California Jews experiencing heightened depression, anxiety since 2023 Hamas violence

UC Davis study looks at psychological issues

University of California - Davis

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California Jews are reporting significantly greater symptoms of depression and anxiety since the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians in October 2023, according to a University of California, Davis, study. 

The paper, “Mental Health in Californian Jews Before and After October 7, 2023,” was published in the American Psychological Association journal Psychological Trauma on July 28.

“The study highlights the psychological toll of the October 7th Hamas attacks even on Jews living thousands of miles from the conflict. But what is important to note is that concerns about antisemitism right here in the U.S., beyond the trauma from the attack itself, were a key driver of this psychological distress,” said Leah C. Hibel, professor of human ecology at UC Davis and lead author of the paper. “These findings suggest a greater need for mental health providers who have the knowledge, skills and awareness to understand and respect the unique cultural and discriminatory experiences of Jews.”

Researchers surveyed more than 200 Jewish parents of children ages 2 to 18, living in Northern California from September 2023 before the attacks, through August 2024. The study was designed to assess the impact of antisemitism on Jewish well-being and unintentionally captured the Oct. 7 massacre, the ensuing war and humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, and the historic rise in antisemitism here in the United States, Hibel said. 

Jewish families were recruited for the study through cultural Jewish organizations and community centers, as well as Jewish religious institutions and schools. 

Hibel said the survey showed a 30% increase in depressive symptoms and 45% increase in anxiety symptoms since Oct. 7. Importantly, with over 60% of the participants reporting having experienced an antisemitic event, like having their synagogue vandalized, concerns about antisemitism are driving these symptoms, she said.

“Jewish-serving organizations can assist in providing group therapy, support groups, and community gatherings to help those affected to process fears and concerns surrounding the Oct. 7 massacre and the current rise in antisemitism,” the researchers concluded in the paper. “Jewish community leaders should build bridges with existing community mental health organizations to increase the cultural competence of non-Jewish providers.”

She said in the paper that similar surveys in other minoritized communities have revealed perceived discrimination across a variety of characteristics such as gender, sexual orientation or race/ethnicity, to be associated with mental health symptoms.

Hibel said the widespread discrimination has consequences.

“While this study emphasizes the specific public health concern of antisemitism, Jews are not the only group impacted by rises in bigotry and discrimination, or the violence in the Middle East and those groups should also be examined for mental health concerns,” Hibel said.

 

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Journal

Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy

DOI

10.1037/tra0002011 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Mental health in Californian Jews before and after October 7, 2023

'Evidence of Genocidal Intent': Israeli General Calls for Killing 50 Palestinians for Every Oct. 7 Victim

Aharon Haliva, the former head of military intelligence in Israel, said in his vengeful remarks that it "doesn't matter now if they are children."


Relatives gather around the body of a child wrapped in a shroud 

in Gaza City on August 16, 2025.
(Photo by Saeed Jaras / Middle East Images via AFP)

Julia Conley
Aug 18, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Those who listened to the 22-minute speech given by a South African attorney as part of the country's genocide case against Israel at the United Nations' top court in January 2024 have long been well aware that Israeli officials have openly made genocidal statements about their military assault on Gaza—but a recording broadcast by an Israeli news channel on Sunday revealed what The Guardian called an "unusually direct description of collective punishment of civilians" by a high-level general.

Aharon Haliva, the general who led Israel's military intelligence operations on October 7, 2023 when Hamas led an attack on the country, was heard in a recording broadcast by Channel 12 that "for everything that happened on October 7, for every person on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die."

"The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations," said Haliva in comments that were made "in recent months," according to Channel 12. "It doesn't matter now if they are children."

More than 62,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel's airstrikes and ground assault on Gaza since October 7, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, with more than 250 people having died of malnutrition due to Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid. The official death toll figures put out by officials in Gaza is believed by many to be a severe undercount.

The Israel Defense Forces' own data recently showed that only about 20,000 militants are among those who have been killed by Israeli forces—even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and both Republican and Democratic leaders in the United States, the top international funder of the IDF, continue to insist that the military is targeting Hamas.

Haliva, who stepped down from leading military intelligence in April 2024, added in his comments that Palestinians "need a Nakba every now and then to feel the price"—a reference to the forced displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, the killing of about 15,000 people, and the destruction of more than 500 Palestinian towns when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

Notably, The Guardian reported that Haliva is "widely seen as a centrist critic of the current government and its far-right ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir," whose genocidal statements about Gaza and the West Bank have been widely reported.

