Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
US’s Own Intelligence Finds Further Strikes on Iran Are Futile, Report Says
The recent round of strikes has killed dozens in Iran and destroyed key civilian infrastructure.
By Sharon Zhang ,
The recent round of strikes has killed dozens in Iran and destroyed key civilian infrastructure.
By Sharon Zhang ,
July 21, 2026
In this handout photo, a damaged bridge lies in a riverbed, following U.S. airstrikes carried out a day earlier, on July 17, 2026 in the southern Hormozgan Province, Iran.
Morteza Akhoundi via Getty Images
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that further strikes on Iran aren’t likely to achieve any progress with regard to the U.S.’s war aims, a new report finds as the Trump administration approaches Congress to ask for $87 billion more to fund the war.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that intelligence analysts have “concluded that Tehran and Washington are, for now, stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war” that would not be resolved with further strikes. The report, largely prepared by the CIA, finds that there is little reason to believe that Iranian officials will be impacted, nor will further strikes change their positions at the negotiation table regarding provisions on sanctions or the Strait of Hormuz.
The findings come, nonetheless, on the U.S.’s 10th straight day of bombing Iran after President Donald Trump unilaterally declared the ceasefire. Dozens of people in Iran have been killed as a result of the strikes, including children, while three U.S. soldiers were killed by Iranian strikes this past weekend. The U.S. has targeted hundreds of sites across Iran, including civilian infrastructure like bridges, railways, and power facilities.
The U.S. is showing no signs of slowing, even as the war has already begun to escalate into an all-out closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, at the opening of the Red Sea, by the Houthis.
On Tuesday, during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Trump once again threatened to strike Iran’s “Pickaxe Mountain,” a nuclear energy facility south of Tehran.
“We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” said Trump.
Trump also claimed, once again, that Iranian officials “want to meet desperately to try to end” the war, but then said that the U.S. won’t stop its attacks until Iranian officials are “ready to meet in a meaningful way.”
Secretary of State Pete Hegseth is also slated to testify before senators on Tuesday to push for the Trump administration’s request for an additional $87 billion to continue the war on Iran. The Trump administration has reportedly internally estimated that the war has already cost the U.S. between $80 billion and $100 billion.
Iranian officials have indeed expressed interest in negotiations in recent days. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that Iranian officials are eager to negotiate because they believe they have the upper hand.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, said in remarks to the press on Sunday that the U.S. is only open to negotiations if Iran stops attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
“As long as Iran insists on controlling an international waterway, we’re going to have to respond to that,” Rubio said. “They continue to send signals that they want to talk, that they want to negotiate, but their behavior is what we’re responding to. And their behavior is, they’re launching missiles and drones at ships.”
However, the U.S.’s insistence over the control of the strait is one of the major sticking points in the ceasefire negotiations, alongside provisions for sanctions relief for Iran. Rubio threw cold water on the sanctions relief proposals, too, on Sunday.
“One of the reasons why Iran is in shambles is because every penny that this regime there gets, be it in sanctions relief or through the oil they’re able to get out, they invest it in Hezbollah, they invest it in Hamas,” said Rubio, ignoring the U.S.’s position as the single largest spender on the military in the world. “They should be spending billions of dollars supporting the people of Iran,” he said.
Meanwhile, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed the U.S.’s strategic crude oil preserve to its lowest point since 1983, and gas prices have once again risen above $4 a gallon on average across the country.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that further strikes on Iran aren’t likely to achieve any progress with regard to the U.S.’s war aims, a new report finds as the Trump administration approaches Congress to ask for $87 billion more to fund the war.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that intelligence analysts have “concluded that Tehran and Washington are, for now, stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war” that would not be resolved with further strikes. The report, largely prepared by the CIA, finds that there is little reason to believe that Iranian officials will be impacted, nor will further strikes change their positions at the negotiation table regarding provisions on sanctions or the Strait of Hormuz.
The findings come, nonetheless, on the U.S.’s 10th straight day of bombing Iran after President Donald Trump unilaterally declared the ceasefire. Dozens of people in Iran have been killed as a result of the strikes, including children, while three U.S. soldiers were killed by Iranian strikes this past weekend. The U.S. has targeted hundreds of sites across Iran, including civilian infrastructure like bridges, railways, and power facilities.
The U.S. is showing no signs of slowing, even as the war has already begun to escalate into an all-out closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, at the opening of the Red Sea, by the Houthis.
On Tuesday, during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Trump once again threatened to strike Iran’s “Pickaxe Mountain,” a nuclear energy facility south of Tehran.
“We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” said Trump.
Trump also claimed, once again, that Iranian officials “want to meet desperately to try to end” the war, but then said that the U.S. won’t stop its attacks until Iranian officials are “ready to meet in a meaningful way.”
Secretary of State Pete Hegseth is also slated to testify before senators on Tuesday to push for the Trump administration’s request for an additional $87 billion to continue the war on Iran. The Trump administration has reportedly internally estimated that the war has already cost the U.S. between $80 billion and $100 billion.
Iranian officials have indeed expressed interest in negotiations in recent days. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said that Iranian officials are eager to negotiate because they believe they have the upper hand.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, said in remarks to the press on Sunday that the U.S. is only open to negotiations if Iran stops attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
“As long as Iran insists on controlling an international waterway, we’re going to have to respond to that,” Rubio said. “They continue to send signals that they want to talk, that they want to negotiate, but their behavior is what we’re responding to. And their behavior is, they’re launching missiles and drones at ships.”
However, the U.S.’s insistence over the control of the strait is one of the major sticking points in the ceasefire negotiations, alongside provisions for sanctions relief for Iran. Rubio threw cold water on the sanctions relief proposals, too, on Sunday.
“One of the reasons why Iran is in shambles is because every penny that this regime there gets, be it in sanctions relief or through the oil they’re able to get out, they invest it in Hezbollah, they invest it in Hamas,” said Rubio, ignoring the U.S.’s position as the single largest spender on the military in the world. “They should be spending billions of dollars supporting the people of Iran,” he said.
Meanwhile, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed the U.S.’s strategic crude oil preserve to its lowest point since 1983, and gas prices have once again risen above $4 a gallon on average across the country.
Pentagon Slashed Civilian Harm Reduction Staff and Is Instead Using AI
CENTCOM, which oversees the war in Iran, has had its civilian harm reduction team slashed from 10 people to just one.
By Sharon Zhang ,
CENTCOM, which oversees the war in Iran, has had its civilian harm reduction team slashed from 10 people to just one.
By Sharon Zhang ,
July 20, 2026
In its first year under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon dramatically slashed its teams responsible for taking efforts to reduce civilian harm in military conflicts, new reporting finds — an undertaking that continued until as little as months before the U.S. bombed an elementary school in Minab, Iran, in one of the worst single incidents of a civilian massacre committed by the U.S. in modern history.
A report on the cuts to civilian harm reduction staff, reported by The Intercept, finds that, between January 2025 and the end of the year, the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence was slashed from 40 to just nine. In that time, the Pentagon also stopped developing a database that would have helped track incidents where civilians were harmed by U.S. actions.
These slashes to civilian harm mitigation and response, abbreviated as CMHR, were done across the Department of Defense.
For instance, such staff at Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs military activity in the Middle East, were cut from 10 to one. When U.K. watchdog group Airwars tried to submit documentation of civilian casualties to Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which has directed the U.S.’s boat strike campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the group was told that the command did not have the infrastructure to deal with such reports.
When it comes to the Minab massacre, in which the U.S. killed over 150 people with a Tomahawk missile, including over 100 children, those left at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence aren’t even allowed to investigate the incident, as well as other major incidents with civilian casualties, the report says.
Related Stor
Trump Dismisses Responsibility for Minab Massacre, Saying Photo Evidence Is “AI”
The US is widely acknowledged to be responsible for the strike, including within internal Pentagon investigations. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout July 15, 2026
Wes Bryant, who formerly oversaw the center’s civilian harm assessments, told The Intercept that the remaining staff have only been retained so that the department can keep up appearances, and that their findings are “being thrown into the wind.”
The reporting follows others that have found that the Trump administration sought to shutter the office before Donald Trump was even inaugurated in January 2025. Since then, Hegseth has made his vow to ignore what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” a central tenet of his identity as the military’s top official — and numerous scandals regarding civilian harm done by the U.S. have followed, including in the boat strike campaign, strikes on Yemen, and in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is trying to replace some of the duties of its civilian harm mitigation staff with AI, The Intercept notes. Military service members are instead using AI systems like Palantir’s Maven Smart System, as well as the military’s AskSage, to conduct assessments of the civilian environment.
This lines up with reports that service members used AI to help select the elementary school in Minab as a target, and bypassed warnings about faulty targeting in order to expedite strikes at the beginning of the war.
In its first year under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon dramatically slashed its teams responsible for taking efforts to reduce civilian harm in military conflicts, new reporting finds — an undertaking that continued until as little as months before the U.S. bombed an elementary school in Minab, Iran, in one of the worst single incidents of a civilian massacre committed by the U.S. in modern history.
A report on the cuts to civilian harm reduction staff, reported by The Intercept, finds that, between January 2025 and the end of the year, the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence was slashed from 40 to just nine. In that time, the Pentagon also stopped developing a database that would have helped track incidents where civilians were harmed by U.S. actions.
These slashes to civilian harm mitigation and response, abbreviated as CMHR, were done across the Department of Defense.
For instance, such staff at Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs military activity in the Middle East, were cut from 10 to one. When U.K. watchdog group Airwars tried to submit documentation of civilian casualties to Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which has directed the U.S.’s boat strike campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the group was told that the command did not have the infrastructure to deal with such reports.
When it comes to the Minab massacre, in which the U.S. killed over 150 people with a Tomahawk missile, including over 100 children, those left at the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence aren’t even allowed to investigate the incident, as well as other major incidents with civilian casualties, the report says.
Related Stor
Trump Dismisses Responsibility for Minab Massacre, Saying Photo Evidence Is “AI”
The US is widely acknowledged to be responsible for the strike, including within internal Pentagon investigations. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout July 15, 2026
Wes Bryant, who formerly oversaw the center’s civilian harm assessments, told The Intercept that the remaining staff have only been retained so that the department can keep up appearances, and that their findings are “being thrown into the wind.”
