Southern Poverty Law Center

‘Craven Attempt to Silence Dissent’: Trump DOJ Slammed for Indictment of Anti-Hate Group

“Another example of the dangerous, overreaching abuse of executive power so endemic in this authoritarian administration.”


FBI Director Kash Patel speaks alongside Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche during a news conference on April 21, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Apr 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The civil rights and progressive advocacy community is rallying to the defense of the Southern Poverty Law Center after President Donald Trump’s Justice Department indicted the organization on Tuesday on multiple counts of wire fraud and other charges, which the group has condemned as false and politically motivated.

The Justice Department, led by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche—who previously served as Trump’s personal attorney—said Tuesday that a grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama returned an indictment charging SPLC with “11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.” The Justice Department accused SPLC, which specializes in monitoring extremist groups and movements, of “funding” far-right white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan by paying people to infiltrate them and gather information.

Bryan Fair, SPLC’s interim chief executive, said the Trump DOJ’s “false allegations” won’t “shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the civil rights movement becomes a reality for all.” Fair noted that SPLC no longer works with paid informants but emphasized that they “risked their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation’s most radical and violent extremist groups.”

Allied civil rights organizations spoke out in defense of the SPLC and warned that the Trump administration’s legal assault on the group is part of a broader attack on those who oppose the far-right and work to protect democracy.

“What is happening to civil rights organizations right now is the most coordinated assault on our sector since COINTELPRO,” Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “We are the people who train poll workers, run food banks, fight discrimination, protect the right to protest, and staff domestic violence hotlines. We are the ones who make sure that everyone can live, love, vote, work, study, travel and simply be themselves, free from discrimination. This administration views that as a threat to its power.”

“In order to have absolute power, it must dismantle our rights,” Wiley added. “And that’s why they’re coming after us.”

“We condemn this appalling move from a captured, weak-willed DOJ that is devoid of integrity and has lost sight of its mission under this administration.”

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, called the SPLC indictment “another example of the dangerous, overreaching abuse of executive power so endemic in this authoritarian administration.”

“This is a craven attempt to silence dissent by attacking a core civil rights organization focused on combating violent extremism,” said Gilbert. “We condemn this appalling move from a captured, weak-willed DOJ that is devoid of integrity and has lost sight of its mission under this administration. We stand in solidarity with SPLC.”

SPLC has repeatedly criticized Trump, members of his two administrations, people in his orbit, and extremist groups—such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers—that have supported the president’s efforts to subvert American democracy, including with violence on January 6, 2021.

“To be clear: Trump’s FBI is going after the Southern Poverty Law Center because they infiltrated and exposed the same dangerous right-wing extremist groups that many Trump allies are associated with,” activist Melanie D’Arrigo said in response to the indictment.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement that the Trump administration’s “continued weaponization of the Justice Department to target organizations speaking out against its agenda is anti-American behavior harkening back to the McCarthy era.”

“The Trump administration’s attack against the Southern Poverty Law Center is a direct threat to the values that make America great,” said Romero. “In this time of unprecedented peril for our democracy, we urge all Americans of good conscience to join us as we stand in support of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

Even the right-wing underworld claims new DOJ indictment is nonsensical

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks next to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel and U.S. President Donald Trump, at a press briefing at the White House, following a shooting incident during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 25, 2026 REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Joe Conason

April 26, 2026 

ALTERNET


More than friendly to fascists both abroad and at home, the Trump administration is now seeking to destroy the Southern Poverty Law Center -- historically one of the nation's most powerful and effective opponents of the Ku Klux Klan, American neo-Nazis and other white supremacist movements.

This was the latest in a long series of signals from the White House to the president's swastika-flying fans. It means that such groups need no longer fear a resolute federal response to their criminality.

On April 22, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced -- at a blatantly political press event -- that the Justice Department has indicted the SPLC for "wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering." The indictment, described by Patel as "massive" and "sweeping," relies on the notion that the SPLC 's use of paid informants in violent white supremacist outfits such as the Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance and Atomwaffen somehow defrauded its donors.


Blanche and Patel went on to assert that those payments -- which over the years amounted to millions - had financed the continued existence of those groups, a claim echoed in right-wing media outlets. In the New York Post, for instance, a columnist wrote that by paying its confidential informants, the SPLC "kept relic organizations like the Ku Klux Klan on life support."

The alleged motive was to justify the SPLC's own continued existence and fundraising by maintaining a threat from fascist violence, which Republicans in Washington have persistently minimized or dismissed. Indeed, the Trump administration has hired and promoted any number of far-right extremists, especially since its return to power.


The absurdity of the indictment ought to be obvious to anyone -- including former federal prosecutor Blanche -- who knows how the FBI prosecutes organized crime, terrorism, narcotics smuggling or violent extremism, in nearly every case depending on paid informants. Over the past few decades, in fact, the FBI and the Justice Department have relied on information from SPLC and its informants to jail violent Klansmen and Nazis.