When arguing South Africa's genocide case at the International Court of Justice in January 2024, attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi catalogued a number of statements made by Netanyahu, the IDF, and his top Israeli ministers, including:A call from Netanyahu for Israelis to "remember what Amalek has done to you," a reference to God's command that the Israelites massacre their ancient enemy, the Amalekites, in the Old Testament;
A demand from Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi that the IDF "burn Gaza" to the ground, and a statement from him that "the people of Gaza cannot be described as animals because animals are better than humans"; and
A chant made by Israeli soldiers, who had been told early in the war to "release all restraints" as they bombarded Gaza, that there are "no uninvolved civilians" in the enclave.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which said last month that it had determined Netanyahu's government is committing genocide in Gaza, said Haliva's remarks "are part of a long line of official statements that expose a deliberate policy of genocide."




"For 22 months, Israel has pursued a policy of systematically destroying Palestinian life in Gaza," said B'Tselem. "This is genocide. It is happening now. It must be stopped."

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor added that Haliva openly admitted "what Israel tries to deny: genocide is not a byproduct of war but the goal."

Haliva's remark about the necessity of repeating the Nakba in Gaza "reveals a clear intention: The bloodshed is not meant to stop, but to be repeated."

Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Haliva's statement "is not just evidence of genocidal rhetoric, it is a blueprint for genocidal action" that must push the US government to end its support for Israel.

"The Trump administration and the international community can no longer turn a blind eye," said Awad. "President [Donald] Trump and Congress cannot continue to claim they do not know or deny what the entire world is seeing every hour of every day. The United States must immediately halt all military aid and support to Israel and demand accountability for war crimes committed in Gaza. Silence is complicity."

ICYMI

State Dept Shuts Down Temporary Visas for Injured Gaza Kids After Tirade From Racist Influencer Laura Loomer

"This goes far beyond 'wrong side of history,'" said journalist Ryan Grim.


Four Palestinian children with severe injuries and amputations in Egypt on route to Chicago for medical treatment paid for through HEAL Palestine on April 6, 2025.
(Photo by HEAL Palestine)

Stephen Prager
Aug 18, 2025
RAW STORY

The US State Department announced Saturday that it would halt the issuing of visas to children from Gaza in urgent need of medical care.

The decision came after a frenzied campaign by the racist online provocateur and close Trump confidante Laura Loomer, who raged over the weekend about the arrival of badly injured Palestinian children in Houston and San Francisco earlier this month.

The arrival of these children had been arranged by the US nonprofit group HEAL Palestine, which has helped at least 63 children "receive lifesaving surgeries, prosthetics, and rehabilitative care in the US."

In what she claimed was an "exclusive" report, Loomer—who has described herself as a "Proud Islamophobe," and as "pro-white nationalism"—shared a video posted by HEAL Palestine of children on crutches and wheelchairs arriving with their families at a US airport.

She falsely claimed that the children's shouts of joy were "jihadi chants" and that they were "doing the HAMAS terror whistle" and referred to the children as "Islamic invaders from an Islamic terror hot zone."

Loomer tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department in another post: "How did Palestinians get Visas under the Trump administration to get into the United States? Did @StateDept approve this? How did they get out of Gaza? Is @SecRubio aware of this?"

The day after Loomer's tirade began, the State Department announced that "all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days."

HEAL Palestine issued a statement Sunday saying it was "distressed" by the State Department's decision. Contrary to claims by Loomer that the children would become "like leeches on welfare," HEAL clarified that the children in the country were here "on temporary visas for essential medical treatment not available at home."

"After their treatment is complete," the organization said, "the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East."

Rhana Natour, the director and producer of All That Remains—a documentary for Al Jazeera's Fault Lines on a 13-year-old Palestinian girl who traveled to the US to receive treatment after losing her leg in an Israeli airstrike—told Drop Site News that the humanitarian visas canceled by the State Department are granted "exclusively to burned and disabled children and their parents."

(Video: Al Jazeera English)

Loomer took credit for the department's cancellation of the visas, thanking Rubio and calling it "fantastic news."

"Hopefully, all GAZANS will be added to President Trump's travel ban," Loomer wrote. "There are doctors in other countries. The US is not the world's hospital!"

In response, the X account for Drop Site, which has frequently highlighted the work of HEAL Palestine, responded to Loomer, saying that "Your taxes aren't funding the care for these Palestinian children," and that their treatment was being funded entirely through private support from donors.

"The only role of US tax dollars in the picture," Drop Site said, "is the costly review the State Department will now be forced to conduct because of a deranged racist's ravings to block children from lifesaving treatment."

Loomer later suggested that the wounded Palestinian children were being treated "for free," at the expense of US taxpayers, while "US Veterans are homeless on the street, unable to get healthcare."

