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"The Democratic National Committee voted to reject a resolution denouncing the influence of AIPAC in US politics. Eighty percent of Democrats have a negative view of Israel today. The DNC’s main function is to keep the Democratic Party and its representation on the ballot from reflecting the will of the public."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Washington Post calls for the assassination of Iranian peace negotiators

The US and Israel have so normalized the assassination of national leaders that the mainstream press now discuss it as a standard military tactic. The other day The Washington Post ran an article by Marc Thiessen arguing that the US should “carry out a final barrage of leadership strikes, eliminating the Iranian officials who had been spared for the purpose of negotiations.”

“Iran’s leaders must be made to understand that their lives literally depend on reaching a negotiated settlement to Trump’s liking. If they refuse to do so, they will be killed,” Thiessen writes.

At some point one of America’s enemies is going to assassinate a US official and my replies are going to be full of shrieking, outraged Americans acting like I’m the bad guy when I say Washington had it coming.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday condemned US-Israeli attacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, as unjustifiable under international law and humanitarian principles pic.twitter.com/fN2rwvS9Pm

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) April 16, 2026

Despite Lebanon Ceasefire, US And Israel Prepare For More War On Iran w/ Mohammad Marandi

US House narrowly rejects war powers resolution as dissent grows

The US House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly rejected a war powers resolution that would have prevented further military action against Iran, as Democrats united against continued US involvement in the conflict amid peace talks that have yet to make a breakthrough.

The resolution introduced by Greg Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, failed by a vote of 213-214, with one Republican member voting present. It required at least two more votes to pass, as tied votes fail in the House.

In a sign that Democrats had solidified in opposition to the war, three congressmen who had voted against a previous resolution in March – Henry Cuellar of Texas, Greg Landsman of Ohio and Juan Vargas of California – voted in favor of this attempt. Jared Golden of Maine was the sole Democrat to vote in opposition, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky the only Republican to vote for passage. Ohio’s Warren Davidson voted present, after voting in favor last month.

Larry Johnson & Col. Wilkerson: Iran Just FULLY Opened the Strait of Hormuz – It’s OVER for Trump

Hegseth says US is ‘locked and loaded’ to finish job of destroying Iran energy grid

Iran’s energy infrastructure is “not destroyed yet” and the US is “locked and loaded” to finish the job, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, said on Thursday as he called many of the press corps gathered the moral equivalent of the Pharisees who conspired to destroy Jesus Christ. Hegseth’s comments from the Pentagon podium came as a naval blockade of Iranian ports began this week and he called on Tehran to accept a nuclear deal or face consequences for its remaining infrastructure, power generation and energy industry.

“We are reloading with more power than ever before, and better intelligence, even more importantly, better intelligence than ever before,” he said. “You are digging out your remaining launchers and missiles with no ability to replace them. You can dig out for now. Can’t reconstitute, but we can,” he also said about Iran’s military leadership.

The choice facing Iran, he said, was straightforward. “We prefer to do it the nice way, through a deal led by our great vice-president and negotiating team, or we can do it the hard way.” On Iran’s nuclear program, he said: “The war department will ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. Never.”

Iran OPENS STRAIT After Trump BENDS To Demands

Pope says ‘world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants’

Pope Leo XIV has said that the world is being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants” who spend billions on war, in comments that will be seen as another sharp escalation in his almost week-long feud with the White House over the US-Israel war on Iran. The first American-born pontiff did not mention Donald Trump by name, but used his speech in Cameroon on Thursday to denounce world leaders that invoke religion to justify violence against other nations.

His comments came as US bishops offered their full-throated support to the head of the Catholic church, who has been under fire from Trump for days after speaking out against the Iran war. “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo told a gathering at Saint Joseph Cathedral in the western city of Bamenda.

“They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found. The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters,” said the pontiff, who is on an 11-day tour of Africa.

The unusually forceful statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, meanwhile, came after JD Vance, Trump’s vice-president and a converted Catholic, assailed Leo for speaking out against the war, in effect telling the pope to stay out of politics and “stick to matters of morality”.

