‘She Died Free’: Tributes Pour In for Revolutionary Icon Assata Shakur

“They wanted her bound, broken, and paraded as an example, but instead, she slipped their grip and lived out her life in exile, surrounded by people who honored her struggle and her survival,” said one admirer.


Assata Shakur with Old Havana, Cuba, in the background on October 7, 1987.
(Photo by Ozier Muhammad/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

Olivia Rosane
Sep 27, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Assata Shakur, a Black revolutionary who inspired generations of activists to struggle for a better world, passed away on Thursday in Havana, Cuba, where she had lived in exile from the US for over four decades.

Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced her death on Friday, saying it was caused by a combination of “health conditions and advanced age.” She was reportedly 78 years old.

“At approximately 1:15 pm on September 25, my mother, Assata Shakur, took her last earthly breath,” her daughter Kakuya Shakur wrote on Facebook on Friday. “Words cannot describe the depth of loss that I am feeling at this time. I want to thank you for your loving prayers that continue to anchor me in the strength that I need in this moment. My spirit is overflowing in unison with all of you who are grieving with me at this time.”

Shakur, who was born Joanne Deborah Byron and was also known as Joanne Deborah Chesimard, spent the first three years of her life in Queens, New York before moving to Wilmington, North Carolina. She then returned to Queens for third grade.

“Assata’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people continues to inspire generations.”

“I spent my early childhood in the racist segregated South,” she recalled in a 1998 letter to Pope John Paul II. “I later moved to the northern part of the country, where I realized that Black people were equally victimized by racism and oppression.”

Shakur became active in the anti-Vietnam War, student, and Black liberation movements while attending Borough of Manhattan Community College and the City College of New York. After graduation, she joined first the Black Panther Party and then the Black Liberation Army (BLA).

“I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the US government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one,” she wrote in 2013.

In 1973, she and two other BLA activists were stopped at the New Jersey Turnpike by two state troopers. By the end of the encounter, both Shakur’s friend Zayd Malik Shakur and trooper Werner Foerster were shot dead. In 1977, Shakur was convicted of Foerster’s murder in a trial she described as a “legal lynching.” Throughout her life, she maintained her innocence.

“I was shot once with my arms held up in the air and then once again from the back,” she wrote of the shootout.

She was sentenced to life in prison plus 33 years, but didn’t long remain behind bars.

“In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case and who were also extremely fearful for my life,” she wrote.

In 1984, she claimed asylum in Cuba. Throughout her life, she also remained staunchly committed to the cause of liberation for all oppressed peoples.

“I have advocated and I still advocate revolutionary changes in the structure and in the principles that govern the United States,” she wrote to John Paul II. “I advocate self-determination for my people and for all oppressed inside the United States. I advocate an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism, and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty.”

During her exile, her writings, including her 1987 autobiography, gained a wide audience and brought her story and voice to younger activists.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom,” she wrote in one of the book’s most famous passages. “It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”



She was also influential in the world of music and hip-hop, serving as godmother to Tupac Shakur and inspiring songs by Public Enemy and Common, among others.

The US government did not give up its pursuit of her. In 2013, under President Barack Obama, the Federal Bureau of Investigation named her the first woman on its “Most Wanted Terrorist” list. The FBI and the state of New Jersey also doubled the reward for information leading to her capture. That reward will now never be claimed.

“She died free!” one of her admirers, who uses the handle The Cake Lady, wrote on social media on Friday. “The US government, after decades of pursuit, never got the satisfaction of putting her in a cage. They wanted her bound, broken, and paraded as an example, but instead, she slipped their grip and lived out her life in exile, surrounded by people who honored her struggle and her survival.”

News of her passing inspired tributes from social justice and anti-imperialist leaders and organizations, including former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)

“We honor the life of comrade Assata Shakur, a revolutionary who inspires and pushes all of us in the struggle for a better world,” wrote anti-war group CodePink on social media.

Community organizer Tanisha Long posted: “Assata Shakur joins the ancestors a free woman. She did not die bound by the carceral system and she did not pass away living in a land that never respected or accepted her. Assata taught us that liberation can not be bargained for, it must be taken.”

The Revolutionary Blackout Network wrote, “Thank you for fighting to liberate us all, comrade.”



The New York-based People’s Forum said: “We honor Assata’s life and legacy as a tireless champion of the people and as a symbol of hope and resistance for millions around the world in urgent fight against racism, police brutality, US imperialism, and white supremacy. Assata’s unwavering commitment to the liberation of her people continues to inspire generations.”

The Democratic Socialists of America vowed to “honor her legacy by recognizing our duty to fight for our freedom, to win, to love, and protect one another because we have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Black Lives Matter organizer Malkia Amala Cyril lamented to The Associated Press that Shakur died during a global rise of authoritarianism.

“The world in this era needs the kind of courage and radical love she practiced if we are going to survive it,” Cyril said.

Several tributes featured Shakur’s own words.

“I believe in living,” she wrote in a poem at the beginning of her autobiography.

“I believe in birth. I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth. And i believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, seasick sailors, can still be guided home to port.”

Trump tariffs: Who stands to lose from new US pharma duties?

Arthur Sullivan

DW

September 27, 2025

The US president's latest tariff move will see the US impose 100% levies on imports of branded or patented pharmaceutical goods from October 1. What could it mean for global trade?

Will US patients become the losers of Donald Trump's new tariffs on pharma imports

Image: Anthony Behar/SipaUSA/picture alliance

The news came in much the same way as previous tariff bombshells from the US president had — suddenly, via social media, and with much left unclear.

In a post on his social media site late on Thursday, Donald Trump announced steep new tariffs on US pharmaceutical imports.

"Starting October 1st, 2025, we will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any branded or patented Pharmaceutical Product, unless a Company IS BUILDING their Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plant in America,” he wrote on Truth Social.

So far, pharmaceutical goods have been exempt from the so-called reciprocal tariffs Trump announced back in April. That was mainly because earlier this year, the US government opened a national security probe examining the possibility of tariffs on pharma goods.

Trump has regularly threatened that pharmaceutical products would be hit with tariffs since returning to office in January so the move itself is not a major surprise, even if the timing is.

What exactly will the move mean for drugs companies?

There were two possible exemptions in Trump's announcement. He said the tariffs will not apply to so-called generic drugs, apparently meaning drugs and pharmaceuticals that use the same ingredients and are used in the same way as existing, branded drugs, originally covered by chemical patents.

However, Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, says the distinction between branded and generic drugs is not entirely clear because there can be a "big difference."

"There's a lot of branded, generic drugs for example. That all seems to be smashed together in Trump's announcement. At this stage, we just don't know how it will play out," she told DW.

Deborah Elms says it's still not clear what exactly will exempt a company from Trump's pharma tariffs

Image: Hinrich Foundation

The other distinction Trump announced is that the tariffs will not apply to companies that produce drugs in the US or who plan to build factories there.

He wrote that "IS BUILDING" will be defined as "breaking ground" and/or "under construction." Therefore, there will be "no Tariff on these Pharmaceutical Products if construction has started," he added.

Elms says this carve-out could be significant but emphasized that because all there is to go on so far is a social media post from Trump.

If she were a pharma executive now she would be "buying a shovel and digging a hole somewhere," she suggested, in order to declare that her company had broken ground and was "preparing for a factory development."

"It's unclear what would be sufficient to avoid tariffs. They could come up with a lot of criteria that either qualifies or disqualifies. I can imagine that there will be a lot of confusion over this," said Elms.

Neil Shearing, Capital Economics' group chief economist, believes the announcement "is not quite as big a move as it appears at first sight" because the exemption for firms producing within the US is "more significant."

"Many of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies either already have some production in the US or have announced plans to build production in the near future. This would appear to make them exempt from the new tariffs," Shearing wrote in a note to clients.

Why the pharmaceutical industry in Germany is booming  04:02

Several large pharmaceutical companies have recently pledged to begin new construction in the US, such as Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Roche Holding and GSK.

A report by US business daily Wall Street Journal earlier this month identified more than a dozen drugmakers which had pledged to spend more than $350 billion (€299 billion) collectively by the end of this decade on drugmaking and related activities within the US.

Which countries will be worst affected?

According to the United Nations Comtrade Database, the US imported around $213 billion worth of pharmaceutical products in 2024.

Data from the MIT Observatory of Economic Complexity identified Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore and India as the top five exporters of pharmaceuticals to the US in July 2025. The EU accounts for around 60% of all US pharma imports.

However, it is unclear how pharmaceutical firms operating from Ireland, Germany or other EU nations will be impacted. That's because when details of the US-EU trade agreement were released in late August, it appeared that EU pharma tariffs would be limited to 15%, in line with most other tariffs in the deal.

Simon Harris, Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, announced he would be "studying the impact of this announcement" but stressed that the August trade agreement made clear that tariffs on pharma products would be capped at 15%. "This remains the case," he said in a press release.

Ken Peng, head of Asia investment strategy at Citi Wealth, thinks the generic drugs exemption would be "good news for the likes of India and China, who mostly do not provide branded drugs to the US market."

Generic drug production has largely moved to Asian countries because of their cost advantage over most Western companies

Image: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

However, Nathalie Moll, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, believes the new tariffs will "increase costs, disrupt supply chains and prevent patients from getting lifesaving treatments," as she said in a statement.

Following the announcement on Thursday, shares in Asian and European pharma companies fell.

What about US consumers?

Trump has long claimed that tariffs would boost US consumers. But Deborah Elms argues that for various reasons, that will not be the case, and patients are about to "pay an awful lot more money" for pharmaceutical products.

Admitting that there could be some "long-term benefits" to homeshoring pharma production "such as securing supply," she says high US production costs mean it often makes sense for pharmaceuticals to be made elsewhere.

And so she expects "higher costs for US patients," and less pharma imports from abroad.

"In many cases, they will not reach US patients at all. So...it's also access issues. What is the benefit of this from a consumer perspective? Almost none."

Edited by: Uwe Hessler

Arthur Sullivan Reporter and senior editor focused on global economic stories with a geopolitical angle.@drumloman86

This alarming intel shows how TACO Trump will drag us into World War III

Thom Hartmann
September 27, 2025 

COMMON DREAMS


Donald Trump speaks with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. 

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque


The world has often seen great wars ignited not by inevitability, but by weakness, hesitation, and betrayal. Cowards playing with matches.

History shows that one of the biggest risk factors for war is an autocratic leader who fears for his own future. Which is why the kind of pathetic incoherence we saw at the United Nations this week should concern us all.

This week’s news brings some alarming data points:

After four different Danish airports were buzzed by what many assume to be Russian drones (Danes are uncertain), a French airport was hit yesterday and a Norwegian airport was shut down by drones earlier in the week.
The US Navy fired Trident II D5 ballistic missiles from the coast of Florida, lighting up the sky as they were testing devices that could carry thermonuclear bombs deep into Russia.
A massive US Navy presence in the Caribbean and off the coast of Venezuela was just this week joined by F35s and Reaper drones as Trump has blown three Venezuela boats out of the water without congressional authorization.
In an absolutely unprecedented move, Pete “Kegger” Hegseth has ordered all the US military’s flag officers and their staffs to come to Virginia for a meeting with an unknown agenda. This is not normal military procedure; it has the stench of authoritarian consolidation, the kind of maneuver history has shown us precedes purges, coups, and crackdowns.
Russia is experiencing a nationwide fuel shortage (also in Russian-occupied Crimea) as the result of Ukrainian drones taking out refineries and depots across the nation. It’s so bad, the Kremlin has banned fuel exports until the end of the year. The nation’s economy is teetering and Putin is apparently in political trouble.
Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister Wu Chihchung warns, “China is preparing to invade Taiwan.”
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, just said, “NATO and the European Union want to declare, in fact, have already declared a real war on my country and are directly participating in it.”
NATO notified Russia that they may shoot down planes that invade NATO airspace, and Russia replied that “would be war.”

As Russian jets cross NATO skies and intelligence warns of an impending strike, while Trump — desperate for a diversion from the Epstein/Trump sex scandal and a collapsing economy —appears to be trying to provoke a war with Venezuela, the question grows louder: are we watching the sparks of a new global conflict?


And is the dangerous bond between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump the match that could light the fuse of World War III?


Remember back in July when Trump told NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (during a visit to the Oval Office) that if Europe would pay for the anti-missile defense systems Ukraine desperately needs he’d see to it that they were shipped over there promptly?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted:
“I’m grateful to our team and to the United States, Germany, and Norway for preparing a new decision on Patriots for Ukraine.”