Journalist Ryan Grim, Drop Site's co-founder, responded: "Trump slashed Medicaid, slashed the [Department of Veterans Affairs], slashed [Affordable Care Act] exchange subsidies, and increased the military budget to over a trillion dollars but Loomer wants people to think that the reason they don't have healthcare is that a Palestinian child got treated thanks to donations from people heartbroken at what Israel is doing to children."

"The trillion dollars being spent to blow the arms and legs off of children is the problem," Grim continued. "Not the children themselves."

In July, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that since October 2023, at least 17,000 children have been killed and 33,000 injured across Gaza, many of them attacked by Israeli forces "as they [lined] up for lifesaving humanitarian aid."

The UN reported Friday that "10 children were losing one or both legs every day," making Gaza "home to the largest group of child amputees in modern history."

Despite having no formal position, Loomer is one of the most influential figures in the Trump administration—reportedly having spearheaded the hiring and firing of aides for key roles, including in the National Security Council.

Loomer has said that the US is a "Judeo-Christian ethnostate" being "destroyed" by immigration, and—following the opening of Trump's immigrant detention camp "Alligator Alcatraz"—joked that the "alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals," a number referring to the total population of Latinos in the United States.

Following news of the State Department's decision to cancel visas for injured Palestinians, Grim wrote that it "looks like [Loomer] is also setting visa policy."

"So we want to arm Israel to the teeth, allow them to block food and medical aid from getting into Gaza, and also condemn those facing medical emergencies to death," he said. "This goes far beyond 'wrong side of history.'"

Vast Majority of 'Refugees' Accepted Under New Trump Plan Will Be White South Africans


"The Trump administration has sent a dangerous message," one refugee wrote, "that in a multiracial democracy, the loss of white dominance is equivalent to persecution."



White South Africans supporting US President Donald Trump and South African and US tech billionaire Elon Musk gather in front of the US Embassy in Pretoria, on February 15, 2025, for a demonstration.
(Photo: Marco Longari/AFP)

Stephen Prager
Aug 15, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The administration of US President Donald Trump is reportedly discussing a refugee program that would grant the majority of admissions to the white South African minority that ruled the country through apartheid for decades.

Reuters reported Friday that the administration was mulling a cap of 40,000 refugees entering the United States next year, down from the 100,000 allowed in by former President Joe Biden.

According to two officials, who spoke with Reuters anonymously, "30,000 of the 40,000 spaces would be devoted to Afrikaners, a largely Dutch-descended minority in South Africa that Trump has prioritized for resettlement."

At the end of 2024, the United Nations Refugee Agency reported that there were nearly 43 million people worldwide recognized as refugees, who are forced to flee their home countries due to violence, persecution, or human rights violations.

Among them are:Nearly 6 million Syrians forced to flee deprivation, violence, and persecution amid the country's decade of brutal civil war;
6 million Afghans facing persecution after the Taliban returned to power in 2021;
Over 4 million Sudanese and South Sudanese people displaced by war and famine;
1.3 million refugees from Myanmar, including the Rohingya, who are fleeing what is recognized by the US as a genocide; and
The million and growing Haitians fleeing the gang warfare that has overtaken their impoverished nation.

At the beginning of his second term, Trump emphatically slammed the door on all of these groups, indefinitely suspending the US Refugee Admissions Program and halting the process for about 600,000 refugees who were being considered for admission and thousands who'd been approved.

He also shut down CBP One, the application allowing asylum-seekers fleeing violence and poverty to apply for entry at the Southern border legally, and revoked the legal status of millions of people in the country under humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status (TPS), many of whom now face deportation.

While turning away countless millions facing death and danger, Trump has welcomed Afrikaners, the minority group that implemented and enforced a racist and anti-democratic system of apartheid that deprived Black people of their rights in South Africa until 1994.

Trump is a proponent of the false theory that, since the end of apartheid, South Africa's democratically elected Black government has systematically oppressed and allowed for the murder of white farmers, referring to it as a "genocide."

That theory has been bolstered by Trump's billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is also a white South African. Earlier this year, the artificial intelligence chatbot on his social media platform X, known as "Grok," began to inexplicably discuss so-called "white genocide" in South Africa in response to unrelated prompts, which led many to speculate that Musk had programmed it to amplify the conspiracy theory.

However, as Joe Walsh, a white journalist from South Africa, noted in an article for Current Affairs last year, South Africa's Black population is killed at 10 times the rate of its white population.

In large part due to the legacy of apartheid, white South Africans also have 20 times the wealth of Black ones and hold the vast majority of land in the country despite being just over 7% of the population.

Meanwhile, white South African organizations like AfriForum have argued that efforts by the current government to more equitably distribute land constitute a form of racial discrimination and even genocide against whites.