The bishops said Vance had mis-stated Leo’s position. “For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war,” said the statement on Wednesday, attributed to James Massa, chair conference’s committee on doctrine. “A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword ‘in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed’. That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’

Iran is ready to go back to war, with Sara Larijani and Taha Zeinali

Trump announces 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon after ‘excellent conversations’

Donald Trump has announced a 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon to be followed by a meeting between Israeli and Lebanese leaders next week, in a deal that it is hoped will bring progress toward a parallel peace agreement between the US and Iran.

The ceasefire is due to take effect at midnight on Thursday in Lebanon, where Israel has been conducting devastating airstrikes aimed at wiping out the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia.

Trump said on social media that the truce was agreed after he held separate “excellent conversations” with Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Thursday.

Netanyahu said the ceasefire offered an opportunity for a “historic peace agreement”, but insisted that the disarmament of Hezbollah remained a precondition. “We have an opportunity to make a historic peace agreement with Lebanon,” Netanyahu said in a televised speech, adding that Israel would maintain a 10km (6.2-mile) “security zone” along the border in southern Lebanon.

Debt, Decline and Iran: Why the U.S. Can't Afford Another Forever War? w/ Dennis Kucinich

Lebanese army claims Israel violating truce

The Lebanese army claimed early on Friday that Israel had committed violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon that took effect at midnight, including intermittent shelling of several southern Lebanese villages.

In a statement cited by Reuters, the army also called on citizens to hold off on returning to southern villages and towns.

Israel warns southern Lebanese not to return south of Litani River

The Israeli military has issued an urgent warning to the people of southern Lebanon not to return south of the Litani River despite the ceasefire coming into effect.

Hezbollah earlier called on displaced Lebanese residents to delay returning to their homes in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs before the ceasefire came into force. The group also urged caution amid what it called Israel’s history of “breaking covenants and agreements”.

The Israel Defence Forces’ later “urgent message” on X was directed to “the residents of southern Lebanon”.

Israel SWARMED With "Biblical" Number of Bees

Israel escalates attacks on medics in Lebanon with deadly ‘quadruple tap’

When they received the call to respond to an Israeli airstrike in the city of Mayfadoun, in southern Lebanon, most of the paramedics held back, having previously seen colleagues killed by double-tap attacks targeting rescuers. But the medics from the Islamic Health Association (IHA) rushed to the scene.

By the time the other emergency workers arrived at the site, they found the IHA medics had indeed been caught in a second strike. They started evacuating their wounded colleagues, only for their ambulances to be hit in two further attacks. One of the paramedics covered his ears and screamed, convulsing in pain as shrapnel shattered the back window of the ambulance. The rescue mission on Wednesday afternoon had turned into a nightmare as Israel carried out three consecutive strikes on three sets of ambulances and medical workers.

In total, the attacks killed four medics and wounded six more, from three different ambulance corps, according to medical sources. Three of the medics were from the Hezbollah-affiliated IHA and Amal-affiliated medical corps, while one was from the Nabatieh emergency services organisation. Under international law, all medics are protected and are considered non-combatants, regardless of political affiliation.

Rescuers in Lebanon have long been wary of the double-tap attack, when Israeli forces target a location, wait until people gather to help survivors, and then strike again. Wednesday’s three-wave attack after the initial one prompted the coining of a fearsome new term: the quadruple tap.

In a video taken by one of the paramedics at the site, rescuers are seen loading two wounded people into their ambulances when a bomb lands next to their vehicle. Paramedics rush to extract the driver, who is motionless and limp as they pull him from the ambulance, which is splashed with blood. “Oh God, oh God,” the man filming can be heard saying. They carry two more blood-covered medics out of their vehicle and on to stretchers. Medics mourned their colleagues on Thursday at funerals in Nabatieh, a city near Mayfadoun. Such events have become increasingly common, with healthcare workers killed by Israeli bombings on a near daily basis.

Newly unsealed records reveal Amazon’s price-fixing tactics, California attorney general claims

Hundreds of previously redacted records reveal how Amazon has put pressure on independent sellers using its platform into raising their prices on the sites of competitors such as Walmart and Target, so that Amazon can appear to have lower prices, California authorities allege. The global conglomerate became concerned even if a competitor was selling an item for as little as a penny less, according to one segment of the newly unredacted evidence.

The documents – which have never previously been reported on – include internal emails, deposition testimony and confidential corporate presentations that the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, obtained as part of a civil case his office launched in 2022 accusing Amazon of large-scale price-fixing.