The reporting follows others that have found that the Trump administration sought to shutter the office before Donald Trump was even inaugurated in January 2025. Since then, Hegseth has made his vow to ignore what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” a central tenet of his identity as the military’s top official — and numerous scandals regarding civilian harm done by the U.S. have followed, including in the boat strike campaign, strikes on Yemen, and in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is trying to replace some of the duties of its civilian harm mitigation staff with AI, The Intercept notes. Military service members are instead using AI systems like Palantir’s Maven Smart System, as well as the military’s AskSage, to conduct assessments of the civilian environment.
This lines up with reports that service members used AI to help select the elementary school in Minab as a target, and bypassed warnings about faulty targeting in order to expedite strikes at the beginning of the war.
Suspicious timing: Trump admin scrubs 1,600+ pages from website during heat wave
Kate Yoder
Kate Yoder
July 20, 2026
ALTERNET
If you wanted to save some money by learning how to check your home for air leaks, poor insulation, and power-hungry lightbulbs, the Department of Energy’s website was ready to help. And if you needed an expert, the site guided you to another page for help lining up a professional energy assessment, a well-established first step to cut utility bills and curb pollution at the same time.
That is, until this summer, when both of those resources vanished from the agency’s site, each now redirecting to “Page not found.” They were taken down by July 3, around the same time that the Department of Energy deleted more than 1,600 pages from the Energy Saver section of its site, gutting a resource for people looking to conserve energy and lower bills.
“I can’t remember another time that, with DOE specifically, we’ve seen an entire domain go down the way that [it] has been reported on now,” said Izzy Pacenza, who monitors government websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. Over a 30-day span this summer, as swaths of the country suffered under heat waves, more than 300 of the webpages had received 160,000 page views, according to an analysis from The Guardian.
The news coverage of the missing websites has focused on the disappearance of one recommendation in particular. Ahead of a heat wave that roasted New York City with 100-degree temperatures earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked businesses and residents to set their AC to 78 degrees to conserve energy, drawing the ire of Republicans who mocked the restrictions as “socialism.” Internet sleuths were quick to notice that similar guidance had vanished from the Department of Energy’s website, which used to direct people to keep their thermostat between 75 and 78 degrees. The timing suggested that the agency might have removed the pages as a rebuke to Mamdani’s advice.
The purge looked suspiciously timed for another reason: On July 2, the Energy Department announced a proposed rule to make it harder for future administrations to approve energy efficiency standards for household appliances, saying it would “permanently end Green New Scam appliance mandates.” The move was part of the Trump administration’s broader attack on energy efficiency requirements.
The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative has argued that Trump’s federal agencies tend to remove information from their websites related to regulatory changes they just announced, which limits access to information people could use to oppose agency proposals during the legally required public comment period. But the facts that would be most relevant here — the agency’s information about its Appliance and Equipment Standards Program — remain on the site, pointed out Andrew deLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. “I haven’t seen things come down that are directly related to the appliance standards program,” he said.
The Department of Energy did not respond to questions about why it removed the webpages. But the purge could be understood as part of a broader pattern of removing the most accessible, actionable public information about climate change from federal government websites. Last summer brought an abrupt end to the government website that hosted the National Climate Assessment, a series of congressionally mandated reports that broke down how climate change affects the regions where people live. Around the same time, Climate.gov, the widely used site that translated the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research into easy-to-understand resources, vanished too.
Energy Saver provided a similar service, distilling technical knowledge about conserving energy into advice for ordinary people: shopping for efficient appliances, installing “cool roofs,” and do-it-yourself guides to saving energy and money.
“These things are seen as authoritative resources and tools given to us by the government for us to think about how climate change interacts with our daily lives,” Pacenza said. “And now that interaction, and that relationship, is being broken or interrupted.”
This kind of consumer advice on how to save energy clashes with President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” framing. The administration has promoted a narrative that energy use, powered by fossil fuels, “is a tenet of American values and of our identity,” Pacenza said. Telling people to be aware of their energy use is in tension with this narrative. Even if the DOE’s website purge wasn’t driven by Mamdani’s statements about conserving energy, a similar impulse may lie behind the decision.
The debate over asking Americans to adjust their thermostats to save energy is actually decades old: During a fuel shortage in the summer of 1979, President Jimmy Carter required retail stores, restaurants, and other public and commercial buildings to keep the thermostat no warmer than 65 degrees in winter and no cooler than 78 degrees in summer (sound familiar?). President Ronald Reagan reversed those restrictions in 1981, calling them “an excessive regulatory burden.”
In general, though, energy efficiency measures used to be in the realm of bipartisan agreement. Reagan went on to sign the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 into law, establishing minimum efficiency standards for refrigerators, freezers, and other household equipment. But recent years have seen air conditioners, laundry machines, shower heads, and other items get roped into the culture wars. Republicans have argued that government efficiency standards interfere with “consumer choice” and have been undoing regulations passed by Democratic administrations.
“This administration isn’t doing anything to improve efficiency standards — they’re only trying to go backwards,” deLaski said.
If you wanted to save some money by learning how to check your home for air leaks, poor insulation, and power-hungry lightbulbs, the Department of Energy’s website was ready to help. And if you needed an expert, the site guided you to another page for help lining up a professional energy assessment, a well-established first step to cut utility bills and curb pollution at the same time.
That is, until this summer, when both of those resources vanished from the agency’s site, each now redirecting to “Page not found.” They were taken down by July 3, around the same time that the Department of Energy deleted more than 1,600 pages from the Energy Saver section of its site, gutting a resource for people looking to conserve energy and lower bills.
“I can’t remember another time that, with DOE specifically, we’ve seen an entire domain go down the way that [it] has been reported on now,” said Izzy Pacenza, who monitors government websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. Over a 30-day span this summer, as swaths of the country suffered under heat waves, more than 300 of the webpages had received 160,000 page views, according to an analysis from The Guardian.
The news coverage of the missing websites has focused on the disappearance of one recommendation in particular. Ahead of a heat wave that roasted New York City with 100-degree temperatures earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked businesses and residents to set their AC to 78 degrees to conserve energy, drawing the ire of Republicans who mocked the restrictions as “socialism.” Internet sleuths were quick to notice that similar guidance had vanished from the Department of Energy’s website, which used to direct people to keep their thermostat between 75 and 78 degrees. The timing suggested that the agency might have removed the pages as a rebuke to Mamdani’s advice.
The purge looked suspiciously timed for another reason: On July 2, the Energy Department announced a proposed rule to make it harder for future administrations to approve energy efficiency standards for household appliances, saying it would “permanently end Green New Scam appliance mandates.” The move was part of the Trump administration’s broader attack on energy efficiency requirements.
The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative has argued that Trump’s federal agencies tend to remove information from their websites related to regulatory changes they just announced, which limits access to information people could use to oppose agency proposals during the legally required public comment period. But the facts that would be most relevant here — the agency’s information about its Appliance and Equipment Standards Program — remain on the site, pointed out Andrew deLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. “I haven’t seen things come down that are directly related to the appliance standards program,” he said.
The Department of Energy did not respond to questions about why it removed the webpages. But the purge could be understood as part of a broader pattern of removing the most accessible, actionable public information about climate change from federal government websites. Last summer brought an abrupt end to the government website that hosted the National Climate Assessment, a series of congressionally mandated reports that broke down how climate change affects the regions where people live. Around the same time, Climate.gov, the widely used site that translated the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research into easy-to-understand resources, vanished too.
Energy Saver provided a similar service, distilling technical knowledge about conserving energy into advice for ordinary people: shopping for efficient appliances, installing “cool roofs,” and do-it-yourself guides to saving energy and money.
“These things are seen as authoritative resources and tools given to us by the government for us to think about how climate change interacts with our daily lives,” Pacenza said. “And now that interaction, and that relationship, is being broken or interrupted.”
This kind of consumer advice on how to save energy clashes with President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” framing. The administration has promoted a narrative that energy use, powered by fossil fuels, “is a tenet of American values and of our identity,” Pacenza said. Telling people to be aware of their energy use is in tension with this narrative. Even if the DOE’s website purge wasn’t driven by Mamdani’s statements about conserving energy, a similar impulse may lie behind the decision.
The debate over asking Americans to adjust their thermostats to save energy is actually decades old: During a fuel shortage in the summer of 1979, President Jimmy Carter required retail stores, restaurants, and other public and commercial buildings to keep the thermostat no warmer than 65 degrees in winter and no cooler than 78 degrees in summer (sound familiar?). President Ronald Reagan reversed those restrictions in 1981, calling them “an excessive regulatory burden.”
In general, though, energy efficiency measures used to be in the realm of bipartisan agreement. Reagan went on to sign the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 into law, establishing minimum efficiency standards for refrigerators, freezers, and other household equipment. But recent years have seen air conditioners, laundry machines, shower heads, and other items get roped into the culture wars. Republicans have argued that government efficiency standards interfere with “consumer choice” and have been undoing regulations passed by Democratic administrations.
“This administration isn’t doing anything to improve efficiency standards — they’re only trying to go backwards,” deLaski said.
Republicans Are Trying to Give Big Oil Immunity for Causing Climate Chaos
A new report further links fossil fuel emissions to extreme weather events. States are trying to make polluters pay.
By Mike Ludwig ,
A new report further links fossil fuel emissions to extreme weather events. States are trying to make polluters pay.
By Mike Ludwig ,
July 21, 2026
Smoke from massive wildfires in Canada and Minnesota engulfs the Washington, D.C. skyline, reducing visibility and casting a colored haze over the U.S. Capitol Building on July 17, 2026, in Washington, D.C.Finn Gomez / Getty Images
The science used to attribute extreme weather events to climate change has advanced remarkably in recent years, allowing policy makers, judges, and the public to see clear links between disasters and the fossil fuel emissions driving climate crisis. Now, as the links become clearer, oil and gas lobbyists are scrambling to shield the industry from a wave of lawsuits and state laws seeking to hold profiteers accountable for the damage that burning fossil fuels causes to communities and public health.
Developed over the course of three years by a panel of experts, the National Academies of Sciences published a report on July 16 updating and expanding on a landmark 2016 review that found climate attribution science had made “great strides” in explaining the increasing frequency of extreme weather such as heat waves, floods, extended droughts, and wildfires in the context of climate disruption caused by humans. The link between global warming and individual violent storms is less clear — but not in the tropics, where warming ocean temperatures are known to likely intensify hurricanes and cyclones.
