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"What was once covert, controversial, and constrained is now overt, normalized, and defended."

-- Medea Benjamin

What were once vices are now habits.

-- Joe Walsh

News and Opinion

You Can’t Make People Cheer For Your Wars After Committing A Live-Streamed Genocide

I saw a clip of Fox News war propagandist Sean Hannity solemnly reading a tweet by Atlantic Council fellow Jamie Metzl which said, “It is profoundly disturbing that a growing segment of the far left appears to be almost rooting for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime, and other forces fundamentally opposed to the US and our allies. This seems to reflect a corrosive strain of anti-Americanism dressed up in post-colonial theory that risks blinding us to the moral realities of our world and the nature of our adversaries.”

These assholes really thought they could commit a genocide in full view of the entire world for years and then expect everyone cheer for them to win.

Of course we’re seeing more “anti-Americanism”. You don’t get to commit horrific atrocities year after year and then cry when the world starts to hate you.

Fox News is absolutely panicking. They are crying on air about how the American public is waking up and supporting the resistance. They call it 'anti-Americanism', but the truth is people are just sick of the US and Israel destroying the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/ndZIcsOvWV

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) March 20, 2026

Prof. Mohammad Marandi : FROM TEHRAN: How Iran Resists Aggression

Iran rejects US ceasefire plan and submits its own amid push for talks

Iran dismissed a US ceasefire proposal on Wednesday and countered with a negotiation plan of its own as intermediaries sought to keep diplomatic channels between the warring countries open. Iranian state TV quoted an anonymous official as saying Tehran had rejected the plan it had received via Pakistan, saying it would “end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met”, and until then would continue fighting across the region.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, later said the proposals had been “passed on to the country’s senior authorities” but Iran had “no intention of negotiating for now”. The five-point plan Iran put forward included an end to the fighting and the assassination of its officials, guarantees that no other war is started against it, reparations for the current conflict, and Iranian control over the strait of Hormuz.

Despite the apparent Iranian rejection of the US deal, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said discussions were continuing and were productive. She told reporters on Wednesday that “it became clear that Iran wants to talk and President Trump is willing to listen”. Leavitt also suggested the US was sticking to its four- to six-week timeframe for ending the war, saying it had been a “resounding victory” so far. It was announced that Donald Trump’s rescheduled trip to Beijing would take place on 14 May, leading to speculation the US hoped the war would be over by then.

Pressure has been growing domestically for Trump to find an end to the war in Iran, as Iranian attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and the virtual blockade of the strait of Hormuz has sent prices soaring across much of the world. Oil prices fell after news of the 15-point plan broke on Wednesday, as investors hoped for an end to the biggest energy crisis in decades. About 59% of Americans say that the US war in Iran has “gone too far”, according to a new poll. Trump’s approval rating has dropped to an all-time low of 36% owing to the increase in fuel prices and the war in Iran, according to a poll by Reuters.

Israel, by contrast, has sought to keep fighting as it tries to degrade the Iranian regime further. Israeli officials were reportedly surprised by the US ceasefire plan.

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Why Trump Is Now Desperate

Exhibit # 666 x 10²³ of why the Democrats are despicable pieces of excrement just like the Republicans.

Critics Slam Meeks, Jeffries Pushing Off War Powers Bill Just as It Gets Enough Votes to Pass

Democratic Party leaders are under fire after it was reported that they plan to wait until mid-April to hold a vote to rein in President Donald Trump’s powers to wage war with Iran.

Punchbowl News reported on Tuesday that US House lawmakers had abandoned plans to hold a vote this week on a war powers resolution introduced by Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

With a two-week recess beginning next week, postponing the vote means the earliest Democrats could force it again is April 13.

A previous war powers resolution, which came to the floor just days after the US and Israel launched the war at the end of February, failed by a razor-thin margin when four pro-war Democrats—Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.)—joined the bulk of Republicans to kill it.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said at a press briefing on Tuesday that there are “ongoing conversations” about passing a war powers resolution “sooner rather than later.” He said, “When we present something on the floor, it’s our determination to win.”

