Friday, March 21, 2025

Nature’s warriors: How rice plants detect and defend against viral invaders

Peking University

Peking University, March 20, 2025: A groundbreaking study led by Li Yi, professor at the School of Life Sciences, was published in Nature on March 12, titled “Perception of viral infections and initiation of antiviral defence in rice”, uncovering a molecular mechanism by which rice cells perceive viral infections and initiate antiviral response, which significantly contributes to understanding of virus-host interactions for further disease resistance breeding.

Why it matters:
Viruses affecting rice, a staple food for more than half of the world population, pose persistent threats to crop production and could severely undermine global food security. Though recent discoveries have revealed how rice plants mitigate such threats by initiating immune responses against insect-borne viruses, the molecular mechanism by which plant hosts perceive viral infections and initiate defense remains elusive.

Key Findings & Methodology:
The research team introduced viruses to rice plants via insect vectors, employing natural infection methods that mimic real-world agricultural conditions to provide more accurate insights into plant-virus interactions.
The study uncovered a complete antiviral immune pathway that sets off the following reactions in the plant’s immune system:
1. Perception and recognition of viral coat proteins mediated by RBRL;
2. Degradation of jasmonic acid(JA) signaling pathway repressors;
3. Activation of RNA silencing core protein AGO18 expression via the jasmonic acid signaling pathway;
4. Upregulation of a synergistic defense mechanism involving AGO18-mediated RNA interference and reactive oxygen species (ROS), which strengthened the plant’s ability to fend off the virus.

Other key findings include:
1. The RING1-IBR-RING2 type ubiquitin ligase(RBRL) in rice can not only recognize the coat protein (CP) of the Rice stripe virus (RSV) but also the coat protein P2 of the Rice dwarf virus (RDV).
2. Further research indicates that the RSV CP not only induces an upregulation of RBRL expression but also activates the ubiquitin ligase activity of RBRL. This, in turn, promotes the ubiquitination and degradation of the jasmonic acid signaling pathway repressor NOVEL INTERACTOR OF JAZ 3 (NINJA3) mediated by RBRL, thereby activating the jasmonic acid signaling pathway in rice.

Significance
The discovery made by Li Yi's team, combined with their previous research findings, has elucidated a core antiviral pathway in rice. This pathway encompasses the entire chain of processes from the perception of viral infection by rice cells to the activation of the antiviral immune mechanisms in rice. This research represents a milestone in plant virology and crop science, bringing researchers closer to developing a multi-target strategy for antiviral breeding of crops.

*This article is featured in PKU News' "Why It Matters" series. More from this series.

Click "here" to read the paper

Written by: Yang Yimeng
Edited by: Wu Jiayun, Chen Shizhuo
Source: PKU News (Chinese)

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-08706-8

Article Title

Perception of viral infections and initiation of antiviral defence in rice

Racial and ethnic inequalities in actual vs nearest delivery hospitals

JAMA Network Open

About The Study:

This cohort study found that American Indian and Black individuals delivered at lower-quality hospitals than white individuals. The disparity in care between Black and white birthing individuals would have been reduced if individuals had delivered at their nearest hospital.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nansi S. Boghossian, PhD, email nboghoss@email.sc.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.1404)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

# # #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.1404?guestAccessKey=c0957767-f5eb-4d6d-88a4-15c747418b57&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=032125

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

Journal

JAMA Network Open

State earned income tax credits and firearm suicides

JAMA Network Open

About The Study:

In this cohort study, the presence and generosity of state refundable earned income tax credits were associated with a decrease in firearm suicide rates, supporting the growing body of literature highlighting the importance of antipoverty policies for reducing firearm suicide.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Nicole Asa, MPH, email nasa3@uw.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.1398)

# # #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.1398?guestAccessKey=c0957767-f5eb-4d6d-88a4-15c747418b57&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=032125

Journal

JAMA Network Open

How Should We Rethink Our Relationship to US Violence Around the World?

Democracy-destroying forces thrive off militarism. We have to resist both.

