the US suspended in-person consular services at its embassy and consulates across Brazil on Friday and advised Americans to avoid US diplomatic facilities, citing unspecified "security concerns."

In a petition filed to Brazil's Superior Electoral Court, Lula's campaign said taking such an action just days before Brazilians vote "projects instability over the electoral environment," something it said was part of a larger "infrastructure of external intervention in the Brazilian electoral process.”

In recent days, Brazil's intelligence agency said it confirmed the existence of interference by the US in Brazil's election to support Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro—who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence under house arrest for orchestrating a coup attempt in 2022.

"Although Trump has not formally endorsed him, Bolsonaro is undoubtedly Washington’s preferred candidate," explained Nick Cleveland-Stout, a research associate at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, on Friday. "Often at the request of the Bolsonaro family, the US has engaged in a pressure campaign to weaken the Lula government, sparking fears of further interference."

Trump responded with hostility to the prosecution of the disgraced ex-president—imposing tariffs of up to 50% on Brazilian imports in retaliation, sanctioning the Supreme Court justice overseeing the case, and threatening to use American "military might" against Brazil.

He's also designated two Brazilian crime groups as "narcoterrorist" organizations, invoking a similar pretext Trump used to justify his invasion of Venezuela to kidnap its leader Nicolás Maduro in January.

As the election has approached, Trump has appeared to put his thumb on the scale in an effort to stop Lula from achieving what would be an unprecedented fourth term.

In July, the US consulate in São Paulo invited right-wing pro-Bolsonaro social media influencers to a closed-door roundtable meeting to discuss “freedom of expression and the digital environment.”

The Guardian reported on Thursday that the State Department was also diverting $1 million from its human rights fund to oppose "judicial overreach and censorship" by Brazil’s Supreme Court, an apparent reference to the court's actions against Bolsonaro and his allies.

The Brazilian government has denied visas to two State Department officials whom it said were seeking to discuss "election integrity," which it perceived as an effort to “undermine the electoral system.”

Trump and his allies have previously spread baseless conspiracy theories to cast doubt upon Lula's victory in 2022, which helped to fuel the failed coup. They've done the same with the victories of other left-wing candidates in Latin American elections—including Bolivia's Evo Morales in 2019 and Guatemala's Bernardo Arévalo in 2023.

Lula's campaign said the sudden US suspension of consular services was "yet another extremely serious development in the interference in Brazilian elections by the US government," alleging that it was "coordinated, by all indications, directly by the brothers Flávio and Eduardo Bolsonaro.”

The filing noted that even “the legislative branch of the foreign state itself… recognizes the pattern of external pressure." It pointed to a letter sent earlier this week by Democratic US Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Peter Welch (Vt.), and Tim Kaine (Va.) to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which said that "the administration’s most recent actions point toward an effort to interfere with, and potentially undermine, Brazil’s general election in October."

A man wearing a mask depicting US President Donald Trump attends a rally of Brazilian right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro in Goiania, Brazil, on September 27, 2026. (Photo by Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images)

The first round of Brazil's election will begin on Sunday. Should neither candidate receive 50% of the vote, a runoff between the top two candidates will be held on October 25. Several major polls show Lula with a narrow first-round lead entering Sunday, although others have the race effectively tied or Bolsonaro slightly ahead.

But Lula has also seized upon Trump's meddling to portray Bolsonaro as a tool of foreign powers, drawing on a history of US-backed coups and election interference that have undermined Brazilian democracy.

“Flávio Bolsonaro is Trump’s candidate and what Trump wants is to colonize Brazil, take our riches, steal our future and leave us in the dust," said a campaign ad that began airing last week.

The Trump administration, for its part, has continued to double down on public overtures toward imperialist ambition. On Thursday, an official US State Department social media account reposted a video created in August glorifying the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine and declaring that "American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again."

Dov H. Levin, a political scientist at the University of Hong Kong who recently published research on the effects of foreign election interference, told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that, if too overt, Trump's intervention could backfire.

"There are cases of failure," he said, "and cases where the reaction provoked by the intervention harms precisely the side it intended to help."

Country music star Zach Bryan wore a "Free Palestine" T-shirt during a performance at Gillette Stadium on Friday night in what was widely interpreted as a gesture of defiance against the venue's pro-Israel owner Robert Kraft.

Weeks earlier, the New England Patriots owner drew international backlash when he banned the rapper Macklemore from his venue over his pro-Palestine comments onstage and rallied other NFL owners to do the same, a campaign that led to Macklemore's ouster from Ed Sheeran's US tour.

Sheeran—one of the world's most recognizable pop stars—was branded a spineless coward by many critics and faced a mutiny from his fellow touring acts after caving to the billionaire Kraft's heavy-handed censorship tactics. Sheeran's vague statement denying that he was "complicit" with Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza—which has killed more than 74,000 people, including over 21,000 children over nearly three years, according to official numbers—did little to quiet them.

In sharp contrast, Bryan and his band made their position clear as they performed before a sold-out crowd in Foxborough, Massachusetts on Friday.

Drummer Nate Head wore a cream-colored "Palestine" baseball jersey bearing the name Hind Rajab and the number 5 on the back—a reference to the 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in 2024. Macklemore had similarly referenced Rajab in the song that led to his ban.

Guitarist Noah Le Gros wore a green "Palestine" jersey onstage. After the show, he posted a photo of himself wearing the jersey in front of a Kraft Sports & Entertainment sign, making the message unmistakable.

The company behind the jerseys, Wear the Peace—which donates all profits to organizations providing food, water, medical care, and other aid in Gaza—praised Bryan and his band for having "stood for Palestine tonight on a stage that tried to ban the simple mention of it."

Bryan, who served eight years in the US Navy, has a history of taking political stances that run counter to the conservatism long associated with mainstream country music. He has defended transgender people against public attacks and last year wrote lyrics criticizing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's aggressive deportation tactics.

But the “I Remember Everything” singer does not map cleanly onto either side of the political spectrum. In the past, he has described himself as a "total libertarian" and more recently stressed political unity: "Left wing or right wing we’re all one bird and American," he said in an interview last year.

The shirt he wore on Friday night also raised questions: Beneath the phrase "Free Palestine," the shirt featured a pine tree emblem and the phrase "An Appeal to Heaven"—iconography associated with George Washington's army in the Revolutionary War and later adopted by some far-right Christian nationalists.

Bryan has not yet publicly commented on what he intended to convey with his shirt on Friday night. Nor has Kraft—who previously referred to pro-Palestine comments on his stage as "hate speech"—publicly responded to Bryan's display.

The band is scheduled to perform another show at Gillette Stadium on Saturday night, and it remains to be seen whether they will face any pressure to back down.

In the meantime, Bryan has drawn praise from commentators who contrasted his display with Sheeran's response to Kraft.

Idrees Ahmad, the associate editor of New Lines Magazine, called it "a real Spartacus moment in music."

"All true artists resist conformity and control," he said. "Trying to tell the most recalcitrant people what they can or can't say was always going to backfire. This trend will only grow the more there is an attempt to censor."

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, an Israeli-born foreign policy analyst who has become an outspoken critic of Israel's wars, celebrated it as yet another sign of how dramatically public opinion had shifted against the country over the past few years.

“We got the country singers. We won the culture wars," he said. "Break out the moonshine."

A federal judge in El Paso on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from continuing construction of border barriers, roads, and other infrastructure across the Big Bend region, a win for environmentalists, landowners, and other Texans from across the political spectrum who are united in their opposition to the project.

US District Judge Kathleen Cardone—who was appointed by former President George W. Bush—granted a preliminary injunction sought by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and other plaintiffs.

"The court finds that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of at least one of the claims in [their] suit, that there is a likelihood that they will suffer serious, irreparable harm without an injunction, and that the balance of the equities and the public interest weigh in their favor," Cardone wrote in her two-page decision.

Cardone's order immediately prohibits the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies from building “border barrier or related infrastructure” or engaging in “any construction or ground-disturbing activities” in the Big Bend Sector until they comply with applicable laws. It also stays the effect of three Trump administration waivers that had allowed officials to bypass numerous federal protections.

“This is a historic victory for Big Bend and everyone who loves this wild corner of Texas,” said Laiken Jordahl, CBD's national public lands advocate. “No administration has the right to destroy a crown-jewel national park for political theater."

"With a federal court ordering the bulldozers to stop, Big Bend gets to breathe," Jordahl added. "But this fight is far from over. We won’t rest until Big Bend’s environmental protections are fully restored and the illegal waiver that allowed so much destruction is gone for good.”

Clara Bensen, director of communications for No Big Bend Wall and a board member of Conserve Big Bend, also welcomed the ruling.

"For months we've watched the federal government send bulldozers into a national park that belongs to all of us. Today a federal judge told them to stop," she said in a statement.

"Since we learned the Trump administration planned to seize public and private land and destroy the Big Bend region as we know it, this community has come together across the political aisle to fight back," Bensen added. "The government tried to ignore the law to build unnecessary border infrastructure, and the court made clear it can't. This is a victory, but we are not letting our guard down."

The ruling comes after contractors began bulldozing roads and building other infrastructure in and around Big Bend National Park in August, including near Santa Elena Canyon and Mariscal Mountain. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) temporarily halted construction on August 17, but that pause expired earlier this week.

The Trump administration has argued that the project—which initially included plans for a 30-foot-high reinforced steel wall—is necessary to achieve what it calls “operational control” of the border. Plaintiffs in the case challenged the administration's determination under Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that the region is an area of “high illegal entry,” noting that the government's claim is contradicted by its own statistics.

The Big Bend Sector is among the least-trafficked portions of the southern border, accounting for roughly a quarter of the international boundary's length, but no more than 3% of annual migrant apprehensions. The sector recorded just 1.3% of total border apprehensions in 2025, according to CBP data.

Plaintiffs in the case argued that the administration unlawfully used extraordinary powers to waive environmental and other laws, including the Endangered Species Act, National Park Service Organic Act, and National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Indigenous groups alleged violations of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act.

At Friday's hearing, Rio Grande river guide and landowner Danny William Miller described the prospect of a barrier cutting across his property and blocking access to the river as “a bullet to the head," according to The Big Bend Sentinel.

Miller testified that once the landscape is altered, it cannot simply be restored. His guide work, he said, would become “a tour of the military-industrial complex, rather than a tour of the wilderness.”

Another local resident, Bill Guerra-Addington, told the court, “They’re taking the river away from us, and it’s devastating.”

Friday's injunction is temporary. The underlying lawsuit will continue, and the broader legal battle over Trump's Big Bend border project—and the administration's legally dubious waivers—remains unresolved. On Wednesday, US District Judge Orlando Garcia, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, rejected a request from an Indigenous group and business owners for a temporary restraining order in one of several separate cases seeking to halt work on the project.

Still, National Parks Conservation Association president and CEO Tiernan Sittenfeld called Cardone's order “a victory for Big Bend and for all of America’s national parks.”

"While national park advocates are grateful for this halt to border construction in Big Bend, the devastating toll it has already taken on this national park must be studied and remediated," she said. "The administration must repair the damage it has done to the beautiful, fragile desert ecosystems that make Big Bend National Park one of America’s most iconic places."