"The myth's purpose," Walsh wrote, "is to make it seem dangerous to have Black people in control of the government."

But it's a myth with purchase in the White House. While virtually every other refugee group was left in limbo, Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that "Any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship. This process will begin immediately!"

In May, 59 Afrikaners arrived at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, where the Trump administration celebrated their arrival.

Bill Frelick, director of Human Rights Watch's Refugee and Migrant Rights program, told PBS News, "There were refugees who had been identified, vetted, who had spent years as refugees, and their hopes for admission to the United States after years of suffering had been crushed."

"That now the one exception would be made for Afrikaners," he said, "just seems like a cruel twist to those refugees to whom the door was closed in their face."

Last month, Reuters reported that a senior official from the State Department told the government of South Africa that it was not allowed to process refugees of mixed-race descent who spoke the Afrikaans language for entry into the US. The official said that the resettlement program was only "intended for white people."

In The Hill, opinion contributor Lok Darjee—himself a Bhutanese refugee who fled war in 2011—has described the Trump administration's embrace of white South Africans over other refugees as emblematic of its "racist ideology."

"By admitting white South Africans as refugees and victims of racial persecution," Darjee said, "the Trump administration has sent a dangerous message that in a multiracial democracy, the loss of white dominance is equivalent to persecution."

"In this narrative, South Africa becomes a warning of what awaits the United States should Black and nonwhite Americans gain political power," he continued. "As America becomes a more diverse nation, those who equate whiteness with greatness see this shift not as progress, but as a threat."

'A Disgrace': CFPB Union Rips Court for Allowing Trump Assault on Consumer Agency

"None of us can stand idly by while Russ Vought and Donald Trump destroy the agency that protects working Americans from financial predators," said the union president.


Congressional Democrats and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau workers hold a rally to protest the closing of the CFPB outside its headquarters on February 10, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for MoveOn)

Jessica Corbett
Aug 15, 2025

COMMON DREAMS

The head of a union representing employees of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was among those who blasted a Friday ruling from a federal appellate court that lets President Donald Trump continue with an effort to gut the CFPB.

"Today's ruling is a disgrace. It empowers Donald Trump to unilaterally eliminate vital public services established by Congress," said CFPB Union president Cat Farman in a statement. "Without a functioning CFPB, there is less oversight of the biggest banks, which means more fraud and less help for veterans and the elderly who are major targets for financial scams."

The union president took aim at the acting leader of the CFPB, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, and Trump, who has a broader mission to tear apart the federal bureaucracy with his Department of Government Efficiency, previously led by billionaire Elon Musk.

"None of us can stand idly by while Russ Vought and Donald Trump destroy the agency that protects working Americans from financial predators," Farman declared. "CFPB workers aren't giving up our fight to defend the rule of law from executive overreach and protect the hard-earned paychecks of working people from Wall Street greed."

In Friday's 2-1 decision, a panel from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that a district judge exceeded her authority by blocking the Trump administration's sweeping attack on the federal agency earlier this year. Judge Greg Katsas wrote the new opinion, joined by Judge Neomi Rao; they were both appointed by Trump during his first term.

Judge Nina Pillard—an appointee of former President Barack Obama, who signed the bill that established the CFPB—dissented. She wrote, "The notion that courts are powerless to prevent the president from abolishing the agencies of the federal government that he was elected to lead cannot be reconciled with either the constitutional separation of powers or our nation's commitment to a government of laws."

US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a former Harvard University professor who spearheaded the creation of the CFBP, stressed on social media Friday that "the fight continues."

The Trump appointees' decision will not take effect immediately, giving critics time to seek further appeals. Adina Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group, which represented plaintiffs who sued over attacks on the CFPB, signaled that her organization may take further action.

"The Trump administration does not have the authority to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created by Congress and which plays an important role in protecting consumers across the country," Rosenbaum said in a statement.

"The district court found that the defendants were trying to eliminate the agency, and it entered an injunction to prohibit them from doing so while the case is ongoing. The court of appeals should have upheld that injunction to ensure that the administration does not illegally close the agency and deprive consumers of the protections to which they are entitled," she added. "We are strongly considering filing a petition for rehearing en banc."

This truly shocking statistic reveals the depth of Trump's deception

Thom Hartmann
August 18, 2025 

COMMON DREAMS

Donald Trump (Reuters)

We’re all familiar with Trump’s famous deportation flights of Venezuelans and Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a concentration camp in El Salvador in violation of a court order.

But did you know there have been over 1,000 such flights in the past few months, some to absolute hellhole countries?

On top of that, the Washington Post reports that ICE is planning to open or expand 125 new “detention facilities” across the country, including ones to hold families, giving America the largest prison system in the world.