The report found improvements over the past decade in datasets and model simulations that scientists use to determine whether climate change made an extreme weather event more likely or intense. Scientists are also improving the accuracy of “storyline event attribution,” which focuses on whether climate disruption shaped the physical processes leading up to a damaging event.
Uncertainties remain, but the report from one of the nation’s most trusted research institutions affirms that scientists can reliably link specific disasters to oil and gas emissions, according to Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign.
“For years the fossil fuel industry has argued in court that climate change is just too global and too complex to connect specific harms to individual polluters, but in recent years attribution science has changed that,” DiPaola said in an interview. “This report only confirms that this field has matured into an incredibly rigorous scientific discipline, and it gives courts stronger evidence to evaluate the real-world consequences of fossil fuel pollution.”
Republicans Want to Punish Canada for “Exporting” Its Wildfire Smoke Into the US
The Republicans make no mention of experts’ warnings that the climate crisis is supercharging the wildfires. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout July 17, 2026
More than 40 cities and states have filed lawsuits against major fossil fuel companies for climate-related damages. The specifics vary, but in many cases the plaintiffs argue that companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and BP engaged in deceptive advertising by failing to inform the public about research linking the burning of fossil fuels to the climate crisis. Lawsuits filed by California, Maine, New Jersey, and multiple municipalities also argue that air pollution is a “public nuisance” under state laws.
“It does not decide these cases, but the [National Academies] report makes it more difficult for the industry and its lawyers to argue that the science is not ready for the courtroom,” DiPaola said. “It just gives judges a better foundation for finding causation.”
Two dozen states have also introduced or passed into law what are known as “climate superfund bills,” which create funds paid into by fossil fuel polluters that states can use to pay for the costs of environmental cleanup and fixing infrastructure damaged by extreme weather attributed to climate change. The American Petroleum Institute, a top lobbying group for the industry, lists opposing state-level superfund bills as one of its top political priorities for 2026.
“The industry sees reports like this coming out from leaders in the scientific field, and they would rather ask lawmakers to shut down the climate superfund bills entirely and the lawsuits entirely,” DiPaola said.
Energy In Depth, a pro-industry publication and project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, published an op-ed on July 14 claiming the “fingerprints of climate litigation activists” are “all over” the National Academies report, which should be viewed as “the latest deliverable in a well-funded litigation campaign.”
With droughts causing water shortages while deadly floods and heat waves increase in frequency, fossil fuel supporters in the Republican Party are addressing the climate crisis by attempting to shift the blame. The fight burst into public view over the past week as devastating wildfires in Canada burned out of control, filling skies across much of the Midwest and Northeast U.S. with smoke that forced millions of people indoors.
Experts say wildfires are a natural feature of Canada’s forests, and the recent outbreak likely resulted from a mix of human activity and persistent heat and drought driven by climate disruption, which makes fires bigger, hotter, and more destructive. However, President Donald Trump attacked Canada on July 17 over the wildfire smoke that drifted across the U.S. border in a nonsensical online post. Republicans in Congress also threatened to impose economic sanctions on Canada for “exporting” smoke, exacerbating tensions over Trump’s tariffs and antics on the world stage.
In 2023, a landmark study from the Union of Concerned Scientists directly linked coal, oil, and gas companies to worsening forest fires in the western United States. The study found that nearly 20 million acres — or 37 percent of the total area burned by forest fires in the western United States and southwestern Canada since 1986 — can be attributed to heat-trapping air pollution released by the 88 largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers globally.
Forest fires are increasing in scale and occurring earlier in the season. In 2025, the number of people displaced from their homes by forest fires globally reached nearly 500 million, the highest level since 2020. Carly Phillips, a senior scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the organization’s forest fire attribution study and others like it, such as the new one from the National Academies, are critical pieces of scientific evidence for holding big polluters accountable.
“Attribution science has been a flashpoint, so that affirmation of the rigor and robustness of this science from the National Academies is key for affirming the utility of this type of research,” Phillips told Truthout.
Phillips pointed to a recent piece from the Wall Street Journal editorial board attacking the National Academies report as politically compromised. Phillips said the editorial follows a decades-long disinformation campaign against climate attribution science waged by the industry. The Journal accuses unnamed “trial lawyers” of staging a “climate coup” at the National Academies.
“It’s part of a broader pattern of attempting to discredit the National Academies and attribution science broadly, not for the science but for the process,” Phillips said. “But there’s no evidence. They are manufacturing controversy where there is none.”
DiPaola said Big Oil companies have increasingly turned to conservative media outlets and Republicans lawmakers to shield them from public scrutiny as science connects the deadly heat waves, fires, and floods in the headlines to climate disruption caused by fossil fuel pollution. In press releases and public communications, both the American Petroleum Institute and GOP lawmakers describe the state-level lawsuits and superfund bills as “extremist.”
“Attribution science is becoming more and more precise at the same time these liabilities cases are moving closer to discovery — and at the same time that industry is begging leaders in Congress to throw them out,” DiPaola said.
Big Oil executives would likely not want judges ordering them to hand over internal documents and testify under oath after repeated investigations revealed that Chevron and other companies knew that burning fossil fuels caused global warming decades ago but failed to warn the public and policy makers, DiPaola pointed out.
On April 17, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced legislation in Congress to “protect American energy from leftist legal crusades” and the climate superfund laws introduced by Democratic lawmakers in two dozen states. At the state level, dark money right-wing groups are distributing model legislation that would quash climate accountability funds and lawsuits.
In a statement, Hageman said “state legislators and environmental extremists” are trying to “scapegoat” fossil fuel firms. The presidents of two lobbying groups — the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute — thanked Cruz and Hageman in a joint statement. After all, the climate superfund bills alone are “designed to inflict multi-billion-dollar penalties for past emissions and other alleged contributions to ‘climate change,’” according to a press release from Hageman’s office.
Vermont and New York were the first states to sign climate superfund bills into law. New York plans to recover $75 billion over 25 years from fossil fuel companies to pay for climate damage, and Vermont is still assessing the damage attributed to specific companies, according to DiPaola. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers recently passed laws shielding fossil fuel companies from climate lawsuits in Utah, Tennessee, Iowa, and Oklahoma. Similar legislation is on the move in Louisiana.
Phillips said fights over who will pay for climate damages could have been avoided if the fossil fuel industry had been honest in decades past with the public and politicians about the dangers of burning fossil fuels, prompting an earlier start to a transition to clean energy. Instead, the industry and its allies continue to wage a disinformation campaign with the goal of “deceiving the public” and obstructing climate action.
“It did not have to be this way,” Phillips said. “It did not have to get to the point where these extreme storms and extended droughts are driving this level of harm and destruction.”
The science used to attribute extreme weather events to climate change has advanced remarkably in recent years, allowing policy makers, judges, and the public to see clear links between disasters and the fossil fuel emissions driving climate crisis. Now, as the links become clearer, oil and gas lobbyists are scrambling to shield the industry from a wave of lawsuits and state laws seeking to hold profiteers accountable for the damage that burning fossil fuels causes to communities and public health.
Developed over the course of three years by a panel of experts, the National Academies of Sciences published a report on July 16 updating and expanding on a landmark 2016 review that found climate attribution science had made “great strides” in explaining the increasing frequency of extreme weather such as heat waves, floods, extended droughts, and wildfires in the context of climate disruption caused by humans. The link between global warming and individual violent storms is less clear — but not in the tropics, where warming ocean temperatures are known to likely intensify hurricanes and cyclones.
The report found improvements over the past decade in datasets and model simulations that scientists use to determine whether climate change made an extreme weather event more likely or intense. Scientists are also improving the accuracy of “storyline event attribution,” which focuses on whether climate disruption shaped the physical processes leading up to a damaging event.
Uncertainties remain, but the report from one of the nation’s most trusted research institutions affirms that scientists can reliably link specific disasters to oil and gas emissions, according to Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign.
“For years the fossil fuel industry has argued in court that climate change is just too global and too complex to connect specific harms to individual polluters, but in recent years attribution science has changed that,” DiPaola said in an interview. “This report only confirms that this field has matured into an incredibly rigorous scientific discipline, and it gives courts stronger evidence to evaluate the real-world consequences of fossil fuel pollution.”
Republicans Want to Punish Canada for “Exporting” Its Wildfire Smoke Into the US
The Republicans make no mention of experts’ warnings that the climate crisis is supercharging the wildfires. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout July 17, 2026
More than 40 cities and states have filed lawsuits against major fossil fuel companies for climate-related damages. The specifics vary, but in many cases the plaintiffs argue that companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and BP engaged in deceptive advertising by failing to inform the public about research linking the burning of fossil fuels to the climate crisis. Lawsuits filed by California, Maine, New Jersey, and multiple municipalities also argue that air pollution is a “public nuisance” under state laws.
“It does not decide these cases, but the [National Academies] report makes it more difficult for the industry and its lawyers to argue that the science is not ready for the courtroom,” DiPaola said. “It just gives judges a better foundation for finding causation.”
Two dozen states have also introduced or passed into law what are known as “climate superfund bills,” which create funds paid into by fossil fuel polluters that states can use to pay for the costs of environmental cleanup and fixing infrastructure damaged by extreme weather attributed to climate change. The American Petroleum Institute, a top lobbying group for the industry, lists opposing state-level superfund bills as one of its top political priorities for 2026.
“The industry sees reports like this coming out from leaders in the scientific field, and they would rather ask lawmakers to shut down the climate superfund bills entirely and the lawsuits entirely,” DiPaola said.
Energy In Depth, a pro-industry publication and project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, published an op-ed on July 14 claiming the “fingerprints of climate litigation activists” are “all over” the National Academies report, which should be viewed as “the latest deliverable in a well-funded litigation campaign.”
With droughts causing water shortages while deadly floods and heat waves increase in frequency, fossil fuel supporters in the Republican Party are addressing the climate crisis by attempting to shift the blame. The fight burst into public view over the past week as devastating wildfires in Canada burned out of control, filling skies across much of the Midwest and Northeast U.S. with smoke that forced millions of people indoors.
