90 Years of US Social Security: A Time for Celebration and Action


While we wish we could do nothing but celebrate, the history of Social Security shows that we must always defend the program from those who would privatize or outright eliminate it.


US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945) signs the Social Security Act, 

on August 14, 1935.
(Photo by FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Max Richtman
Aug 14, 2025

Common Dreams

Social Security turns 90 years old this week! President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the program into law on August 14, 1935, as insurance against what he called the “hazards and vicissitudes” of life. For a federal program to endure for 90 years and maintain an extremely high level of popularity among the American people is truly extraordinary.

As FDR’s grandson, Jim Roosevelt, put it, “A cake with 90 candles on it would probably be dangerous, but the 90-year success of Social Security should be celebrated in any way possible.”

While we wish we could do nothing but celebrate, the history of Social Security shows that we must always defend the program from those who would privatize or outright eliminate it. These forces have been at work ever since Social Security was enacted. President Roosevelt’s Republican opponent in the 1936 elections, Alf Landon, called Social Security “a fraud on the working man.” Some things never change.

This year, we already have seen unprecedented interference from the Trump administration in the workings of the Social Security Administration (SSA) as part of a phony campaign against “fraud.“ Severe cutbacks in SSA staff and reckless policy changes have made it harder for Americans to access their earned benefits, giving rise to a grassroots ‘Hands Off Social Security’ movement.

The only scheming around Social Security is coming from the White House and its allies in Congress.

Trump’s Treasury secretary revealed the administration’s real agenda when he said that savings accounts for children contained in the president’s Unfair, Ugly Bill were a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.“

Rampant misinformation and myths about Social Security (spread mainly by the political right) are designed to undermine public support for the program. Both US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” This is the same team who told us that 150 year olds and 300 year olds are somehow collecting benefits. The only scheming around Social Security is coming from the White House and its allies in Congress.

Fortunately, knowledge is power. That is why we produced a new documentary film about the 90-year history of Social Security, a program born in the Great Depression that is equally crucial today as a lifeline for seniors, people with disabilities, and their families.

The documentary, Social Security: 90 Years Strong, was produced through a grant from AARP and is available for download by advocates and community members who would like to hold their own screenings. As the film reveals, Social Security came into being—and lives on—for a reason: It is part of the fabric of American life and must be preserved for the future.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

“Social security is an earned benefit,” says Tracey Gronniger of Justice in Aging, one of the key interviewees in the film. “People work for their entire lives and pay into this program—and we have to make sure that it’s there for them when they are ready to retire or they become disabled.”

Former Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) closes out the documentary with the powerful plea: “We have to save Social Security. We have to secure it. We have to make it live for future generations.”

The film features appearances by several other notables, including Jim Roosevelt, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), Nancy Altman (Social Security Works), Bill Arnone (formerly of National Academy of Social Insurance), Kathryn Edwards (Labor Economist), and Giovanna Gray Lockhart (Former Director, Frances Perkins Center).

FDR’s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, who was a prime mover in the creation of the program, probably said it best: “Social security is so firmly embedded in the American psychology today that no politician, no political party, could possibly destroy this act and still maintain our democratic system.” Food for thought, indeed.

For Social Security’s 90th Birthday, Don’t Celebrate–Organize!

Instead of having a piece of birthday cake, make a call to your member of Congress, post on social media about how we need to protect Social Security, and talk to your friends about the need to speak up against threats to your benefits.



Members of the Miami community, especially senior citizens, gather to protest the new policies applied to the Social Security Administration by the administration of President Donald Trump on the International Labour Day in Miami, United States on May 1, 2025.
(Photo: Jesus Olarte/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Martin BurnsMary Liz Burns
Aug 14, 2025

Common Dreams


This August 14 marks the 90th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law. This was a huge step forward for America, and our country has been profoundly changed for the better. We quite understandably focus on Social Security’s retirement benefits, but Social Security is much more than this. It is a social insurance policy that helps children whose parents have died and those who are disabled and provides spousal income.

It is very easy to be tempted into celebrating Social Security’s longevity and enjoying a piece of birthday cake. Given the threats to Social Security, as well as other programs like Medicaid, such celebrations are misleading. The best way to mark Social Security’s 90th birthday is to adapt a phrase made famous by the legendary labor organizer Joe Hill: “Don’t celebrate—organize!”

Given the threats to Social Security by the Trump administration in just seven months in office, celebrations are not helpful. Let’s briefly review some of the recent Trump actions that impact your benefits:Weakening confidence in Social Security by alleging widespread fraud. Back in April, Elon Musk, then the self-styled first buddy and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), was leveling charges of massive fraud in Social Security. As The New York Times reported, “Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has continued his campaign to aggressively undercut Social Security, leveling baseless and often misleading attacks on the insurance program.”

President Donald Trump has said consistently since 2016 that he would not touch Social Security. I have no doubt that some will dismiss all that we are saying by pointing to Trump’s repeated promises to protect. Rather than focusing on how much a promise from Trump is worth, I would point to the fact that Scott Bessent, Trump’s Treasury secretary who was discussing the Trump Accounts created by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) described them as, “a backdoor for privatizing Social Security. Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out. To the extent that if, all of a sudden, these accounts grow and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement, then that’s a game changer, too.”

In March, Axios reported that “Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested this week that only ‘fraudsters’ would complain about missing a monthly Social Security check, and that most people wouldn’t mind if the government simply skipped a payment.”

All sides agree that Social Security faces some very significant long-term funding challenges. Rather than helping to solve Social Security’s challenges or even have no impact on them, the OBBB weakens Social Security’s finances. As The Hill recently reported: “President Trump’s tax and spending megabill could speed up insolvency for Social Security’s trust funds, according to an analysis from the Trump administration’s chief actuary for the program. The Office of the Chief Actuary (OACT) at the Social Security Administration (SSA) released an analysis this week of the law’s potential effects on the program’s finances in response to a request from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.”

