The annual UN climate talks, COP30, are entering their final hours after a fire briefly shut down the venue yesterday. Early this morning, the COP Presidency released a raft of new negotiations text including an updated version of Brazil’s Mutirão, an overarching political package for climate outcomes put forward by the Presidency. Despite its omission from the latest text, there is increasing support for a roadmap for a transition away from fossil fuels, endorsed by over 80 countries. Also this morning, Colombia led a press conference presenting the Belém Declaration on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, highlighting the growing number of countries at COP30 calling for a global just transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. **Below is a quote fromDr. Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists**, who is on the ground at COP30. “The new texts released this morning are disappointing across the board and the Mutirão text is much weaker than the earlier version. The COP Presidency must intensify its efforts to bridge differences, including in open and transparent plenaries in these final hours, to secure an ambitious outcome at COP30. “The lack of finance for a clean energy transition and adaptation from richer nations—a critical part of the Paris Agreement—remains an ongoing obstacle to securing bold and fair outcomes. Political leaders from wealthier countries must show a willingness to meet their responsibilities instead of once again forcing those least responsible for the climate crisis into an inequitable compromise. “Adaptation finance, which is a top priority for climate vulnerable nations coming into this COP, has been low-balled yet again. Lower income countries are unjustly enduring blow-after-blow from climate impacts caused primarily by heat-trapping emissions from rich nations, impacts that will worsen as the world overshoots 1.5 C of global warming. A strong outcome on funding for adaptation is essential to restore trust and deliver a fair outcome at COP30. “The Mutirão text has completely dropped mention of a roadmap for a just transition away from fossil fuels, a glaring omission of an urgent call championed here by more than 80 countries. Fossil fuels are the root cause of the climate crisis and there is no credible pathway to meet science-based climate goals without a fast, fair, funded phaseout of fossil fuels. Lower income nations cannot make this transition rapidly, nor can they close the vast energy poverty gap that millions suffer from today, without funding from richer countries. Public finance is essential. “More and more countries are demanding a just transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy to protect people and the planet while building thriving economies. The Belém Declaration led by Colombia is a bold complement to the roadmap nations are calling to include in the Mutirão, setting a high bar for ambition. How we make the transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy is crucial to ensuring this transition serves the needs of people, not fossil fuel interests bent on extracting profits. In addition to ramping up renewable energy and energy efficiency, a just transition must include support for workers currently dependent on fossil fuels for their livelihoods and for communities suffering from fossil fuel pollution. “At COP28 in Dubai, nations agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. Now at COP30, billed as the ‘implementation COP,’ world leaders must secure a just transition package that sets the world firmly on a path to turn that commitment into reality within this critical decade and beyond.”

**Bronwen Tucker, Public Finance lead at Oil Change International, said:** “This is outrageous. We came here to secure a COP 30 package for justice and equity. The Presidency has presented a shamefully weak text that fails to mention fossil fuels, fails to deliver accountability towards rich countries’ finance obligations, and only makes vague promises on adaptation. The Belém Action Mechanism for a just transition needs to be protected at all costs in the final hours. But let’s be clear, we need all of these pillars to work together in one package: the just transition, public finance, and planning for a fair fossil fuel phaseout. “A large group of countries have been vocal in their support for a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, but rich parties are still refusing to deliver the debt-free public finance on fair terms that is key to make it happen. Until they stop blocking efforts to address the systemic barriers developing countries face to phasing out fossil fuels, any roadmap will be a dead-end.”

Responding to this morning’s second draft COP30 decisions, 350.org warns that the texts still lack the ambition needed to close the climate and finance gaps, even as global momentum for a fossil fuel phaseout roadmap accelerates. _“This morning’s draft COP30 decisions fall far short of the giant leap needed to close the climate ambition gap. Crucially, they don’t offer a clear and robust plan to phase out fossil fuels. The inclusion of a Just Transition mechanism is a genuine multilateral achievement with real potential to shift implementation on the ground, but without a transition plan to end oil, gas and coal we’re still fanning the flames. When it comes to finance, especially the weakened commitment to triple adaptation support, the texts lack the lifeline communities already facing climate impacts urgently need. We can’t achieve justice on the cheap,_ ” said **Andreas Sieber, Associate Director of Policy and Campaigns,****350.org**. _“We’re stagnating at a time when our islands can’t afford even a small amount of delay. While the Just Transition mechanism is a notable achievement, the fact that this morning’s draft COP30 statement doesn’t even mention a plan to end fossil fuels casts a shadow over our day here in Belém. COP30 needs to address the obvious cause of the climate crisis, and ramp up the finance required to adapt to it. We’re walking a fine line here between survival and climate catastrophe, and in these final hours I am hoping we can take something back to our communities that indicates that the world considers our homes worth fighting for,” said_**Fenton Lutunatabua, 350.org Pacific Team Lead.** This lack of clarity on fossil fuels comes despite **over 80 countries** publicly supporting a **Transition Away from Fossil Fuels Roadmap (TAFF)**. Yet, the mitigation section of the draft still contains **no mention of fossil fuels** , relying instead on weak voluntary initiatives and vague and non-binding plans to wind down oil, gas, and coal. On finance, the text is not the justice-focused package needed: * A weakened call to **triple adaptation finance** with no clear responsibility. * No delivery plan for the **new collective quantified goal (NCQG)**. * Lack of progress on **innovative finance** , **direct access for Indigenous Peoples** , and clarity on the contributor base. * The reference to ending **inefficient fossil fuel subsidies** has disappeared. The launch of the **Just Transition Mechanism** is a welcome and meaningful step, but without a fossil fuel phaseout plan and real finance, the world will still be adding fuel to the fire. 350.org urges Parties to match the global momentum and deliver a final COP30 outcome that is just, equitable, and aligned with climate science and justice. A viable COP30 package requires **finance, adaptation and a fossil-fuel transition roadmap**. Without all three, the deal cannot hold.

Big Pharma and its allies have taken corporate influence in Washington to new heights, hiring more than 500 lobbyists this year in an attempt to pass three bills that undermine Medicare drug price negotiations, according to a new Public Citizen report. * **The ORPHAN Cures Act** , passed in July 2025, will delay and exempt some of the most profitable drugs – including cancer treatments – from negotiations, representing tens of billions in annual Medicare spending. * **The EPIC Act and MINI Act,** if passed, would lengthen the already long delay period before small molecule drugs are eligible for negotiation — effectively excluding many medicines from negotiations entirely or shortening the period patients have access to lower negotiated prices to only one or two years. Lobbyist hires by Big Pharma and its allies outnumbered public interest lobbyists on the Hill opposing the 3 harmful bills by over 20-to-one. In addition to Republicans including ORPHAN Cures in their Big Ugly Bill, one of President Trump’s recent executive orders suggests Big Pharma’s lobbying efforts on EPIC are working. In April, Trump issued an executive order titled “Lowering Drug Prices by Once Again Putting Americans First”, which essentially endorses the EPIC Act, a bill that would raise drug costs for patients and taxpayers by billions of dollars. “Members of Congress must reject the demands of pharma lobbyists and instead work to make prescription drugs more affordable,” said**Steve Knievel,** **Public Citizen Access to Medicines Advocate.** “Instead of handing drug corporations billions of dollars by helping them evade price negotiations through measures like the ORPHAN Cures Act, EPIC Act and MINI Act, Congress should pass legislation to empower Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices on all costly medicines and allow all patients to access lower, negotiated prices, even if they don’t have Medicare. The prices for the 15 drugs negotiated by Medicare with pharmaceutical companies is expected to be announced in November.

