As Trump Dismantles the Republic, Where Are Its Former Leaders?

Tens of millions of Americans voted for our past presidents. They are waiting for them to speak up, stand up, and mightily help lead the fight to stop Trump’s mayhem against the American people in red and blue states.



(L-R) Former U.S. Vice Presidents Al Gore and Mike Pence, Karen Pence, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former U.S. President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, former U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Melania Trump, former U.S. President Joe Biden, Jill Biden, former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and Doug Emhoff attend the state funeral for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Washington National Cathedral on January 9, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Ralph Nader
Apr 13, 2025

Common Dreams

If there was ever a strong contemporary case for declaring that silence is complicity, consider the hush of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and even George W. Bush as they grind their teeth over the Donald Trump-Elon Musk wrecking of America. Trump is destroying freedom of speech and due process, abolishing democratic restraints, and establishing a criminal fascistic dictatorship.

Trump pounds Biden for the Trump administration’s blunders and failures an average of six times a day. These assaults go unrebutted by the Delaware recluse, nursing his political wounds.

The Clintons? Bill sticks to his private telephone wailings. While Hillary, who gave us Trump in 2016 with her smug, stupid campaign, penned a self-anthem op-ed in The New York Times on March 28, 2025. She writes: “Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.” Trump is not belligerent enough for the war hawk Hillary Clinton who has been the pro-Iraq sociocider butcher of Libya and the ardent supporter behind provocative “force projection” of the Empire around the world.

What would all the GIs, who they caused to lose their lives in their presidential wars, think of their timidity?

Before turning to the excuses for essentially shutting themselves up during our country’s greatest political upheaval—unconstitutional and criminal to the core—here is what prominent former Democratic presidents and presidential candidates COULD do:Tens of millions of Americans voted for our past presidents. They are waiting for their leaders to speak up, stand up, and mightily help lead the fight to stop Trump’s mayhem against the American people in red and blue states. The people want former Democratic leaders to galvanize the Democratic Party, still largely in disarray about confronting Trump.

Don’t they know they have a trusteeship obligation to citizens, many of whom are voicing their demands for a comprehensive plan of offense against the GOP in town meetings and other forums?

The media, threatened daily by Trump, is eager to give former Democratic Party leaders coverage.They are all mega-millionaires, very capable of raising many more millions of dollars quickly with their fame and lists of followers. They know very rich people as friends. They could set up strike forces in Washington and around the country to provide needed, fighting attorneys, organizers, and other specialists to ride head-on against the proven damage to health, safety, and economic well-being of people here and abroad and counter Trump’s daily cruel and vicious assaults. They could end Trump’s unrebutted soliloquy of lies and false scenarios over mainstream and social media.
They could push the Democrats in Congress to hold constant “unofficial” public hearings and file resolutions and legislation that provide the daily evidence of this dictator and his recidivistic criminality and push for impeachment and Trump’s removal from office. Impossible, you might say with the GOP in narrow control on Capitol Hill. Look back at Richard Nixon who for far fewer violations was told by Republican senators that his time was up. Politicians save their political skin in approaching elections before rescuing an unstable, egomaniacal, vengeful politician like the one now camped at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Trump will be soon plunging in polls and stock market drops, inflation, recession, and more Gestapo-like kidnappings and disappearances to foreign prisons of targeted individuals. These conditions are not popular with the American people.
The former Democratic leaders could do what Bernie Sanders is doing and traverse the country supporting the fighting civic spirit of the American people who oppose the painful afflictions wrought by Tyrant Trump.
Gore is well-credentialed to show how the actions of Hurricane Donald, Tornado Trump, Drought Donald, and Wildfire Musk’s fossil-fuel-driven greenhouse gases are leading to a climate catastrophe. The facts and trends Trump omnicidally ignores need to be front and center.

Even George W. Bush, known for causing the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis and the destruction of their country by his criminal war of aggression has a beef. His sole claim to being a “compassionate conservative”—the funding of life-saving AIDS medicines overseas—has gone down in flames with Trump’s illegal demolition of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Bush may be mumbling about this, but he’s staying in his corner painting landscapes.

All this abhorrent quietude in the face of what they all believe is a mortal attack on the Republic has the following excuses:

First, they don’t want to get into a pissing match with a slanderous ugly viper, who unleashes his hordes of haters on the internet. That’s quite a surrender of patriotic duty at a time of unprecedented peril. What would all the GIs, who they caused to lose their lives in their presidential wars, think of their timidity?

Second, it wouldn’t have much impact. America doesn’t listen to “has-beens.” Then why is Obama still the most popular retired politician in America with over 130 million followers on Twitter? That attitude is just convenient escapism.

Third, plunging into the raucous political arena with the Trumpsters and Musketeers is just too disruptive of a comfortable daily routine life by politicians who believe they have been there, done that, and deserve a respite. Self-diminishment gets you nowhere with tens of millions of people in distress who seek powerful amplifiers from well-known leaders behind the demand that Trump understands: YOU’RE FIRED, ringing throughout the nation from liberals and betrayed Trump voters hurting in the same ways. That mass demand is what pushes impeachment of the most visibly impeachable president in American history.

In the final analysis, it comes down to their absence of civic self-respect and cowardliness in confronting Der Fuhrer. Aristotle was right: “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”

Want Equitable Tax Policy? Listen to the Patriotic Millionaires, Not Donald Trump

The new Patriotic Millionaires tax plan isn’t going to become the law of the land anytime soon, but it could help refocus America’s political debate onto the dynamics that are threatening to destroy our democracy.