Last, but certainly not least, the Trump administration has made large cuts to Social Security staffing that impact its ability to help Americans access their earned benefits. As the Center for Budget and Policy pointed out in June: “Over the past five months, the Trump administration has forced the Social Security Administration (SSA) through a radical transformation that threatens to disrupt services for the largely older and severely disabled people who most rely on the agency. The Trump Administration and its so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have created huge gaps in customer service and support by indiscriminately pushing out 7,000 workers to hit an arbitrary staffing reduction target. This is the largest staffing cut in SSA’s history.”

Given all of this, if you really care about Social Security, it is impossible to blithely celebrate its birthday.

So instead of having a piece of birthday cake, make a call to your member of Congress, post on social media about how we need to protect Social Security, and talk to your friends about the need to speak up against threats to your benefits. In other words, don’t celebrate–organize!


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Martin Burns
Martin Burns has worked as a congressional aide, polling analyst, journalist, and lobbyist. He was on the campaign trail for Harris-Walz in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In addition to Common Dreams, his work has been published by The Hill, Irish Central, and the Byline Times. Martin resides in Washington, DC with his wife, and regular coauthor, Mary Liz. His website is Martinburns.news.
Full Bio >

Mary Liz Burns
Mary Liz Burns is financial education consultant and content creator focusing on personal finance topics including retirement decisions, maximizing Social Security, and managing debt. She is a certified financial behavior specialist® with an MBA specializing in financial psychology, and is based in Washington, D.C.
Full Bio >

On Social Security's 90th Anniversary, Trump's Attacks on Program Top List of Policies Americans Oppose


Nearly two-thirds of Americans said they disapprove of the Trump administration slashing the Social Security Administration workforce.


US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks during a press conference on Social Security in front of the US Capitol on May 5, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Aug 14, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

As the US marked the 90th anniversary of one of its most broadly popular public programs, Social Security, on Thursday, President Donald Trump marked the occasion by claiming at an Oval Office event that his administration has saved the retirees' safety net from "fraud" perpetrated by undocumented immigrants—but new polling showed that Trump's approach to the Social Security Administration is among his most unpopular agenda items.

The progressive think tank Data for Progress asked 1,176 likely voters about eight key Trump administration agenda items, including pushing for staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration; signing the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is projected to raise the cost of living for millions as people will be shut out of food assistance and Medicaid; and firing tens of thousands of federal workers—and found that some of Americans' biggest concerns are about the fate of the agency that SSA chief Frank Bisignano has pledged to make "digital-first."

Sixty-three percent of respondents said they oppose the proposed layoffs of about 7,000 SSA staffers, or about 12% of its workforce—which, as progressives including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have warned, have led to longer wait times for beneficiaries who rely on their monthly earned Social Security checks to pay for groceries, housing, medications, and other essentials.

Forty-five percent of people surveyed said they were "very concerned" about the cuts.



Only the Trump administration's decision not to release files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case was more opposed by respondents, with 65% saying they disapproved of the failure to disclose the documents, which involve the financier and convicted sex offender who was a known friend of the president. But fewer voters—about 39%—said they were "very concerned" about the files.

Among "persuadable voters"—those who said they were as likely to vote for candidates from either major political party in upcoming elections—70% said they opposed the cuts to Social Security.

The staffing cuts have forced Social Security field offices across the country to close, and as Sanders said Wednesday as he introduced the Keep Billionaires Out of Social Security Act, the 1-800 number beneficiaries have to call to receive their benefits "is a mess," with staffers overwhelmed due to the loss of more than 4,000 employees so far.

As Common Dreams reported in July, another policy change this month is expected to leave senior citizens and beneficiaries with disabilities unable to perform routine tasks related to their benefits over the phone, as they have for decades—forcing them to rely on a complicated online verification process.

Late last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted that despite repeated claims from Trump that he won't attempt to privatize Social Security, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act offers a "backdoor way" for Republicans to do just that.

The law's inclusion of tax-deferred investment accounts called "Trump accounts" that will be available to US citizen children starting next July could allow the GOP to privatize the program as it has hoped to for decades.

"Right now, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are quietly creating problems for Social Security so they can later hand it off to their private equity buddies," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Thursday.

Marking the program's 90th anniversary, Sanders touted his Keep Billionaires Out of Social Security Act.

"This legislation would reverse all of the cuts that the Trump administration has made to the Social Security Administration," said Sanders. "It would make it easier, not harder, for seniors and people with disabilities to receive the benefits they have earned over the phone."

"Each and every year, some 30,000 people die—they die while waiting for their Social Security benefits to be approved," said Sanders. "And Trump's cuts will make this terrible situation even worse. We cannot and must not allow that to happen.

Sanders Bill Would Fight Trump Effort to 'Dismantle Social Security'

"On the 90th anniversary of Social Security, our job must be to reverse these disastrous cuts, expand Social Security, and make it easier, not harder, for Americans to receive the benefits they have earned and deserve."

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appears on at Fox News on May 7, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Aug 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday introduced the Keep Billionaires Out of Social Security Act, legislation intended to thwart President Donald Trump's attacks on the agency that administers benefits for millions of seniors and other Americans.

In a statement introducing his bill, Sanders (I-Vt.) called out not only Trump but also Elon Musk, who is the richest person on Earth and led the president's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until he left the administration in May.

"Since Trump has been in office, he has been working overtime with the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, to dismantle Social Security and undermine the faith that the American people have in this vitally important program," Sanders said. "Thousands of Social Security staff have lost their jobs, seniors and people with disabilities are having a much harder time receiving the benefits they have earned, field offices have been shut down, and the 1-800 number is a mess."

"That is beyond unacceptable," the senator declared, just days before a key milestone for the law that led to the Social Security Administration (SSA). "On the 90th anniversary of Social Security, our job must be to reverse these disastrous cuts, expand Social Security, and make it easier, not harder, for Americans to receive the benefits they have earned and deserve. That's precisely what this legislation will do."