But Democrats would likely be in a position to “win” the vote if it were held this week. Andrew Solender reported on Tuesday for Axios that following intense criticism from the grassroots base and pressure from party leadership, “most, if not all, of the four defectors are expected to flip and vote for the measure this time.”

Solender later reported that Meeks was undecided about the measure. While the New York Democrat confirmed to Axios that the party had gotten defectors on board, he said he “hasn’t decided whether to force a vote on his war powers resolution this week or in mid-April.”

Democratic leadership has already been accused of attempting to sabotage a previous resolution introduced by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in late February by waiting to vote on it until after Trump launched the war.

As I reported, Meeks staff previously tried to delay a vote by warning 40 Dems could oppose it. In the end, just 4 did.

Now Meeks is saying he may not hold the vote because *one* member could vote no.

Democratic leadership is doing everything it can to avoid voting on this war https://t.co/pR4CQsnWfR

— aída chávez (@aidachavez) March 25, 2026

“It would be extremely alarming for Reps. Jeffries and Meeks to waver now on forcing a war powers vote,” said Cavan Kharrazian, the senior policy adviser for Demand Progress. “Delaying a war powers vote now effectively gives Trump two more weeks to continue and escalate the war in Iran.”

Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site News, went further, accusing Meeks of backing off the resolution precisely “because it now may have the votes to pass.” He contended that “Democrats secretly want this war to continue because it hurts Trump.”

IRAN: U.S. MILITARY BASES 'ELIMINATED' + 2,000 PARATROOPERS EN ROUTE FOR INVASION | Laith Marouf

One advantage the Iranians have is that their entire elite seems to consist of 130 IQ polymath combat veterans with PhDs who stormed across minefields with fixed bayonets surrounded by poison gas back in the day and then spent 30 years studying philosophy, game theory,… https://t.co/GJFv6Xvuuj

— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) March 24, 2026

IRAN "CAN'T WAIT' FOR U.S. TO INVADE - Alastair Crooke On Iran War

‘This War Is Dumb as Hell’: Military Historian Assesses Trump’s Disaster in Iran

Even as President Donald Trump signaled this week that he’d like to quickly wrap up his unconstitutional war with Iran, some experts are warning that the president has put himself in a situation with no easy way out.

Military historian Bret Devereaux, a teaching assistant professor at North Carolina State University, published a lengthy analysis of the war on Wednesday in which he described it as a failed gamble that Iran’s regime would simply crumble in the face of a well-executed series of aerial strikes.

Devereaux said that this was highly unlikely given the nature of the Iranian regime, which is structured to maintain itself up and down the chain of command if one or even several of its leaders are killed.

And now that it’s very clear that Trump’s gamble of overthrowing the regime hasn’t paid off, Devereaux wrote, he will be at the mercy of events beyond his control.

“Once started, a major regional war with Iran was always likely to be something of a ‘trap,’” he contended, “not in the sense of an ambush laid by Iran—but in the sense of a situation that, once entered, cannot be easily left or reversed.”

While Iran’s response to the strikes carried out by the US and Israel in June 2025 was relatively tepid, Devereaux said, once Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the goal of their latest operation would be regime change, the Iranian government took the extraordinary step of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, sending global energy prices skyrocketing.

It has been this threat to shut down the strait, as well as the massive difficulty and cost it would take to occupy a nation of 90 million people, the historian continued, that has kept every US president for the last five decades from launching an invasion of Iran.

At the same time, he continued, Trump cannot now simply walk away while leaving Iran with the ability to take the global economy hostage whenever it pleases.

“The result is a fairly classic escalation trap: Once the conflict starts, it is extremely costly for either side to ever back down, which ensures that the conflict continues long past it being in the interests of either party,” he wrote. “Every day this war goes on makes both the United States and Iran weaker, poorer, and less secure but it is very hard for either side to back down because there are huge costs connected to being the party that backs down.”

Summing up his argument, Devereaux declared, “This war is dumb as hell.”

Devereaux’s analysis was echoed by Ilan Goldenberg, senior vice president and chief policy officer at J Street, who wrote in a social media post Wednesday that the US and Iran appear to be caught in an escalation trap, as exemplified by the Trump administration’s recent decision to send more military personnel to the Persian Gulf.