The Guardian obtained and reviewed the cache of evidence, which has been filed in San Francisco county superior court but has not yet become publicly available. Within the documents, lawyers for the state of California have unmasked key details, paragraphs and sometimes whole pages that had previously been blacked out. A judge permitted some redactions to remain at Amazon’s request.

In a statement, Bonta said the newly unveiled evidence reinforced his office’s claims that Amazon’s actions “unlawfully punishes sellers whose products are sold at lower prices by other online retailers”.

“Especially while consumers face an affordability crisis, there is no room for illegal practices that impede competition and raise prices,” Bonta said. “California looks forward to our trial in January 2027.”

As Americans Struggle With Soaring Prices, Trump Says $4 Gas Is ‘Not Very High’

President Donald Trump on Thursday brushed off Americans’ concerns about paying $4 per gallon of gas, telling a group of reporters that this price is “not very high.”

While speaking with journalists on the White House lawn, Trump was asked by a reported from ABC News how long Americans should expect to be dealing with high gas prices, which have soared since the president launched an unconstitutional war of choice with Iran more than six weeks ago.

“They’re not very high,” Trump said. “If you look at what they were supposed to be to get rid of a nuclear weapon, with the danger that entails, so the gas prices have come down very much over the last three or four days.”

Gas prices have not come down “very much” over the last four days. According to AAA, gas prices in the US currently average $4.09 per gallon, a slight decrease from the $4.16 they averaged the week prior.

After the reporter informed Trump that gas was still over $4 a gallon, he replied, “Well, that’s what ABC says, but the fact is, if you look at the stock market, it’s up. Everything’s doing really well.”

Shortly after Trump shrugged off concerns about high gas prices, he posted a message on Truth Social discussing the security features he wants to see in the luxury ballroom he’s been planning to build on White House grounds.

Among other things, Trump said he wanted the ballroom to have “Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations, Structures, and Equipment, Protective Missile Resistant Steel, Columns, Roofs, and Beams, Drone Proof Ceilings and Roofs, Military Grade Venting, and Bullet, Ballistic, and Blast Proof Glass.”

Aliya Rahman v. DHS: Disabled Woman Dragged from Car Files Claim over Violent Arrest in Minneapolis

A journalist filmed an ICE protest at a Minnesota church. Then federal agents showed up at her door

Georgia Fort was one of two journalists, alongside Don Lemon, charged for covering the 18 January protest during services at St Paul’s Cities church, where the pastor reportedly works as a field director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The two Black, independent journalists, and the protesters, were charged with unusual violations of law. Charging journalists is in general unusual. Trump has long cast the media as a foe and, during his second administration, has ramped up attacks on the press as part of his campaign of retribution.

During the height of “Operation Metro Surge” in January, days after a federal agent killed Renee Good, dozens of people entered the church to call attention to one of its pastors, who reportedly served as an acting field director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nearly 40 people have been charged over the protest in a sprawling case that pits the first amendment rights to protest and report against the free exercise of religion. The Trump administration has made clear that the case is a high priority. Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the civil rights division at the Department of Justice, has said the government is “going to pursue this to the ends of the earth”, which the government said in legal filings was not a political statement but “mere promises to vigorously enforce federal criminal law”.

Fort, 38, has worked as a journalist for nearly two decades and has been independent for roughly the last eight years, producing her own award-winning television show on a local Twin Cities station. She shares her reporting with her online audience of nearly 160,000 followers on Facebook and more than 130,000 on Instagram, and she’s highly involved in the journalism community, working to train the next generation of reporters.

The government has charged the Minnesota protesters with a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 (Face Act), a law used to charge people who vandalize a reproductive healthcare clinic, or who threaten, obstruct or injure someone who is trying to access that clinic. The law includes a previously unused provision that prohibits interfering with the exercise of religious freedom at a place of worship. The protesters face a second charge of conspiracy to deprive others of rights, a law originally created during the Reconstruction era to protect Black southerners from the Ku Klux Klan.

These types of charges against journalists are “unprecedented”, said Gabe Rottman, vice-president of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In the rare instance where a journalist is charged, it’s typically for trespassing, and those charges are often dismissed, he said. “It’s another escalation on the part of the second Trump administration,” he said. “It’s exceedingly rare, so much so that it hasn’t happened before. These particular statutes haven’t been used to charge a journalist.” The journalists will have strong defenses in this case, Rottman said. Prosecutors would need to prove that the journalists acted with an intent to deprive people of their rights, he said.

Texas immigration court interpreter detained by ICE says ‘they want to make me disappear’

A Texas court interpreter who was arrested by ICE after living in the US for more than 35 years is speaking out from detention, saying she has been “treated like a criminal” and fears being deported to a country where she has never been. Meenu Batra is the only licensed Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu court interpreter in the state, and has served as an interpreter for hundreds of people in immigration court.

Then, last month, immigration agents at Harlingen international airport stopped her and put her in handcuffs, and transferred her to El Valle detention facility in Raymondville. “It feels bizarre,” she said. “I don’t know how else to put it. Here I am just staring at the wall wondering what exactly I’m doing here but also what is anybody doing here.”

Batra, 53, had spent almost her entire adult life in south Texas, raising four children there. She had fled Indian pogroms against Sikhs in Punjab, and had arrived in the US in 1991. In 2000, an immigration judge granted her a “withholding of removal” to India, concluding she was likely to face persecution there. Now her lawyer worries the government plans to send Batra to a “third country” where she has never been.

Batra had been on her way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for work on 17 March when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer stopped her at the airport and asked: “Do you know that you are here illegally?” In a sworn deposition, Batra said that she responded, “No” – and clarified that she had a valid status and a legal work permit. She was taken away in an unmarked SUV, she said.

In a declaration filed as part of a petition for habeas corpus challenging her detention, Batra said that she was initially detained without food or water for 24 hours, and denied medication that she takes for her cholesterol for several days. She alleged that after she was arrested, officers made her pose for photographs with her hands behind her back to give the impression she was still handcuffed and told her the images were “for social media”.

Progressive Analilia Mejía takes New Jersey US House special election

Progressive Democrat Analilia Mejia wins congressional special election in New Jersey in a landslide

Democrat Analilia Mejia won a special election to represent New Jersey’s 11th congressional district in the House of Representatives in a landslide, the Associated Press reports.

Mejia who narrowly defeated Tom Malinowski, a former congressman, in the Democratic primary, after a super PAC aligned with AIPAC hit him with a barrage of negative ads, took more than 70% of the vote in early counting.

Malinowski, a supporter of Israel, had criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2023, and refused to rule out placing conditions on US aid to Israel.

Mejia, who was endorsed by Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is far more critical on Israel and was the only candidate in the Democratic primary to call Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza a genocide.

Three Winners at the Latest DNC Meeting: Israel, Ethnic Cleansing, and Genocide

In the aftermath of last week’s big meeting of the Democratic National Committee in New Orleans, supporters of the US-Israel alliance have been quite content. “We’re pleased that the DNC Resolutions Committee rejected a set of divisive, anti-Israel resolutions,” the president of Democratic Majority for Israel said. The CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, a former national security advisor to Kamala Harris, expressed gratitude to the DNC’s leadership.

Why did pro-Israel groups voice so much pleasure and praise—not only for the sidelining of pro-human-rights resolutions but also for the process that sidelined them? The answer has to do with the DNC’s mechanism that thwarted changes in positions on Israel. A panel named the Middle East Working Group gummed up all efforts to align the DNC with the views of most Democratic voters, even while supposedly hard at work.

Last Friday, the transparent thinness of the pretense caused Politico to headline an article this way: “Inside the DNC’s Middle East (Not) Working Group.” But the not-working group had been functioning quite well—as a charade for delay and obfuscation.

The day before the derisive headline appeared, the DNC Resolutions Committee dispensed with a resolution about events in Gaza and the West Bank. Its provisions included a declaration that the DNC “supports pausing or conditioning US weapons transfers to any military units credibly implicated in violations of international humanitarian law or obstruction of humanitarian assistance.”

That resolution critical of Israel went nowhere, which is to say it went to the so-called working group, also known as a “task force.”

Assisting the diversion as chair of the Resolutions Committee was political strategist Ron Harris, described in his home state of Minnesota as a “longtime Democratic Party insider.” He made false claims during the meeting: “I know that the task force has met once a month since it was created…. I have the confidence that work is happening…. These are people working really really hard over a very thorny issue…. They are doing their work…. They’re hearing from experts and all sorts of things.”