By George Yancy ,

Truthout

March 18, 2025

People hold an antiwar vigil on the 20th anniversary of the U.S. war in Iraq, on March 19, 2023, in New York City.Leonardo Munoz / VIEWpress

The outrages are raining down one after another: Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine is responsible for the war with Russia, which thus blames Ukraine for the deaths of its own people and implicitly supports Putin’s use of unrestrained military force. Trump’s proposal to forcefully relocate Palestinians from Gaza, which functions as an extension of ethnic cleansing. Trump’s exaggerated use of “invasion” to describe undocumented immigrants, which is a military term used to describe those “enemies” infiltrating a territory with the aim to conquer.

As news like this comes down, I often wonder just how far I am willing to go speaking against those power structures that are responsible for so much catastrophe, profound grief and actual and potential violent death.

Those power structures include what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.” It can be argued that those triplets constitute the raison d’être of the U.S. — the purpose for its existence.

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Speaking out against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967, King quickly became an unpopular figure. In fact, notes Brian Jones at Jacobin, “Opinion polls conducted just prior to King’s death one year later indicated that 72 percent of white people and 55 percent of black people disapproved of his opposition to Vietnam.” But King was convinced that it was time to speak out: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

One fortifying source in our collective effort to speak out and resist the jingoistic nature of the U.S. is the courageous work of Norman Solomon, who is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, demonstrates that the U.S. is driven by warmongering. Indeed, he writes, “The militarism that propels nonstop U.S. warfare is systemic.”

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In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Solomon discusses the mainstream media silence around U.S. militarism. He articulates ways of resisting such silence, of rejecting denial. He provides deep insights regarding U.S. participation in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, reminding us that the U.S. is run by those who qualify as war criminals, and how the political economy and anti-democratic forces are linked to the U.S. being a war criminal system. Furthermore, Solomon links forms of racist othering and U.S. warfare. The interview that follows has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

George Yancy: In your book, War Made Invisible, I get the sense that many Americans would rather not know about the horrible atrocities that the U.S. has committed around the world via military violence. In what way are corporate media outlets in the U.S. (what you call “mainline American media”) responsible for maintaining many Americans’ willful ignorance regarding the ugly and dehumanizing realities of what happens in war?

Norman Solomon: Patterns of media silence and evasion are crucial. When empathy is very selective about victims of war, it’s easy to fall into the tacit assumption that some grief is profound and some is trivial — lives that really matter and lives that don’t. That’s usually implicit in what’s communicated from mainline U.S. media and even more routinely from U.S. government officials. They emphasize the humanity of some and ignore or downplay the humanity of others, and I do mean “others.” For Americans and for the society as a whole, the dynamic is deeply corrosive in realms that we might call moral, ethical, spiritual, political — and the results are foreign policy that serves the U.S.’s warfare state while relying on hypernationalism and what George Orwell called “doublethink.” Windows on the world are tinted red, white and blue.

The essence of propaganda is repetition, and it keeps reinforcing a kind of mass media wall. There are cracks in the wall — some exceptional journalism can happen in even the largest news outlets — but overall, the structural constraints are unyielding. So, in this century, fairly rigid taboos have prevented much candid reporting or commentary in major U.S. media about the horrors that the U.S. military has directly inflicted on a huge scale, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and elsewhere, as well as indirectly in many other places, including Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza.

When an official enemy of Washington is responsible for massive war atrocities, as with Russia in Ukraine, the U.S. media try hard to convey the horrors in human terms. But when Pentagon firepower is responsible, the empathetic coverage of its victims is ratcheted way down, if not nonexistent. And in medialand, if the perpetrators are at the top of the U.S. government, the narrative has victims without victimizers, just well-meaning American policy makers who sometimes make mistakes and miscalculate. In tandem with the nonstop flow of official pronouncements, a premise of mass media is that U.S. policies might be flawed at times but the impetus is basically to do good in the world.

When Pentagon firepower is responsible, the empathetic coverage of its victims is ratcheted way down, if not nonexistent.