As Sanders' office summarized, the bill aims to defend Americans and their benefits by:Protecting and improving Americans' access to Social Security offices—prohibiting closures, relocations, and service reductions, reversing Trump's layoffs, and ensuring Americans can speak to real people to get their benefits;
Increasing funding by $5 billion to improve customer service, modernize technology, and reduce backlogs;
Restoring assistance for vulnerable and disabled people to access their benefits;
Safeguarding Americans' data and stopping Trump's politicization of Social Security; and
Removing DOGE's authority and calling for an independent investigation into DOGE's actions at SSA.

The bill is backed by 20 other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and several organizations, including Social Security Works, Alliance for Retired Americans, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

Sanders introduced the bill on the same day that he joined former Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley, U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and John Larson (D-Conn.), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—a co-sponsor of the new legislation—for a Protect Our Checks town hall, hosted by Unrig Our Economy, Social Security Works, and the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Late last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent "openly bragged about plans to use a back door to privatize Social Security and hand the benefits of working families over to those folks on Wall Street," Wyden pointed out. "Trump's so-called promise to protect Social Security, in my view, is about as real as his promise to protect Medicaid—no substance, big consequences for American seniors and families walking on an economic tightrope."

The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Republicans passed and the president signed in July is expected to strip Medicaid and other key assistance, including food stamps, from millions of Americans in the next decade.



Wednesday's town hall also featured testimony from Social Security recipients, including Judith Brown, who explained that "at 37, I became disabled. It was devastating, because I was a young mother to two sons [that] are on the autism spectrum."

"When my sons needed additional medical support, I was able to get care for them because of their Social Security benefits. Without those benefits, we would have been homeless on the street," Brown continued. "Social Security has always been there for us over all these years. Right now, this administration is bent on stripping us of our benefits that we paid into during our working years... We cannot allow this to happen. Social Security must be protected and expanded. Our entire existence is on the line, and we must fight to protect Social Security."

Unrig Our Economy spokesperson Saryn Francis said that "Republican tariffs are driving up prices at the grocery store, their bills are raising the cost of healthcare and electricity, and they've even found time to hand out more tax breaks to billionaires, and now they want to mess with Social Security, and we are not going to let them take that away from us."

Francis noted that "this weekend, with over 50 events across the country, Americans are rallying in a massive effort to support Social Security and calling on congressional Republicans to stop threatening what hardworking people have earned and need to survive."

Trump’s Venezuela Drug War Gambit and the Militarization Playbook at Home

Whether it’s a wall in the desert or barricades in front of the White House, the message is the same: Perceived threats, real or manufactured, are met with troops, not talks.


National Guard troops are deployed to the Washington Monument as part of US President Donald Trump’s mobilization of law enforcement on August 12, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)

Michelle Ellner
Aug 15, 2025

Common Dreams

US President Donald Trump has quietly authorized the Pentagon to carry out military operations against what his administration calls “narco-terrorist” networks in Latin America. On paper, it’s a counter-narcotics policy. In practice, it serves as a green light for open-ended US military action abroad, bypassing congressional approval, sidestepping international law, and stretching the definition of “national security” until it becomes a catchall justification for the use of force.

The directive allows the US to target groups unilaterally labeled as both criminal and terrorist. Once that designation is made, the military can operate without the consent of the targeted country, a move that violates international law. In a region with a long history of US-backed coups, covert wars, and destabilization campaigns, the risk of abuse isn’t hypothetical; it’s inevitable.

While the order applies across Latin America, Venezuela stands at the top of the list. The Trump administration has accused President Nicolás Maduro’s government of working with transnational cartels, and has doubled the bounty on him to $50 million (double the bounty for Osama bin Laden). It’s a lawfare tactic designed to criminalize a head of state and invite mercenaries and covert operatives to participate in regime change. The accusations fueling this escalation have grown increasingly far-fetched casting Maduro in turn as a partner of Colombia’s FARC, the head of the “Cartel de los Soles,” a patron of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, and now, as an ally of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. a charge even Mexico’s own president says has no evidence, revealing how politicized and unfounded this allegation is.

The core premise of the accusation is that Maduro is involved in a cocaine trafficking network of Venezuelan military and political figures called Cartel de los Soles. The Venezuelan government denies the cartel’s existence, calling it a fabrication to justify sanctions and regime change efforts. Multiple independent investigations have shown no hard evidence exists and that this narrative thrives in a media-intelligence echo chamber. Reports from outlets like Insight Crime cite anonymous US sources; those media stories are then cited by policymakers and think tanks, and the cycle repeats until speculation becomes policy.

The communities in Caracas and Los Angeles, in the Venezuelan plains, and in the US-Mexico border may seem worlds apart, but they are facing the same war machine.

Fulton Armstrong, a professor at American University and a former longtime US intelligence officer, has stated that he knows no one in the intelligence community, apart from those currently in government, who believes in the existence of the Cartel de los Soles.

Drug monitoring data also contradict this narrative. The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) reports that only about 7% of US-bound cocaine transits through the Eastern Caribbean via Venezuela, while approximately 90% takes Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific routes. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2025 World Drug Report likewise confirms that trafficking remains concentrated in major Andean corridors, not through Venezuela. Yet Venezuela is targeted anyway, not for its actual role in the drug trade, but because neutralizing its government has become a pillar of US foreign policy, seen in Washington as a step toward reshaping the country’s political system and prying open its economy to foreign control.






The “narco-terror” label put on Venezuela also attempts to rope Venezuela into the US fentanyl crisis, despite the absence of evidence that the country plays any role in fentanyl trafficking. Even US drug enforcement assessments make no mention of Venezuela as a source or transit point.

This link exists only in political rhetoric, a way to fold Venezuela into a domestic public health crisis and recycle the same logic used to brand it a “national security threat.” That accusation dates back to 2015 when then-President Barack Obama created the legal and political scaffolding for an open-ended campaign of coercion. Once the “narco-terror” framework is in place, Washington can sustain and escalate military measures over time, regardless of the immediate pretext.

