The US reliance on and promotion of fossil fuels is interfering with its ability to celebrate its 250th birthday, as several July 4 events were canceled due to a dangerous, record-breaking heatwave in the Central and Eastern US that scientists say would have been "virtually impossible" without the climate emergency.

As millions of people sweltered under heat alerts, extreme heat and humidity led to the cancellation of both Washington, DC and Philadelphia's Independence Day parades. Nearly 30 other events in states including Alabama, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia were modified, postponed, or canceled, according to USA Today.

"The US having to cancel major 4th of July celebrations because of extreme heat is almost too spot on as a metaphor for the country’s failure to combat global warming," Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn told Common Dreams. "How we confront the climate crisis will determine a lot about the next 250 years of American history, including if we make it that long. The revolution we need today is the clean energy revolution so we can finally declare our independence from fossil fuels."

Temperature records were tied or broken in 22 locations on Thursday and 17 on Friday, according to CNN, with DC breaking a 120-year record on both days with temperatures above 102°F.

The heat forced the temporary closure Friday afternoon of the Great American State Fair on the National Mall, and seven attendees required "advanced life support," probably due to heat exposure, according to CNN.

Matt Rein, the Democratic National Committee's influencer and creative partnerships director, reported from the state fair on Saturday that local emergency workers said guests were "dropping like flies" due to the heat.

Meanwhile, one group who tried to draw attention to the climate emergency at a July 4 event was evicted for its efforts by the US Coast Guard, as the Times Union reported. The nonprofit Hudson River Sloop Clearwater had attempted to join Saturday's Sail4th 250 parade of tall ships to New York Harbor when its sailboat was removed by the guard. The Coast Guard later said it was due to banners the boat was displaying reading, "Save the Clean Water Act” and “Indigenous rights, racial justice, climate solutions,” despite the fact that the group had the event organizer's permission to participate.

The heat dome that has settled over the Central and Eastern US over the July 4 weekend is so dangerous in part because it includes high humidity along with high heat, with heat indexes of 105-115°F expected in some places. This corresponds with a Wet Bulb Global Temperature (WBGT)—a measurement that accounts for heat, humidity, and air flow—of 28-30°C, at which point it is dangerous for even healthy people to be physically active outdoors. According to World Weather Attribution, the current heatwave broke regional records for WBGT.

"It is still a relatively rare event even in today’s climate, that has warmed by 1.4°C due to the burning of fossil fuels. In a 1.4°C cooler climate, WBGTs as high as those forecast in early July 2026 would have been so extreme as to be virtually impossible," the group wrote on Friday.

Friederike Otto, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London, told CNN, “When a historic 4th of July celebration is disrupted, and World Cup matches are played in conditions that are unsafe for players and fans, it shouldn’t take another scientific study to wake people up."

Otto continued, "Climate change is here, it’s already impacting the things we enjoy in our everyday lives, and it will continue to get worse the longer we drag out the inevitable transition to net zero emissions.”

Climate scientist and communicator Katharine Hayhoe encouraged people to use this opportunity to talk about the climate emergency to their friends and family:

Heatwaves aren't new. But I'm a climate scientist, and I can tell you heatwaves like this are virtually impossible without fossil fuel pollution. Not only that, but when extreme weather hits, research shows that connecting it to climate change helps people understand why it matters. And you know who the most trusted people to do that are? Not scientists. You! Yes, people we know are the most effective messengers to have these conversations. So if you're worried about what's happening and how extreme heat puts us at risk—talk about it!

While the US is the world's leading historical emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, and its military is the No. 1 institutional climate polluter, the Trump administration in particular has taken steps to accelerate the climate emergency by increasing oil, gas, and coal production while hindering the development of renewable energy.

"Trump’s promotion of coal burning and cancellation of wind turbines make him the Benedict Arnold of America’s current struggle, not its George Washington."

Just two days before the nation's birthday, Energy Secretary and fracking CEO Chris Wright bragged on social media that the Trump administration would end subsidies for new wind and solar on July 4.

Climate scientist Rebekah Jones shot back: "During a record heatwave, no less. Fossil fuel industries have received $549 BILLION in direct subsidies, and $7 TRILLION in tax benefits. They average $30 billion per year in upfront taxpayer money. All of renewable energy recieved $400 million per year from 1994-2009."

Tennessee state Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-20) also called out the move: "Talk about 'slugs for salt’—it's 119 degree heat index in the Eastern US this week—these guys are all in on the rapture."

In a July 4 post, scholar Juan Cole argued that President Donald Trump's climate policies were tantamount to treason.

"Since 2018, some 13,000 Americans have died from heat," he said. "Trump’s promotion of coal burning and cancellation of wind turbines make him the Benedict Arnold of America’s current struggle, not its George Washington."

Cole pointed out that the current heatwave was part of a pattern of hotter summers in the nation's capital due to the climate emergency, noting that the last decade was its hottest on record.

He continued:

The bad news is that this is only the beginning. Summers in the capital are going to be more dangerous every decade unless we halt dangerous carbon emissions.

The average summer temperature in DC could be 97°F in the 2080s if we go on farting out CO2 at our current rate. Humidity will also increase, as the Atlantic heats up and puts more water vapor in the atmosphere. The ability of the atmosphere to hold water vapor increases 7% with every 1°C increase in temperature.

That combined with more frequent storms and sea-level rise opens up the possiblity that DC "will be unlivable in the summers within the lifetime of my younger readers," he wrote.

"Trump is helping climate change accomplish what British military might could not, putting in question the future of America in places like Washington, DC and Baltimore, at least in the summers," Cole said.

Hundreds of members of the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front descended on Washington DC Saturday morning as the nation's capital prepared to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Members of the group, wearing masks and carrying Confederate and US flags, rode the DC metro and marched around parts of Capitol Hill before departing the city by train, as WUSA reported. Beyond the march itself, no other incidents were reported connected to the group.

"What kind of fascist hellscape is [happening] on Pennsylvania Ave at the Eastern Market Metro stop?" Georgetown Law professor Josh Chafetz wrote on Bluesky upon spotting the group.

Chafetz said the group appeared to be all white and all male.

"Absolutely terrifying to have white supremacist hate group Patriot Front march through our streets today in Washington, DC," human rights lawyer Mai El-Sadany wrote on social media. "Their manifesto calls for a white ethnostate, excludes people of color from their definition of citizenship, and is deeply antisemitic and xenophobic."

In one video shared by WTOP reporter Mitchell Miller, members of the group stood in a line outside DC's Union Station chanting, "Life, liberty, victory" and "Reclaim America."

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Patriot Front split from Vanguard America after the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, at which white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into counterprotesters, killing anti-racist activist Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others

"Patriot Front is an image-obsessed organization that rehabilitated the explicitly fascist agenda of Vanguard America with garish patriotism. Patriot Front focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country," SPLC explains.

The group believes that democracy no longer functions and wants to transform the US into a "pan-European" ethnostate that excludes both citizens of color and new immigrants and refugees.

One image from a Reuters photographer shows the masked Patriot Front marchers standing around a Black woman sitting on the DC Metro.

"This image is from today. A Black woman sits on the DC metro as masked white nationalists prepare to march on our nation's capital. This is America's 250th anniversary," attorney Aaron Parnas posted on social media.

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, blasted the group for carrying Confederate flags and embracing fascism while claiming the mantle of US patriotism.

"You have no right to call yourself a '[patriot]' while carrying the flag of one of America's enemies, and claiming victory on behalf of the ideology that fueled another—both of which the US defeated," D'Arrigo wrote on social media.

President Donald Trump spent his address to the United States the night before its 250th birthday fearmongering about the "communist menace" and suggesting that his Republican Party should govern the nation for a century.

"America will never be a communist country," he said from Mount Rushmore, South Dakota Friday night. "We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms, if we are foolish, stupid, and unwise. But if we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the SAVE America Act then we will not lose an election for a hundred years."

His remarks clearly implied a false link between communism and the Democratic Party and promoted a bill that critics say will make it harder for millions of eligible voters to participate in elections. The SAVE America Act claims to address the documented non-problem of noncitizen voting by requiring voters to show documents such as passports and birth certificates, which can be expensive and difficult to obtain, especially for low-income voters. Such requirements would also impose added burdens on rural voters and married women who have changed their names.

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, wrote on social media that with his remarks, Trump was "clearly defining the effects of voter suppression bills."

"What message could be more unifying on the nation’s 250th birthday weekend than touting one-party rule?" writer Michael Freeman posted on social media.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11) wrote: "The thing about Trump is he tells us what he wants & what he intends to do. He wants to end democracy. Freeze MAGA in power forever. Have zero accountability to the people. Just seize power & keep it. We are so close to true authoritarianism. We must use every ounce of power & leverage we have to stop them."

Before arguing for 100 years of Republican rule, Trump continued the exaggerated anti-communist rhetoric he has employed in the weeks since progressive and Democratic-Socialist candidates won a series of Democratic primary victories.

"There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success," Trump said on Friday. "These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11."

In fact, the Democratic Socialists who won primary elections in New York City last month ran on a platform of affordable housing, Medicare for All, stronger unions, and an end to US military support for Israel's genocide in Gaza, policies backed by large numbers of ordinary Americans.

Trump doubled down on an opposition between communism and US values and also linked his anti-communist to his anti-immigrant stance, threatening to send communists into "exile."

"You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both," Trump said in a quote later posted from the White House X account.

"This July 4th, the Trump regime is pushing a new Red Scare. This is an actual White House post. The regime is pretending that communism is a serious threat to America," Tom Joscelyn, who served as a senior professional staffer on the January 6 Committee, responded on social media.

MeidasNews editor in chief Ron Filipkowski argued that Trump was leaning on anti-communism to divert attention from his own disastrous policies.

"Trump fucks up the economy with his tariffs, raises gas prices for every American with his foolish war, piles on to the national debt with his budget & wasteful spending on vanity projects, covers up Epstein, makes billions for himself, then starts yelling about communism to distract," he wrote on social media.

Journalist Mark Chadbourn agreed, writing on social media that the speech reflected Trump's "new strategy."

"Now he’s failed completely abroad, he’s looking to the Enemy Within to create new Hate Figures to unite his wavering followers," Chadbourn said. "Can’t stop Iran’s threat so let’s have a 2026 Red Scare to turn neighbour against neighbour. A new HUAC on the way? Very dangerous."

Trump's July 3 remarks contrasted with those of New York Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani earlier that day, who uplifted the country's immigrant heritage, decried greed and racial supremacy, and argued that “time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.”

On the heels of young Canadians suing over Prime Minister Mark Carney’s climate "failure" and people across the country mobilizing to urge the government to "stop fast-tracking destruction," the Liberal leader on Thursday made a pair of fossil fuel-related announcements that sparked fresh anger.

Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith of the United Conservative Party announced that the province is partnering with the federally owned Trans Mountain Corporation and Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation for a proposed tar sands pipeline that would bring more oil to British Columbia's west coast.

"The proposed pipeline would generally follow the existing footprint of the federally owned Trans Mountain pipeline, running from Bruderheim, northeast of Edmonton, to the Roberts Bank export terminal in Delta, BC, south of Vancouver," the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported. "Smith said the project would send more than 1 million barrels to Asian markets every day, reducing Canada's reliance on the US."