In your book, you argue courageously about the necessity for changing mainline reporting in the United States. You point out how mainline reporting avoids telling the truth about the horrors of wars and how the U.S. explicitly engages in wanton violence. Furthermore, the U.S. military-industrial complex seems invested in perpetuating a narrative or a form of framing that “exculpates” it from charges of warmongering. Talk about the ways in which mainline reporting needs to be challenged.

The needed transformations are concentric: growing individual awareness, strengthening truly independent journalism, challenging corporate media outlets (as the media watchdog group FAIR does so well), freeing artistic expression from constraints of the profit motive, organizing for basic political change inside and outside electoral arenas, and developing mass movements against the corporate power that fuels the country’s runaway militarism along with countless destructive effects of neoliberal capitalism at home and abroad. In the process, I think it’s much healthier to shift away from emphasis on “speaking truth to power” and toward speaking truth about power. Realism about 24/7 class warfare is necessary for building vital capacities.

A straightforward look at U.S. military interventions in the last 80 years brings into focus clear pictures of methodical policies on several continents. And that means overcoming chronic avoidance. Few grow up comprehending that their government has been, and is being, run by people who qualify as war criminals. But that has been the case for many decades, not simply as a matter of individuals in power, but most importantly because of the political economy and the anti-democratic forces that are dominant. We could call it a war criminal system. Such understanding is at odds with acceptable discourse in mainstream media. One result can be cognitive dissonance. If people reject denial, they’re left facing inconvenient and often horrific truths — and, in the usual U.S. frameworks of media and politics, likely marginalization or excommunication for the sin of ethical realism. We need to expose these dynamics, bring them out into the open and confront them.

When finishing War Made Invisible, of course, I thought a lot about how to end the last chapter. I could do no better than quoting these words from James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Speaking of warmongering, in my discussion with scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan, she clearly points out how Israeli children are taught to perceive Palestinians/Arabs as “racially other,” as “primitive” and “disposable.” In War Made Invisible, you discuss how race (or racism) frames other human beings as “racialized enemies” within the context of war. As a philosopher who writes about race/racism, I am painfully aware of how this framing is used to “justify” the killing of human beings. Speak to how you understand anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab racism as a powerful and nefarious factor impacting the current and ongoing slaughter of innocent Palestinians by the State of Israel. I would be remiss not to mention that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the interrelationship between “the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism.”

It’s been chilling to see videos of Israeli children singing and waving Israeli flags at right-wing rallies for relentless war on Gaza while Palestinian children there are being bombed and starved along with their relatives. So many descriptive words come to mind: Racism. Ethnocentrism. Religious fanaticism. Spiritual rot. Fascistic cruelty. And parallel with the deadly hate is the nationalism of Israel that strives for Jewish supremacy and a warped sense of superiority over Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. Meanwhile, in the United States, strong currents of such attitudes can be discerned in the claims of America’s Jewish Zionists, and the more numerous Christian Zionists for that matter. Twisted religious passions get tangled up in racist pathologies and belief in serving God by extinguishing the lives of those perceived to be obstructing the purity of holy agendas.

Few grow up comprehending that their government has been, and is being, run by people who qualify as war criminals. But that has been the case for many decades

Racial and religious toxins are constantly swirling around U.S. politics, as personal biases combine with functionality within the U.S. warfare state, which is tightly synced up with Israel’s military. Last year — even though polls showed that a majority of Americans opposed shipping weapons to Israel as long as its war in Gaza continued — Congress kept approving huge arms shipments to Israel while it went on with ethnic cleansing and genocide. The conformity that took hold was stark from the outset in October 2023, and there was a racial aspect. Here’s a telling fact: Two weeks after Israel’s siege of Gaza began, just 4 percent of the House of Representatives had signed on to a resolution calling for “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine”; the sponsor and all 18 co-sponsors were legislators of color. The speed and intensity of their response stood out. As the war on Gaza continued, not a single white House member’s name went onto the resolution.