“The administration’s border plan at Big Bend has faced strong bipartisan opposition from local landowners, experienced local borderland sheriffs, and conservationists alike," Sittenfeld added. "Big Bend is no place for border barriers. It’s time for the administration to come to the table with the border communities that know Big Bend best, repair the damage from this ill-conceived project, and find new solutions.”
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Since Republicans in the US Senate this week blocked a bill to make school bus stops off-limits for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, community members in Pennsylvania and Austin, Texas have expressed outrage by arrests made in front of children—in at least one reported case, leaving a child abandoned as officers detained his mother.

"It doesn’t have to be this way. ICE doesn’t have to traumatize children, tear families apart, and treat people like this," said José "Chito" Vela III, the mayor pro tempore of Austin, on social media late Thursday.

Vela made the comments as he posted a video that he said shows the aftermath of an ICE arrest at a school bus stop, with officers driving away with the mother of a 9-year-old boy who was left with other community members.

"They fucking took her," said one woman angrily as the child sat on the ground crying. "What the fuck are they going to do with the child now? ... Y'all have no fucking shame."

Vela posted the video a day after Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) introduced a bill aimed at stopping ICE and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies from conducting enforcement operations at school bus stops.

In August, Murphy and many of his constituents were outraged when ICE arrested parents at school bus stops in Danbury, Connecticut—detaining them after their children boarded buses, leaving them without anyone to pick them up after school let out and giving the family no time to ensure their children would be cared for.

Murphy said on the Senate floor Wednesday that the bus stop arrests were part of an operation in which 118 people were detained in Connecticut. Federal data has shown that a majority of people being arrested by ICE, which is carrying out President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, have no criminal convictions.

“For parents in this body, you know how anxious that first day of school is, how kids are just brimming with nervous anxiety about that first day, and you know what that feels like to watch your kid walk onto that school bus," said Murphy. "Well, what do you think it does to those kids on that first and second day of school to see ICE officers at the school bus stop? Imagine that 6-year-old who boarded the school bus, and when he got back from school that day and got off, his parent wasn't there. A 6-year-old feeling like he had been abandoned. In this case, he may or may not have seen the arrest because it happened almost immediately after he got on.”

The senator added that ICE has "blatantly lied" about its practice of carrying out arrests at school bus stops.

"When they were presented with these stories from Danbury, DHS doubled down and said any claim that ICE targeted parents at a school bus stop is false," he said. "Then just days afterwards, we had the video evidence. This often happens—ICE says something didn't happen, and then we have the video proving that it did."

Also on Wednesday, about 75 community members gathered at the corner of Tremont Avenue and East Fornance Street in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where ICE reportedly detained three people in front of a group of children who were waiting for the school bus.

They called on Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and local officials to pass legislation to bar law enforcement from cooperating with ICE.

“When enforcement happens in places where families live their everyday lives, at bus stops, on streets, near schools, or in neighborhoods, the effects can reach beyond the person who is detained,” Jorge Liborio, 16, told WHYY. “It can affect children, parents, coworkers, friends, and entire communities.”

Jay Lee, an advocacy and civic engagement manager at the Woori Center, which provides resources for the area's large immigrant population, said that "attendance is falling" in local schools. Immigrants make up about 18% of Norristown's population.

Chalkbeat reported this week that nearly two years after Trump rescinded a policy that barred immigration enforcement in sensitive areas like schools and hospitals, school attendance dropped below 40% at one Indianapolis school when ICE was conducting operations in the city.

Two federal lawsuits challenging Trump's termination of the sensitive locations policy are ongoing.

On Wednesday, Murphy denounced Republicans for blocking his bill, pointing to Sen. Jim Banks' (R-Ind.) claim that it would create "sanctuary bus stops"—safe havens for immigrants who commit crimes.

"If we prohibit ICE from operating at school bus stops, you know what will happen?" said Banks. "All the illegals in the country will just hide out at bus stops, knowing that ICE isn’t allowed to touch them! Bus stops will become the most unsafe places in the country."

Murphy called Banks' objection "bizarre" and "dishonest."

"I did not anticipate that one of the arguments against this bill would be that it would lead to the development of ‘sanctuary bus stops,'" said the senator. "But what do we imagine here? People are going to live at bus stops? We're going to have encampments around bus stops of people who are here without documentation? I just think it's an example of how this whole debate has gone way off the rails. It is just fundamentally detached from the reality.”

In Austin, Vela said that "families pay the price" when ICE "chooses to use these tactics."

"This is evil. This is wrong. And it has to stop," said Vela. "We must demand accountability. We must demand better. Our children deserve better."

Experts are raising alarms after Georgia's Republican-led State Election Board requested that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice launch an investigation into state voting machines just over a month before the 2026 midterm elections.

As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday, James Mills, executive director of the State Election Board, sent a letter to US Attorney General Todd Blanche asking the DOJ "to put additional security measures in place before the midterm election and give the state a six-month deadline to eliminate the use of QR codes on ballots to tally votes."

The AJC noted that Georgia would need to "revamp its in-person voting process" to comply with this demand since it currently "relies on scanners reading QR codes on ballots to count votes."

In a Thursday analysis of Mills' letter, Democracy Docket reporter Jacob Knutson described it as "an extraordinary assault on Georgia’s voting system by unelected officials appointed to make and enforce the state’s election rules."

Knutson also questioned whether the Trump administration could even legally carry out Mills' request.

"The DOJ lacks the legal authority to declare voting machines unlawful or unilaterally seize voting equipment," Knutson wrote, "as the US Constitution gives state and local officials the power to administer elections."

In a video published Friday, election attorney and Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias said that Mills' request for DOJ interference in his own state's election process boils down to Republicans fearing that they're about to be swept out of power in the coming elections.

"It is no coincidence that this is taking place at exactly the same time that Donald Trump's poll numbers are sagging," Elias said, "at exactly the same time that it appears that his efforts in court are failing, and exactly the same time that [Democratic US Sen.] Jon Ossoff looks clear to win that Senate race in a walk."

Later in the video, Elias explained that Trump and his allies have been telegraphing for months that they will take extraordinary measures to maintain their full grip on all three branches of the federal government.

"This is all happening when you have a White House that is looking for excuses to take over voting," he said. "They are looking for excuses to seize ballots. They are looking for excuses, as Donald Trump said, to take control of the tabulation of votes."

Kristin Nabers, Georgia state director for voter rights advocacy group All Voting is Local, accused the State Election Board of "trying to sow chaos into the midterms before voting takes place."

"Certain members of this board continue to show that they do not serve Georgia voters, they serve the interests of the Trump administration," Nabers said. "The board has already advocated for the administration’s interference in elections many times in Trump’s second term, including when multiple board members served as witnesses in the FBI’s bogus investigation into Fulton County."

After losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump infamously waged an unsuccessful campaign to strong-arm Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" the votes necessary to overtake former President Joe Biden's lead in the Peach State.

Police in New Delhi detained hundreds of people Friday amid a crackdown on demonstrations challenging India's election authorities and their controversial revision of voter rolls, prompting Amnesty International to accuse the government of trampling fundamental rights in the world's largest democracy.

More than 700 protesters—including former Delhi Chief Minister Atishi Marlena; Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Saurabh Bharadwaj; and Neha Bora, who is president of the leftist All India Students' Association—were reportedly detained in the capital as demonstrators sought to protest outside Jantar Mantar against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Journalists covering the protests were also reportedly detained and blocked from doing their jobs.

The Cockroach Janta Party—which led last summer's successful youth-led protests to oust embattled Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan after devastating leaks of critical university entrance exams—is again playing a central role in the demonstrations.

Police cited Section 163 of India's criminal code—a provision intended to address immediate public order threats that critics say is misused to broadly restrict peaceful political assembly—to justify the mass detentions.

“The right to protest is not dependent on government approval. It is protected by the Indian Constitution and international human rights law," Amnesty International India board chair Aakar Patel said. “Prohibitory orders like Section 163 of India’s criminal procedure law, which grant temporary emergency powers to restrict gatherings in the name of public order, have become a convenient way for authorities to routinely prevent peaceful protests."

“Detaining people simply because they intend to protest is a blatant attack on the rights to liberty and freedom of peaceful assembly," Patel added. "Detentions must have a lawful basis and cannot be arbitrary or discriminatory. Those arbitrarily detained for solely exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly must be released at once, and authorities must guarantee their right to protest."

The sweeping overhaul of India's electoral rolls has resulted in more than 133 million names being removed from draft voter lists across 30 states and union territories since the process began last year. That's about 14.1% of the pre-SIR rolls. Delhi recorded the largest reduction, with 32.8% of registered electors removed from its draft list.

While the Election Commission says SIR intended to verify voter eligibility and clean up electoral rolls, critics warn that mass deletions could disenfranchise legitimate voters, particularly people who have migrated, lack documentation, or belong to marginalized communities.

The controversy intensified last month after an Indian Express investigation revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions involving voter additions, deletions, and other SIR-related procedures. The two commissioners reportedly raised concerns, including over what they characterized as “unauthorized” or “illegal” actions.

"This is a disenfranchisement of millions of voters.”

Protesters are demanding Kumar's resignation amid doubts about the transparency and impartiality of the SIR and those behind it.

“The protest is against Gyanesh Kumar and the Election Commission," protester Pawan, a 36-year-old IT professional, told The Indian Express Friday at Jantar Mantar. "But there’s a larger context, I feel. Demanding the resignation of the CEC isn’t the only thing. People are upset with the SIR. This is a disenfranchisement of millions of voters.”

AAP spokesperson Anurag Dhanda, who was among those detained, told Indo-Asian News Service that "we are simply demanding that democracy should not be destroyed. We were saying that people should have the right to vote. Gyanesh Kumar took away the right to vote and committed vote theft, yet the vote thief is not being put in jail. Instead, they brought us here and made us sit at the police station."

"This is a complete dictatorship of the Modi government," he added, referring to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party.

Marlena, better known mononymously as Atishi, said that "when the British ruled India, Gandhiji fought for people's right to vote. Today, when we have that right, Gyanesh Kumar is trying to take it away."

Atishi said that when demonstrators tried to reach Jantar Mantar—an officially designated protest site—police hauled them away in buses and detained them at a local police station.

"We are not afraid of Modiji's police," she said, referring to Modi. "We will continue to fight to protect the right to vote. The fight against vote theft will continue. The EC's system will have to be corrected, and Gyanesh Kumar will have to resign."

At one point, Bora and other detained demonstrators were sprung from a police bus by fellow protesters in the streets.

After escaping detention, Bora defiantly called for a fresh wave of protests for Saturday.

"Get rest after today's detention," she said. "Because if you don't, how will you reach Jantar Mantar at 1 pm tomorrow?"

"Thousands of police officers are working to save one man—Gyanesh Kumar—whom we have to ensure gets removed from office," Bora continued.

"Jantar Mantar 2.0 is not done!" she added, implicitly referring to the earlier Cockroach Janta Party protests. "It has just begun!"

A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to block the Trump administration's rollback of fuel efficiency standards, which they called a "giveaway" to the oil and auto industries.

Earlier this week, the US Department of Transportation finalized a rule weakening Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which require automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of their vehicles each year.