The indictment also charges that the SPLC "concealed" its identity behind false fronts when sending money to informants, following similar practices by the FBI and the Justice Department to avoid exposing their paid agents.

To suggest that the SPLC "supported" the activities of those criminal groups, as the DOJ indictment alleges, is precisely the same as saying that federal prosecutors and FBI agents were responsible for financing the Mafia, narcotics cartels and terrorism networks.


Under questioning from reporters, Blanche essentially admitted that the indictment's fundamental claim is baseless. Asked whether the indictment specifically alleged that the SPLC payments benefited the Klan, Atomwaffen or other extremist groups, Blanche admitted that it offered no such evidence. "To the extent that there's any link between that individual receiving the money and benefits to that organization," he said, "that's not in the indictment."

Not surprisingly, perhaps, former federal prosecutors who have gone after the Klan and other violent extremists were appalled by the government's attack on SPLC.

Doug Jones, who served as U.S. attorney in Alabama, described the indictment as "outrageous" and "pure political retribution" by President Donald Trump. Having taken down white supremacist gangs himself, Jones recalled how the SPLC "helped dismantle the Ku Klux Klan's operations in Alabama and beyond" in 1981, when its attorneys and investigators secured justice in a Mobile, Alabama, lynching incident.


There are dozens of similar cases in the SPLC files, including major victories against the United Klans of America, the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Imperial Klans of America, and the paramilitary White Patriot Party and the Aryan Nations.
It isn't only liberal lawyers who can see through the flimsy accusations in the DOJ indictment. In The Free Press, Bari Weiss' Trump-friendly online publication, conservative Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld warns that "the Justice Department will have a hard time proving that the (SPLC's) use of informants amounts to fraud."

Many other right-wing commentators and organizations have welcomed the indictment as just desserts for an organization whose views they despise, particularly because the SPLC has defended Muslims, gays and trans people as well as Blacks and Jews. So much for freedom of speech, a value more likely to be upheld on the right when convenient and comforting to their own.


The most telling commentary on this disgraceful frameup comes not from liberals or conservatives but from the fascist underworld. Gleeful as they are, the fascists admit that the indictment is nonsensical and indeed view its legal falsification as evidence that Trump is truly on their side.

Curtis Yarvin, the authoritarian gadfly whose writings have influenced various Big Tech figures and others in the Trump circle, celebrated the indictment on X: "What's cool is that I don't really see a strong legal case that the SPLC shouldn't be able to run these kinds of wacky black ops. That means DOJ is prosecuting the SPLC just because it (kind of) can. If so this would be an unusual sign of 'finally getting it.'"


On the "revolutionary fascist" American Futurist Telegram channel -- whose authors include former members of the Atomwaffen neo-Nazi group, linked to at least five political murders -- the indictment won praise for the same sickening reason. They know that the SPLC, far from secretly propping up violent white nationalists, is their worst enemy.

"The SPLC was not funding racist groups to enable their racism -- they, in fact, were not funding racist groups at all," the American Futurist-linked TAF Private channel posted, according to Raw Story. "What they were doing was funding bad actors within groups, with the intention of destroying those groups from the inside."
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the old saying goes -- and for the Trump White House, the enemy of fascism is its enemy too.

Trump Promised ‘Cleanest Air.’ Report Shows Half of All US Children Live Amid Dangerous Pollution

The head of the American Lung Association said President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has “rolled back rules that would have protected kids from power plant and vehicle pollution.”


Smog hangs low around downtown Los Angeles, California on March 16, 2026.
(Photo by Raul Roa/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Apr 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Close to half of the children in the United States—more than 33 million kids—live in counties with dangerously high levels of toxic air pollution, according to the American Lung Association’s annual air quality report out Wednesday.

The 27th iteration of the ALA’s report examines “two of the most widespread and dangerous air pollutants”—fine particles and ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog—and assigns grades to counties and cities based on pollution levels, both daily and annually. In what the report describes as a “grim indication of the deterioration of air quality nationwide,” just one city—Bangor, Maine—was “ranked on all three cleanest-cities lists by earning an ‘A’ for ozone and short-term particle pollution and being listed among the 25 cities with the lowest year-round particle levels.”



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“Last year, there were two (the other metro area being San Juan-Bayamón, Puerto Rico),” the report notes. “Past reports have been graced by as many as half a dozen metro areas meeting these criteria.”

The report, which uses air quality data collected between 2022 and 2024, estimated that 46% of all children in the US live in counties that received a failing grade on at least one measure of air pollution analyzed by the ALA. More than 7 million children—10% of all kids in the country—live in an area with failing grades for all three of the ALA’s measures.

Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the ALA, said at a time when the federal government should be strengthening air quality standards, President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “is doing the opposite,” despite Trump’s campaign promise to deliver “the cleanest air.”

“In the last year, EPA has weakened enforcement and rolled back rules that would have protected kids from power plant and vehicle pollution,” said Wimmer. “Children need clean air to grow and play, and communities need clean air to thrive. Leaders at every level must act to improve and protect America’s air quality.”

For the seventh consecutive year, Bakersfield, California ranked as the US metropolitan area with the worse year-round particle pollution. Fairbanks, Alaska ranked as the city with the worse short-term particle pollution, while Los Angeles topped the list of cities with the worst ozone pollution.

The Trump administration has gleefully taken an ax to climate regulations—including air pollution standards—and the legal finding underpinning environmental rules while aggressively promoting the oil, gas, and coal industries, threatening decades of progress toward cleaner air and water.

The Guardian noted Wednesday that “since returning to office last year, the Trump administration has initiated at least 70 actions to roll back environmental and climate protections. Among them is the loosening of regulations on power plants that limit mercury and other hazardous air toxins.”

“Other rollbacks include overturning limits on major air pollution sources, disbanding EPA advisory committees on air quality, and ending the practice of estimating the monetary value of lives saved by limiting fine particulate matter and ozone while still calculating costs to companies,” the outlet added.

Trump FCC Chair Hints at TV Warnings for Kids’ Content That Acknowledges Existence of Transgender People

“This is a solution in search of a problem, and another example of this commission prioritizing culture war politics over the real issues that affect consumers every day,” said the only Democratic FCC commissioner.


Stephen Prager
Apr 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

In the Trump administration’s latest attempt to push transgender people out of public life, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr said Wednesday that his agency is weighing whether ratings on television shows should be modified to warn viewers when trans people are acknowledged.

Carr posted a public notice on social media that the FCC’s Media Bureau would be seeking public comment on whether the TV Parental Guidelines age rating system—established under the Telecommunications Act of 1996—should include notices for “transgender and gender nonbinary programming” in a similar fashion to existing labels for sex, violence, and other content that parents could consider “harmful” to children.



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Carr wrote: “Recently, parents have raised concerns with the industry’s approach... They argue that New York and Hollywood programmers are promoting controversial issues in kids’ programming without providing any transparency or disclosures to parents.”

Neither Carr nor the FCC’s notice elaborated on what supposedly harmful content children were being exposed to or which programs it would seek to warn families about.

The FCC notice also asked for public comment on whether other changes should be made to ensure that the TV Oversight Management Board, which oversees the rating system, represents a “range of family values.” It also inquired about whether it should add board members from religious organizations.




While the FCC does not directly implement the programming ratings, it does have a role in overseeing them. As FCC chairman, Carr has brought an unusually heavy hand down on the rights of broadcasters to air content critical of President Donald Trump.

He has threatened to strip the broadcast licenses of networks that cover Trump’s war in Iran unfavorably. Before that, he was briefly successful in his efforts to bully ABC into pulling the Trump-critical late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show from the air.

By labeling transgender and nonbinary representation as dangerous to children, Carr would be taking yet another action to bring the media landscape into conformity with the Trump administration’s agenda, which has consisted of systematic attempts to push transgender Americans to the margins of society and portray them as deviant and dangerous, particularly to children.

Among a slew of other anti-LGBTQ+ policies, the administration has reinstated a full ban on transgender people in the military, attempted to punish medical establishments that provide gender-affirming care, withheld passports and other legal documents from transgender people containing their preferred gender identifiers, and aggressively sought to pressure school districts into adopting policies that refuse to recognize trans students.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency’s only Democratic commissioner, criticized Carr’s push to revise TV ratings.

“American families are worried about affordability, access, and rising costs, not whether the TV ratings system has enough warnings about gender identity,” Gomez said in a statement. “The FCC’s own record shows the existing system is working fine.”

While Carr claimed there had been many complaints about “ratings creep” from parents, Gomez noted that the most recent report from the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board said it received just 11 complaints about ratings guidelines in 2025 and that only two resulted in a ratings change.

Gomez said, “This is a solution in search of a problem, and another example of this commission prioritizing culture war politics over the real issues that affect consumers every day.”

Outrage Grows Over GOP Plan to Take Food Aid From Millions of Women and Children

“There is no doubt that this appropriations bill would only deepen America’s hunger crisis,” said the president of one anti-hunger organization.


Shoppers wait in line at a grocery store in Washington, DC on January 23, 2026.
(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Apr 23, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

House Republicans faced mounting anger on Thursday after proposing hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to a program that provides food aid to millions of vulnerable women and children across the United States.