For almost a quarter of a century, the racial subtext embedded in the “war on terror” has been hidden in plain sight. Beginning with the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, virtually all the victims of Pentagon firepower have been people of color. Countries aren’t bombed because people of color are living there — but the fact that people of color are living there makes it easier to start and continue wars on them. While the liberal establishment is apt to concede that systemic racism is at work in a wide range of domestic institutions and policies, scarcely a word gets said about the systemic racism at work in foreign policy. Meanwhile, the powerful military of the Israeli apartheid state is a close partner with the Pentagon. When I was working on the afterword about the Gaza war for the paperback edition of War Made Invisible, I realized that the book’s subtitle directly applies: “How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.” The Israeli military is a major adjunct to the U.S. military machine. The command structures are different and the national leaders might differ about tactics at times, but their missions and operations remain firmly aligned.

Clearly, it is in the interests of the U.S. to keep the human toll of war invisible. The invisibility helps to construct the U.S. (and I would also include the State of Israel here) as a “victim,” and as “innocent.” This narrative of “victimhood” and “innocence” also enables U.S. citizens to see themselves as far removed from being complicit with U.S. violence. Because I grapple with this question constantly, I want to pose it to you: How should U.S. citizens rethink their relationship to U.S. violence around the world? There is a remark that you make in your book where you’re discussing “the hellish realities in Gaza” and you state how this is “largely courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.” I am ethically consumed by this issue of complicity, my own complicity. How do you think about this?

Silence is complicity. Inaction is complicity. In the Middle East and elsewhere, people’s homes have been on fire, sometimes literally, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers and civic acquiescence. Much of the U.S.’s entire culture revolves around buying things and looking out for real or imagined self-interest. For sure, many Americans are preoccupied with their personal struggles, whether financial, health, family troubles, all kinds of distress. Yet to the extent we can be more aware of the very real forms of violence and deprivation that the U.S. government is causing to be inflicted in many parts of the world, we have opportunities to escalate nonviolent opposition to the actual roles of “our” government on this beautiful and tormented planet.

While it is hard to admit, Donald Trump is now at the helm of the U.S. and head of its military might — yet again. I disdain Trump’s ethical ineptitude, his fascistic tendencies and his indifference to truth-telling. I recall he once said that he would not take the nuclear option off the table regarding Europe and the Middle East. When I think about the fact that we are now 90 seconds to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, a Trump presidency ought to scare all of us. Or perhaps motivate us to resist the possible consequences of his administration. Any thoughts on Trump and war?

Instead of “crackpot realism,” we now have crackpot egotism in control of the executive and legislative branches. As bad as many of Joe Biden’s cabinet members were, comparing them to Trump’s cabinet ought to make clear the absurdity of claims we’ve heard over the years that there is no significant difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Noam Chomsky was correct when he described the Republican Party as the most dangerous organization in human history. This doesn’t let “Genocide Joe” and the neoliberal Democrats off the hook for their horrendous crimes and terrible policies.

We need to acknowledge simultaneous truths. While militarists are running both parties, one of them is emphatically racist, misogynist, resolutely anti-democratic and determined to crush virtually every major facet of social progress since the New Deal. The Trumpist Republican Party is hellbent on dismantling the remaining elements of democracy in this country. Militarism thrives on the destruction of democracy, and vice versa. To what extent Trump will be a war president remains to be seen, but his political agenda is clearly fascistic. Our responsibilities include fighting against militarism, racism, sexism and predatory corporatism — along with all the intermeshed evils — while also fighting for a truly progressive future to nurture life instead of destroying life.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

George Yancy is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery fellow at Dartmouth College. He is also the University of Pennsylvania’s inaugural fellow in the Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Program (2019-2020 academic year). He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 25 books, including Black Bodies, White Gazes; Look, A White; Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America; and Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. His most recent books include a collection of critical interviews entitled, Until Our Lungs Give Out: Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), and a coedited book (with philosopher Bill Bywater) entitled, In Sheep’s Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism (Roman & Littlefield, 2024).

Hungary Bans LGBTQ Pride Events, Approves Facial Recognition to Track Attendees

Thousands protested the ban outside Hungary’s parliament, blocking traffic and defying police orders to disperse.

By Zane McNeill ,

Truthout

March 19, 2025

Demonstrators hold banners during a protest on March 18, 2025, in Budapest, Hungary.Janos Kummer / Getty Images

Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of Budapest after Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok approved a law prohibiting LGBTQ Pride events and authorizing the use of facial recognition technology to monitor attendees.

“This law is a full-frontal attack on the LGBTI community and a blatant violation of Hungary’s obligations to prohibit discrimination and guarantee freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” Dávid Vig, director of Amnesty International Hungary, said in a statement.

According to Amnesty International, the law was introduced on March 17, rushed through Parliament without public consultation, and is set to take effect on April 15. Opposition lawmakers staged a dramatic protest in the legislature, releasing rainbow-colored smoke bombs, but the measure passed by a vote of 136 to 27.

“In targeting Budapest Pride, [Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán is both making a powerful statement about what kind of people he and his party think Hungarians (and all people) should be in terms of their gender and sexual expression, and making it much less possible for all Hungarians to express social and political dissent of any kind,” Hadley Renkin, a gender studies professor at Central European University, told Truthout.

The law amends Hungary’s Act on the Right of Assembly, criminalizing the organization of events and penalizing attendance at gatherings that violate the country’s “Propaganda Law,” which forbids the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors. LGBTQ advocates argue that far right politicians are exploiting concerns about minors’ safety as a pretext to target LGBTQ people.

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Viktor Orbán is isolated in Europe and needs a friend in the White House in order to fulfill his larger agenda. By Heather Digby Parton , Salon March 11, 2024

“This is not child protection, this is fascism,” the Budapest Pride organizers said in a statement.

Under the law, people who participate in a banned Pride event could be identified by facial recognition software and face fines of up to 200,000 HUF (around 550 USD). Andrea Peto, gender studies professor at Central European University, explained to Truthout that this marks the first instance in which Hungary has approved facial recognition technology to track participants and impose fines.

Critics of the law warn that Hungary’s approach closely mirrors that of Russia, where in December 2022, President Vladimir Putin expanded the country’s ban on “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” to include adults, effectively criminalizing public support for LGBTQ rights.

“This isn’t a new form of power (or hate) at all, but it’s very clear that this kind of politics places the human body (and its gender, sexuality, race, class, etc.) and its surveillance and control at the center of the struggle for absolute power. And this is, in fact, one of — if not the most — iconic signs of true fascism,” Renkin said.

Renkin also highlighted how Trump’s recent attacks on civil liberties and transgender people in the U.S. may be emboldening far right leaders in Hungary and across the world. “Although this isn’t a surprise and was really pretty much expected, it’s clear that Orbán and people like him, and the anti-queer right wing not just in Hungary but throughout the world, has been greatly emboldened by Trump and everything he’s been doing,” Renkin told Truthout.

In response to the Pride ban, thousands of protesters gathered outside Hungary’s Parliament after the vote, chanting anti-government slogans. The demonstration later moved to the Margaret Bridge over the Danube River, where protesters blocked traffic and defied police orders to disperse.

“The attack on Pride is a nationalist, neo-conservative response to the crisis of the neoliberal global order, so it’s not just about LGBTQ people, it’s about everyone who is committed to human rights and democracy,” Peto told Truthout. “It is an attack on liberalism and therefore indirectly on democracy.”

Since returning to power in 2010, Orbán and his right-wing government has systematically eroded LGBTQ rights under its nationalist agenda. Early in his tenure, Hungary’s constitution was rewritten to consolidate power while restricting civil liberties. Marriage was defined strictly as “the union of a man and a woman,” excluding same-sex couples, and the definition of family was limited to heterosexual partnerships. In 2020, Hungary revoked legal recognition for transgender and intersex people, preventing them from changing their names or gender markers on official documents.