The paper notes:
“The documents outline the strategy behind ICE’s breakneck expansion, a chaotic effort that has already triggered lawsuits and accusations of cruelty.”

Are Americans being conditioned by our media to become “Good Germans”?


For several decades I did international relief work for a nonprofit based in Germany; my family and I even lived at the organization’s headquarters in Stadtsteinach for much of 1986/1987. One of my closest co-workers and mentors was a man 25 years my senior, Horst Von Heyer, who’d been a teenage member of the Hitler Youth when WWII ended.


I started working with Horst in the late 1970s after his assistant was eaten by a crocodile in southern Africa. For example, we went into Uganda together to deal with the post-Idi Amin 1980 famine and set up a program for orphaned kids that continues to this day. When we lived in Germany, Horst and I used to have lunch together nearly every day when we were both in town. He became one of my closest friends (he’s now passed away).

So, of course, I asked him how Germans (and he, as a teenager) could possibly have been okay with the Nazis rounding up millions of Jews and other “undesirables” to ship via boxcars to the death camps.

His answer was frankly shocking in its simplicity:

“We didn’t know.”

The concentration camps within Germany were, he explained, for “the worst of the worst” criminals and “traitors” who’d tried to overthrow the country. The Republican Great Depression and the chaos that followed WWI, he told me, had created a massive problem of street crime and homeless people, so most middle-class Germans, feeling unsafe, enthusiastically supported Hitler’s “law and order” agenda.

Those “innocent” Jews, Gypsies, and others removed from local areas were being moved, Horst said he was told, because their residences were slated to be part of what we’d call “urban renewal” efforts. They were simply being resettled, and it would end up better for them and the communities they were leaving.
“I remember how shocked we all were when the pictures came out from the Polish death camps like Auschwitz at the end of the war,” he told me. “You Americans and the rest of the world were shocked, too. Hitler’s men and the German media had done a really good job of keeping it all under wraps.”

In that, I discovered by reading William L. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and other research, Horst was right.


By the end of 1933, Hitler had largely neutered Germany’s free press; not by market competition, but by bankrupting writers and outlets with libel lawsuits, unleashing police raids for “slander” claims, vigilante “Brownshirt” militia violence against reporters, arrests of publishers for “publishing anti-German propaganda,” the outright seizure of progressive newspapers, and a sweeping Schriftleitergesetz “Editor’s Law” which criminalized journalism that exposed government excesses.

Nazi loyalists and party-friendly oligarchs took over the press outlets that remained in a massive media consolidation project, ensuring that every headline and every radio news report served the regime much like Fox “News” and rightwing hate-radio/podcasts do today for Trump.

When stories were published about Jews and others being transported, they were couched in euphemisms such as Umsiedlung (“resettlement”) or Evakuierung (“evacuation”) and Arbeitseinsatz (“labor deployment”) in official communications, press coverage, and public speeches.


These terms fit neatly into propaganda narratives about “urban renewal,” war-effort labor needs, or “population transfers” from “overcrowded” and “crime-ridden” cities. There were literally no public reports in Germany about mass killings or illegal detentions between 1934 and the end of the war in 1945.

Today in the U.S., the lack of coverage of Trump’s brutal treatment of immigrants, lack of due process, and hundreds of monthly deportation flights to hellhole countries or foreign concentration camps isn’t due to a Schriftleitergesetz legal ban but rather to billionaire owners sucking up to Trump, partisan political framing, and the media’s tendency to underplay ongoing, systemic human rights abuses once they’ve been normalized.

We saw something like this in the early days of the Iraq war when the Bush administration tried to normalize and justify the black sites, torture, and murders that were later exposed to the horror of Americans and the world.


In both 1940s Germany and today’s America, the effect is similar: the public is shielded from the human scale of state-led actions against targeted groups, making it easier for those policies to continue without mass pushback.

In the first week of Trump’s second term, 7,300 people were put on military flights and deported from the US. The numbers have only grown since then, with virtually no oversight and little by way of due process. Since he took power, over 100 immigration judges (about 15%) have been fired nationwide; as Chicago’s former Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jennifer Peyton noted.

She added:

“Since January 2025, the immigration courts under EOIR are no longer honoring or offering due process like they did when I was appointed. The court system has been systematically and intentionally destroyed, defunded, and politicized by this administration. I don't know why this has happened, but I fear for our country and for justice.”

Meanwhile, American media has engaged in a 1940s-German-like scheme to downplay the horrors of these disappearances.

When I heard a guest on CNN mention in passing that there’d been over 1,000 deportation flights in recent months, I was shocked. Why didn’t I know?

