Fury as Dem senator remains lone lawmaker to spill on Trump's 'insane' post-midterm Iran plan

By:Alexander Willis

Oct 31, 2026

RAW STORY



Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned this week that the Trump administration plans to resume its war on Iran after the midterms — an “insane” scheme he said he learned of in confidential briefings. By Saturday night, he was still the only lawmaker to speak out about those briefings, leaving one independent journalist furious.

“In one of these briefings, we did get the chance to have a fairly detailed conversation about what the war plan would be if we restarted military operations,” Murphy said, speaking at the Middle East Institute.

“You’ve heard a preview that it would be a short-duration plan. I will just say this: their plan is insane. It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law. The plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongment and escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interest.”

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and ranking member of the Department of Defense Subcommittee, Murphy is often briefed on matters related to U.S. military operations and foreign policy. As noted by Murphy, however, he was not the only member of Congress to have been briefed on the Trump administration’s post-midterm plans for Iran.

“How has literally no other member of Congress mentioned this briefing???” independent journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote in frustration Saturday evening, later calling the lack of interest in the briefings from other members of Congress “just pathetic.”

Murphy’s warning came after reports that the U.S. told Gulf nations to prepare for a short-lived, high-intensity campaign after the Nov. 3 election. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was weighing strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and civilian infrastructure. Trump has said he won’t launch any attacks on Iran until after the election.

THE MAJORITY OF SNAP USERS ARE WHITE 

Jaws drop as Trump cabinet official drops shockingly 'racist' Halloween message

By:Alexander Willis

Oct 31, 2026
RAW STORY



Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins set off a firestorm Saturday with a Halloween message to Americans that critics almost immediately slammed as blatantly “racist.”


“This is the most racist s--- I’ve ever seen,” wrote Jamie Bonkiewicz, a Nebraska-based political activist whose home was visited by the Secret Service for comments about former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

In a post on X, Rollins reminded her more than 212,000 followers that defrauding federal food assistance programs was a crime and illustrated the point with a mock Halloween costume labeled “SNAP FRAUDSTER.” The program, formally the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, pays low-income Americans an average of $6.30 per day.

“Some costumes come with a price tag. This one comes with a prison sentence,” Rollins wrote. “To anyone stealing from American taxpayers: The tricks are over. The treats are running out. Happy Halloween!”

The mock Halloween costume features a depiction of an African American man giving the middle finger while wearing copious amounts of jewelry. The man is seen holding a $1 bill set aflame and standing in front of piles of cash and a lighter. The mock costume notes the man’s “questionable fashion choices” and includes “stacks of taxpayers cash,” “fake grills,” an “EBT card” and a pair of “handcuffs.”

Rollins didn’t name him, but the costume appears to reference Mercedes Reshard New, an Atlanta social media personality known as “Shawty Dred.” New was arrested this month on federal charges accusing him of fraudulently obtaining more than $4 million in SNAP benefits to fund a lavish lifestyle.

“Just insane white supremacy, out in the open brazen racism, from Trump cabinet members,” wrote journalist and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. “But hey, let’s return to our regularly scheduled programming on Hasan Piker and the left.”

Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH) called Rollins’ post “despicable” and “disgusting,” and hinted that she would ask Rollins what motivated her to make the post during her upcoming testimony before the Agriculture Committee, which Brown sits on as the vice ranking member.

Prominent attorney George Conway quipped, “I had no idea Secretary of Racism was a cabinet position,” and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) sarcastically wrote, “Not in any way racist if you ignore the obvious racism.”

Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) made his own version of Rollins’ post, only shifting the target from a Black SNAP recipient to President Donald Trump, whom Walkinshaw depicted in his own mock costume labeled “CONVICTED FRAUDSTER.”

“Some costumes come with a price tag. This one comes with a failed Presidency,” Walkinshaw wrote. “To the Trump Administration officials stealing from American taxpayers: The tricks are over. The treats are running out. Happy Halloween!”

WHAT'S UP DOC?!

Abdul El-Sayed stomps out intraparty feud with one statement days out from midterms

By: Julia Conley, 

Common Dreams

Oct 31, 2026

After issuing a brief statement in response to Rep. Haley Stevens’ demand that he apologize for the views he’s expressed—in line with a growing majority of Democrats—that are critical of US funding for Israel, Michigan’s Democratic US Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, headed into the final weekend before the midterm elections with the same focus he has maintained throughout his campaign.


“While Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago,” said El-Sayed, “let’s all focus on the task at hand: That’s beating Mike Rogers, holding [President Donald] Trump accountable, and getting money out of politics, putting money in pockets, and passing Medicare for All.”