The following year, the government enacted a “propaganda law,” banning LGBTQ representation in educational materials and media accessible to minors. This led to censorship in schools, legal action against booksellers, and restrictions on LGBTQ content in television and media. Renkin notes that the Pride ban is an extension of this law and “is exactly what many of us feared when the media representation law was first passed — though the facial recognition provision is a new and frightening twist.”

Renkin and Peto told Truthout that this marks a dangerous escalation in Orbán’s attacks on civil liberties. “The right to assembly was changed and the parliament voted yesterday and the president approved today,” Peto emphasized. “The fact that the media is discussing Pride even [as] the Basic Law formerly known as Constitution is being amended to allow the introduction of ‘child protection’ for this ban is a good antiliberal political communication strategy.”

Despite the ban, Budapest Pride organizers have said that they plan to move forward with this year’s march on June 28.

“This law has a major impact on the LGBTQ people in Hungary and globally, as this is just the beginning,” Peto continued. “Hungary is a laboratory so if this law happens, the other countries will follow this example.”

“I think we should expect more of this, in Hungary and elsewhere,” Renkin added.

Trump and DOGE’s Attacks on CFPB Will Help Financial Industry Prey on Consumers

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is meant to protect us from predatory finance. That’s why Trump wants it gone.

By Sasha Abramsky ,

Truthout

March 20, 2025

Demonstrators hold signs as they attend a protest against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's anticipated plan to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in front of the CFPB headquarters in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 2025.Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the destructive impact of predatory lenders on the well-being of individual borrowers and the health of the broader economy became increasingly clear. In response, a growing number of political figures, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, pushed for the creation of an agency that would represent consumer interests against predatory finance. The agency sought to ensure the enforcement of existing regulations and create new ones to rein in the financial industry.

Congress passed legislation that would establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in 2010, and the newly minted agency began operations the following July. On its website, the CFPB explains its origin story this way: “Many Americans took on loans that they did not fully understand and could not afford. Although some borrowers knowingly took on too much debt, many Americans who behaved responsibly were also lured into unaffordable loans by misleading promises of low payments. Honest lenders that resisted the pressure to sell complicated products had to compete with their less responsible competitors.”

For the past 14 years the CFPB has protected ordinary Americans against credit card companies with misleading policy on interest rates and fees; against payday lenders, whose fees can add up to the equivalent of hundreds of percent interest per year; against banks for the charging of so-called “junk fees”; against lenders hawking misleading loans guaranteed by borrowers’ car ownership titles, and so on. In 2023 alone, it brought 29 enforcement actions, winning more than $3 billion in compensation for consumers, and bringing in nearly half a billion dollars in fines levied against companies.

This is, in other words, a modest example of the federal government putting its resources to work to benefit ordinary Americans against wealthy, exploitative corporations. For that very reason, it has long been in the crosshairs of the GOP and the party’s wealthy donor base. Trump’s first administration repeatedly tried to break the agency, with the Heritage Foundation lobbying for its demise and Trump appointing the fiercely pro-business Mick Mulvaney to head the agency. The administration also argued that the creation of the CFPB as an independent agency was in and of itself unconstitutional.

Ultimately, Trump 1.0 didn’t succeed in its efforts to incapacitate the agency, and in many ways the CFPB’s footprint, and its enforcement actions grew, or, at the very least, continued apace through 2021. When Biden became president, pushing a pro-consumer agenda, the CFPB continued to grow in importance, to the disdain of much of corporate America.

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Now, under Trump 2.0, corporate America has its second chance to destroy a government outfit that offers modest protections for the vulnerable against the powerful and the rich.

In the weeks after Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) tried to simply “delete” the CFPB, despite the fact that it was created by Congress and can thus only be legally abolished by Congress. In fact, after USAID, no part of the federal bureaucracy attracted the malignant laser-focus attention of DOGE as did the CFPB, which Musk took to regularly attacking on his X account.

On February 7, the oligarch, whose Tesla company had faced hundreds of consumer complaints to the CFPB, and whose efforts to create an X-Visa payment processing partnership were also likely to be flagged by the bureau, posted “CFPB RIP” on X. It was in keeping with DOGE’s efforts to go after the National Labor Relations Board, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and other parts of the federal bureaucracy that had, at one point or another, stood in the way of the most predatory or unethical of Musk’s business practices.

For 14 years, the CFPB has stood for the little person against the oligarchs. Now the oligarchs are once again out in force.

The next day, newly acting head of the CFPB Russell Vought, who also is in charge of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, ordered agency staff to stop all work on developing new rules, on investigating corporate malfeasance, as well as all litigation and all public communication. He then informed the Federal Reserve, which funds the agency, that the CFPB won’t be taking any additional moneys for its operations the following quarter. The union representing workers at the agency also let it be known that they had reason to fear he was preparing to return its $711 million balance, thus essentially rendering it entirely defanged. This was followed up by another memo to the agency’s roughly 1,700 staff prohibiting them from engaging in any work at all, and to not come into the office — an office which Vought then reportedly sought to have the lease terminated on.

In the week surrounding February 14, dozens of probationary staff at the agency were fired. Vought also canceled $100 million in contracts that the CFPB had with companies that did things such as help process consumer complaints. At about the same time, DOGE operative and former pharmaceutical lobbyist Chris Young was brought in as a “senior adviser” to the bureau.

All of this prompted a fierce legal pushback. Days after Vought’s efforts to dismember the CFPB in all but name, the National Treasury Employees Union went to court alleging that Vought was planning to lay off 95 percent of the agency’s staff.

It didn’t take long for U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to side with the union in this case. She concluded that Vought and/or DOGE could not simply fire thousands of employees without cause and issued a temporary restraining order. In early March, the order was extended, and, as of publication, the agency’s corps of staff remains largely intact, albeit in the Vought-ordered deep freeze in which most of its daily work is no longer being carried out.

In recent weeks, the CFPB has dropped at least 10 cases against lenders, including, according to Reuters, a case against Capital One accusing the bank of withholding billions of dollars in interest payments from customers. Dozens of other cases are now on hold.

All of this shifts the burden of protecting consumers onto the states, privately funded lawsuits and ultimately consumers themselves. That doesn’t mean consumers have no protections left; but it does mean that under Trump, the federal government is basically washing its hands of even modest efforts to protect consumers — especially the low-income and/or borrowers of color who have most frequently ended up at the wrong end of particularly exploitative lending practices — thus further tipping the scales in favor of some of the worst players in the lending industry.

Given the other actions of this oligarchical administration, none of this should be a surprise. Part of DOGE’s mission seems to be to obliterate any system or agency that can stop Musk’s and Trump’s accumulation of power and wealth. For 14 years, the CFPB has stood for the little person against the oligarchs. Now the oligarchs are once again out in force, uprooting the systems that stand in their way and rapidly returning the lending industry to the worst practices of the pre-financial crisis days.

Israel's Takeovers of Gaza Hospitals Amount to 'War Crimes,' Says Human Rights Watch

"The Israeli military's denial of water and electricity left sick and wounded people to die, while soldiers mistreated and forcibly displaced patients and health workers, and damaged and destroyed hospitals."

Gazan teams investigate after Israeli forces destroyed al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on April 17, 2024.
(Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Mar 20, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

As the Israel Defense Forces continued a devastating assault on the Gaza Strip Thursday, a U.S.-based rights group said that the IDF "caused deaths and unnecessary suffering of Palestinian patients while occupying hospitals" there over the past 18 months, "amounting to war crimes."

"International humanitarian law provides that hospitals and their staff may not be deliberately attacked," states the new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report. "Parties to the conflict must at all times respect and protect hospitals and take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to patients, staff, and facilities during the hostilities."

Like previous publications exposing the IDF's systematic destruction of the Gaza health system, the HRW report lays out how Israeli forces who occupied hospitals neglected their legal obligations and instead "severely interfered with the treatment" of injured and sick Palestinians, including by denying doctors' pleas to bring in supplies and blocking access to facilities and ambulances, "leading to the deaths of wounded and chronically ill patients."