Experts say wildfires are a natural feature of Canada’s forests, and the recent outbreak likely resulted from a mix of human activity and persistent heat and drought driven by climate disruption, which makes fires bigger, hotter, and more destructive. However, President Donald Trump attacked Canada on July 17 over the wildfire smoke that drifted across the U.S. border in a nonsensical online post. Republicans in Congress also threatened to impose economic sanctions on Canada for “exporting” smoke, exacerbating tensions over Trump’s tariffs and antics on the world stage.
In 2023, a landmark study from the Union of Concerned Scientists directly linked coal, oil, and gas companies to worsening forest fires in the western United States. The study found that nearly 20 million acres — or 37 percent of the total area burned by forest fires in the western United States and southwestern Canada since 1986 — can be attributed to heat-trapping air pollution released by the 88 largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers globally.
Forest fires are increasing in scale and occurring earlier in the season. In 2025, the number of people displaced from their homes by forest fires globally reached nearly 500 million, the highest level since 2020. Carly Phillips, a senior scientist with the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the organization’s forest fire attribution study and others like it, such as the new one from the National Academies, are critical pieces of scientific evidence for holding big polluters accountable.
“Attribution science has been a flashpoint, so that affirmation of the rigor and robustness of this science from the National Academies is key for affirming the utility of this type of research,” Phillips told Truthout.
Phillips pointed to a recent piece from the Wall Street Journal editorial board attacking the National Academies report as politically compromised. Phillips said the editorial follows a decades-long disinformation campaign against climate attribution science waged by the industry. The Journal accuses unnamed “trial lawyers” of staging a “climate coup” at the National Academies.
“It’s part of a broader pattern of attempting to discredit the National Academies and attribution science broadly, not for the science but for the process,” Phillips said. “But there’s no evidence. They are manufacturing controversy where there is none.”
DiPaola said Big Oil companies have increasingly turned to conservative media outlets and Republicans lawmakers to shield them from public scrutiny as science connects the deadly heat waves, fires, and floods in the headlines to climate disruption caused by fossil fuel pollution. In press releases and public communications, both the American Petroleum Institute and GOP lawmakers describe the state-level lawsuits and superfund bills as “extremist.”
“Attribution science is becoming more and more precise at the same time these liabilities cases are moving closer to discovery — and at the same time that industry is begging leaders in Congress to throw them out,” DiPaola said.
Big Oil executives would likely not want judges ordering them to hand over internal documents and testify under oath after repeated investigations revealed that Chevron and other companies knew that burning fossil fuels caused global warming decades ago but failed to warn the public and policy makers, DiPaola pointed out.
On April 17, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced legislation in Congress to “protect American energy from leftist legal crusades” and the climate superfund laws introduced by Democratic lawmakers in two dozen states. At the state level, dark money right-wing groups are distributing model legislation that would quash climate accountability funds and lawsuits.
In a statement, Hageman said “state legislators and environmental extremists” are trying to “scapegoat” fossil fuel firms. The presidents of two lobbying groups — the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute — thanked Cruz and Hageman in a joint statement. After all, the climate superfund bills alone are “designed to inflict multi-billion-dollar penalties for past emissions and other alleged contributions to ‘climate change,’” according to a press release from Hageman’s office.
Vermont and New York were the first states to sign climate superfund bills into law. New York plans to recover $75 billion over 25 years from fossil fuel companies to pay for climate damage, and Vermont is still assessing the damage attributed to specific companies, according to DiPaola. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers recently passed laws shielding fossil fuel companies from climate lawsuits in Utah, Tennessee, Iowa, and Oklahoma. Similar legislation is on the move in Louisiana.
Phillips said fights over who will pay for climate damages could have been avoided if the fossil fuel industry had been honest in decades past with the public and politicians about the dangers of burning fossil fuels, prompting an earlier start to a transition to clean energy. Instead, the industry and its allies continue to wage a disinformation campaign with the goal of “deceiving the public” and obstructing climate action.
“It did not have to be this way,” Phillips said. “It did not have to get to the point where these extreme storms and extended droughts are driving this level of harm and destruction.”
The book that accidentally created monster Alex Jones — and the author's deep regret
Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones speaks outside the federal courthouse after a bankruptcy hearing. David J Phillip/AAP
Jon Ronson’s book Them: Adventures with Extremists launched him to worldwide fame – and more dubiously, launched conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Though Jones has been deplatformed, his influence lingers: just this week, it was reported that Australia’s far-right One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts praised Jones in 2024 as “a beacon of hope around the world”.
Researched and written in the years preceding September 11, and published in April 2001, Them – which Ronson described in a preface to its second edition as “a snapshot of life in the Western world on 10 September 2001” – is turning 25.
Ronson’s original plan was to spend time with people who’d been described as “the extremist monsters of the Western world” as they went about their everyday lives. They included neo-Nazis, militias and Omar Bakri, a UK Islamic fundamentalist who called himself “Osama Bin Laden’s man in London”, and whom Ronson shadowed for a year in 1996 for a documentary.
Among other things, Ronson recorded the “clownish” Bakri watching the Lion King with a baby on his knee, and asking him to guard the money he’d been collecting for Hamas in giant Coca Cola bottles, while he retrieved a coat – which he agonised over as a Jewish person, but did (seemingly to avoid awkwardness).
Bakri, who told the Daily Mail the September 11 attacks were “exciting”, was barred from the United Kingdom after leaving in 2005. In 2010, he was arrested in Lebanon and sentenced to life in prison after a terrorism trial. Released pending retrial, he was sentenced again in 2015 to six years hard labour.
“I thought that perhaps an interesting way to look at our world would be to move into theirs and stand alongside them while they glared back at ours,” Ronson writes. But what started as a series of profiles of extremist leaders “quickly became something stranger”, when he realised the very different people he was following all shared a belief in the New World Order: a conspiracy theory that imagines “a tiny elite rules the world from inside a secret room”.
This tyrannical, shadowy elite, Ronson soon discovered, was said to launch wars and wield almost unimaginable power. It has the ability to, among other things, “select and cast out the heads of state, control Hollywood and the markets and the flow of capital, operate a harem of under-age kidnapped sex slaves”.
If there was any truth to the theory, Ronson reasoned, there must be an actual secret room, and it had to be located somewhere. So he resolved to find it.
At various points, he found himself chased by men in dark glasses and surveilled from behind trees. He also managed to witness robed international chief executives participate in a bizarre effigy-burning ritual in the forests of northern California – an experience he shared with Jones, then a harmless-seeming regional radio crank, based in Texas.
Now, 25 years on, that worldview has arguably become easier to sustain than Ronson could have imagined. Revelations surrounding figures such as Jeffrey Epstein – who did operate a network of underage girls he coerced into sexually servicing powerful men – have shown the wealthy and powerful can and do conceal serious and shocking crimes through networks of influence and privilege.
But rather than confirming the existence of a secret cabal directing world events, such scandals have often been absorbed into far broader conspiracy narratives – from QAnon to claims about bloodthirsty global elites harvesting adrenochrome from children – further blurring sometimes porous lines between fact and fiction.
Genuine curiosity and refusing caricature
The book helped to establish Ronson’s distinctive investigative approach: an interest in the fringe and the unusual, approached with a genuine sense of curiosity and a refusal of easy caricature.
This sensibility has run through his work since, from The Men Who Stared at Goats (looking at bizarre, fringe tactics adopted by the US army) and You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (an early critique of social media shaming) to his culture war conspiracy theories podcast series, Things Fell Apart.
But Them also propelled Jones into the mainstream – which Ronson has publicly regretted. When Ronson got to know him, “Alex was hollering his powerful apocalyptic vision down an ISDN line from a child’s bedroom in his house, with choo-choo train wallpaper and an Empire Strikes Back poster pinned on the wall”.
Since then, Jones has been “successfully sued” and has filed for bankruptcy after being found liable for defamation for his claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged and “no one died”.
Sadly, what once seemed extreme and marginal – the circulation of conspiracy theories and the associated peddling of prejudice and hate – now feels depressingly routine.
Just as it inadvertently captured the historical moment about to erupt with the September 11 attacks and their aftermath, Them anticipated the mainstreaming of conspiratorial thinking, which would become a defining feature of our misinformation-ridden historical moment.
Paranoia as the new common sense
“Paranoia was the new common sense,” writes columnist John Ganz in When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. “The country seemed to be seeking something new, a break with the exhausted possibilities of the past but also a restoration, a way to recover what had been lost.”
At the end of the 1980s, the Berlin Wall had been reduced to rubble and the communist bloc was crumbling. Excitable liberals were wittering on about the end of history. America stood triumphant, seemingly without rival. And yet something felt off.
Ganz argues appearances were deceptive. “America felt itself to be losing out: losing its dominant place in the world, losing the basis of its security and wealth, and losing its sense of itself.”
There had to be an explanation. And there had to be someone to blame.
This bled through in the culture of the early 1990s. “Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you,” sang Kurt Cobain, capturing the zeitgeist on Nevermind (1991). It was the time of Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) and The X-Files (1993). The truth, we were told, was out there. Trust no one – especially anyone in a position of authority.
Ruby Ridge: ground zero?
This atmosphere permeates Them’s second chapter, on the bloody Ruby Ridge standoff in regional Idaho in August 1992. Also permeating the chapter – and the book – are Ronson’s stated aims of painting people “as complicated grey areas, rather than magnificent heroes or sickening villains” and sticking “to the nuanced truth, rather than flattening it to make ideological points”.
Randy and Vicki Weaver were among the first Americans to articulate fears about the New World Order. In the 1980s, they moved from Iowa to a plywood cabin without electricity, high in the Idaho ranges. There, they home-schooled their children, living among bears and mountain lions.
Randy felt the need, Ronson tells us, to socialise from time to time. He made friends within the nearby Aryan Nations community and attended their summer camps with his children four times – though he told Ronson he wasn’t personally a white supremacist, but a “separatist”.
One such friend was an undercover agent, who asked Randy to sell him two illegal sawn-off shotguns. Once arrested, Randy was offered a choice: spy on Aryan Nations for the government or face time behind bars for illicit gun running. He went with the second option. Warned they could lose their house and convinced the New World Order was monitoring them (which was not untrue now), the Weavers stopped showing up to court.