This framing turns a political standoff into a declared security imperative. It broadens the range of permissible military tools, from ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) to direct action.

The pattern is familiar. In Panama (1989), Colombia (2000s), and Honduras (2010s), US militarized antidrug campaigns failed to dismantle supply chains or reduce trafficking volumes. What they did accomplish was shifting routes, militarizing criminal actors, and destabilizing governments, and left societies more fragile—costing lives and destroying communities in the process.

The Mirror at Home: Militarization and Communities of Color

The same militarized logic driving US policy in Venezuela is being applied inside the United States. In August 2025, President Trump signed an executive order placing the DC Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deployed the National Guard, citing a public safety “emergency,” despite official data showing violent crime at multiyear lows. Even US law enforcement statistics contradict the White House narrative, but the administration dismissed them, casting the city as overrun by “roving mobs,” “wild youth,” and “drugged-out maniacs.”

DC is only one example. The same militarized logic has sent thousands of troops to the US-Mexico border, converted military bases into detention centers from Texas to New Jersey, and stationed soldiers inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in over 20 states. In Los Angeles, Marines and National Guard units patrolled immigrant neighborhoods in a show of force, a deployment beaten back only by mass community resistance and the threat of labor action.

Whether it’s a wall in the desert or barricades in front of the White House, the message is the same: Perceived threats, real or manufactured, are met with troops, not talks. The playbook never changes: In Venezuela, the “threat” is cast as narco-terrorism; in the US, it’s a “border surge” or a manufactured public safety emergency built on racially coded depictions of Black and brown communities. In both cases, the logic is identical: Treat political disputes and social crises as security emergencies, sideline diplomacy and community solutions, usurp greater executive powers, and make military force a routine tool of governance.

The Real Threat

Trump’s “narco-terror” authorization uses the language of fighting drugs and crime to mask a deeper project: expanding the military’s role in governance and normalizing its use as a tool of political control both at home and abroad.

In Latin America, that means more interventions against governments the US wants to topple. At home, it means embedding the military deeper into civilian life, particularly in Black and brown neighborhoods.

The communities in Caracas and Los Angeles, in the Venezuelan plains, and in the US-Mexico border may seem worlds apart, but they are facing the same war machine. Until we reject militarization in all its forms, the targets will keep shifting, but the people under the gun will look the same.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Michelle Ellner is a Latin America campaign coordinator of CODEPINK.
Full Bio >

Bolivian centrist and right-wing candidates headed for unprecedented presidential election runoff

Euronews
Sun, August 17, 2025



Bolivians are headed for an unprecedented runoff presidential election, after early election results showed dark horse centrist Rodrigo Paz drew more votes than the right-wing front-runners, although not enough to secure an outright victory.

With over 91% of the ballots counted Sunday, Paz received 32.8% of the votes cast. In second place was conservative former president Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga, who secured 26.4% of votes.

Candidates needed to surpass 50%, or 40% with a 10-point margin of victory, to avoid a runoff.

Paz, a former mayor who has sought to soften the edges of the opposition’s push for tough austerity to rescue Bolivia from economic collapse, will face off against Quiroga on 19 October.

Presidential candidate Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga waves after voting in general elections in La Paz, Bolivia, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. - AP Photo/Freddy Barragan

The results delivered a major blow to the Andean nation’s Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party after almost 20 years of dominance. The party's founder, charismatic ex-President Evo Morales, rose to power as part of the “pink tide” of leftist leaders that swept into office across Latin America during the commodities boom of the early 2000s.

The official MAS candidate, Eduardo del Castillo, finished sixth with just 3.2% of the vote. The other leftist candidate who ran for a faction of the now-splintered party, 36-year-old Senate president Andrónico Rodríguez, captured just 8% of the vote.

Electoral officials count votes after polls closed during general elections, in La Paz, Bolivia, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. - AP Photo/Freddy Barragan

The lead for Paz came as a shock to a nation that had been conditioned by weeks of opinion polls to expect that the leading right-wing contenders, Quiroga as well as multimillionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, would capture the top two spots in the election.

This marks Doria Medina's fourth failed presidential bid. He told grim-faced supporters on Sunday that he had “no regrets.”

“I wanted to serve Bolivia as president, and it hasn’t been possible,” he said.

The elevation of the more moderate Paz apparently reflects Bolivian ambivalence about a wholesale political flip to the same right-wing establishment that Morales swept aside when he stormed to office in 2006, famously declaring an end to Bolivia’s 20-year experiment with free-market capitalism.

Presidential candidate Rodrigo Paz leaves after accompanying his daughter Catalina to vote during general elections, in La Paz, Bolivia, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. - AP Photo/Freddy Barragan

Paz has tried to distance himself from Morales’ now-shattered MAS party, which has failed to halt an economic tailspin.

He has also criticised right-wing pledges to sell Bolivia’s abundant lithium reserves to foreign companies and turn to the International Monetary Fund for billions of dollars of loans.

At stake is the direction this landlocked nation of 12 million people will take as it grapples with a dire shortage of fuel, double-digit inflation and a scarcity of US dollars.

Who Will Lose Out If the Rich Succeed in Helping the Right Win in Bolivia?

There is now a coordinated, well-funded network, backed by big capital, big business, and international financial institutions, working to bring in a new conservative government in Bolivia.


An advertisement is seen in La Paz, Bolivia for right-wing candidate Tuto Quiroga in the Bolivian elections scheduled for August 17, 2025.
(Photo by Joseph Bouchard)

Joseph Bouchard
Aug 15, 2025

Common Dreams

Ahead of this Sunday’s presidential election in Bolivia, the latest polling from Ipsos Ciesmori, released last weekend, reveals a close horserace in Bolivia’s presidential race between perennial centrist candidate and business magnate Samuel Doria Medina (21.2%), former conservative and Banzerite President Tuto Quiroga (20%), as well as Manfred Reyes Villa, Cochabamba mayor, retired Army captain, and pro-Banzer right-winger, at 7.7%.