The cuts were proposed in an appropriations bill to fund the US Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies. The Republican legislation would cut $200 million from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in the coming fiscal year at a time when families nationwide are struggling to afford groceries.

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The GOP bill would cut by $141 million a WIC benefit that helps provide fruit and vegetables to toddlers, preschoolers, and pregnant and postpartum women. Around 5.4 million people would lose fruit and vegetable benefits under the Republican bill, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

“There is no doubt that this appropriations bill would only deepen America’s hunger crisis,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, said in a statement. “Families are already struggling in the face of rising grocery prices and would be forced to stretch tight budgets even further. In turn, they would be forced to make difficult choices such as paying for food, housing, or other basic needs.”

Rep. Sanford Bishop Jr. (D-Ga.), the top Democrat on the House agriculture subcommittee, said Thursday that “it is hard to make America healthy again when this bill takes fruit and vegetables from over 5 million women, infants, and children and eliminates the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.”




The damage from the Republican proposal wouldn’t be limited to people in the United States. Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to End Hunger, noted that “globally, the bill would cut a drastic 25% from Food for Peace at a time when worldwide hunger emergencies are spiking, and the availability of emergency food is in doubt.”

“Countless families in the United States and around the world are struggling to get the food they need for themselves and their families. Conflict abroad is spurring emergencies while raising costs for food and agriculture across the globe, and continued economic uncertainty is continuing to put a strain on the limited resources of those most in need of food assistance,” said Mitchell. “Hungry people and families cannot afford to shoulder the burden of decreasing federal spending.”

The House GOP’s proposed cuts would compound the ongoing damage inflicted by the unprecedented $200 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump approved last summer.

CBPP noted in an analysis released Wednesday “that SNAP participation nationwide fell by 2.5 million people (6%) between the law’s July 2025 enactment and December of that year, the latest month of data from the US Department of Agriculture.”

“The declines started before HR 1’s enactment, suggesting factors at play in addition to that law,” the think tank observed. “But in many states they accelerated after HR 1, and we expect that trend to continue.”

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“It’s disgusting,” said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. “We ought to be able to end hunger in this country. It’s a political condition. We have the money.”


US Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) speaks at an event opposing the war on Iran on March 18, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Win Without War)

Jake Johnson
Apr 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern on Wednesday said it is “disgusting” that President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are pursuing more cuts to federal nutrition assistance for low-income Americans while simultaneously backing a war of choice in Iran that has cost US taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

“We have 46 million people in this country who are hungry, and they don’t seem to give a shit,” McGovern (Mass.) told reporters, warning that Republicans are bent on enacting additional cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in their forthcoming budget reconciliation package. “We ought to be able to end hunger in this country. It’s a political condition. We have the money.”

McGovern noted that the Trump administration has “spent $60 billion on the war in Iran”—a rough estimate based on analyses indicating that the US is spending around $1 billion per day on the conflict. The Trump administration is also pushing Congress to approve up to $100 billion in new funding for the Iran war.

More broadly, Trump has requested that lawmakers pass a $1.5 trillion military budget for the coming fiscal year—a nearly 50% increase compared to current levels—while pushing for more cuts to healthcare, housing, nutrition, and education programs.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are demanding additional food aid cuts as part of the annual appropriations process, as the unprecedented $200 billion in SNAP cuts they enacted last summer continue to wreak havoc nationwide.




On Wednesday, the GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee released its funding bill for the Agriculture Department and other agencies. The proposal would significantly underfund the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC), taking food benefits from around 5.4 million toddlers, preschoolers, and pregnant and postpartum WIC participants, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the Republican funding bill “cuts grocery vouchers specifically for women, infants, and children” and “pares back assistance for rural communities, slashing water and waste grants and cutting resources to help provide broadband service in rural areas.”

“Republicans are willing to increase funding by hundreds of billions of dollars to fight foreign wars,” said DeLauro. “But when it comes to supporting American farmers and hungry families, all they can do is cut, cut, cut. The American people deserve better.”

Rights Groups Warn Countries to End Complicity in Trump’s High Seas Murder Spree

As the death toll rises, governments “cannot plausibly claim ignorance of the risks” of supporting the US military in the Caribbean and Pacific, said a coalition.


Wayuu fishermen in the coastal community of Cano Sagua, Venezuela on December 20, 2025 continue their daily work amid growing anxiety over the Trump administration’s deadly attacks on boats in the region.
(Photo by Oumala Epieyuu/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Apr 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


With the death toll in the Trump administration’s bombings of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean hitting at least 180, a global coalition of rights and policy organizations is warning governments that they “cannot plausibly claim ignorance of the risks” of continuing to support the United States’ deadly policy in the region, and demanding that countries “stop facilitating extrajudicial killings” carried out by the US military.

The Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC) spearheaded the statement now co-signed by at least 125 human rights groups, drug policy organizations, and veterans’ groups, warning that just as US military officials and personnel have risked potential criminal liability by taking part in at least 52 boat bombings since September, third countries that are aiding the US in the attacks may be taking similar risks.

“Third states can incur legal responsibility for aiding or assisting another state in their commission of internationally wrongful acts, including extrajudicial killings and crimes against humanity,” reads the statement, whose signatories include Amnesty International, Oxfam America, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “Forms of cooperation such as intelligence sharing, access to military bases, and the provision of logistical support may meet the threshold for aiding and assisting where they facilitate the identification, tracking, and targeting of vessels.”

As El País reported Thursday, a number of countries have confirmed they are cooperating with President Donald Trump’s targeting of boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which the administration has claimed is aimed at stopping drug trafficking in the region.

The US military has not publicly released evidence that the people it’s killed were actually “narco-terrorists” as it’s repeatedly claimed; the family members of some of the victims have filed legal complaints, saying their loved ones were not involved in the drug trade.

A small number of victims were identified last year by The Associated Press, which found some were struggling fishermen or other workers who took low-level jobs helping drug traffickers to navigate the Caribbean. Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America has compared the killings, if they have targeted the drug trade at all, to “straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners.”

Despite the lack of evidence to back up the administration’s claims about the operation, the Dominican Republic has allowed the US to refuel military planes and transport equipment at one of its air bases and its Las Américas International Airport, and the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago expressed support for the boat bombings when they began in September. The island nation has reportedly allowed the transit of military aircraft and the installation of a US radar system for surveillance.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said in November that his government would no longer share intelligence on drug trafficking with the US, but he later walked back the threat, saying intelligence would be shared provided it “will be used for seizures without undermining human rights.”

Trump also convened a “Shield of the Americas” summit last month to announce the creation of a coalition of 17 countries in the region, including Argentina, Costa Rica, and Paraguay, which will focus on “bilateral and multilateral operations against cartels and terrorist organizations.”

Legal experts have warned that although Trump informed the US Congress last October that the administration views the US as being in an “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels, the military has clearly violated international law by targeting defenseless survivors of its boat bombings.

“The United States is not in an armed conflict with anyone in Latin America. That means the people on these boats are civilians. Civilians, including those suspected of smuggling drugs, are not lawful targets,” said the ACLU last month.

Experts have said the bombings meet the definition of extrajudicial killings—or simply murder—and one top US military lawyer warned before the operation began that US service members could face legal repercussions for carrying out the attacks at the direction of Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Despite the alarm raised by legal experts, “we are witnessing a continuation and a truly worrying normalization of these attacks against vessels,” Annie Shiel, US director of CIVIC, told El País on Thursday. “The United States is committing extrajudicial killings or murders, plain and simple.”

The group and its fellow signatories warned states like the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago could also be held legally responsible if they provide aid or assistance to the US when it is committing acts that violate international law.

“All states must immediately cease or refrain from providing any assistance that could contribute to these unlawful killings,” reads the statement. “Failure to do so facilitates the continuation of this lawless campaign, undermines the rule of law, and risks incurring legal responsibility under international law.”

The groups emphasized that in addition to putting countries at risk for legal liability, governments that facilitate the boat killings are exacerbating harm to their own communities.

“Families awaiting the return of their loved ones may never know what happened to them and have no access to recourse,” they said. “Coastal communities have witnessed human remains washing up on shore and fear for their lives when they trade and fish, sowing psychological trauma and undermining livelihoods.”

From Boat Murders to Kidnapping Maduro, Trump Spending Billions on ‘Donroe Doctrine’ Militarism

“Across the country people are going bankrupt and dying prematurely because of lack of healthcare, but the US government has billions to spend on imperialist violence to enrich corporations,” said one researcher.


A protester holds a sign decrying US militarism against Venezuela, with the message “No to War,” during a March 14, 2026 demonstration in Madrid.
(Photo by Olmo Blanco/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Apr 23, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As the basic needs of millions of Americans are sacrificed upon the altar of waning US global domination, an analysis unveiled Thursday revealss that the Trump administration has spent billions of dollars on illegal military aggression against Venezuela and civilian boats alleged without evidence to be smuggling drugs off the coast of Latin America.

The Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs published an analysis by a pair of researchers who “found that spending on Operation Southern Spear and Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela, the Caribbean, and the Eastern Pacific cost at least $4.7 billion from August 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026.”

The researchers—Hanna Homestead of the Institute for Policy Studies’ National Priorities Project and Jennifer Kavanagh of the think tank Defense Priorities—also found that “costs will continue to mount as some naval assets and aircraft remain in the region and strikes continue.”

“This estimate is only partial due to lack of information, and does not include long-term budgetary costs such as veterans benefits,” an introduction to the analysis states.