In August 1992, US marshals hiding in the bushes shot the Weavers’ barking family dog as it came too close. Ronson reports that Weaver’s teenage son Sammy fired random shots in response, and was shot and killed. A marshal was killed too. Hundreds of federal agents descended, martial law was declared, and residents emerged from their homes bearing placards denouncing the New World Order. Vicki was shot and killed while holding her infant daughter.
Media coverage recast the human tragedy as a national psychodrama about extremism, government overreach and the collapse of public trust.
In the following months, militia movements expanded rapidly across the US. The infamous siege in Waco, Texas, where David Koresh’s Branch Davidians clashed with federal agents, ending with 75 members dead, unfolded in Texas less than a year later.
For many in the American far right, the ruined Weaver cabin became a symbol of resistance and martyrdom, assuming a quasi-mythic status. One pilgrim who visited was Timothy McVeigh, later responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people and injured close to 700.
Bilderberg: a secret society running the world?
Ronson soon realised the same name was on the lips of the various militia members and anti-government activists he spoke to: the Bilderberg Group. These are the people who actually run the world, they believed. Bilderberg was described as “the Roman Senate” or “a pyramid”.
Jones explained: “They’re way up there. Below them you’ve the IMF, the World Bank, the United Nations, then you’ve got us down here, the cattle, the human resources.” At the time, he was funding efforts to rebuild the Branch Davidian church.
Ronson first encountered Jones while interviewing Randy Weaver, who considered the then regional radio host “a true and tirelesss warrior”. Jones explained the Bilderbergers were orchestrating world decline from the behind the scenes. As with many conspiracy theories, the line between fantasy and reality was not always easy to discern.
The Bilderberg Group is real. It even has its own website. Established in the wake of World War II, it consists of annual private meetings attended by political and industrial leaders, financiers, media executives and royalty. It is, without doubt, a highly secretive organisation – which has intensified the suspicion around it.
Interestingly, UK politician Peter Mandelson, former US ambassador and friend of Epstein even after his conviction, is named in the book as a Bilderberg attendee.
This explains how Ronson eventually found himself sneaking into Bohemian Grove, the annual retreat (since 1878) of a secretive, elite club whose attendees “read much like a Bilderberg roll-call”, alongside Jones.
There, hidden among the redwoods of northern California, wealthy and politically connected men, many of them drunk, gathered for an elaborate ceremony centred on burning an effigy before a giant owl statue. Harmless elite play-acting, or dastardly occult ritual conducted by the secret rulers of the world? Ronson saw the former, Jones the latter.
In his short book on Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, The Elephant in the Room (2026), Ronson describes watching the alt-right move steadily closer to political power, propelled in part by “leading voice” Jones – who reportedly received a swift call from a newly elected Trump, thanking him for his support.
Despite a lingering “personal” fondness for his fellow Bohemian Grove crasher, Ronson calls him “basically the most irresponsible man I have ever met”, who “uses his powers to inflame paranoia” and “boldly makes stuff up to suit his weird agenda”.
Lizard people
I first became aware of David Icke, former semi-professional footballer and respected sports journalist, now a believer in giant lizards, in April 1991. I was at home, watching TV, not yet ten years old.
Icke was being interviewed live on a prime-time UK talk show, wearing an eye-wateringly lurid turquoise tracksuit. He had recently started to refer to himself as the “Son of the Godhead”. On air, he made a series of predictions about imminent and devastating natural catastrophes. The audience, not knowing what to make of it all, laughed.
Ronson describes the moment:
He said this with such ferocity, such conviction, that the audience stopped laughing for a moment […] You could feel it sweep across the television studio, sweep across the land, a stirring of some primordial paranoia. Could David Icke actually be a soothsayer?
But in fact, ridicule and opprobrium followed the segment. In the period after his very public shaming, Ronson records, Icke came to believe his mockery had been orchestrated by shadowy elites. He immersed himself in conspiracy literature, including on the Bilderberg Group.
Icke became convinced the global elite were not merely corrupt politicians or financiers, but something much stranger: shape-shifting reptilian beings manipulating humans across millennia. Ancient civilisations, occult rituals and modern political institutions were all folded into a single explanatory system.
The reptilian invaders, he concluded, were the secret rulers of the world.
Critics have long argued his talk of secret reptilian elites functions as a coded form of antisemitism, echoing older conspiratorial myths – including ideas traceable to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Yet Ronson suggests Icke genuinely believes the world is controlled by interdimensional lizard people.
The promise of hidden forces
This creates a puzzle. If someone claims giant lizards secretly control the planet, are we dealing with metaphor, coded prejudice, mental instability, opportunity or sincere belief? Increasingly, it seems the answer may be some unstable combination of them all.
Part of what makes Them feel so relevant now is that Ronson rejects the reassuring assumption that extremist or conspiratorial thinking falls outside the bounds of ordinary life.
Long before social media turned paranoia into a viable business model, he grasped that bizarre ideas do not emerge from nowhere. Rather, they are shaped by spectacle, distrust, insecurity and the seductive promise that hidden forces can explain an increasingly bewildering world – often with disastrous consequences.
Given Ronson’s record of books on topics just hitting (or about to explode into) the mainstream, the topic of his forthcoming one, to be published in August, is unsurprising: the masculinity crisis.
Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones speaks outside the federal courthouse after a bankruptcy hearing. David J Phillip/AAP
July 18, 2026
Jon Ronson’s book Them: Adventures with Extremists launched him to worldwide fame – and more dubiously, launched conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Though Jones has been deplatformed, his influence lingers: just this week, it was reported that Australia’s far-right One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts praised Jones in 2024 as “a beacon of hope around the world”.
Researched and written in the years preceding September 11, and published in April 2001, Them – which Ronson described in a preface to its second edition as “a snapshot of life in the Western world on 10 September 2001” – is turning 25.
Ronson’s original plan was to spend time with people who’d been described as “the extremist monsters of the Western world” as they went about their everyday lives. They included neo-Nazis, militias and Omar Bakri, a UK Islamic fundamentalist who called himself “Osama Bin Laden’s man in London”, and whom Ronson shadowed for a year in 1996 for a documentary.
Among other things, Ronson recorded the “clownish” Bakri watching the Lion King with a baby on his knee, and asking him to guard the money he’d been collecting for Hamas in giant Coca Cola bottles, while he retrieved a coat – which he agonised over as a Jewish person, but did (seemingly to avoid awkwardness).
Bakri, who told the Daily Mail the September 11 attacks were “exciting”, was barred from the United Kingdom after leaving in 2005. In 2010, he was arrested in Lebanon and sentenced to life in prison after a terrorism trial. Released pending retrial, he was sentenced again in 2015 to six years hard labour.
“I thought that perhaps an interesting way to look at our world would be to move into theirs and stand alongside them while they glared back at ours,” Ronson writes. But what started as a series of profiles of extremist leaders “quickly became something stranger”, when he realised the very different people he was following all shared a belief in the New World Order: a conspiracy theory that imagines “a tiny elite rules the world from inside a secret room”.
This tyrannical, shadowy elite, Ronson soon discovered, was said to launch wars and wield almost unimaginable power. It has the ability to, among other things, “select and cast out the heads of state, control Hollywood and the markets and the flow of capital, operate a harem of under-age kidnapped sex slaves”.
If there was any truth to the theory, Ronson reasoned, there must be an actual secret room, and it had to be located somewhere. So he resolved to find it.
At various points, he found himself chased by men in dark glasses and surveilled from behind trees. He also managed to witness robed international chief executives participate in a bizarre effigy-burning ritual in the forests of northern California – an experience he shared with Jones, then a harmless-seeming regional radio crank, based in Texas.
Now, 25 years on, that worldview has arguably become easier to sustain than Ronson could have imagined. Revelations surrounding figures such as Jeffrey Epstein – who did operate a network of underage girls he coerced into sexually servicing powerful men – have shown the wealthy and powerful can and do conceal serious and shocking crimes through networks of influence and privilege.
But rather than confirming the existence of a secret cabal directing world events, such scandals have often been absorbed into far broader conspiracy narratives – from QAnon to claims about bloodthirsty global elites harvesting adrenochrome from children – further blurring sometimes porous lines between fact and fiction.
Genuine curiosity and refusing caricature
The book helped to establish Ronson’s distinctive investigative approach: an interest in the fringe and the unusual, approached with a genuine sense of curiosity and a refusal of easy caricature.
This sensibility has run through his work since, from The Men Who Stared at Goats (looking at bizarre, fringe tactics adopted by the US army) and You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (an early critique of social media shaming) to his culture war conspiracy theories podcast series, Things Fell Apart.
But Them also propelled Jones into the mainstream – which Ronson has publicly regretted. When Ronson got to know him, “Alex was hollering his powerful apocalyptic vision down an ISDN line from a child’s bedroom in his house, with choo-choo train wallpaper and an Empire Strikes Back poster pinned on the wall”.
Since then, Jones has been “successfully sued” and has filed for bankruptcy after being found liable for defamation for his claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged and “no one died”.
Sadly, what once seemed extreme and marginal – the circulation of conspiracy theories and the associated peddling of prejudice and hate – now feels depressingly routine.
Just as it inadvertently captured the historical moment about to erupt with the September 11 attacks and their aftermath, Them anticipated the mainstreaming of conspiratorial thinking, which would become a defining feature of our misinformation-ridden historical moment.
Paranoia as the new common sense
“Paranoia was the new common sense,” writes columnist John Ganz in When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. “The country seemed to be seeking something new, a break with the exhausted possibilities of the past but also a restoration, a way to recover what had been lost.”
At the end of the 1980s, the Berlin Wall had been reduced to rubble and the communist bloc was crumbling. Excitable liberals were wittering on about the end of history. America stood triumphant, seemingly without rival. And yet something felt off.
Ganz argues appearances were deceptive. “America felt itself to be losing out: losing its dominant place in the world, losing the basis of its security and wealth, and losing its sense of itself.”
There had to be an explanation. And there had to be someone to blame.
This bled through in the culture of the early 1990s. “Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you,” sang Kurt Cobain, capturing the zeitgeist on Nevermind (1991). It was the time of Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) and The X-Files (1993). The truth, we were told, was out there. Trust no one – especially anyone in a position of authority.