Every day I read at least a dozen different news outlets and am a voracious consumer of cable news. Yet, like most Americans, I thought deportation flights to foreign horror chambers were the exception — like with Abrego Garcia — rather than the rule. After all, the Biden administration was also running deportation flights; the difference is that they only happened after due process had been granted the deportees, and they were never sent to foreign concentration camps or dumped in hellholes like South Sudan.

In 1944, as questions were being raised by stories leaking into the foreign press about the boxcars of people traversing the countryside, the Hitler administration produced a slick PR effort around a concentration camp in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. It served as a way-stop on the routes to the death camps, but Goebbels had the barracks painted, gardens planted, and the grounds beautified.


He then organized “social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries” and the press, and made a documentary film of their one-day visit with the simple title Theresienstadt that played in theaters across Germany.

The international press bought it hook, line, and sinker, reporting to the world that the Nazi detention camps weren’t all that bad and were just part of rebuilding and cleaning up Germany after WWI and the Great Depression.

Which raises the question: How long will it be before we start seeing films and made-for-TV events with Kristi Noem or Pam Bondi telling us how “humane” the new private, for-profit “detention centers” are that are being built by Trump’s donors and cronies?


I give them about a month to get their propaganda routine together. In the meantime, they seem to be doing everything they can to make sure we don’t really know the full scope and brutality of their efforts to push brown and Black people out of the United States.

SATIRE

Dear America, Nobody makes a deal like Trump. NOBODY

D. Earl Stephens
August 18, 2025   

RAW STORY

Donald Trump looks on next to Vladimir Putin in Alaska. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque


Dear Americans Who Can’t Stop Rooting For Me No Matter What,

First, I just want to say I am still a little jet logged from flying around the world and back and climbing on top of that incredible summit in Alaska with the great President Putin and looking down on people. So I hope you will bare with me, as you read this Very Important Letter today.

Thank you in advance, and you are welcome in the future.


To begin with, you should know that my oxygen levels are incredibly high, and even the Russian diplomats couldn’t believe how hot my ankles looked after that grueling meeting in which I brought peace back to Alaska, hope to Russia, and only a tiny bit of hurt to Ukraine — much, much less then anybody could have ever expected.

One of the diplomats who couldn’t stop looking at my ankles, a very pretty blonde girl may I say, said through an interrogator that they expected to see my ankles swollen up like a balloon after the press reports from our dirty, rotten, disgusting media here in the states. Instead, she told me through that interrogator that she saw a champion of a man, whose ankles looked no older than 50, and probably even less than that. And remember: She has a diploma.


I took this as a great compliment after climbing that summit, and meeting their leaders on equal footing with my incredibly trim ankles.


Right off the top, I want to inform you that I will have to keep this Very Important Letter short today, because I want to concentrate on everything I did at this grueling summit, and keep the emphasis away from what didn’t happen with Jeffrey Epstein and all those girls. I think we’ve all heard enough about that. Besides, I prefer screwing President Zelensky instead.

That’s a joke.

Or maybe not.


You can never tell with me, because I make a point of never smiling. Even though I should be happy, I see smiling as a tremendous weakness. You’ll notice that after everything I said in that terrific summit, Vlad was doing all the smiling. The last time I smiled on top of that summit was when Vlad got off the airplane.

That should tell you everything you need to know about how it went.

So I’d talk and Vlad would do all the smiling. He didn’t know what to make of it. Even when he told me that he felt sorry for me that the 2020 election was stolen, I didn’t smile. I did thank him for the sediments, but I made sure not to smile about it.


Truth is, I was happy that a man of such sensational stature and incredible power saw the election in 2020 exactly as I did. This is a man who constantly wins elections by tremendous margins, so I think he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to other people winning elections by tremendous margins like I do.

We have this and many, many other things in common. Except I am taller than him. Much, much taller, and a little bit smarter. Not a lot smarter, but a little, and I think that incinerates him.

I could tell the sexy Russian girl with the diploma, who was admiring my slim ankles felt the same way, too — I mean about the elections. This has all been so incredibly unfair to me, but I told her I am working my hardest to make sure our elections are as fair as Russia’s in the future. This brought a smile to her face, too, but I didn't blink.


On that note, when I am done with this letter, I will be talking with Governor Costello in Texas to jerrystander things there so we never lose the Senate again.

Everybody can thank me for that later.

But for now, you are welcome.


Because of national security emotions, I can’t get too much into what Vlad and I discussed for three hours at the top of that summit, but rest assured, he was smiling the whole time, because he isn’t as strong as I am. Without devolving too much here, I think it’s safe to say Zelensky won’t be smiling very much when I tell him how little of his country I want him to give to Vlad, so we can bring peace to the world, and I can win another Noble Peace Prize.

Basically, I just want him to give Vlad a little corner of Ukraine that’s no bigger than North Carolina or New Jersey. He won’t even notice it’s gone. In exchange, Vlad will agree not to attack Ukraine as long as I am in office. And given the terrific shape of my ankles that could be a very long time.

It is incredible that nobody thought of this before. Vlad couldn’t believe what a terrific deal it was. I’ve never seen him smile like that. Meantime, I just pouted, but inside I was jumping around like a man with 27-year-old ankles.


Nobody makes a deal like me. NOBODY.

I did tell Vlad that Russia could keep shooting and bombing Ukrainians until this fantastic deal is finalized, because that was only fair. You couldn’t believe how much he was smiling after that one. I even threw in attacking my own capital with armed troops as a bonus just to show him how serious I was.

At that point, I knew I had him right where I wanted him.

Well … I really do have to wrap this Very Important Letter up. My incredible stamina is running out of gas.


But before I meet Marco on the golf course, after talking with Governor Costello, I want to make sure to thank the men of our armed forces for their incredible job rolling out the red carpet for not one, but two powerful world leaders. Nobody’s ever asked our military men to do that before, but I had great confidence that as their Commander inside their Chief, that they could perform this tricky, dangerous duty.

Needless to say, this made Vlad smile, while I kept that powerful pout on my rigid military face. There’s no way Vlad expected red carpet treatments on my beautiful runway. Right then and there, I knew he would be eating out of my hands.

I still am shivering in my spine when I think of how powerful I was during this summit. While talking with Sean in front of 227 million people on Fox Friday night, I almost cracked a smile. Sean told me it would be OK if I smiled just a little, but I told him that wouldn't be appropriate given that I never let one smile out in front of Vlad, even though he deserved one.

Sean didn't know how to take that, but he never asked me one question that I couldn’t answer after that, and everybody I’ve talked to seemed pretty happy about it.

So that's it for now, average voters of America.

I hope you are as proud of me as I deserve. All I ever do is think about you, and how you can help keep me in office for as long as possible to make great deals on your behalf.

May God get around to blessing you and your families, long after he’s done blessing me.
DONALD J. TRUMP

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and in addition to finishing up this latest letter, finished a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

'Not much was accomplished': Fox News host offers brutal takedown of Trump's Putin summit

David Edwards
August 17, 2025

RAW STORY

Fox News/screen grab

Fox News host Howard Kurtz opened his Sunday show by noting that "not much was accomplished" at President Donald Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the war in Ukraine.

"Three and a half years into the brutal and bloody war in Ukraine after the illegal Russian invasion that has always featured targeting civilians, President Trump announced he would meet with Vladimir Putin and try to negotiate a peace deal," Kurtz explained. "There's no other way to put this: a dramatic lowering of expectations for the sit-down in Anchorage."

"After the meeting, despite some upbeat talk, it was clear not much was accomplished," he continued. "No ceasefire, no details, no questions from the press, just vague assurances that some progress was made without explaining what that was."

Former National Review editor Rich Lowry agreed that "Putin moved the ball a little bit in his direction."

"Putting off the talk of the ceasefire, at least for now, and getting Trump to stop threatening secondary sanctions and harsher measures," he noted.


Kurtz reported that Fox News had confirmed that "Trump is going along with a Putin plan to forget about the ceasefire and to give the Kremlin control of that whole Donbas region of Ukraine, eastern Ukraine, in exchange for ceding some land elsewhere."


"Many pundits are saying Putin was a sort of a pariah," the host observed, "and that he already won by getting a meeting on U.S. soil."

"Yeah, the United States just validated him, and we became an ally of Russia rather than an ally of Ukraine and our NATO allies there," left-leaning guest Meghan Hays said. "I don't think that Putin has any interest in having a deal. He wants to take Ukraine, and then he slowly wants to take back the rest of what the old USSR."

Watch the video below from Fox News or click the link.

Russian 'trophy' tank flies American flag as it attacks Ukraine

Matthew Chapman
August 18, 2025 
RAW STORY

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they meet to negotiate for an end to the war in Ukraine, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S., August 15, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

In the wake of President Donald Trump's summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Kremlin propagandists are going wild with a new video intended to humiliate Trump, The Daily Beast reported on Monday.

In the video, broadcast by the Russian propaganda network RT, Russian troops in Ukraine can be seen "cruising into battle in a captured American M113 APC, which they described as a 'trophy,' while flying both the U.S. and Russian flags in tandem."

The display of an American flag was not lost on Ukrainian observers.

“How should this be understood? Russian propagandists are showing a video where Russian equipment goes on the attack with flags of Russia and the USA,” said Ukrainian Presidential Office chief Andriy Yermak, a close associate to Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “In fact, Russians are using United States symbols in their own terrorist, aggressive war with the killing of civilian people. Maximum audacity.”