In addition to the financial burden, the analysis notes the human costs of enforcing the so-called “Donroe Doctrine.”

“While not the topic of this paper, they are essential to note at the outset,” the publication states. “The raid and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during Operation Absolute Resolve resulted in approximately 75 known fatalities. These include 32 Cuban personnel killed, at least 23 Venezuelan security officers killed, and at least two civilian deaths.”

US strikes “against unarmed vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific between September 2, 2025 and March 31, 2026 have killed at least 163 people,” the authors added. “In addition, at least one American service member died while deployed to the Caribbean in February 2026 when two US ships collided.”

The toll from Trump’s boat-bombing spree has since risen to more than 180 following additional reported strikes. Survivors of somemi bombings allege they were tortured by their US captors. The US military and Trump administration have provided no solid evidence to support their claims that the boats were transporting illicit narcotics.

Homestead and Kavanagh noted in their analysis that “to date, Congress has not authorized the use of force in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific and the Pentagon has not provided information about costs of Venezuela-related operations, even as they continue to mount.”

There have been more than 50 boat bombings since Trump launched his campaign last September. Relatives of people killed in or missing after the strikes insist their loved ones were fishers with no links to the drug trade, an assertion echoed by leaders in Venezuela, Colombia, and some Caribbean island nations.

Multiple war powers resolutions aimed at reining in Trump’s ability to wage war on Venezuela or bomb boats on the high seas without congressional authorization have been rejected by the Republican-controlled Congress.

In addition to the bombing and invasion of Venezuela and the boat strikes, the Trump administration has deployed troops to Ecuador as part of a joint campaign against alleged drug gangs dubbed Operation Total Extermination. Trump has also ordered the military to plan an invasion to seize the Panama Canal, threatened to “take” Cuba, possibly attack Mexico and Colombia, invade and annex Greenland, and somehow make Canada the “51st state.”

That’s just in the Western Hemisphere. Overall, Trump has bombed seven countries around the world since returning to the White House and 10 nations over the course of his two terms—including Iran, where he launched an illegal war with Israel.

The Costs of War Project rose to prominence by tracking the human and financial price of the so-called US War on Terror, which since September 2001 has resulted in over 940,000 direct deaths, including at least 432,000 civilians, in five studied countries, at a monetary cost of around $8 trillion.

Homestead and Kavanagh wrote in their analysis that the $4.7 billion figure “is a conservative estimate, and the greatest costs may yet be to come,” as “operations do not have a clear end date and are actively expanding.”

“They carry significant human, financial, and strategic costs and risk,” the researchers contended. “American taxpayers, who are increasingly unable to afford basic needs, have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent.”

Homestead told The Intercept on Thursday that “across the country people are going bankrupt and dying prematurely because of lack of healthcare, but the US government has billions to spend on imperialist violence to enrich corporations—from Venezuela to Iran—without any regard for human rights, life, or rule of law.”

“This situation illustrates why greater restraint on Pentagon spending—which primarily benefits private contractors—is so necessary,” she added.

This, as Trump seeks a record $1.5 trillion allocation for military spending in the next federal budget—despite the national debt approaching a staggering $40 trillion—while proposing billions of dollars in cuts to vital social programs.

‘Genocide Has No Place in This World’: Activists Sabotage Israeli-Owned Elbit Weapons Factory in UK

“We are fucking sick and tired of our government’s collaboration in this genocide,” said one activist who participated in the direct action.


An activist with People Against Genocide kicks down a ceiling inside the UAV Tactical Systems, owned by Elbit, in the city of Leicester, England on Friday April 24, 2026.
(Photo: via social media / screengrab)

Jon Queally
Apr 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

In the early hours of Friday morning, members of the anti-war group People Against Genocide in the United Kingdom gained access to the roof of a drone manufacturing facility in the city of Leicester and began sabotaging a so-called “clean room” to hamper the building of weapons used in the ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza that experts from around the world characterize as genocide and a crime against humanity.

The UAV Tactical Systems facility, owned by the Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems Ltd., has been the target of protest in recent years for its role in providing the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with unmanned aerial drones, combat vehicles, surveillance equipment, and other military hardware.


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“We are fucking sick and tired of our government’s collaboration in this genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people,” said one unnamed activist, sitting on the facility’s roof early Friday. “We are tired of waiting for them to uphold international law.”

Footage posted online by The Aftershock, a media outlet focused on the pro-Palestinian movement, showed members of the People Against Genocide on the roof of the facility in Leicester and then making their way down toward the manufacturing rooms inside.

“They’re breaking the ceiling of the clean room used to make key parts for Israeli military drones,” the outlet noted. “Contaminating the clean room can knock it out of use for several months.”

According to The Canary, a UK-based news outlet:
At approximately 10am, an action taker from the group occupying the roof abseiled into the factory through a hole made with power tools. Whilst abseiling into the weapons factory, the action taker proceeded to damage the ceiling and air supply to the clean room.