The American Gestapo's brutish, racist, unholy crusade rampages on. They've now left Chicago - trailing tear gas, court losses, manifest lies, the wrath of a people - to terrorize diverse blue Charlotte NC with its "cowardly fascist pigs doing cowardly fascist pig things." In a new "offense to history," they even named their latest depravity _Operation Charlotte's Web._ its author E.B. White, a stirring voice for democracy and inclusion who decried the "smell" arising from those who "adjust to fascism," weeps. Thanks to his big butt-ugly bill's profane gift of $75 billion to thugs fighting an imaginary invasion of "criminal illegal aliens" and other forms of "domestic terrorism" by brown people, nearly half of FBI agents and countless Homeland Security workers have been pulled off other issues (like homeland security) and reassigned to round up deadly day laborers, taco makers and baby-sitting abuelas - coincidentally and not vengefully at all, mostly in Dem-run cities. Key to keeping the ethnic cleansing program churning is fascist ghoul Stephen Goebbels Miller, who sees every critic or court loss as "legal insurrection" and "domestic terrorist sedition" - what Jan. 6?- against federal government heroes who have immunity no matter their atrocities because, "This campaign of terrorism will be brought down." Miller's fever dreams are echoed in the frenzied white nationalist agit-prop DHS spews to lure thugs to JOIN.ICE.GOV: **** **"** America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out." The rhetoric is brown-shirted: "We're Taking Back America," "The Enemy Is At the Gates," "America For Americans," "We Are Asleep No Longer," and, from the video game _Halo_ whose villains are zombie parasites, "Destroy the Flood." They've even tossed into their state-sponsored domestic terrorist campaign Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders from the Spanish-American War - "We have room for but one flag, the American flag" - evidently unaware they were famously diverse, from cowboys to elites to Native Americans. George Conway on the brazen language: "It's hard to Nazi what's going on here." Despite lowering physical and moral standards, and offering $50K bribes, DHS is still struggling to find enough sadists, losers, "pudgy militia stooges" and Marx' “scum, offal, refuse of all classes" to fill their ranks of bounty hunters. As a result critics, often cops, say it's clear from videos of wild, ham-fisted abductions, "There's something off with those guys - they're out of control." Many cite operations "built on spectacle, not evidence," with "a total abrogation of responsibility or training" and illegal practices like chokeholds meant to "send a message of brutality..."They're just fascist shows of force to satiate the creepy desires of an old man who wants to seem macho.” In Chicago, those abuses led to multiple court orders to rein them in, and even a call from Mayor Brandon for the UN to investigate them. Response from a Chicago bounty hunter when a resident began filming him.Photo from Bluesky "Operation Midway Blitz," the terrorizing of Chicago's brown-skinned population from early September to last week, saw 3,100 people, including U.S. citizens and children, detained, perhaps 1,100 of them deported or agreed to leave, lively communities shrunk to ghost towns, widespread trauma, inspired resistance, and a shitshow of often deranged violence by grossly ill-trained goons. They shot at least 2 people, killing one. They repeatedly, indiscriminately shot rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, teargas and smoke bombs at protesters, journalists, first responders, pastors, and outside an elementary school. They handcuffed a city alderman at a hospital, pepper-sprayed a one-year-old in the face, beat up and bloodied the people they detained. They undertook 8 car chases that ended in 8 crashes. In one of their most ludicrous, performative flops, they launched a flamboyant raid on an apartment building allegedly filled with Venezuelan gang members - rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter, smashing doors, seizing families and crying kids, dragging them into the cold, zip-tying, leading away and slickly videotaping 37 victims in what Goebbels hailed as a counterterrorism victory that "saved God knows how many lives" - except all the drama resulted in _zero criminal charges._ Again and again, the bombastic cruelty proves both hollow and illegal: In a lawsuit about conditions at Broadview detention facility, a judge "literally ordered DHS to clean up their shit" after agreeing detainees were being held without access to beds, toilets,food, water, counsel, telephones, anything approaching basic humanity. The malfeasance kept bigly backfiring on them. Last week, another judge, citing "repeated, material violations," ruled that 614 detainees at Broadview should be released on a $1,500 bond following an earlier class action lawsuit charging their detentions contravened a Biden-era consent decree limiting warrantless arrests; he also barred them from being deported. Of the 614 named, just 16 have criminal records, usually minor, and will not be freed. The _other_ _97.4%_ were just randomly grabbed and shoved in vans, mostly while working, commuting to or from work, or at Home Depot looking for work, leaving little time for the gang murders they're alleged to indulge in. Sensibly and hysteria about terrorism notwithstanding, the judge decided it was "highly unlikely" they constitute the infamous "worst of the worst.” Overseeing much of this hapless carnage is _preening_ _,_ Napoleonic, 5'4", Nazi-coiffed Greg Bovino, who goes to work "with a Bowie knife in his belt - it's all for show." Bovino often posted heroic photos of his time in Chicago, like on a Mekong-esque patrol boat - "Where streets end, our Marine Unit begins" - and when he slammed a city official to the ground and paraded him around "like in some kind of masked-domination fantasy reboot of the Battle of Midway and the London Blitz, but where the Nazis were the good guys." His contempt for heeding the law is so great that, when he got hauled before _another_ judge in a lawsuit ripping his violence - teargassing students, no body camera, repeatedly lying, "force (that) shocks the conscience" - and she issued a restraining order, it took him just days to violate it. On Friday, ongoing protests at Broadview erupted in scuffles that ended in several injuries and 21 arrests. Among the detainees was Rev. Michael Woolf, pastor at Lake Street Church and one of many faith leaders who've long put their bodies out there to decry a "black hole" of a facility, tell those inside "we didn’t forget you," offer weekly witness "at the picket line, amid the tear gas," and declare the moment "absolutely a spiritual emergency...We are somewhere in 1930s Germany, and whether the church is going to be silent is being tested." In this commitment, he joins Catholic bishops, journalists, rights advocates, former federal officials and other critics who've blasted the months of mindless brutality, abduction, fear-mongering and gutting of communities. One attorney: "This is not law enforcement. It is terror." The Rev. Michael Woolf was slammed to ground at Broadview protest Photo by Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times Still, Chicago has sought to rise to the challenge. The nation's third-largest city, with a history of fierce labor activism, it likes to view itself as "a collection of small towns with Midwest sensibilities," where "people know their neighbors (and) word spreads quickly." Organizers began building a broad grassroots coalition right after Trump's election: "We knew what was coming. Trump wants to terrify Chicagoans into submission - we aren’t having it. Mayor Brandon Johnson created an Office of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights to strengthen sanctuary protections, declare an "ICE Free Zone," expand access to resources and local groups launched multiple resistance efforts, many in the largely Latino Little Village: Rapid Response teams, neighborhood patrols, ICE-spotting hotline, Know-Your-Rights flyers. Volunteers escorted kids to school and families dropping them off; for those afraid to go out, they did grocery runs and gave out ride-share gift cards. A West Side group hosted "Whistlemania" events, packing over 17,000 kits with warning whistles, resource guides, tips on what to do if ICE turns up. MigraWatch trained over 2,000 people to monitor raids and tell people their rights. Everyone honked horns. To help often-targeted Latino street vendors - tacos, flowers, candy, tamales - cyclists organized "buy-out" events, emptying stands and delivering the goods to shelters or families in need. Pop-up events raised money for vendors, restaurant crawls helped keep Latino-owned eateries open, students held walkouts, tracked unmarked SUVs, monitored ICE hot spots to keep neighbors safe. "The strategy here is to make us afraid. Our response is a bunch of obscenities and ‘no,’" said one resident. Of those threatened, she said, "We’re showing we care about them, even if the federal government doesn’t." Organizers also sought to create a template for other besieged cities to follow - a tactic that's evidently worked as North Carolina towns face their own "reign of terror." Tellingly, before leaving, Bovino berated Chicago as "a very non-permissive environment"; weirdly, he then gathered his gang of armed sadists in their masks and fatigues for a photo op by their agit-prop team at Anish Kapoor’s __landmark sculpture _Cloud Gate,_ or _T_ _he Bean;_ preposterously, because they exist beyond irony, on command they shouted not "cheese" but "Little Village," the community they've been terrorizing. Saturday, they moved on to Charlotte, which has a black female mayor and black male sheriff; he and four other black sheriffs in the state’s largest counties were all elected on platforms opposing ICE after fierce organizing by immigrants’ groups. DHS said they were "surging" agents to Charlotte "to ensure Americans are safe"; they also charged "sanctuary politicians" letting alleged criminals "roam free on American streets" "failed to honor" ICE detainers - so, keep people in prison to not hurt goons' feelings? Given Charlotte's diversity, its low crime rate, and Dem Gov. Josh Stein's charge ICE is just "stoking fear," their arrival was widely deemed "pure racism and retribution." Also, Bovino is from there and attended Western Carolina University before becoming a stormtrooper; his parents, if he had any, must be so proud. The abuses came fast. En route to work Saturday morning, Willy Aceituno stopped at Pollo Campero to get breakfast; Honduran-born, he's a U.S. citizen. At the door, he was confronted by thugs for living while brown; he showed his REAL ID, they let him go. Minutes later, in his truck, more thugs; he declined to open his window or answer their questions with, "Why don’t you ask other people? Why just me?" They smashed his window, dragged him out, slammed him to the ground; livid bystanders yelled, "They just I.D.'ed him!", "Don't you guys coordinate?", "This whole thing's wrong, man!" and "What the fuck is wrong with y'all?" After driving off with him, he later said, they finally looked at his I.D. and let him out of the car; when he asked for a ride back, they told him to get lost or they'd arrest him again. - YouTube www.youtube.com Charlotte, meanwhile, grew quiet, with residents "reeling" from the ugly incursion. Protesters marched and chanted, "Fuck Donald Trump"; drivers honked thug warnings; a woman in a car kept yelling, "This is an illegal traffic stop" until nervous goons pointed guns at her. But many restaurants stood empty, street vendors dwindled, small businesses and foreign markets shut down. Manolo’s, a Colombian bakery that's closed once in 28 years, did again after thugs chased and tackled customers when they left; the owner didn't want to carry the weight "of maybe a kid to lose their father or mother on their way (to) get a cake." Outside apartment complexes, auto parts stores, Wal Mart, masked agents menacingly patrolled, grabbing "whoever they see as Latino" and bumbling with handcuffs before driving off with them. Panicked churchgoers fled after masked agents came and snatched a member as scared kids cried; one 15-year-old: "We thought church was safe." Thugs "geared up like they're in Fallujah" chased a flower-shop owner into the woods; bystanders followed, filmed, shamed them into clumsily retreating. The owner of a laundromat stayed open but locked the door behind each customer. as louts patrolled outside: "I know these folks, and I'm pretty sure they're not criminals...People need to do laundry. Laundry does not discriminate."An older woman having coffee on her porch as two guys she'd hired hung her Christmas lights chased off goons who came by "looking for easy pickings." "We've got two human beings in my yard trying to make a living," she raged. "It's an abuse of all our laws." At a grocery store, Bovino heroically helped bulky guys in camo snare a teenager pushing carts and pin him to the ground; as agents drove out, they smirked at appalled residents filming them. And a neighbor filmed goons chasing down two women, U.S. citizens, who'd been honking at drivers to warn of a raid; as they pulled into their driveway, the guys aimed a rifle, screamed to open the car window, smashed it, hauled them off. The neighbor, in disbelief: "This is our reality now." In a scathing editorial, _The Charlotte Observer _blasted that reality of a hateful regime that's "already failed...with every unnecessarily smashed window, every sneer at due process, every federal agent’s smirk." While the cruelty is still the point, they write, "It turns out Americans don't like masked federal agents gleefully stomping on our core values." > — (@) An oblivious, Bovino keeps celebrating doing it anyway, crowing on social media of his success in Charlotte. He touted the arrest of a "criminal illegal" with an alleged history of drunk driving, bragging he took him "off the streets so he can’t continue to ignore our laws (like he is) and drive intoxicated on the same roads you and your loved ones are on." He gloated about capturing his latest victim with a photo of her in tears. He boasted 81 people were detained Saturday - the total eventually climbed to 130 - with, "We had a record day today!!!!!" He added, "With some good criminals also," evidently forgetting the tired, worst-of-the-worst claim. Many had “significant criminal and immigration history,” he said, then listing minor breaches like DUI, larceny, and removal orders - which have always been, and remain, a _civil_ offense. His transgressions grew yet more egregious when he doubled down on the assault's grotesque Charlotte's Web shtick. Alongside a video of two victims, Bovino quoted, wildly out of context, the gentle, eloquent, freedom-loving E.B. White, who created a generous, compassionate spider, Charlotte, who uses her web and words for good, to save Wilbur the pig. "By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a little,” she says. "Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that." Bovino, deeply ignorant of lifting up a life, appropriated the words of Charlotte’s babies as they hatch and fly off: "Wherever the wind takes us. High, low. Near, far. East, west. North, south. We take to the breeze, we go as we please." He then crudely, basically added, "Us too!" with, "Our agents go where the mission calls." Just fucking fuck off, you fascist fucking loser. Bovino, raged both White's granddaughter and literary executor Martha White and _Law Dork_ 's Chris Geidner, "is exactly who E.B. White warned us about." Geidner praises White, who once shamelessly admitted he believed in freedom "with burning delight," as "a leading voice for American democracy." In a 1940 essay, before the U.S. entered World War II, White described America's worrisome reaction to the rise of Nazism as "a sort of dim acquiescence." "The least a man can do at such a time is to declare himself and tell where he stands," he wrote, adding he was "suspicious of people beginning to adjust to fascism and dictators. From such adaptable natures a smell rises. I pinch my nose." After Charlotte, Bovino and his thugs went to Raleigh, where they were fiercely denounced; said Mayor Janet Cowell, "We didn't ask for this." Neither did 16-year old Manny Chavez. "Everyone is scared," he said. Still, he spoke up. ,

A three-judge panel in El Paso today blocked a redistricting map demanded by President Trump and supported by Texas Republicans, ruling it unconstitutional because it discriminates along racial lines. **Adrian Shelley, Texas director of Public Citizen, issued the following statement:** “Today’s ruling is a rebuke of Texas Republicans who caved to Donald Trump and trampled the voting rights of their constituents. Gov. Abbott and his allies in the Legislature have forgotten their independent streak as Texans. Perhaps they can find the courage that Republicans in a few other states have to tell the president no.”