A mobile billboard calling for higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy depicts an image of billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos, near the U.S. Capitol on May 17, 2021 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sam Pizzigati
Apr 14, 2025

Inequality.org

Republican leaders in Congress have been working feverishly over recent days to renew the rich people-friendly 2017 Trump tax cuts set to expire at this year’s end. Both the House and Senate have now passed bills that do that renewing—and also add in some assorted new goodies.

All that remains before this latest giveaway to grand fortune becomes law: a bit of dickering between House and Senate GOP leaders over the tax cut’s particulars and then President Donald Trump’s John Henry on whatever legislation that dickering ends up producing.

Trump can barely wait for the signing ceremony. But he’s also pushing for much more than an extension—and expansion—of those 2017 tax cuts. His ultimate goal: erasing taxes on income from the entire federal tax code.

Some 48% of Americans say they worry “a great deal” about how “income and wealth are distributed,” a remarkably high share of the public given how seldom our media and politics directly address that distribution.

“You know,” Trump told a press conference this past Tuesday, “our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff based. We had no income tax.”

Over those years, federal revenue most certainly did come mostly from tariffs. And those tariffs did work wonders—for the nation’s rich. Our original Gilded Age wealthy frolicked in an America where the rich and their corporations could essentially operate however they pleased. They could pay their workers precious little and cavalierly short-change consumers at every opportunity.

In that same America, the federal government did precious little to protect average Americans from greed and grasping—and even less to make their lives more economically secure.

Changing that profoundly unequal state of affairs took decades of organizing on the part of workers, farmers, and middle-class reformers. By 1913, that organizing had paid off. The ratification of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that year gave Congress the authority to levy income taxes. By the end of World War I, America’s wealthy faced a 79% levy on their top tax-bracket income.

But the nation’s rich would come roaring back in the Roaring Twenties. America’s wealthiest flexed their political muscles enough to get that top tax rate down to 25%. They would go on to party hardy throughout that decade, right up until the 1929 stock market crash. The 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that Trump so likes to trumpet helped turn that crash into the Great Depression.

Amid that unprecedented downturn, America’s grassroots would rise up and break the plutocratic lockgrip on public policy. Working people would gain collective bargaining rights. Seniors would gain Social Security. The super rich would gasp as federal tax rates on their top-bracket income jumped to over 90%.

The end result? By the mid-1950s, over half America’s households had money left over after meeting their most basic living expenses. No modern nation had ever before reached that status.

That share-the-wealth momentum, unfortunately, would soon begin ebbing. Since the late 1970s, as the Economic Policy Institute has detailed, only Americans of substantial means have been sharing in Corporate America’s economic bounty.

How can we change this top-heavy state of affairs? Last week, at an unusual conference in Washington, D.C., activists highlighted a detailed agenda for making America start working for all Americans, not just the wealthiest among us. What made this confab so unusual? The people who put it together all just happen to rate as wealthy themselves.


The sponsor of this How To Beat the Broligarchs gathering: Patriotic Millionaires, the national group that’s been organizing Americans of means to “tax the rich, pay the people, and spread the power” since 2010. This past week’s broligarch-bashing conference gave these millionaires—and activists and scholars equally interested in creating a more equal United States—a vibrant forum for sharing information, insights, and, most importantly, an ambitious gameplan for ending rule by the rich.

“Our economy should be judged on how well it takes care of working people,” as Patriotic Millionaires founder Erica Payne notes, “not on how many billionaires it mints in a calendar day.”

To take better care of working people, the new Patriotic Millionaires economic plan, entitled America 250: The Money Agenda, proposes a “Cost of Living Tax Cut Act” that would exempt all annual income up to $41,600—the current cost of living for the typical American adult—from federal income tax.

Another Patriotic Millionaires-proposed piece of legislation, the “Cost of Living Wage Act,” would nearly triple the federal minimum wage, from $7.25 an hour to $20, a rate that would adjust every year to rising prices.

To help trim our richest down to something resembling democratic size—and offset the cost of exempting low incomes from income tax—the Patriotic Millionaires plan would also start subjecting millionaires to a surtax on their taxes due.

Another part of the plan would tax the capital gains millionaires pocket—their profits from buying and selling stocks and other assets—at the same rate as ordinary earned income. Still another plan section would essentially prevent the mostly tax-free intergenerational transfer of assets from the super rich to their super fortunate offspring.

What makes that prevention so important? Under current law, point out Patriotic Millionaires analyst Bob Lord and law professors Brian Galle and David Gamage in a new research paper, between 80 and 90% of the wealth “that rich families have set aside for their heirs will likely never be subject” to the over-a-century-old federal estate tax.

The first phase of the “Anti-Oligarchy Act” the Patriotic Millionaires plan is proposing would have all inheritances over $1 million taxed as ordinary income. This phase would also “impose a progressive tax on large sums of trust-held wealth to limit the accumulation of dynastic wealth.”

The second phase would seek to impose “a tax on the wealth of the richest Americans sufficient to reduce their wealth to a level in harmony with the ideals of democracy, amending the United States Constitution if necessary.”

The pollsters at Gallup have just asked Americans if they worry “a great deal”—or much less—about 16 different current-day concerns. Some 48% of Americans say they worry “a great deal” about how “income and wealth are distributed,” a remarkably high share of the public given how seldom our media and politics directly address that distribution.

The new Patriotic Millionaires tax plan obviously isn’t going to become the law of the land anytime soon. But the plan could help refocus America’s political debate onto the dynamics that are threatening to destroy our democracy. Let’s get that debate going. Soon.

'Cruel and Dangerous': Trump Ends Protected Status for Afghans and Cameroonians

One advocate said the move was "yet another example of the Trump administration using immigration policy to target the most vulnerable among us."

Denis, from Cameroon, is greeted by supporters after speaking during a rally with activists from CASA, SEIU and, other organizations in Lafayette Park to demand "Temporary Protected Status for Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador on International Workers Day," on Monday, May 1, 2023.
(Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)


Olivia Rosane
Apr 12, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it was revoking the Temporary Protected Status—or TPS—for thousands of immigrants from Cameroon and Afghanistan who are currently living and working in the United States.

The move, the latest attempt by the administration to roll back protections for migrants in the U.S. who cannot safely return to their home countries due to conflict or natural disasters, comes despite the fact that advocates say conditions in both countries remain dangerous.

"TPS exists for a reason: to protect people whose return to their country would place them in grave danger. Afghanistan today is still reeling from Taliban rule, economic collapse, and humanitarian disaster. Nothing about that reality has changed," president and CEO of Global Refuge Krish O'Mara Vignarajah said in a statement. "Terminating protections for Afghans is a morally indefensible betrayal of allies who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us to advance American interests throughout our country's longest war."

"We cannot afford to lose this protection; our lives depend on it."

President Donald Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants a central plank of his 2024 campaign. However, since taking office, he has consistently moved not only to crack down on undocumented immigration but to revoke the status of migrants who are in the country legally. This has included attempting to strip TPS from other nationalities, revoking visas and even green cards from immigrants from certain countries or who voice opinions the administration dislikes, and ordering nearly 1 million people who entered the country using a Biden-administration app to leave "immediately."

Friday's decision would impact more than 14,600 Afghans and 7,900 Cameroonians, who would now have to leave the country by May and June respectively, according toAl Jazeera.

TPS means that immigrants from certain countries undergoing conflict or hardship—who may not qualify for asylum—will not be deported and will be able to work legally in the U.S. until the situation in their home country improves.

Cameroonians have been grated TPS due to civil conflict between the government and separatists that sparked in 2017. The violence has collapsed the economy and forced almost 1 million people to flee their homes within the country. More than 1.8 million people there urgently need humanitarian assistance.

"TPS has been a lifeline that has allowed me to live in safety and dignity," Amos, a Cameroonian TPS holder and member of CASA—a group that organizes working class Black, Latino, African-descendant, Indigenous, and immigrant communities—said in a statement. "Returning to Cameroon would put me and thousands of others in grave danger, as violence and government attacks continue to devastate our communities back home. With the protection of TPS, I have been able to build a stable life in the U.S., contribute meaningfully to my community, and pursue a future full of promise. We cannot afford to lose this protection; our lives depend on it."

CASA executive director Gustavo Torres said: "By ending TPS for Cameroon, President Trump has again prioritized his instincts for ethnic cleansing by forcibly returning people to violence, human rights violations, and a humanitarian crisis in Cameroon that continues to place its citizens at severe risk. Cameroon clearly meets the statutory basis for the redesignation of TPS. This termination of TPS is a xenophobic attack that targets our families and neighbors and endangers the economy of the U.S."

In Afghanistan, the Taliban government continues to violate human rights, arresting Afghans who worked with the U.S.-backed government and severely limiting the freedom of women and girls.

"For Afghan women and girls, ending these humanitarian protections means ending access to opportunity, freedom, and safety," Vignarajah said. "Forcing them back to Taliban rule, where they face systemic oppression and gender-based violence, would be an utterly unconscionable stain on our nation's reputation."

In addition, the Biden administration determined in 2023 that conflict in the country contributed to internal displacement and economic instability, making it difficult for people there to access food, water, and healthcare.

Council on American-Islamic relations-California CEO Hussam Ayloush said:
Ending TPS for Afghans and Cameroonians is a cruel and dangerous escalation of the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda and a shameful betrayal of our moral and humanitarian obligations. These individuals have fled war, persecution, and instability—and, in the case of many Afghans, risked their lives to support U.S. operations. This decision will separate families and force people into the shadows. For some of them, TPS may be their only option for protection from deportation. It's yet another example of the Trump administration using immigration policy to target the most vulnerable among us. Decisions such as these deepen fear in our communities and erode trust in our government's commitment to protecting human rights.

There is a good chance, however, that the administration's decision will not stand up in court. A federal judge has already temporarily blocked its attempt to end protections for Venezuelans, saying the order was "motivated by unconstitutional animus."

"We will closely examine the terminations to determine whether the government complied with the TPS statute in determining Afghanistan and Cameroon are now safe to accept returns of their nationals as required by the TPS statute," Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney who helped bring the case challenging the ending of TPS status for Venezuelans, toldThe New York Times.

Sanders and AOC Draw Crowd of 20,000+ in Utah—A State Trump Won by Over 20 Points

"We're here in so-called 'conservative' Utah, and tomorrow we're gonna be in Idaho," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "Because we believe that in every state of this country, people are prepared to stand up and fight."


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appear before a crowd of 20,000 people in Salt Lake City, Utah on April 13, 2025.
(Photo: Bernie Sanders/X.com)

Jake Johnson
Apr 14, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew a crowd of more than 20,000 people in Salt Lake City, Utah on Sunday for the latest stop on the progressive duo's "Fight Oligarchy" tour, which has attracted energized audiences across the United States as public anger at the Trump administration mounts.

"We're here in so-called 'conservative' Utah, and tomorrow we're gonna be in Idaho. Because we believe that in every state of this country, people are prepared to stand up and fight," Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd gathered in Salt Lake City's Huntsman Center.

Roughly 4,000 people were in the overflow crowd outside the Huntsman Center, according to the Vermont senator's communications director. President Donald Trump won the state of Utah by more than 20 percentage points in the 2024 election.

"We are living in the most dangerous moments in the modern history of this country," Sanders told the Salt Lake City audience. "We are living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control our government... We do not want a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class—we want a government that represents all of us."

Sanders' remarks followed a fiery speech by Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has emerged as a leading voice against the Trump administration and outspoken critic of the Democratic leadership's capitulation in the face of what the progressive lawmakers characterized as a growing authoritarian threat.

"We are at a crossroads in America," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We can either have extreme and growing wealth inequality with the toxic division and corruption that it requires to survive, or we can have a fair economy for working people along with the democracy and freedoms that uphold it."

"Oligarchy or democracy," she added, "but we cannot have both."

Watch the rally in full:



The Salt Lake City event came after a week in which Trump continued to wreak global havoc with his billionaire-enriching tariff chaos and Republicans in Congress moved ahead with another round of tax breaks for the wealthy—giveaways they want to pay for, in part, with massive cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.

"It does not surprise us that their first economic mission has been to target Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, firing our federal workers, and cutting benefits from our veterans for hundreds of billions of dollars, so that they can hand that money off to the wealthiest," Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday.

The Utah event came days after Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez appeared before a crowd of 36,000 in Los Angeles, which the Vermont senator described as "our biggest rally ever."

"When Donald Trump looks out at this crowd—and they pay attention to this stuff, Elon Musk does—you are scaring the hell out of them," Sanders said at the Los Angeles rally. "Because they know what we know: They are the 1% and we are the 99%." \

Following Record-Breaking LA Rally, Sanders Takes Fighting Message to Coachella

"We need you to stand up to fight for justice—fight for economic justice, social justice, and racial justice," Sanders told the festivalgoers.


U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is seen on giant screens as he speaks on stage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 12, 2025 in Indio, California.
(Photo: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)


Olivia Rosane
Apr 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders capped off a record-breaking Los Angeles stop on his "Fighting Oligarchy" tour with Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday by making a surprise appearance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.

Sanders took the festival stage Saturday night to introduce singer-songwriter Clairo—whom he praised for using her platform to fight for women's rights and "to try to end the terrible, brutal war in Gaza." Before introducing the singer, he shared a message with the young people in the crowd.

"The country faces some very difficult challenges, and the future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation," Sanders said to cheers. "Now you can turn away and you can ignore what goes on, but if you do that, you do it at your own peril. We need you to stand up to fight for justice—fight for economic justice, social justice, and racial justice."



Sanders criticized U.S. President Donald Trump in particular for his denial of the climate emergency.

"Now we've got a president of the United States," Sanders began, only to be interrupted by a chorus of boos.

"I agree," he said, continuing to lament that Trump "thinks climate change is a hoax. He is dangerously wrong."

"You and I are going to have to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them to stop destroying this planet," Sanders said.

He also urged the audience to stand up for women's rights, an economy that prioritizes the working class over billionaires, and the right to healthcare.

His speech at Coachella came after he addressed a crowd of tens of thousands with Ocasio-Cortez at Los Angeles' Gloria Molina Grand Park Saturday afternoon. Writing on social media, Sanders said the event drew a crowd of 36,000, breaking the record he and the New York representative set in Denver in March.

"Your presence here today is making Donald Trump and Elon Musk very nervous," Sanders said as he announced the record to the crowed.



The pair repeated many of the themes that have defined the "Fight Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here" tour since Sanders launched it in February to counter both the billionaire takeover of the U.S. government and the move toward authoritarianism under Trump.

"We're living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life… We're living in a moment where the president has no understanding or respect for the Constitution of the United States, and let us make no doubt about it, moving us rapidly toward an authoritarian form of society," Sanders said Saturday afternoon, as the Los Angeles Daily Newsreported.

"And, Mr. Trump, we ain't going down," he said.

Ocasio-Cortez called out "Trump's corrupt and disastrous tariff scheme" that played out over the past week, in which the president announced new tariffs on Tuesday only to declare a pause when the market fell, causing it to rally again. The incident has sparked suspicions of insider trading.

"It's been despair every day. And being around all these people and hearing these messages is helpful right now."

"I hope that we all see now that the White House's tariff shuffle here didn't have anything to do with manufacturing like they claimed," she said. "It was about manipulating the markets. It was about hurting retirees and everyday people in the sell-off, so Trump could quietly enrich his friends whom he nudged to buy the dip before reversing it all in the morning."

AOC also criticized the culture of playing the stock market in U.S. Congress, saying the body and its members "have somehow conditioned itself to actually believe that it is normal for elected representatives who swear an oath to the American people to day trade individual stocks that make millions with the sensitive information we are entrusted with for the purpose of governing."

"How can anyone possibly make an objective vote on healthcare, energy, or war when their personal money is tied up in pharmaceutical, oil and gas, or defense company stock?" she asked, before concluding, "They can't."

At Saturday's rally, the two lawmakers were also joined by musical guests Neil Young, Joan Baez, The Red Pears, Maggie Rogers, Indigo de Souza, and the Raise Gospel Choir, as well as other progressive politicians and community leaders including Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), District 1 LA City Councilmember Eunissess Hernandez, California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez, and SEIU President April Verrett.

The event inspired hope in several of the 36,000 attendees, with Myylo Lewis of Silver Lake, California tellingThe Guardian that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders were the "closest thing to a version of America you actually want to live in."

"I needed this right now," 32-year-old Tracy Setto of Palmdale told the Los Angeles Daily News. "It's been despair every day. And being around all these people and hearing these messages is helpful right now."

David Rasmussen, meanwhile, felt inspired.

"We've all got to rise up together, fight it, push it back, make something else happen because this cannot go on," Rasmussen toldAl Jazeera.

The Los Angeles event was the first in a five-day Western swing of the tour. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez will next appear in Salt Lake City on Sunday evening, followed by stops in Nampa, Idaho; Bakersfield, California; Folsom, California; and Missoula, Montana.

"The American people, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, do not want billionaires to control our government or buy our elections," Sanders said in a statement announcing the Western part of his tour. "They do not want Republicans to decimate Social Security and the Veterans Administration. They do not want huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the country paid for by massive cuts to Medicaid and other programs that working families rely on. That is why I will be visiting Republican-held districts all over the Western United States. When we are organized and fight back, we can defeat oligarchy."

Israel Preparing to Seize Ethnically Cleansed City of Rafah as Part of Permanent Buffer Zone

"The entire city of Rafah is being swallowed up," warned one Israeli human rights group. "The massive death zone... continues to grow by the day."

Palestinians ethnically cleansed from Rafah in southern Gaza carry their belongings as they flee in search of safety on March 31, 2025.
(Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)


Brett Wilkins
Apr 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The Israel Defense Forces is preparing to permanently seize the largely depopulated Palestinian city of Rafah—comprising about 20% of Gaza's land area—and incorporate what was once the embattled enclave's third-largest city into a borderland buffer that IDF troops have described as a "kill zone" rife with alleged war crimes.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretzreported Wednesday that "defense sources" said an area from the so-called Philadelphi corridor along Gaza's border with Egypt and the Morag corridor—the name of a Jewish colony that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis—will be incorporated into the buffer zone that runs along the entire length of the Israeli border.

The affected area includes the entire city of Rafah—which is thousands of years old—and surrounding neighborhoods, which were home to more than 250,000 people before Israeli launched what United Nations experts have called a genocidal assault on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.



As Haaretz's Yaniv Kubovitch reported:
Expanding the buffer zone to this extent carries significant implications. Not only does it cover a vast area—approximately 75 square kilometers (about 29 square miles), or roughly one-fifth of the Gaza Strip—but severing it would effectively turn Gaza into an enclave within Israeli-controlled territory, cutting it off from the Egyptian border. According to defense sources, this consideration played a central role in the decision to focus on Rafah...

It has yet to be decided whether the entire area will simply be designated a buffer zone that is off-limits to civilians—as has been done in other parts of the border area—or whether the area will be fully cleared and all buildings demolished, effectively wiping out the city of Rafah.

In recent weeks and for the second time during the war, IDF troops forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands residents from Rafah and other areas of southern Gaza in an ethnic cleansing campaign reminiscent of the 1948 Nakba, or "catastrophe" in Arabic, through which the modern state of Israel was founded. Most Gaza residents today are Nakba survivors or descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from other parts of Palestine in 1948.

Earlier this month, Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced plans to seize "large areas" of southern Gaza to be added to what Katz called "security zones" and "settlements."

Jewish recolonization of Gaza is a major objective of many right-wing Israelis. Last month, Katz announced the creation of a new IDF directorate tasked with ethnically cleansing northern Gaza, which Israeli leaders euphemistically call "voluntary emigration." Katz said the agency would be run "in accordance with the vision of U.S. President Donald Trump," who in February said that the United States would "take over" Gaza after emptying the strip of its over 2 million Palestinians, and then transform the enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East." Trump subsequently attempted to walk back some of his comments.

Earlier this week, the Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence published testimonies of IDF officers, soldiers, and veterans who took part in the creation of the buffer zone. Soldiers recounted orders to "deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions."



Palestinians who dared enter the perimeter, even accidentally were targeted, including civilian men, women, children, and elders. One officer featured in the report toldThe Guardian: "We're killing [men], we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."

Most of Gaza's more than 2 million residents have been forcibly displaced at least once since Israel launched the war, which has left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Widespread starvation and disease have been fueled by a "complete siege" which, among other Israeli policies and actions, has been cited in the ongoing South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Jewish Group Says Trump 'Using Jews as an Excuse' to Spy on Social Media Posts of Immigrants

One critic accused the administration of "cynically claiming to be fighting antisemitism" despite being "the most openly antisemitic U.S. administration in living history."


A protestor holds a sign that reads, "Jews for Free Speech" during a protest in New York City demanding the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist and recent Columbia graduate, on March 10, 2025.
(Photo: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Apr 12, 2025

COMMON DREAMS

A Jewish-led progressive advocacy group was among those expressing horror Wednesday at a new policy unveiled by the Trump administration as part of what it claims is a wide-scale effort to protect Jewish people from antisemitism, but which critics warn is itself antisemitic.

The decision by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to begin considering immigrants' "antisemitic activity on social media," said Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, is actually an example of the administration "using Jews as an excuse to move a cruel, anti-immigrant, authoritarian agenda."

"This will NOT fight antisemitism," said the group. "We refuse to be used this way."

DHS said that effective immediately, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will begin screening immigrants' social media activity for what the administration views as expressions of antisemitism, including "endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic activity." The agency's findings could be seen "as a negative factor in any USCIS discretionary analysis when adjudicating immigration benefit requests," such as green card or visa applications, it said.

The agency cited President Donald Trump's executive orders that he says are aimed at "combating antisemitism"—which have also been used to round up international students, deny them due process, and threaten them with deportation for speaking out for Palestinian rights.

DHS did not specify what views expressed on social media could be used against an immigrant applying for benefits, but its approach to the State Department's "catch and revoke" program targeting international students who have called for their schools to divest from Israel suggests the agency won't simply be looking for immigrants who threaten the safety of Jewish people.

"This move by DHS will chill online expression for people in the United States and abroad alike."

In recent weeks the Trump administration has revoked the visas of hundreds of international students and immigration agents have detained Palestinian rights advocates including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk. One DHS official explicitly conflated Khalil's involvement in pro-Palestinian protests with terrorism in explaining why he should be deported, and Secretary of State Marci Rubio suggested Ozturk had created "a ruckus" by writing an op-ed calling on her school, Tufts University, to divest from companies that benefit from Israel's assault on Gaza.

Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that in addition to "targeting people based on nothing more than their First Amendment-protected expression," it will likely used "error-prone automated tools" to detect what it views as antisemitic activity.

"These tools are guaranteed to improperly categorize an unknown number of applicants as violent, terroristic, or antisemitic, even by the administration's broad definitions of those terms," said Ruane. "Given the U.S. government's demonstrated willingness to strip people's legal status for engaging in constitutionally protected speech it dislikes, this move by DHS will chill online expression for people in the United States and abroad alike."

Writer Dan Berger said the administration is "cynically claiming to be fighting antisemitism" despite being "the most openly antisemitic U.S. administration in living history."

Elon Musk, who was chosen by Trump to lead efforts to slash public spending at the Department of Government Efficiency, provoked shock from rights groups—but shrugs from the Republican Party and a leading pro-Israel organization—when he displayed what appeared to be a Nazi salute at an inauguration event in January. He has also promoted Germany's far-right party, Alternative for Germany, which has promoted Nazi slogans, and minimized the Holocaust at a rally for the group.

"Dark, abysmal stuff, and a pox on everyone whose defense of genocide made this possible," said Berger.

Jezebel reporter Kylie Cheung also pointed to politicians on both sides of the aisle, such as former President Joe Biden, who have vehemently supported Israel's assault on Gaza and accused those who speak out against it of antisemitism.

DHS's social media policy, said Cheung, "is the natural conclusion of every politician, Democrat and Republican, broadly smearing anti-genocide protesters as antisemitic terrorist sympathizers for the last two years."

DOGE Is Reportedly Spying on Federal Workers With AI Technology

"We have been told they are looking for anti-Trump or anti-Musk language," an anonymous source said of potential surveillance at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.


Elon Musk of the Department of Government Efficiency shows off a shirt that says "Tech Support" while speaking at the first cabinet meeting of President Donald Trump's second term at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Eloise Goldsmith
Apr 10, 2025

COMMON DREAMS

Staff with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fear that billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is spying on them using artificial intelligence, according to reporting from Reuters, The Guardian, and Crooked Media's newsletter What a Day.

According to Reutersreporting published Tuesday, Trump administration officials told some managers at the EPA that DOGE is rolling out AI to monitor for communications that may be perceived as hostile to U.S. President Donald Trump or Musk, citing two unnamed sources with knowledge of the situation.

According to those two sources, who relayed comments made by Trump-appointed officials in posts at the EPA, DOGE was using AI to monitor communication apps such as Microsoft Teams. "Be careful what you say, what you type, and what you do," an EPA manager said, according to one of the sources.

"We have been told they are looking for anti-Trump or anti-Musk language," a third source told Reuters.

The outlet, however, could not independently confirm whether AI was being implemented.

After the story was published, the EPA told Reuters in a statement that it was "looking at AI to better optimize agency functions and administrative efficiencies." However, the agency said it was not using AI "as it makes personnel decisions in concert with DOGE." The EPA also did not directly address whether it was using AI to snoop on employees.

In response to Reuters' reporting, the government accountability group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wrote on X, "Let's be clear: the career civil servants who work in the government serve the American people, not Donald Trump."




According to Thursday reporting from The Guardian and Reuters, EPA managers told employees during a Wednesday morning meeting that DOGE is "using AI to scan through agency communications to find any anti-Musk, anti-Doge, or anti-Trump statements," according to an employee who was quoted anonymously.

Since returning to power, Trump has launched an all-out assault on environmental protection, including through cuts to programs and personnel at the EPA. According to The New York Times, the EPA has already undergone a 3% staff reduction so far, but the agency also plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, which would mean dismissing as many as 1,155 scientists, according to reporting from last month. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has also said he would like to cut 65% of the agency's budget.

The Guardian and What a Day also reviewed an email from a manager at the Association of Clean Water Administrators, a group of state and interstate bodies that works with the EPA on water quality and management, which warned workers that meetings with EPA employees might be monitored by AI.

"We recently learned that all EPA phones (landline/mobile), all Teams/Zoom virtual meetings, and calendar entries are being transcribed/monitored," the email states. The recorded information is then fed into an "AI tool" which analyzes and scrutinizes what has been recorded. "I do not know if DOGE is doing the analysis or … the agency itself," according to the author of the email, per The Guardian and What a Day.

The EPA denied that it's recording meetings, but it did not address the question of an AI tool, according to the outlets.

According to The Guardian and What a Day, employees at other agencies also fear they are being surveilled. For example, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs official warned employees that virtual meetings are being recorded in secret, according to an email reviewed by the two outlets. In February, managers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned some workers to be careful about what they say on calls, per an employee there.

"It's like being in a horror film where you know something out there [wants] to kill you but you never know when or how or who it is," one anonymously quoted employee from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development told The Guardian and What a Day, evoking the climate of fear that is rife among government workers.

House GOP Approves 'Modern-Day Poll Tax' With Passage of Orwellian SAVE Act


"Congressional Republicans' anti-voting legislation is a power grab to silence the voices of American citizens—full stop," said one advocate.



U.S. President Donald Trump greets U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who proposed the SAVE Act, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on March 4, 2025.
(Photo: Win McNamee/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Apr 10, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The U.S. House's passage of a bill on Thursday that would require Americans to prove their citizenship with documentation when they register to vote was the Republican Party's response to the fact, said one progressive critic, that "every day more people are catching on to their big grift."

"H.R. 22 is how they plan to keep themselves in power," said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, of the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. "Not by making life easier for working people, but by making voting harder."

The bill, proposed by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), would require all Americans to present a passport or an original copy of their birth certificate in person when they register to vote and update their voter registration—purporting to combat what Republicans have falsely claimed is a "problem that affects voters in nearly all 50 states": that of noncitizens voting in federal elections.

With noncitizens already barred from voting in federal elections, numerous analyses have found that very few ballots have ever been cast by people who aren't U.S. citizens. The Brennan Center for Justice found that noncitizens were suspected of casting just 30 votes out of 23.5 million in 2016—or 0.0001% of all votes cast.

But the Brennan Center was among many rights advocacy groups warning Thursday that more than 21 million Americans don't have easy access to their birth certificates or a passport, and could be disenfranchised by the SAVE Act.

"The House has just passed one of the worst pieces of voting legislation in American history," said Michael Waldman, the group's president and CEO. "The Senate must stop it. The SAVE Act would put voting out of reach for millions of American citizens. It should not become law."

According to Public Citizen, the SAVE Act has the potential to stop tens of millions of Americans from voting.

About 146 million citizens don't have a passport—nearly as many as the 153 million people who voted in the 2014 presidential election, Public Citizen noted.

The bill could also disenfranchise up to 69 million women and 4 million men who have changed their names after marrying, as they wouldn't be able to use their birth certificates showing their names at birth to prove their citizenship.

Voters in states including West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, where less than one-third of citizens have a valid passport, could be most impacted by the SAVE Act's requirements.

"The SAVE Act is an assault on a fundamental American freedom—our ability to vote," said Gilbert. "A set of eligible voters who were able to participate in past elections—some who have been registered for decades—will now be unable to cast their ballots."

Along with making voting harder for people in rural areas, naturalized citizens, low-income voters, Native Americans, first-time voters, and people of color—many of whom lack easy access to citizenship documents—the SAVE Act would end voter registration drives, upend online voter registration systems that are used in 42 states, and make it harder for voters to register by mail. States would also be required to establish programs to purge existing voter rolls.

President Donald Trump and the Republicans, said Mitchell, "want to weaken the opposition to their pro-billionaire agenda, even if that means taking away our freedom to vote. But we refuse to be silenced, and we will do everything in our power to stop their shameless power grab."

Four Democratic House members—Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Ed Case (D-Hawaii)—joined the Republicans in supporting the legislation.

Common Cause denounced the four Democrats for their vote "to suppress the vote of millions of Americans."

Common Cause president and CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said the SAVE Act should be called "what it is: a modern-day poll tax."

"If this bill becomes law, millions of hardworking Americans will have to either shell out money getting the right papers to prove their citizenship or have no say in the next election for Congress and president," said Kase Solomón.

The point of the bill, she said, is "to make it so difficult to vote that many people will give up on voting all together."

In the Senate, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a companion bill earlier this year. The GOP, which holds 53 Senate seats while the Democrats hold 47, would need Democrats to join them to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold in order to pass the bill.

"Every U.S. senator who cares about protecting our right to the ballot must vote down this poll tax in any form," said Kase Solomón. "Common Cause and our 1.5 million members will make sure every senator hears from the people that this bill is dead on arrival."

Tony Carrk, executive director of the government watchdog group Accountable.US, said the SAVE Act also "paves the way to toss out legal votes and undermine election results that [the Republicans] don't like."

"Congressional Republicans' anti-voting legislation is a power grab to silence the voices of American citizens—full stop," said Carrk. “Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their allies in Congress are attacking voting by threatening Americans' ability to vote by mail, allowing Musk's [Department of Government Efficiency] to access sensitive personal information, and kneecapping states' ability to run free and fair elections."

"It should send a chill down the spine of every American," he said.

House GOP Passes Bill That Moves Toward Making Trump a 'King With Unlimited Power'

"House Republicans want to make it harder for federal courts to serve as a check on Trump's lawlessness and overreach," said one advocate. "But that's not how our democracy works."



Julia Conley
Apr 10, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

With the Trump administration's attacks on the First Amendment, birthright citizenship, and other constitutional rights in full swing, Republicans in the U.S. House on Wednesday passed a bill that one advocacy group called a "sneak attack" on another bedrock principle of U.S. democracy.

"The passage of the No Rogue Rulings Act (NORRA) is an ideological attack on the checks and balances of our Constitution," said Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters.

The bill, which passed 219-213, with only Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) joining Democrats in opposing it, would limit U.S. District Court judges' ability to issue nationwide injunctions blocking President Donald Trump's executive orders.

The legislation was proposed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) after federal judges blocked several actions by Trump, including his executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship, his mass expulsion of immigrants to El Salvador's prison system, his freeze on federal grants and loans, and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) mass firings of federal employees.

NORRA "brings us one step closer to dismantling our democracy for the benefit of one man and his extreme agenda that is actively harming people across the country," said Maggie Jo Buchanan, interim executive director of the judicial reform group Demand Justice. "Anyone who voted in favor of this bill failed them and our country today."

"Passage of this bill by the U.S. House is an overreach on the part of the legislative branch, and we urge the U.S. Senate to reject this legislation when it comes to the floor."

Members of the judiciary including Judges James Boasberg, Paul A. Engelmayer, and John Batestes have faced calls for impeachment over their respective rulings blocking Trump from sending planeloads of immigrants to El Salvador, barring DOGE from accessing the Treasury Department's payment system, and directing federal health agencies to restore public health data to their websites after Trump ordered them to delete it.

With impeachment votes unlikely to succeed, Stewart said the legislation proposed by Issa "is a political attempt to restrain and block our federal courts from their constitutional responsibility."

"Judges appointed to the federal bench are independent bodies that review executive and legislative actions to determine their constitutionality. This is a simple process that has been in place for centuries," said Stewart.

"The League believes that all powers of the U.S. government should be exercised within the constitutional framework to protect the balance among the three branches of government," she added. "Passage of this bill by the U.S. House is an overreach on the part of the legislative branch, and we urge the U.S. Senate to reject this legislation when it comes to the floor."

Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, suggested that in their attacks on federal judges, Republicans are trying to weaken "the first line of defense against Donald Trump's attempts to cut essential services and attack our freedoms."

"In response to legal rulings that haven't gone Trump's way, House Republicans want to make it harder for federal courts to serve as a check on Trump's lawlessness and overreach," said Harvey. "But that's not how our democracy works. Trump is a president bound by the checks and balances of our Constitution, not a king with unlimited power."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) pointed to the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education to highlight the irrationality of Republicans' attempt to bar judges from applying their rulings to the entire nation.

"A nationwide injunction is a necessary part of the judicial tool kit," Raskin told NBC News. "Why should every person affected [by an issue] have to go to court? Why should millions of people have to create their own case? Why should Brown vs. Board of Education have applied to just Linda Brown as opposed to everybody affected?"

Harvey called on Senate leaders to "uphold their oath and block any attempt to weaken the federal courts."

"Anything less," she said, "would be walking away from their constitutional duties."

'They Are Laughing at Us All': Trump Tariff Whiplash Boosts Wealth of Mega-Rich by $304 Billion


"Is there any doubt in anyone's mind they were tipped off?" asked one progressive news outlet.


Tesla CEO Elon Musk waves as he walks with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on March 7, 2025.
(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Apr 10, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

As retirees, small business owners, and consumers reeled from the chaos sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump's erratic tariff policies, the richest people on the planet saw their wealth surge Wednesday as the White House partially froze the duties it imposed on most countries.

Trump's announcement of the 90-day pause sparked a historic market rally that added $304 billion to the collective wealth of the world's top billionaires, according to a Bloombergestimate. The outlet called the jump "the largest one-day gain in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index," which was launched in 2012.

"The largest individual gainer Wednesday was Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, who added $36 billion to his fortune as the EV manufacturer's stock jumped 23%, followed by Meta Platforms Inc.'s Mark Zuckerberg, who gained almost $26 billion," Bloomberg reported. "Nvidia Corp.'s Jensen Huang saw his wealth rise $15.5 billion as the chipmaker's shares rebounded 19%, nearly offsetting its 13% decline in the week to Tuesday's close."




Though the stock market gave up some of the massive gains on Thursday amid continued uncertainty about Trump's tariffs, the rapid billionaire wealth surge amplified concerns about possible market manipulation and insider trading ahead of the president's announcement of a 90-day pause. Trump publicly encouraged people to buy stock just hours before announcing the pause.

"Is there any doubt in anyone's mind they were tipped off?" The Tennessee Holler, a progressive news outlet, wrote on social media. "They are laughing at us all."

In the days leading up to the president's partial tariff pause, some of his billionaire supporters publicly criticized his approach as their wealth took a hit amid the trade war-induced market sell-off.

According to Bloomberg, the 500 richest people in the world saw their collective wealth fall by $208 billion the day after Trump announced the sweeping tariffs last week. The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was "flooded with worried calls from Wall Street over the weekend and felt strongly he had to persuade Trump that a pause was needed."

The partial tariff pause came a day before the Republican-controlled House passed a budget blueprint that paves the way for another round of tax cuts that would primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans.

"These tariffs are not designed to solve an actual trade or economic challenge," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday. "They're designed to soak typical workers with higher taxes in order to help pay for handouts to the top."

"They're focused on yet more handouts to billionaires and corporations," Wyden added, "and everybody else is going to be on the hook to pay for them."