The two left-wing MAS-affiliated candidates, Senate Leader Andrónico Rodríguez and Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo, both poll below 10% despite the MAS leading in voting intentions early on in the cycle. Current President Luis Arce is not running due to his administration being marred by continuous crises, scandals, and unpopularity.

The unpopularity facing the MAS and the left, particularly amid various crises—inflationary, political, judicial, energy, and financial—has created the possibility that the right could win an election for the first time in more than 20 years. The “nill-blank-undecided” camp stands at 33%, with most of them being disaffected leftist voters; most prominently, supporters of Evo Morales, who has been barred from running and wanted on pedophilia charges.

The race is likely to head to a second round in late October if no candidate secures 40% of the vote and a 10% lead over the next competitor. As things stand, two right-of-center candidates, Doria Medina and Quiroga, are likely to advance, a blow to the left’s progressive agenda. It would be the first second-round runoff in Bolivia’s history.

A right-wing government today would mean more poverty, more austerity, more militarism (and a likely return to heavy US influence), and less representation for Indigenous peoples and women.

The socialist movement’s downfall has been the right’s elation, and they have not been able to contain it, perhaps even overplaying their hand right before Sunday’s election.

Marcelo Claure, Bolivia’s richest man and loud financial backer of multi-millionaire Samuel Doria Medina, has declared Bolivia will soon be “free from socialism and communism” and says he looks forward to returning to the country under a “new government.” Claure, who lives between New York and Miami, backs a neoliberal, private-sector-focused corporate economic plan that suspiciously mirrors Doria Medina’s, calling for the privatization of key industries, inviting international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, and relying on “public-private partnerships.” Much of Doria Medina’s financing has also come from his personal fortune, ironically earned through state contracts.

Jaime Dunn, the right-wing libertarian Wall Street tycoon who dropped out of the race after claiming to be the “most talked about politician in Bolivia,” has also been actively lobbying for a right-wing government. Dunn has said that “Bolivia is a country of owners, not proletarians,” claiming both Doria Medina and Quiroga have “copied [his] economic plans.” He has celebrated what he calls “an end to socialism and authoritarianism” while proposing to dismantle all government industries, shut down the tax service, cut taxes for the wealthy, and end fuel and other subsidies, policies that would trigger a tsunami of chaos and suffering across the country.

Dunn openly praises Argentine President Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” cuts, which have already pushed more than half of Argentines into poverty; left thousands more living on the street; and sold the country off to crypto scammers, big exporters, and foreign investors.

The financier class has made its preferences crystal clear. In a Reuters piece, foreign investors expressed elation at the prospect of a new right-wing government, saying the election was “fueled by investors’ hopes that a political U-turn could help shore up the country’s fragile economy and pave the way for an IMF program.”

Carlos de Sousa, a debt strategist at Vontobel, said a change in government would be “quite positive for the economy.” Ajata Mediratta, a partner at Greylock Capital, described a non-leftist government as one that would bring about “liberalizing reforms” which “will eventually allow the economy to flourish” and “unshackle the economy.”

That’s a hell of a way to say people are going to suffer immensely under austerity and policies designed to enrich the wealthy and foreign capital.

Mainstream media, particularly in the US, has lavished coverage on the right-wing frontrunners, presenting their ideas and personalities in a vacuum of “neutrality” without acknowledging their history. This includes their roles in the Banzer dictatorship, their role in selling Bolivia’s energy and commercial sectors to foreign interests in the 1990s and early 2000s (leading to the Cochabamba Water War and the rise of the MAS), and their track record with IMF-backed austerity programs that brought very mixed results despite the costs.

A right-wing government today would mean more poverty, more austerity, more militarism (and a likely return to heavy US influence), and less representation for Indigenous peoples and women.

Inside Bolivia, the corporate media ecosystem has spent years boosting conservative candidates. Most outlets in the country are private, running cover, and buying skewed polls for their preferred right-wing hopefuls. These include Red Uno, Bolivia TV, Unitel, ERBOL, El Deber, the two Catholic Fides networks, and La Brújula Digital. Página Siete, Bolivia’s only independent media outlet, was closed through government pressure, and has left a wide hole in the country’s press freedom.

Affiliated TikTok, X, and Facebook accounts have also been busy spreading misinformation in their favor, publishing manipulated or outright false polls bought by candidates and running disproportionate favorable coverage of conservatives. Negative coverage of MAS and the left, with overwhelmingly positive or neutral coverage of the right, dominates their reporting.

Even Evo Morales has been running fake polls to claim the election is rigged against him.

There is now a coordinated, well-funded network, backed by big capital, big business, and international financial institutions, working to bring in a new conservative government in Bolivia. That would mean dismantling much of the progress achieved by the MAS and the left over the past 20 years.

The MAS, though highly imperfect (we can talk about crisis mismanagement, corruption, embracing of dictators, and centralization of power forever), has made significant progress on various and significant fronts. That includes drastically reducing poverty and extreme poverty by more than half; cutting child hunger; expanding access to public education; creating new public universities; defending water rights; more than quadrupling gross domestic product per capita after decades of stagnation; getting Bolivia to a low and stable unemployment rate; successfully nationalizing key industries; expanding public healthcare through SUS; and giving Indigenous peoples, women, and other marginalized groups meaningful political representation under a Plurinational government.

If the polls are right, that legacy could soon be gone, making way for austerity and widespread suffering amid historic crises.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Joseph Bouchard
Joseph Bouchard is a journalist and researcher from Québec covering security and democracy in Latin America. His articles have appeared in Responsible Statecraft, Reason, The Diplomat, Le Devoir, and RealClearPolitics, among others. He is a PhD student in Politics at the University of Virginia and a SSHRC doctoral fellow on Latin American Politics.
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Parents' Group Says New Revelations About Meta's AI Chatbot 'Confirm Our Worst Fears'

"When a company's own policies explicitly allow bots to engage children in 'romantic or sensual' conversations, it's not an oversight, it's a system designed to normalize inappropriate interactions with minors," said one advocate.