Rutte coordinated with Germany and Norway (and later other NATO countries) to raise the billions necessary to pay for the systems to replenish stocks held by European nations, particularly France, Germany, and Denmark, that those countries are supplying to Ukraine.


The replacements should have arrived in Europe by now, a continent that’s increasingly on edge as Putin keeps flying MiGs over former Soviet client states in the Baltics.

As they supply Ukraine — which is suffering under unprecedented attacks with hundreds of missiles and drones every night — Europe’s own stockpiles that could be used to deter Russian aggression are vanishing.

Between that Oval Office meeting and now, however, Trump had his infamous red-carpet meeting with Putin in Alaska and apparently got different orders from his self-described friend and probable mentor.


As Vivian Salama reports for The Atlantic, there’s been a sudden change in the Trump administration’s position with regard to providing NATO or EU countries with defensive weaponry to replace what they’ve given to Ukraine:
“Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby said that he didn’t believe in the value of certain foreign military sales, according to two administration officials with knowledge of the discussion.”


Adding to European concerns, news broke last week that a Russian Major General who defected claims Putin is planning a full-on invasion of both Ukraine and parts of the Baltic states — all NATO members — “before Christmas.”

The British newspaper the Daily Express reported, in an article headlined “Russia's 'greyzone' invasion plan to start WW3 before Christmas revealed by defector”:

“Moscow is preparing a ‘greyzone’ attack on Poland before Christmas, a senior Russian military official has revealed.

“The warning, sent through an Eastern European ally during London’s DSEI arms fair last week, has triggered urgent discussions in the UK and US about the risk of a deniable strike aimed at fracturing NATO.”


Poland, Romania, and Estonia have all seen Russian MiGs violate their airspace in the past two weeks, scrambling NATO jets as Poland and Estonia have invoked NATO’s Article 4 process to stand up to potential aggression.

It appears to me (just my opinion) that when Putin met with Trump in Alaska either he ordered Trump to back away from Ukraine and NATO, or simply took the measure of the man and concluded he could launch an invasion of the Baltics with a low probability that the United States under the convicted felon would respond militarily. Trump’s recent blocking of Patriot systems to Europe suggests the former rather than the latter.

Europe is taking this threat seriously. Great Britain this past week dispatched Royal Air Force jets to Poland with backup from Voyager tankers; they join German, French, Swedish, and Danish jets that began patrolling the eastern flank of the Baltic nations after the first Polish incursions.


Donald Tusk, Poland’s Prime Minister, warned that his nation — and, implicitly, the region — is now closer to military conflict “than at any time since the Second World War.” The UK’s OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) Ambassador, Neil Holland, was explicit that these were not accidental incursions into NATO airspace:
“Either Russia has deployed systems it cannot control, or it is provoking us deliberately.”


According to the Express reporting, British intelligence isn’t expecting a full-on invasion of Eastern Europe but, instead — at least initially — the same sort of “deniable” pinpoint attacks Putin has used to precede his later, larger assaults on other nations including Georgia and Ukraine. One UK intelligence official said:
“There’s no suggestion of a full-scale invasion. But a calibrated strike – something deniable, something confusing – is exactly how Russia has operated in the past.”


He added:

“They’re probing NATO. If they can strike Poland and NATO flinches — even slightly — it undermines the whole alliance.”


At the same time, Russia has reportedly launched a full-scale “coordinated information warfare” assault on Finland via the internet and social media. Finland shares a 833-mile border with Russia, which, as the USSR, has invaded that nation twice in modern times, once in 1939 and again in 1941.

Marco Giannangeli, Defence and Diplomatic Editor for Express, pointed out:
“Western officials fear the disinformation campaign is intended to soften the ground for further provocations along the Gulf of Finland.”


Putin’s apparently taking Trump’s TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) label to heart. Tragically, the entire world may soon see the consequence of a blustering, incompetent, race/deportation-obsessed, apparently terrified-of-Putin president who’s surrounded himself with people whose singular quality is not competence but loyalty and a willingness to break tradition and the law on the boss’ behalf.

History will not forgive miscalculation at this scale. With Europe bracing for attack, NATO stockpiles running dry, Trump near provoking war with Venezuela, and Putin — in deep trouble at home — probing for weakness, the world stands at a perilous crossroads.


The only question now is whether this moment will be remembered as the turning point that stopped another world war, or the disaster when Trump and Putin together opened the gates to it.

Trump's latest threat is nothing short of domestic terrorism

Thom Hartmann
September 26, 2025 

COMMON DREAMS


Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting at the White House. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst


If Donald Trump's lips move, he’s lying. Or trying to solicit a bribe. Or slandering Democrats. Or, now, taking hostages.

Most recently, he’s started lying about what congressional Democrats are demanding in exchange for giving the GOP the votes they need in the Senate to keep the government open past Oct. 1.

And now, Trump has announced that he's taking hostages. Federal employees will be fired, rather than temporarily furloughed, if there is a government shutdown.

But I’ll get to that in a moment. It isn’t where he started lying, bribe-getting, and slandering Democrats this week.

That was when the entire world watched, aghast, as Trump fulfilled his commitment to the fossil fuel industry and repeatedly lied before the assembled United Nations about fossil fuels, renewable energy, and climate change.


Back in April of last year, he’d addressed a private group of fossil fuel executives and billionaires, and said that he was offering them a “deal”: if they’d give his campaign massive contributions, he’d do pretty much whatever they wanted. The Hill has documented almost $140 million in bribes/contributions that followed the speech, and there’s likely far, far more in dark money contributions that we’ll never know about.

Thus, an embarrassed America had to watch as the entire world was treated to the president of the United States lying repeatedly in exchange for over a hundred million dollars. After all, his lips were moving.

The Emiratis placed a bet recently when they put $2 billion into a little crypto company that the Trump family and Steve Witkoff's family had started. Apparently in exchange, Trump authorized the transfer to the UAE of about a half-million top-tech chips, that had been blocked by national security concerns.

Generally, that’s called a “bribe,” although without the FBI doing an investigation we won’t know for sure. At the very least, it’s a conflict of interest. Ryan Cummings of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy, said:

“If this is true, this is the largest public corruption scandal in the history of the United States and it’s not even close.”