The falsehood that the task force had met “once a month,” when actually it had scarcely met, was enough reason for me to contact Harris and ask where he’d gotten that (mis)information. He replied that it was “according to the DNC staffer coordinating the process.”

The basic problem with the working group is not only that it hasn’t done much of anything in the nearly eight months since DNC Chair Ken Martin announced it with great fanfare. The underlying hoax is that it was set up not to reflect the views of registered Democrats nationwide.

Polling is clear. Three-quarters of Democrats agree that “Israel is committing genocide,” and a large majority are more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis by a 4-to-1 margin. But only a minority of the Middle East Working Group’s eight members has a record of supporting

Palestinian rights, while several are firm supporters of Israel. The oil-and-water mix seems destined for stalemate or mere platitudes. But stalemate and platitudes appear to be just fine from here to the horizon for DNC leadership.

Such stalling mechanisms and scant real representation are as old as the political hills. In this case, an unfortunate boost has come from James Zogby, who for decades bravely worked inside the Democratic Party and elsewhere to advocate for the human rights of Palestinians, in sharp contrast to US foreign policy.

As the most prominent person in the Middle East Working Group, Zogby has hailed it as an important step forward. Aligning himself with Martin’s approach from the outset, he said that the new chair’s move to set it up was “politically thoughtful.”

Zogby can remember when, in the 1980s, party leaders did not want to hear the “p-word”—Palestinians. He has portrayed the current sparse intra-party discussion related to Israel as major progress. “Don’t count me among those who left New Orleans complaining of defeat,” Zogby wrote in an April 14 piece for The Nation.

After that article appeared, I spoke with Zogby, and he summarized his approach this way: “I have a tendency to feel like sometimes there are little victories, and I latch onto them. Moving to catch up to where Democrats are.”

Compare that approach to this assessment days ago from Mike Merryman-Lotze, the American Friends Service Committee’s director of Just Peace Global Policy: “The failure of the DNC to take even minimal action in the face of ethnic cleansing and genocide is shameful.”

When my RootsAction colleague India Walton loudly interrupted the DNC’s business as usual during its general session a week ago, she was challenging a political culture of conformity that has ongoing deadly consequences. The context involves a simple and crucial choice—between excessive patience or urgency that’s grounded in life-and-death human realities. Those realities exist very far away from the transactional atmosphere of entrenched political institutions.

All this matters for at least two profound reasons: One is that, on the merits, silent or euphemistic complicity with Israel’s methodical policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide is abhorrent.

And given the crystal-clear polling, the failure of the Democratic Party leadership to oppose military aid to Israel threatens to seriously damage the turnout needed to defeat Republicans at election time (as polls have shown was the case with Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign for president). “Eight-in-10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents currently have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 69 percent last year and 53 percent in 2022,” the Pew Research Center reported last week.

In these exceedingly dystopian times, when realism is more important than ever, it’s a grave mistake to let rose-colored glasses distort vision and substitute undue patience for vital urgency.

Stakes high as supreme court set to rule on law involving Monsanto’s weed-killing pesticide

The US could face foreign attacks, food shortages and agricultural “devastation” if the supreme court rules against Monsanto in a closely watched case over pesticide regulation that is set for arguments later this month, according to a series of legal briefs supporting the company. In contrast, opposing legal briefs warn that if the court sides with Monsanto, consumers will be stripped of their rights to sue when they develop cancer or other serious diseases they attribute to exposure to dangerous chemicals. Companies will be able to hide product risks with little accountability, they warn.

The case centers on glyphosate – a widely used weed-killing pesticide that has long been a favorite of farmers, but also has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies. The court’s task is to determine if federal law essentially pre-empts states’ labeling requirements for products that could cause harm.

The issue is galvanizing people across the US, spurring arguments that cross political lines. Hundreds of organizations and individuals, including elected officials from dozens of states and former high-ranking federal officials, have filed lengthy legal briefs detailing arguments they hope will sway the court’s decision. Many have also been vying – via a supreme court “lottery” – for a ticket to watch the 27 April hearing in person. And members of the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement are planning a “People v Poison” rally outside the courthouse they hope will draw thousands of protesters.

“It’s an important case,” said Allen Rostron, associate dean of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. “I’d characterize it as one significant battle in a much wider and longer war over these kinds of issues about how best to balance interests in public health and safety against other concerns.” Monsanto, owned since 2018 by the German conglomerate Bayer, believes a ruling in its favor would help put an end to lawsuits brought by people who say using Roundup herbicide and other glyphosate products caused them to develop cancer, and Monsanto failed to warn them of the cancer risk.

The core of Monsanto’s case before the supreme court is its position that under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (Fifra), it cannot be held liable for failing to warn of a cancer risk associated with its products if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not found such a risk exists. “EPA has determined that glyphosate and Roundup do not cause cancer and that a warning stating otherwise is neither required nor permitted under Fifra,” the company states in its brief to the court. More than 100 individuals and organizations have filed briefs opposing Monsanto’s position, arguing that federal law clearly carves out space for separate state labeling requirements, including for warnings of product risks.

‘Foreign Billionaires First, America Last’: Critics Slam GOP Over Mining Approval Near Minnesota Boundary Waters

Democratic lawmakers and environmental protection groups condemned Senate Republicans on Thursday for their “heartbreaking” passage of a House resolution to overturn a 20-year moratorium on mining in the watershed of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the nation’s most visited wilderness area—a vote that critics said was the result of years of lobbying by a foreign-owned mining firm.

House Joint Resolution 140 now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk, nearly a decade after Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta, the owner of Twin Metals Minnesota, began discussing with Trump’s first administration its desire to build a copper mine over the pristine area.

“Because of this extremely short-sighted vote, our nation’s most-visited wilderness area faces the threat of permanent toxic pollution,” said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.). “Why? So Antofagasta, a Chilean corporation that owns Twin Metals, can mine American copper and ship it to China to be smelted and sold on the global market. Twin Metals has been lobbying President Trump and Republicans in Congress for over ten years to remove the protections from this watershed and renew their mine plans to extract American minerals at the expense of freshwater for future generations.”

The 50-49 vote in the Senate, said Environment America, puts the 1.1 million-acre wilderness area for heavy metals leaching into the soil and water through acid mine drainage.

Toxic runoff from copper mining, said the group, “ultimately poisons the land and water surrounding a mine, making the ecosystem unlivable for wildlife.”

According to Jacobin, Antofagasta spent $200,000 on lobbying in the final quarter of 2024 and $230,000 in the first quarter of 2025 “on issues including federal leases for Twin Metals.” The Chilean company is owned by billionaire Andrónico Luksic, who rented out his $5.5 million mansion in Washington, DC to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, then-White House adviser Jared Kushner, from 2017-21.

Republican Senators will soon vote to allow a Chilean company to mine in the BWCA watershed.

Who asked for this? The billionaire owner of mining conglomerate Antofagasta – who happens to be Ivanka Trump’s former landlord. https://t.co/HLUO0O7VMw

— Rep. Betty McCollum (@BettyMcCollum04) April 15, 2026

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.

China Thinks Ahead To Reduce Its Reliance On Petroleum

US & Israel Bomb 307+ Medical Facilities in Iran

Iran War: Trump Expects Hugs From China, Israel Still Bombing Lebanon

US Statement on Lebanon Ceasefire Leaves Major Loophole That Israel May Exploit To Continue Attacks

Zionist Logic, Malcolm X, 1964

Hegseth Says US ‘Locked and Loaded’ To Bomb Iran’s Power Plants and Energy Industry

‘The Pirate State’

In Third Boat Strike This Week, US Kills 3 People in ‘Entirely Make-Believe’ Armed Conflict Against Cartels

American Heresy

Ben Jennings on the US-Iran war and AI slop – cartoon
Ben Jennings

AOC FLAMED For Nonsense Answer on Pelosi Replacement

A Little Night Music

The Animals - Bo Diddley

The Animals - One Monkey Don't Stop No Show

The Animals - Let The Good Times Roll

The Animals - Dimples / Boom Boom

The Animals - Gin House Blues

The Animals - Ain't Got You

The Animals - I Put A Spell On You

The Original Animals – The Fool

The Original Animals – Just A Little Bit

The Animals - Let It Rock / Gotta Find My Baby