“The much more important story right now isn’t diplomacy—it’s the thousands of US troops being mobilized and moving toward the Middle East,” he wrote. “That movement strongly suggests preparation for further escalation, with Kharg Island emerging as the most likely target. For any objective observer, the likely Iranian response to a US move on Kharg is obvious: escalation, not capitulation. Tehran would almost certainly respond by expanding attacks on energy infrastructure across the Gulf.”

Goldenberg added that “the most plausible off-ramp” will involve Trump simply declaring victory while leaving the regime intact and with vague promises to not produce a nuclear weapon, although he said that likely wouldn’t come until after more escalation and destruction.

“Better to accept this likely outcome today rather than six months from now,” he advised.

In a Wednesday analysis published at Liberal Currents, University of Illinois political scientist Nicholas Grossman cast doubt on Trump’s ability to simply wash his hands of the Iran conflict and walk away.

Part of the issue, said Grossman, is that Iran simply might want to keep inflicting economic damage on Trump to make him think twice before launching a future attack on the regime.

“In hard power dynamics, this is the strongest position the Islamic Republic has ever been in, the most leverage they have over the United States since the 1979-80 hostage crisis,” Grossman wrote. “Iran is likely thinking of longer-term security. If they can endure more US-Israeli bombing—and the war so far indicates that they can—then they can increasingly establish their ability to crash the global economy, a deterrent even the United States must respect.”

Given that Trump is unlikely to want to be seen as a “loser” for simply accepting Iran’s control of the strait, Grossman concluded, “that points to stalemate or escalation, more death and destruction, and a global economic disruption that will be bigger than many currently expect.”

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Why Trump Is Wedded to Israel

"Torture & Genocide": U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese Denounces Israeli Abuse of Palestinians

How the US Became an International Serial Killer

For decades, the United States moved from covert assassination plots to openly embracing assassination or “targeted killing” as policy. Now, in its war with Iran, that evolution is reaching its most dangerous phase.

On March 17th and 18th, the United States and Israel assassinated three senior Iranian government officials in targeted air strikes: Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council; Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Basij domestic security forces; and Esmaeil Khatib, Iran’s Intelligence Minister.

The missile that killed Ali Larijani also demolished an apartment building and killed more than a hundred people. Israeli defense minister Israel Katz announced that Israeli forces were now authorized to assassinate any senior Iranian official whenever they can, and they have continued to do so, bringing the number of Iranian officials assassinated in the past year to at least seventy.

The assassination of Ali Larijani is a blow to the already fraught chances for a negotiated peace between Iran and the United States and Israel. Ali Larijani was an experienced, pragmatic senior official who had played leading roles in negotiations with the US and other world powers since 2005.

Larijani had degrees in math and computer science, attended the revered seminary in Qom, and fought in the Iran-Iraq War, rising to the rank of brigadier-general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. After the war, he managed Iran’s state broadcasting service, earned a doctorate in Western Philosophy from the University of Tehran, and wrote three books on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, before entering politics and government in 2005. In 2024, Larijani wrote a book on political philosophy, titled Reason and Tranquility in Governance.

If the US hoped to make peace and restore relations with Iran, Ali Larijani would have been a potential negotiating partner. The decision to assassinate Larijani two weeks into this war suggests that US leaders had no interest in negotiations.

Another possibility is even more chilling. Israeli leaders may have viewed Larijani as a potential off-ramp and deliberately eliminated him to ensure the war continues.

That killing was followed by an unprecedented Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field—the largest in the world and a shared resource with Qatar. Iran retaliated with missile strikes on energy infrastructure across Israel and the Gulf. In Qatar, damage to the Ras Laffan LNG terminal—one of the world’s most critical gas hubs—could take years and billions of dollars to repair.

As global energy markets reeled, US officials confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the South Pars attack had been coordinated with Washington, contradicting denials from President Trump.

The pattern is unmistakable. As one analyst put it, Israel appears to be escalating deliberately—eliminating moderates within Iran while striking critical infrastructure—to provoke a wider regional war that leaves no room for de-escalation.

Analysts debate how much Israel is driving this escalation and how much US officials are fully aligned. But an imperial power cannot outsource responsibility. As Harry Truman’s famous desk sign declared: The buck stops here.

In its alliance with Israel, the United States has normalized the systematic assassination of foreign leaders—from Palestine, and Lebanon, to Syria, Yemen and now Iran. This is not new. In 2020, President Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) that had joined with US forces to fight the Islamic State.

Yet assassination is explicitly prohibited under US law. Executive Order 12333 states clearly: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”

That prohibition emerged from the Church Committee’s investigation into US assassination plots against Fidel Castro in Cuba, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, and General René Schneider in Chile.

It also reflects long-standing international law, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions.

After 9/11, however, the United States systematically ignored or circumvented many of the constraints of US and international law. As US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq led to widespread armed resistance, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began arguing for what he called “manhunts,” to deploy US special operations forces to hunt down suspected resistance leaders and kill them, as Israeli undercover units already did in occupied Palestine.

General Charles Holland, the head of US Special Operations Command, refused to authorize such operations, but his retirement in October 2003 allowed Rumsfeld to appoint more like-minded officials to senior positions and bring in the Israelis to train American death squads in Israel and North Carolina.

“Dead men tell no tales,” as the saying goes, and there has been almost no accountability for the resulting killings, which systematically killed thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two senior US commanders told the Washington Post that only about 50% of “kill or capture” raids by Joint Special Operations Command targeted the “right” or intended people or homes, while troops involved in these raids said that that assessment greatly overstated their rate of success.

Drone warfare accelerated the trend. Under President Obama, strikes expanded tenfold, turning targeted killing into a central pillar of US policy. By 2011, night raids in Afghanistan numbered in the hundreds each month, alienating the Afghan people and ultimately ensuring the defeat of the US occupation and the return of the Taliban.

Now US and Israeli forces are using air and drone strikes to assassinate Iranian leaders and kill civilians in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. The language of restraint has disappeared, replaced by open celebration of “lethality” and threats of further war crimes.

What was once covert, controversial, and constrained is now overt, normalized, and defended.

The cumulative effect is stark: the United States has made assassination and extrajudicial killing routine instruments of policy, as it tramples the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions and its own laws—undermining the very international legal order it claims to uphold.

Meanwhile, a multipolar world is emerging, driven largely by nations of the Global South. But the transition to a peaceful, sustainable world is far from certain. The greatest obstacle in its way is the continued reliance of the United States on the illegal threat and use of military force and economic coercion to try to maintain its own dominance.

Iran exercised restraint for decades in the face of false accusations regarding nuclear weapons, “maximum pressure” economic sanctions and escalating threats and attacks by the US and Israel. It quietly built up its defenses and military strategies for the day that it would need them, and that day has come.

The failure of the international community to stop successive US wars of aggression poses an existential threat to the UN Charter and the post–World War II order. As Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned at the CELAC Summit on March 21: “The more serious humanity’s problems become, the fewer tools we have for collective action. And that path leads only to barbarism.”

The United States now faces a stark choice: to continue down this path of lawless violence, or to turn the page on our nation’s life of international crime and finally, genuinely embrace diplomacy and peaceful coexistence with our neighbors, as the UN Charter requires.

For Americans—and for the world—that choice is becoming a matter of survival.

CPT. Matt Hoh : Will US Troops Fight for a Foreign Country?

'FINAL BLOW': Pentagon Preps Ground Troop Iran Deployment

Trump Promised to Lower Energy Prices for Americans. He’s Done the Exact Opposite

President Donald Trump ran on promises to cut energy prices “in half” within his first year in office. But according to a report released Wednesday, he’s done the exact opposite, and it’s expected to get much worse as oil prices soar from his war with Iran.

Electricity prices increased more than twice as fast as overall inflation in 2025, according to a fact sheet by the Groundwork Collaborative.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, electricity costs increased by nearly 7% last year, compared with an overall consumer price index increase of 2.7%.

In January, a report by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, found that Americans spent an extra $2,120 in 2025 due to inflation across the economy. Electricity cost the average family an additional $123.

Groundwork’s report attributed these price increases to Trump’s aggressive tariffs, which the group said have raised the costs of building and maintaining electric grids—costs that energy companies pass directly to consumers.

It also noted the Trump administration’s support for the swift build-out of artificial intelligence data centers, which have dramatically increased energy demand in places where they’ve been constructed.

Costs for consumers connected to America’s largest power grid, PJM, for example, increased by a collective $9.4 billion last year—more than a 180% increase. Meanwhile, Bloomberg found that in areas near data centers, wholesale electricity costs had jumped by as much as 267% over the past five years.

That pinch is being felt by consumers, 66% of whom said their electricity bills increased over the past year, compared with just 5% who said they decreased, according to a poll earlier this month from Data for Progress.

Groundwork found that “rising energy prices hit working families the hardest,” with those earning under $50,000 spending nearly 7% of their annual income on energy, compared with just 1.2% for those earning above $150,000, according to a 2025 report from the Bank of America Institute.

Reuters/Ipsos poll: Trump’s approval rating on the economy has sunk to 29%.

Lower than Biden’s lowest rating.

Far lower than Trump’s first-term lowest. pic.twitter.com/cwYBcxuaQm

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 24, 2026

Rising costs have been a growing source of anger among voters who elected Trump to bring them down, but now give him just a 29% approval rating on the economy, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday.

It’s a historic low that Trump hit for the first time this month as gas prices in the US have soared to an average of $3.98 per gallon as a result of oil price hikes caused by Trump’s war with Iran, which resulted in Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping route.

Groundwork noted that the pain of the war goes far beyond the pump: The price of residential heating oil is already up 35% since the war began. Meanwhile, rising diesel costs for trucks and disruptions to the global shipment of fertilizer are expected to jack up food prices.

Short of ending the war altogether, the group pointed out that Trump has options to reduce energy costs by tapping into increasingly cheap and abundant wind and solar energy.

Instead, however, the president has delayed hundreds of solar projects by introducing new review requirements that have slowed construction and backed lawsuits to gut efficiency standards.

Earlier this month, at the Trump administration’s urging, a federal judge sided with 15 red states to strike down Biden administration energy standards, which were estimated to reduce costs by more than $950 per year for families living in federally funded housing.

While Trump has taken actions aimed at curbing the global fuel shock, including tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and pausing the federal gas tax, a poll from Groundwork and Data for Progress this week found that more than half of Americans, 52%, would prefer to simply see the war end rather than these emergency measures.

It's not about Hezbollah, it's about Israel territorially expanding

Israel used white phosphorus to scorch earth in south Lebanon

When the M825-series 155mm artillery projectile bursts, expelling its felt wedges containing white phosphorus, it leaves a distinctive knuckle-shaped plume. That is how Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers said they were able to verify that Israel was again using the notorious weapon over south Lebanon, reigniting accusations that it is breaking the laws of war. The New York-based rights group said it had verified and geolocated eight images showing airburst white phosphorus munitions exploding over residential areas in the southern Lebanese town of Yohmor in the opening days of Israel’s assault during the war on Gaza.

Since then, more videos have emerged purporting to show white phosphorus munitions exploding over south Lebanon, and researchers say that with 800,000 Lebanese people displaced from the region after Israeli forces ordered them to leave, many more uses may have gone undocumented. In the last week, Israeli soldiers have been facing fierce resistance from Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon, despite an intense bombing campaign. In recent days, Israeli forces have bombed roads, petrol stations, bridges and medical centres in an effort to cut south Lebanon off from the rest of the country.

White phosphorus is a chemical substance dispersed in artillery shells, bombs and rockets that ignites when exposed to oxygen, burning at up to 800C and emitting large quantities of smoke. Military forces use it as a smokescreen to mask troop movements, mark targets or illuminate terrain at night, and military lawyers argue such uses are entirely legitimate. But its use over civilian areas is controversial – and some claim illegal – because it ignites fires, causes serious burns and emits toxic fumes.

Ahmad Beydoun, an architect and PhD researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, documented and mapped nearly 250 uses of white phosphorus by Israeli forces between October 2023 and November 2024, the last time they launched a full-scale attack on southern Lebanon. Beydoun, who said his count was a conservative estimate, found that 39% of uses were in residential areas, 17% in agricultural lands and 44% in forested or open terrain. “I think the Israeli army’s thinking is that they use it to burn down fields for visibility, so that people or Hezbollah militants don’t hide under the trees,” he said.

According to a report by the Lebanese non-profit Public Works Studio, white phosphorus was used to burn more than 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres) of southern Lebanese countryside, “including 873 hectares of dense forest with gum trees and vast areas covered with oak and pine trees”. White phosphorus can also lie hidden in the soil and spontaneously combust when uncovered by farmers, posing a continuing threat if the people of south Lebanon are able to return to their homes.

ISRAEL HUMILIATED IN LEBANON AS SHOCKING AMBUSH ATTACKS DESTROY MERKAVA TANKS | Dr. Marwa Osman

Cuba Prepares for US Invasion | Trump’s Iran Desperation | Lebanon Under Siege

Strike on alleged drug vessel kills four in the Caribbean, US military says

The US has launched another strike on a vessel in the Caribbean, killing four people, the US Southern Command said. The command, which oversees combatant operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced on X that it had conducted a “lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations”.

Wednesday’s strikes brings the total number of deaths to at least 163 people since the defense department began attacking alleged “narco-terrorists” last September in more than 45 strikes.

Without including evidence, the US Southern Command said that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

US Postal Service to introduce 8% fuel surcharge on packages

The US Postal Service (USPS) plans to introduce its first-ever fuel surcharge on packages to offset rising energy costs, according to a statement. The surcharge, set at 8%, is expected to take effect on 26 April and remain in place until 17 January 2027, under the current plan.

Packages under Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage and Parcel Select will be affected by the surcharge. “Transportation costs have been increasing, and our competitors have reacted with a number of surcharges,” reads the statement by the USPS. “We have steadfastly avoided surcharges and this charge is less than one-third of what our competitors charge for fuel alone, so even with this change, the Postal Service continues to offer great value in shipping with some of the lowest rates in the industrialized world.”

Oil prices have jumped dramatically since the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, with the cost of crude oil per barrel up by as much as 40% since the beginning of 2026. The average price per gallon for diesel gas in the US is now $5.37, up from $3.75 one month prior.

Democrats were quick to voice their concern. “Groceries. Gas. Now packages. Is there anything Donald Trump hasn’t made more expensive? Call it what it is: the Trump Mail Tax,” said JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois,in a post on social media. “Trump has messed up on affordability so badly that he’s even managed to make the mail more expensive,” the US senator Raphael Warnock said in a post.

Meta and YouTube designed addictive products that harmed young people, jury finds

Meta and YouTube have been found liable for deliberately designing addictive products that hooked a young user and led to her being harmed, a jury ruled on Wednesday. Jurors found the tech companies to be both negligent and having failed to provide adequate warnings about the potential dangers of their products.

The jury awarded the plaintiff in the case damages of $6m, with Meta to pay 70% and YouTube the remainder. It took nearly nine days of deliberations for the Los Angeles jury to reach its verdict. This lawsuit, over social media’s alleged harm to young people, was the first of its kind to go to trial.

Over the course of the six-week trial, which took place in Los Angeles superior court, jurors heard from top executives at Meta and YouTube, whistleblowers, expert witnesses on social media and addiction, and a 20-year-old woman at the center of the lawsuit, who has gone by the initials KGM for court proceedings.

KGM testified that she became addicted to YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine, which she said had deleterious effects on her wellbeing. By age 10, she said, she had become depressed and was engaging in self-harm as a result. Her social media use allegedly caused her to have strained relationships with her family and in school. When she was 13, KGM’s therapist diagnosed her with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia, which KGM attributes to her use of Instagram and YouTube.

“How do you make a child never put down the phone? That’s called the engineering of addiction. They engineered it, they put these features on the phones,” Mark Lanier, KGM’s lawyer said during closing arguments last week. “These are Trojan horses: they look wonderful and great … but you invite them in and they take over.” KGM’s lawyers say her experience is emblematic of what tens of thousands of young people have faced on social media and in their offline lives.