The clean room is used to make essential components for Israeli military drones and, once contaminated, it could be out of use for several months.

The action involved four people from direct action group People Against Genocide. They successfully evaded recently-increased security patrols at the plant, and used 10m extension ladders to ascend over razor-wire fencing, gaining access to the factory roof. The team next began to use high-grade power tools to cut their way through the roof, to damage weaponry inside.

“We cannot stand idly by while Elbit continues to manufacture death and destruction here in Leicester,” a spokesperson for People Against Genocide said in a statement.

“Petitions, protests and lobbying decision makers who are actively involved in the Gaza genocide, has unsurprisingly, failed to create necessary change,” the spokesperson explained. “Therefore, rather than appeal to politicians or the government, we’re bypassing the complicit decision makers and are taking direct action to shut Elbit down and disrupt the murderous Israeli war machine ourselves.”

“Genocide,” said the unnamed activist on the roof of the facility, “has no place in this world. That’s why we’re here today—to shut Elbit down.”

Despite ‘Big Tariff’ Threat From Trump, UK Urged to ‘Raise, Not Abolish’ Tax on Tech Giants

“We need to stop kowtowing to him, stop offering him humiliating and unpopular ‘state’ visits, and start enacting economic policies that put the interest of people here ahead of Donald Trump,” said one campaigner.


A protester holds a balloon of a baby President Donald Trump at a demonstration in London as the US leader visits the United Kingdom on September 17, 2025.
(Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Apr 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

After President Donald Trump threatened to impose a new tariff on the United Kingdom over its Digital Services Tax, the head of a UK economic justice organization on Friday called for standing up to the US leader and even increasing the levy.

The 2% tax on digital companies such as search engines and social media networks that derive value from UK users—which applies to US tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet’s Google—has generated significant revenue annually, including £808 million, or over $1 billion, for the 2024-25 financial year.

“We don’t like it when they target American companies... whether we like those companies or don’t like ‘em,” Trump—whose inauguration last year featured several ultrarich tech executives—said Thursday. He accused the UK of trying to “make an easy buck” and warned that “they better be careful.”

“If they don’t drop the tax, we’ll probably put a big tariff on the UK,” the president continued, suggesting that the tariff would be “more than what they’re getting” from the policy targeting Big Tech.

Responding in a Friday statement, Nick Dearden, director of UK-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, said that “Trump’s latest threats prove, yet again, that if you give in to a bully, they’ll just come back for more.”



Just months after striking a bilateral trade deal that notably did not alter the tax on tech companies, Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed an artificial intelligence pact last September. The latter, said Dearden, “rolled out the red carpet to Trump’s Big Tech barons.”

“But this wasn’t the end of the story. Rather, the pact has given Trump an ongoing vehicle to bully the British government,” the campaigner continued. “It’s time to admit that Stramer’s strategy towards Trump has been an abject failure. We should raise, not abolish the digital services tax, which has already raised billions of pounds for the British economy.”

“Trump won’t like this but that’s just too bad, we need to stop kowtowing to him, stop offering him humiliating and unpopular ‘state’ visits, and start enacting economic policies that put the interest of people here ahead of Donald Trump,” he argued—as the UK’s King Charles III and his wife Camilla, the queen consort, prepare to meet with Trump at the White House on Monday.

Asked about Trump’s tech tax threats, a spokesperson for Starmer’s office told The Guardian that “our position on that is unchanged... It is a hugely important tax to make sure that those businesses continue to pay their share. So it is a fair and proportionate approach to taxing business activities in the UK.”

As the newspaper noted:
The digital services tax is only meant to be an interim measure, and the UK government agreed in 2021 to phase it out, averting the threat of retaliatory tariffs on British products from the US.

The tax was meant to be replaced in 2024 with a new global system after the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) brokered a deal between 140 countries, including the UK, that proposed large multinational companies paying tax in the countries where they do business committed themselves to a minimum 15% corporation tax rate. Implementation has been beset with delays as a number of countries have continued to raise objections over the regime.

Trump’s tariff threat comes after he has lashed out at Starmer—and other European officials—in recent weeks over their limited support for his illegal war on Iran. The US leader suggested to the BBC this week that he and the UK prime minister could only “recover” if the Labour leader embraced stricter immigration policies and “opened the North Sea” to the fossil fuel industry.

“I’m here to serve the British people always, to have their interests and to make sure that I make the right decisions for them,” Starmer told the British broadcaster. “That is why I took the decision that we would not be dragged into the war in Iran.”

‘This Isn’t Justice’: Trump to Bring Back Firing Squad, Electric Chair, and Gas Executions

“Expanding the federal death penalty will be a stain on our history,” said Sen. Dick Durbin.