"The Alberta government's submission to the federal government's Major Projects Office said the project would cost between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion, including contingencies. Construction would start as early as 2027 and finish by 2034," CBC noted. "As for who foots the bill, Smith said detailed funding and the cost for taxpayers 'remains to be negotiated.'"

Sounding the alarm about the plans with a Friday blog post, 350 Canada country manager Atiya Jaffar wrote, "In other words, we can get ready to expect $35-100 billion of our taxpayer dollars wasted on building this dangerous pipe dream."

"Canada is headed in a dangerous direction. Expanding tar sands and the fracked gas industry is like pouring fuel on the flames of the climate emergency," she argued, urging Canadians to pressure their members of Parliament to sign what the advocacy group is calling a "People's MOU," a jab at the memorandum of understanding the federal and Alberta governments signed last year.

Smith and Carney's pipeline press conference came after shortly after the PM and BC Premier David Eby announced a "cooperative prosperity agreement" that the Wilderness Committee condemned as "an abandonment of both governments' efforts to fight climate change and protect the environment," given its provisions on the province's liquefied natural gas (LNG) and mining endeavors.

Although Eby, a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP), "has been a prominent critic of the Carney government's work with Alberta on pipeline plans," Politico reported Thursday, the provincial leader cut short a trip to Beijing, where he traveled to meet with PetroChina executives about LNG production, "to be at the prime minister's side" for the announcement.

Eby tried to stress that "this agreement doesn't require us to support any pipeline proposal from Alberta. However, as I've said before, we recognize our constitutional position, and we do not have the authority to stop a new pipeline. We will not be going to court to fight a pipeline project. Instead, we will ensure we fulfill our constitutional obligations in good faith."

"Pipelines are federal jurisdiction," he continued. "That's why this agreement matters. It ensures that the northern tanker ban stays in place, and it ensures that if a pipeline goes ahead, that British Columbians are fairly compensated for the environmental risks we would take on any new pipeline project."

The Wilderness Committee's conservation and policy campaigner Lucero González responded, "Eby said he will ensure British Columbians are compensated for the environmental damage of another pipeline, but there is no compensation for the extinction of the southern resident orcas."

"How do you compensate for the unimaginable pain of an endangered orca like Tahlequah who has shown us her dead calves throughout the Salish Sea while each new megaproject continues to destroy their habitat?" González inquired.

Pointing to not only the potential increase in tanker traffic and oil spill risk but also the federal government's "proposed evisceration" of the Species at Risk Act, González declared that "Carney is showing us his enthusiastic willingness to accept and fund the extinction of endangered species and a future where oil and private profit are more valuable than the entire Salish Sea ecosystem.

As Politico highlighted, the prime minister's motivations for pushing the new pipeline include combating a separatist movement in one of the involved provinces:

The project is also aimed at easing separatist tensions in Alberta, where voters will decide in October if they want to hold a referendum to separate from Canada. Smith has blamed "10 years of bad Liberal policy" under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for fueling western alienation, pointing to climate rules and energy regulations she says hurt Alberta’s economy.

In a 17-minute video posted to his YouTube channel earlier this week, Carney acknowledged that his government’s energy policies will increase emissions. He argued that the climate policies championed by Trudeau had become a political wedge—and fodder for Alberta separatists.

Even before the video, advocacy organizations had partnered with a trio of young citizens in June to take legal action over the prime minister failing to bring Canada's 2030 emissions reduction plan into compliance with a key federal law.

Julia Levin of Environmental Defence, one of the groups behind the case, said last month that "PM Carney is betraying Canadians by taking a wrecking ball to our hard-fought climate progress. It is Canadians who are paying the price through wildfires, heat domes, rising food insecurity and high costs of living."

The Wilderness Committee's associate director, Torrance Coste, similarly said Friday that "at a time when people across the country are suffering in extreme heat, wildfire evacuations, and devastating floods, pursuing the expansion of Canada's most polluting industry is utterly despicable."

"In the fight against climate change, Prime Minister Carney and Premier Eby are issuing their surrender, and resigning us to a future of ecological and economic decline," Coste added.

While Eby flew home to be by the prime minister's side for Thursday's first announcement, the NDP's recently elected national leader, Avi Lewis, delivered a scathing rebuke of a federal government that he said "will protect above all else: the profits of Big Oil."

"As we mark the five-year anniversary of a heat dome that killed 619 people in British Columbia—and as many communities across the country are facing extreme weather right now—Canadians deserve leadership that protects us," Lewis argued on social media. "Instead, this government is doubling down on yesterday's failed solutions and dragging us into further danger, risk, and insecurity."

The pipeline's "opaque and confusing public-private partnership ownership structure means it's very likely that we, the public, will not only bear the risks and the damages, but also the lion's share of the costs," he warned. "Canada's New Democrats unequivocally oppose this pipeline proposal. If anything, this is a pipeline to the courts. It ignores the federal government's legal responsibility to meaningfully consult Indigenous nations, including Treaty 8 nations in Alberta, threatens endangered species, and accelerates climate change. It will sow the very divisions the prime minister claims he wants to avoid."

"We do not achieve unity or prosperity from projects that pit communities against one another, all while a handful of oil and gas CEOs walk away with enormous profits," he continued. "While we're stuck fighting yesterday's battles over pipelines, and the prime minister openly admits that our emissions will rise, the rest of the world is racing ahead on renewables. We cannot afford to fall behind while other countries build the industries of the future. "

According to the NDP leader: "Canadians deserve better than being told our only choice is another fight over another pipeline. This country needs an alternative to the Liberal-Conservative consensus that is doubling down on a future of climate-wrecking corporate welfare."

"New Democrats are ready to build something bigger, safer, and better—a Canada that is a renewable energy superpower, with an east-west clean electricity grid and good green jobs in every region," he concluded. "Lower costs for families with home retrofits and heat pumps for all. Investing in the care economy as a nation-building project. That's what it looks like to build big things that actually unite this country."

Israel's Security Cabinet on Thursday approved the construction of 13 new settlements in the central West Bank, a move critics slammed as the latest effort to "fracture" Palestine and cement Israeli control over the illegally occupied territory with the goal of annexation.

Israeli media reported that the Security Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, gave the green light to the new settler colonies in the Binyamin area, with the first phase of construction expected to start in the coming months.

The Binyamin Regional Council has argued that now is the time for building the strategically located settlements due to political and security conditions, which present an opportunity to establish facts on the ground that will make Israeli control a fait accompli.

Condemning the approval as a “dangerous escalation,” the Jerusalem Governorate—a nominally administrative division of the Palestinian Authority—asserted that Israel’s settlement plan “seeks to create new geographical realities on the ground,” and would “undermine the prospects of establishing a geographically contiguous Palestinian state.”

That, say critics—and some Israeli officials—is the point. Netanyahu last year promised that “there will be no Palestinian state," while Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and other officials have also vowed to annex some or all of the West Bank.

"Israel’s continued expansion of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory is not an isolated policy decision but part of a long-standing strategy to entrench permanent Israeli control over occupied land, further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory, and prevent any prospects of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state," the UK-based International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) said in response to the Security Cabinet vote. "The Binyamin plan represents a significant escalation of that policy, accelerating changes to the occupied territory that would create an irreversible status quo."

ICJP called the move "yet another example of the abhorrent and utter disregard of the international rules-based order by Israel" and "yet another attempt to further fragment Palestinian territory and isolate East Jerusalem from its surrounding Palestinian communities."

Madar, the Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies, said Wednesday that construction of illegal Israeli settler outposts has soared from an average of 8 per year between 2012-22 to 32 in 2023, 62 in 2024, and 86 last year.

Palestinian officials and international human rights groups have long warned that Israeli settlement expansion is destroying the possibility of a two‑state solution.

United Nations resolutions and the UN's International Court of Justice have affirmed the illegality of Israel's settlements and occupation of Palestine, the latter of which the ICJ found in 2024 is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law.

Efforts by the Israeli government, military, and settlers to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. With the world’s attention focused on Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have ramped up the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the occupied territory.

Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,105 Palestinians—at least 242 of them children—since October 2023, according to the latest report published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

With at least 250 million people across the Midwest and Eastern United States facing high temperatures on Friday due to what the National Weather Service dubbed a "prolonged, dangerous heatwave" that's expected to last through Fourth of July weekend, a leading climate group called on Congress to "protect people, not data centers."

Specifically, 350.org—an international movement for climate action founded nearly two decades ago—wants US lawmakers "to establish a moratorium on new data centers and ban utility companies from cutting off electricity access of American households who can't afford to pay their bills, as an emergency measure to protect lives."

The group on Friday shared an online tool that allows Americans to send an editable letter to Congress with the latter demand. It stresses that deadly summer heatwaves are "fueled by climate change," and "in 27 states, it's perfectly legal for utility companies to shut off your electricity if you fall behind on your bills, even on the hottest days of summer."

Candice Fortin, 350's energy affordability campaigns manager, said in a Friday statement that "no American should lose their life over an electric bill. Losing air conditioning in this heat isn't an inconvenience—it's life-threatening. Air conditioning in a dangerous heatwave is what keeps elderly people, pregnant women, and young children out of the emergency room, and higher use during summer heatwaves is something every utility plans for."

"Yet ordinary households are once again paying the highest price for a crisis they didn't cause," Fortin explained. "The reason the grid has so little headroom is that data centers are consuming electricity at a scale it wasn't built for, around the clock, every day of the year. And worse: fed by fossil-fueled energy sources that make heatwaves more frequent and more deadly."

As data centers contributed to the strain on US power grids on Thursday, Data for Progress released poll results showing that—along with billionaires, many of whom have made their fortunes from Big Tech—Americans see the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency companies that are driving the surge in data center construction as top villains to US society and the economy.

To reduce grid strain and the risk of blackouts, the US Department of Energy this week granted permission to PJM Interconnection, which serves 67 million people across 13 states, to force data centers to temporarily use backup generators if necessary. However, such systems generally run on diesel or gas, which means more air pollution for surrounding communities.

Fortin said Friday that "350.org is calling for a moratorium on new data center construction, to give citizens and their elected representatives time to put democratic rules in place to manage their impact on our energy, water, and land."

Two progressive firebrands, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), recently introduced a bill to do just that. Their proposed Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act is endorsed by Food & Water Watch (FWW), which last year became the country's first national organization to call for halting approval of new AI data centers and, ultimately, in December, led a related letter to Congress backed by hundreds of other advocacy organizations, including multiple 350 chapters.

Since that letter, Big Tech has continued to make billions. Fortin noted that "Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta raked in net profits of over $80 billion in the first three months of 2026 alone. In fact, investor-owned utilities kept, on average, a profit of 14.6 cents on every dollar they collected from ratepayers. They can afford to wait while communities catch up."

The current heatwave "is a preview of every summer to come," she warned. "Our leaders must choose who they will protect: tech companies and investor-owned utilities, or people. Access to clean, affordable energy is a right, not a privilege. Real independence means no American is ever again forced to choose between a power bill they can't afford and heat they can't survive."

Over the past few years, calls for state and national bans on utility shutoffs have mounted, particularly during hot and cold spells. During another period of high temperatures last summer, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) led a pair of letters to Democratic congressional leaders as well as governors and mayors arguing that Republican US President Donald Trump "has put millions of lives at risk by dismantling federal agencies and lifesaving programs that help working families keep their homes cool and survive deadly heatwaves like the one this week."