The statement followed Stevens’ latest attempt to suggest that El-Sayed’s candidacy has threatened Jewish communities, by tying him to an anti-Rogers ad by an outside group, Rebellion PAC, that addressed how the billions of dollars and political support the US provides to Israel each year costs Americans. The Trump administration has publicly said the US launched its illegal war on Iran after being pushed to do so by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a decision that has markedly worsened the affordability crisis for Americans.

El-Sayed’s campaign has said the digital ad does not “speak for” the progressive candidate, while others have pushed back on the claim by the vehemently pro-Israel Stevens and pro-Israel groups that the video is antisemitic, noting that it says nothing about Jewish people.


In his statement Friday evening, El-Sayed appeared to have little interest in engaging with Stevens further regarding persistent accusations by corporate Democrats who have claimed he hasn’t done enough to reach out to Jewish communities, whom his campaign has been speaking with extensively about fighting antisemitism and their views on Israel at “deep canvassing” events.

“Our campaign is and has always been focused on addressing the most critical challenges Michiganders are facing: skyrocketing gas prices, unaffordable groceries, and the inability to see a doctor,” said El-Sayed, noting that his message had allowed him to win the primary in August despite “a historic $70 million in outside spending by big corporations” and the pro-Israel lobby on behalf of Stevens.

Two sources told Politico that El-Sayed’s campaign was asking Stevens not to campaign with him in the final weekend, which the congresswoman had begrudgingly said she planned to do in her statement demanding an apology from the candidate.

But El-Sayed himself was applauded by progressives for “holding firm and ignoring the whines and threats of extremists,” as art director Lindsay Ballant said.



“For those folks demanding that El-Sayed condemn that ad, he isn’t playing your stupid game,” said another observer. “He understands that whatever he does, it won’t be enough. There will always be another demand. So take your cudgel somewhere else.”

Even if El-Sayed took time away from the statewide door-knocking tour he had planned for the weekend to address Stevens’ demand, podcaster and former Obama administration staffer Tommy Vietor asserted that “people would then say he didn’t condemn it firmly enough.”

“The guilt by association shit is endless,” said Vietor. “Meanwhile, Abdul is literally being called a jihadist by the president of the United States!”



Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) are set to join El-Sayed at the “Knock Out the Vote” canvassing event from Saturday through Monday.

‘Grotesque’ Trump deal arms foreign unit accused of torturing people to death: WSJ

By: Bennito L. Kelty

Oct 29, 2026

RAW STORY


President Donald Trump's administration quietly agreed to arm a foreign military unit with a gruesome human rights record, a new report revealed.


The Trump administration agreed to send about $35 million in military aid, including armored personnel carriers, to Cameroon's Rapid Intervention Battalion, known as the BIR, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. U.S. officials and congressional aides told The Journal that State Department officials negotiated the aid alongside a deal for the Central African nation to accept deportees from the U.S. who aren't Cameroonian.

The unit has a brutal past. A 2017 Amnesty International report accused the BIR of war crimes during its fight against the Boko Haram terrorist group, finding that members beat and drowned detainees and tortured some of them to death. Trump's first administration cut off some aid to the unit in 2019 and booted Cameroon from a U.S.-Africa trade pact over its forces' ongoing abuses, which Cameroon denied at the time.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on the aid package earlier this year, according to The Journal. That stalled the deal for months until April, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio's team told her the administration was overriding her and pushing ahead.

Shaheen this week tore into the arrangement as "grotesque" and said Rubio had let her down by signing off on it.

In a statement, Shaheen argued that the U.S. has no business handing sensitive military gear to governments with shaky human rights records, let alone as payment for taking in people.

Cameroon started accepting U.S. deportation flights in December and has taken in at least 36 people since, according to Refugees International, a humanitarian advocacy group. Some officials told The Journal the Trump administration intends to ramp up flights to African countries in the coming months. Around the time the aid was disclosed to Congress in January, the U.S. also steered $30 million to the United Nations refugee agency's operations in Cameroon, even as it slashed foreign aid elsewhere.

The State Department wouldn't discuss the details of any agreement but praised its partnership with Cameroon on security and counterterrorism, and said it follows the Leahy Law, which prohibits military aid to forces tied to human rights abuses. Cameroon's embassy in Washington did not respond to The Journal's request for comment.

‘Defies belief’: Hegseth’s leak crackdown sparks accusations Pentagon broke law

By: Erik De La Garza

Oct 30, 2026
RAW STORY


The Pentagon may have violated federal privacy law while publicly accusing a fired Army general of leaking classified information, attorneys told CBS News.