Ruby Ridge: ground zero?
This atmosphere permeates Them’s second chapter, on the bloody Ruby Ridge standoff in regional Idaho in August 1992. Also permeating the chapter – and the book – are Ronson’s stated aims of painting people “as complicated grey areas, rather than magnificent heroes or sickening villains” and sticking “to the nuanced truth, rather than flattening it to make ideological points”.
Randy and Vicki Weaver were among the first Americans to articulate fears about the New World Order. In the 1980s, they moved from Iowa to a plywood cabin without electricity, high in the Idaho ranges. There, they home-schooled their children, living among bears and mountain lions.
Randy felt the need, Ronson tells us, to socialise from time to time. He made friends within the nearby Aryan Nations community and attended their summer camps with his children four times – though he told Ronson he wasn’t personally a white supremacist, but a “separatist”.
One such friend was an undercover agent, who asked Randy to sell him two illegal sawn-off shotguns. Once arrested, Randy was offered a choice: spy on Aryan Nations for the government or face time behind bars for illicit gun running. He went with the second option. Warned they could lose their house and convinced the New World Order was monitoring them (which was not untrue now), the Weavers stopped showing up to court.
In August 1992, US marshals hiding in the bushes shot the Weavers’ barking family dog as it came too close. Ronson reports that Weaver’s teenage son Sammy fired random shots in response, and was shot and killed. A marshal was killed too. Hundreds of federal agents descended, martial law was declared, and residents emerged from their homes bearing placards denouncing the New World Order. Vicki was shot and killed while holding her infant daughter.
Media coverage recast the human tragedy as a national psychodrama about extremism, government overreach and the collapse of public trust.
In the following months, militia movements expanded rapidly across the US. The infamous siege in Waco, Texas, where David Koresh’s Branch Davidians clashed with federal agents, ending with 75 members dead, unfolded in Texas less than a year later.
For many in the American far right, the ruined Weaver cabin became a symbol of resistance and martyrdom, assuming a quasi-mythic status. One pilgrim who visited was Timothy McVeigh, later responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people and injured close to 700.
Bilderberg: a secret society running the world?
Ronson soon realised the same name was on the lips of the various militia members and anti-government activists he spoke to: the Bilderberg Group. These are the people who actually run the world, they believed. Bilderberg was described as “the Roman Senate” or “a pyramid”.
Jones explained: “They’re way up there. Below them you’ve the IMF, the World Bank, the United Nations, then you’ve got us down here, the cattle, the human resources.” At the time, he was funding efforts to rebuild the Branch Davidian church.
Ronson first encountered Jones while interviewing Randy Weaver, who considered the then regional radio host “a true and tirelesss warrior”. Jones explained the Bilderbergers were orchestrating world decline from the behind the scenes. As with many conspiracy theories, the line between fantasy and reality was not always easy to discern.
The Bilderberg Group is real. It even has its own website. Established in the wake of World War II, it consists of annual private meetings attended by political and industrial leaders, financiers, media executives and royalty. It is, without doubt, a highly secretive organisation – which has intensified the suspicion around it.
Interestingly, UK politician Peter Mandelson, former US ambassador and friend of Epstein even after his conviction, is named in the book as a Bilderberg attendee.
This explains how Ronson eventually found himself sneaking into Bohemian Grove, the annual retreat (since 1878) of a secretive, elite club whose attendees “read much like a Bilderberg roll-call”, alongside Jones.
There, hidden among the redwoods of northern California, wealthy and politically connected men, many of them drunk, gathered for an elaborate ceremony centred on burning an effigy before a giant owl statue. Harmless elite play-acting, or dastardly occult ritual conducted by the secret rulers of the world? Ronson saw the former, Jones the latter.
In his short book on Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, The Elephant in the Room (2026), Ronson describes watching the alt-right move steadily closer to political power, propelled in part by “leading voice” Jones – who reportedly received a swift call from a newly elected Trump, thanking him for his support.
Despite a lingering “personal” fondness for his fellow Bohemian Grove crasher, Ronson calls him “basically the most irresponsible man I have ever met”, who “uses his powers to inflame paranoia” and “boldly makes stuff up to suit his weird agenda”.
Lizard people
I first became aware of David Icke, former semi-professional footballer and respected sports journalist, now a believer in giant lizards, in April 1991. I was at home, watching TV, not yet ten years old.
Icke was being interviewed live on a prime-time UK talk show, wearing an eye-wateringly lurid turquoise tracksuit. He had recently started to refer to himself as the “Son of the Godhead”. On air, he made a series of predictions about imminent and devastating natural catastrophes. The audience, not knowing what to make of it all, laughed.
Ronson describes the moment:
He said this with such ferocity, such conviction, that the audience stopped laughing for a moment […] You could feel it sweep across the television studio, sweep across the land, a stirring of some primordial paranoia. Could David Icke actually be a soothsayer?
But in fact, ridicule and opprobrium followed the segment. In the period after his very public shaming, Ronson records, Icke came to believe his mockery had been orchestrated by shadowy elites. He immersed himself in conspiracy literature, including on the Bilderberg Group.
Icke became convinced the global elite were not merely corrupt politicians or financiers, but something much stranger: shape-shifting reptilian beings manipulating humans across millennia. Ancient civilisations, occult rituals and modern political institutions were all folded into a single explanatory system.
The reptilian invaders, he concluded, were the secret rulers of the world.
Critics have long argued his talk of secret reptilian elites functions as a coded form of antisemitism, echoing older conspiratorial myths – including ideas traceable to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Yet Ronson suggests Icke genuinely believes the world is controlled by interdimensional lizard people.
The promise of hidden forces
This creates a puzzle. If someone claims giant lizards secretly control the planet, are we dealing with metaphor, coded prejudice, mental instability, opportunity or sincere belief? Increasingly, it seems the answer may be some unstable combination of them all.
Part of what makes Them feel so relevant now is that Ronson rejects the reassuring assumption that extremist or conspiratorial thinking falls outside the bounds of ordinary life.
Long before social media turned paranoia into a viable business model, he grasped that bizarre ideas do not emerge from nowhere. Rather, they are shaped by spectacle, distrust, insecurity and the seductive promise that hidden forces can explain an increasingly bewildering world – often with disastrous consequences.
Given Ronson’s record of books on topics just hitting (or about to explode into) the mainstream, the topic of his forthcoming one, to be published in August, is unsurprising: the masculinity crisis.
Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Why Americans really hate Washington's elderly politicians
Reuters photographer Evelyn Hockstein (May 11, 2026)
Reuters photographer Evelyn Hockstein (May 11, 2026)
July 21, 2026
ALTERNET
When American voters complain about the gerontocracy that runs this country, they are not upset specifically about advanced age, but what that advanced age represents — at least, according to one conservative polling expert.
“Partly this is because voters tend to view older politicians as part of the same sclerotic, desiccated establishment that partisans of the left and right have both turned against,” wrote The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell on Tuesday. “The thinking goes that if you've been around Washington for decades, you're probably more responsive to donor demands, and not looking out for your constituents.”
Longwell proceeded to quote various voters whose comments reinforced her observation. One voter, Carlos, told her that "I don't know how many 80-year-olds have very fresh, new, innovative, we're-gonna-make-the-world-a-better-place ideas.” Similarly Cyndi, a Floridian who voted for Trump in 2024, said that "I am so tired of having people to pick from that are my parents' age. I have this theory that when you can draw Social Security, you shouldn't be able to run for office anymore.”
Likewise Sherrecia, a Georgian who switched from supporting Joe Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024, told Longwell that "I think when you tell people that they can run unlimited amounts of time, you give them permission to stop focusing on you and start focusing on themselves.” Another Trump 2024 voter, Jacine, told Longwell that “I think all of them are out of whack because they're too old, and greed has taken over, and they have piled up a lot of money within themselves, and they're really out of touch with the American people.”
Michelle, a 2024 Trump voter, told Longwell that "I feel like so much of politics is people that are 70-plus years old and are kind of out of touch maybe with what young families are going through.”
Longwell pointed out that “a recent NPR/Marist poll back in May found that 80 percent of voters support upper age limits to run for office. Nearly 90 percent want term limits.”
Further reinforcing her insight about why voters are rebelling against the gerontocracy, Longwell pointed out that elderly politicians who are perceived as anti-establishment — regardless of whether they are on the left or the right — tend to be more popular. This includes a pair of octogenarians, Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
“The obvious counter-examples to this anti-gerontocracy phenomenon are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, both men in their 80s who are extremely popular with big chunks of their respective parties,” Longwell wrote. “However, both men built their political brands by running against the establishments of their own parties and introducing new political paradigms that can scramble traditional party alignment. And while both show visible signs of their age, they still manage to be omnipresent in the discourse.”
This is not to say that Trump’s age isn’t also a factor in terms of his health and overall fitness for office. When Trump turned 80 in June, Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and a top aide to President Bill Clinton, told The New York Times that “somebody at 80 years old just doesn’t have the physical stamina, the mental stamina for that office. It ages you in a way that no other stress in your life does.” Also in June independent reporter Rhian Lubin wrote that Trump is "exhibiting visible symptoms typical for an octogenarian, including bruising on his hands, swollen ankles and legs and appearing to nod off during meetings and high-profile events."
Lubin added, "Medical experts warn, though, that it's not so much these obvious symptoms and his age that Americans should be most concerned about, but the conduct and behavior on display during his second presidency.”
When American voters complain about the gerontocracy that runs this country, they are not upset specifically about advanced age, but what that advanced age represents — at least, according to one conservative polling expert.
“Partly this is because voters tend to view older politicians as part of the same sclerotic, desiccated establishment that partisans of the left and right have both turned against,” wrote The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell on Tuesday. “The thinking goes that if you've been around Washington for decades, you're probably more responsive to donor demands, and not looking out for your constituents.”
Longwell proceeded to quote various voters whose comments reinforced her observation. One voter, Carlos, told her that "I don't know how many 80-year-olds have very fresh, new, innovative, we're-gonna-make-the-world-a-better-place ideas.” Similarly Cyndi, a Floridian who voted for Trump in 2024, said that "I am so tired of having people to pick from that are my parents' age. I have this theory that when you can draw Social Security, you shouldn't be able to run for office anymore.”