TSA tipped off ICE in arrest of mother and child at San Francisco airport

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers targeted a mother and her child at San Francisco international airport for arrest after TSA agents tipped them off, according to a report from the New York Times. The report, which cites federal documents, adds a new dimension to the arrest by ICE officers that went viral this week, casting new scrutiny on the Trump administration’s information-sharing agreements that critics say are leading to more indiscriminate immigration arrests.

ICE officers arrested Angelina Lopez Jimenez and her nine-year-old daughter Wendy Godinez Lopez after their immigration status and travel plans were flagged by TSA agents, according to the Times. Homeland security declined to comment on the data-sharing arrangement between TSA and ICE.

The Guatemalan nationals, who reportedly resided in California’s Bay Area and were traveling to Miami, had been apprehended by US border agents in 2018 in Arizona and released with a notice to appear in immigration court. An immigration judge ordered their removal the next year. The arrest at SFO airport on Sunday was filmed by bystanders and circulated widely on social media. In those videos, Lopez Jimenez is seen crying as ICE officers make the arrest and bystanders demand them to show their badges.

The incident drew condemnation from Democrats in Congress. “I am deeply angered by the video released of a Sacramento mother being forcibly detained by ICE in front of her young daughter at San Francisco International Airport this weekend,” representative Doris Matsui of California wrote on X. “This is our neighbor and a member of our community. This video showcases the cruelty we have come to expect from Trump’s ICE agents, but also the lasting trauma that will be inflicted on those who are forced to witness their disproportionate and deadly recklessness. I am demanding answers as to why ICE treated this Sacramentan so violently in front of her daughter.”

Democrats shut down DHS funding deal from Republicans as standoff continues

The Senate remained deadlocked on Wednesday over funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), after Republicans proposed legislation that would restart all of its operations with the exception of those involved in deportations, but exclude reforms that Democrats want.

The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, quickly shot down the offer, and said Democrats had countered with a measure that coupled DHS funding with a host of new guardrails on immigration enforcement operations – something the party has insisted on for months. But that gained no traction with the GOP. “Get serious, folks,” the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said, in response to the Democrats’ counteroffer.

The standoff seems likely to prolong the partial government shutdown, which began in mid-February after Democrats refused to approve funding for the department overseeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), border patrol and other agencies involved in Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, without reforms demanded in response to the deaths of two US citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.

The funding lapse has led to lengthy lines at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at some major airports, including including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport and George Bush intercontinental airport in Houston, prompting the president to this week deploy ICE agents in a bid to relieve congestion. Schumer has sought to place the blame on Republicans for the travel chaos, saying its most recent proposal disrupted talks that had been nearing a compromise.

“We thought there had been some progress. Then Republicans sent us their offer yesterday, and it contained none of what we talked about, none of the reforms we had been discussing,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “So if anyone is slowing down negotiation and hurting TSA workers, it is the Republican leadership, who did not include one single reform.”

US has caused $10tn worth of climate damage since 1990

The US has caused an eye-watering $10tn in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself, new research has found. By being the largest carbon emitter in history, the US has caused greater harm to worldwide economic growth than any other country, ahead of China, now the world’s largest emitter that is responsible for $9tn in GDP damage since 1990, according to the findings of the paper.

About 25% of this GDP dampening has occurred in the US itself, although other countries have borne a heavy toll, with economic losses disproportionately felt in the poorest countries. Since 1990, US emissions have caused an estimated $500bn of economic damage to India and $330bn in damage to Brazil, the research finds. “These are huge numbers,” acknowledged Marshall Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University who led the new work. Burke added that the US has “a lot of responsibility, our emissions have caused damage not only to ourselves, but pretty substantial damage in other parts of the world”.

The new study, published in Nature on Wednesday, attempts to attach dollar amounts to “loss and damage” – a term used to sum up the harm suffered by societies baked by dangerously rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Developing countries have called for wealthier nations, which have emitted most of the greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution, to assist them financially to deal with loss and damage stemming from disastrous heatwaves, floods, droughts and crop failures worsened by escalating temperatures.

This damage is summed up by the new research, which calculates how much global heating has constrained GDP and assigned responsibility for this to countries based on their emissions since 1990. This metric does not include all consequences of rising temperatures but does show when economies are hurt by heat that wilts workers and strains public health systems.

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