The unusual disclosure followed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s removal of Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia. A Pentagon official told media outlets that Sylvia had failed three polygraph examinations during a leak investigation.

"It defies belief to see … [the] leaking of Privacy Act-protected information of an employee in order to accuse that same employee of themselves being accused of unauthorized leaks," national security attorney Brad Moss told CBS News.

Moss said the Privacy Act generally bars disclosure of such records without consent or other legal authorization.

"This is a Privacy Act violation," former Army attorney Cody Harnish told the network. "Secretary Hegseth cannot sign off on the Pentagon not following the statute."

Harnish also criticized the disclosure of an ongoing counterintelligence investigation and a Justice Department referral, along with a declaration of “severe misconduct” before the investigation had concluded.

Another military justice expert, Frank Rosenblatt, disagreed that disclosing the polygraph information violated the law, but blasted reliance on the tests.

"This unreliable junk information is being allowed to stand in for like actual evidence that he's done something," he said.

CBS could not independently verify the official’s leak allegations. Two other Pentagon sources confirmed the firing was connected to polygraphs but disputed that Sylvia leaked classified information.

The controversy follows earlier accusations by Hegseth against three Pentagon aides whom he dismissed last year while a leak investigation remained underway.

“Once a leaker, always a leaker,” Hegseth told Fox News at the time. “And if those people are exonerated, fantastic, but we don’t think, based on what we understand, it’s going to be a good day for a number of those individuals because of what was found in the investigation.”

Canadian rock star brutally mocks Trump with new song: 'Like a baby tossing the toys'

By:Robert Davis

Oct 29, 2026

RAW STORY


Canadian rock star Bryan Adams brutally mocked President Donald Trump in a new song he released just before the midterm elections, according to a new report.


The Guardian reported that Adams wrote a new song titled "Lake Ontario," which takes a shot at Trump for his efforts to "rename" one of Canada's most famous bodies of water. The move further escalated the feud between the two countries and resulted in the U.S. and Canada placing additional tariffs on goods coming from either side.

The lyrics make it clear that Trump's renaming efforts were an attempt to "deflect from the president’s other political problems, including the war in Iran and renewed scrutiny of the Jeffrey Epstein files," according to the report.

"But things weren’t going his way in Iran/ So like a baby tossing the toys from the pram/ But it feels like another distraction/ while the Epstein files were getting traction," the lyrics read in part.

Adams explained that the song came from a project he called a "love letter" to Canada.

“After finishing the first song, I moved on to that one, and then moved on to another one, and then started thinking maybe I should just carry on with my theme,” Adams told The Guardian.

 THE EPSTEIN CLASS

Police probe the royal retreat at the center of cryptic Epstein emails

By:Travis Gettys

Oct 30, 2026

RAW STORY


Scottish detectives are investigating time that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell spent at Balmoral, King Charles’ private estate in Scotland.


Police Scotland said it had received “information” and that inquiries into the disgraced royal’s time there with the late child sex offender were at a “very early stage," reported The Guardian.

The Daily Express has reported that the inquiries relate to claims that women were trafficked to the estate.

“We have received information and active inquiries are ongoing, but these are at a very early stage,” a Police Scotland spokesperson said. “All inquiries are evidence-led, with the needs of victim survivors at the heart of those inquiries.”

Photos previously released by the U.S. Department of Justice appear to show Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein on a shooting trip at Balmoral.

The estate also appears in a string of cryptic emails released last year as part of the Epstein files. In August 2001, someone using the name “the Invisible Man” sent four emails to Maxwell, who has since been convicted of sex trafficking. In one, the sender said their “valet” had recently died and that they had “left the RN,” shorthand for the Royal Navy. Mountbatten-Windsor left the Royal Navy the month before.

Another email from the same sender, dated Aug. 16, 2001, said they were at “Balmoral summer camp for the royal family” before asking Maxwell: “Have you found me some inappropriate friends?”


In March 2002, Maxwell wrote to the Invisible Man that she had passed along a message to an unnamed person, beginning: “I just gave Andrew your telephone no.” She added that “Andrew” would be “very happy” if the person did some “two legged sight seeing.”

The sender of the emails has not been confirmed.

Several other British police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, Thames Valley Police and Surrey Police, have live investigations linked to the Epstein files. The National Police Chiefs’ Council said there is no national investigation at present.


Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office over allegations that he shared sensitive information with Epstein while serving as a U.K. trade envoy. He denies wrongdoing, and that investigation continues.

200+ Global Groups Implore Congress to Prevent Trump Nuclear Attack on Iran

“The use of even a single nuclear weapon in Iran would destroy a taboo that has held since Nagasaki, with unimaginable consequences for all humanity.”