A woman holds a sign during a demonstration outside the department of corrections before the scheduled firing squad execution South Carolina inmate Mikal Mahdi on April 11, 2025 in Columbia, South Carolina.
(Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Apr 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The US Department of Justice said on Friday that it was planning to bring back several long-abandoned methods of execution—including firing squads, gas asphyxiation, and electrocution—as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to expand the use of the federal death penalty.

Trump has vowed to restore the death penalty at the federal level, reversing the moratorium imposed by former President Joe Biden, who downgraded the sentences of nearly all 40 people on death row to life in prison without parole.

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

The federal government has never in modern history used the firing squad as a method of execution. And with the exception of Utah and South Carolina—the latter of which only revived the practice in 2025—it has not been used in state executions in the modern era.

The chair, which was the most common method of execution in the 20th century, was gradually phased out beginning in the 1980s because it came to be widely viewed as violent and cruel.

Meanwhile, execution by poison gas was carried on in the US for decades after the Nazis used it to murder millions of victims during the Holocaust, with states mostly abandoning it because it was viewed as expensive and impractical. However, Alabama and Louisiana have recently brought it back using nitrogen gas.

Nearly all executions at the state level are now carried out with lethal injections, which, despite being considered more “humane,” are known to cause intense pain and suffocation and are frequently botched.

Blanche, who has authorized the government to seek the death penalty against nine people, said reviving old methods is necessary to ensure that the department “is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is unavailable.”

According to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, nearly 1 in 8 people convicted and sentenced to death have later been exonerated. Meanwhile, more than 550 capital convictions, over 5% of them, have been overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct.

Efforts to revive antiquated methods are likely to draw challenges from civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which have called the death penalty a form of “cruel and unusual punishment” forbidden by the US Constitution and one that disproportionately harms people of color.

“This isn’t justice. It’s cruel, immoral, and discriminatory,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “Expanding the federal death penalty will be a stain on our history.”

Mamdani Applauded for Veto of Bill Restricting Right to Protest Near NYC Schools and Universities

“These bills are not about Jewish safety,” said a Jewish Voice for Peace organizer. “New Yorkers want elected leaders to protect our constitutional rights, not limit them.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers an address to the crowd at his 100 Days Rally at the Knockdown Center in Queens on April 12, 2026.
(Photo by Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Apr 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is earning plaudits for vetoing legislation passed by the New York City Council that critics say would have restricted the US Constitution’s First Amendment right to peacefully protest.

According to a Friday report in The New York Times, the bill vetoed by Mamdani “would have required the New York Police Department to publicize plans to deploy security perimeters around educational facilities during protests.”

In a statement explaining his veto, Mamdani said he worried that the bill as written would infringe on the rights of “workers protesting [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement], or college students demanding their school divest from fossil fuels, or demonstrating in support of Palestinian rights,” among other causes.

“Nearly a dozen unions have raised the alarm about its impact on their ability to organize,” said Mamdani. “That is why I am vetoing this legislation.”

As noted by Gothamist, the bill drew opposition from the New York Civil Liberties Union and the 1199 Service Employees International Union, who warned it would criminalize the kinds of pickets that teachers’ and nurses’ unions regularly carry out at hospitals.

United Auto Workers Region 9A and Professional Staff Congress/CUNY also registered opposition to the bill and helped lead opposition to it, according to The City.

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin (D-5), however, rejected these characterizations of the legislation, which passed the council by a 30-19 vote, just short of a veto-proof margin.

“Ensuring students can enter and exit their schools without fear of harassment or intimidation should not be controversial,” Menin said, according to the Times. “This bill simply requires the NYPD to clearly outline how it will ensure safe access when there are threats of obstruction or physical injury, while fully protecting First Amendment rights.”

According to Gothamist, Mamdani’s veto drew rebukes from both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the UJA Federation of New York, who accused the mayor of not taking the safety concerns of Jewish New Yorkers seriously.

However, anti-war group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) praised Mamdani’s veto of the bill, which they said would have hindered their ability to protest outside educational institutions.

“We call on New York City’s legislators to stop weaponizing our identities to justify repression of dissent—which is sacred to our Jewish tradition,” said JVP. “Rather than limit our constitutional right to protest, our legislators should end the sales of stolen Palestinian land in our city.”

A second bill, which the council passed by a veto-proof 44-5 margin, will place similar requirements on NYPD to create security perimeters around houses of worship that are being targeted by protests.

Eliza Klein, New York City organizer for JVP, disputed that this legislation protects the rights of Jewish New Yorkers.

“These bills are not about Jewish safety,” said Klein. “Especially at a time when the federal government is attacking our cities—including specifically targeting those who speak out for Palestinian freedom—New Yorkers want elected leaders to protect our constitutional rights, not limit them.”