The Biden administration required annual fuel-efficiency improvements aimed at bringing the average for new vehicles to 50.4 miles per gallon by 2031. Under the Trump administration’s new rule, the 2031 requirement would fall below the 35.4 mpg already achieved by the 2024 fleet, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) own analysis.

NHTSA estimated that as a result of the rule change, Americans will consume roughly 122 billion more gallons of gas by 2050 than they would have under the old standards, increasing average lifetime fuel costs by more than $1,600 per vehicle—more than the roughly $1,300 the administration has claimed they'll save on average in upfront vehicle costs.

It is also projected to add about 1 billion additional metric tons of CO2 emissions by 2050 compared with retaining the previous standards—equivalent to more than six months' worth of emissions from the entire US transportation sector.

“Oil companies will profit from less efficient cars, but drivers will take a hit to their wallets and our kids will breathe dirtier air," said David Pettit, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Climate Law Institute. "We’ll all pay the price for more tailpipe pollutants spewing everywhere from playgrounds to wild places. We’re asking the courts to put a stop to this callous giveaway to Big Oil and Big Auto.”

CBD was joined by the Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, Public Citizen, and Sierra Club, which filed a petition on Friday to ask an appeals court to review the rule change. They argue that the rollback is illegal because federal law requires NHTSA to set fuel-economy standards at the “maximum feasible” level manufacturers can achieve.

“The Trump administration’s rollback will mean wasted gas, more air pollution, and higher costs for Americans who are already struggling with high fuel prices,” said Andy Su, senior transportation attorney at Environmental Defense Fund. “We’re going to court to oppose this dangerous U-turn away from decades of successful work to make our cars more efficient and less expensive to drive.”

The US Department of the Treasury this week released proposed regulations for the first federal "school choice" program, as proponents call it, drawing a fresh wave of condemnation from critics who have expressed concerns since President Donald Trump signed last year's Republican budget package.

"The Trump administration's proposed rules confirm what we expected, that their federal private school voucher program is designed to direct public resources to private schools and organizations and will provide little benefit to the 90% of children who attend public schools," said Demetria McCain, director of policy at the Legal Defense Fund, in a Friday statement.

"Instead of using federal resources to serve all children, this administration has dismantled the Department of Education, weakened long-standing civil rights protections, and worked to build a two-tiered system of education that benefits a select few," McCain continued. "Our children deserve better."

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act established the Education Freedom Tax Credit, which is set to begin next year. According to the Treasury Department, under the proposed rules, eligible taxpayers could claim an annual credit of up to $1,700—or $3,400 for married couples filing jointly—for contributions to scholarship granting organizations (SGOs).

The program is widely seen as a scheme to funnel tax dollars toward private school tuition, but the department noted that the rules would also allow scholarships to support "academic tutoring, special needs services, books, supplies, computers and other equipment, and other qualifying expenses connected with a student's enrollment or attendance."

That "aspect of the program has put Democratic governors in a bind," The Washington Post reported Thursday. There is no cost to states that participate, but "governors must approve all SGOs that meet the rules. States that want to opt into the program for the benefit of public school students will have to allow private school vouchers as well, and vice versa."

As the Post detailed:

Governors have until January 1 to opt in. Thirty mostly Republican-led states have already joined. Most of the remaining states that have not rejected the plan are led by Democrats.

The proposed regulations include income limits for eligible families, protections for scholarship funds, and details on how the funds can be used. States cannot restrict the types of schools that benefit, Treasury and Education department officials said, meaning public funds could go toward a religious school that bars LGBTQ students or a private school that doesn't have certified teachers.

Among the Democrats facing some calls to opt out are New York Gov. Kathy Hochul—who, as Chalkbeat pointed out, "has said she plans to participate unless she finds a 'poison pill' in the program," but "declined Thursday to make it official."

New York State United Teachers president Melinda Person declared Thursday that "the regulations are loaded with poison pills. If New York opts in, the state would be prohibited from setting standards for scholarship organizations, deciding which organizations can participate, or limiting the types of schools and expenses that receive these federal tax dollars."

"That means New York could be forced to help funnel taxpayer-subsidized dollars to private schools that have admissions policies and practices that would never be acceptable in our public schools, while being denied the authority to put stronger safeguards around the program," Person warned. "New York puts its name on the program, but Washington writes the rules."

"We take responsibility for participating, but surrender much of our ability to determine where the money goes and what standards recipients must meet," she added. "This isn't local control. It is a one-way door into a federally designed voucher program, one that could use public resources to support schools that discriminate, while stripping New York of the ability to provide the protections New Yorkers expect. Gov. Hochul should make clear now that New York will not walk through that door."

Josh Cowen, a Michigan State University education policy professor who authored the book The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, laid out the "good" and "bad" of the regulations on social media Thursday.

Leaders at the nation's two largest teachers unions also weighed in. National Education Association president Princess Moss said that "with back-to-school in the rearview mirror, more Americans are struggling to make ends meet as the cost of school supplies, packed lunches, and gas continues to outpace salaries and paychecks."

"Instead of helping families make ends meet, the Trump administration is once again putting its thumb on the scale for private school vouchers at the expense of the public schools that serve 90% of America's students," she asserted. "At a time when educators, students, and families are calling for more resources to strengthen neighborhood public schools, this administration is advancing a plan to divert taxpayer dollars to subsidize private education for a select few."

"We will closely review the Treasury Department's new voucher regulations and continue fighting to ensure public funds remain invested in public schools where every student—regardless of their race, ZIP code, disability, family income, or immigration status—can learn, grow, and thrive," Moss pledged. "America's students deserve policies that expand opportunity, not vouchers that leave most children behind."

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten similarly charged that "this scheme is a poison pill for the 90% of American children who attend public schools. Instead of strengthening public education, President Trump is diverting $500 billion in taxpayer cash into private hands, with everyone else left fighting for scraps in a real-life Hunger Games."

While the Congressional Budget Office estimated the program would cost the federal government $26 billion in lost revenue over the next decade, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has found it could cost up to $51 billion per year. A January report from US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted that's more than the combined federal spending on programs to support students with disabilities and those who are from low-income backgrounds.

Weingarten said that "state governors should reject it—not least of all because they will have no say or oversight over how the vouchers operate. The reality is that for every precious public dollar funneled to private schools—money that could be spent on instruction, lowering class sizes, modern buildings, or new books in the library—public school parents will be hunting for pennies on the floor."

"This isn't about 'school choice'; it's the about the school's choice: Private schools can simply refuse to accept poor kids, those with special needs, or those with different religions. And they can refuse to submit to the basic accountability measures their backers hypocritically demand of public schools," she stressed. "If this were really about 'choice' then the administration would be trying to help public schools succeed, rather than eviscerating them."

"This is yet another cruel chapter in the Trump's administration's war on families after the Big, Ugly Bill slashed trillions in support for young people by gutting Medicaid, food assistance, and student loans," she continued. "If we are serious about the promise of education, then we have an obligation to make every public school a place where parents want to send their kids, educators want to work, and kids thrive."

The union leader argued that "instead of this voucher scheme, we should commit to creating safe and welcoming schools with a curriculum that is engaging, relevant, and rigorous. That means multiple pathways to career and college, expanding community schools, focusing on literacy and critical thinking, and protecting children against the perils of artificial intelligence while harnessing its potential. These regulations do the exact opposite."

An analysis published Friday by Democracy Docket warned that "tens of thousands" of voters across the US face "risk of disenfranchisement" thanks to actions being taken by the United States Postal Service.

The analysis, written by veteran election reporter Jim Saksa, points to a new USPS policy known as Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) that "will eliminate evening mail pickups from post offices more than 50 miles away from a regional processing facility, most of which are located in major urban areas."

For people who live in these areas, ballots sent on Election Day will be postmarked and delivered at least a day later than in previous election years, thus making it ineligible to be included in final election tallies.

"In every state, a day’s delay in delivery means that if mail voters wait until the last day or two before the election to mail their ballot," Saksa explained, "they could be disenfranchised."

Saksa reported that this policy is currently active in "about 42.5% of all ZIP codes" in the continental US, and is scheduled to eventually take effect in around 70% of all ZIP codes. No additional ZIP codes are expected to be added between now and election day.

Saksa also said that voters concerned about their ballots not being counted should deliver them in person to their local post office, where they can ask an employee to postmark it.

President Donald Trump has tried for the last several months to use USPS to meddle with states' mail-in voting systems.

In March, the president signed an executive order that instructed the United States Postal Service to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to their voter lists.

The US Supreme Court last month rejected Trump's efforts to interfere with mail-in voting, allowing states to continue sending ballots to voters as they've done in past elections.

Even with the Supreme Court loss, however, the president's repeated attacks on voting by mail has had a major impact on the 2026 midterm elections.

An NBC News poll released in September showed that just 23% of Democratic voters said they planned to vote by mail this year, a double-digit drop from 2024 when 34% of Democrats said they were voting by mail.

In an interview with Politico published Thursday, Quentin James, founder and president of The Collective Political Action Committee, said Black voters have been expressing concerns about sending in their ballots for fear that Trump will order USPS to not deliver them.

“I think there’s confusion,” James said. “We know that the president has spent six months talking about changing the rules regarding mail-in voting, and a lot of folks are concerned about their ballot being secure."

Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg also told Politico that her group is "absolutely hearing concern" about the mail voting process this year.

"But more importantly," Greenberg added, "what we’re hearing is people trying to figure out what they can do and how they can organize locally in order to protect elections."

The Trump administration is intentionally slow-rolling efforts to restrict abortion pill access until after the midterms. Once they're over, "the gloves will be off," according to one anti-abortion advocate who spoke with The Washington Sun.

US Attorney General Todd Blanche said during his July confirmation hearing that rules allowing abortion pills to be shipped nationwide were "wrong" and that he'd seek to review them. He's also reportedly assured faith leaders he would work to ban abortion "in every single state."

But according to a Friday report from the Sun, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has intervened to limit the potential political fallout of new sweeping restrictions on a method that accounts for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the US.

Six in 10 Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 68% say they oppose the banning of medication abortion nationwide. According to senior White House officials, Wiles warned Blanche that an aggressive effort to ban the drug would further alienate voters in November, when Republicans are already predicted to take heavy losses.

"No one wants us taking any real action before the midterms,” one senior administration official told the Sun, passing on the message apparently being pushed by White House staff to the Justice Department.

The White House has denied that the meetings took place, saying the report was "completely false."

But anti-abortion activists who have pressured the White House told the Sun they believe officials are just biding their time until, in their view, the opinion of voters no longer matters.

“Once the midterms are over and it’s truly lame-duck time, we’ve heard the gloves will be off,” one of them said. “We have heard we have friends [in the White House], and there are definitely people who are staunch pro-lifers.”

During President Donald Trump’s second term, the DOJ has asked federal courts to pause several state lawsuits challenging Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policies that allow mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth and delivered by mail. But critically, it has not defended those FDA policies on the merits, but rather sought to slow litigation against them on procedural grounds.

But evidence also suggests the administration is laying the groundwork to restrict access once the political costs are neutralized. Despite multiple prior reviews reaffirming its safety and effectiveness, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spearheaded an FDA "safety" review of mifepristone that could tighten prescription and delivery rules.

Blanche, meanwhile, has indicated openness to reviving the 1873 Comstock Act, which banned the shipment of “lewd” and “indecent” materials through the mail, including those related to abortion.

Amy Littlefield, The Nation's abortion access correspondent, has described Comstock as a “zombie law from the Victorian era," but said it could serve as a "nuclear option" for effectively banning abortion nationwide without any need for an act of Congress.

Since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling overturned the national right to an abortion, anti-abortion groups have pushed for the act to be interpreted in the most expansive way possible.

"If abortion opponents are right in their reading of it, if the courts agree with their reading of it, it could essentially be revived as a de facto nationwide abortion ban that would apply even in blue states," Littlefield told Democracy Now! "Broadly interpreted, it could apply to latex gloves that might be used in an abortion, or syringes... It could be broadly interpreted to shut down not just mail-order abortions, but also clinic-based care, depending on how it’s read."

In 2022, the DOJ under the Biden administration published a legal opinion stating that Comstock does not prohibit the mailing of abortion drugs unless the sender intends to use them illegally. During his confirmation, Blanche said he would revisit that opinion and would use “every lawful action available” to enforce the law.

One unnamed anti-abortion activist told the Sun they've been assured that, under Blanche, the DOJ is "actively working on" plans to use Comstock to restrict abortion. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, has previously told the Sun that she's had "encouraging" meetings with a DOJ official and that plans to rescind the 2022 memo are in the works.

Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for Students for Life, however, said the DOJ had indicated that “everything but the election is pushed until after the elections.”

Trump has vowed to be the “most pro-life president in history" since returning to office. But while campaigning in 2024, he pledged explicitly that he would “not block” access to abortion drugs.

Katie O'Connor, the director of federal abortion policy at the National Women's Law Center, told Common Dreams that "asking the DOJ to wait until midterm votes are counted to take action on abortion is an intentionally deceptive move that keeps voters from making their voices heard."

"This isn't a surprise if you've been paying attention to how this administration operates when it comes to abortion," said Mini Timmaraju, the president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, in a social media post.

"Abortion is extremely popular with voters. Trump knows that," she said. "But he's also under a ton of pressure from anti-abortion extremists to take away access to medication abortion, which is used in the majority of abortions in the US and has been a lifeline for access post-[Roe v. Wade]."

"They’re trying to pull one over on voters," she said. "We’re not going to let that happen."

Left-wing French political leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said Friday that labor unions across the country were planning to strike next week alongside students who have been protesting poor school conditions and teacher shortages, as demonstrators reported unwarranted force by the police and the protests devolved into violence in parts of France.

The French justice minister said Friday that "an active and violent minority" of demonstrators has pushed widening protests against poor education funding into chaos, with fires being set at some schools, dozens of teachers an principals injured, and a police officer in northeastern France reportedly attacked by a mob.

Meanwhile, one student outside Lycée Voltaire in Paris held a sign that read, “School is a right, not a privilege," and a 17-year-old identified as Yves by The Guardian said he and his classmates were "totally pacifist" as they peacefully blocked the entrance to the school, joined by some of their teachers.

“The atmosphere on this barricade is generally very calm,” Yves said. “But there have been other people from outside school who have come past and tried to set fire to things, so we’ve tried to move the bins to stop that.”

The high school is one of many that students say have suffered from teacher shortages and neglect by the government, with students struggling to learn in classrooms packed with 40 children or more. Some protesters reported dilapidated school buildings in the European Union's second-largest economy, inequality in which a child's "social background" decides their success in school, excessively long school days that have done nothing to improve international rankings, and infrastructure that is ill-equipped for the soaring temperatures the climate emergency brought this summer.

“It was unbearable sitting exams in 35°C-40°C heat, even the teachers said those were impossible conditions," a 19-year-old student named Sofiane told The Guardian. Sofiane also expressed concerns that the government may end food assistance for low-income students.

On Thursday, the French government announced spending cuts in its 2027 budget.

“The education budget is being cut to shreds while so much extra funding is being put into the army,” a student named Sophia told The Guardian.

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin told RTL Radio that officials are "not entirely sure" that protesters who have set fires to schools and perpetrated violence in the protests, which began last month in Paris before spreading across the country, "are even high school students themselves."

"We have gone from high school student demonstrations to a public order disturbance," said Darmanin.

Authorities said more than 560 schools were closed Friday due to the unrest, and Darmanin said police have made about 2,000 arrests of young people.

In Marseille, prosecutors said Thursday that two teachers had been assaulted by students who poured gasoline on them, but The Guardian reported Friday that the teachers had been inadvertently hit with the gasoline when a student was throwing it into a trash can.

At least two high schools in Paris were damaged by fire on Friday morning.

But Mélenchon, a presidential candidate and the leader of the left-wing party France Unbowed, suggested that demands for order from his opponent, the far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, were disingenuous.

"Ms. Le Pen calls for the restoration of order," said Mélenchon. "What order is she talking about?! The daily disorder that our youth experience? Our adversaries live in a parallel reality."

Students on Friday accused police of using tear gas to disperse protests, and an investigation was being conducted into a police officer's alleged beating of a 14-year-old boy in Val d’Oise, outside Paris. The boy suffered severe injuries to his mouth and jaw. The officer also reportedly launched a rubber bullet, and the family's lawyer said the boy had thought he was "going to die."

"The government has opted for a crude and dangerous escalation," said Mélenchon on Friday.

On Thursday, one student in Saint-Denis held a sign that read, "Can we explain ourselves without being tear-gassed?"

Mélenchon said a strike in solidarity with the students by French labor unions was "taking shape for October 6, thanks to the decisive action of the trade union confederations."

"Everywhere, delegations of workers are forming to ensure the protection of young people," he said. "The government must stop playing at violence and festering. And completely revise its 'education' copy in the budget!"

"Join the October 6 demonstrations by wearing a white armband!" Mélenchon urged workers. "Step in to protect our youth!"

A Friday report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the American job market is running on fumes.

According to the BLS, the US economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, which was well below economists' forecasts of 90,000 jobs added on the month.

Additionally, employment numbers for previous months were revised downward by a total of 60,000 jobs, and BLS now estimates that the economy posted a net loss of 10,000 jobs in July and a net gain of 133,000 jobs in August.

In a Friday social media post, economist Bill McBride noted that the economy over the last year has only created 496,000 jobs, which averages to roughly 41,000 jobs per month. For comparison, the economy created an average of 186,000 jobs per month in the last year of former President Joe Biden's term.

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, called the latest jobs numbers "mediocre," and pointed out that wage growth in September posted just a 3% yearly gain.

"That’s a new five-year low," Long remarked, "and it’s wiped out entirely by ~3.4% inflation."

Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, also pointed to wage growth failing to keep up with inflation, which she said "gives credibility to the negative consumer sentiment" expressed in recent surveys.

Kyle Moore, chief economist at The Century Foundation, said that the weak wage growth on the month doesn't tell the full story of the stresses working-class Americans are facing because the numbers "leave out debt, all the bills families have to pay before they can spend any of their paycheck."

"A worker with debt often can’t afford to miss a paycheck, and therefore can’t afford to quit a bad job or push for a raise," Moore explained. "That is exactly what we see in today’s job market, with hiring stalled, the quit rate stuck at 1.9%, and wage growth falling as prices climb. Mounting debt, sluggish hiring and real wage growth, and weak social support all disempower workers."

Moore criticized President Donald Trump and his administration for trying to spin their economic policies as successes given the current numbers.

"Until the Trump administration confronts the reality that debt is eating into workers’ gains—wage gains that are now non-existent, in real terms, for the typical worker," said Moore, "the gulf between how this administration spins the economy and how working families actually experience it will continue to widen."

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett didn't heed Moore's advice on this matter, and continued boasting about the state of the economy during a Friday interview.

"If you look at the data from this week, it's proving that Trumponomics is really working," said Hassett, "and this is one reason why markets are celebrating so much."

Breyon Williams, chief economist at Groundwork Collaborative, called the weak jobs report emblematic of how the economy as a whole has performed during Trump's second term.

"There’s a clear pattern in the Trump economy," Williams explained. "One sector is creating most of the new jobs, unemployed workers can’t find new jobs, and Americans are seeing their paychecks eaten up by the president’s high prices. When businesses are barely hiring and raises aren’t keeping up with rising prices, it’s a stalled economy—and working families are stuck in it."

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation on Friday that would crack down on artificial intelligence-powered Flock cameras increasingly used—and abused—by law enforcement agencies across the United States to track and log vehicle data.

Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an interview with The Washington Post, which was first to report on the new legislation, that the US is "moving toward a surveillance state where a handful of giant companies make huge profits by giving the government, by selling to the government, the power to track our every move."

According to a summary released by Sanders' office the Ban Flock Act would bar the federal government from using automatic license plate readers (ALPR) or accessing the information that they gather. The legislation would also halt federal grant funding to state and local governments that use ALPRs and allow Americans to "sue the federal government for violation of their rights through the use of automatic license plate readers."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who joined Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in sponsoring the legislation, said in a statement that the maker of Flock cameras, Flock Safety, is "selling its cameras nationwide, laying the groundwork for a surveillance state while enriching corporate executives."

"Your right to privacy includes the freedom to move around your community without every move being monitored,” said Merkley. "No one should have this unchecked surveillance power at their fingertips, which is why I’m teaming up with Sen. Sanders to rein in this dangerous technology."

Ocasio-Cortez warned that "across the country, Big Tech companies like Flock Safety have built a mass surveillance system to harvest Americans’ private and personal data without their consent."

"AI-powered cameras are keeping track of our every move and weaponizing this data against working people to make record profits. The widespread integration of this technology into American society is unconscionable," she added. "I am proud to introduce the Ban Flock Act with Sen. Sanders to enforce our constitutional right to privacy and protect Americans from both corporate and government surveillance."

The new bill comes after President Donald Trump and his FBI director, Kash Patel, defended Flock cameras as useful tools for law enforcement, even as investigations showed significant abuses. One such investigation, published by the libertarian Institute for Justice in August, "identified well over 100 incidents of ALPR abuse, including romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct."

Trump nevertheless told reporters in September that "I sort of like them... because of law enforcement, but some people don’t."

"They think it’s an infringement," said of the cameras' critics. "I like them."

According to the ACLU, Flock operates more than 120,000 ALPRs nationwide.

"Flock's ALPR cameras aren't like your normal traffic cameras," the group noted. "This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search—with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find."

Sanders said in a statement Friday that "at a time of growing concern about the unchecked power of artificial intelligence, Flock is eviscerating the very notion of privacy by installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent."

"Going to the doctor? Flock knows. Dropping your kid off at school? Flock is tracking you. Flock is always watching," the senator said. "We cannot allow America to become a surveillance state where a handful of AI oligarchs profit by giving the government the power to track our every movement."

The company behind US President Donald Trump's meme coin has launched a competition giving participants an opportunity to attend "the most exclusive dinner in the world"—all they have to do is buy a digital token with no inherent value that has lost investors billions of dollars while further enriching the president.

The Washington Sun reported Thursday that winners of the competition, held by CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC, "will be chosen based on a formula that seems designed in part to increase sales of $TRUMP in the next two months." The event invite promises the top 185 holders of the meme coin an evening with three unidentified "legends" and Trump, "plus a private meet and greet with a legend yet to be announced," at the president's golf club in Virginia.

The November 22 dinner will mark the second exclusive event for holders of Trump's meme coin, which has netted the president at least $635 million, according to recent financial disclosures.

Investors in the digital token haven't fared nearly as well: The cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen has estimated that nearly a million people who purchased the meme coin through the end of June 2026 had combined losses of around $4 billion.

Last May, the top buyers of Trump's meme coin—including Chinese billionaire Justin Sun, who has poured tens of millions of dollars into the president's crypto ventures—attended an exclusive dinner at Trump's Virginia golf club and received a VIP tour of the White House. Ethics experts and other critics described the event as "corruption embodied."

News of the second dinner sparked similar outcry. "This is the most brazenly corrupt shit I have ever seen in politics and it's not even close," wrote Tommy Vietor, a podcast host and former spokesperson for Barack Obama.

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) characterized the event as "the most exclusive dinner in the world with the most corrupt president in American history."

The Pentagon is preparing to dramatically expand the American military presence in the Middle East as President Donald Trump weighs renewed attacks on Iran, with thousands of additional troops and a third aircraft carrier being readied for deployment, even as the conflict he has repeatedly declared "over" or "won" threatens to erupt into a new and potentially broader phase.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that the Pentagon is preparing options that could put as many as three US aircraft carriers and their accompanying warships in the Middle East.

According to The Associated Press, around 9,000 additional sailors and Marines are being dispatched aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group. The buildup could push the number of US personnel in the region above 20,000 by late October.

The Roosevelt is being sent to relieve the USS George Washington, while a third carrier, the USS George HW Bush, is also already in the region.

The new deployment plans come as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran remains stalled, and as Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume large-scale military action—including the total annihilation of the nation of over 90 million people—after the November midterm elections.

"Either they'll do something very proper and smart, or they won't be around very long," Trump said of the Iranian government Thursday in Denton, Texas. "Frankly, I hate to see that, but they won't be around very long."

Iran, meanwhile, has reportedly begun preparing for a more expansive retaliation should the United States launch another major attack in the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against the Middle East nation.

Hamidreza Azizi, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Reuters Thursday that the Iranian government seems "determined not to respond symbolically to a symbolic move and instead to escalate in the ⁠hope of reestablishing deterrence."

Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump—the president's daughter-in-law—warned during a Wednesday interview with British journalist Harry Cole that the increasingly protracted Iran War could not only tarnish Trump's legacy, but could also cost Republicans next month's midterm elections.

"Well, it's possible," Trump—who campaigned as the "peace president" on a promise of no new wars—said of the midterm risks Thursday on his way to Texas, before adding that “it should help because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

The intelligence consensus of every US administration since former President George W. Bush—including during both of Trump's terms—has been that Iran has not been trying to develop nuclear weapons.

United Nations human rights experts on Thursday joined the growing chorus of people around the world outraged by Tennessee's two botched attempts to execute Christa Pike and called on the state to refrain from trying again to kill the 50-year-old woman.

After a last-minute legal battle, the US Supreme Court allowed Tennessee to execute Pike for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. The state tried to do so at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday night—with two injections of pentobarbital, each of which was supposed to be lethal—but she survived and was transported by ambulance to a hospital.

A doctor interviewed by WSMV 4 Nashville's Steve Mehling suggested that an IV could have been placed incorrectly—and, as the journalist summarized: "Pike may suffer from a flurry of long-term effects. This includes skin necrosis, permanent scarring, functional impairment, compartment syndrome, chronic neuropathic pain, and pigmentation change at the injection site."

As of Thursday afternoon, Pike's attorneys said that she was still alive, but in critical condition, "and receiving lifesaving medical care," according to The Washington Post. Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who had previously declined to grant clemency in this case, has since halted executions in Tennessee and ordered an investigation into the state's second botched killing of an inmate this year.

Several UN special rapporteurs and members of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls had urged US authorities to commute Pike's sentence last month, saying that her "execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row."

After Wednesday's botched attempts, some of the same experts weighed in again: "Christa Pike was denied clemency. One hour before her execution, a court halted it. The Supreme Court then lifted the stay. She was injected twice with lethal drugs and survived. Forcing a person to face death, have it suspended, and then face it again within hours amounts to barbaric and torturous punishment, compounded in this case by decades of psychological torture on death row."

"The state of Tennessee must immediately and irrevocably end this cruelty by commuting Christa Pike's death sentence," said Morris Tidball-Binz, special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions; Margaret Satterthwaite, special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers; Pau Pérez-Sales, special rapporteur on torture; Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, special rapporteur on the right to health; Reem Alsalem, special rapporteur on violence against women and girls; and working group members Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstić, Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, and Haina Lu.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk went even further, arguing against capital punishment.

"The case of Christa Pike lays bare multiple reasons why the death penalty should be abolished," said a statement from his office. "The prolonged suffering—physical and mental—arising from multiple failed execution attempts is abhorrent, and cruel. And there are key fair trial questions still unresolved."

Türk is calling on "state authorities not to pursue any further attempt to execute Pike," his office said. "We are also troubled by the increase in the number of executions in the United States. The death penalty has no place in any society."

San Francisco-based artificial intelligence firm OpenAI has "parted ways" with three safety researchers who allegedly shared "confidential company information," The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, prompting fresh alarm among critics who accuse the ChatGPT maker of sidelining internal warnings about the risks posed by its increasingly powerful AI.

People reportedly familiar with the matter told the Journal that OpenAI recently informed employees it had terminated the three researchers, who it accused of sharing the information with "a third-party AI safety organization."

OpenAI did not identify the researchers, the outside organization, or the information allegedly shared. A company spokesperson told the newspaper that "our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work.”

The Journal's Maxwell Zeff—who authored the report with Keach Hagey and Berber Jin—subsequently identified the three safety team members as Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni.

"Looks like they're firing whistleblowers," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) said in response to the report. "What are they hiding?"

"I'll be sending OpenAI a demand for transparency," he added.

Shaunna Thomas is the executive director of Guardrails Alliance, a super political action committee made up of "workers, organizers, policy experts, and everyday people who believe the most powerful technology ever built shouldn’t be controlled by a handful of unaccountable billionaires."

Thomas called the Journal report "the latest example of OpenAI advocating for safety measures in the public eye, but actively making decisions and lobbying against those efforts behind closed doors."

"Sam Altman says we need to slow down development to ensure the safety of humanity," Thomas said, referring to OpenAI's CEO. "Yet he is allegedly firing the very people hired to keep us safe. When deep insiders are sounding the alarm, history tells us to listen. OpenAI is not only ignoring their warnings, it’s punishing them."

"In the absence of clear regulations, insiders are a crucial factor in keeping the rest of us safe as these models continue to do unpredictable things," she added. "We must stand with rank-and- file employees and fight for their protection."

The new allegations come amid an intensifying debate over whether OpenAI and other frontier AI companies can adequately police themselves.

As Common Dreams recently reported, OpenAI and other AI firms are investigating tens of thousands of security incidents, including episodes involving attempts to bypass guardrails, escape sandboxes, hijack websites, and even access government systems.

In July, an OpenAI model autonomously breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during an internal cybersecurity test. Experts warned that the incident demonstrated the dangers of relying on voluntary corporate safeguards.

It's not just OpenAI; in 2026 alone, companies including Google, Meta, and Anthropic have reported incidents of AI autonomously escaping supposedly isolated testing environments and targeting real-world systems.

AI safety campaigners and some Democratic lawmakers this week lambasted President Donald Trump, who, after meeting with Big Tech executives including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, dismissed the lack of legally binding commitments regarding AI regulation by saying he trusted the corporate leaders' "morally binding" self-policing pledge.

Elon Musk, CEO of the artificial intelligence company xAI, has said that such incidents “will happen frequently ⁠as AI becomes smarter and more agentic,” a reference to systems’ ability to independently act toward accomplishing specific goals without meaningful human control.

Experts say such autonomous hacks underscore the problem of AI alignment. As AI progresses toward artificial general intelligence—a still-hypothetical point at which it matches or surpasses human cognitive ability at virtually any intellectual, creative, or physical task—the challenge of ensuring that advanced systems reliably pursue goals that match what humans actually want becomes increasingly difficult and, many insiders believe, dangerous to the point of posing an existential risk to humanity.

Last month, Casar and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) unveiled legislation that would pause development of advanced AI.

Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) also said this week that he is seeking to introduce legislation to at least temporarily ban recursive self-improvement, or AI that is capable of improving itself and modifying its objectives without meaningful human input.

And on Thursday, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) put forth a bill that would compel every AI company operating in the US to obtain a public charter.

“This issue is of monumental consequence,” said Sanders. “I’d rather be called an alarmist than a father or grandfather who is asleep at the wheel."

Conservation groups that sued this summer over President Donald Trump's administration rescinding the regulatory definition of "harm" in the Endangered Species Act updated their legal challenge on Thursday after yet another attack on the landmark law.

The coalition's supplemental complaint explains to a federal court in Seattle that since the lawsuit was first filed in July, administrative leaders have directed various agencies to interpret the ESA to mean that only intentionally killing or wounding a protected species is illegal—a shift that critics condemned as "an all-out war on America's wildlife."

As the "harm" rescission took effect on September 14, US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik issued a related memorandum with that interpretation—effectively allowing "incidental" killing. John Luce, general counsel at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sent the same directive to eight sections of NOAA.

These memos "violate the plain language and overarching purpose of the ESA; they also lack any reasoned basis, are arbitrary and capricious, and failed to comply with applicable notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements," the new filing argues, citing the Administrative Procedure Act. The coalition is asking the court to vacate the memos and bar the agencies from using their interpretations of the 1973 law.

"This despicable effort to legalize most killings of endangered wildlife would essentially mean open season on species already on the brink of annihilation," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species co-director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a Thursday statement. "It's the most serious attack on imperiled animals since the Endangered Species Act was passed more than 50 years ago."

"Without protection against the daily assaults of our modern world, Florida manatees, spotted owls, snowy plovers, and so many other animals that bring color to our world won't stand a chance," he warned, noting that "habitat destruction is the single biggest cause of species endangerment and extinction" in the United States and beyond.

Greenwald added that "with this destruction, the perils faced by plants and animals have grown exponentially. Such peril doesn't come down the barrel of a gun, but it's still a deadly threat, and the Endangered Species Act can and must protect our imperiled wildlife from this kind of careless killing."

In addition to the center, the coalition behind the case includes Columbia Riverkeeper, Conservation Law Foundation, Conservation Northwest, Friends of the Wild Swan, Oregon Wild, Sierra Club, Swan View Coalition, and WildEarth Guardians, with legal representation by Earthjustice.

After the memos were exposed last month, Earthjustice attorney Ben Levitan declared that "the government's new legal position is a prescription for extinction."

"It says that as long as you claim you didn't mean to kill an endangered species, the law can't and won't stop you," he stressed. "That's ridiculous—and a totally illegal, active misreading of the Endangered Species Act. We'll see the Trump administration in court about this."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday unveiled a bill aimed at reining in the artificial intelligence industry that would force every AI company operating in the US to obtain a public charter.

According to Jayapal (D-Wash.), the charter system will be similar to the one long used in the US to regulate banks, which must submit to certain regulatory obligations before being allowed to operate.

"The crux of this bill is simple," said Jayapal. "If you want to be an AI company in this country, you have to obtain a public charter that has a broad set of terms and conditions to operate and ensure public benefit without the harms."

The Washington Democrat said the charter approach was needed given the broad reach large technology companies already have over every aspect of life in the US, and she argued it would be a more proactive alternative to the piecemeal approach US lawmakers have taken to regulating Big Tech.

"For too long, we’ve allowed a few Big Tech companies to dominate the market," she said. "They have used mass surveillance to steal private information, labor, and creative work, building trillion-dollar empires on our tracked personal lives. AI corporations and Big Tech are now following that same playbook."

Under the charter system, tech companies would be banned from practices such as surveillance pricing to charge individual consumers different prices based on their personal data and financial histories.

The system would also establish stronger liabilities for AI companies that commit harmful acts, and particularly egregious actions could be punished by removal of firms' charters, which would essentially be a corporate death penalty.

Jayapal's proposal would also put the government in charge of every step of the AI safety review process and would include "round-the-clock federal oversight, testing in government facilities and approval to release, adversarial stress tests, and a government-controlled kill switch," according to her office.

The proposed framework earned praise from former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who argued that American voters have already "paid an extraordinary price for Big Tech's self-regulation."

"For generations we have required banks, drug makers, and nuclear operators to meet public terms before they do business," Khan added, "and AI companies should be no different."

Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, also gave the Jayapal plan kudos, saying it would "establish desperately needed rules of the road, punish AI companies that release dangerous products, and create the clear public benefit that the American people are calling for."

"Companies have continually pulled the rug out from under families, workers, and small businesses to build powerful and unaccountable Big Tech monopolies that dictate to us how we should live our own lives," Haworth emphasized. "Enough is enough."

Although President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have publicly opposed legislative restrictions on the AI industry, the bill comes as Democrats are aiming to win congressional majorities in the November midterm elections.

The Trump administration has spent months targeting anti-Israel protesters for deportation as part of what it portrays as a fight against "antisemitism." One of its latest targets is a Hasidic Jewish rabbi.

Yehonatan Ovadia, a 35-year-old Israeli citizen, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on August 28 after being summoned to immigration court in Manhattan. He now sits in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, according to The New York Times, which broke news of his detention on Wednesday.

Ovadia, a father of five children, has lived in New York's Rockland County since coming to the United States on a religious worker visa in 2022. He is a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, an ultra-Orthodox movement that opposes Zionism on religious grounds, holding that Jews should not establish a sovereign state in the land of Israel before the coming of the Messiah.

Some members of Satmar have vocally protested against US support for Israel's genocidal military assault in Gaza since it began in 2023.

“We demonstrated for Gaza, for the liberation of Gaza, for the rights of the Palestinians and to show to the world that the Jews, real Judaism, want to have peace,” Ovadia told the Times from detention.

As the death toll in Gaza has mounted, Ovadia has continued to attend anti-Israel marches across New York and New Jersey. Earlier this year, the government revoked his legal status after he appeared at one of these protests.

In November 2023, Ovadia joined a group of anti-Zionist Hasidic Jews to protest the display of a large Israeli flag at the Ramapo Town Hall. Some attendees were recorded cutting the flag down with scissors. Ovadia and another man were charged with hate crimes over the incident—charges that were later dropped.

Ovadia later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense of disorderly conduct, for which he paid a $200 fine plus an additional $125 charge. He says he was not one of the men who took down the flag and that he did not know about the other attendees' plans to do so.

The formal reason for Ovadia's deportation, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was that he “overstayed his welcome and refused to depart” the US after losing his status. But the reason he lost that status is more revealing.

Though it acknowledged that Ovadia was eligible to maintain his religious worker status, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ultimately revoked it “as a matter of discretion." It cited what it said were “adverse factors” stemming from the 2023 Israeli flag protest.

DHS stated even more explicitly that the content of Ovadia's speech was the real issue.

"The Trump administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews, and steals property," DHS said.

At the beginning of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing DHS to target noncitizens who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests, which it has deemed antisemitic.

The order has led to nonviolent political organizers, like the Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil and many others, having their legal immigration statuses abruptly revoked and being whisked into ICE detention without warning. Federal courts have struck down this policy on First Amendment grounds.

Ovadia's attorneys have filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that DHS had unlawfully retaliated against Ovadia for his protected speech. They argue that by targeting Ovadia over activism that stems from his religious beliefs, the government has taken “an official position” favoring “one religious position within Judaism” while penalizing "an adherent of another.”

Many Jewish protesters have been arrested during demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians, including dozens who were arrested at a Jewish Voice for Peace event last week to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations General Assembly. But Ovadia's attorneys believe he may be the first Jewish protester to have his immigration status stripped.

Supporters of Yehonatan Ovadia gather outside his immigration court hearing in Manhattan on September 30, 2026. (Photo from Eric Lee/X)

Eric Lee, one of Ovadia's attorneys, has emphasized the case as an example of why "equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism produces absurd results."

"Trump's DHS says ICE detention of Yehonatan Ovadia is justified because he was 'harassing Jews,'" Lee wrote in a post on social media. "A rabbi detained for participating in a Hasidic demonstration against Israel three years ago was harassing... himself? What a joke!"

Ovadia, whom a judge has denied bond, appeared in immigration court on Wednesday, while dozens of supporters, many in traditional Hasidic dress, assembled outside.

And from detention, the man DHS has accused of "harassing Jews" continued to describe his activism not as hostility toward his own people, but as an expression of Jewish solidarity with Palestinians.

"From the Jewish people to our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza and the West Bank and all over occupied Palestine: We didn't forget you!" Ovadia said in a statement shared by Lee. "We are following you, and we know that you are facing genocide! Please be strong and continue to believe! Because your struggle is our struggle and your liberation is our liberation!"

"We will SHOUT and DEMONSTRATE for you," he continued, "from New York, Washington, Canada, London, and from every place that we can in the free world."

"Your liberation is near," Ovadia concluded, "and it will bring peace and liberation to all of us."

The winners of the annual Right Livelihood Award, announced on Wednesday, are two women and two women-led groups who "refused to wait for permission," said the executive director of the award committee.

“A system built to serve the few was never going to hold," said Ole von Uexkull, who added that the winners of the 2026 award are "rewriting the rules that autocrats, patriarchs, and Silicon Valley’s most powerful men assumed were theirs to write alone.”

The honorees include Jalila Haider, a Pakistani human rights lawyer who was the first female attorney from her Hazara community; Timnit Gebru, an American artificial intelligence researcher who has challenged the consolidation of power in Big Tech and exposed the potential harms of AI; the Rural Women's Assembly in South Africa, a movement of 78,000 small-scale farmers "united to defend land, seed, and bodily autonomy against corporate agribusiness and patriarchal dispossession"; and the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association (GYLA), the country's first human rights organization in Georgia, which has played a crucial role in its democratization.

The winners of the award, said Right Livelihood in a video about the 2026 laureates, "are making justice the center of the narrative."

Haider has combined legal work with on-the-ground activism, leading a seven-day hunger strike in 2018 against the targeted killing of Hazaras, a Shia Muslim minority, by the Pakistani army. The strike forced the army chief to negotiate directly with Hazara women, "resulting in a sustained decrease in attacks against the community."

Her law firm has also helped more than 600 political activists regain their freedom.

"Despite detention, cyberharassment, and death threats, she continues working toward a world where, in her words, 'no human being is illegal,'" said Right Livelihood.

Gebru was fired from Google after authoring an academic paper that warned of the risks posed by large language models; she had been co-leading the company's Ethics AI team. Now the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), the organization's distributed model "brings together researchers and collaborators across countries and continents, defying the centralized and corporate-driven concepts that mainstream AI entails."

"What keeps me going is belief in human agency," said Gebru in Right Livelihood's video.

The Rural Women's Assembly has "built one of the region’s largest autonomous platforms for rural women" with a volunteer structure, establishing 24 seed multiplication sites and "defending traditional seed systems from commercialization.

Its seed sovereignty efforts have challenged corporate control over South Africa's food systems and strengthened "communities’ resilience to climate shocks," according to Right Livelihood.

"We have the power, and we have the imagination that it will take to construct this new world, because another world is needed, and it's urgent," said the group's regional coordinator, Mercia Andrews.

GYLA is the first Right Livelihood winner from Georgia since the award was established in 1980. The group provides grassroots legal aid and has secured landmark legal victories, including ones that have protected rights for people with disabilities and guaranteed free education for every child in Georgia.

The group has opted to remain in the country with a scaled-down team, despite Georgia's repressive "foreign agents" law.

"With courage and determination, the organization presses on for a better future for all Georgians," said Right Livelihood.

The awards, which include support for the winners' work, are set to be presented on December 1 in Stockholm.

A group of 20 US senators on Thursday demanded that the US Department of Health and Human Services boost winter heating assistance as President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran fuels a surge in energy costs.

In a letter sent to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the senators—19 Democrats along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—urged an emergency appropriation request for "at least $3 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)," which would supplement the $4 billion already allocated to the heating assistance initiative.

"Without immediate action, senior citizens on fixed incomes, working families with kids, and people with disabilities are at serious risk of going cold this winter," the senators wrote. "In the richest country in the history of the world, we cannot let that happen."

The senators then pointed fingers at Trump, arguing that the president's "war in Iran and his opposition to renewable energy is sending home heating costs through the roof."

The price of heating oil, along with the price of gasoline and diesel fuel, has been skyrocketing in the months since Trump attacked Iran without congressional authorization in February.

Barron's reported on Wednesday that heating oil prices have now hit record highs, and an analysis published Monday by the National Energy Assistance Directors Association estimates that houses will pay an extra $900 for heating oil this winter, a 50% increase from the year before.

The senators concluded their letter by reiterating the urgency of passing emergency increases in LIHEAP funding.

"Emergency LIHEAP assistance is needed now more than ever," they wrote. "Without this vital funding, states will be forced to turn away families, reduce benefits, or exhaust heating assistance funds well before winter is over."

"Being able to heat your home in the freezing cold is not a luxury," they emphasized. "It is a matter of life and death."

As some of California's richest residents pour tens of millions of dollars into defeating a proposed billionaire tax, one former venture capitalist is making a remarkably different argument: He is perfectly happy to pay it—and he's not alone.

John O'Farrell, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, explained Wednesday in a 12-post thread on the social media platform X why he supports the California Billionaire Tax Act, commonly known as Proposition 40, which is on the state's November midterm ballot.

O'Farrell's argument contradicts the chorus of Silicon Valley billionaires and their allies who warn that taxing billionaire wealth would drive the ultra-rich out of California.

"I know where I want to live," he wrote.

"I've been fortunate to benefit from tech wealth. I'm not even close to being a billionaire, but I could easily afford to pay the wealth tax—and any billionaire certainly can—without the slightest effect on my lifestyle," O'Farrell said. "I support a wealth tax at my wealth level also."

Introduced by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, Prop 40 would impose a one-time 5% levy on people worth $1 billion or more, with an option to pay the tax in annual installments of 1% over five years.

The proposal would require the state to spend 90% of revenue from the tax on healthcare and the rest on food assistance and public education. Proponents say the tax would raise roughly $100 billion in revenue. Critics argue that it could drive wealthy residents and investment from California and stall economic growth.

"I find the knee-jerk opposition of some ultra-wealthy people to the idea of paying any new tax deeply disappointing," O'Farrell said in his thread. "To be honest, I can't understand it. They have so much money they couldn't spend it in multiple lifetimes."

Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies—a Washington, DC-based progressive think tank—exposed 22 California billionaires who have poured more than $150 million into defeating Prop 40, "with more rolling in every day," as Chuck Collins wrote for the group.

"These 22 include a prince, several private jet-flying chums of Jeffrey Epstein, and a bunch of crypto and tech bros designing the [artificial intelligence] future for the rest of us," Collins noted. "On January 1, 2025, these 22 billionaires had a combined wealth of $439.8 billion. By September 1, 2026, their wealth had grown to $722.1 billion. In a little under 20 months, their combined wealth increased $282.6 billion, a gain of over 64%."

O'Farrell's social media thread pointed out how "our tax system favors wealthy people."

"I believe it's a patriotic duty to pay taxes, and I do so with pride," he wrote, adding, "the least we can do is pay up rather than try to avoid it."

"Paying taxes is ultimately a matter of self-interest," he contended. "What kind of society do we want to live in? One that rewards achievement but also emphasizes fairness and opportunity for all—or one in which you have to cower in a bunker and live in fear of the pitchforks?"

"One enables the pursuit of happiness for all," he concluded. "The other, just the pursuit of endless wealth."

Prop 40 is backed by numerous progressive groups including the Teamsters union, California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and Our Revolution, as well as individual progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Democratic congressional candidate Connie Chan, who is running to replace retiring longtime San Francisco congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Sanders, Khanna, and others—including Congresswoman Aisha Wahab (D-Calif.), Democratic congressional candidate Randy Villegas, and California insurance commissioner candidate Jane Kim—are set to speak at a series of rallies for Prop 40 starting Saturday in San Francisco.

O'Farrell isn't the only wealthy Californian who supports Prop 40. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose fortune has soared into the hundreds of billions of dollars, has said he is “perfectly fine” with the proposed tax, telling Bloomberg that he and his family “chose to live in Silicon Valley” and that whatever taxes California applies, “so be it.”

A Washington, DC judge on Thursday shut down President Donald Trump's push to have the US Department of Justice indict a former Olympian on false charges of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

In a 26-page ruling, Washington, DC Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman said that charges against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn deserved to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning future DOJ attorneys can never revive the case against him.

Edelman noted that, within a month of having Hearn indicted on felony vandalism charges, the DOJ moved to dismissed the case "not because it had misidentified Mr. Hearn as the perpetrator of the alleged act, but because no crime occurred."

Rather, Edelman continued, the damage done to the Reflecting Pool "was due to a contractor's 'rushed and botched' installation of the lining while conducting renovations, and Mr. Hearn's actions had no effect on the value of the pool."

Attorneys representing Hearn issued a joint statement celebrating Edelman's decision, while emphasizing that the case "never should have been brought in the first place."

"This was a miscarriage of justice, and what happened to Mr. Hearn is an outrage that should shock every American," the attorneys said. "This administration chose to pursue an unjust prosecution against Mr. Hearn. It should not get repeated chances to wield the power of criminal prosecution against someone who should never have been prosecuted."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who counts Hearn as a constituent, ridiculed Trump-appointed DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro for trying to prosecute the former Olympian despite lacking "any evidence" against him.

Raskin also suggested that the president was more deserving of being charged with vandalizing iconic Washington, DC landmarks.

"If Detectives Pirro and [US Attorney General Todd] Blanche are still searching for felon vandals in the Nation’s Capital," Raskin wrote, "I’ve got great leads on who illegally bulldozed the East Wing of the White House and who has been desecrating the Kennedy Center with deranged narcissistic graffiti."

Trump personally pushed the DOJ to indict Hearn, and rebuked Pirro in August after her office moved to drop the case.

"I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro... on the Reflecting Pool," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. "I don't know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM."

Norm Eisen, one of the attorneys representing Hearn, revealed later that month that he and other members of the former Olympian's legal team were seeking grand jury transcripts related to the case to determine “whether prosecutors were candid" when seeking the indictment of their client.

Relatives of Renee Good filed a pair of lawsuits against the federal government and immigration officials on Thursday over both the US citizen's killing at the hands of an immigration agent and an alleged conspiracy to interfere with civil rights in Minnesota's Twin Cities.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old writer, poet, and mother of three, in Minneapolis on January 7, while ICE was deployed there as part of President Donald Trump's "Operation Metro Surge."

Filed in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota on behalf of her partner, Becca Good, and brother, Brent Ganger—the trustee for next of kin, including her children—the complaint against the United States lays out the details of the shooting and what followed, alleging wrongful death, battery, assault, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence.

The suit notes that Renee Good had primary custody of her 6-year-old son and provided primary care for her 12- and 15-year-olds. In addition to highlighting the "immense physical, mental, and emotional pain" she suffered in her final moments, it stresses that "Renee's children, parents, and siblings have been forever deprived of the economic support, services, advice, comfort, assistance, protection, and companionship of someone who was monumentally important to them and who cared for them deeply."

Becca Good, who was in the vehicle with her partner and their dog during the shooting, shared in a Thursday statement that "every morning, she is my first thought. I think about how the kids are growing up without their mama, and how I will grow old without the love of my life. I think about how we should have had 40 more years together. But I also think about what she would have wanted after all of this."

"As we have tried to navigate our own massive loss, I am also devastated by how many other lives have been destroyed in this darkest of times," said Good, whose partner's death was shortly followed by immigration agents' fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on January 24, also in Minneapolis. "So many other families are dealing with the loss of their loved ones; to everyone who has had to witness it—the pain of this moment extends far beyond our family."

"What happened to us should never happen to any family," she stressed. "No child should grow up without a parent because of it. No one should lose their sister or their daughter. No one should have to live without their soulmate. Accountability—real accountability—is the only way to make sure that no other family has to go through what we have."

That's where the second complaint comes in. It names not only Ross but also Trump Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her adviser Corey Lewandowski, "border czar" Tom Homan, former acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, former Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino, and 10 other federal agents.

"These two civil complaints seek to remedy two distinct, but related wrongs. We seek accountability for the unconscionable and unconstitutional use of force by a federal agent that killed Renee on January 7th. But we also seek accountability for the discriminatory and violent operation that placed Jonathan Ross on Portland Avenue that day," explained Benjamin Berkman, senior attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, the firm representing the family.

"Those in the highest rungs of power authorized armed, masked men to terrorize Minnesotans on the basis of their perceived race or national origin," the lawyer said. "To achieve that goal, they also sought to silence community members who refused to look away. Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act to hold accountable those who conspire to deny the equal protection of the laws. Today's filings intend to do just that."

While Trump has sent ICE into various US communities since returning to office last year after running on a promise to pursue mass detention and deportations, the invasion of the Twin Cities followed a series of his racist statements directed at the area's Somali immigrants and their families. The filing alleges that "Operation Metro Surge was conceived, ordered, and carried out to satisfy the president's expressed animus toward people of Somali origin and Hispanic people."

In practice, the operation involved "masked agents roving public streets and targeting people of Somali descent and origin and Hispanic individuals without regard to immigration status," the complaint says. It highlights that "like many members of their community," Becca and Renee Good, two white women, "were concerned about ICE's conduct and its effect on their friends and neighbors."

As with the first filing, the second also lays out the details of the shooting and its aftermath: "Renee was driving the couple's Honda Pilot" and stopped on Portland Avenue, the document says. "Exercising her First Amendment rights, Becca exited the vehicle and began filming ICE activity while Renee remained in the car and honked her horn to warn her neighbors."

It details the confrontation with masked agents, including one who "turned away the aid offered to her as she lay dying," and attempts by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, to blame Renee Good for her own death—including claims, contradicted by video evidence, that she "weaponized her vehicle" in "an act of domestic terrorism."

Antonio M. Romanucci, the law firm's founding partner, emphasized that "unquestionably, unequivocally, neither Renee nor Becca was the worst of the worst. They were exactly as their name says—Good folks. No one was armed. No one was a domestic terrorist. They had their pet dog in the car."

"Indeed, Renee told masked agents she wasn't mad at them; her last words clearly reflected her state of mind. Renee had the right to speak, express herself, assemble, observe, and leave the scene unharmed and alive," he continued. "Today, these lawsuits are the beginning of the ultimate legal weapon in uncovering the truth behind this unlawful use of deadly force and the nefarious conspiracies behind the invasion of American cities by American law enforcement officers."

Renee Good's brother, Ganger, declared Thursday that "I stand here with fierce determination to do what is right for my sister, for her children, and for our country—and that is to insist on accountability."

"What happened to her on January 7th and what has happened to far too many people in the last year is not what America is about," he added. "We can and must do better, and the Constitution must be the roadmap back to decency and the rule of law."

The Bolivia Public Prosecutor's Office on Thursday denounced “the kidnapping of our attorney general” after the country's top law enforcement official, Roger Mariaca, was intercepted and detained at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz, along with a prosecutor from the city.

Observers were quick to note that the arrests took place weeks after Mariaca's office arrested Fernando Cerimedo, a political operative with ties to right-wing campaigns across Latin America.

Cerimedo also has a business partnership with President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale—a connection that helped earn Cerimedo the nickname "MAGA's Man in LatAm."

Marco Antonio Oviedo, Bolivia's interior minister, said the two officials were arrested on suspicion of criminal organization, money laundering, and drug trafficking.

The arrests were carried out with the "cooperation of the US government" as part of the "fight against terrorism," said Oviedo.

They were detained days after the Trump administration revoked their visas and those of more than a dozen other people from Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador.

The US State Department had accused them of corruption and having ties to drug trafficking, similar to allegations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was abducted by US military forces in January.

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other officials have taken numerous actions that they say are aimed at combating drug trafficking in Latin America, including bombing dozens of alleged drug boats, partnering with countries across the region on military operations, and creating the Shield of the Americas, an alliance with right-wing governments including that of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz that is ostensibly aimed at defeating drug cartels and organized crime.

The Trump administration claimed Mariaca had taken "bribes to facilitate drug trafficking and help violent criminals evade justice." Mariaca denied the accusations on Monday and said his visa had been revoked as part of an effort at "interference" and "political pressure" due to his investigation into Cerimedo.

Cerimedo's arrest in August was in connection with the attempted murder of a lawyer and activist with whom he reportedly had a relationship.

"He's also being investigated for collusion in drug trafficking and other activities during his time as a presidential adviser to Rodrigo Paz," reported journalist Ollie Vargas.

On social media, Ryan Grim of Drop Site News called the detention of Mariaca "fallout from the arrest of Cerimedo," while another observer replied, "That's your Marco Rubio pulling the strings."