A digital billboard calls for an end to the Iran War on April 30, 2026 in New York City’s Times Square.
(Photo by Adam Gray/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Oct 30, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As Iran’s government takes steps to prepare the nation’s people for a possible US nuclear attack, more than 200 global civil society groups on Friday implored Congress to act to stop President Donald Trump from using doomsday weapons to end his illegal 228-day war of choice that he’s been unable to win by conventional means.

“In recent weeks, President Trump has threatened to ‘hit Iran hard’ after the US midterm elections next week,” the groups—who are members of the Back From the Brink Coalition—said in a statement to congressional lawmakers. “On October 15, President Trump stated that he would not use nuclear weapons against Iran. But frequent, abrupt changes of policy have become a staple feature of his presidency, and the single statement that he will not use nuclear weapons stands against a string of threats to do just that.”

As the statement noted:
On April 7, he declared, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” On May 18, he posted an [artificial intelligence]-generated image of himself pushing a red button with nuclear explosions appearing on monitors behind him. On June 8, he threatened Iran, warning that “we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again.” On September 20, he told a reporter, “My question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up?” Speaking at the [United Nations] on September 23, he asked, “Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly?”

“We cannot discount these as idle threats,” the coalition stressed. “The use of even a single nuclear weapon in Iran would destroy a taboo that has held since Nagasaki, with unimaginable consequences for all humanity. The US president should not have the unchecked authority to launch nuclear war.”

“We call on the United States Congress to act now to assert its constitutional role as the only branch of government empowered to declare war—and to make clear that it does not authorize or condone the use of nuclear weapons in Iran,” the statement concludes.

Despite passing various authorizations for the use of military force, Congress has not declared war since World War II. Since that conflict—which ended with the US waging the only nuclear war in history—the United States has attacked dozens of nations.

The 1973 War Powers Resolution, passed as the US killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians during the Vietnam War, was an attempt to check presidents’ powers to wage war without congressional authority. However, only a small handful of war powers resolutions have been passed by the full Congress—most recently this year, ordering Trump to end hostilities against Iran—and none have succeeded in stopping any military action.

Democratic members of Congress have expressed alarm at the specter of a Trump nuclear war on Iran. Hinting at the possibility, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Thursday at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC that he was recently briefed on “what the war plan would be if we restarted military operations” after the midterms, as threatened by the president.

“I will just say this, their plan is insane,” Murphy continued. “It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.”

“The plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongment and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests,” he added.

Meanwhile, Iran is stepping up preparations for a resumption of US-Israeli attacks, including nuclear strikes. The government is currently holding a “Civil Defense Week” focused on “public preparedness, protecting people and national assets, and ensuring government support for the continuity of essential services,” according to state-run Press TV.

Earlier this week, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC)—which is not one of the groups listed on Friday’s statement—said that “Trump’s continued threats to annihilate an entire civilization and unleash even more destructive weapons are unconscionable. There is no military solution to this crisis, and another round of attacks would only deepen the suffering of civilians and risk igniting an even wider regional war.”

“The Trump administration must change course and should invest in the multilateral regional diplomacy that is underway rather than continuing its destabilizing threats to renew attacks,” the group continued. “Congress must also act to prevent further unauthorized military action when it returns after the upcoming election.”

“There is still a path away from disaster,” NIAC added, “but it requires choosing negotiations over confrontation.”

Win the Midterms to Defang Climate Monster Trump

The debate over major permitting reform legislation hinges around the fact that as long as Trump is in charge, it will empower his pro-fossil fuel rampage.


The “Drill, Baby, Drill” motif float shows a depiction of US President Donald Trump with reference to the use of fossil fuels and the rejection of environmentally friendly energy production for the Rose Monday parade on March 3, 2025 in Rhineland-Palatinate, Mainz-Mombach, Germany.
(Photo by Andreas Arnold/picture alliance via Getty Images)


Bill Mckibben
Oct 30, 2026

The Crucial Years

As we head towards the midterms, the president’s closing argument has mostly been about various people’s posteriors, but he has also taken the time to make several, um, substantive points.

One is his theory that solar panels become incredibly hot to the touch during their operation, and hence will kill “all the animals.” As he explained his theory, “The animals jump on them and they fry because those black panels are hotter than your stove.” This is not true, as anyone with a functioning brain should be able to easily figure out; there are of course tens of millions of homes and apartments with solar panels, and no reports of burns from touching them. Literally here is a video of a goat dancing on a solar panel. It turns out in fact there are dozens of these pictures online—goats on solar panels are an entire genre.