As our Constitution says:
“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” (emphasis added)

And now, on the verge of a government shutdown, Trump has rolled out one of the most audacious lies of the past … er … week. On his Nazi-infested failing social media site, he wrote:
“After reviewing the details of the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive.

“They are threatening to shut down the Government of the United States unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens (A monumental cost!), force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors, have dead people on the Medicaid roles, allow Illegal Alien Criminals to steal Billions of Dollars in American Taxpayer Benefits, try to force our Country to again open our Borders to Criminals and to the World, allow men to play in women’s sports, and essentially create Transgender operations for everybody.”


Let’s examine that:


— “over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending” is extraordinarily misleading. Even Republicans claim that would be the cost over 10 years to continue the Affordable Care Act subsidies, so people’s insurance costs don’t explode at the start of next year. And don’t forget that Republicans cut that trillion dollars in ACA and Medicaid spending so they could give a $3.5 trillion in tax breaks to Trump and his billionaire friends.

— “to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens” is up to the states, not the feds, as they control how their Medicaid dollars are disbursed. Most Blue states make their programs available to all legal immigrants, and some extend that to undocumented people, particularly pregnant women (and most Red states don’t). The reason is simple: we all share the same space. You don’t want the undocumented person standing behind you in line at the grocery store to have an active case of TB, for example; keeping everybody healthy is only common sense.

— “force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors” is complete horses––t. The Democratic leaders’ public position in the shutdown talks is an “ironclad” extension of ACA premium tax credits and reversing recent Medicaid cuts, full stop.


— “have dead people on the Medicaid roles [sic]” is another lie. Democrats’ Continuing Resolution (CR) demand is entirely and 100% about health coverage affordability and undoing cuts, not “funding dead people.”

— “allow Illegal Alien Criminals to steal Billions of Dollars in American Taxpayer Benefits” is even beyond a lie, it’s a slander against both immigrants and Democrats. There is nothing even remotely close to letting anybody “steal” anything in their CR demand.

— “try to force our Country to again open our Borders to Criminals and to the World,” is another libel against Democrats and the Biden administration. No president of either party since the 1920s has tried to “open our borders” to anybody, particularly criminals. And, again, the only firm Democratic demand is to extend the ACA/Obamacare subsidies and undo the cuts to Medicaid.


— “allow men to play in women’s sports” is both another lie and an attempt to inflame his queer-hating base. There’s no mention of this anywhere in anything any Democrat has said with regard to the CR and it’s not in their formal proposal. And the official Democratic Party position is that officials with responsibility for every sport should be able to decide if they want to allow trans athletes to compete or not (would anybody care if the sport was a Chess tournament?). Ironically, that’s the “small government” position.

— “essentially create Transgender operations for everybody” is so absurd as to be laughable, if it wasn’t that so many Republicans actually believe things Trump and his lickspittles in the rightwing media sewer put out.

On top of all that, the Trump administration announced today that if Democrats won’t vote to help keep the government open, they will begin mass layoffs of federal employees. This is pure hostage-taking, and radically raises the stakes for the Democrats in the Senate.


At the moment, the only solid demands Democrats are making in exchange for their vote to keep the government open are to extend the Obamacare subsidies and eliminate the Medicaid cuts that will phase in during January, 2027 just after the 2026 midterm elections.

They should, in my opinion, add the release of the Epstein files and the unmasking of ICE to that list.

America deserves to know if, in addition to having had a jury already determine that this convicted felon committed sexual abuse, our president was also involved in the abuse of young girls.

And polling shows that Americans are increasingly uncomfortable with unaccountable, masked secret police patrolling our streets and violently attacking citizens and protesters.


Whatever they do, though, I agree with the comment former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, now a Democrat, said on my SiriusXM radio program yesterday:

Every Democrat in the Senate should spend the next month in the reddest parts of their states doing town halls where Republicans refuse to, leaving the administration to twist in the wind of the bad publicity as the government shuts down and they begin firing federal workers.

Or conducting mock hearings about the UAE chips-bribery and the Epstein files.

What Trump’s doing with his mass firing threat is nothing short of economic terrorism against the American people.

For decades, government shutdowns meant temporary furloughs that were painful but reversible. Now, Trump and his cronies are using the threat of mass, permanent firings to gut the very institutions that protect our food, our air, our water, our workers, and our democracy itself.

This isn’t about budgets; it’s about power. It’s about dismantling the federal government so only Trump’s priorities — ICE, border patrol, and his authoritarian machinery — are left standing.

It’s a smash-and-grab of our constitutional order, a direct assault on Congress’s power of the purse, and an act of extortion against the American people: “Give us what we want, or we’ll torch the house.”

And here’s the bottom line: Democrats must never give in to hostage takers, because if you pay the ransom once, the next demand will be even bigger, the next threat even worse. Authoritarians don’t just bend the rules, they burn them down, and the only way to stop them is to refuse to play their game.

Courage!

DOGE STATE 0F CRUELTY

Trump launches AI program to deny Medicare services

Lauren Sausser, KFF Health News

Darius Tahir, Kaiser Health News
September 26, 2025 

A nurse holds an elderly woman's hand. (Shutterstock)

Taking a page from the private insurance industry’s playbook, the Trump administration will launch a program next year to find out how much money an artificial intelligence algorithm could save the federal government by denying care to Medicare patients.


The pilot program, designed to weed out wasteful, “low-value” services, amounts to a federal expansion of an unpopular process called prior authorization, which requires patients or someone on their medical team to seek insurance approval before proceeding with certain procedures, tests, and prescriptions. It will affect Medicare patients, and the doctors and hospitals who care for them, in Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington, starting Jan. 1 and running through 2031.

The move has raised eyebrows among politicians and policy experts. The traditional version of Medicare, which covers adults 65 and older and some people with disabilities, has mostly eschewed prior authorization. Still, it is widely used by private insurers, especially in the Medicare Advantage market.

And the timing was surprising: The pilot was announced in late June, just days after the Trump administration unveiled a voluntary effort by private health insurers to revamp and reduce their own use of prior authorization, which causes care to be “significantly delayed,” said Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“It erodes public trust in the health care system,” Oz told the media. “It’s something that we can’t tolerate in this administration.”

But some critics, like Vinay Rathi, an Ohio State University doctor and policy researcher, have accused the Trump administration of sending mixed messages.

On one hand, the federal government wants to borrow cost-cutting measures used by private insurance, he said. “On the other, it slaps them on the wrist.”