HRW interviewed patients and healthcare workers present for Israeli takeovers of al-Shifa medical complex in Gaza City, Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, and the Nasser facility in Khan Younis. According to witnesses, the IDF "denied electricity, water, food, and medicines to patients; shot civilians; mistreated health workers; and deliberately destroyed medical facilities and equipment. Unlawful forced evacuations put patients at grave risk and left desperately needed hospitals nonfunctional."

In the section on Israeli activities at al-Shifa in November 2023, HRW reported that "Ridana Zukhra, 25, said she left al-Shifa with her children, brother, and cousin when Israeli forces ordered people to evacuate. Despite holding white flags, a tank fired at the group, badly wounding her daughter, Ghazal, 5, whose leg had to be amputated."

The report also shares accounts from the hospital five months later:
Dr. Badr B., 28, who asked not to use his real name for his protection, said that electricity at the hospital was cut off at about 2:00 am on March 18. Israeli forces broadcast a message that no one could leave, he said, and they shot and wounded four healthcare workers near the entrance. A doctor told the BBC that two patients on life support died because of the electricity cut.

Israeli forces seized the complex with "military vehicles, snipers, quadcopters [drones], soldiers, everything," Dr. B. said. Israeli forces ordered the 72 healthcare workers left at the hospital to transfer about 180 patients from the third and fourth floors of the ICU in the specialized surgeries building to the ground floor and warned they would "start shooting at these floors" within two hours. Dr. B. said that they began "shooting as we were evacuating the last group, three [patients] on crutches and the rest in wheelchairs." Staff then transferred patients to the hospital's reception building.

HRW also detailed Israel's December 2023 assault on Kamal Adwan and the February 2024 raid at Nasser, "when 850 patients and up to 10,000 displaced people were sheltering there."

According to the publication:
Duaa D., who asked that her real name not be used for her protection, said her son Mohammed, 20, was a kidney patient in Nasser hospital at the time, where there was no fresh food, clean water, or medicine for Mohammed's hypertension. Her two younger children, sheltering in a tent in the hospital courtyard, went sleepless with fear. Mohammed said he could barely walk and had lost almost half his body weight due to vomiting and diarrhea, that the water was contaminated, and that he could not digest the canned food due to his chronic illnesses.

On February 13, Duaa saw Jamal Abu al-Ola, 25, who had been sheltering in the hospital, in a white hazmat suit with his hands bound. NBC and other media reported that Israeli forces had detained and beaten him and ordered him to warn the hospital to evacuate, threatening to kill him and others if he did not return. Duaa said al-Ola shared the warning and left the hospital, but soon after was carried back in and "shot, with a fountain of blood pouring." Witnesses told news media that Israeli forces shot and killed him near the hospital entrance.

Duaa told HRW that she saw a large number of bodies on the ground and recalled an "unbearable" smell. "We saw cats and dogs eating bodies," she said. "Once a dog brought a human hand and gave it to its puppies."

Bill Van Esveld, associate children's rights director at HRW, demanded accountability for Israeli troops' well-documented war crimes.

"Israeli forces repeatedly demonstrated deadly cruelty against Palestinian patients in hospitals that they seized," Van Esveld said. "The Israeli military's denial of water and electricity left sick and wounded people to die, while soldiers mistreated and forcibly displaced patients and health workers, and damaged and destroyed hospitals."

"The Israeli military's occupation of Gaza's hospitals has transformed sites for healing and recovery into centers of death and mistreatment," he added. "Those responsible for these horrific abuses, including senior officials, should be held to account."

The report was published just days after Israel fully abandoned a cease-fire that took effect in January. Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Khalil Al-Dakran toldAnadolu Agency on Thursday that "the bodies of 710 people were transferred to hospitals since Tuesday, in addition to over 900 others injured."

Al-Dakran said that 70% of the injured were women and children, and "many of the injured died due to the lack of urgent medical care amid an Israeli blockade on Gaza, which causes a severe shortage of essential equipment and medicine."

Since the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel, the IDF has slaughtered at least tens of thousands of Palestinians—leading to an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

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