The second point he’s been making this week is that he is going to lower diesel costs by buying some of the fuel from Russia, thereby abrogating our country’s own sanctions and replenishing the Kremlin’s war budget. Indeed, the diesel is traveling on previously sanctioned tankers. As Svitlana Romanko, the intrepid leader of Ukraine’s Razom We Stand points out, this is utter betrayal: “Every barrel on board these ships exporting Russian fossil fuels is money for the missiles and drones Russia fires at Ukrainian homes every night, bringing more civilian casualties.” But since it’s President Donald Trump, it’s also utterly stupid, in that the quantities are too small to budge the high price of diesel, which, as the zealots at that radical website OilPrice.com write, is “set to persist well into 2027.” Of course, there’s another possible explanation—it’s all part of the grand corruption scheme that the Times has begun to unravel: as Anton Troianvoski and Eric Lipton document:
An American energy company intends to buy Russian technology and use it to access a massive supply of natural gas in Alaska, liquefy it, and export it to allies abroad.

The Kremlin and the White House were interested in the idea. President Vladimir V. Putin discussed the plan last month with President Trump’s peace envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, people familiar with the negotiations said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. It is one of a series of energy deals White House officials believe could help smooth relations with Moscow and eventually pave the way to end the war in Ukraine.

But it turns out that the company was not an all-American affair. The multibillion-dollar project has received secret funding from the same powerful Russian company that was to provide the technology, according to the energy executive who until last month led the US firm and two others involved in company negotiations.


Anyway, there was a third point the president made this week, this one purely monstrous. It came in a speech in oil-patch Lubbock, Texas, where, in an effort to boost flailing Senate candidate Ken Paxton, he declared an end to any real federal oversight of methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry. As Sara Sneath reports:
At a Trump rally in Corpus Christi earlier in the day, Trump shouted out Harold Hamm, saying the founder of Continental Resources was in the audience. In April, Continental Resources wrote a letter to the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] pushing back against measures in the methane rule that prohibit routine flaring of associated gas.


Hamm, careful readers will remember, was the president’s chief donation bundler from the oil and gas industry during the last presidential campaign. Anyway, it’s worth remembering that

Last year, the US emitted more methane from its oil and gas sector than any other country in the world. Methane is responsible for at least a quarter of today’s warming.

Julia Kane, a researcher for Fieldnotes, said the Trump Environmental Protection Agency was giving oil and gas corporations exactly what they want. “The oil and gas industry says it’s a ‘good-faith’ partner eager to help craft regulations, but time and time again it’s worked behind the scenes to delay and weaken them,” she said.

All of this, of course, is pretty much par for the course. You could pick any week in the last two years and come up with roughly the same kind of idiocy and perfidy and graft; the Trump presidency is an ongoing evil MadLibs.

The trouble with his current gust of malignity, however, is that right now a pair of Democrats in the Senate—Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico—have been trying to persuade their colleagues, and by extension the rest of the country, to support a “permitting reform” bill that would make it easier to build energy stuff. It’s traveling under the name BAAJA, for Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, I guess on the grounds that “affordability” is something all right-minded people support (except, of course, for Trump who thinks it, like global warming, is a “hoax.”) Anyway, the grand bargain these two senators have struck with the oil industry is hundreds of pages long, and would overturn much of the environmental review process in America.

If you have any doubts about the necessity of making changes in how we review things, read Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance. But the devil comes in the details—or rather, the devil is Donald Trump, and the pertinent detail is whether he can be contained in a meaningful way. Obviously Whitehouse and Heinrich knew that this would be an issue, and they did their best to build in some guarantees that it wouldn’t be able for him to use it push dirty energy at the expense of clean. But from the start there have been questions about this—I wrote two weeks ago about Harvard professor Jody Freeman, so centrist in this work that she actually served on the board of a major oil company, who said:
A close read suggests it’s structurally designed to lock in and subsidize natural gas & other fossil projects over cleaner renewables for years to come, using the courts and taxpayer dollars.


Since then, what you might call normie Democrats have been sounding increasingly urgent alarms in increasingly urgent language, and urging the drafters of this massive legislation—currently scheduled for a vote five days after the election—to figure out how to amend key provisions. Exhibit No. 1 here would be John Podesta, the insider’s insider. White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton, counselor to Barack Obama on climate and to Joe Biden on energy policy, chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign—I think it’s safe to say he understands presidential power as well as anyone alive. So it landed with a thud two days ago when he told Jael Holzman that the bill as written would hand Trump a “loaded howitzer.” He focused on the sections around “permitting certainty,” which were written to try and keep the president from interfering (as obviously he has been doing) with clean energy projects. But:
This was “one place where I think they made a huge mistake,” Podesta said, calling the restriction on revoking or rescinding decisions “one of the worst provisions of the bill.” He complimented lawmakers for trying to address Trump’s attacks on already-permitted renewable energy projects, including stop-work orders on offshore wind facilities under construction, and for seeking commitments from the administration to continue permitting projects in exchange for a deal.