The coalition—which also included FWW and 350—urged the New York Democrats who serve as minority leaders in the US Senate and House of Representatives, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, to fight for legislation that includes "a robust nationwide moratorium on electricity, water, and broadband shutoffs during months of extreme heat, and mandate that utilities reinstate disconnected services, waive late-payment fees, and forgive all utility debt for low-wealth households."

Months later, this past April, the US Energy Information Administration released a report showing that utility companies disconnected American households from electricity more than 13.4 million times in 2024—which, as CBD pointed out, came as "electric utilities raked in record profits of more than $54 billion and dividend payments of $34 billion," and "investor-owned utility executives were paid $530 million."

Jean Su, director of the CBD's energy justice program, said at the time that "this federal data is the most sobering portrait we have of the country's brutal energy affordability crisis... It's inexcusable for utility executives and shareholders to make record profits while families suffer climate extremes and get punished for being poor."

"We're grateful to Congress and the Energy Information Administration for establishing the first-ever study of how many millions of people are having their power shut off because they can't afford to pay," she added. "The only sure way out of this mess is to replace the price gouging of fossil fuel utilities with affordable, renewable community energy."

As Friday reporting from The Washington Post highlighted, it's not just potential utility shutoffs endangering Americans in the 23 states under an "extreme heat warning" from NWS. The newspaper found that although "about 93% of homes have air conditioning nationwide, as do 96% of households in the areas with high heat risk this week," around 3 million households currently impacted by soaring temperatures lack AC.

"Access and use of air conditioning is extremely important," Jaime Madrigano, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Post. "We know that air conditioning is probably one of the only really proven effective strategies that we know actually does save lives when it comes to heat-related mortality."

Madrigano also recognized those who have AC units or systems at home, but are struggling to pay for them amid rising costs across the economy: "We know a lot of people are dealing with high utility bills. That's a very pressing crisis in this country right now," she said. "You may have to choose between food and medications or air conditioning, and the more pressing concern may be feeding your family."

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday delivered a speech commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America that drew a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump's vision for the country.

Speaking from New York City Hall, Mamdani recounted how his city had long served as a refuge for people from across the globe who came seeking a new life an opportunity.

It was these immigrants who ultimately shaped New York and made it into what it is today, said Mamdani—who is an immigrant and among the rising number of democratic socialists who have recently won at the ballot box.

The mayor then moved to the present day, where he took aim at the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies emanating from Trump and his MAGA movement.

"The story of America has been written by those who have so often been told by those with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional," Mamdani said. "For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best."

Mamdani took aim at the ideology espoused by many rich and powerful people who see America as "an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal."

"America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes," the mayor continued. "America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit."

"How small they are," Mamdani remarked. "How weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power for themselves by turning us against one another."

The mayor then pivoted to a more hopeful tone by arguing that "time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress."

Mamdani insisted that the greed shown by American oligarchs and the division sown by its current political leadership are "not all we see when we look for America."

"We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on her ailing neighbor," he said. "Yes, we see in America corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed in a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work, and who still believes this country can do better by his family."

In his conclusion, Mamdani paid tribute to "those ideals upon which our nation was built," which he described as "strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them."

"Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived," he said. "A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America: The striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection. What a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape."

Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety's cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.

State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company's automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.

“We have cameras that are used for everything from illegal dumping to drug houses to hotels that are just big problems,” Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told prospective customers during a demonstration of the company's Condor Camera, according to a Thursday report in The Washington Times.

“There are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things," Cox added.

Those uses include spying on constitutionally protected protest activity and enforcing abortion bans by tracking pregnant people's travel across states—even ones in which the medical procedure is legal.

The ACLU—which recently launched a "Get the Flock Out" campaign to "fight creepy ALPR cameras"—says there are currently between 80,000 and 100,000 Flock devices installed nationwide that conduct more than 20 billion scans per month. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the cameras, and some of them keep their locations a secret.

"Flock's ALPR cameras aren't like your normal traffic cameras," the ACLU explained. "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."

The backlash against creeping state surveillance has even transcended the partisan divide.

“I think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan," ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.

There is growing action—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country.

According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.

Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.

Susie O'Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California's nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company's national network without city officials' knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.

O'Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.

"I have goose hbumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis," she said. "And just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing... It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all—just no way."

Less than a week after Good's killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city's Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.

“For us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.

Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin—which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock—told The Washington Times that “there’s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue."

"There are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant," he added.

At the national level, US Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.

Krishnamoorthi and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have also urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety "for failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans’ personal data to be exposed to hackers, criminals, and spies to steal."

Their demand came after the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock revealed that hackers stole passwords and data from at least 35 Flock customer accounts.

In May, US Reps. Jesús "Chuy" Garcia (D-Ill.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to a bill that would prohibit state and local governments receiving federal highway funds from using ALPRs for purposes other than electronic toll collection.

It's not just Flock. Axon, Vigilant Solutions—a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions—Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, Jenoptik, and other firms market ALPRs to law enforcement agencies, private companies, and others.

"It doesn't matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood," the ACLU said, "they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it."

In what some described as a "fitting metaphor" for the state of the US, a large panel fell from the stage at President Donald Trump's 250th anniversary extravaganza, nearly crushing a group of young dancers during a rehearsal.

A video of the falling piece of debris was posted to social media Thursday by the independent journalist Aaron Parnas, who wrote, "The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250's July 4th celebration."

The giant panel interrupted a patriotic dance number, making a loud crash and sending bits of dust and shrapnel flying just feet behind the troupe of what appeared to be about two-dozen performers on the event's Salute to America stage, where many of the festival's biggest acts are taking place.

“We’re grateful to report that everyone is safe,” a Freedom 250 representative said. “We take the safety of our performers, crew, volunteers, and guests extremely seriously.”

He added that "additional safeguards and senior technical oversight are now in place as preparations continue.”

HuffPost deputy editor Philip Lewis said it was "literally a miracle no one was hurt."

From a scourge of algae in the reflecting pool, to the rash of headline acts bailing from their performances, to the persistent low attendance, and empty booths, the festivities—commandeered by the Trump-aligned Freedom 250 operation—has been seemingly marred by one indignity after another.

Power outages have led the supply of ice cream to become liquefied by the heat, and a faulty generator has led the giant Ferris wheel to run only intermittently.

A model of the president's planned "Arc de Trump" has been mocked as "a sad, peeling mess" by Margaret Hartmann of New York Magazine, who noted the creasing vinyl, cracking wood, and caulk oozing out the sides. The mid-festival addition of a series of improvised columns did little to stop it from being referred to as a "Temu arch."

Other buildings were haphazardly overlaid with vinyl covers designed to look like three-dimensional pieces of classical architecture.

An interim report published Thursday by Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee emphasized the festival's dual role—in addition to being a monument to Trump's ego—as yet another opportunity for his donors and allies to profit.

Through the newly created Freedom 250 group, the report alleges, Trump has used the event to sell sponsorship packages promising VIP access, speaking roles, private receptions, and photo opportunities with the president.

It also points to federal contracts for Trump-connected event vendors, official merchandise sales through a Trump campaign vendor, and event-registration data routed through a firm founded by former Trump digital strategist Brad Parscale.

The company in charge of the State Fair's production is Event Strategies, Inc.—a firm run by a group of longtime Trump aides. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it has received taxpayer funds through the National Park Foundation, though it remains unclear how much the company has made.

It's also unclear what, if any, oversights may have led to the dangerous stage mishap. However, the use of an opaque private charity to fund the festival appears to have enabled corner-cutting elsewhere.

According to the Democratic report, the UFC arena on the White House South Lawn “bypassed layers of [National Park Service]-mandated environmental review,” allowing the commercial fighting organization headed by Trump pal Dana White to save time and money, which led to a lawsuit last month seeking to stop the event.

Journalist Ryan Grim said that if there have indeed been safety rules flouted, the falling panel is "the kind of thing somebody can genuinely be prosecuted for if someone dies, which is not uncommon if you slap it together like this."

Many found the short video deeply resonant—a microcosm of the unprecedented elite enrichment that has taken place during the second Trump administration, subsidized by bone-deep cuts to social safety net programs that have made life more precarious for millions of people, including many children.

Political commentator J Aubrey said that it was "hard to imagine a more fitting metaphor for our rapidly decaying society."

There is, unnervingly, still plenty of time for a deadly incident to occur at the fair.

The president's Independence Day celebration is slated to culminate in the launching of 850,000 firework shells from near the reflecting pool and several other sites along the Potomac River.

The National Park Service has projected the display would cause “very unhealthy” conditions around central DC, including particulate pollution that can harm those with asthma, according to documents uncovered by The Washington Post.

Soaring temperatures have also put Washington under severe drought, turning the surrounding area into a potential tinderbox. DC Water has said it was coordinating with federal officials in the case that a forest fire breaks out.

"It only takes one small spark landing in dry vegetation under the right conditions to start a fast-moving wildfire," April Newman, a public information officer at Cal Fire, told Axios.

Trump himself, who recently turned 80 years old and is rumored to be in poor health, is also not immune to the dangers.

The president declared that on Independence Day, "when it's going to be approximately 107 degrees out... I'm going to make a really long speech."

That speech, scheduled for 9:45 pm ET, will take place on the Salute to America stage.

Major American corporations that benefited from tax cuts enacted last year by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are donating to the campaigns of GOP lawmakers who made the windfall possible.

A report published Friday by Unrig Our Economy spotlights seven House Republicans who voted for the sprawling and unpopular GOP budget package, which extended tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Americans while inflicting unprecedented cuts on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance—with disastrous consequences for millions of low-income families across the country.

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), one of the lawmakers featured in the new report, has received campaign donations from corporate PACs representing 3M, Amazon, Walmart, AT&T, and other companies that collectively received billions of dollars in tax breaks from the Republican law, which restored a provision allowing businesses to immediately write off new investments.

Amazon saw its US income taxes fall by more than half last year due to the GOP law, even as the company's profits grew. Unrig Our Economy noted that Amazon, whose PAC donated thousands to the Republicans spotlighted in the new report, has an effective federal tax rate of 1.37% following enactment of the budget law.

Miller-Meeks, who has received at least $57,000 in donations from the PACs of companies that benefited from the 2025 law, issued a statement Thursday bragging about supporting "the largest tax cuts in American history," not mentioning that the benefits will disproportionately flow to profitable corporations and the richest people in the country.

"Thanks to the Republican tax law, corporations are receiving tax breaks, House Republicans are getting campaign cash, and working families are getting stuck with the bill," the report states.

Another Republican lawmaker featured in the report, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, received $2,500 in campaign donations from the PAC of FirstEnergy, which reaped $500 million in depreciation deductions thanks to the GOP tax law.

"Bresnahan voted to give FirstEnergy hundreds of millions in tax breaks even after the company raised utility prices for his constituents," Unrig Our Economy's report observes.

The report also points out that Bresnahan "owned stock in every single one" of the companies who contributed PAC money to his campaign following passage of the Republican budget package last summer.

"This comes after Bresnahan has already faced scrutiny for dumping stock in Medicaid providers and selling off bonds in Pennsylvania hospitals before voting to slash Medicaid and put rural hospitals at risk," the report notes.

Leor Tal, Unrig Our Economy's campaign director, said in a statement that "one year ago, House Republicans ripped away healthcare and food assistance from millions of Americans, so that corporations could get massive tax breaks."