After the arrests, a special police unit reportedly searched the Santa Cruz Departmental Prosecutor’s Office, Mariaca's office, and the attorney general's home.

"We denounce before the entire Bolivian population this intervention that is being carried out illegally," Claudia Pardo, the head of communications at the Public Prosecutor's Office, told the press.

Journalist Joseph Bouchard noted that while claiming to fight drug trafficking in Latin America, the Trump administration is "actively protecting allied drug traffickers and criminals," such as former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in 2024 of helping the Sinaloa Cartel import hundreds of tons of drugs into the US. Trump pardoned Hernández last November, weeks before his administration invaded Venezuela and abducted Maduro.

The administration "bankrolled Fernando Cerimedo, who is now jailed in Bolivia for ties to drug trafficking," said Bouchard, "and the US forced Bolivia to jail his prosecutor."

For President Donald Trump, war is peace.

That’s what he suggested during an interview published Thursday by Time magazine when asked by a reporter about his threat to “annihilate” Iran during last week’s United Nations General Assembly.

Over the last seven months, Trump has on numerous occasions threatened apocalyptic destruction of Iran, most infamously in April when he said that if it did not submit to a peace agreement he found favorable, its "whole civilization" would "die."

Trump's threat to annihilate a nation of 90 million people drew worldwide condemnation from human rights groups, lawmakers, and other nations, some of whom described the rhetoric as "genocidal."

Time senior political correspondent Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs asked Trump about these threats and how they comported with his self-description as a peacemaker.

"You've made versions of that threat before. You've also called yourself the president of peace," they said. "How can the president of peace be calling for the annihilation of an entire people?"

Trump replied: "Because by annihilating Iran, we've created peace in the world. With Iran, I don't think you could ever have peace."

The reporters asked Trump to clarify: "Are you talking specifically about the government, the Islamic Republic regime? What about the innocent people?"

He did not give a clear answer, instead accusing the Iranian government of having "killed 75,000 people in the last number of months," referring to its crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.

Iran has claimed that 3,117 people were killed during the protest wave. But while independent investigations have suggested this is an undercount, the figures they have confirmed are far lower than what Trump suggests.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), for instance, documented a total of 7,007 confirmed deaths, mostly of protesters, between December 2025 and February 2026, and says another 11,744 possible deaths remain under review. Other unverified reports suggest that perhaps as many as 30,000 people were killed.

While seeking to justify continued war with Iran—now into its seventh month—Trump has continued to inflate the number of people supposedly killed well beyond even the highest reported figures. In July, he claimed 52,000 people had been killed, but provided no evidence. He again provided no evidence for the 75,000 figure other than to say it was "documented."

After launching the war at the end of February, Trump initially claimed it would last about six to eight weeks. The reporters asked why the war was now entering its seventh month.

"Only because I wanted to go further," Trump acknowledged.

"I took them out," he said, possibly referring to Iranian nuclear sites, or to Iran's senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed during the initial wave of US-Israeli attacks. "I could have stopped then, but I wanted to go further."

Trump went on to portray Iran as essentially destroyed, claiming its economy, navy, and air force were “gone” and putting inflation at “300%”—assertions that substantially overstated the damage inflicted on the country.

Iran has suffered enormous military and economic damage, but it has continued to launch ballistic missile attacks and threaten further retaliation. Meanwhile, official Iranian data puts September inflation at roughly 90% year over year, a far cry from 300%.

“When I said I was going to be there for a short period of time, I was, and then I decided I wanted to go further than that because I didn’t want to have them come back in some different form," the president said.

US President Donald Trump addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York on September 22, 2026. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump's threats also come as the US midterm elections loom just over a month away. High gas prices and inflation caused by the war have fueled backlash among American voters, leading to Trump's lowest-ever approval ratings and predictions of an electoral bloodbath for Republicans down the ballot in November.

Last week, Trump rejected a Qatari-mediated ceasefire proposal from Iran that would have involved the US ending its military blockade of Iran in exchange for Iran lifting its restrictions on travel through the Strait of Hormuz. It would also have meant returning to nuclear negotiations for the first time since Trump backed out of the memorandum of understanding agreed upon in June.

With the war deeply unpopular among the American public, Trump has scaled back the tempo of his attacks on Iran in recent months. Reporters asked Trump whether he planned to ramp up the bombing once the elections were over.

He said it was “possible,” adding, “I can’t tell you that because look, you know, you’re asking, 'Where are you going to bomb?'”

Human rights organizations said Thursday that Nebraska should be seen as a bright red warning sign of what's to come for states across the US as they implement the draconian Medicaid work requirements included in the budget legislation that President Donald Trump signed into law last year.

In early May, Nebraska became the first state to implement the new work reporting mandates, which require certain Medicaid recipients to document at least 80 hours of work or other qualifying activities per month to remain enrolled in the program. Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, announced the state's fast-tracked implementation of the requirements at a celebratory press conference late last year alongside Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), Oxfam America, and Nebraska Appleseed said in a joint report released Thursday that the rush to impose the mandates has had the predicted results of mass confusion and bureaucratic chaos, previewing what millions of Medicaid recipients across the country can expect in the months ahead.

“Nebraska is the canary in the coal mine for issues that most states will face when they begin implementing these work requirements,” said Matt McConnell, a US researcher on economic, social, and cultural rights at HRW. "As they do, they should make sure red tape doesn’t strip people of healthcare."

The trio of advocacy groups interviewed a dozen Nebraskans who have directly experienced or witnessed the unruly rollout of the expanded work requirements. One 64-year-old man "said he lost his Medicaid coverage while undergoing treatment for kidney cancer and multiple chronic health conditions," the groups noted.

"He said a representative of the health plan that managed his Medicaid coverage informed him he lost access because he was not working, even though he is unable to work due to his condition," the groups added. The man said the loss of Medicaid coverage disrupted his care, including an appointment with a cancer specialist.

The Trump administration has said even people with terminal cancer are not necessarily exempt from the new work reporting requirements.

One Medicaid eligibility worker from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services told HRW, Oxfam, and Nebraska Appleseed that "poor training, vague and inconsistent guidance, and technical issues, including unprepared software systems, had caused stress and uncertainty for applicants and for state employees."

“We just sometimes don’t know what we’re doing,” the worker said. "I wish the people who make policies knew what they were doing."

It's unclear exactly how many people have lost Medicaid in Nebraska as a result of the new requirements. Sarah Maresh, healthcare access program director at Nebraska Appleseed, said Thursday that obtaining data from the state has been "like pulling teeth."

"Nebraskans deserve access to this information," said Maresh. "You can’t fix problems you refuse to measure."

Earlier this week, following relentless pressure from advocates, Nebraska's health department released preliminary data showing that more than 1,000 Nebraskans have been deprived of Medicaid coverage due to the expanded work requirements—a figure that's believed to be a significant undercount.

"I have been saying for years that Medicaid work reporting requirements are a flawed policy if the goal really is to incentivize work, but they are very effective at taking Medicaid coverage away by tangling folks up in red tape," Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families, wrote in a blog post earlier this week. "Unfortunately, Nebraska’s data only reinforces this point."

Nationwide, millions of people have lost Medicaid coverage since Trump signed the GOP budget package, which includes around $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.

States face a January 1, 2027 deadline to implement the expanded work requirements—though states are allowed to move more quickly. Montana and Arkansas have joined Nebraska in implementing the mandates ahead of the federal deadline, resulting in similar chaos and confusion.

After a decade since the launch of the Fight for $15 movement in New York City, a record number of U.S. states and communities are set to raise the minimum wage in the new year.

From New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, the minimum wage will increase in 23 states and 41 cities and counties, according to a report released Thursday by the National Employment Law Project (NELP). In 40 of those 64 jurisdictions, it will hit or exceed $15 an hour for at least some workers.

"The raises we are seeing are a true testament to the power of organizing."

By the end of 2023, additional increases are planned in five states and 22 localities—with 21 reaching or topping $15 an hour—bringing the total for next year to 86: 27 states and 59 cities and counties, says the report, Raises From Coast to Coast in 2023. The totals take into account that multiple increases are planned in Michigan and four local jurisdictions.

"The raises we are seeing are a true testament to the power of organizing," said Yannet Lathrop, senior researcher and policy analyst at NELP, in a statement. "These raises were achieved in a variety of ways, from ballot initiatives to statehouses to workers making their demands to employers directly."

"As these wins continue and we see the real-world impact of higher pay—from growing unionization to narrowing racial wealth gaps—we encourage lawmakers to go further and raise pay broadly across our economy," Lathrop added.

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As the report details:

In the 10 years since fast food workers walked out of their jobs demanding a $15 minimum wage and a union, the Fight for $15 worker movement has won minimum wage increases in 28 states and nearly five dozen cities and counties. These victories have led to an estimated $150 billion in additional annual pay for 26 million workers and to the narrowing of the racial wealth gap.
The movement has also put pressure on employers to raise their pay scales, leading… hundreds of businesses, large and small, to raise wages to $15 or more. Among them are corporate giants employing hundreds of thousands of workers from coast to coast, including Amalgamated Bank, Bank of America, Barclays, Best Buy, Charter Communications, Chobani, Chipotle, CVS, Ikea, JP Morgan Chase, LabCorp, Macy's, MetLife PNC, Sam's Club, Southwest Airlines, Synchrony Financial, T- Mobile, Target, Under Armour, USAA, Verizon, Walgreen's, Walmart, and Wells Fargo.

"The monumental impact of the Fight for $15 is clearly visible in this year's record wage increases as well as those in years past," said NELP executive director Rebecca Dixon. "But in those same 10 years, congressional action to expand worker rights has been limited."

"While it is encouraging to see boosts to the minimum wage in cities and states across the country, we need federal policy to address the mounting crises brought about by record increases in the cost of living and pandemic recovery," she stressed. "We must pass a higher federal minimum wage—at least $15 an hour—that accounts for rising costs of living and ensures that workers have the ability to support themselves and their families."

In March 2021, eight members of the Democratic caucus, joined all 50 Republicans in the U.S. Senate to kill legislation that would have established a $15 federal minimum wage, lifting millions of people out of poverty. Among those Democrats was Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who officially declared herself an Independent in recent weeks.

State-wide polling conducted shortly before that vote last year showed a majority of Arizonans across the political spectrum in favor of increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour. In November 2021, the people of Sinema's hometown of Tucson approved a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Arizona's second-largest city.

NELP's new report notes that Tucson residents are on track to see a $15 hourly wage by 2025. The city's current rate is $13, but it is set to increase to $13.85 on January 1, with a $10.85 tipped wage—both in line with the state's floor.

Worker wins from 2022 highlighted in the report include campaigns in Foster City and San Mateo County, California; Hawaii; Nebraska; Tukwila, Washington; and Washington, D.C.

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"In 2023 and 2024, the campaigns to watch include an $18 ballot measure in California and possible ballot measures in Arizona, Ohio, and Michigan," the publication points out.

"On the legislative front, there may be one fair wage campaigns in Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland," the report adds, "as well as efforts to raise the minimum wage in Maryland (to speed up the state's implementation of a $15 minimum wage), Massachusetts (where the minimum will reach $15 in 2023 and there are no inflation adjustments planned for following years), and New York (where the demand is $21.25 by 2026-2027)."