However, Podesta said they are “going to have to take it out” or significantly revise it because he believes this language would allow Trump to illegally approve projects on sensitive or protected lands and courts would not be able to force the government to undo approvals that violate the law. He argued this would mean Trump could permit development in many areas land conservation groups, tribes, and anti-drilling advocates have long fought to protect from industry, including the Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, and the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

“I think they have handed Trump not just a loaded gun, but they’ve handed him a loaded Howitzer to go after public lands, to permit stuff that even if it’s illegal can’t be reversed by the courts,” Podesta said. “They’re going to have a permit gorge like you’ve never seen, not really caring about whether they’re going through the legal steps to do it, and under this bill, those can’t be reversed. That’s got to change if this bill’s going to pass.”


Abigail Dillen, president of EarthJustice, who have been leading the legal fight against Trump’s environmental extremism, followed up Podesta’s warning:
Over the next two years, BAAJA would create more legal runway for this president to make corrupt deals and green-light harmful projects of all kinds, and it would constrain any future president from repairing the damage. People can reasonably differ on long-term projections. But once you know what’s in this bill, how BAAJA plays under Trump should be clear as glass…

Most sweepingly, the bill’s certainty provisions would render Trump permitting decisions irrevocable with very limited exceptions. The next administration would likely inherit a raft of destructive and unpopular projects, and BAAJA would make it wildly risky financially and even impossible for the next president to revisit them. To be clear, the damage would not be confined to energy-related projects. Think detention centers, petrochemical complexes, data centers on public lands—whatever kinds of projects appeal to this president.


And here’s Carl Pope, former executive director of the Sierra Club and an environmentalist so centrist he once barnstormed the country with fracking executives touting the desirability of natural gas:
Title IV, “Permit Certainty,” is the draft’s most troubling section. Environmental policy has historically improved through two linked processes: identifying new risks and applying existing clean up technologies to abate them; in parallel, pushing research on clean up technology options and then adopting stronger standards as science and technology advance. Title IV works to obstruct both.

For example, a data center permitted to use fossil-fuel power could claim protection even after cleaner, cheaper alternatives become available for their needs. Likewise, if regulators later discovered dangerous contamination—such as PFAS, or “forever chemicals” in a watershed—the provision could impede stronger water-quality standards needed to protect nearby residents.

What BAAJA describes as a regulatory floor may function as a public-health ceiling. Instead of preserving agencies’ ability to respond to new evidence, it could lock in yesterday’s permits and yesterday’s pollution standards, under which millions of tons of unnecessary pollution are emitted by outmoded power plants.


For the first few weeks, this fight has been mostly confined to very elite and in-the-know circles. Earlier this week, for instance, Tom Steyer came out for the bill on the grounds that it “beats the status quo.” When I saw it, I flashed back to a gathering convened on his ranch 15 years ago: I shared a cabin there with… John Podesta and Carl Pope. We shouldn’t have this closed a political circle on questions this large.

So it’s good to see that policy is increasingly joined by politics in this debate: Given that we’re hoping for a blue wave in next Tuesday’s election, it may be hard to persuade Democrats to go along with the Whitehouse-Heinrich plan, because the conventional wisdom is starting to harden around the Ossoffian ideal that the best way to deal with Trump is to stand up to him.

A fairly important straw in the wind came earlier this week when four key Senators—Oregon’s Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, Ed Markey from Massachusetts, and Tammy Duckworth from Illinois—wrote a letter to Whitehouse, Heinrich, and their Republican co-sponors arguing that the Trump administration has clearly enforced environmental laws unfairly over the last two years and there is every indication they will keep trying to do so. As they pointed out, the Department of Energy has admitted to canceling billions of dollars in grants to states that had voted for Kamala Harris:
This vindictive, partisan discrimination based on whether a grantee is in a State represented by two Democratic Senators that President Trump lost in the 2024 election is disgraceful. It violates core constitutional protections, harms communities comprised of Americans from across the political spectrum, and, ironically, harms millions of Trump voters who live in these States. No American should be caught in the crosshairs of such a brazenly corrupt scheme. No one has explained why a Senator from a targeted State should help the Trump administration fast-track fossil fuel projects while it refuses to restore funding that Trump officials admitted was terminated on an illegal, partisan basis.