"Now, many of those companies are dishing out PAC money to the Republicans listed in this report," said Tal. "Republicans in Congress sold out many of their own constituents to help corporations get even richer. It’s time that House Republicans step up, do the right thing, and start fighting for working Americans—not giant corporations."

Right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel is accusing Pope Leo XIV of doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party with his criticisms of artificial intelligence.

According to a Thursday report from CNN, Thiel told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Tuesday that the pope was inadvertently serving as a "Chinese communist agent" when he released a 42,000-word encyclical that called for strict regulation of AI, a technology that the pontiff said heightens the "risk of dehumanization" throughout the world.

Thiel argued that this sort of thinking was dangerous, CNN reported, because it could result in the US losing the "race" to build more advanced AI to China. Because of this, Thiel continued, the pope is essentially "working for the Chinese communists" by trying to tap the brakes on AI development.

Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, has long decried AI critics in harsh terms. Over the last year, he has been delivering a series of lectures in which he has said that opponents of AI development are working as agents for the Antichrist.

Journalist Christopher Hale, who writes the Letters From Leo newsletter, noted on Friday that Thiel in the past has even speculated that Pope Leo could be "a manifestation of the Antichrist."

Thiel has said that he instructed Vice President JD Vance, a longtime political ally who received major funding from the tech billionaire for his 2022 Senate campaign, to ignore the pope's moral guidance despite influencing Vance to convert to Catholicism, Hale added.

"Thiel seeded the vice president’s Catholic faith," Hale wrote, "and he now tells wealthy festival audiences that the leader of that faith works for a communist government."

In addition to his attacks on the pope, Thiel also warned about "a democratic-socialist takeover of the Democratic Party," pointing to recent victories in New York and Colorado of candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

Thiel said that this "takeover" would doom the US, arguing that "when the Democratic Party goes, this country is over," according to CNN.

The New York Times reported in May that Thiel has grown so concerned about the political situation in the US that he's created a "foothold" for himself in Argentina, which is currently being governed by ideologically likeminded libertarian President Javier Milei.

"Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B," the Times reported. "Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022."

Trump administration officials reportedly believed that the Israeli government intended to assassinate Iran's top negotiators—including the country's foreign minister—during peace talks with the US in an effort to sabotage diplomatic progress.

The New York Times reported Thursday that "American concerns about the targeting of two particular Iranian officials—Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament—spiked during delicate ceasefire negotiations that began in April." In response, the US "went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials," according to the Times, which cited unnamed current and former American officials.

The US and Israel have killed dozens of top Iranian officials since launching their illegal joint war in late February. But the allied countries reportedly removed Araghchi and Ghalibaf from their target list in late March, opening the possibility of high-level negotiations to end the war.

But Israel remained bent on targeting the negotiators, according to the Times, whose reporting was later corroborated by The Washington Post.

The Times detailed one dramatic incident in April, when Ghalibaf was planning to travel to Pakistan's capital to meet with US Vice President JD Vance:

Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.

But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.

Iran’s security forces notified the plane carrying Mr. Ghalibaf back to Tehran that they had picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Mr. Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his social media page. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, and the Iranian delegation traveled some eight hours by land back to Tehran, Mr. Mohammadi and the two officials said.

The Post reported that "cracks emerged" between the US and Israeli approaches to the war following Israel's assassination of top Iranian national security official Ali Larijani in March.

"They’ve wiped out everybody," Trump told reporters in late March, suggesting Israel's assassination campaign was making it difficult to find potential negotiating partners.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to the new reporting that "Israel is a state that, on paper, is a US partner, but in reality is so extreme in its obsession to undermine US diplomacy that it even tries to assassinate those the US engages with in crucial negotiations."

"I can't recall a government as terrified of peace as the one running Israel," Parsi added.

At present, the Israeli government—led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—is endangering tenuous US-Iran peace talks with its continued occupation of and assault on Lebanon, which Iran has highlighted as a key factor in the negotiations.

Visiting occupied southern Lebanon earlier this week, Netanyahu declared to Israeli troops that "our insistence is that we will not leave... until the threat is removed."

Parsi wrote earlier this week that "beyond his long-standing desire to use American force to subjugate Iran to Israeli domination and achieve a regional balance favorable to Israel," Netanyahu "now also has stark political and personal reasons to restart the war" with Iran.

"The [US and Iran's memorandum of understanding] has come at a steep political cost for Netanyahu," wrote Parsi. "His prospects for reelection in October are weaker than they have been in months. Once seen as the Israeli leader uniquely capable of delivering President Trump, he now confronts the prospect that both the war and the ensuing diplomacy will leave Israel in a strategically weaker position—undermining the very case he has made for his leadership."

"And of course," Parsi added, "if he loses the elections, he will likely spend the next few years in jail, as he will lose his immunity as prime minister and face trial over corruption charges."

After finding last fall that a majority of voters believe life in the United States is getting worse, and many are "extremely worried" about issues including cost of living, division, authoritarianism, wealth inequality, and the climate crisis, the polling firm Data for Progress decided to have Americans name the "bad actors" most responsible for the country's concerning conditions.

In a pair of surveys conducted last month, Data for Progress asked more than 2,000 Americans to rate the impact of various groups or industries on the US economy—"things like jobs, prices, and economic growth"—as well as American society, or "things like feelings of community, well-being, and social trust."

The top villains, according to respondents, are the nation's nearly 1,000 billionaires, then corporate landlords. Rounding out the top 10 were sports gambling marketplaces, artificial intelligence companies, cryptocurrency firms, payday lenders, the Republican Party, social media giants, the Democratic Party, and for-profit universities.

Respondents were asked to rank each group or industry on a seven-point scale from "extremely negative" to "extremely positive."

Those with the most positive views were small businesses, libraries, regional banks and credit unions, charitable organizations, hospitals, churches, public K-12 schools, online shopping platforms, large grocery companies, big box retailers, and urgent care clinics.

"Within categories, we see some meaningful differences between individual actors—mom-and-pop landlords, small regional banks, public K-12 schools, and renewable energy companies are viewed more positively than their counterparts: corporate landlords, multinational banks, charter K-12 schools, and oil and gas companies," the progressive polling firm noted.

With the November midterm elections just four months away, and Democrats trying to seize control of both chambers of Congress as progressives within the party notch key wins over more moderate candidates, Data for Progress executive director Ryan O'Donnell said that "effective populist messaging requires calling out the actors actually making life worse for Americans, and right now, that includes Big Tech and the billionaires behind it."

"As AI continues to impact people's lives directly—whether it's a data center in their backyard or a job replaced by automation—AI companies and tech billionaires are setting themselves up to be the next big villains in American politics," he added.

Earlier this week, as the US Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority "gave their blessing for billionaires to buy even more influence over the politicians who represent us," the watchdog Public Citizen released a report about soaring corporate political spending since the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, including $517 million in this cycle so far.

Some of the top villains from Thursday's polling were key contributors to that figure: "Cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, Big Tech, and online betting corporations have collectively spent $294 million to influence federal elections in the 2026 midterm cycle."

Blasting the corporate spending as "a disaster for democracy," the report's author, Rick Claypool, said that "if the current, broken campaign finance system remains unchallenged—and corporate spending is allowed to drown out the voices of real voters and real people—these corporate campaigns will keep multiplying, even as voting rights for individual Americans face escalating attacks."

That report and the Data for Progress polling were notably published as more than 250 million people across the United States faced high temperatures tied to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency—and, as Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, residents of communities with data centers are being asked to make sacrifices due to strained power grids.

Americans are also awaiting the fate of the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act—which includes a ban on corporate investors buying single-family homes to rent out—because Republican President Donald Trump has refused to sign it in an effort to bully GOP lawmakers into passing a legislative attack on voting rights.

In a comment that multiple congressional Democrats said shows Trump "does not care" about Americans' cost of living concerns, Trump on Monday called the affordable housing bill a "big yawn" compared with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America, Act that he wants Congress to send to his desk.

It's official: The proposed California Billionaire Tax Act, which last week was certified for November's election, has a ballot designation—Proposition 40.

"The people of California now have the opportunity to decide what kind of future they want,” Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) vice president Debru Carthan said on Thursday.

“Proposition 40 asks a simple question: At a time when hospitals are reducing services, working families are being squeezed, and essential services are under attack, should a few hundred billionaires contribute their fair share to protect the state that helped make their extraordinary wealth possible?" Carthan asked. "We believe Californians will answer with a resounding yes."

Drafted by SEIU-UHW, Prop 40 would impose a one-time 5% levy on people worth $1 billion or more, to be paid in annual installments of 1% over five years.

The bil 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.

Prop 40 supporters include the Teamsters union and progressive groups like the California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Our Revolution, as well as individual progressives like 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.

The measure is opposed by Republicans, business groups, the Democratic Party, and even some progressives, including Chan's opponent, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11).

Prop 40's most prominent Democratic opponent is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom critics accuse of trying to bamboozle voters with his recently unveiled plan for a national billionaire income tax. Some observers skeptical of the presumed 2028 presidential hopeful contend that his support for an income tax is rooted in knowledge that very rich people actually have relatively little income when compared with their investments and other assets.

Some progressive groups opposing Prop 40—including the California Teachers Association (CTA) and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California—point out that it is a one-off tax on wealth, not income. CTA is backing a separate ballot measure, the Children’s Education and Health Care Protection Act, which would permanently extend Proposition 55, California’s existing high-income-earner tax, which is set to expire in 2030.

In response to Thursday's ballot designation, Billionaire Tax Now said in a statement that "the measure qualified for the ballot after supporters submitted more than 1.6 million signatures from Californians across the state—nearly twice the number required to qualify—making it one of the strongest citizen-led ballot qualification efforts in California history."

"Voters consistently support the billionaire tax by large, double-digit margins," the coalition continued. "For healthcare workers who have dedicated their lives to caring for patients, today’s news isn’t just welcome, it’s critical. With no other viable alternatives proposed by Gov. Newsom, the billionaire tax is the only available option to stop a cascade of hospital and clinic closures spurred by massive federal cuts in HR 1, known as President [Donald] Trump’s so-called 'Big, Beautiful Bill.'"

"In November," Billionaire Tax Now added, "California voters will at last have a chance to make billionaires pay their fair share to help prevent widespread hospital closures, through a commonsense ballot initiative that places a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of approximately 200 billionaires who reside in the Golden State."

As Americans face rising grocery prices under President Donald Trump and rally behind progressive policies and primary candidates, US Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday introduced a bill that shows what kind of proposals could become reality with more Democrats like her in Congress.

Inspired by a program in her own district in Washington state, the chair emerita of the Congressional Progressive Caucus introduced the Fresh Bucks for Fresh Produce Act, which would create a pilot program at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) that gives households earning 80% or less of their area's median income $60 per month to buy fruits and vegetables.

The USDA pilot would be modeled on Seattle's Fresh Bucks initiative, in which enrolled households "experience a 31% higher rate of food security and consume at least three daily servings of fruits and vegetables 37% more often than those assigned to a program waitlist," according to University of Washington (UW) research published last August.

"I would classify both of those numbers as pretty large," study co-author Jessica Jones-Smith a professor at UW and University of California, Irvine, said at the time. "We don't routinely see interventions that work that well. It's a pretty big impact on diet in terms of what we can do from a policy perspective and expect to make a difference in food insecurity."

In Seattle—generally ranked as an expensive but livable metropolis—a single person living within city limits on a monthly income of $7,070, or $84,850 a year, can apply for the program. For a family of four, it's $10,095 per month, or $121,150 annually. In January, the city the welcomed over 4,500 more local households off its waitlist and increased monthly benefits from $40 to $60.