Administration officials are “talking out of both sides of their mouth,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat. “It’s hugely concerning.”

Patients, doctors, and other lawmakers have also been critical of what they see as delay-or-deny tactics, which can slow down or block access to care, causing irreparable harm and even death.

“Insurance companies have put it in their mantra that they will take patients’ money and then do their damnedest to deny giving it to the people who deliver care,” said Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican and a urologist. “That goes on in every insurance company boardroom.”

Insurers have long argued that prior authorization reduces fraud and wasteful spending, as well as prevents potential harm. Public displeasure with insurance denials dominated the news in December, when the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO led many to anoint his alleged killer as a folk hero.

And the public broadly dislikes the practice: Nearly three-quarters of respondents thought prior authorization was a “major” problem in a July poll published by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.


Indeed, Oz said during his June press conference that “violence in the streets” prompted the Trump administration to take on the issue of prior authorization reform in the private insurance industry.

Still, the administration is expanding the use of prior authorization in Medicare. CMS spokesperson Alexx Pons said both initiatives “serve the same goal of protecting patients and Medicare dollars.”

Unanswered Questions


The pilot program, WISeR — short for “Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction” — will test the use of an AI algorithm in making prior authorization decisions for some Medicare services, including skin and tissue substitutes, electrical nerve stimulator implants, and knee arthroscopy.

The federal government says such procedures are particularly vulnerable to “fraud, waste, and abuse” and could be held in check by prior authorization.

Other procedures may be added to the list. But services that are inpatient-only, emergency, or “would pose a substantial risk to patients if significantly delayed” would not be subject to the AI model’s assessment, according to the federal announcement.


While the use of AI in health insurance isn’t new, Medicare has been slow to adopt the private-sector tools. Medicare has historically used prior authorization in a limited way, with contractors who aren’t incentivized to deny services. But experts who have studied the plan believe the federal pilot could change that.

Pons told KFF Health News that no Medicare request will be denied before being reviewed by a “qualified human clinician,” and that vendors “are prohibited from compensation arrangements tied to denial rates.” While the government says vendors will be rewarded for savings, Pons said multiple safeguards will “remove any incentive to deny medically appropriate care.”

“Shared savings arrangements mean that vendors financially benefit when less care is delivered,” a structure that can create a powerful incentive for companies to deny medically necessary care, said Jennifer Brackeen, senior director of government affairs for the Washington State Hospital Association.


And doctors and policy experts say that’s only one concern.

Rathi said the plan “is not fully fleshed out” and relies on “messy and subjective” measures. The model, he said, ultimately depends on contractors to assess their own results, a choice that makes the results potentially suspect.

“I’m not sure they know, even, how they’re going to figure out whether this is helping or hurting patients,” he said.

Pons said the use of AI in the Medicare pilot will be “subject to strict oversight to ensure transparency, accountability, and alignment with Medicare rules and patient protection.”


“CMS remains committed to ensuring that automated tools support, not replace, clinically sound decision-making,” he said.

Experts agree that AI is theoretically capable of expediting what has been a cumbersome process marked by delays and denials that can harm patients’ health. Health insurers have argued that AI eliminates human error and bias and will save the health care system money. These companies have also insisted that humans, not computers, are ultimately reviewing coverage decisions.

But some scholars are doubtful that’s routinely happening.


“I think that there’s also probably a little bit of ambiguity over what constitutes ‘meaningful human review,’” said Amy Killelea, an assistant research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.

A 2023 report published by ProPublica found that, over a two-month period, doctors at Cigna who reviewed requests for payment spent an average of only 1.2 seconds on each case.

Cigna spokesperson Justine Sessions told KFF Health News that the company does not use AI to deny care or claims. The ProPublica investigation referenced a “simple software-driven process that helped accelerate payments to clinicians for common, relatively low-cost tests and treatments, and it is not powered by AI,” Sessions said. “It was not used for prior authorizations.”

And yet class-action lawsuits filed against major health insurers have alleged that flawed AI models undermine doctor recommendations and fail to take patients’ unique needs into account, forcing some people to shoulder the financial burden of their care.

Meanwhile, a survey of physicians published by the American Medical Association in February found that 61% think AI is “increasing prior authorization denials, exacerbating avoidable patient harms and escalating unnecessary waste now and into the future.”

Chris Bond, a spokesperson for the insurers’ trade group AHIP, told KFF Health News that the organization is “zeroed in” on implementing the commitments made to the government. Those include reducing the scope of prior authorization and making sure that communications with patients about denials and appeals are easy to understand.

‘This Is a Pilot’

The Medicare pilot program underscores ongoing concerns about prior authorization and raises new ones.

While private health insurers have been opaque about how they use AI and the extent to which they use prior authorization, policy researchers believe these algorithms are often programmed to automatically deny high-cost care.

“The more expensive it is, the more likely it is to be denied,” said Jennifer Oliva, a professor at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington, whose work focuses on AI regulation and health coverage.

Oliva explained in a recent paper for the Indiana Law Journal that when a patient is expected to die within a few years, health insurers are “motivated to rely on the algorithm.” As time passes and the patient or their provider is forced to appeal a denial, the chance of the patient dying during that process increases. The longer an appeal, the less likely the health insurer is to pay the claim, Oliva said.

“The No. 1 thing to do is make it very, very difficult for people to get high-cost services,” she said.

As the use of AI by health insurers is poised to grow, insurance company algorithms amount to a “regulatory blind spot” and demand more scrutiny, said Carmel Shachar, a faculty director at Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation.

The WISeR pilot is “an interesting step” toward using AI to ensure that Medicare dollars are purchasing high-quality health care, she said. But the lack of details makes it difficult to determine whether it will work.

Politicians are grappling with some of the same questions.

“How is this being tested in the first place? How are you going to make sure that it is working and not denying care or producing higher rates of care denial?” asked DelBene, who signed an August letter to Oz with other Democrats demanding answers about the AI program. But Democrats aren’t the only ones worried.

Murphy, who co-chairs the House GOP Doctors Caucus, acknowledged that many physicians are concerned the WISeR pilot could overreach into their practice of medicine if the AI algorithm denies doctor-recommended care.

Meanwhile, House members of both parties recently supported a measure proposed by Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat, to block funding for the pilot in the fiscal 2026 budget of the Department of Health and Human Services.