They propose a test of whether or not the Trump administration is serious going forward:
It would be compelling if, before the motion to proceed vote, the Trump administration directed DOE to 1) reinstate every award it terminated in October 2025 that it has not already restored, 2) to allow recipients to draw down those funds under the original award terms, and 3) to commit in writing that it will not terminate an award because of the political identity of the recipient’s State or the party affiliation of its elected officials.

While such action may not fully address the wide range of concerns individual Senators have about various portions of this complex legislation, it would represent an important first step and carry far more weight with us and, more importantly, our constituents whose awards were illegally terminated, than mere informal assurances that the Trump administration will stop interfering with clean energy projects.


As Rachel Frazin notes in The Hill, this constitutes a high bar, especially since Merkley is likely to succeed Whitehouse as the chair of the Senate’s Environment Committee should the Dems win the chamber—it’s considerably higher than the sign off on a few wind projects that former DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested this week would be signal enough. (And as Heatmap reported this week, Trump hasn’t been signing off on those anyway—in fact, it appears that they’re thinking of banning the importation of wind turbine equipment on “national security grounds”). According to Frazin, the letter from the four Senators
represents a fracture in the Democratic caucus. It’s not entirely clear how widespread the sentiment is among Democrats, but if enough of them vote against the bill, it could hamper its chances.


And the odds of that happening seem to me to be increasing, because news of the bill seems to be escaping DC containment. Remember—this election is being largely fought over data centers, which Americans truly hate. Paul Krugman Thursday morning called the polling on these data factories “astonishingly negative” and provided a nifty little chart to drive the point home.






Essentially, no one (who isn’t an oligarch) strongly supports them, and most of the country hates them. So if the permitting bill might make it easier to build them—well, my guess is that many politicians in both parties are a little wary now of the data center issue, and don’t want to get crosswise on it. Too many traditional allies are up in arms—here, for instance, is the new NAACP resource for Black voters opposing data centers, complete with a great picture of Justin Pearson waging a remarkable campaign for Congress on the issue. Here’s the letter from the Climate Justice Alliance, with more than a hundred frontline groups coming together to say:
Your closed-door deal bolsters the work of the Trump administration which is hell-bent on dismantling environmental justice at every turn, and we are beyond outraged at what you are saying our lives are worth. Reject this travesty.


Equally pointedly, in Heinrich’s New Mexico this week, students walked out of classes to protest data centers and they linked their protest directly to the permitting bill:
“We will not get back the last 20 years of climate progress Project Jupiter will undo,” Isabelle Taylor-Ault, a student organizer and junior at NMSA, said to the crowd outside the Roundhouse in Santa Fe. “You, the adults, the ones supposed to be fighting for us, you may get the privilege of dying of old age, but our children will die from climate change.”

A handful of state lawmakers sitting on the interim Water and Natural Resources Committee—which was meeting on the Capitol’s third floor—headed down to watch the protest unfold.

In Albuquerque, protesters directed much of their ire toward US Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), who recently unveiled a sweeping, bipartisan permitting reform bill that protesters say reduces tribal input and empowers fossil fuel companies to quickly break ground on more harmful projects.

More than 100 protesters marched from the UNM bookstore down Central Avenue to Heinrich’s downtown Albuquerque office. In front of a large sign that read, “Heinrich is a sellout,” protesters with YUCCA, as well as Indigenous and environmentalist groups, described the bill as a betrayal by a longtime champion for tribal and environmental causes.


Indeed, it didn’t take long after that demonstration for one of Heinrich’s colleagues—New Mexico congresswoman Melanie Stansbury—to come out swinging against the bill, saying she was “adamantly opposed” in what the New Mexico Political Report called a “rare public split” between members of the delegation.

The stakes are of course enormous. If the data center buildout continues (and in New Mexico, for instance, Oracle’s Project Jupiter depends on a gas pipeline), then a Sierra Club analysis just released says the new facilities would soon produce more greenhouse gas emissions than Mexico. As Eric Roston and Olivia Raimonde write:
The US power sector would emit 2.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, after factoring in planned AI projects. That’s 618 million tons more than 2025 levels, by the Sierra Club’s calculations, or about a 42% increase.

A year and a half ago, researchers at the nonprofit environmental group would have estimated that the buildout and its impact would have been a quarter or half of current projections, said Jeremy Fisher, the Sierra Club’s principal adviser for climate and energy. “The numbers continue to sort of boggle our minds,” he said.


It’s hard to predict exactly how BAAJA would affect that, which is part of the problem: The bill is a bit of a black box, and the only thing we know for certain is that for the next two years Donald Trump occupies that black box, snarling about solar panels that kill all the animals and eager to do any favor that the fossil fuel industry demands.