Those enrolled in Seattle's program can buy "fresh fruits and vegetables at supermarkets, and fresh, frozen, canned, and dried fruits and vegetables (with no added fats, sugars, or salt) at farmers markets and independent grocers" that accept Fresh Bucks cards.

Adam Porter, who directs the Meals on Wheels program at the Seattle-based Sound Generations, said Thursday that "older adults across King County are facing impossible choices as grocery prices continue to rise. Seattle's Fresh Bucks program has had a substantial impact on our clients' health and quality of life: We have seen firsthand how a targeted produce benefit can increase health equity, improve food security, and keep food dollars circulating locally.

"A USDA pilot modeled on that success would be a meaningful step toward healthier households and stronger community food systems nationwide," Porter continued. In addition to his organization, groups endorsing Jayapal's bill include the Center for Biological Diversity, Coalition for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture, Farm Action Fund, Food & Water Watch, National Education Association, Southern Poverty Law Center, White Center Community Development Association (WCCDA), and over a dozen more.

"In White Center and historically underinvested communities across King County, we see every day how rising grocery costs continue to strain working families, seniors, immigrants, and households already navigating increasing housing and living expenses," said WCCDA executive director Aaron Garcia. "Access to healthy, culturally relevant food should not be determined by income—it should not be considered a luxury."

"At WCCDA, we believe thriving communities require systems that make healthy food accessible, affordable, and attainable—and that investments in food access are investments in community health, economic stability, and opportunity," Garcia said. "We strongly support Congresswoman Jayapal's leadership in advancing innovative solutions that respond to the realities families face today while strengthening local food systems and neighborhood businesses that give us our vibrancy."

"Expanding the proven Seattle Fresh Bucks model through a federal pilot offers an opportunity to increase food security, support local producers and retailers, and help communities across the country build healthier, more resilient futures," he added.

Jayapal has celebrated recent primary wins by leftists in New York, and on Thursday, with the November midterms just four months away, she called out her Republican colleagues—who are trying to hang on to their narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress after using them to pass cuts to federal food and healthcare programs while giving more tax breaks to the rich.

"As families struggle to keep food on the table, Congress must prioritize work on efforts to lower costs and help Americans stay afloat," said Jayapal, who is joined in sponsoring the bill by Democratic Reps. Alma Adams (NC), Nanette Barragán (Calif.), Chris Deluzio (Pa.), Shomari Figures (Ala.), Jahana Hayes (Conn.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Andrea Salinas (Ore.), Adam Smith (Wash.), and Shri Thanedar (Mich).

"While Republicans in Congress enacted legislation to raise food prices and are hell-bent on cutting food assistance, Seattle is once again leading the way with the Fresh Bucks program, which is successfully keeping people fed with nutritious food and reducing hunger," she said. "We must pass this legislation to expand the program nationwide and get families in every corner of the country healthy produce they can afford."

The rise of global temperatures has made oppressive summer heatwaves an annual occurrence, and for many Americans, air conditioning is no longer optional.

But as scorching temperatures bear down on the US once again this week, affecting more than 250 million people across the country, some are suddenly being forced to share the precious cool air with data centers that have popped up in their towns to power the breakneck build-out of artificial intelligence technology.

To keep their massive arrays of computer servers cool, these complexes require large amounts of energy even in normal times. But during a heatwave, the demand becomes even greater.

As power grids become strained, residents of communities with data centers are being asked to make sacrifices in the form of cost, comfort, and potentially safety.

In Henrico County, Virginia, which has 37 data centers, thousands of county employees received an email last week from County Manager John Vithoulkas warning them that beginning on July 1, the rate paid by "government and school facilities will increase dramatically—by 25%, increasing costs by an estimated $5 million next fiscal year."

"To mitigate the impact of higher electric costs, I am asking that we, collectively, make slight adjustments to conserve electricity across our individual workspaces,” he said in the email, which was obtained by 404 Media. “Turn off your lights when leaving your workspace, including when you leave for the day,” he continued. “Turn off your computers/laptops at the end of each workday. If your workspace has windows, adjust the blinds to manage heat from sunlight.”

He also informed them of the high cost of running "space heaters," which Frank Landymore of Futurism.com suggested was a thinly veiled way of telling residents to turn down the AC, since nobody would be using space heaters in 100-degree heat.

It was a signifier of what's happened across the entire mid-Atlantic grid, whose largest operator, PJM Interconnection, is experiencing record energy demand.

According to Reuters, the grid that supplies power to 67 million people has seen a roughly 1,000% increase in capacity prices since 2024 as a result of the AI boom, which is already being passed onto consumers in the form of higher bills.

To reduce the risk of outages caused by an overburdened grid, the US Department of Energy granted PJM the authority to require data centers to operate backup diesel generators.

Under the emergency order, Politico reported, data centers are allowed to produce enough diesel emissions that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would categorize it as a "possible human carcinogen."

The result has been what Shaolei Ren, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, told The Associated Press could be “a disaster for the local air quality" in communities with data centers.

In Lowell, Massachusetts, where a Markley Group data center sits in the working-class Sacred Heart neighborhood, residents told the AP that they were staying inside to avoid smelling the diesel fumes being belched up near their homes.

Public backlash led the Lowell City Council to vote unanimously for a moratorium on data center building in February. But many residents feel the damage has already been done, with the Markley center gobbling up their town's electric and water resources.

One resident told The Harvard Crimson in May that since the center came to town, his winter electric bill has shot up from $40 to $177.

As temperatures spiked this week, more than 200 protesters flooded a local zoning meeting to voice their anger about the noise, pollution, and surveillance equipment bearing down on their homes. One 14-year-old girl was dragged out of the meeting by police officers.

"I'm not hurting anyone," she shouted as cops escorted her through the exit. "We just don't want data centers!"

Within roughly three years, data centers have come to consume about 4.5% of all electricity in the US, a number that is expected to keep ballooning in the coming years.

Even before the data center boom began, scientists had long warned that the climate crisis caused by human carbon emissions would make US heatwaves more frequent, longer, and more intense.

Heatwaves in major US cities are already three times as common as they were in the 1960s, according to an EPA report from 2024, and the average heatwave season is now 46 days longer.

The number of heat-related deaths in the US more than doubled from 1,069 in 1999 to 2,325 in 2023, according to a JAMA Network study analyzing mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With more than 1,500 data center projects currently underway across the US, a vicious cycle appears poised to accelerate.

The rapid buildout of data centers has already culminated in massive emission spikes. Amazon, which once pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, saw its carbon output increase by 16% in 2025 in large part due to its multi-billion dollar data center buildout.

According to a report out Wednesday from the Environmental Integrity Project, at least 74 natural gas-fired power plants are being planned to power the industry's expansion, which are expected to release 662 million tons of greenhouse gas—equivalent to the entire nation of Australia—per year.

Many of the plants are being built in low-income areas that already have poorer health outcomes and could produce nearly 160,000 tons of health-damaging pollutants that can cause lung damage, asthma, and heart attacks.

“In their wholehearted embrace of dirty and outdated gas power, data center developers are announcing to the public that they don’t care about us," said Alex Bomstein, the executive director at Clean Air Council. "We deserve better than decades of toxic pollution, parched streambeds, and climate chaos.”

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro on Thursday announced that her office had secured a felony indictment against former US Olympic athlete David Hearn for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

In a press conference announcing the charges, Pirro accused the 67-year-old Hearn of "forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner" of the Reflecting Pool last month.

“We will not allow our sacred monuments to be roped off or diminished or in any way impacted by disgruntled individuals who think that they and not the rest of the nation have the right to decide what should happen,” Pirro said. “These landmarks and monuments belong to all of us, and they must be protected for generations to come."

If convicted, Hearn faces up to 10 years in prison.

The Olympian was first arrested last month after he was seen reaching into the pool, which had been undergoing renovations ordered by President Donald Trump.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Hearn said that he simply put his hand in the water and touched a piece of lining in the pool that was already peeling off.

“I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told the paper. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

Norm Eisen, an attorney who is representing Hearn, accused the Trump administration of using his client as a scapegoat for the botched pool renovation, which has been plagued by intense algae blooms, peeled lining, and dead ducks.

"These charges are outrageous and should be alarming to every American," said Eisen. "This indictment reflects the administration's efforts to shift blame from their own failures."

"On the eve of our nation's Independence Day," Eisen continued, "Americans should be deeply concerned by the misuse of government power against an ordinary system based on a concocted narrative."

During her tenure as US attorney, Pirro has overseen multiple failed prosecutions.

Earlier this year, Pirro's office attempted to bring charges against several Democratic elected officials for creating a video reminding US military personnel that they should not follow any illegal orders given by the president. The case collapsed when a grand jury refused to sign off on an indictment, however.

Pirro's office last year also tried to convict Sean Dunn, a former US Department of Justice employee who hurled a sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers, on misdemeanor assault charges. Dunn was ultimately acquitted by a jury in November.

Having a July 4 barbecue will be significantly more expensive this year than it was a year ago, and two reports say President Donald Trump's policies are at least partly to blame.

In an analysis published Wednesday, the American Economic Liberties Project faulted Trump for not taking on the corporate concentration in the meatpacking industry, which the group argued was the single biggest contributor to a "July 4th BBQ burn" that will see Americans pay record prices for ground beef.

The report finds that even though Trump has tried to cut prices by lowering his tariffs to increase the supply of imported beef, they have not fallen due to the meatpacking oligopoly's power to keep prices high regardless of input costs.

In fact, the report says that prices have gone up by an additional 2% since Trump exempted beef imports from his tariffs last November.

The real problem, the report contends, is that just four companies process 85% of US beef, giving them enormous leverage over what consumers pay for the final product.

Even though three of these four firms have paid out tens of millions of dollars to settle price-fixing allegations, the report adds, none of them have been broken up.

Lori Wallach, director of the American Economic Liberties Project's Rethink Trade program, said the president's unwillingness to take on corporate power was hurting both consumers and cattle ranchers.

"Responding to a corporate-monopoly-driven price crisis with trade tools has caused a double whammy," said Wallach. "No relief for American consumers, and record floods of imported beef threatening the livelihoods of the ranchers who supported Trump."

"To bring prices down," Wallach added, "the administration must break up the big four beef packers that dictate terms to consumers and ranchers alike."

Katie Hettinga, policy analyst at Rethink Trade and lead author of the report, said that until Trump "breaks the power of dominant meat packers and grocery chains to keep prices high, American consumers will suffer."

A separate analysis published Tuesday by Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation spotlighted the high price of not just beef, but other July 4 staples as well.

In addition to the price of beef, which has gone up by over 20% in the last year, the report finds the prices of prepared potato salad (23% year-over-year increase), ice pops (22% increase), and strawberries (20% increase) have all seen substantial rises.

And it's not just food items, as the prices of disposable forks (20% year-over-year increase) and aluminum foil (18% increase) have gone up dramatically as well.

Lindsay Owens, executive director at Groundwork Collaborative, said that Trump's tariffs on foreign goods and his illegal war with Iran, which caused the price of fertilizer to spike, both contributed to the price spikes.