AI in health care is here to stay, Murphy said, but it remains to be seen whether the WISeR pilot will save Medicare money or contribute to the problems already posed by prior authorization.

“This is a pilot, and I’m open to see what’s going to happen with this,” Murphy said, “but I will always, always err on the side that doctors know what’s best for their patients.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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This story can be republished for free (details).KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

‘What if they’re right?’ 

U.S. CEOs sound alarm on jobs crisis ‘unfolding in plain sight'

Alexander Willis
September 27, 2025
RAW STORY


ECONOMIC DYSLEXIA

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a board sourced from Bureau of Labour Statistics, CES titled 'BLS Overestimates Biden Jobs by Nearly 1.5 Million', while Senior Visiting Fellow in Economics at The Heritage Foundation Steve Moore speaks, during an announcement on the economy, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 7, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Nearly two-dozen CEOs of major companies are sounding the alarm on what could potentially be an impending job crisis, an Axios report published Saturday found.

Axios co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei found that of the 20 CEOs they spoke to last week, every single one of them was reducing future hiring due, in part, to the rise of generative artificial intelligence.

“Maybe all these CEOs are wrong. But what if they're right?” VandeHei wrote. “The White House and Congress aren't treating this like a brewing crisis, and seem more focused on beating China to advanced AI than bracing workers for a short-term jolt.”

While VandeHei did not publish any direct quotes from his discussions with CEOs, he did point to past statements that appeared to mirror the concerns expressed to him last week.

“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.," said Ford CEO Jim Farley last summer while speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind."

CEOs for both Amazon and Walmart shared similar sentiments this year. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that his company expects to “reduce our total corporate workforce” because of AI, and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told his company executives that they should expect to freeze hiring in the near future.

For VandeHei, however, the looming potential job crisis, which he described as “unfolding in plain sight across America,” was largely being ignored by the Trump administration.

“Top officials argue that the race with China is existential and that new technologies, over time, create more and better jobs,” VandeHei wrote. “They dismiss the warnings of massive job loss as misguided doomerism.”

The Trump administration has been hyper focused on besting China’s own AI development, framing it as a geopolitical race with the United State’s most formidable advisory, and with the stated goal of achieving “global dominance in artificial intelligence.” President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to remove regulations around AI development, and championed hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of private-sector investments into AI development.

That hyper focus could prove short sighted, however, with VandeHei arguing that the Trump administration had failed to set up the proper guardrails in the event of widespread adoption of AI by American companies, and at the expense of American jobs.

“Most new technologies cause short-term pain but later create new jobs,” VandeHei wrote. “What's different with this one is that we had advanced warning to prepare the population for it.”

Alarm as more than 1K detainees 'disappear' in immigration 'black site': report

Stephen Prager,

 Common Dreams
September 27, 2025 





Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem visit "Alligator Alcatraz" in Florida. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Immigrant rights activists in Florida are expressing alarm as they have found themselves “unable to locate” more than 1,000 detainees who have been “administratively disappeared” from the state’s immigrant internment camp known as ”Alligator Alcatraz.”

Last week, the Miami Herald reported that “the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined” after the paper “obtained the names from two detainee rosters.”

The reporters found that around 800 of the people on the rosters do not appear on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Online Detainee Locator System, which provides publicly available information about the court status and locations of people who have been jailed by immigration enforcement. Another 450 had no location listed and instead merely instructed users to “Call ICE for details.”

The Herald also found that the vast majority of the detainees in the system did not have final orders of removal issued against them by immigration judges, which would be required for their deportation. Nevertheless, the detainees’ families and attorneys have been left unable to find them.

Detainees and other witnesses, including several members of Congress who visited in July, have described the conditions inside Alligator Alcatraz as horrific. The ramshackle tent camp was set up in a matter of days this summer in the Everglades to warehouse thousands of people detained by ICE, often without criminal charges or warrants, and with restricted access to attorneys.

While people in federal immigration facilities are typically able to be tracked through the system, the state-run Alligator Alcatraz works differently.

Shirsho Dasgupta, one of the reporters who broke the story for the Herald, told Democracy Now! on Thursday that attorneys he’s spoken to often “don’t know who to call” to get in contact with their clients.

Operations at Alligator Alcatraz were briefly halted in August when a federal district judge ruled against the facility on environmental grounds. But that ruling was stayed by a federal appeals court just two weeks later, allowing operations to resume.

While the state of Florida runs the facility, it has requested and was promised reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Shelter and Services Program, which was initially created to provide housing and other services to individuals released from ICE custody who were awaiting immigration court proceedings.

In a statement on Friday, the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC), which has also attempted to track the detainees, said that the Herald’s report shows what they “have been warning about for months,” that “those detained in this detention camp have effectively been administratively disappeared.”

FLIC said that the state of Florida has refused to confirm how many detainees are currently in Alligator Alcatraz and that, in addition to those not listed on the ICE locator tool, they have also seen people deported before scheduled bond hearings. The group also said it had “confirmed data showing Florida is lying when claiming those detained at the Everglades camp had final orders of removal.”

“Since this depraved torture camp funded with state FEMA funds reopened,” said Tessa Petit, FLIC’s executive director, “we have been unable to locate the fathers, brothers, friends, and sons that are caged there without due process in the ICE locator. Hospitalizations for severe medical incidents, which include cardiac incidents and surgeries, go unreported.”

Thomas Kennedy, a policy analyst at FLIC, said: “What we’re seeing at Alligator Alcatraz is basically a new model of immigration detention, where a state-run facility is operating as an extrajudicial black site, completely outside of the previous models of immigration detention in this country. It’s making what was already a terrible system somehow even worse.”

'Uncharted waters': Trump budget cuts push National Weather Service 'to its limits'

Alexander Willis
September 27, 2025 
RAW STORY


The National Weather Service logo is displayed at the National Hurricane Center. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo


The Trump administration’s significant budget cuts to the National Weather Service have pushed the agency “to its limits,” according to a new report from the Washington Post, leaving many experts to fear that the agency may very well be unable to perform its most basic functions.

“They’re going to run out of gas,” said John Sokich, who worked for the NWS for close to five decades before retiring this year, speaking with the Washington Post in its report published Saturday. “They’re going to start missing things. They can’t sustain that level of effort for much longer. You just can’t sprint a mile.”