The summit, which took place at the end of last week, was wildly criticized for giving Putin literal red-carpet treatment, and not substantively moving forward any peace talks.

Indeed, Trump appears to have softened his posture against Russia, which had been growing more hawkish for weeks as Putin refused to make any concessions. Before the meeting, Trump warned there would be "very severe consequences" and potential new economic measures against Russian trading partners if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire. However, Trump emerged saying a ceasefire did not need to happen immediate

Watch the video below or at this link.

Drought, dams and diplomacy: Afghanistan’s water crisis goes regional


By AFP
August 17, 2025


Over four decades of war, Afghanistan wielded limited control over five major river basins that flow across its borders in all directions into downstream neighbouring nations - Copyright AFP Mohammad Faisal NAWEED
Susannah Walden

Over four decades of war, Afghanistan wielded limited control over five major river basins that flow across its borders into downstream neighbouring nations.

But as Taliban authorities swept to power and tightened their grip on the country, they have pushed for Afghanistan’s water sovereignty, launching infrastructure projects to harness precious resources in the arid territory.

Dams and canals have sparked tensions with neighbouring states, testing the Taliban authorities’ efforts to build strong regional ties, as they remain largely isolated on the global stage since their 2021 takeover.

At the same time, the region is facing the shared impacts of climate change intensifying water scarcity, as temperatures rise and precipitation patterns shift, threatening glaciers and snowpack that feed the country’s rivers.

Here are key points about Afghanistan’s transboundary water challenges:



– Central Asian states to the north –



Afghanistan is emerging as a new player in often fraught negotiations on the use of the Amu Darya, one of two key rivers crucial for crops in water-stressed Central Asia, where water sharing relies on fragile accords since Soviet times.

Central Asian states have expressed concern over the Qosh Tepa mega canal project that could divert up to 21 percent of the Amu Darya’s total flow to irrigate 560,000 hectares of land across Afghanistan’s arid north, and further deplete the Aral Sea.

Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are likely to face the biggest impact, both joined by Kazakhstan in voicing alarm, even as they deepen diplomatic ties with the Taliban authorities — officially recognised so far by only Russia.

“No matter how friendly the tone is now,” water governance expert Mohd Faizee warned, “at some point there will be consequences for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan when the canal starts operating”.

Taliban officials have denied that the project will have a major impact on the Amu Darya’s water levels and pledged it will improve food security in a country heavily dependent on climate-vulnerable agriculture and facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

“There is an abundance of water, especially when the Amu Darya floods and glacial meltwater flows into it” in the warmer months, said project manager Sayed Zabihullah Miri, during a visit to the canal works in Faryab province, where diggers carved into a drought-ridden plain dotted with camels and locusts.



– Iran to the west –



Iran is the only country with which Afghanistan has a formal water sharing treaty, agreed in 1973 over the Helmand river, which traverses Taliban heartland territory, but the accord was never fully implemented.

Longstanding tensions over the river’s resources have spiked over dams in southern Afghanistan, particularly in periods of drought, which are likely to increase as climate shocks hit the region’s water cycle.

Iran, facing pressure in its parched southeastern region, has repeatedly demanded that Afghanistan respect its rights, charging that upstream dams restrict the Helmand’s flow into a border lake.

The Taliban authorities insist there is not enough water to release more to Iran, blaming the impact of climate pressures on the whole region.

They also argue long-term poor water management has meant Afghanistan has not gotten its full share, according to an Afghanistan Analysts Network report by water resources management expert Assem Mayar.

Iran and Afghanistan have no formal agreement over their other shared river basin, the Harirud, which also flows into Turkmenistan and is often combined into a single basin with the Morghab river.

While infrastructure exists on the Afghan portions of the basin, some has not been fully utilised, Faizee said.

But that could change, he added, as the end of conflict in Afghanistan means infrastructure works don’t incur vast security costs on top of construction budgets, lifting a barrier to development of projects such as the Pashdan dam inaugurated in August on the Harirud.



– Pakistan to the east –



Water resources have not topped the agenda in consistently fraught relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s Kabul river basin, which encompasses tributaries to the greater Indus basin and feeds the capital and largest city, is shared with Pakistan.

The countries, however, have no formal cooperation mechanism.

With the Afghan capital wracked by a severe water crisis, the Taliban authorities have sought to revitalise old projects and start new ones to tackle the problem, risking fresh tensions with Pakistan.

But the lack of funds and technical capacity means the Taliban authorities’ large water infrastructure projects across the country could take many years to come to fruition — time that could be good for diplomacy, but bad for ordinary Afghans.