"As Americans fire up the grill this Fourth of July, they’ll feel the heat of summer price hikes," said Owens. "As popsicle prices spike and air conditioning bills skyrocket, working families will be forced to sweat in the face of high price tags. Thanks to Trump’s tariffs and foreign wars, Americans won’t find any independence from inflation this Fourth of July.”

As the Social Security Administration's unveiling Thursday of a 250th anniversary commemorative Social Security card coincided with a congressional report on President Donald Trump's use of the semiquincentennial to enrich himself—including by deceiving donors—advocates demanded answers from Trump officials on the decision to turn "Social Security cards into political propaganda."

The SSA unveiled the new cards, set to be issued to all babies born between July 2-December 31, 2026, and the "Freedom 250" logo that will be emblazoned on them, tying the government documents to the semi-private entity that has pushed for Trump's far-right agenda to be at the forefront of the country's 250th anniversary celebration.

Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, noted that in the 90 years since the first Social Security card was issued in 1936, "the design has never been politicized."

"Now, the Trump administration is putting the logo of a semi-private, partisan entity, which is widely reported to be corrupt, on the Social Security cards of newborn babies. They claim ‘no additional cost to families or taxpayers’, but the cost has to come from somewhere."

A commemorative Social Security card with a Freedom 250 logo. (Photo by Social Security Administration)

Altman referred to a report released Thursday by the US House Natural Resources Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, titled "From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday."

The 55-page report found that Freedom 250, which is funded through taxpayer dollars as well as donations from a number of companies with regulatory business before the government, including Palantir, ExxonMobil, and Oracle, secretly diverted funds intended for the congressionally chartered, bipartisan initiative America 250, and misled donors by providing them with Freedom 250's banking information instead.

"This is abuse of Social Security, a nonpartisan institution which Trump claimed he would not hurt."

The report also detailed how Freedom 250, with former employees of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has collected Americans' personal data and has "sold access to the president and courted foreign money in America's name."

"Freedom 250’s website quietly collects an extraordinary amount of information about the people who visit it," reads the report. "Its own privacy disclosure states that Freedom 250 collects everything a user shares with it and, when a user or devices permits, tracks precise geolocation data down to 'latitude, longitude, velocity, [and] bearing.' It logs each click across the site and captures the information users type into forms, including home addresses and contact information, and sends it back to the server of the organization that designed and created the website—in this case the National Design Studio, staffed by ex-DOGE employees."

The subcommittee explained how Freedom 250 "circulated sponsorship packages starting at $500,000 and climbing above $10 million, backed by a 'historic photo opportunity' with President Trump. Its CEO solicited foreign governments, corporations, and individuals at the World Economic Forum in Davos to fund the president’s priorities. If foreign funds reach the president's vanity projects, the report finds the conduct would clearly violate the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause."

Altman emphasized, in light of the committee's findings, that "DOGE has been found in court to have mishandled our private Social Security data, and these cards may provide another opportunity for that abuse of Americans’ most personal, sensitive information."

The use of the Freedom 250 logo on Social Security cards is "corrupt and inappropriate," said Social Security Works.

The group called on SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano to disclose whether the administration is paying a licensing fee to Freedom 250, release "any and all contracts between the Social Security Administration and Freedom 250," and reveal whether Freedom 250 will have "access to data associated with beneficiaries of Social Security cards bearing their logo."

"This is abuse of Social Security, a nonpartisan institution which Trump claimed he would not hurt," said Altman. "Like issuing passports with Trump’s visage and signature, putting his name on the Kennedy Center, and destroying the East Wing of the White House, turning Social Security cards into political propaganda reveals yet again Trump’s contempt for the American people he is supposed to be serving.“

Over 21,500 children—1,022 of them babies—are among the more than 73,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since it launched the US-backed genocidal war on Gaza 1,000 days ago, including hundreds of minors slain since a one-way ceasefire took effect nine months ago, Gaza's Government Media Office said Thursday.

In updated figures, the GMO said that at least 73,066 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its war and siege on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. A separate analysis published in mid-April by UN Women found that at least 38,000 women and girls were killed between October 2023 and December 2025.

The GMO said Thursday that at least 173,514 others—including more than 44,500 children—have been wounded, and 9,500 Palestinians are still missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed-out buildings in the coastal strip, more than 90% of which has been destroyed and 80% of which is under Israeli control, according to officials.

(Source: Gaza Government Media Office)

More than 11,000 Gazan children have suffered what the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) called "life-changing injuries," including as many as 4,000 amputations, many of them performed without anesthesia.

“Every day for the past 1,000 days, the world has failed 1 million children in Gaza by not intervening to stop the killing and maiming of children," Ahmad Ahendawi, regional director at the charity Save the Children, said Thursday. "As their young, fragile bodies were blown to bits and pieces by bombs and missiles, the world sold those same weapons to the government of Israel [and]... continued trade agreements with the government of Israel."

Early in the war, UNICEF called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.”

Classified Israel Defense Forces (IDF) data leaked last August suggested that 5 in 6 Palestinians, or 83%, killed during the war's first 19 months were civilians. Experts attribute the high civilian death toll to Israel's use of artificial intelligence in target selection, its dropping of 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs—many of them supplied by the US—in densely populated urban zones, and relaxed rules of engagement allowing for an unlimited number of noncombatant casualties in airstrikes targeting a single Hamas operative, no matter how low-ranking.

Last month, a United Nations commission of inquiry found that 30% of those killed by Israel in Gaza have been minors, and that “the deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza."

The commission, which separately concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, used language consistent with Article II of the Genocide Convention, the international treaty against which Israel's actions are being weighed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In December 2023, South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the ICJ that is now formally backed by around 20 nations.

IDF troops have admitted to witnessing alleged war crimes, including indiscriminate murder of women and children. Doctors and other international volunteers who worked in Gaza's besieged hospitals during the genocide have reported the apparently deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians, including children shot in the head and chest by Israeli snipers.

Palestinian survivors and witnesses have also accused IDF troops of summarily executing women and children.

“Every day for the past 1,000 days, the world has failed 1 million children in Gaza."

The new GMO figures note 460 deaths from malnutrition—164 of them children—and 28 Palestinians, mostly children, who perished from hypothermia in camps housing many of the approximately 2 million people forcibly displaced by the war.

According to figures published last month by UNICEF, more than 1,000 Palestinians, including at least 265 children, have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since the October 2025 ceasefire took effect. UNICEF called the purported truce a "cruel and deadly illusion."

All this in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack in which approximately 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed—some by so-called “friendly fire” and under the fratricidal Hannibal Directive—and 251 others abducted.

In the aftermath of the deadliest attack on Israel in its 75-year history, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation—exhorted Israelis to "remember what Amalek has done to you."

According to the Hebrew Bible, the nation of Amalek was an ancient archenemy of the Israelites whose total extermination—"man and woman, infant and suckling"—was commanded by the Abrahamic deity figure God.

Numerous Israeli leaders made similarly genocidal statements, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who asserted that there are no innocent people in Gaza, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—who is also wanted by the ICC for ordering the "complete siege" of Gaza blamed for fueling deadly famine and disease—and the influential far-right politician Moshe Feiglin.

"Every child in Gaza is the enemy," Feiglin said last year. "We need to occupy Gaza and settle it, and not a single Gazan child will be left there."

According to the new GMO figures, 39,022 families in Gaza have suffered Israeli massacres, with more than 2,700 families entirely wiped out and another 6,020 left with only a single surviving member. More than 58,800 children have been orphaned, including 2,700 who lost both parents, while 26,370 women are now widows.

In 2024, Save the Children published a report detailing how Israel's onslaught has caused the "complete psychological destruction" of Gazan children. A subsequent study found that nearly all children in the embattled Palestinian enclave believed that their deaths were imminent—and nearly half of them said they wanted to die.

“We could die at any moment. I hope the war stops for us,” a 14-year-old girl identified as Amani told Save the Children in a report published Thursday.

“I hope the war stops so that I can continue my education in Gaza and live my rights as a human like any girl in other countries," she added. "I would like to live with love, peace, and an easy life."

The unprecedented cuts to federal nutrition assistance that President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans enacted nearly a year ago directly undermine the administration's "Make America Healthy Again" initiative, argues a new report by a pair of food policy experts.

The so-called MAHA project, spearheaded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., emphasizes the importance of a healthy diet to childhood development. But the new white paper, published Wednesday and authored by Joelle Johnson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Priya Fielding-Singh of George Washington University's Global Food Institute, notes that research shows the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) "reduces food insecurity—which is itself linked to increased risk of poorer diets among children—and may improve health outcomes among households with low incomes."

"How the administration’s health objectives can be achieved alongside policies that reduce both food access and nutrition education is a question these dual agendas do not resolve," the report states. "Understanding this tension also helps explain why the administration’s MAHA messaging has at times appeared disconnected from the SNAP policies it has simultaneously pursued."

The GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR 1) will inflict nearly $190 billion in cuts to SNAP over the next decade—the largest in the program's history—and expand work reporting requirements, despite evidence showing that such mandates do virtually nothing to boost employment or reduce poverty. According to one estimate, the expanded SNAP work reporting requirements could cause nearly 70,000 avoidable deaths by 2040.

The Republican law also forces states to pay a portion of SNAP benefits for the first time, straining budgets and potentially forcing deeper food aid cuts.

Millions of people across the US—including more than 800,000 children—have lost SNAP benefits since Trump signed the Republican budget package into law on July 4, 2025. It is well established that food insecurity, which is on the rise across the US, is associated with chronic disease.

“It is impossible to reconcile the administration’s MAHA rhetoric on reducing chronic disease in childhood with the cruel cutbacks to SNAP brought about by HR 1,” Johnson, who serves as deputy director for healthy food access at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), said in a statement. “Whatever MAHA initiatives CSPI might have otherwise supported are completely subsumed by the biggest cut to SNAP in the program’s history.”

"Cutting off food assistance for millions of families undermines MAHA's stated goals of improving diet quality and preventing chronic disease."

The new report stresses the "ripple effects" of the Trump-GOP SNAP cuts across the food safety net, pointing to negative impacts on kids' eligibility for school meals and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

"Approximately 16 million children live in households that rely on SNAP to meet their basic food needs, and many will face cascading losses of access to other nutrition programs as a result of HR 1's cuts," the report warns. "Children who lose SNAP also risk losing automatic enrollment in WIC and free school meals, forcing families already stretched thin to navigate multiple re-enrollment processes with no guarantee of restored access."

Trump and the GOP are not finished attacking nutrition assistance for low-income families. Last month, House Republicans approved legislation that would slash fruit and vegetable benefits for millions of young children and pregnant and postpartum women—a cut consistent with the White House's budget proposal for the coming fiscal year.

"If we are serious about improving Americans' health, we need policies that make healthy food more accessible, not less," said Fielding-Singh, director of policy and programs at the Global Food Institute. "Cutting off food assistance for millions of families undermines MAHA's stated goals of improving diet quality and preventing chronic disease. Food security and public health go hand in hand."

As its conservative majority showed unprecedented deference to President Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court passed what ProPublica described as a "troubling milestone" during the term that ended last October.

For the first time in its modern history, an analysis published Wednesday found, the court decided more cases using its secretive "shadow docket" than using the regular process.

Unlike the so-called "merits docket," in which cases undergo lengthy periods of review, parties file briefs and make oral arguments for their side, and the justices issue extensive signed rulings explaining their reasoning, shadow docket decisions are expedited and offer little mechanism for accountability.