Likewise Sherrecia, a Georgian who switched from supporting Joe Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024, told Longwell that "I think when you tell people that they can run unlimited amounts of time, you give them permission to stop focusing on you and start focusing on themselves.” Another Trump 2024 voter, Jacine, told Longwell that “I think all of them are out of whack because they're too old, and greed has taken over, and they have piled up a lot of money within themselves, and they're really out of touch with the American people.”
Michelle, a 2024 Trump voter, told Longwell that "I feel like so much of politics is people that are 70-plus years old and are kind of out of touch maybe with what young families are going through.”
Longwell pointed out that “a recent NPR/Marist poll back in May found that 80 percent of voters support upper age limits to run for office. Nearly 90 percent want term limits.”
Further reinforcing her insight about why voters are rebelling against the gerontocracy, Longwell pointed out that elderly politicians who are perceived as anti-establishment — regardless of whether they are on the left or the right — tend to be more popular. This includes a pair of octogenarians, Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
“The obvious counter-examples to this anti-gerontocracy phenomenon are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, both men in their 80s who are extremely popular with big chunks of their respective parties,” Longwell wrote. “However, both men built their political brands by running against the establishments of their own parties and introducing new political paradigms that can scramble traditional party alignment. And while both show visible signs of their age, they still manage to be omnipresent in the discourse.”
This is not to say that Trump’s age isn’t also a factor in terms of his health and overall fitness for office. When Trump turned 80 in June, Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and a top aide to President Bill Clinton, told The New York Times that “somebody at 80 years old just doesn’t have the physical stamina, the mental stamina for that office. It ages you in a way that no other stress in your life does.” Also in June independent reporter Rhian Lubin wrote that Trump is "exhibiting visible symptoms typical for an octogenarian, including bruising on his hands, swollen ankles and legs and appearing to nod off during meetings and high-profile events."
Lubin added, "Medical experts warn, though, that it's not so much these obvious symptoms and his age that Americans should be most concerned about, but the conduct and behavior on display during his second presidency.”
Trump supporters spread their beliefs like a disease: study
EMOTIONAL PLAGUE
Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump await his remarks at an event at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's 2026 Policy Conference at the Washington Hilton, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 26, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
Multiple experts are warning that President Donald Trump is gradually eroding American democracy through his actions since resuming office in 2025. Now, a new study from the American Journal of Political Science explains how so many Americans are willing to go along with his authoritarianism.
To learn this, researchers turned to Norway in order to assess how ordinary people reacted when surrounded by individuals with authoritarian ideologies, reported PsyPost's Eric W. Dolan on Sunday. In a paper co-authored by Sirianne Dahlum, Torbjørn Hanson, Åshild Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam, and Alexander Wuttke, the scholars conducted a “field experiment [which] randomly assigned soldiers to different rooms during boot camp, so soldiers lived among peers with varying levels of openness to authoritarian rule. We found that many individuals adjusted their privately reported support for authoritarian rule to align more closely with their peers.”
They added, “Further survey-experimental evidence among soldiers and the general Norwegian population confirms that learning about others’ level of support for authoritarian rule changes both perceptions and own support. Our results suggest that support for authoritarian rule can have a social basis and could potentially spread through social contagion in established democracies.”
As a result of their study, the researchers concluded that there are weaknesses in democratic cultures when it comes to combating authoritarian ideas.
“The social basis of regime preferences that we have identified could imply that support for authoritarian rule could quickly spread in a society when citizens realize that these attitudes are more widespread than previously thought,” the authors explained. “It also points to the potential for cascade effects, where initial shifts in attitudes—through exogenous shocks—can spread rapidly through social networks, potentially leading to widespread changes in political norms. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for identifying how authoritarian sentiments might proliferate even in seemingly stable democracies and for developing effective strategies to reinforce and sustain democratic values.”
The researchers learned this first by studying over 1,300 Norwegian military recruits and how their authoritarian views evolved based on whether they were placed in rooms with peers who held or did not hold authoritarian views. They examined how these recruits’ attitudes changed over a period of eight weeks based on those exposures. Then they did the same thing with people outside the Norwegian military.
“To test whether these findings apply outside the military context, the scientists replicated the survey experiment using a representative sample of 1,500 general Norwegian citizens,” Dolan wrote. “The participants received similar prompts about the popularity of strongman leadership in a recent public opinion poll. A control group answered the questions without receiving any prior information about the views of others.”
Dolan added, “The findings in the general population closely mirrored the results from the military recruits. When ordinary citizens were informed that authoritarian views were widespread, they reported higher levels of personal support for strong leaders. The researchers then conducted a final replication using a massive cross-national sample of over 25,000 respondents from more than 29 different countries, which yielded the same pattern of social influence across diverse cultural contexts.”
As Kotsadam told PsyPost, “The field experiment shows that attitudes can converge among people who actually live together, while the survey experiments indicate that simply learning what other people believe can itself alter stated preferences. More broadly, the findings suggest that the stability of democracy depends not only on what citizens privately believe, but also on what they think their fellow citizens believe.”
If there is any silver lining to the study, it is that these views are not set in stone.
“They can be influenced by the surrounding social climate,” Kotsadam told Doland. As such, “making support for democratic principles visible may help reinforce those principles.”
Writing for Zeteo in April, journalist John Harwood further identified how Trump has eroded democratic norms to turn America into a dictatorship.
"To state the obvious, Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler," Harwood wrote. "MAGA is not Nazism. No despot or movement in history compares to the Third Reich, and the nature and scale of evil it perpetrated. Moreover, Trump's handiwork appears less formidable today. Most of America recoils from his second-term grotesquerie. If permitted free and fair elections, voters will punish his Republican Party this fall — just as Hungarian voters have now punished Trump's authoritarian role model Viktor Orbán. But the lessons Rees identifies remain relevant to the crisis confronting 21st-Century America. And that is not merely because Trump and a disturbing number of his young fans have, at times, expressed admiration for Nazi strength and ruthlessness."
Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump await his remarks at an event at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's 2026 Policy Conference at the Washington Hilton, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 26, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
July 20, 2026
ALTERNET
Multiple experts are warning that President Donald Trump is gradually eroding American democracy through his actions since resuming office in 2025. Now, a new study from the American Journal of Political Science explains how so many Americans are willing to go along with his authoritarianism.
To learn this, researchers turned to Norway in order to assess how ordinary people reacted when surrounded by individuals with authoritarian ideologies, reported PsyPost's Eric W. Dolan on Sunday. In a paper co-authored by Sirianne Dahlum, Torbjørn Hanson, Åshild Johnsen, Andreas Kotsadam, and Alexander Wuttke, the scholars conducted a “field experiment [which] randomly assigned soldiers to different rooms during boot camp, so soldiers lived among peers with varying levels of openness to authoritarian rule. We found that many individuals adjusted their privately reported support for authoritarian rule to align more closely with their peers.”
They added, “Further survey-experimental evidence among soldiers and the general Norwegian population confirms that learning about others’ level of support for authoritarian rule changes both perceptions and own support. Our results suggest that support for authoritarian rule can have a social basis and could potentially spread through social contagion in established democracies.”
As a result of their study, the researchers concluded that there are weaknesses in democratic cultures when it comes to combating authoritarian ideas.
“The social basis of regime preferences that we have identified could imply that support for authoritarian rule could quickly spread in a society when citizens realize that these attitudes are more widespread than previously thought,” the authors explained. “It also points to the potential for cascade effects, where initial shifts in attitudes—through exogenous shocks—can spread rapidly through social networks, potentially leading to widespread changes in political norms. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for identifying how authoritarian sentiments might proliferate even in seemingly stable democracies and for developing effective strategies to reinforce and sustain democratic values.”
The researchers learned this first by studying over 1,300 Norwegian military recruits and how their authoritarian views evolved based on whether they were placed in rooms with peers who held or did not hold authoritarian views. They examined how these recruits’ attitudes changed over a period of eight weeks based on those exposures. Then they did the same thing with people outside the Norwegian military.
“To test whether these findings apply outside the military context, the scientists replicated the survey experiment using a representative sample of 1,500 general Norwegian citizens,” Dolan wrote. “The participants received similar prompts about the popularity of strongman leadership in a recent public opinion poll. A control group answered the questions without receiving any prior information about the views of others.”
Dolan added, “The findings in the general population closely mirrored the results from the military recruits. When ordinary citizens were informed that authoritarian views were widespread, they reported higher levels of personal support for strong leaders. The researchers then conducted a final replication using a massive cross-national sample of over 25,000 respondents from more than 29 different countries, which yielded the same pattern of social influence across diverse cultural contexts.”
As Kotsadam told PsyPost, “The field experiment shows that attitudes can converge among people who actually live together, while the survey experiments indicate that simply learning what other people believe can itself alter stated preferences. More broadly, the findings suggest that the stability of democracy depends not only on what citizens privately believe, but also on what they think their fellow citizens believe.”
If there is any silver lining to the study, it is that these views are not set in stone.
“They can be influenced by the surrounding social climate,” Kotsadam told Doland. As such, “making support for democratic principles visible may help reinforce those principles.”
Writing for Zeteo in April, journalist John Harwood further identified how Trump has eroded democratic norms to turn America into a dictatorship.
"To state the obvious, Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler," Harwood wrote. "MAGA is not Nazism. No despot or movement in history compares to the Third Reich, and the nature and scale of evil it perpetrated. Moreover, Trump's handiwork appears less formidable today. Most of America recoils from his second-term grotesquerie. If permitted free and fair elections, voters will punish his Republican Party this fall — just as Hungarian voters have now punished Trump's authoritarian role model Viktor Orbán. But the lessons Rees identifies remain relevant to the crisis confronting 21st-Century America. And that is not merely because Trump and a disturbing number of his young fans have, at times, expressed admiration for Nazi strength and ruthlessness."
Top historian explains why Trump might 'fake' an 'act of terror'
REICHSTAG FIRE REDUX
Nick Hilden
As the war with Iran flares back up, a leading historian and expert on authoritarianism warns that President Donald Trump might attempt to “fake” an “act of terror.” This is according to Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an expert on the fascist regimes, who on Tuesday raised a dire warning about Trump’s intentions regarding Iran.
“Trump is pursuing this war in the HOPE that Iran carries out an act of terror in the U.S.,” Snyder posted. “And even if it doesn’t, which I doubt it will, consider the possibility that Trump's people would fake one.”