So the key thing, of course, far beyond debate on this bill, is to try and defang that monster, and the chief method for that is simple: Win the elections Tuesday in as sweeping a fashion as possible. If you’re looking for a way to pitch in, there are plenty. For those of us of a certain age, Third Act’s Party Line senior-to-senior phone and text banking is operating day and night; if you’re a youngster, Seed the Vote can figure out ways to put you to work. I’m hunkered down for one last long weekend of all-out effort, and I hope you are too. We could come out of next week a different country, and wouldn’t that be sweet!


© 2022 Bill McKibben


Bill Mckibben
Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent book is "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?." He also authored "The End of Nature," "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."
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Boo-Hoo! California’s Billionaire Snowflakes Are Scared of a One-Time, 5% Tax!

The 22 billionaires who have spent or spoken against California’s Prop 40 have seen their combined wealth increase 64% in the last 20 months, yet you’d think from their reaction the sky was falling.

Supporters of the California Billionaire Tax Act rally in Los Angeles on February 18, 2026.
(Photo by Billionaire Tax Now/X)

Chuck Collins
Oct 31, 2026

OtherWords

Americans overwhelmingly support taxing billionaires more. But some of those billionaires, including those who’ve seen their wealth balloon in recent years, are spending big to stop it.

Voters in California, for example, are considering a ballot initiative called Prop 40—a one-time, 5% wealth tax exclusively on the state’s 200-plus billionaires. But a few dozen billionaires are ponying up tens of millions to fight the tax and threatening to run away if they lose.

In an analysis for Tax the Ultra Rich Now (TURN), the Institute for Policy Studies identified 22 Golden State billionaires who have contributed substantial funds or been outspoken opponents of Prop 40. This group has seen their combined wealth increase 64% in the last 20 months. Yet you’d think from their reaction the sky was falling.

When you hear their baleful cries, echoing from the superyachts and private jets, you want to take their hands and reassure them: “It’s all going to be OK.”

The 22 billionaire snowflakes include a bunch of tech bros and crypto barons making billions off developing an AI future for the rest of us.

Several are chums of Jeffrey Epstein, including Palantir’s Peter Thiel. In the last 20 months, Thiel’s wealth increased a whopping 120.27%, from $14.8 billion to $32.6 billion. That puts his wealth at 11,319 times the median wealth of a Californian household, which is $303,000. To protect his gains, Thiel has given $3 million to the No on 40 campaign and has called on other billionaires to move out of California. (Thiel himself recently moved to Argentina.)

Venture capitalist John Doerr, an early investor in Google, Amazon, and DoorDash, gave $10 million to No On 40. In the last 20 months, Doerr’s wealth increased 47.97%, from $14.8 billion on January 1, 2025, to $21.9 billion on September 1, 2026. Doerr’s wealth is 7,227 times that of the median Californian.

Google’s Sergey Brin has been the single largest opposition donor, chipping in over $102 million to fight Prop 40. From the deck of his $450 million yacht, the Dragonfly, Brin has seen his personal wealth grow a whopping 70% in the last 20 months, from $148 billion to $253 billion. Brin’s wealth is a stratospheric 83,498 times the median wealth of a Californian household.

Not all the billionaires are cowering in the corner.

Billionaire Tom Steyer said he would vote for the billionaire wealth tax and wished it went further to reduce inequality. Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, is worth an estimated $190 billion and supports the one-time wealth tax. He told CBS News that “it’s a privilege, it’s a responsibility” to pay taxes—and that “nothing would give me more joy” than to pay more.

California’s 231 billionaires held approximately $2.3 trillion as of September 22, 2026 and pay incredibly low taxes on their riches. According to economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, from 2019 to 2025, while California billionaires’ wealth grew an average of over 15% per year, they paid on average just 0.26% of their wealth annually in state income taxes. Sergey Brin and his fellow Google co-founder Larry Page paid even less—just 0.07% of their wealth annually.

We can see why these billionaire snowflakes don’t want anything to change. Still, the one-time wealth tax would be just a small fraction of their gains in the last few years—and nevermind of their overall wealth, which will remain massive.

When you hear their baleful cries, echoing from the superyachts and private jets, you want to take their hands and reassure them: “It’s all going to be OK. You’ll have 95% of your billions and tens of thousands of your neighbors will have healthcare. You will get over this one quickly.”

Californians will decide their fate in November: a vote for oligarchy or a first step toward rebalancing our democracy? And Americans elsewhere will be watching.


This column was distributed by OtherWords.

Chuck Collins
Chuck Collins is co-founder of CARP and author of Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet.
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