They are often unsigned, with no final vote count or explanation of the court’s decision, and are often issued within hours of legal action being taken, leaving no time for deliberation or public input.

These cases are meant to be reserved for emergency or temporary interventions. But as Trump has attempted to exert unprecedented executive authority that often brazenly pushes legal boundaries, ProPublica found that the court's use of the shadow docket has exploded.

The analysis found that during the last Supreme Court term, the court issued 63 decisions on the shadow docket, compared with just 56 on the merits docket. Analyzing more than two decades of decisions by the high court, they found that the court has never come close to issuing this many secret decisions in any previous term.

This is due largely to the Trump administration's unprecedented petitioning to have cases decided on the shadow docket after elements of the president's agenda were stymied by lower courts.

As ProPublica explained, the court "has repeatedly green-lit policies of his that lower courts have blocked—and has done so with little to no explanation," and often the decisions have been highly consequential and "have thrown lower courts’ processes into turmoil and have sometimes directly contradicted longstanding legal precedent."

On June 23, 2025, after a lower court had ruled that eight men being deported to South Sudan should have due process, the Supreme Court intervened after a request from the administration to stop that order. The men were deported. The majority didn’t issue an opinion justifying its ruling.

Three months later, the Supreme Court voted to allow immigration agents to stop people based on racial or ethnic characteristics while still-ongoing litigation against it proceeded. To justify the decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a rare shadow docket opinion that people who were in the country legally would be “free to go after the brief encounter.” These became known as “Kavanaugh stops.” Last year, ProPublica found more than 170 citizens who had been stopped and detained by ICE agents. The more than 50 Americans held even after agents learned of their citizenship were almost all Latino.

And in May, while an election in Louisiana was already underway, the justices allowed the state to immediately redraw its electoral map, removing one of the two majority-Black voting districts. Louisiana can now use that map for the 2026 midterms as part of a nationwide redistricting battle for control of the House of Representatives—an effort touched off by Trump’s call for Republican-led states to create more safe seats for themselves.

An analysis by the legal group Court Accountability in October found that the Supreme Court sided with Trump 90% of the time in the 23 orders included in its analysis of his second administration through October 2025, nearly all of which were issued on the shadow docket.

“The patterns show a court going out of its way to enable Trump,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University and a Supreme Court analyst, told ProPublica.

Noting that the American public’s approval of the high court has fallen substantially in recent years, Leslie Proll, a civil rights lawyer and the former director of voting rights at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, called the court’s unprecedented secrecy “utterly disgraceful.”

"That hugely consequential cases are decided with no transparency," she said, "only adds to the court's illegitimacy and further decreases the public's confidence."

As President Donald Trump's team on Thursday tried to paint the June jobs report as positive, economists and congressional Democrats called it "weak" and "disappointing," with some also ripping the Republican administration's harmful policies, from sweeping tariffs and the Iran War to the mass detention and deportation of immigrants.

The nation's economy added just 57,000 jobs in June, or roughly half of what economists had anticipated, according to the latest monthly report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS noted that "both the unemployment rate, at 4.2%, and the number of unemployed people, at 7.1 million, changed little in June."

The Department of Labor (DOL) agency also revised job gains down for May by 43,000 and April by 31,000, and said that "over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.5%." That's notably lower than the 4.2% annual inflation rate detailed by BLS a few weeks ago, as Americans struggle to afford groceries, housing, and other basic necessities during Trump's second term.

"Today's weak jobs numbers are grim warning signs of a struggling labor market," Alex Jacquez, a former Obama administration official who is now Groundwork Collaborative's chief of policy and advocacy, said in a statement.

"Job gains reflect temporary seasonal hires and other workers separated from the broader economy while the majority of the labor force is frozen," he explained. "Working Americans increasingly report that their paychecks can't keep up with Trump's high prices, but are not confident they'll be able to find better opportunities. They're instead focused on trying to keep up with the president's price hikes."

Angela Hanks, a former DOL senior official who's now chief of policy programs at The Century Foundation, similarly called the report "yet more evidence of a fragile economy under President Trump, with job growth coming in well below expectations and sizable downward revisions to the last two months."

"While the unemployment rate dipped slightly to 4.2%, this number only tells us how many people are working—it doesn't tell you whether people can afford to live," she stressed. "The reality behind today's jobs numbers is that the cost of living continues to outpace paychecks: 43% of Americans now say they're worse off financially than they were a year ago, and year-over-year wage growth came in at 3.5%, below overall inflation of 4.2%—meaning that real wages are falling."

"Looking beyond the topline numbers, more than half of all June job growth was concentrated in healthcare and social assistance, continuing a trend of these sectors propping up much of our economy," she pointed out. "The labor force participation rate declined sharply and widely, with nearly every demographic group seeing declines, which partially explains the drop in the unemployment rate. Moreover, certain racial and age disparities actually worsened: Black youth unemployment rate rose to a whopping 26.8%, as did Hispanic youth unemployment, coming in at 20.1%—a reminder that this economy is not delivering for workers who are struggling the most."

Hanks added that “while Trump will surely tout this moderate job growth as a win, not long ago numbers like today's would have prompted serious concern. But families aren't grading Trump on a curve: They feel the impacts of this administration's chaotic and costly economic policies every day. Until working people can actually afford their lives—groceries, housing, healthcare, childcare—claims of a 'strong economy' will continue to ring hollow."

In line with Hanks' prediction, Trump's messengers attempted to frame the figures positively, with his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, celebrating the declining foreign-born labor force amid the administration's deadly crackdown on immigrants, and her deputy, Kush Desai, claiming the report "reinforces that the American labor market remains solid."

Acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling—whom the president earlier this week nominated for the permanent post—said that "Trump's America first agenda continues to provide greater wages for workers and certainty to the sectors which will fuel the next 250 years of US economic security."

Meanwhile, with the midterm elections just four months away, the Democratic National Committee's rapid response director, Kendall Witmer, declared that "Donald Trump's failed economic agenda has driven working families into a corner as Americans worry about how to find a job and keep up with sky-high prices. The reality for working families is undeniable: Trump has wrecked the economy, leaving millions wondering how they will make ends meet with no relief in sight."

"But Trump doesn't give a shit—he's only focused on building his vanity projects and using the power of the presidency to get even richer," added Witmer, just two days after the president's annual financial disclosures revealed that he pocketed an unprecedented $2.2 billion—over half of it from his family’s cryptocurrency grift—during his first year back in the Oval Office.

Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) took to social media over "another disappointing jobs report" and also called out GOP priorities, from erecting a giant arch in Trump's honor to putting his name on various items, including passports and the $250 bill.

As Lieu concluded, "November is coming."

More than a dozen corporate Democrats last week responded to upstart progressive wins in primaries by pledging their support to a political manifesto called "Promise to America," which emphasizes support for capitalism, law enforcement, and "fiscal discipline."

A Thursday report published by Sludge about the Promise to America found that it "is closely tied to the Welcome Party, a group whose PAC has received more than half of its individual contributions from billionaires."

According to Sludge, the Promise to America appeared in public for the first time last month at Welcome Party's annual WelcomeFest conference, where it was signed by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Adam Gray (D-Calif.).

Other prominent Democrats who have signed the pledge include Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Vincente Gonzalez (D-Texas), and Don Davis (D-NC).

Although Sludge uncovered no evidence that Welcome Party is financially supporting the Promise to America, the manifesto's presence at the group's conference was notable given that billionaire donations account for more than 60% of the $10.8 million in donations that it has received over the last five years.

Major donors to the PAC include LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who has donated a total of $1.8 million, and former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, who with his wife Kathryn has donated $2.5 million.

Other notable billionaires who have contributed to WelcomePAC include Bain Capital co-founder Joshua Bekenstein, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and several members of the Walton family.

Sludge's investigation also found that "more billionaires may have donated to the Welcome Party’s two 'dark money' nonprofit arms, which do not disclose their donors publicly."

The Promise to America manifesto has drawn heavy criticism from progressives.

In a recent interview with political commentator Santita Jackson, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that the corporate Democrats' pledge was a reactive document that lacked policy solutions to the problems facing Americans.

"Okay fine, if you’re against [democratic socialists], that’s okay. But what do you believe?" said Ocasio-Cortez. "And that I think is the core of the weaknesses from that wing at this moment. There’s no affirmative vision really coming from most places in the Democratic Party with the exception of democratic socialism."

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) last week also challenged the corporate wing of the party in a speech on the floor of the US House of Representatives in which he defended the vision being laid out by progressive insurgents.

“The progressive movement is winning across the country, from the heart of New York to Michigan to Maine,” Khanna said. “The people are saying no to foreign wars and they’re saying no to genocide in Gaza. They’re saying no to the unfair and lopsided economy that has allowed a few people to hoard extreme wealth and power, and they’re saying yes to Medicare for All.”

US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on Thursday accused Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis of conduct commonly seen from President Donald Trump's after Polis fired two members of the state clemency board, citing their decision to speak out publicly against his release of former county Clerk Tina Peters.

In 2024, Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting equipment in an effort to prove the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump. The president, who faced his own legal challenges for spreading the falsehood and trying to overturn the election, issued a symbolic pardon for Peters and pressured Polis to commute her sentence, which Polis did in May, angering members of his own party and democracy advocates.

Two members of the state clemency board, Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, were among those who opposed Polis' decision, and they went against the board's usual custom of maintaining secrecy about its proceedings to reveal that the entire board had twice voted unanimously to reject Peters' bid for a shorter sentence, only to be overruled by the governor.

On Wednesday, Proff and Taslimi told The New York Times that they'd received dismissal letters from Polis, who told them they had "breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes."

Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Polis' commutation of Peters's sentence was akin to acting like the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by election-denying Trump supporters "didn't happen."

"Firing people who oppose you is also a page out of Trump's playbook," said the congresswomen.

The board members also revealed that Polis had passed over other deserving applications for parole before he allowed Peters to walk free on June 1.

"We have reviewed hundreds of applications that moved us to tears," they wrote in an op-ed at The Denver Post. "People who spent decades atoning for a single terrible decision, who attended college or seminary behind bars, completed countless programs, developed curricula for other incarcerated people, mentored young offenders, and raised thousands of dollars for victims’ rights organizations."

"Along with nine other members of the board, we have read applications supported by prosecutors who tried the case, by prison wardens who watched the transformation happen, and even by victims themselves," they continued. "And we have seen the governor fail to act or delay many of these applications."

A spokesperson for Polis told the Times that their decision to divulge the two unanimous votes against Peters' release threatened the "credibility of the board." Taslimi told 9NEWS Denver that Polis' real message in deciding to fire the two board members "is that the public doesn't have the right to know that his own advisory board told him no, twice, unanimously."

"That's not protecting the process, that's protecting himself from scrutiny," said Taslimi.

The two dismissed board members noted in their op-ed that Peters, unlike many of the people who have submitted clemency applications that have been rejected by Polis, has "expressed no contrition" for the crime she was convicted of.

"Within hours of her release, Peters appeared on a podcast and immediately resumed her attacks on the integrity of US elections," they wrote. "She repeated the debunked conspiracy theory that voting machines cheated Donald Trump out of reelection in 2020 and portrayed herself as a martyr to the effort to expose it. She called her release a miracle."

"The governor said he was moved by her admission that she made a mistake," they added. "She walked out of prison and told the world she made no mistake at all."

Proff told 9NEWS that she might regret her decision to speak out if her fellow board members were "disappointed" in her public revelations about the panel's operations.