A 13-year-old boy looks at an iPhone screen display on May 21, 2025 in Bath, England.
(Photo by Anna Barclay/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Aug 15, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Four months after the children's rights advocacy group ParentsTogether Action issued an advisory about the potential harms Meta's artificial intelligence chatbot could pose to kids, new reporting Wednesday revealed how the Silicon Valley company's standards for the AI product have allowed it to have sexually provocative conversations with minors as well as make racist comments.

Reuters reported extensively on an internal Meta document titled "GenAI: Content Risk Standards."

The document said that Meta's generative AI products—which are available to users as young as 13 on the company's platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—are permitted to engage in "romantic or sensual" role-play with minors.

Examples of acceptable remarks from the AI bot included "Your youthful form is a work of art" and "Every inch of you is a masterpiece," which the document suggested could be said to a child as young as 8.

An example of an acceptable comment made to a high school student was, "I take your hand, guiding you to the bed."



New Republic contributing editor Osita Nwanevu said the reporting shows that "if we're going to have this technology, the content used to train models needs to be legally licensed from its creators and their applications need to be regulated."


"For example: I do not think we should allow children to be groomed by the computer," he said.

Reuters reported that Meta changed the document after the news outlet brought the sexually suggestive comments to the company's attention, with spokesperson Andy Stone saying such conversations with children should not have been allowed.

"The examples and notes in question were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed," Stone told Reuters. "We have clear policies on what kind of responses AI characters can offer, and those policies prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role-play between adults and minors."



But Stone didn't say the company had revised the content standards to disallow other concerning comments, like those that promote racist views.

The document stated that the AI chatbot was permitted to "create statements that demean people on the basis of their protected characteristics"—for example, a paragraph about Black people being "dumber than white people."

Reuters' reporting suggested that Meta's allowance of sexually suggestive AI conversations with children was not an accident, with current and former employees who worked on the design and training of the AI products saying the document reflected "the company's emphasis on boosting engagement with its chatbots."

"In meetings with senior executives last year, [CEO Mark] Zuckerberg scolded generative AI product managers for moving too cautiously on the rollout of digital companions and expressed displeasure that safety restrictions had made the chatbots boring, according to two of those people," reported Jeff Horwitz at Reuters. "Meta had no comment on Zuckerberg's chatbot directives."

In April, ParentsTogether Action issued a warning about Meta's AI chatbots and their ability to "engage in sexual role-play with teenagers," which had previously been reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Wednesday's reporting provided "a fuller picture of the company's rules for AI bots," the group said.

"These internal Meta documents confirm our worst fears about AI chatbots and children's safety," said Shelby Knox, campaign director for tech accountability and online safety at ParentsTogether Action. "When a company's own policies explicitly allow bots to engage children in 'romantic or sensual' conversations, it's not an oversight, it's a system designed to normalize inappropriate interactions with minors."

The group said it tested Meta AI earlier this year, posing as a 14-year-old, and was told by the bot, "Age is just a number" as it encouraged the fictional teenager to pursue a relationship with an adult.

"No child should ever be told by an AI that 'age is just a number' or be encouraged to lie to their parents about adult relationships," said Knox. "Meta has created a digital grooming ground, and parents deserve answers about how this was allowed to happen."

As Stone assured Reuters that the company was reviewing its content standards for its AI chatbot, other new reporting suggested Meta isn't likely to impose strict rules discouraging the bot from making racist or otherwise harmful remarks any time soon.

As CNN reported Wednesday, Meta has hired Robby Starbuck, a "conservative influencer and anti-DEI agitator," to serve as an anti-bias adviser for its AI products.

The arrangement is part of a legal settlement following a lawsuit Starbuck filed against Meta in April, saying the chatbot had falsely stated he took part in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

An executive order signed by President Donald Trump last month seeks to rid AI products of so-called "woke" standards and prohibit the federal government from using AI technology that is "infused with partisan bias or ideological agendas such as critical race theory"—the term used by many conservatives in recent years for the accurate teaching of race relations in US history.

Rights Group Pushes Delaware AG to Revoke Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's Corporate Charter


A Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer called on Kathy Jennings to "use her power to stop this dangerous entity that is masquerading as a charitable organization while furthering death and violence in Gaza."


Palestinians tend to a man wounded while trying to obtain food aid at a site run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the Gaza Strip on July 30, 2025.
(Photo: Yousef Alzanoun/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Aug 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

A leading U.S. legal advocacy group on Wednesday urged Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings to pursue revoking the corporate charter of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose aid distribution points in the embattled Palestinian enclave have been the sites of near-daily massacres in which thousands of Palestinians have reportedly been killed or wounded.

Last week, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) urgently requested a meeting with Jennings, a Democrat, whom the group asserted has a legal obligation to file suit in the state's Chancery Court to seek revocation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's (GHF) charter because the purported charity "is complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide."

CCR said Wednesday that Jennings "has neither responded" to the group's request "nor publicly addressed the serious claims raised against the Delaware-registered entity."

"GHF woefully fails to adhere to fundamental humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence and has proven to be an opportunistic and obsequious entity masquerading as a humanitarian organization," CCR asserted. "Since the start of its operations in late May, at least 1,400 Palestinians have died seeking aid, with at least 859 killed at or near GHF sites, which it operates in close coordination with the Israeli government and U.S. private military contractors."

One of those contractors, former U.S. Army Green Beret Col. Anthony Aguilar, quit his job and blew the whistle on what he said he saw while working at GHF aid sites.

"What I saw on the sites, around the sites, to and from the sites, can be described as nothing but war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of international law," Aguilar told Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman earlier this month. "This is not hyperbole. This is not platitudes or drama. This is the truth... The sites were designed to lure, bait aid, and kill."