Snyder made this statement along with a link to an article he wrote describing Trump’s “desire for terror,” which would provide the president with “a pretext to try to cancel or ‘federalize’ the coming Congressional elections.” The historian’s warning comes not only as the war resumes, but as Trump has ramped up his election denial claims and demands for states to surrender control over elections to the federal government.
According to Snyder, “Self-terrorism might not have been the initial aim; but as time goes by, and failures and atrocities mount, its appeal will grow. Trump could think that he has much to gain; the war itself makes terrorism more likely; there are plausible vectors of terror; and the United States has let down its defenses.” What’s more, “Trump has already telegraphed the move. We know that he is obsessed with the fall elections, which his party will almost certainly lose by spectacular margins, and that he fears the accordant loss of power. This is clear from his own statements and actions.”
Snyder notes that Trump has offered “incoherent” justifications for the war, writing that “it is as though the war itself is not the main goal, but that it was simply important to somehow get the thing started.” And if the president is hoping for an act of terrorism, “the Tehran regime is, so to speak, a convenient partner in the mutual provocation of terror. Trump seems to have anticipated this, without seeming to care about loss of life: ‘Like I said, some people will die.’ And if they do, he has his pretext.”
While there are a number of contexts in which Iran or a different U.S. adversary could attempt a terror attack, Snyder suggests that “another possibility is an American act of terrorism on the territory of the United States, either presented as an Iranian attack or not. Most terrorism inside the United States is domestic and is right-wing, and this war has been very divisive among American fascists. Historically, fascist competitions for power have been accompanied by internal violence.”
What’s more, according to Snyder, not only has Trump dismantled much of the anti-terror apparatus, but “domestic terrorists are also getting a pass if they are right-wing; the Department of Homeland Security has deprioritized domestic terrorism and is no longer keeping up its database. An unqualified but right-wing recent college graduate is in charge of its program designed to prevent domestic terrorism.” Snyder notes that several current high-level U.S. intelligence and anti-terror appointees lack experience, and are direct allies of Trump who have expressed desire to meddle in U.S. elections.
Should a terror attack occur, whether by Iran, Russia or some domestic entity, writes Snyder, “none of this requires any sort of grand plan in the White House, let alone a conspiracy. None of it even requires very much initiative. Self-terrorism is more a matter of allowing things to fall apart, and then grabbing opportunely at a bit of the falling wreckage, which is something that Trump does well.”
“Modern tyranny is terror management,” Snyder concludes. “When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book.”
Nick Hilden
July 21, 2026
ALTERNET
As the war with Iran flares back up, a leading historian and expert on authoritarianism warns that President Donald Trump might attempt to “fake” an “act of terror.” This is according to Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an expert on the fascist regimes, who on Tuesday raised a dire warning about Trump’s intentions regarding Iran.
“Trump is pursuing this war in the HOPE that Iran carries out an act of terror in the U.S.,” Snyder posted. “And even if it doesn’t, which I doubt it will, consider the possibility that Trump's people would fake one.”
Snyder made this statement along with a link to an article he wrote describing Trump’s “desire for terror,” which would provide the president with “a pretext to try to cancel or ‘federalize’ the coming Congressional elections.” The historian’s warning comes not only as the war resumes, but as Trump has ramped up his election denial claims and demands for states to surrender control over elections to the federal government.
According to Snyder, “Self-terrorism might not have been the initial aim; but as time goes by, and failures and atrocities mount, its appeal will grow. Trump could think that he has much to gain; the war itself makes terrorism more likely; there are plausible vectors of terror; and the United States has let down its defenses.” What’s more, “Trump has already telegraphed the move. We know that he is obsessed with the fall elections, which his party will almost certainly lose by spectacular margins, and that he fears the accordant loss of power. This is clear from his own statements and actions.”
Snyder notes that Trump has offered “incoherent” justifications for the war, writing that “it is as though the war itself is not the main goal, but that it was simply important to somehow get the thing started.” And if the president is hoping for an act of terrorism, “the Tehran regime is, so to speak, a convenient partner in the mutual provocation of terror. Trump seems to have anticipated this, without seeming to care about loss of life: ‘Like I said, some people will die.’ And if they do, he has his pretext.”
While there are a number of contexts in which Iran or a different U.S. adversary could attempt a terror attack, Snyder suggests that “another possibility is an American act of terrorism on the territory of the United States, either presented as an Iranian attack or not. Most terrorism inside the United States is domestic and is right-wing, and this war has been very divisive among American fascists. Historically, fascist competitions for power have been accompanied by internal violence.”
What’s more, according to Snyder, not only has Trump dismantled much of the anti-terror apparatus, but “domestic terrorists are also getting a pass if they are right-wing; the Department of Homeland Security has deprioritized domestic terrorism and is no longer keeping up its database. An unqualified but right-wing recent college graduate is in charge of its program designed to prevent domestic terrorism.” Snyder notes that several current high-level U.S. intelligence and anti-terror appointees lack experience, and are direct allies of Trump who have expressed desire to meddle in U.S. elections.
Should a terror attack occur, whether by Iran, Russia or some domestic entity, writes Snyder, “none of this requires any sort of grand plan in the White House, let alone a conspiracy. None of it even requires very much initiative. Self-terrorism is more a matter of allowing things to fall apart, and then grabbing opportunely at a bit of the falling wreckage, which is something that Trump does well.”
“Modern tyranny is terror management,” Snyder concludes. “When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book.”
Florida retirement haven unravels as seniors face ruin under Trump economy
Photo by Cristina Anne Costello on Unsplash
The cost of living continues to explode under President Donald Trump, and now, a new CNN report on Florida seniors has exposed the reality of this economic ruin.
On Tuesday, CNN News Central featured a segment from chief domestic correspondent Phil Mattingly, examining the economic struggle of senior citizens in Florida. As host Dana Bash explained as she introduced the segment, Florida's particular characteristics have made it an ideal place to measure the impact of rising costs on some of the country's most vulnerable residents.
"Florida has long been a top retirement destination thanks to its climate, tax benefits and massive senior communities," Bash explained. "That also makes Florida a magnifying glass on the impact of rising costs on Americans with the least cushion to absorb the blow. One example: healthcare. As ObamaCare subsidies expire, premiums are expected to double for nearly 5 million people in Florida. Some are being left to choose: my house or my health."
Early on in the segment, Mattingly spoke to senior Ellen Trocino, a nurse he met at a volunteer health clinic she was attending as a patient. Trocino said she had been living in her car for about a week, and gave herself low odds of managing to get housing anytime soon, given the steep cost of a down payment or a security deposit.
"Roughly a million Florida seniors depend on state-funded insurance, and that lifeline is fraying," Mattingly explained. "Florida turned down federal dollars to expand coverage to residents just above the poverty line... And cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill Beautiful Bill act could strip coverage from more than a million additional Floridians by 2034. Medical expenses. Rent. These are just some of the costs bearing down hardest on those with the least cushion left."
Mattingly also spoke to healthcare advocate Scott Darius about the misconceptions many have about how helpful Medicaid can be for Florida residents.
"What people assume about Medicaid is that it's there for all low-income people, right?" Darius said. "But in Florida, if I'm a single parent with two kids, the most I can make in a year and still qualify for Medicaid is $8,000, for the year. But what we've seen in expansion states is that once you do that, the cost of private insurance actually goes down for everyone else."
Another struggling senior, Phoebe White, told Mattingly about the hardships she has experienced trying to pay bills that keep going up, while her Social Security payments remain static.
"Somehow with prayer, I made it, and I'm not on the streets," White said. "I'm not homeless. I'm okay. And I do need my car. I do need my car just in case. Yeah, I need to sleep in it. And I pray that that never happens."
"You're actually thinking through like, I have to keep my car insurance up because I may have to live in my car?" Mattingly asked.
"Absolutely," White responded.
Photo by Cristina Anne Costello on Unsplash
July 21, 2026
ALTERNET
The cost of living continues to explode under President Donald Trump, and now, a new CNN report on Florida seniors has exposed the reality of this economic ruin.
On Tuesday, CNN News Central featured a segment from chief domestic correspondent Phil Mattingly, examining the economic struggle of senior citizens in Florida. As host Dana Bash explained as she introduced the segment, Florida's particular characteristics have made it an ideal place to measure the impact of rising costs on some of the country's most vulnerable residents.
"Florida has long been a top retirement destination thanks to its climate, tax benefits and massive senior communities," Bash explained. "That also makes Florida a magnifying glass on the impact of rising costs on Americans with the least cushion to absorb the blow. One example: healthcare. As ObamaCare subsidies expire, premiums are expected to double for nearly 5 million people in Florida. Some are being left to choose: my house or my health."
Early on in the segment, Mattingly spoke to senior Ellen Trocino, a nurse he met at a volunteer health clinic she was attending as a patient. Trocino said she had been living in her car for about a week, and gave herself low odds of managing to get housing anytime soon, given the steep cost of a down payment or a security deposit.
"Roughly a million Florida seniors depend on state-funded insurance, and that lifeline is fraying," Mattingly explained. "Florida turned down federal dollars to expand coverage to residents just above the poverty line... And cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill Beautiful Bill act could strip coverage from more than a million additional Floridians by 2034. Medical expenses. Rent. These are just some of the costs bearing down hardest on those with the least cushion left."
Mattingly also spoke to healthcare advocate Scott Darius about the misconceptions many have about how helpful Medicaid can be for Florida residents.
"What people assume about Medicaid is that it's there for all low-income people, right?" Darius said. "But in Florida, if I'm a single parent with two kids, the most I can make in a year and still qualify for Medicaid is $8,000, for the year. But what we've seen in expansion states is that once you do that, the cost of private insurance actually goes down for everyone else."
Another struggling senior, Phoebe White, told Mattingly about the hardships she has experienced trying to pay bills that keep going up, while her Social Security payments remain static.
"Somehow with prayer, I made it, and I'm not on the streets," White said. "I'm not homeless. I'm okay. And I do need my car. I do need my car just in case. Yeah, I need to sleep in it. And I pray that that never happens."
"You're actually thinking through like, I have to keep my car insurance up because I may have to live in my car?" Mattingly asked.
"Absolutely," White responded.
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