"But I really have a feeling that the person who's upset," said Proff, "is the one that was using our board as backing for a politically unpopular and unjust decision."

As the progressive movement builds its momentum in Democratic primaries, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued her first endorsement in a competitive Senate primary on Thursday, throwing her support behind Dr. Abdul El-Sayed as he battles for the party's Senate nomination in Michigan.

Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a likely 2028 presidential candidate and one of the most popular figures among the Democratic base, is perhaps the biggest player yet to back El-Sayed, the former public health director for Detroit, who polls currently show leading the more establishment-friendly Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8).

The primary, which will take place on August 4, will determine who faces Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in a race that could decide whether Democrats flip the Senate in November.

AOC's support for El-Sayed—who has championed Medicare for All, an arms embargo against Israel, raising taxes on the wealthy, and overturning Citizens United—puts her at odds with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has backed Stevens, and with other progressive Democrats like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Chris Murphy (D-Ct.) who prefer McMorrow.

However, El-Sayed has his own share of high-profile supporters, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), as well as a host of progressive House members, including Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

“Despite our ideological differences and whatever disagreements there are in the party, every single one of us sees this moment as existential,” Ocasio-Cortez told The New York Times. “And I think many people are willing to put aside differences in order to give us the best chance at winning. And I think that Abdul gives us that right now.”

Though he appears to be in the driver’s seat with just over a month before the August 4 Michigan primary, El-Sayed still faces a perilous path to the nomination that AOC’s endorsement may help him to weather.

While El-Sayed has sworn off big money donors, Stevens—the candidate closest behind him—is armed with more than $16 million in super PAC spending, including millions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) political spending arm, the United Democracy Project, which has begun to blanket the airwaves with ads boosting Stevens, who also has the backing of nearly 100 other corporate PACs representing the health insurance industry, Wall Street banks, fossil fuels, and Big Tech, among others.

The alliance between AOC and El-Sayed is nearly a decade in the making. Fresh off the stunning primary upset that led her to Congress in 2018, she endorsed the doctor's then-longshot bid to become governor of Michigan.

Sharing a photo of the two at a campaign event eight years prior, El-Sayed celebrated AOC as someone who "has spent her career taking on the powerful on behalf of everyday people, and she has shown all of us what courageous, smart, values-driven leadership looks like."

He added that she "has changed the trajectory of American politics and inspired a generation to believe that government really can work for working people."

"Together, we’re proving that even in the face of unprecedented outside spending, a movement powered by the people can win," El Sayed said.

Indeed, that movement has been winning of late.

AOC's endorsement of El-Sayed comes after three House candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani—including multiple self-identified democratic socialists—cruised to victory over establishment Democrats in their primaries last week.

This week showed that the left-wing insurgency was underway nationwide, with 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros stunning longtime Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado's primary.

Pollster Adam Carlson said that El-Sayed's race in Michigan will go a long way towards demonstrating the extent to which AOC and her movement truly have reshaped the political landscape.

“If El-Sayed wins the primary and the general election in the swingiest of swing states, ahead of 2028,” he said, “it would give the progressive wing of the party a proof of concept that the conventional wisdom of 'more moderate equals more electable' has some serious holes in it, at least in the second Trump era.”

US President Donald Trump last year purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of Abbott Laboratories stock before his Justice Department dropped a years-long criminal investigation into the company, which was accused of misconduct after infant hospitalizations and deaths were linked to one of its baby formula factories.

The stock purchases were revealed in the president's annual financial disclosure report, which spans 927 pages and shows thousands of trades valued at over $1 billion. Trump's first purchase of Abbott stock last year was made in late September, and the president bought around $500,000 worth of shares in total in 2025, according to the nonprofit media organization More Perfect Union.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that "top decision makers" at the Department of Justice shut down the criminal investigation into Abbott—which donated $500,000 to Trump's inaugural fund—even though "some prosecutors believed they had evidence to criminally charge the company under a law they have used to pursue other businesses for allegedly selling contaminated foods."

"Prosecutors had been considering a misdemeanor charge against Abbott for violating the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and a separate count for misleading the government," the Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. "Investigators in early 2022 had found traces of a potentially deadly bacteria at its plant in Sturgis, Michigan, including on equipment very close to infant formula containers—as well as a long list of other problems."

The Food and Drug Administration received reports of at least nine infant deaths linked to baby formula produced at Abbott's Sturgis plant, which the company temporarily shut down amid fears of dangerous contamination. The Justice Department launched its investigation into Abbott, the largest infant formula manufacturer in the US, in 2023, under the administration of former President Joe Biden.

Trump's DOJ has taken a far more lax approach to corporate enforcement, reaching sweetheart settlement deals with companies accused of price-fixing, stifling competition, and other illegal activities.

The Journal reported that the Justice Department and Abbott "reached a settlement to resolve" a separate but related civil lawsuit alleging that the company knowingly "failed to follow manufacturing standards to protect against the risk of contamination."

"That suit, which was joined by 31 states, alleged that Abbott had a 'culture of concealment' at Sturgis and 'withheld information from FDA related to the presence of microorganisms in the Sturgis facility,'" the Journal observed.

Last April, the investigative outlet ProPublica reported that workers at Abbott's Sturgis plant—which resumed production in June 2022—said the company was still "engaging in unsanitary practices similar to those that led it to temporarily shut down."

"Current and former employees told ProPublica that they have seen the plant in Sturgis, Michigan take shortcuts when cleaning manufacturing equipment and testing for microbes," the outlet reported. "The employees said leaks in the factory are sometimes not fixed, a dangerous problem that can promote bacterial growth. They also said workers at the facility do not always take required swabs to check for pathogens while performing maintenance during production. Supervisors have urged workers to increase production and have retaliated against workers who complained about problems, the employees said.

Abbott, whose stock is down significantly year-to-date but up over the past month, called the ProPublica story "misleading" and impugned the motives of workers who spoke to the outlet.

Trump's purchase of Abbott stock wasn't the only buy that preceded significant action by his administration.

"On April 8, 2025, the day before Trump announced the tariff pause, the disclosure shows 327 individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million, one of the largest single-day stock buying sprees disclosed in the filing," Sludge reported on Wednesday. "The purchases included Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Alphabet, each valued as much as $250,000, along with scores of other companies. The S&P 500 jumped nearly 10% the following day when Trump announced the pause, one of the largest single-day gains in the index's history."

President Donald Trump's plans for a massive fireworks show in Washington, DC on July 4th could lead to a public health disaster, according to leaked National Park Service documents obtained by The Washington Post.

As the Post reported on Wednesday, internal NPS models project that Trump's plan to launch an estimated 850,000 fireworks over a 40-minute span on Saturday will lead to "very unhealthy" air quality throughout downtown Washington, DC, Arlington, and the area around Capitol Hill.

NPS' internal report recommends that residents "wear an N95 mask when outdoors" and "remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show."

George Thurston, a professor of medicine and population health at New York University, said that the amount of pollution projected by the NPS is so severe that people should "minimize exposures" to outdoor air during the fireworks show, while adding that wearing "an N95 mask would be a good idea."

Thurston also expressed concern about DC residents living in low-income neighborhoods, which are disproportionately exposed to environmental pollutants and could be particularly vulnerable to hazardous air quality stemming from the festivities.

A Tuesday report from Capital Weather also expressed concerns about Trump's planned fireworks, noting that "the approximately 860,000 shells anticipated in this year's show will be at least roughly 50 times more than the usual 10,000 to 20,000 shells" launched during past events.

The problem could be made worse, Capital Weather added, by the extreme heat Washington, DC is expected to get on July 4, with temperatures projected to peak at 100ºF.

"Unless there are strong winds, there will very likely be near-record amounts of smoke to go with all the fireworks," Capital Weather explained. "As of now, winds only look to be around 5 to 8 mph, which will struggle to push the smoke along. If a chance of scattered storms materializes, it could become even more humid and primed for smoke to hang around."

One member of British Parliament called on the Labour government to defend the country's revered National Health Service "with everything we have and firmly stand up to the bully in the White House" after a study published Wednesday showed the UK-US pharmaceutical trade deal brokered last year is projected to cause 229,000 excess deaths as funding is stripped away from the NHS.

“It is a complete insult to patients who are suffering and dying on hospital trolleys and waiting months for treatment," said Helen Morgan of the Liberal Democrats Party regarding the new analysis. "We cannot afford to sit by while our NHS is picked apart by a foreign regime."

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of York, the University of Liverpool, and Christchurch Hospital in New Zealand and published in the British Medical Journal, found that £44.7 billion ($59.5 billion) will have to be diverted from health services by 2036 in order to pay for new medications under the deal.

The agreement was reached last December, with recently resigned Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government agreeing to pay 25% more for new US medications over the next decade. The NHS will double the percentage of gross domestic product that it allocates for pharmaceuticals, from 0.3% to 0.6%, with the spending increasing from 10% to 12% of the universal healthcare system's budget.

In exchange, the Trump administration agreed not to impose tariffs of up to 100% that he had threatened for UK medicines being imported to the US.

Science Minister Patrick Vallance insisted in April that the deal would give NHS patients access to "life-changing new medicines that they previously would have been denied" while boosting the UK's "life sciences sector" by avoiding Trump's tariffs.

"Scandalously, this backroom deal was not subject to any scrutiny in Parliament before being rushed through—and the government refuses to say what impact it will have on the NHS."

But Sir Ciarán Devane, chief executive of the NHS Alliance, told The Guardian that the study raised "serious questions" about whether Britons will truly benefit from the agreement.

"If billions of pounds are diverted away from frontline care to meet higher medicines costs, the consequences for prevention, community services, and the treatment of long-term conditions could be profound," said Devane. "The government must urgently publish the full impact assessment and ensure there is appropriate scrutiny of the deal if it could have such far-reaching implications for population health.”

The projected avoidable death toll in the study far exceeds that which the UK saw during the coronavirus pandemic, when 137,000 excess deaths were recorded between March 2020-June 2022.

"If the indirect effect on adult social care is also included, the increase in excess deaths is even greater (291,000),” reads the study.

The greatest number of excess deaths is projected to occur in patients suffering from cardiovascular, respiratory, and gastrointestinal issues as well as cancer.

Patients with “neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health problems" will also face "broader effects on quality of life," the research states.

The government has assured the public that "frontline services" will be protected, notes the report, but "the NHS will need to fund this deal from allocations made six months before the deal was agreed. The evidence suggests that if additional public expenditure was available, it could be more effectively deployed within the NHS itself."

The research projected that the greatest number of deaths would occur in cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and cancer patients.

It added that there will also be broader harm caused to quality of life for patients in those sectors as well as “neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health problems”.

Tim Bierley, a campaigner with the UK-based group Global Justice Now, said that the report "adds to the overwhelming evidence that the Trump medicines deal risks taking a wrecking ball to our health and our economy."

"Billions that could be spent on recruiting more NHS staff, cutting [general practitioner] waiting times, or improving our hospital care are set to be siphoned off by corporate giants in the pharma industry," said Bierley, whose group has joined the campaign Just Treatment in filing a legal challenge against the deal. "Scandalously, this backroom deal was not subject to any scrutiny in Parliament before being rushed through—and the government refuses to say what impact it will have on the NHS."

"The next prime minister," said Bierley, "must change direction, stand up for our NHS, and unpick the mess left by their predecessors.”

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)."