Israel Defense Forces officers and soldiers have admitted to receiving orders to open fire on Palestinian aid-seekers with live bullets and artillery rounds, even when the civilians posed no security threat.

"It is against this backdrop that [President Donald] Trump's State Department approved a $30 million United States Agency for International Development grant for GHF," CCR noted. "In so doing, the State Department exempted it from the audit usually required for new USAID grantees."

"It also waived mandatory counterterrorism and anti-fraud safeguards and overrode vetting mechanisms, including 58 internal objections to GHF's application," the group added. "The Center for Constitutional Rights has submitted a [Freedom of Information Act] request seeking information on the administration's funding of GHF."

CCR continued:
The letter to Jennings opens a new front in the effort to hold GHF accountable. The Center for Constitutional Rights letter provides extensive evidence that, far from alleviating suffering in Gaza, GHF is contributing to the forced displacement, illegal killing, and genocide of Palestinians, while serving as a fig leaf for Israel's continued denial of access to food and water. Given this, Jennings has not only the authority, but the obligation to investigate GHF to determine if it abused its charter by engaging in unlawful activity. She may then file suit with the Court of Chancery, which has the authority to revoke GHF's charter.

CCR's August 5 letter notes that Jennings has previously exercised such authority. In 2019, she filed suit to dissolve shell companies affiliated with former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Richard Gates after they pleaded guilty to money laundering and other crimes.

"Attorney General Jennings has the power to significantly change the course of history and save lives by taking action to dissolve GHF," said CCR attorney Adina Marx-Arpadi. "We call on her to use her power to stop this dangerous entity that is masquerading as a charitable organization while furthering death and violence in Gaza, and to do so without delay."

CCR's request follows a call earlier this month by a group of United Nations experts for the "immediate dismantling" of GHF, as well as "holding it and its executives accountable and allowing experienced and humanitarian actors from the U.N. and civil society alike to take back the reins of managing and distributing lifesaving aid."

'Censorship and Discrimination': 200+ Scholars Slam Canceling of Harvard Journal Issue on Palestine

They wrote that "it exemplifies anti-Palestinian discrimination, obstructing the dissemination of knowledge on Palestine at the height of the genocide in Gaza," where students and educators face scholasticide.

Demonstrators protest Harvard University's stance on the Israeli war on Gaza and show support for the Palestinian people in Cambridge, Massachusetts on April 25, 2025.
(Photo: Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Aug 14, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

As Israel continues its U.S.-backed annihilation of the Gaza Strip and Harvard University weighs a deal with the Trump administration, the Ivy League institution came under fire by more than 200 scholars on Thursday for recently canceling a journal issue on Palestine.

"We, the undersigned scholars, educators, and education practitioners, write to express our alarm at the Harvard Education Publishing Group's (HEPG) cancellation of a special issue on Palestine and Education in the Harvard Educational Review (HER)," says the open letter. "Such censorship is an attempt to silence the academic examination of the genocide, starvation, and dehumanization of Palestinian people by the state of Israel and its allies."

Last month, The Guardian revealed how, after over a year of seeking, collecting, and editing submissions for a special issue on "education and Palestine" in preparation for a summer release, HEPG scrapped plans for the publication in June.

"The Guardian spoke with four scholars who had written for the issue, and one of the journal's editors," the newspaper detailed. "It also reviewed internal emails that capture how enthusiasm about a special issue intended to promote 'scholarly conversation on education and Palestine amid repression, occupation, and genocide' was derailed by fears of legal liability and devolved into recriminations about censorship, integrity, and what many scholars have come to refer to as the 'Palestine exception' to academic freedom."

The new letter also uses that language:
Contributing authors of the special issue were informed late into the process that the publisher intended to subject all articles to a legal review by Harvard University's Office of General Counsel. In response to this extraordinary move, the 21 contributing authors submitted a joint letter to both HEPG and HER, protesting this process as a contractual breach that violated their academic freedom. They also underscored the publisher's actions would set a dangerous precedent not only for the study of Palestine, but for academic publishing as a whole. The authors demanded that HEPG honour the original terms of their contractual agreements, uphold the integrity of the existing HER review process, and ensure that the special issue proceed to publication without interference. However, just prior to its release, HEPG unilaterally canceled the entire special issue and revoked the signed author contracts, in what The Guardian notes as "a remarkable new development in a mounting list of examples of censorship of pro-Palestinian speech."

These events reflect what scholars have termed the "Palestine exception" to free speech and academic freedom. It exemplifies anti-Palestinian discrimination, obstructing the dissemination of knowledge on Palestine at the height of the genocide in Gaza—precisely when Palestinian educators and students are enduring the most severe forms of "scholasticide" in modern history.


In a lengthy online statement about the cancellation, HEPG executive director Jessica Fiorillo said that "we decided not to move forward with the special issue because it did not meet our established standards for scholarly publishing. Of the 12 proposed pieces, three were research-based articles, two were reprints of previously published HER articles, and seven were opinion pieces."


"As a student-edited, non-peer-reviewed publication, HER manuscripts, nonetheless, undergo internal review by experienced, professional staff," she continued. "During this review, we determined that the submissions required substantial editorial work to meet our publication criteria. We concluded that the best recourse for all involved was to revert the rights to the pieces to authors so that they could seek publication elsewhere."


The scholars wrote Thursday that "it is unconscionable that HEPG have chosen to publicly frame their cancellation of the special issue as a matter of academic quality, while omitting key publicly reported facts that point to censorship. Perhaps most disturbingly, HEPG leadership has sought to displace responsibility for their actions onto the authors and graduate student editors of the journal, calling into question the integrity of the journal's long-standing review processes, and dismissing the articles as 'opinion pieces' unfit for publication."