The Trump administration has already terminated hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which the NWS is a part of, including many NWS employees themselves. Furthermore, Trump is proposing to slash NOAA’s funding by around $1.7 billion for fiscal year 2026.

The results have already been hard felt at the agency, with many staff “working double shifts” in order to keep forecasting offices operational, and terminating services deemed vital such as educational outreach programs.

It’s the potential to miss something vital, however, that has most NWS employees concerned over its increasingly thinning ranks.


“We have a strained and severely stretched situation,” said Tom Fahy, a leader of the union that represents NWS staff, speaking with the Washington Post. “There’s a breaking point.”


The NWS service employed around 4,300 people last year, a figure that experts said was likely around 200 employees short of ideal. Since Trump took office, however, around 600 workers left the NWS – either through retirement, reassignment or firing – a figure that has alarmed agency veterans.

“In my time here, the agency has never, ever been below 4,000,” said Brian LaMarre, a NWS veteran who’s worked at the agency for more than 30 years. “This is uncharted waters.”

Trump's UN rant shone a harsh spotlight on his most alarming belief

Tom Tyner
September 26, 2025 
RAW STORY

Donald Trump attends the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York. REUTERS/Mike Segar

During his speech to the United Nations in New York this week, President Donald Trump claimed many countries were “heading down a path of total destruction.”

In Europe, said Trump, “many countries [are] on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda.” Along with immigration, Trump said, “the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world.”

Trump went on: “Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast … the carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction.”

Based on Trump’s assessment, it would be hard to imagine the abysmal conditions in countries who have bought into the carbon footprint hoax. They have invested heavily in clean-energy development and weaned themselves off of fossil fuels, the “traditional energy” sources Trump believes that every country needs to be great.

One country in particular has arguably gone farther down the path of total destruction Trump envisages than any other: Denmark.

Denmark has long relied heavily on clean, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and bioenergy, which produce over 80 percent of its energy. Over 80 percent of its new car sales are electric vehicles. America’s sales total 8 percent. Denmark's reliance on fossil fuels for energy and vehicle fuel is among the lowest in the world. From Trump’s perspective, Denmark should be on the brink of collapse.


First, let’s take a look at Denmark’s economy.

The Independent Australia, which ranks all major economies on eight indicators, ranks Denmark as the best-performing economy in the world in 2025. The US economy ranks 24th. According to FocusEconomics, Denmark boasts one of the strongest and most resilient economies in Europe, with a high standard of living and strong fiscal management. The country has a diversified economy, with key industries including pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, and shipping.

How about quality of life?


According to US News and World Report, Denmark has the number one quality of life among all nations based upon its broad access to food, housing, quality education, health care and employment, job security, political stability, individual freedom and environmental quality. The United States: 22nd.

What about average individual income?

According to a WorldData study, Denmark’s individual income ranks 13th in the world at $76,357 while the US’s average income ranks seventh at $83,660. According to World Population Review, Denmark has among the lowest income inequality among all nations while the US has among the highest. Therefore, the US income average is skewed towards higher-income individuals while Denmark’s individual income is spread more evenly.


How healthy are Denmark’s residents?

According to the World Population Review, Denmark is the 16th-healthiest country in the world to live based on the Global Health Index for 2024 while the US is ranked 65th. Denmark’s excellent quality of life, expansive social programs, good work-life balance, strong health-care system, and safe environment all contribute to a healthy citizenry.

How happy are people in Denmark?


The World Population Review’s World Happiness Report uses statistical analysis to determine the world’s happiest countries. Based on its findings, Denmark ranks as the second-happiest country in the world. The US isn’t among the top 12. Northern European countries, many of which are leaders in clean, renewable energy development, dominate the top countries in the happiness rankings.

Trump’s asinine assertion that clean energy development is destroying countries was delivered to an audience of UN representatives from countries committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions as members of the Paris Climate Accord.

It was delivered at an international organization committed to building a global system to fight climate change coming from greenhouse gas emissions. One can imagine how many minds were changed by Trump’s laughably false, anti-science claims.

Trump of course is dead wrong about everything related to climate change and green energy development. Increased production and usage of clean, renewal energy sources not only doesn’t destroy countries, it helps them to thrive economically and provide a superior quality of life to countries like the US which remain doggedly, ignorantly dependent on fossil fuels.

It was a welcome sight for Trump to embarrass himself beyond belief on a world stage so that every nation could hear the kind of outlandish malarky that Americans have to put up with every day. That Trump’s every remark was met with stone-faced silence by the UN’s international audience spoke volumes. They weren’t buying it.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor

NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES REDUX

'Pathetic': Military experts rip Pentagon head after reason for generals' meeting revealed

Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth speaks with the media as he departs a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 21, 2024. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

David Badash

THE NEW CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

September 26, 2025 
ALTERNET



Speculation has been swirling after U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth abruptly ordered roughly 800 top officers from around the globe to return to the U.S. next week for a meeting — with no explanation or agenda provided.

“Hegseth’s orders,” The Washington Post reported on Friday in an exclusive, “require anyone in a command position with the rank of one-star general or rear admiral and above, as well as their senior enlisted leaders, to be at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday.”

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Experts have expressed that the national security concerns alone are disturbing — every top officer in all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces — and their support staff — away from their posts and together in one room.

Others expressed concerns that the nation’s top military brass might be asked to take a loyalty pledge — not to the Constitution but to the President or to his ideology. Some suggested it might be to refocus the officers on domestic U.S. issues rather than external threats or enemies.

Instead, the meeting, according to the Washington Post’s report, will be for all 800 or so generals and admirals to listen to Secretary Hegseth speak about his own beliefs regarding what the U.S. military should be — his “warrior ethos” ideology.

The speech is expected to last less than one hour.

As The Washington Post reported on Thursday, the Defense Department “possesses highly secure videoconferencing technology that enables military officials, regardless of their location, to discuss sensitive matters with the White House, the Pentagon or both.”

The Defense Secretary’s “directive comes in the wake of Hegseth’s firing of numerous senior military officers without cause this year, upending military norms and creating a culture of fear in the Pentagon, the people familiar with the matter said,” the Post also reported on Friday. “The recent firings of top military officers and the unusual nature of the order has stirred widespread concern among military officials that Hegseth may also have [an] additional surprise in store.”