Congressional Progressive Caucus Deputy Chair Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-05) issued the following statement after the House vote to release the Epstein Files. “Today, my Progressive Caucus colleagues and I unanimously voted to release the Epstein Files. The American people deserve to know who enabled Jeffrey Epstein, who looked the other way, and who’s still being protected. It is shameful that the pedophile protection party refused to take this issue seriously, all to protect Donald Trump at the expense of survivors who have waited long enough. While I am glad the House passed this legislation, it is unconscionable that we needed a discharge petition to get a vote because Republican Leadership refused to take up this issue. Despite an overwhelming vote in favor, we know Trump will still try to conceal the truth from coming to light which he can release on his own. “Our Caucus is grateful for the incredible work CPC Member Ranking Member Robert Garcia did on the Oversight Committee, as well as the efforts of CPC Member Congressman Ro Khanna in helping move this legislation across the finish line. This vote would not have happened without CPC Member Congresswoman Summer Lee, who forced the vote to subpoena the DOJ. “Survivors of Epstein’s abuse—and all survivors of abuse and sex trafficking—deserve justice. We will keep fighting to ensure the public gets answers and transparency. Today is an important step in holding some of the most powerful institutions and people accountable.”

A major outage at internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare today disrupted access to numerous websites, public services, and AI tools worldwide. The incident follows recent large-scale outages at Amazon Web Services and CrowdStrike, underscoring how much of the modern internet now depends on a small number of private companies. Cloudflare, which routes and secures roughly 20% of all web traffic, attributed the disruption to a spike in unusual traffic but has not identified the cause. **J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen,** issued the following statement on the outage: “This outage is another brutal reminder that the internet is far too dependent on a tiny handful of tech giants. For years, industry lobbyists have insisted that deregulation would spark innovation from smaller companies. Instead, we got the opposite: mass consolidation of data, compute, and infrastructure into the hands of a few dominant firms whose failures now cascade across the globe. “Governments and companies continuing to contract with the same handful of companies are increasing the fragility of both the internet and entire economies. Congress and regulators must finally step in and crack down on anticompetitive behavior, opening markets, requiring interoperability, and ensuring smaller tech firms can compete so the entire digital economy isn’t held hostage by the failures of a few dominant companies.”

On Tuesday morning, a problem at web-infrastructure firm Cloudflare caused global outages that took down websites, video games, social media platforms, AI chat bots and more. Last month, following a similar Amazon Web Services outage, Demand Progress Education Fund and 14 other organizations sent a letter asking Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson to investigate how consolidation in cloud services can lead to these single points of failure in our economy and security. * Read the Letter The following is a statement from **Demand Progress Education Fund Policy Director Emily Peterson-Cassin** : “Yet again, a failure at one company disrupted the lives of people all around the globe. Big Tech’s relentless drive to become the only fish in the pond and centralize the internet in their hands threatens our economy and our national security. The FTC has the knowledge and the power to help prevent this from happening again. For all our sakes, the agency must take action immediately.”

Over forty citizen’s sector organizations including the national nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility have sent a joint letter to federal officials warning of public health consequences of a series of executive orders by President Trump which direct the NRC to dramatically weaken Standards for Protection Against Radiation in the US federal code. The letter points out sharply disproportionate impacts on women and children from weakening existing radiation exposure standards and calls for strengthening them. The letter is posted here. It was spearheaded by the nonprofit Generational Radiation Impact Project (GRIP) and Beyond Nuclear. and sent to US Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Surgeon General Denise Hinton, and other key elected and appointed officials. Recent Trump executive orders direct the NRC to “reconsider” the linear no-threshold (LNT) model. The joint letter argues that this “would undermine public trust by falsely claiming that the NRC’s radiation risk models lack scientific basis, despite decades of peer-reviewed evidence and international consensus.” The widely accepted LNT model has no limit “below regulatory concern,” i.e. no level below which radiation exposure can be treated as negligible or zero-risk. Where applied, LNT takes account of proportional cancer and health risks of all tiny exposures no matter how small. Trump executive orders direct the NRC to undertake new rulemaking and “wholesale revision” of existing radiation regulations, which would likely lead to the NRC abandoning LNT and raising allowable exposure limits. A July 2025 Idaho National Laboratory report commissioned by the Department of Energy recommended loosening the public radiation standard fivefold to 500 millirems. In 2021 the NRC roundly rejected a petition to raise allowable radiation exposures for all Americans, including children and pregnant women, to 10 Rems a year, 100 times the current limit. But past NRC opposition to such changes stands to be reversed by the Trump executive orders. If federal radiation regulations were weakened to permit exposures of 10 Rems a year, scientists estimate that over a 70-year lifetime, four out of five people would develop cancer they would not otherwise get. Today’s joint letter stresses that health damage would not be evenly distributed across the population, but would disproportionately affect women and children, who are biologically more susceptible to ionizing radiation than men. And an article published today in _the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists_ cites several lines of evidence “that women and young girls are significantly more vulnerable to radiation harm than men—in some cases by as much as a ten-fold difference” and that “infants are especially vulnerable to radiation harm.” “[NRC] bases its risk assessments on Reference Man, a model that represents a young adult male and fails to reflect the greater impacts to infants, children, and women—pregnant or not,” the joint letter states. “Newer research has shown that external radiation harms children more than adults and female bodies more than male bodies. Research on internal exposures…has not yet been sufficiently analyzed to discover if there are broad age-based or male/female differences in impact…. Existing standards should therefore be strengthened to account for these life-stage and gender disparities…not weakened. Radiation causes infertility, loss of pregnancy, birth complications and defects, as well as solid tumor cancer, leukemia, non-cancer outcomes including cardiovascular disease, increased incidence of autoimmune disease and ongoing new findings.” In cases where cancer, heart disease, and vascular degradation including stroke are caused by radiation, they are documented at higher rates in women than in men, according to 2024 UNIDIR report _Gender and Ionizing Radiation.___ The joint letter urges the NRC to “to stand up to the Executive Order’s marching orders to ‘promote’ nuclear power—a mission outside its legal regulatory mandate,” and adopt “stronger, science-based radiation protections….Contemporary research shows that radiation’s impact is far greater on females, children, and fetuses—the most at-risk postnatal group being girls from birth to age five. A truly protective framework would replace Reference Man with a lifecycle model.” "All US radiation regulations and most radiation risk assessments are based on outcomes for the Reference Man,” said **Mary Olson** , CEO of GRIP, the organization which spearheaded the joint letter, and co-author of _Gender and Ionizing Radiation._ “Young men like the Reference Man are harmed by radiation, but they’re more resistant to harm than are women and children. Radiation causes cancer in women at twice the rate of adult men, while the same exposure in early childhood, will, across their lifetimes, produce _seven times_ more cancer in young females, and _four times_ more in young males." "We know that exposure to radiation causes disproportionate harm from both cancer and non-cancer related disease outcomes over the course of the lifetime to women and especially to little girls, but radiation is dangerous for everyone,” said **Amanda M. Nichols** , Ph.D., lead author of _Gender and Ionizing Radiation._ “[President Trump’s] executive order will allow the industry to relax the current standards for radiological protection, which are already far from adequate. This will have detrimental health consequences for humans and for our shared environments and puts us all at higher risk for negative health consequences. " "Living near nuclear power facilities doubles the risk of leukemia in children; and radiation is also associated with numerous reproductive harms including infertility, stillbirths and birth defects.,” said **Cindy Folkers,** Radiation and Health Hazard Specialist with the NGO Beyond Nuclear, a signatory to the joint letter. “Exposing people to more radiation, as this order would do if implemented, would be tantamount to legitimizing their suffering as the price of nuclear expansion."

This week, the Trump administration finalized a plan to open up millions of acres of fragile landscapes in the Western Arctic to oil and gas drilling. The Department of the Interior published a proposed rule in the Federal Register revoking protections for much of the Western Arctic. The final rule will be published on November 17. Totaling more than 23 million acres in size, the Western Arctic is the largest contiguous area of national public lands in the United States. The Department first announced its proposal to vastly increase oil and gas drilling in the Alaskan landscape in June, limiting public input to a 60-day comment period on the plan. Since retaking the White House, Donald Trump has consistently acted to give away public lands to corporate polluters and oil and gas firms. Multiple Day One executive orders rolled back protections to make it easier for oil and gas companies to drill on public lands. Trump’s budget reconciliation law supercharged this pro-polluter giveaway, returning royalty rates oil and gas companies must pay for using public lands to levels originally set in the 1920s. _**In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Loren Blackford released the following statement:**_ “One of Donald Trump’s first acts post-shutdown is to serve the Western Arctic on a silver platter to Big Oil CEOs. Make no mistake, leasing out our public lands to private industry is a sell-off in everything but name. This has always been Trump’s plan for our public lands – hand them over through sales, leases, and sweetheart deals that boost corporate bottom lines and sell out Americans’ natural heritage. Time and time again, the American people have shown they will not stand for this kind of giveaway to corporate polluters, and Sierra Club will continue to stand up for these majestic landscapes and the communities and wildlife that rely on them.”

As outrage grows over Chuck Schumer and Establishment Democrats’ refusal to stand up to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism and right-wing extremism, Sunrise Movement announced the launch of the most ambitious primary programs in its history, seizing on the record-breaking number of open seats and challengers across the country. “For far too long, Democratic leadership has failed to meet the moment; it’s time to clear house," said **Sunrise Movement Executive Director Aru Shiney-Ajay**. “I’m extremely excited about the crop of candidates running in 2026. This year, we have an unprecedented opportunity to elect a new generation of leaders who are challenging our broken political system and fighting for a livable and affordable country.” The initiative will include a nationwide field, protest, and communications program targeting over a dozen congressional primaries. Sunrise organizers and volunteers will mobilize thousands of young people to knock on doors, make calls, and take direct action to elect progressive champions ready to challenge the Democratic Party’s complacency and reimagine what Democratic leadership can look like. In the 2026 general election, Sunrise will lead one of the largest youth electoral efforts in the country, organizing students on campuses across the country to ensure young voters turn out to reject authoritarianism at the ballot box and are prepared to mobilize in defense of election results if Trump or his allies attempt to subvert democracy. The initiative marks a new phase in Sunrise’s continued work to confront the threats Trump poses to democracy and to build a political system that works for working people. A central focus of the initiative will be campus organizing, empowering students to resist the Trump administration's attempts to control curricula and limit political expression. Sunrise will continue to expand its training programs to help young people identify and resist authoritarianism through nonviolent direct action and grassroots organizing. These efforts aim to equip a new generation of activists with the skills and networks to protect democratic freedoms, hold elected officials accountable, and channel this into electoral victories. During the 2024 general election, Sunrise led one of the largest youth voter programs nationwide, making over 4 million voter contacts to mobilize young voters. The 2026 electoral program will build on this work to pressure Democrats to back policies that mobilize young voters and encourage young people to turn out to vote.

Corporate executives are quietly acknowledging what millions of Americans already feel: Trump’s economy is squeezing lower- and middle-income families while corporations enjoy record profits and the wealthy continue to prosper. Consumer outlook indicators point in the same direction. The University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment declined across nearly every demographic group this November — by age, income, and political leaning — except for those with the largest stock portfolios, whose confidence jumped 11%. Similarly, consumer confidence data from the Conference Board showed that the confidence dropped among Americans earning under $75,000 and increased the most for those making more than $200,000 — a clear sign that everyday Americans are growing more worried about their finances, having to spend less just to stay afloat as the K-shaped economy deepens. **_Key Excerpts_** _**Food and Beverage Industry**_ Scott Boatwright, **Chipotle** Chief Executive Officer and Director said during a Q3 2025 earnings call: “Earlier this year, as consumer sentiment declined sharply, we saw a broad-based pullback in frequency across all income cohorts. Since then, the gap has widened, with low to middle-income guests further reducing frequency.” He continued to say, “The economists we have spoken to over the last several quarters, say, Q4, Q1 [are] likely to be the toughest for the consumer. Specifically the cohort under $100,000. **A particularly challenged cohort is the 25- to 35-year-old age group [...] This group is facing several headwinds, including unemployment, increased student loan repayment and slower real wage growth.”** **Coca-Cola'****s** Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Henrique Braun stated during a Q3 2025 earnings call that **“When we look from a consumer point of view, we continue to see divergency in spending between the income groups. The pressure on middle and low-end income consumers is still there."** **Constellation Brands (Makers of Modello and Corona Beer)** Chief Executive Officer William Newlands told attendees at the Barclays 18th Annual Global Consumer Staples Conference 2025 **“****The Hispanic consumer is very concerned at the moment. 80% are concerned about socioeconomic factors, 75% are concerned about their personal finances. It means that their shopping behavior has changed.”** **General Mills’** Group President of North America Retail & North America Pet Dana McNabb said during an Investor Day meeting that “the consumer is still adjusting to this once-in-a-lifetime inflationary period and trying to find their footing...**they're stressed**." General Mills’ CEO Jeffery Harmening followed up by noting that **"the combination of the length of the inflation that we have seen and inflation is still running at or ahead of wage growth. And so consumers, if you're making $200,000 a year or less, you are really feeling that pinch even still today."** **Kraft-Heinz** CEO and Director Carlos Abrams-Rivera laid it out on the Q3 2025 earning call saying that “fact that we have now one of the **worst consumer sentiments we have seen in decades**...it is a unique moment right now in which this is getting -- the consumer negativity and the sentiment is extending longer than we had originally expected." Jack Sinclair, CEO and director for grocery store chain **Sprout's Farmers Market** told**shareholders on the Q3 2025 earnings Call that "from a consumer pressure perspective, I mean, I think that's building … a little bit more in the kind of lower and middle income is what you read about and what you hear. [...] middle-income trade areas, younger demographics … it's just a little more pronounced in those, but I think the pressure is there for everybody** and everyone is trying to figure out how they manage through that in a dynamic environment.” Dirk Van de Put, the Chair and CEO of **Mondelez (Makers of Oreo cookies, Halls cough drops, and Wheat Thins)** said on a Q3 2025 earnings call that while their consumers are “**very concerned in general about the economy, frustrated with the pricing they're seeing****,** ” Mondelez’s seasonal products allow the company to charge higher prices because "the consumer is not that clear on what the right price point is and also is inclined to pay a little bit more." _**Travel Industry**_ **American Airlines'** Chief Strategy Officer, Steve Johnson, said on a Q3 earnings call that “Nearly 50% of our ticket revenue comes from premium,” and as a result the airline is planning to add additional premium seats to its fleet. On an Q3 earnings call, Scott Kirby, **United Airlines****’** CEO described how economic stress causes demand to "bleed off on the lower end” making more seats available for brand loyal customers.

Today, at COP30, Oil Change International released a new report, _Behind the Barrel: An Update on the Origins of Israel’s Fuel Supply_, detailing the global fuel shipments that fuel Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The report tracks over 21 million tonnes of crude oil and refined fuels delivered to Israel between November 2023 and October 2025, including jet fuel used for military aircrafts. The data shows that Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States were among the largest suppliers of oil and refined products during this period. While direct shipments from Brazil appeared to end in early 2024, evidence suggests that Brazilian crude may have continued reaching Israel indirectly via Italy’s Sarroch refinery in Sardinia. **Key findings:** * Twenty-five countries delivered 323 shipments of crude oil and refined products to Israel, totaling 21.2 million tonnes. * Azerbaijan (via Turkey) and Kazakhstan (via Russia) supplied around 70% of crude oil. * Russia was the largest supplier of refined fuels, accounting for nearly half of total refined products. * The United States was the only supplier of JP-8 military jet fuel used by Israeli military aircrafts. * Other crude suppliers included Brazil, Gabon, and Nigeria. * Refined fuels also came from Greece. Italy, and Cyprus. Some countries continued to ship fossil fuels to Israel even after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s actions are unlawful, and a UN Commission concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. By supporting Israeli military operations that have killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children, states risk becoming complicit in genocide under international law under the Genocide Convention. As world leaders convene at COP30, _Behind the Barrel_ reveals the deadly links between fossil fuel suppliers and international conflict. **Statements:**** ** **Bronwen Tucker, Oil Change International, said:**** ** “Governments permitted fuel supplies to Israeleven after it became clear Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, a finding now backed by a UN commission. States have a moral and legal obligation to end these fuel flows immediately. The same fossil fuel system that drives the climate crisis also drives war, occupation, and genocide. At COP30, where governments are negotiating how to phase out fossil fuels, it’s essential to confront this reality. States must follow the example of people across the world who refuse to be complicit in the genocide in Gaza: from trade unionists blocking shipments to campaigners demanding accountability.” **Mohammed Usrof, Executive Director of the Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy (PICS):**** ****“** Behind the Barrel confirms what Palestinians and climate justice movements have long said: fossil fuel supply chains are weapons of war. Governments and corporations that continue to trade oil, diesel, and jet fuel with Israel – even through intermediaries – are enabling genocide. States must impose a full energy embargo and close the legal loopholes that make complicity profitable. The people must rise up against complicit states and impose a people’s energy embargo. At COP30, we must define climate leadership, and its only definition is shutting down the pipelines of war, not hiding them behind carbon accounting.” **Ana Sánchez, General Coordinator for the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine (GEEP), said:** “The fossil fuel industry lies at the core of today’s global crisis, driving climate collapse, militarisation, and genocide. The same system that burns the planet also fuels Israel’s genocidal machine and upholds its colonial regime of illegal occupation and apartheid. From oil fields to shipping routes, fossil capitalism turns profit into power over life itself. At COP30, we remind the world that energy justice is inseparable from liberation: ending these fuel flows is not just a moral imperative but a necessary act of decolonisation. People everywhere are rising to build a new global order that puts life above the privilege of business as usual.” **Disrupt Power, said:**** ** “Workers, the real agents of change, have the power to enact and enforce a people’s energy embargo from below. If frontline dockworkers taking material actions to end the genocide do not differentiate between weapons and energy destined to the settler-colonial entity, why should we? Today, we must sustain the struggle to ensure our oil serve people, not empire or genocide.”

**The Revolving Door Project’s Executive Director, Jeff Hauser** released the following statement in response to the release of emails between convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers: “Larry Summers’ relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has been known for some time, but these emails show their relationship goes far beyond professional collaboration and the large donations Epstein provided to Summers’ wife. These communications reveal a close personal bond between the two men, long after Epstein’s conviction for sex crimes against minors. It is well past time for the powerful institutions that work closely with Summers –including OpenAI–to distance themselves from him, and anyone with a close relationship to Epstein.” _Summers currently sits on the_ _Board of Directors of the OpenAI Foundation_ _, the governing body of OpenAI._ **Hauser continued:** “These emails not only show Summers asking the convicted sex offender for advice pursuing women, but they also reveal what Summers says behind closed doors. As the President of Harvard University, Summers claimed women were innately worse at science, and he presided over a precipitous drop in the hiring of female faculty. But Summers claimed feminists were too quick to infer he was a misogynist. Now, we see that when communicating with Epstein, Summers felt free to express his true opinions, claiming that women are less intelligent than their male counterparts. These opinions are not only objectionable given Summers’ role as a professor, but are all the more concerning given his influence over government and one of the most influential companies on the planet, OpenAI.” “I have previously warned about Summers’ unethical behavior and ties to unsavory businesses, but these latest revelations ought to be the final straw. It is disgusting that Summers has played such a crucial role in government at one of America’s premier universities for so long. Companies and institutions affiliated with him —including the world’s most influential AI company, and two of the nation’s premier news outlets— ought to demand his immediate resignation,” **concluded Hauser.** **Summers is still listed as holding an active position with the following companies and organizations:** Harvard University – Charles W. Eliot University Professor OpenAI – Board of Directors Bloomberg – Columnist New York Times – Contributing Opinion Writer Center for American Progress – Distinguished Senior Fellow SkillSoft – Board of Directors Center for Global Development – Chair of the Board of Directors Peterson Institute for International Economics – Vice Chair of the Board of Directors Atlas Merchant Capital – Senior Advisor Jiko – Advisory Committee Aven – Advisory Board Palmetto – Advisory Board Yale Budget Lab – Advisory Board

A few seconds ago, Dems held massive protests, swept an election, and claimed the inarguable moral high ground in a cruel shutdown America had pinned on the GOP. Then the "surrender caucus" caved to a demented moron who knows nothing, lies about everything, insults veterans, bans fatsos, pukes fake gold, can't find his office, insists he's not a rapist, argues let them eat nothing while partying (again) with fat cats. And now, Epstein's back to take him down. Good call, Dems. It was, shall we say, disheartening when Democrats in a devoutly-to-be-wished ascendancy voted against the will of a majority of their own party, "spit in America's face," and _again_ surrendered to a brazenly inept GOP that refused to do their job by taking a "taxpayer-funded, seven-week vacation" and a regime that shamelessly fought all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to _not feed_ 42 million hungry Americans in a moral and political fiasco dubbed "an intergalactic freak show." When 8 centrist Democrats folded just days after a watershed election that saw every demographic group they need to regain power swing sharply to the left, the response from a dismayed populace was almost universally somewhere between, "Ugh. Just ugh" and "_FUCK."_ __Having backed the already underwater Trump into a corner where he was advocating for starving Americans - Marie Antoinette was often evoked - the move wasblasted as a "cataclysmic failure," "horrific mistake," "moral failure," "world-class collapse," "betrayal" and, from Bernie Sanders, "a very bad night." "When they go low, we cave," was one refrain. Also, "How about we shut down the government for this very popular issue that over three-quarters of Americans support, with a very specific goal and then, hear me out, we hold out for like a month and a half and then...ONLY THEN, fold and don't get the one thing we said we wanted?" Calls for the ejection of wussy Chuck Schumer were so prevalent they sprung up among even fed up moderate Dems like Mark Kelly. What they got in return for their perfidy was...little enough they managed to make the cretinous Trump _almost_ look like a stable genius. The key demand for an extension of Obamacare subsidies was left hanging in a vague deal wherein treacherous House Republicans _may or may not_ bring it up for a vote in December; many cited Unholy Mike likewise last year "promising" to restore $1.1B in funding to DC in exchange for funding the government but then somehow not getting to it. Food stamps will continue to be funded through September, but most government spending will _again_ expire on January 30, when we'll be back where we started. In the interim, House Dems may proffer their own bill to extend ACA subsidies by three years, but a venal GOP will (duh) kill it. Meanwhile, our Narcissist-in-Chief remains focused on a revenge and redemption tour because governance = boring. As Americans struggled, he bragged about cuts to "Democrat programs," toyed with ballrooms and bathrooms, blamed besieged air-traffic controllers not evil Musk for air travel woes - "I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU" - issued a symbolic, wildly broad pardon to over 70 criminal accomplices who helped try to overturn an election in case they wanna help him crime again, and got Ghislaine Maxwell a puppy. He also asked SCOTUS to throw out his much adjudicated, E. Jean Carroll rape and defamation verdict, calling it another "hoax (of) implausible, unsubstantiated assertions” - not his type - because "The American People...demand an immediate end to all of the Witch Hunts." Actually, not. And abroad, in the name of "protecting the (Nazi) homeland," Pete Hegseth has killed 76 people in clearly illegal "kinetic strikes" on Venezuelan "narco-terrorists," likely hapless fishermen, based on zero evidence; to further inflame things, he also brought in the world's largest warship. In response, Maduro called for massive deployment of ground, aerial, naval and missile forces on "full operational readiness" against a greedy dimwit on record for wanting to take "all that oil." Said dimwit has also threatened to "go into Nigeria" with "guns-a-blazing" to protect the fictional "large number of Christians" being killed there. Again, no evidence; again, Nigeria says, not. One possible saving grace: It's improbable Trump could find NIgeria - on a map, in his fever dreams - given he's evidently now struggling just to find his office. Helpful new sign taped onto the White HousePhoto from Bluesky So it was that, last week, White House observers noticed a new sign - actually sheets of computer paper taped to the walls - announcing "The Oval Office." Or, per one report, "The White House Dementia Care Unit helpfully labels the Oval Office with giant, comforting, gold letters" - an act born, many speculated, after "who knows what Trump-kept-trying-to-go-into-the-broom-closet moments." The dumbfounding tackiness of the display, which didn't even manage to center the "the" - never mind what it suggested about the cognitive condition of the supposed most powerful elected official in the world, its presumed target - horrified many. "Please tell me this is not real," pleaded one viewer. Also, "Next, it'll be a picture," "This sign looks like shit," and, in a multi-layered gem, "This is not a good sign." The fact of the sign was one thing. The slovenly visual - "dementia patient navigation signage disguised as nouveau-riche trash chic" - was another: "The1980s called and want their font back" captured the snark toward a script variously compared to a garage sale, a funeral home, an omelette bar, a whorehouse, an _Olive Garden,_ a _La Quinta_ lobby, the _Newlywed Game_ , Daytona Beach circa 1981, and "invites to a shower for a baby named Lakynn." Some posited Barron designed and printed it because "he's good with computer," and, "It's computer everywhere these days." Gavin Newsom countered, "Live, Laugh, Lose." Or "Live, Laugh, Oval Office. I came up with the name Oval Office. It doesn’t have to be an oval. It can be any shape. Square. Rectangle. Doesn’t even have to be an office. It can be your den." Alas, the sign is accompanied by the same ghastly, tacky, polyurethane, $58.07 _Home Depot_ gimcracks that defile the Oval Office, along with the sparely elegant walkway now become a glitzy, game-show Presidential Walk of Fame. It seems the awful glare may finally prove too much even for Laura Ingraham, who in a new interview with the king seems a tad skeptical about the flood of bullshit she's long accepted. Peering at the newest gold vomit above a door, she asks, "So, this is not _Home Depot?_ "Naah," he blusters, real gold, blah blah. (This is _Home Depot_). She seems likewise, oddly unconvinced about other bonkers claims, like HBCUs would "all be out of business" if fewer Chinese students go to American schools, and his 50-year mortgage is great (if you wanna pay double for your home.) Ingraham grows downright quizzical - wait, has he lost Ingraham? - on the subject of affordability. When Trump brags about "the greatest economy we've ever had," she wonders then why are people saying they're anxious about high prices? Big bluff and bluster. "More than anything else it's a con job by the Democrats," he says. "Are you ready? Costs are way down." Also $2 gas, drill baby drill, we're going wild. She, downright doubtful: "So you're saying voters are mis-perceiving how they feel?" For all the bombast, the underwater loser sounds like one. Perhaps sensing their slow, pitiable fall, the White House social media team has begun releasing random, hallucinatory montages of some of the "greatest hits" of "one glorious (insane) nation under God." Just wowza. > — (@) Despite the frantic cheerleading, reality in all its cognitive dissonance keeps intruding. Last week, in one of its most freakish moments, Trump's cluelessness and sick indifference came into ugly, eerie focus when he stood gazing blankly into space, his back to the room, as an Oval Office guest collapsed and a scrum of people rushed to render aid. As Dr. Oz announced a possible deal to lower the price of weight-loss drugs - never mind why are fat drugs the _only_ drug to see price cuts - one man passed out and slowly sank to the floor. As Oz and several others went to help, the People's President turned away - not my narcissistic table - to demonstrate "the unsubtle art of not giving a fuck," also, "how to spot a sociopath," "more mannequin than man," and, "truly, a dick." I really don't care, do you? The same day, his State Department issued new rules about who can/cannot come to our pristine shores. Officials will be charged with rejecting any applicants with an array of conditions - obesity, depression, cancer, cardiovascular - especially if they lack the resources to pay for their health care, which we sure won't, never mind the $100,000 H-1B visa. So: Only the skinny, healthy, rich and racist - like white Afrikaners - need apply. No huddled masses. Def no dementia-ridden fatsos "crumbling in real time," like, you know. People had questions: Will that be all obese people, or just poor ones? Has he looked in a mirror? Also, their social media must show they support white Christian nationalism, Charlie Kirk, and eugenics. His ignoble work done, Trump then left to party, again. > — (@) In his second big Hell-A-Lago extravaganza in a week - during the shutdown, as his USDA returned to court to whine they shouldn't have to feed hungry kids, after his tone-deaf Great Gatsby party whose irony he missed sparked widespread fury - Trump again lifted a fat teeny middle finger to America and welcomed another toxic swarm of rich old white guys and makeup-slathered, pouty-lipped women, this time to gorge on beef filet even he concedes nobody else can afford, truffle dauphinoise, pan-seared scallops and a trio of desserts including "Trump chocolate cake." In the shape of turds? Also there: A vast seafood spread, a CPAC ice sculpture, an opera performance, and sorta synchronized swimmers performing to a tinny _God Bless the USA._ Where is David Lynch when we need him? Amidst the fuck-you opulence, he still babbled, deflected, raved. He spewed out a preposterous scheme for people to buy "THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTH CARE" that mainstream media dutifully reported as something other than ignorant rants - Trump "has floated a proposal" - based, per Klugman, on “whatever the fuck he thinks he knows about healthcare," which is clearly nothing. "Everybody is gonna be happy," he bleated. "They're going to feel like entrepreneurs." He mused, "Nobody knows what magnets are." In one especially deranged stab at distraction, he dug back into birther crap about Obama, who "betrayed a country he wasn't born in." Jittery, hollow, spiteful, he threw spaghetti at the wall, hoping something would stick as his approval plunged to 33%, glossy swimmers or no. > — (@) Then he went to an NFL game - Commanders vs. Detroit Lions - where 67,000 D.C.-area denizens twice booed him so bigly, loudly, relentlessly, all in with jeers, thumbs down, middle fingers up, the noise happily drowning him out, that even cocooned high up in his luxury suite with Mike and Pete (also booed) beside him he seemed to notice, and wilt. D.C lost badly, he left early and sulkily, _T_ _he Borowitz Report_ said he tried/failed to get _ICE_ to arrest all 67,000 booing fans, who were probs paid by Soros and/or Venezuelan drug dealers. At Arlington Cemetery for Veterans' Day, still unable to sing _God Bless America,_ a furious veteran declared it "an affront to me and every other veteran past, present and future to have this bloated POS (who) doesn't give a flying fuck about the Military at this hallowed ground." Wednesday, Jeffrey Epstein returned to haunt him, as we knew one day he would, when Dems released three damning emails. Epstein said "of course (Trump) knew about the girls." He said Trump remained "the dog that hasn’t barked" though a victim had just "spent hours at my house with him." And Rep. Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in to force release of the files. Swiftly, prayerful, maybe AI Press Barbie leapt to the podium to "defy the laws of moral physics." It's all "a hoax, a "fake narrative," a "bad-faith effort to distract from (Trump's) historic accomplishments," she said. It proves "absolutely nothing" even as righteous Republicans re-open the government Dems shut down. Also, "there are no coincidences (in) DC," and it's all Biden's fault. Cave, idiocy, lunacy, evil: This timeline is killing us. Trump falls asleep at (another) press conference. We're exhausted too.Image from Gavin Newsom office on Bluesky

Today, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released the 2025 edition of its flagship report, the World Energy Outlook (WEO), finding that oil and coal demand are still on track to peak by 2030 in its business-as-usual scenario (STEPS), driven by the unstoppable growth of renewable energy and electrification – but that this falls far short of what is needed for the 1.5ºC survival limit. Crucially, the IEA clarifies that the Current Policies Scenario (CPS), an obsolete, fossil-fuel heavy scenario reintroduced under U.S. pressure, does not reflect ‘business-as-usual’. Instead, it implausibly assumes that existing policies and technology trends freeze or roll back, portraying a U.S. administration fantasy rather than the reality of today’s rapidly evolving energy market. While the Trump administration and fossil fuel allies continue to promote this outdated vision, the WEO makes clear that the fastest, cheapest, and healthiest path forward is a rapid transition to renewable energy. The Net Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario, would deliver the most affordable energy and fastest path to full energy access, compared to a future of high energy prices, high death rates from air pollution, and unmitigated climate disaster under the CPS, which could be labeled a ‘Crude Pipedream Scenario.’ Crucially, both the CPS and the business-as-usual scenario see little relief from the current energy affordability crisis plaguing households and businesses while the NZE sees costs stabilize and decline by the mid-2030s. **In response, David Tong, Global Industry Campaign Manager at Oil Change International said:** “This year’s World Energy Outlook sets out a stark and simple choice: we can protect people and communities by safeguarding 1.5ºC, settle for a disastrous business-as-usual 2.5ºC, or choose to backslide into a nightmare future of much higher warming. Holding warming to 1.5ºC means no further delay, no new fossil fuels, and public planning and funding to guarantee a just energy transition. Yet the U.S. is trying to put this path – the only route to survival – beyond reach by reviving an outdated, fossil-fuelled scenario that assumes governments abandon their efforts and progress stalls. “Crucially though, the IEA has also confirmed that no single country can stop the energy transition, with oil and coal demand to peak by 2030 in its business-as-usual scenario, and with gas to follow soon after. And, again, it has reconfirmed that there is no investment in new oil and gas fields for 1.5ºC. “But this year’s report also shows Donald Trump’s dystopian future, bringing back the old, fossil-fuel intense, high pollution Current Policies Scenario, charting an unrealistic pathway where governments drag their energy policies backwards and rates of renewable energy adoption stall, leading to high energy prices and unmitigated climate disaster. At COP30, governments must reject this nightmare fantasy, uphold a just transition, and choose a fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phase-out.” **Notes to Editors** * **The WEO shows climate safety is cheaper than continued fossil fuel dependence:** The WEO makes clear the benefits of governments acting on their legal duty to uphold the 1.5°C survival limit by implementing the fast, fair, funded transition away from fossil fuels they agreed at COP28: The NZE scenario leads to the lowest household energy bills through greater efficiency and lower fuel costs, increases overall energy system resilience, delivers full energy access by 2030, and saves 2 million lives through reduced air pollution – before factoring in the avoided costs of climate damage from holding temperature rise as low as possible. In NZE, countries currently reliant on fossil fuel imports see these bills slashed by more than two-thirds by 2035. * **A fossil fuel peak is nearing:** A peak in fossil fuels is still expected under the baseline trajectory of STEPS, which sees a near-tripling of renewable capacity by 2035, even after accounting for U.S. policy backsliding. The IEA expects coal to decline before 2030, oil to peak around 2030, and gas to peak around 2035. A surge in gas supply led by the U.S. is what drives baseline gas demand projections somewhat higher, by depressing near-term prices. This is not inevitable and other governments and U.S. subnational leaders can and must speed a renewable roll-out instead to avoid fossil fuel-driven volatility. Contrary to industry claims, the IEA sees marginal prospects for gas to replace coal, meaning an influx of LNG in Asia will lead to higher gas demand and pollution and displace renewables. * **But safeguarding 1.5°C means no new oil and gas fields or LNG expansion – and a fast phase-out:** The IEA reconfirms that, as in past editions of the NZE, no new fields are needed. The IEA’s recent report on field decline rates further concluded some fields must close early. The IEA also confirms “many of the LNG projects currently under construction are no longer necessary.” Combined oil and gas demand falls by around 35% by 2035 and 55% by 2040 in this year’s NZE. While the IEA sees that continued investments in fossil fuel infrastructure in recent years have pushed the world to the brink of exceeding 1.5°C, a pathway that “mitigates the most severe risks from climate change remains feasible” – with “reducing emissions as far and fast as possible” the key way to minimize overshoot and avoid gambling on unproven carbon removal technologies. * **The IEA rightly highlights that more finance is key to a fast and fair transition – but wrongly repeats myths on the role for private finance:** The WEO shows much greater investment is needed in grids and storage, energy efficiency, and energy access in developing countries (excluding China) to enable a faster energy transition – but unfortunately repeats the widespread myth that private finance mobilization is the answer, despite typically being ill-suited to cover these technologies and countries. **The evidence instead backs developing countries’ push for an increased focus on rich governments meeting their obligation to provide**** _public_****finance (Article 9.1) at COP30 in Belem.** OCI research shows that existing approaches to private finance mobilization deliver 4-7 times less private investment than promised; in this year’s WEO the IEA itself acknowledges that every public dollar of international public finance today mobilizes only USD 0.60 of private capital. Rich countries can mobilize over $6 trillion annually by ending fossil fuel subsidies, taxing polluters, and changing unfair global tax, trade, and debt rules.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) released its annual World Energy Outlook today detailing trends in and scenarios for energy demand, supply, and what that means for emissions and economic development. The report highlights how renewable energy is expanding at record levels around the world due to often being the cheapest form of energy available. It also makes clear that energy pathways compatible with climate goals do not require new coal mines, oil and gas fields, or large new fossil fuel infrastructure. **Below is a statement fromDr. Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.** She is currently attending the U.N. climate talks in Belém, Brazil until November 23. "The IEA’s latest report underscores the daunting challenge ahead for rapidly decarbonizing the world’s economy but also highlights the opportunity for tremendous wins for consumers’ pocketbooks, public health and addressing energy poverty that pathway provides. “With the world on the brink of overshooting 1.5 degrees Celsius, it’s crucial to prioritize renewable energy, energy efficiency and a climate-resilient energy system. A fast fair phaseout of fossil fuels—coal, oil and gas—is also essential, yet nations continue to recklessly expand these polluting sources of energy at odds with climate goals. All too many political leaders are beholden to entrenched fossil fuel interests who are profiting off perpetuating a fossil fuel-based economy. “Contrary to the IEA’s framing, cooperation and collaboration among countries will be key to accelerating the manufacture and deployment of clean energy technologies globally. At COP30, we need world leaders to live up to the commitments they made in Dubai to advance a clean energy transition within this critical decade. Richer nations must also provide finance to lower-income countries to enable this transition. “The choice for decision-makers should be clear: either they invest in a fast, fair transition to clean energy that brings overwhelming benefits, or they will force people to face the rapidly escalating harms and costs of unchecked climate change.”

Hope glimmers. After an election that saw "democrats in array" rising up to thunderously repudiate "anyone and anything" associated with a doddering wannabe king - "Apparently Americans liked the East Wing more than anyone thought" - the final small sweet revenge was a jury acquitting D.C.'s intrepid Sandwich Guy for the crime of making it pellucidly clear, with mustard, he doesn't want stormtroopers in his town. One sage: "The only way this week could've been better for America was if Dick Cheney ****died again." On Tuesday, voters came out in sometimes record numbers - New York saw its highest turnout in over 50 years - to reject**** MAGA cruelty, inequity and greed, and win "just everything." New Jersey and Virginia saw double-digit wins for women governors - a veteran and former CIA officer - reflecting a failure of anti-trans bigotry and resurgence of Democrats' big tent. There were comparable wins from Connecticut and Pennsylvania to Mississippi and Georgia. Maine overwhelmingly rejected an effort to restrict mail-in voting, Colorado willingly raised taxes on the rich to fund school lunches, California's re-districting Prop. 50 passed by an almost 2 to 1 margin; Newsom showed how to fight Trump - "After poking the bear, this bear roared” - and urged other states to also "meet this moment head-on." Most thrillingly, __New York's _Mayor-elect_ Zohran Mamdani evinced "the way to win is to include everyone. All everyone," and he did in an off-off year yet. One analyst: "Republicans raved every Democrat was Zohran Mamdani, and Americans said, 'Sign me up.'" In Mamdani's electrifying speech - Eugene Debs! - to an exultant crowd, he rebuffed a politics that has "bowed at the altar of caution (and) paid a mighty price...Too many working people cannot recognize themselves in our party." "We chose hope together," he said. "We won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do...New York will (be) a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant." To Trump: "To get to any of us, you will have to get through _all_ of us." He and his vassals will also have to exit the alternative reality bubble - and immense cognitive dissonance - revealed this week in Miami, where Trump spoke at an opulent America Business Forum to billionaires from Saudi Arabia to Silicon Valley. As Republicans lost every election in sight, the government shutdown became the longest in history, and 42 million people, including 3 million in Florida, faced hunger, the assembled tycoons paid $2,000 - but got a $50 gift card for food - to hear a vengeful old man babble, ramble, boast, confuse "Communist" South Africa with South America, and nonetheless gloat about the "economic miracle" he'd delivered to usher in a reeling America's "golden age." Like the tawdry Great Gatsby party he held, "They just can’t seem to stop doing things shockingly out of touch." Meanwhile, per the advice of his ghoulish mentor Roy Cohn, Trump is using the courts as a "personal cudgel" against his perceived enemies. Along with terrorizing blue cities, prosecutors have gone after over 20 anti-ICE protesters, often with "impeding" charges. In Chicago, prosecutors charged primary candidate Kat Abughazaleh with "conspiracy" after roughing her up at a protest. In L.A., a goon shot Carlos Jimenez, absurdly claiming self-defense, after he tried to warn marauding troops that kids were coming out of a school. In Chicago, head Nazi Greg Bovino, who's told ICE thugs to arrest anyone who makes "hyperbolic" comments, charged a protester with giving him a groin injury purportedly requiring a two-week leave to recover; prosecutors just dropped the case after video, shockingly, showed they lied. And so it goes. Mostly, the fascists, being inept, lose. (GOP) Judge Karin Immergut just permanently blocked Trump from inflicting "all necessary troops" on "war-ravaged" Portland OR after finding "no credible evidence" there was need for them and insisting "the facts - not the President’s political whims - guide how the law is applied." Ouch. Still, the most failures have been earned by laughably unqualified US Attorney Jeanine “Boxwine” Pirro, who keeps trying and failing to get grand juries - seven at this point - to indict the proverbial ham sandwich. Her latest and most public effort to "turn a gag-gift-worthy moment into a federal criminal offense" was the case of folk hero, Air Force veteran and former DOJ attorney Sean Dunn, 37, who "brought a sandwich to a fascism fight" - specifically, a salami sub - and won. In the infamous case of "the hoagie heard around the world," Dunn, in a pink shirt and holding a just-bought, now-historic sub, confronted troops skulking on a downtown DC corner, reportedly about to raid a gay club there. He yelled they were fascists who should get out of his town; then he got in the face of 23-year-veteran Border Patrol agent Gregory Lairmore, yelled some more, hurled his sub at Lairmore's bullet-proof-vested chest, and took off running. Thugs gave chase, caught and handcuffed him, and released him without charges. But for the "retaliatory animus" of the thin-skinned toddler in power, it would've ended there. Instead, video of the encounter went viral, the toddler got pissed, and a SWAT team went to Dunn's apartment, complete with pulpy heavy-metal video of the action, to arrest him. Insisting on the preposterous narrative Dunn was pretty much the Zodiac killer and not a guy who threw some bread, Pirro theatrically announced felony assault charges against him: "This guy thought it was funny. Well, he doesn’t think it’s funny today." An equally off-the-wall Pam Bondi chimed in, raving about "assault on a law enforcement officer" and claiming Dunn was "an example of the Deep State" (who worked at the DOJ). Pirro tried to get a grand jury to indict him; they (hilariously) declined, but she finally got a misdemeanor charge to stick. And so to the federal jury trial starting Tuesday - in rare poetic justice, the day after National Sandwich Day - to protect our brave troops from food fights and send the dubious message to a restive populace: "Mess with this government, and it will mess with you." Presiding over what he called "the simplest case in the world" was US District Judge Carl Nichols. And it should have been, especially since the perp, at the scene of the crime, had already confessed, boldly proclaiming, "I did it. I threw a sandwich." Still, it took two days and much bickering as the jury of 12 of Sandwich Guy's peers struggled to remain straight-faced during what one observer called "a strange sort of performance art," both amusing and menacing. The opening statements clearly laid out both sides' differences. Defense: "He did it. He threw the sandwich." Also, so what: See First Amendment." The government: "No matter who you are, you can’t just go around throwing stuff at people if you’re mad.” Also poor traumatized Officer Lairmore, who was just protecting the public, from sandwiches. There was squabbling over words in a charge that cites "forcibly opposing, impeding or interfering" with federal agents on duty. What's "forcibly"? Defense: A sandwich doesn't constitute force any more than "an eight-year-old throwing a stuffed animal in the middle of a temper tantrum." Prosecution, leaning hard into bellicose language: "Here we have the defendant throwing - it’s a sandwich, but throwing it hard...at point-blank range...He takes the sandwich, he cocks it back." There's the "impact" through the vest. Also, it's not just a sandwich; there was "screaming," "cussing," "attempting to instigate." (The judge reminds the jury speech isn't assault). And, like an IED in Fallujah, prosecutors note the victim's harrowing testimony the sandwich "kind of exploded. I could smell the onions and mustard." The horror! The horror! Meanwhile, Sandwich Guy sits in the cafeteria on lunch break, eating soup. A friend's GoFundMe for him - "Help support the Sandwich Guy" - notes his ten years of service in Afghanistan, the Forest Service, the DOJ: "He is proud of his career serving the people of the United States." Back in the courtroom, defense attorney Sabrina Shroff shreds Lairmore's claim the sandwich "exploded" with video showing said sandwich still wrapped on the sidewalk. "Do you recognize that sandwich?" she asks. Lairmore waffles. Shroff: "You don’t see there’s mustard on it?” Lairmore wilts. No. “You can’t tell there’s ketchup on it?” No. "Mayonnaise? Lettuce? Tomato? No. "In fact, the sandwich hasn’t exploded at all has it?" Lairmore, helpfully, "It looks like a little bit is coming out towards the bottom." Shroff also cited two "gag gifts" Lairmore said, sheepishly smiling, he got from co-workers: A plush sandwich he put on his shelf at work and a cartoon patch of Dunn throwing the sandwich, with the words “Felony Footlong,” he put on his lunchbox. So much for trauma, she suggested. Her closing argument was fiery. "This case, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is about a sandwich," she declared. "A sandwich that, according to agent Lairmore, somehow both exploded on his chest in a spray of onions and mustard, but also landed intact on the ground still in its Subway wrapping." Most vitally, she argued, a sandwich cannot be a weapon worthy of federal charges, especially facing off against a bulletproof vest. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiLorenzo glumly dissented: "We’re not just talking about a sandwich." Social media lapped up the coverage. They “relished” the testimony, they argued it “didn’t pass mustard,” they called Lairmore’s claim “baloney.” They summoned “12 Hungry Men.” Asked, “Do you see the sandwich seated in the courtroom today?” Argued, “If the sub doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Snarled, “Say hello to my foot-long friend.” Asked, “Show us on this doll where the sandwich touched you.” Mused, ”Not all gyros wear capes." Insisted, ”I did not have a relationship with that sandwich.“ Proclaimed, "Liberte! Egalite! Panini!" When the verdict came Thursday - with every juror voting for acquittal - they celebrated Sandwich Guy ”beat the wrap,“ "justice, like a good sandwich, was served,“ and, like them, an anti-fascist jury looked at the video, decided what mattered, and essentially said ”what sandwich?“ Outside the courthouse after the verdict, Shroff thanked jurors for their "affirmation" that dissent is "not just tolerated." "It is legal," she declared, "and it is welcome." Sandwich Guy also thanked the jurors, as well as "family and friends and strangers for all of their support, whether it was emotional or spiritual or artistic or financial." "I am so happy that justice prevails in spite of everything," he said. "That night I believed that I was protecting the rights of immigrants...Let us not forget that the great seal of the United States says ‘E pluribus unum.’ That means ‘from many, one.’ Every life matters no matter where you came from. No matter how you got here, no matter how you identify, you have the right to live a life that is free." A nation salutes you. Warren Zevon would have too: "Enjoy every sandwich."

President Trump promised to lower costs on day one. Ten months into his second term, his administration now says America’s affordability crisis is a 2026 problem. Meanwhile, everyday Americans are being laid off in record numbers – surging past one million this year – and credit card debt is crushing households. New data further underscores how American consumers feel about Trump’s economy as he kicks the can down the road on the highest priority for families. Today, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index preliminary data indicated that _sentiment fell_ to 50.3 in November, down from 53.6 in October and nearly three points below expectation, marking another setback for household confidence as sentiment reaches the lowest level in three years. **Chief of Policy and Advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative,_Alex Jacquez_, shared his reaction:** “Americans are losing faith in the economy because they’re losing ground. Every day it becomes clearer that President Trump has no real interest in improving the lives of American families. His economic mismanagement has left households buried under record debt and rising prices. It’s no surprise consumer sentiment is at its lowest point since 2022 and households are turning to leaders who didn’t just learn the word ‘affordability.’”

A federal judge in Texas today dismissed a criminal conspiracy case against Boeing over two crashes of its 737 Max jetliner that killed 346 people. **Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen** , released the following statement: “Unconscionable is inadequate to address the outrage of the Trump Justice Department’s decision to dismiss the criminal prosecution of Boeing. Not only did Boeing’s recklessness lead directly to the deaths of hundreds of people, but it violated the terms of the sweetheart deal it reached with the first Trump administration, again jeopardizing the lives of air passengers. “Judge O’Connor believed his hands were tied in permitting the DOJ to drop the case, but his sharply worded decision reveals that he agrees the department’s action is outrageous. ‘The Government has a confession from Boeing, signed by the CEO and Chief Legal Officer, admitting to all the elements of the conspiracy charge against it,’ he wrote. “For an Attorney General and DOJ leadership that has brought shame and disgrace to a previously magisterial agency, this marks a new low.”

The US Congress’ failure to extend public subsidies for private health insurance threatens the right to health and financial security of millions of people, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam America said today. As open enrollment for private health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) government-operated marketplaces began on November 1, 2025, millions of households will no longer be able to afford health insurance. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act dramatically reduced the cost of private health insurance for low- and middle-income earners by enhancing public subsidies for plans purchased through ACA marketplaces. When the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) became law in July 2025, it expanded and made permanent numerous tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy households and large corporations, while failing to extend these enhanced subsidies. Without new legislation, the subsidies will expire at the end of 2025. “Congress’ failure to extend these subsidies is driving the government shutdown and will harm millions of people already struggling with soaring prices and healthcare costs,” said Matt McConnell, economic justice and rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “These cuts are making ordinary people sacrifice their health to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy few.” The introduction of the ACA in 2010 made health care more accessible for millions of people, including by reshaping federal regulation of the private health insurance industry, which in 2023 provided health insurance coverage for more than 90 percent of the population, or over 300 million people. Among other changes, the law created government-operated marketplaces through which people who do not receive health insurance from their employers or public programs could purchase coverage from a private company. The ACA also established public subsidies to reduce the cost of health insurance premiums for these private marketplace plans. But those earning above 400 percent of the federal poverty level—$62,600 for an individual in 2025—were ineligible. This so-called subsidy cliff was especially harmful to older people who were not or were not yet eligible for Medicare coverage, the public health insurance program for older people and people with disabilities, because health insurance companies were allowed, within certain limits, to charge older people more for the same services. The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act temporarily addressed this subsidy cliff by expanding eligibility to those earning above this income limit and capping premium costs for standard marketplace plans under the ACA at 8.5 percent of household income. These “enhanced premium tax credits,” originally set to expire at the end of 2022, were extended through 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act. Since coming into effect, these changes have significantly reduced healthcare costs for millions of people. The population covered by ACA marketplace plans has more than doubled, rising from 11.4 million in 2020 to 24.3 million in 2025, helping drive a decline in the country’s uninsured rate. “Instead of ensuring ordinary people can access adequate health care, the administration and Congress have chosen to prioritize large tax handouts for the wealthy and well-connected,” said Rebecca Riddell, senior policy lead for economic justice at Oxfam America. “Not extending subsidies risks further inflaming economic inequality, which is already sky high and likely to increase following massively regressive cuts to social protection passed in July.” On July 4, 2025, the OBBBA became law, expanding and making permanent many tax cuts originally implemented during President Donald Trump’s first term that disproportionately benefit large corporations and the country’s wealthiest households. The tax breaks for just the richest 0.1 percent of households alone cost substantially more per year than the enhanced premium tax credits; around $50 billion compared to $35 billion. To partly offset the reduction in revenue from these tax cuts, the act dramatically reduces federal funding for public programs essential for human rights, including a projected $1 trillion in cuts over the coming decade to Medicaid, the public health insurance program for people with low-incomes, which will disproportionately hurt Black people and other people of color. Unless Congress extends these enhanced subsidies, millions of people will soon be forced to choose between paying for extremely expensive health insurance or risking the potentially catastrophic harm of being uninsured, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam America said. Premium costs for the average subsidized ACA marketplace plan will more than double, rising from an average of $888 per year in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization. KFF estimated that the annual cost for an average 60-year-old couple earning just above the ACA’s income eligibility limit—or $85,000 annual household income in 2026—will increase by more than $22,600 next year, rising from 8.5 percent of household income to about 25 percent. The Commonwealth Fund and Urban Institute, two US-based nonprofit organizations, have estimated that about 4.8 million people will become uninsured next year if these subsidies expire, increasing the US’ uninsured population by about 21 percent. People without health insurance are far more likely to forgo and ration health care because of costs and are much more likely to die as a result. Cost-based access barriers are incompatible with health care as a human right for all, worsen inequalities, and can undermine people’s ability to bear costs associated with the enjoyment of other human rights such as the rights to housing, food, and education. Older people without Medicare coverage because they are not yet old enough to qualify for coverage, or because of their immigration status or other restrictions, will be especially harmed. The country’s large and growing population of part-time and gig workers, also largely people of color, who are not legally required to receive employer-sponsored health insurance under the ACA, will also be disproportionately impacted. Even those with health insurance are likely to see their premium costs increase next year because of cost-shifting associated with this dramatic increase in the uninsured population. On October 1, the federal government shut down as a result of Congress’ inability to pass a budget for the 2026 fiscal year. Democratic Party lawmakers, the minority party in both chambers of Congress, have said that their support for any bill to reopen the government is contingent on the extension of these enhanced healthcare subsidies. Under international law, everyone has the human right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, which includes the right to access healthcare goods and services regardless of one’s ability to pay. Many countries have better realized this right by creating a public healthcare system that aims to be universally accessible for all, by providing universal health insurance coverage, or through some combination of these two. “Congress should fix the country’s healthcare system,” McConnell said. “But in the meantime, they shouldn’t make things far worse by cutting this lifeline for millions.” **For more Human Rights Watch reporting on economic justice and rights, please visit:** https://www.hrw.org/topic/economic-justice-and-rights **For more Oxfam America work on U.S. inequality, please visit:** https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/economic-justice/inequality-in-the-us/

CEPR’s Director of International Research Jake Johnston made the following statement today: > For at least two months administration sources have been telling the media that land strikes in Venezuela are under consideration and that the US military buildup in the region is aimed at pressing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to resign or convincing his allies in the military to turn on him. But over the last few days, administration officials have changed their tune: the US is not currently planning military strikes inside Venezuela, they say, and has no plans to pursue regime change. Why the sudden change? It sure looks like a damage control operation ahead of today’s Senate vote on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution, which now appears to have a real chance of passing. > The message the administration is sending to Senate Republicans is that you don’t need to vote to block military action, because, surprise, it’s not happening! Lawmakers should be wary about falling for the bluff. Given the scale of the military resources being deployed, this could well be an effort to buy time until the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft group arrives in the southern Caribbean, and the administration can come up with a legal justification, however flimsy, to bypass congressional authorization for a regime change war that Marco Rubio, Peter Hegseth, and other hawkish officials have been clearly gunning for. > More than 40 nongovernmental organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee, Church World Service, Demand Progress, Justice Democrats, Military Families Speak Out, Peace Action, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and Veterans For Peace, as well as CEPR, sent a letter to US senators today urging them to support the War Powers Resolution.

A new survey conducted by Our Revolution, the nation’s largest progressive political organizing group with more than 8 million members, finds that a majority of grassroots Democrats believe it’s time to replace status quo party leaders and embrace the bold economic populism that powered Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory for New York City Mayor. The post-election survey of more than 3,500 progressive voters shows overwhelming support for primarying Schumer and Jeffries, near-unanimous agreement that Democrats must run on an affordability agenda centered on lowering costs and challenging corporate power, and deep frustration with party leaders seen as out of touch with working people. _“Mamdani’s victory was not an outlier. It was a rallying cry,”_**said Joseph Geevarghese, Executive Director of Our Revolution.**_“The grassroots are demanding change. They want a Democratic Party that fights for working families, taxes the rich, and takes on Trump and the oligarchs driving this affordability crisis. The old guard must step aside or risk losing the movement that delivered these wins.”_ ### Key Findings: * 90% of respondents believe Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should step aside, and 92% would support a primary challenger against him. * 70% say House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries should step aside, with 77% saying they would support a primary challenger. * Nearly all agree Democratic candidates in 2026 must adopt Mamdani’s affordability message, centering campaigns on lowering the cost of living and holding corporations accountable. * Two-thirds (67%) say current Democratic leaders do not understand the struggles of the working class, with confidence in party leadership remaining in the single digits. * Nearly 9 in 10 (87%) say Democratic candidates should reject corporate PAC and billionaire money, warning that the party risks alienating its most motivated voters if it fails to act. * Nearly 2 in 5 (38%) say they definitely will not support a Democratic candidate who accepts corporate PAC or billionaire money. Nearly half (46%) say they’re unlikely to do so, and just 3% said they would. ### Lessons from Mamdani’s Win: Bold Populism Wins Elections When asked what lessons Democrats should take from Mamdani’s landmark campaign: * 89% said bold economic ideas that address affordability win elections. * 90% said standing up to Trump and the oligarchs builds trust and drives turnout. * 92% said taxing the rich and breaking up monopolies are both popular and practical ways to fund affordability solutions. * 86% said it’s time for a new generation of leadership in the Trump era. * 79% said the energy and enthusiasm are squarely with the grassroots and progressives, not the party establishment. ### A Clear Warning: Don’t Repeat the Mistakes of the Past Respondents also voiced concern that establishment Democrats might misread the moment: * 69% fear party leaders will dismiss Mamdani’s win as an outlier, pointing to moderate victories in New Jersey and Virginia. * 65% believe leadership will cling to the status quo to appease big-money donors, rather than lean into the grassroots enthusiasm that drives turnout. * 53% worry Democrats will retreat from moral fights over identity, climate justice, and trans rights, instead of meeting right-wing extremism with conviction and courage. _“This isn’t just about one city or one election,”_ **Geevarghese added.** _“What happened in New York is a blueprint for how Democrats can win everywhere: take on Trump and the billionaire class, lead with moral clarity, and put working people first with clear populist economic policies. The base is demanding that national leaders step aside if they can’t meet this moment.”_

****_The People’s Lobby and People’s Action have introduced a petition calling on AT &T to end its contract with ICE_. With _$30.7 billion_ in revenue in the third quarter of 2025 alone, AT&T does not need its _2024_ or _2025_ contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remain profitable. Yet, the telecom giant is choosing to both collect money from customers who are in the crosshairs, and line its pockets with public dollars to help ICE agents – _who are masked, unidentifiable, and operating without warrants_ – as they terrorize members of the public in communities like Chicago. “AT&T has a choice to make: Be a good business, or exploit people. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t put people from every ethnicity in your ads, take TV, internet and cell phone money from customers who live in communities that are being scapegoated, and then provide ICE with the surveillance and first responders communications infrastructure they used to _turn people’s homes into war zones_. We don’t want Blackhawk helicopters and heavily armed infantrymen kicking down doors in the middle of the night to kidnap parents and zip tie children. Not in Chicago. Not anywhere,” **said The People’s Lobby Executive Director Will Tanzman.** In the wake of President Donald Trump, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune passing a 10-year budget that included the _unprecedented expansion of ICE resources_, the _largest transfer of wealth to the rich in history_, and devastating cuts to vital programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP, more and more Americans have begun to question why the billionaire and corporate beneficiaries of the tax cuts in the Big Ugly Bill are also _on Trump donor lists and getting big government contracts_ funded with public dollars. “There is more than enough for all of us to thrive if billionaires, CEOs, and corrupt politicians don’t hoard it. Corporations depend on our labor and earnings. Elected officials work for us. If they refuse to stop themselves from profiting off of our pain and threatening our rights and freedoms, then we have to organize to peacefully stop them. It’s time for AT&T to refuse to allow ICE to use their technology to separate families. It’s time for AT&T to take away access to communications systems meant to keep us and our neighbors safe from outside agents who seek to terrorize our communities. It’s time for AT&T to end their contract with ICE,” **said People’s Action Executive Director Sulma Arias.** _The petition calling on AT &T to end its contract with ICE is part of a growing movement to hold accountable the corporations that put profits over people_. Other corporations named in grassroots campaigns launched recently include Home Depot, Amazon, and Target. Organizers expect that these campaigns will intensify in the coming weeks as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, SNAP benefits are curtailed, and the resolution of the federal government shutdown over the extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire in December remains uncertain.