"The latter claim ignores that HER explicitly welcomes 'experiential knowledge' and 'reflective accounts' through their Voices submission format," they noted. "When genocide is ongoing, personal reflections and testimonies are not only valid but vital. Dismissing such contributions as lacking scholarly merit reflects an exclusionary view of 'whose knowledge counts'—valuing Western and external academic perspectives over lived experiences of violence and oppression."

The scholars—whose letter remains open to signatures—said that they "stand in solidarity with the authors and graduate student editors of the special issue, who are facing and confronting censorship and discrimination," and concluded by calling for "HEPG to be held accountable."

HEPG is a division of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. While a spokesperson for the latter did not respond to The Guardian's request for comment on the new letter, signatory and University of Oxford professor Arathi Sriprakash told the newspaper that the cancellation mobilized scholars "precisely because we recognize the grave consequences of such threats to academic freedom and academic integrity."

"The ongoing genocidal violence in Gaza has involved the physical destruction of the entire higher education system there, and now in many education institutions around the world there are active attempts to shut down learning about what's happening altogether," Sriprakash said. "As educationalists, we have to remain steadfast in our commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and learning without fear or threat."

HEPG's cancellation has been blasted as yet another example of higher education institutions capitulating as President Donald Trump's administration cracks down on schools where policies and speech on campus don't align with the White House agenda—including students' and educators' condemnation of the Israeli assault on Gaza and U.S. complicity in it. The Trump administration is also targeting individual critics, trying to deport foreign scholars who have spoken out or protested on campus over the past 22 months.

Harvard won praise in April for suing the federal government over a multibillion-dollar funding freeze. However, last month, the university "quietly dismantled its undergraduate school's offices for diversity, equity, and inclusion," and reportedly "signaled a willingness to meet the Trump administration's demand to spend as much as $500 million to end its dispute with the White House."

Amid fears of what a settlement, like those reached by other Ivy League institutions, might involve, Harvard faculty argued in a July letter that "the university must not directly or indirectly cede to governmental or other outside authorities the right to install or reject leading personnel—that is, to dictate who can be the officials who lead the university or its component schools, departments, and centers."

While the HER issue was canceled during Harvard's battle with Trump, outrage over how scholarship on Palestine is handled on campus predates the president's return to power in January. In November 2023, The Nation published a piece about Israel's war on Gaza that the Harvard Law Review commissioned from a Palestinian scholar but then refused to run after an internal debate.

At the time, the author of that essay, human rights attorney Rabea Eghbariah, wrote in an email to a Law Review editor: "This is discrimination. Let's not dance around it—this is also outright censorship. It is dangerous and alarming."

'Legitimate Question': UEFA Chief Addresses Hypocrisy of Banning Russia But Not Israel

UEFA also allowed the on-pitch display of a banner reading "STOP KILLING CHILDREN" before a Super Cup match amid controversy over its response to Israel's killing of a beloved Palestinian footballer.


A banner which reads "STOP KILLING CHILDREN" and "STOP KILLING CIVILIANS" is displayed on the pitch as players line up prior to the UEFA Super Cup 2025 match between Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham Hotspur at Stadio Friuli on August 13, 2025 in Udine, Italy.
(Photo by Chris Ricco/UEFA via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Aug 15, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The head of European football's governing body on Thursday addressed what critics say is its hypocritical policy of banning Russia but not Israel, remarks that came amid backlash over the organization's response to Israel's slaying of a prominent Palestinian footballer and over a banner unfurled at a recent match.

Union of European Football Associations president Aleksander Čeferin was asked during an interview with the Slovenian news channel Odmevi why Russia is banned from UEFA events but Israel is not.

"This is a legitimate question," Čeferin replied, adding that "in principle, I do not support banning athletes from participating in competitions."

"In the case of Russia, the athletes have not been participating for three-and-a-half years and the war has only worsened," Čeferin continued. "I know that many of the athletes oppose the regime, but they still cannot play. I am against being denied the right to participate in our competitions."

"Israel is allowed to play in our facilities. This is our decision as of now," he said. "It's hard for me to say what will happen in the future, but I really think that all athletes should be given the opportunity to compete. The rest of the things should be resolved in other ways."

While Russia's ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukraine is believed to have killed or wounded nearly 50,000 civilians, Israel's US-backed assault and siege on Gaza has left more than three times that number of civilians dead or injured, based on estimates from United Nations agencies and Israel Defense Forces that between two-thirds and three-quarters of slain Palestinians were noncombatants.

Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are fugitives from the International Criminal Court. In 2023 the ICC issued a warrant for the arrest of Putin and Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the alleged war crime of abducting Ukrainian children to Russia.

The following year, the Hague-based tribunal ordered the arrest of Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation. Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

Čeferin's remarks came a day after UEFA invited refugee children including Gazans to unfurl a banner reading "STOP KILLING CHILDREN" and "STOP KILLING CIVILIANS" on the pitch before Wednesday's Super Cup match between Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham Hotspur in Udine, Italy.

The move drew criticism from defenders of both Israel and Palestine, the latter of whom took issue with the conspicuous omission of who is doing the killing. According to Israel's Channel 12, the Israeli government attempted to block the banner's display but settled for a compromise in which the country would not be named.



The banner display came amid backlash over UEFA's response to Israel's recent killing of Suleiman al-Obeid—known as the "Pelé of Palestinian football"—while he was trying to obtain food aid amid a growing forced famine in Gaza. As with the banner, UEFA declined to say where al-Obeid was killed, or by whom.

"Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?" Liverpool FC star and Egyptian national team captain Mohamed Salah asked last week.

Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinian footballers in Gaza since October 2023, prompting calls for the country to be banned not only from UEFA matches but also from the 2026 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

"There are 760 Palestinian athletes martyred by Israel, including 420 footballers, while 140 football facilities have been destroyed," former Egyptian national team star Mohamed Aboutrika said earlier this week.


"FIFA and UEFA stopped Russia over its war on Ukraine," he added. "When will the Israeli occupation be stopped? We don't want just words, we want real action."