Hegseth appeared to respond to — or at least acknowledge — concerns the meeting might include a loyalty pledge on Friday, when retired United States Army officer Ben Hodges, who served as commanding general, United States Army Europe, posted to social media remarks that echoed concerns of others:

“July 1935 German generals were called to a surprise assembly in Berlin and informed that their previous oath to the Weimar constitution was void and that they would be required to swear a personal oath to the Führer. Most generals took the new oath to keep their positions,” he wrote.

Secretary Hegseth mocked General Hodges’ remarks:

“Cool story, General,” he wrote.

Hegseth was quickly chastised.

“You are pathetic,” declared Fred Wellman, a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School, and a 22-year combat veteran who is now the host of the podcast “On Democracy.”

“Supposed to be leading the largest department of our government with millions of troops and civilians and you are trolling retired generals who served honorably longer and more heroically than you could,” Wellman added. “You’re not even a good squad leader.”

Fred Guttenberg, the well-known anti-gun-violence activist, noted that Hegseth’s remarks were “not a denial.”

Other critics responded to the Post’s reporting.

“Yes, totally worth the cost and time and effort to pull hundreds of people away from their commands to listen to Hegseth and his deep thoughts about being a warrior,” snarked The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor.

“So it’s a juvenile Rah Rah high school football speech, that cost[s] a ton of money, takes leaders out of positions in where they [are] managing crises, and puts a massive target on Quantico,” remarked Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired senior U.S. Intelligence Service officer. “Plus they all gonna get stuck when govt shuts down. Genius all around.”

'Can you imagine the disdain?' Ex-GOP insider says Pete Hegseth setting stage for a 'coup'

David McAfee
September 27, 2025 

RAW STORY

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth closes his eyes as he stands by U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictures), in the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria


As U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth orders military brass from all around the world to meet with him for unstated reasons, he may be facing a form of military uprising, according to an independent political strategist who worked on former President George W. Bush's campaign.

Political strategist Steve Schmidt on Saturday published an article called Questions for the generals, in which he argues that Hegseth is setting the stage for a potential "coup."

"Of course, the mind cannot help but drift towards the nefarious when the stupidity overwhelms every conceivable explanation for why the entire senior leadership of the US military would be ordered to depart their commands, and assemble at a precise geographic point at a precise time," he wrote. "Were the scenario the basis for a movie depicting the beginning of a coup it would be dismissed as too far-fetched because nothing so absurd could ever be allowed to happen in real life — not to mention the cost, waste of taxpayer money and massive logistics involved. Yet, here we are."

Pointing to potential grudges among service members, Schmidt goes on to ask, "Can you imagine the disrespect that the generals feel for the drunken National Guard major whose press department recently lied about his receiving the 'Bronze Star Medal for valor?'"

He added, "Can you imagine the disdain that senior professional soldiers feel for a man accused of rape, who entered into a confidential settlement agreement with his alleged victim?"

Schmidt continued: "Can you imagine the embarrassment for someone who is festooned with Christian nationalist tattoos, who has desecrated the Armed Forces with this insanity?"

Schmidt goes even further, bringing up "ambitious generals."

"Can you imagine the shame of men and women who talk about honor, duty and integrity as they rise to attention for the entrance of Secretary Pete and General Caine, first chairman of the Trump Force?" he asked. "How many ambitious generals are in the room?"

Bringing up MAGA and its connection to the military, he said, "Every single value that the military purports to hold dear is something MAGA hates and mocks."

"The generals know that they are led by liars and fools," the analyst wrote Saturday. "The generals know that war is coming, despite Donald promising peace."

Read it here.

'They don't know': Retired general piles on Pete Hegseth's 'stupidly dangerous' new move
Tom Boggioni
September 26, 2025 
RAW STORY


Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth walks through Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 11, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

A decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to bring the approximately 800 most senior generals and admirals in one place for a secretive meeting at Quantico drew fire on MSNBC on Friday morning from retired U.S Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling.

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Hertling, a military analyst for the network, pointed out the danger of pulling the senior military officers from their posts all around the world and putting them in one spot, thereby giving America’s enemies an opportunity to create havoc.

He began by stating, "I’ve never seen anything like this before, and it just seems extremely bizarre and strange,” co-host Joe Scarborough prompted his guest with, “Well, general, let me just ask you strategically how just how stupidly dangerous is this?”

"It's pretty dangerous, Joe,” he conceded. “What I'd say is, you know, a lot of people are looking at it from the generals' perspective. Them thinking, ‘What the heck are we going to hear, because I don't.”

“I think there's, from what I've talked to some of my colleagues that are still active, they don't know what this is about,” he added. “So it could be about a shifting national security strategy. It could be cuts to the general officer corps –– Secretary Hegseth has mentioned that several times. It could be about the upcoming budget stalemate. Or it could be concerns over information leaks or press leaks.”

“But general, don't they have communication systems where they can do that, so we can actually keep our generals and our admirals in the field where they are needed?" the MSNBC host pressed.

“Certainly, Joe and they're called secure video teleconferences. It is,” he replied. “The same thing as a secure computer. Not Snapchat, not Signals app. This is, no kidding, secure stuff.”

Amazon to shut checkout-free UK grocery shops

By AFP
September 24, 2025


Amazon will launch a same-day fresh product delivery service next year - Copyright AFP/File Angelos Tzortzinis

Amazon plans to shut all its grocery stores in Britain, after the shops without checkout registers failed to compete with online delivery demand.

The US tech giant on Tuesday said the decision would impact all 19 Amazon Fresh stores, less than five years after opening.

Amazon Fresh stores allow customers to choose groceries and simply walk out, as a tracking system charges the shopping to their bank accounts.

The company said it made its decision following “a thorough evaluation of business operations and the very substantial growth opportunities in online delivery”.

Amazon will launch a same-day fresh food delivery service next year.

It is set to completely shut 14 Amazon Fresh stores, and convert the remaining five into Whole Foods Market shops, the organic grocery chain it bought in 2017.

Amazon launched its first “just walk out shopping” outlet outside of the United States in London in 2021.

It used “deep learning” algorithms — technology which allows machines to learn by themselves — with cameras and sensors to tell what customers have picked up.

Amazon, which was already growing in Britain before the Covid-19 pandemic, saw its position strengthen after the outbreak and months of closure for shops deemed non-essential.

However, its checkout-free technology “always felt a little awkward for a post-pandemic shopper”, said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell.