Renowned Genocide Scholar Says 'I Know It When I See It'—And He Sees It in Israel's Assault on Gaza

"My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people."


Palestinians mourn a relative killed in an Israeli strike, in Gaza City's Maamadani (Baptist) hospital on July 13, 2025.
(Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jul 15, 2025

COMMON DREAMS

A leading scholar of the Holocaust and genocide warned Tuesday the continued "silence" of many in his field of study regarding Israel's massacre of Palestinians in Gaza "has made a mockery of the slogan 'never again''" as he outlined in a New York Times opinion piece how he came to conclude that Israel is committing genocide in the besieged enclave.

"I'm a Genocide Scholar," reads the essay's headline. "I Know It When I See It."

Like a number of other experts who were at first reluctant to designate the assault on Gaza a genocide—the term coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944—Brown University professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies Omer Bartov gradually came to recognize Israel's campaign of targeted starvation, bombings on civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, and other attacks as genocidal violence as he watched the early months of the war in late 2023 and early 2024.

By May 2024, he wrote at the Times, "it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of [Israel Defense Forces] operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack," including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's threat to turn Gaza into "rubble" and his call for Israeli citizens to remember "what Amalek did to you"—a reference to the biblical passage calling on the Israelites to "kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings" in their fight against an ancient enemy.

At that point, about 1 million Palestinians had been ordered to the so-called "safe zone" of al-Mawasi—which was then targeted in numerous attacks.

Months after one top Israeli official called for the "total annihilation" of Gaza—home to more than 2 million people—Bartov concluded that the government's "actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population."

He wrote that his interpretation of Israel's actions is now that Netanyahu's government wants "to force the population to leave the strip altogether" and "debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation, and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group."

"My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people," wrote Bartov, noting that his assessment is that of an expert who grew up in a Zionist home, spent the first half of his life in Israel, and served in the IDF as well as researching the Holocaust and other war crimes.

"This was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could," wrote Bartov. "But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one."

He added that his conclusion is supported by the destruction of an estimated 174,000 buildings, or 70% of those in Gaza; the killing of more than 58,000 people, nearly a third of whom have been children and nearly 900 of whom were under one year old; and the extermination of more than 2,000 families in their entirety.

CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour noted that Bartov spoke to her last December about his conclusion that Israel is committing genocide.

"If you look at the pattern of what the IDF has been doing, not only has it been moving the population around, every safe zone... tends to get also bombed and shelled," he said at the time. "But also systematically destroying universities, schools, mosques, museums, and hospitals, of course—anything that makes for the health and also the culture of a group, and therefore, by now we have a population that is being completely debilitated."



Bartov published his essay as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said it had recorded the deaths of 875 Palestinians who were killed while seeking aid, with the vast majority killed at or around aid hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.- and Israel-backed privatized aid group that has been rejected by the U.N. due to its lack of neutrality.

"The latest deadly incident happened at around 9:00 am on Monday, July 14, when reports indicated that the Israeli military shelled and fired towards Palestinians seeking food at the GHF site in As Shakoush area, northwestern Rafah," said the OHCHR on Monday of an attack that killed at least two people and injured nine others—days after a hospital in Rafah received more than 130 patients, the majority of whom suffered gunshot wounds they'd sustained while trying to access food distribution sites.

Last May, former Human Rights Watch executive director Aryeh Neier—who was also reluctant to apply the term "genocide" to Israel's attack on Gaza—said Israel's "sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory" was what finally convinced him the assault is a genocide.

While backing the militarized GHF aid operation, Israel has continued to block humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza through crossings and has prevented experienced aid groups from distributing food to starving Palestinians.

Israel "has always insisted that any threat to its security must be seen as potentially leading to another Auschwitz" and has portrayed its attack on Gaza—which it and its allies in the U.S. and other Western countries have persistently claimed it is targeting Hamas—as a fight against an enemy comparable to the Nazis.

"The daily scenes of horror in Gaza, from which the Israeli public is shielded by its own media's self-censorship, expose the lies of Israeli propaganda that this is a war of defense against a Nazi-like enemy," wrote Bartov.

Progressive political strategist Waleed Shahid suggested Bartov's conclusions flew in the face of recent comments by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who in March said the term "genocide" as it related to Gaza should be rejected as antisemitism.



Bartov warned that the refusal of many Holocaust scholars and the political establishment in the U.S.—the largest international funder of the IDF—to confront the reality of Israel's attack on Gaza could ultimately make it impossible "to continue teaching and researching the Holocaust in the same manner we did before."

"Just as worrisome is the prospect that the study of genocide as a whole will not survive the accusations of antisemitism, leaving us without the crucial community of scholars and international jurists to stand in the breach at a time when the rise of intolerance, racial hatred, populism, and authoritarianism is threatening the values that were at the core of these scholarly, cultural, and political endeavors of the 20th century," wrote Bartov.

He expressed hope that "a new generation of Israelis will face their future without sheltering in the shadow of the Holocaust, even as they will have to bear the stain of the genocide in Gaza perpetrated in their name."

"Israel," he added, "will have to learn to live without falling back on the Holocaust as justification for inhumanity."

At Hague Group Emergency Summit, 30+ Nations Seek to 'Halt the Genocide in Gaza'

Host nation Colombia's deputy foreign minister said participants "will not only reaffirm their commitment to opposing genocide, but also formulate concrete steps to move from words to collective action."

Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, speaks during the emergency conference of The Hague Group at the San Carlos Palace in Bogotá on July 15, 2025.
(Photo: Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jul 15, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Ministerial delegates from more than 30 nations gathered in the Colombian capital Bogotá Tuesday for an emergency summit focused on "concrete measures" to end Israel's U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza and other crimes against occupied Palestine.

The two-day Hague Group summit ultimately aims to "halt the genocide in Gaza" and sois led by co-chairs Colombia—which last year severed diplomatic relations with Israel—and South Africa, which filed the ongoing genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) joined by around two dozen countries. Progressive International first convened the Hague Group in January in the eponymous Dutch city, which is home to both the ICJ and International Criminal Court (ICC), whose rulings the coalition is dedicated to upholding.

"This summit marks a turning point in the global response to the erosion and violation of international law," South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola said ahead of the gathering. "No country is above the law, and no crime will go unanswered."

Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir said before the summit: "The Palestinian genocide threatens the entire international system. Colombia cannot remain indifferent in the face of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. The participating states will not only reaffirm their commitment to opposing genocide, but also formulate concrete steps to move from words to collective action."



That action includes enforcement of ICC arrest warrants issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and forced starvation in a war that has left more than 211,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Hague Group members Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, and Senegal will attend the summit. Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela will also take part.

Notably, so will NATO members and U.S. allies Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey. Like Israel, the United States denies there is a genocide in Gaza, despite growing international consensus among human rights defenders, jurists, and genocide experts including some of the leading Holocaust scholars in Israel and the United States.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department—which has sanctioned ICC judges and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese for seeking accountability for Israeli crimes—told Jewish News Syndicate Monday that the United States "strongly opposes efforts by so-called 'multilateral blocs' to weaponize international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas."

The spokesperson added that the Trump administration "will aggressively defend our interests, our military, and our allies, including Israel, from such coordinated legal and diplomatic warfare," even as U.S. allies take part in the summit.

Undaunted by U.S. sanctions, Albanese is among several U.N. experts who spoke at the summit, which she hailed as "the most significant political development in the past 20 months."




In prepared remarks, Albanese—who earlier this month said that "Israel is responsible for one of the cruelest genocides in modern history"—told attendees that "for too long, international law has been treated as optional—applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful."

"This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order," she argued. "That era must end."

According to Albanese:
The world will remember what we, states and individuals, did in this moment—whether we recoiled in fear or rose in defense of human dignity. Here in Bogotá, a growing number of states have the opportunity to break the silence and revert to a path of legality by finally saying: Enough. Enough impunity. Enough empty rhetoric. Enough exceptionalism. Enough complicity. The time has come to act in pursuit of justice and peace—grounded in rights and freedoms for all, and not mere privileges for some, at the expense of the annihilation of others.

The Israeli Mission to the United Nations told Jewish News Syndicate that "what the event organizers, and perhaps some of the countries attending, forget is what triggered this conflict—namely, the butchering of 1,200 innocent souls on October 7, and how 50 Israelis remain in brutal captivity to this day by Hamas in Gaza."

"Attempting to exert pressure on Israel—and not Hamas, who initiated and are prolonging this conflict—is a moral travesty," the mission added. "The war will not end while hostages remain in Gaza."

In addition to the ICC warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the ICJ—whose ruling in the genocide case is not expected for years—has ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, to stop blocking lifesaving humanitarian aid from entering the strip, and to halt its assault on Rafah. Israel has ignored all three orders.

"The choice before us is stark and unforgiving," Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote in The Guardian last week. "We can either stand firm in defense of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics."

"While we may face threats of retaliation when we stand up for international law—as South Africa discovered when the United States retaliated for its case at the International Court of Justice—the consequences of abdicating our responsibilities will be dire," Petro continued. "If we fail to act now, we not only betray the Palestinian people, we become complicit in the atrocities committed by Netanyahu's government."

"For the billions of people in the Global South who rely on international law for protection, the stakes could not be higher," he added. "The Palestinian people deserve justice. The moment demands courage."

House GOP Wants to Stop a Ban That Would Keep Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' Off Food Crops


"Across the country, farms have had to be condemned and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers," said a lawyer at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.


A tractor cultivating and fertilizing rows of young lettuce plants.
(Photo: Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Jul 15, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing to block action that would protect farms from toxic "forever chemicals" found in fertilizers made from sewage sludge.

The provision, introduced as part of a government spending bill unveiled Monday, would bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing the findings from a January risk assessment, which found that the sludge contains dangerous amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

According to the environmental advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the act could cause agricultural losses and pose serious risks to public health.

For decades, the federal government encouraged farmers to spread municipal sewage onto their farmland, as it was a good source of nutrients and a preferable alternative to putting the sludge in landfills.

Nearly 20% of U.S. agricultural land is estimated to use this sludge, commonly known as "biosolids," in fertilizer, and 70 million acres of farmland may be contaminated.

These biosolids contain large amounts of PFAS, which are absorbed through the roots of plants and contaminate plant and animal products that end up on store shelves.

These chemicals are known to accumulate in the body for years without degrading and cause increased rates of cancer, decreased fertility, and developmental delays in children.

The EPA's January study found that the risks associated with PFAS in these sewage sludge-based fertilizers "exceed EPA's acceptable thresholds, sometimes by several orders of magnitude." Even very small quantities of these chemicals, it found, could pose major risks.

The GOP bill, however, forbids the EPA from using any funding to "finalize, implement, administer, or enforce" that risk assessment.

"Preventing EPA from protecting public health and our food supply from toxic contamination epitomizes special interest politics at their worst," said PEER science policy director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with the EPA. "If finalized, this ban will leave ill-equipped state agricultural agencies to deal with a rapidly spreading chemical disaster."

Republicans have faced pressure from chemical manufacturing groups to kill PFAS regulations. In 2023, a report from Food & Water Watch found that eight major companies, including Dow and DuPont, spent a combined $55.7 million to lobby against bills to rein in PFAS between 2019 and 2022. The American Chemistry Council, the industry's lobbying arm, spent over $58.7 million during that same period.

The rule banning action on PFAS is part of a broader effort by Republicans to gut environmental regulations. The bill released Monday slashes EPA spending by over $2 billion, nearly 25%.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has also weakened standards on PFAS in drinking water, which were adopted during the Biden administration.

"Across the country, farms have had to be condemned and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers," said PEER staff counsel Laura Dumais, who filed a lawsuit against the EPA last year for its slow rollout of PFAS regulations. "Further delay in preventing more of these needless tragedies would be unconscionable."

Sotomayor: 

Supreme Court Expedites Trump 'Lawlessness' With Education 

Department Decision

"That decision is indefensible," the justice wrote. "It hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out."

Parents, educators, community leaders, and elected officials rally outside the U.S. Capitol to defend public education on February 12, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images for National Education Association)

Jessica Corbett
Jul 14, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday delivered a blistering dissent to an emergency decision that enables President Donald Trump to plow ahead with laying off nearly 1,400 employees at the Department of Education while a case challenging the plan plays out.

"This case arises out of the president's unilateral efforts to eliminate a Cabinet-level agency established by Congress nearly half a century ago," wrote Sotomayor, joined by her liberals, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. "As Congress mandated, the department plays a vital role in this nation's education system, safeguarding equal access to learning and channeling billions of dollars to schools and students across the country each year."

"Only Congress has the power to abolish the department," she continued, calling out Trump's executive order and Education Secretary Linda McMahon's subsequent move to fire half the agency's workforce. "When the executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary's duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it."

Sotomayor explained that "two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing. Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the government to proceed with dismantling the department."

"That decision is indefensible," she argued. "It hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is grave. Unable to join in this misuse of our emergency docket, I respectfully dissent."

The high court's right-wing majority—which includes three Trump appointees—did not write an opinion, as is customary for shadow docket decisions. The administration responded by pledging to proceed with its efforts to eviscerate the department.

"It is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution," McMahon said in a statement. "We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most – to students, parents, and teachers."



McMahon and Trump's mass firing effort—part of a broader effort to shutter the department—had been blocked by a U.S. district court in Massachusetts and the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in response to a lawsuit in which Democracy Forward is representing a coalition that includes the American Federation of Teachers and Service Employees International Union.

"We are incredibly disappointed by the Supreme Court's decision to allow the Trump-Vance administration to proceed with its harmful efforts to dismantle the Department of Education while our case moves forward," the coalition said in a Monday statement. "This unlawful plan will immediately and irreparably harm students, educators, and communities across our nation."

"Children will be among those hurt the most by this decision," the coalition stressed. "We will never stop fighting on behalf of all students and public schools and the protections, services, and resources they need to thrive."

The Associated Press reported that "separately on Monday, more than 20 states sued the administration over billions of dollars in frozen education funding for after-school care, summer programs, and more."

Fury at ICE sees Americans funnel millions of dollars to help detainees

Alexandria Jacobson,

 Investigative Reporter
July 15, 2025 

RAW STORY

Officers including HSI and ICE agents take people into custody at an immigration court in Phoenix. REUTERS/Caitlin O'Hara

Though the Trump administration has declared a crusade to remove “criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, gangbangers, and other violent criminals” from the United States, immigrants who are farm workers, expectant parents, recent high school graduates and newlyweds have found themselves swept up in raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Families and friends have increasingly turned to fundraising platforms such as GoFundMe, looking for help with legal fees, living expenses, travel costs and medical bills as loved ones — often primary breadwinners — are detained, deported or await immigration hearings, sometimes hundreds of miles from home.

“I've been working in the refugee immigrant space for the last 20 years [and have] been watching things escalate,” said Luma Mufleh, founder of Fugees Family, a nonprofit school network for refugees, who started her own fundraiser for an 18-year-old recent graduate detained by ICE, despite his Special Immigrant Juvenile Status.

“You're hearing these stories of people being arrested that are not supposed to be the target profile, but it hit really differently when it was one of our own.”

A spokesperson for GoFundMe said the company didn't have a specific fundraiser count or a calculation of money raised related to immigration raids. But hundreds of ICE-related fundraisers currently appear on the site.

A Raw Story review of 60 randomly selected GoFundMe fundraisers — just a fraction of the fundraisers on the website — showed more than $1.7 million donated to families across the U.S.

Fundraiser titles included:“Support Maria Laura, Henry, and their unborn baby”
“Single Mom Needs Help After Husband's Deportation”
“Stand with Nacho: Urgent Family Support After ICE Abduction”
“Support for a Family Torn Apart by ICE”

Fundraiser organizers who spoke with Raw Story expressed gratitude for donations received but detailed ongoing trauma for themselves and loved ones often taken unexpectedly to experience allegedly inhumane treatment. Some said they had experienced online harassment in response to fundraisers.

Last week, Raw Story reported the case of two brothers, Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez.

Two months after deportation to El Salvador, despite their pending Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petition, the brothers were diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression following their detention experience where their lawyer says they were “treated inhumanely,” Raw Story reported.

A fundraiser for the brothers, “Jose & Josue: Stranded and Seeking Hope,” raised nearly $35,000 toward a $50,000 goal.


‘Treat you like animals’: Deported brothers ask Trump for help with ICE 'trauma' Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez speak with Raw Story via Zoom

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Raw Story: "Why does the media continue to fall for the sob stories of illegal aliens in detention and villainize ICE law enforcement?"

Asked about potential fundraiser fraud, a GoFundMe spokesperson who declined to be named, “given the sensitivity of the topic,” said verified fundraisers undergo an “enhanced due diligence review process,” which includes “human review” and “technical tools designed to catch misuse.”

All personal information is verified before funds are transferred, the spokesperson said.

“GoFundMe also has the first and only donor protection guarantee in the crowdfunding industry. We guarantee donors a full refund in the rare case something isn’t right,” the spokesperson said.

‘When will it happen again?’

Joanna Martinez, a 22-year-old daycare worker in Charlotte, N.C, started a GoFundMe fundraiser in May after her father, Jose Martinez, was pulled over by immigration agents on his way to work, in what she called an instance of “racial profiling.”

“They basically threatened him. It was like, ‘If you don't get out the vehicle, you and your coworkers, we will take you guys out by force by breaking the windows,’” Joanna told Raw Story.

Jose, a construction worker, is not a U.S. citizen but is working with a lawyer to “see if there's any way that he could get papers,” Joanna said, adding that her father has lived in the U.S. for 20 years and all of his children are citizens.

Jose was detained for two days in his home state then spent 26 days at a detention facility in Lumpkin, Ga. before being released on $4,000 bond, Joanna said.

“We're, of course, happy my dad was able to get out, but just the trauma and not knowing when will it happen again, or will it happen to someone else in our family? That's what we're worried about,” Joanna said.

Joanna said she twice visited her father while he was detained six hours away in Georgia. She said he told her he witnessed two deaths while detained. At least one 45-year-old man died in ICE custody at the facility, according to news reports.

“People were sleeping on the floors. The food that they were feeding them, most of it was either spoiled, or it had maggots inside,” Martinez said.

“He said that they had him in really, really cold temperatures in there.”

The Department of Homeland Security denies any mistreatment of detainees.

"Any claim [of[ subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers," McLaughlin said.

"Ensuring the safety, security and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE."

Joanna had raised $3,665 toward a $5,500 goal for help with her father’s bond payment, lawyer fees and living expenses, since “he can't work as much as he was because of the worry,” she said.

‘He’s lucky’

Mufleh said one of her network’s students, Ernesto Manuel-Andres, was recently taken by ICE while eating lunch at his home in Bowling Green, K.Y.

“I really wasn't panicked when that happened. I was like, ‘He just got caught up. It was a mistake. He shouldn't be in detention. They'll release him the next day,” Mufleh told Raw Story. “That didn't happen.”

Manuel-Andres, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala as a minor, spent three weeks in “very crowded” detention facilities, moved through two facilities in Kentucky and was transferred to Monroe, La., Mufleh said.

“It's an 18-year-old kid that has status,” Mufleh said. “There was no warrant for his arrest. He's not a criminal.”

Mufleh said she launched a GoFundMe partly as a way to inform community members about Manuel-Andres’ situation and to get “some pressure out to get him out.”

When Manuel-Andres was released on bond three weeks later, Mufleh and his school principal traveled to Louisiana to pick him up. His next hearing is in January.

“I think he's lucky. He had attorneys already in place that were familiar with his case. He had a community ready to advocate for him and raise funds for him,” Mufleh said.

“How many thousands of kids in the same situation are in detention right now that we're not hearing their story? That's what's scary, is there are lots of them.”
‘Swarmed us’

A 34-year-old teacher, who declined to be named after receiving harassing messages in response to her fundraiser, started a GoFundMe for her husband after he was detained following a hearing related to an application for a spousal visa.

“He absolutely did not think anything was going to happen,” she said.

“But, I, as an American citizen, having seen how things went with the first Trump administration, I took the day off. I wanted to know exactly what happened when he went to the courthouse.”

When the teacher and her husband were leaving the courthouse, ICE officers “just swarmed us,” she said, adding: “As we turned the corner, I heard the handcuffs get put on him, my husband, and it felt completely surreal.”

“I knew it was a possibility that this could happen, but all the emotions that came with it, I did not expect.”

The teacher, from San Leandro, Calif., said at one point that day she was told her husband, who came from Colombia and “entered at a legal point of entry” seeking asylum, would be released with monitoring.

But as they prepared to leave again, they were chased down and her husband was detained again, she said. He has since been in a detention facility four hours from home, and is considering self-deporting.

“We're at a point of just whatever gets him out of that facility, even if it means him going back to Colombia, and if that's the case, there's definitely some fears there, but at least he would be free,” the teacher said.

“It's just limbo, and it's all so incredibly frustrating, because even the lawyer, she cannot figure out why he's actually being detained, like a legal reason why.”

The teacher had raised a little over $10,000, which she said was being used for gas to visit her husband, vending machine purchases at the detention facility, legal expenses, and living costs while on just her teacher's salary.

Alexandria Jacobson is a Chicago-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, focusing on money in politics, government accountability and electoral politics. Prior to joining Raw Story in 2023, Alex reported extensively on social justice, business and tech issues for several news outlets, including ABC News, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. She can be reached at alexandria@rawstory.com. More about Alexandria Jacobson.

'Plan for the worst': Critics need 'escape plan' for when Trump comes for them

John Stoehr
July 15, 2025 

RAW STORY

A police officer holds a pepper ball gun as protesters challenge ICE personnel in Chicago. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

Leigh McGowan, who does the Politics Girl podcast, was on CNN recently. As I watched, I found my admiration growing.

I don’t mean her politics, which I mostly share, or her skills as a communicator, which are enviable. What I admired was her courage.

She was part of a panel discussing “an aggressive new strategy” by the justice department to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans. McGowan is herself an immigrant. She came from Canada as a student, then spent years going through the grueling process of naturalization.

That’s admirable, but what really struck me was the context.

McGowan was criticizing the president’s anti-migrant purge on national TV just a few days after his Republicans in Congress decided to give more money to immigration cops than any other law enforcement agency in the country. ICE and related agencies now have more funding — $170 billion on top of their regular annual budgets — than most countries in the world spend on their national defense.

She was also criticizing the president’s anti-migrant purge after ICE and other federal agencies staged what appeared to be a “massive show of force,” according to an eyewitness, in a park in Los Angeles. It looked like “a city under military occupation,” that city’s mayor said.

McGowan surely understood the context and she surely understood that the Trump regime could make an example of her — search for some pretext for why her citizenship is no longer valid, perhaps by sifting through her history of public commentary and finding any sort of opinion that the regime considers “a threat to national security.”

This is, after all, what the regime is already doing to foreign students. They can’t go to college here if they have expressed opinions critical of Trump (or of Israel). The regime is doing this to public servants, too, forcing them to take lie detector tests in order purge anyone deemed disloyal to Trump, which is to say, anyone who thinks for himself.

Yet McGowan went on national TV anyway. My admiration grew.


So did my trepidation.

This is real, not theoretical. There are nearly 25 million Americans in this country who went through the naturalization process, which is more than half of all immigrants living in the U.S. All of them now face the prospect of being stripped of their earned rights and privileges based solely on whether Trump is in the mood to respect them.

It’s one thing for a naturalized citizen and public figure like McGowan to go on national TV to criticize the president before he has made an example of someone. It will be another after he has done so, and we should not be naive: eventually, he will make an example of someone.


As if on cue, Acting ICE Director Tom Homan made this statement on Fox: “People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol don't need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them ... based on their physical appearance."

Trump and his Republicans in the Congress have created a secret police force in the form of ICE and Border Patrol that has, unlike the US military, no allegiance higher than the president’s whims and fancies. At the rate we’re going, snatching and disappearing a critic of the regime isn’t a likelihood. It’s an eventuality. What do we do then?

We carry on, said Jemar Tisby.


He’s a historian and professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, in Louisville. He’s the author of The Color of Compromise, the award-winning How to Fight Racism and recently, The Spirit of Justice.

After the GOP passed their budget bill, Professor Tisby posted a piece called “Trump’s Personal Army,” in which he recommended an escape plan for anyone who’s “committed to truth, justice, and democracy.”

I read the piece and asked for an interview. I admit I was skeptical of the reality behind Professor Tisby’s escape plan, as you will see. But then I saw McGowan on CNN. I learned that she’s a naturalized citizen. And I thought: 'Damn, yeah. He’s right.'


“People with large public platforms who continue to be outspoken will be in far more danger than the average person,” the professor told me.

JS: Many people have been concerned about Trump's use of the US military to control the population. Sending the Marines to Los Angeles seemed to confirm that suspicion. In your recent piece, you say that that's a red herring. The real problem is ICE. Why?

JT: The US military, for all its issues, has a higher standard for deployment and very strict rules for any domestic functions. The Posse Comitatus Act, for instance, largely prevents the president from deploying US military for domestic operations. ICE is different.


ICE agents do take an oath to the Constitution, but they are under the US Department of Homeland Security, and they are classified as civilian law enforcement, not military. Not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They are under the executive branch, which means Trump has much broader discretion to direct them.

So he can functionally use them as his personal paramilitary army. You can imagine how such force and power could be wielded by an impulsive president.

The ICE and Border Patrol's demonstration of strength in a park in Los Angeles would be a case in point, correct?

Absolutely. There was no urgent need for a show of military force like that. In a park. In broad daylight. The president and his officials are targeting cities like LA for shows of force.


Not unlike targeting higher education institutions like Harvard University, if they can bring ostensibly liberal bastions to heel, then it’s supposed to demonstrate no one can oppose their power and others shouldn’t even attempt to resist.

LA mayor Karen Bass said it looked like “a city under military occupation,” just the kind of thing that the founders based their revolution on. Yet "constitutional conservatives" for years said the Second Amendment was the answer to tyranny. We're seeing tryanny and no reaction from the NRA and others. I guess they never meant what they said.

The operating principle for the far right or “constitutional conservatives” is “rights for me, not for thee.” They selectively apply civil rights and constitutional principles when it serves their purposes. They willfully disregard them if such rights impede their pursuit of unchallenged power. Simply look at their response to the January 6 insurrection.


A violent mob storms the US Capitol and where was the military show of force? Instead, this president pardons those convicted of crimes that day.

But he does not hesitate to send ICE and the Marines to cities and states with no other “threat” than liberal leadership.

In your piece, you recommend an escape plan for people "committed to truth, justice, and democracy" because “you can’t afford to be unprepared." I feel the urgency. I could be a secret police target. But I confess I don’t feel the reality. How alarmed should I be? How hard are you going to lean into that recommendation?

Look, these preparations may sound alarmist to some, but so did Project 2025. So did deploying ICE and the Marines to public parks.

There is simply no red line this regime will not cross. Why would the $170 billon ICE and Border Patrol forces be any different?

The patterns of authoritarian regimes are clear. Once they have control of military-like force, they use it. While the initial targets may be others (in this case, immigrants), the very nature of these forces is they can be turned by the leader toward virtually any perceived threat, including “dissenters.”

I don’t think they come for everyone the same way. People with large public platforms who continue to be outspoken will be in far more danger than the average person. And there are other ways to shut down dissent: firings, freezing or confiscating assets, lawsuits.

But authoritarian regimes are always built on bloodshed. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

It has been suggested that so far power has not been met with power. Specifically, ICE agents are not being stopped by local cops, nor have they yet been prosecuted by local district attorneys for violating state law. What's your view? Is that an answer? Or is that more escalation of a fight whose outcome we can't know?

My concern is the people will be provoked to violence.

The typical recourses to oppose injustice – courts, local law enforcement, principled leaders – are hobbled and in short supply. They tend to work slowly. And this regime hasn’t shown any willingness abide by the law or settled norms. We need as many officials as possible to use their positions to resist these egregious provocations.

But guns, abductions and confrontations with local residents are a volatile mix. An encounter can turn violent, even deadly, with the twitch of a finger. That would, tragically, be a boon to this regime. They would have even more excuse to deploy military-like force.

As a people, we must remain committed to the welfare of our neighbors, the promotion of democracy, and the use of nonviolent means to protest.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries affirmed recently his belief "in the fundamental goodness of the American people." What we're talking about here, the application of state terrorism for the purpose of controlling the citizenry, would suggest that that's naive. What do you think?

My latest book, The Spirit of Justice, speaks to the tension between the persistent presence of injustice and the necessity of hope.

In my studies as a historian, I have observed that, lamentably, evil and injustice are commonplace. Somehow, they always show up. What is far more remarkable is the fact that there are always people willing to battle evil and injustice. In every age and era, people have risen up, no matter the odds or opposition, to resist and reassert the dignity of all humanity.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, whose husband Medgar Evers was shot and killed in front of their home for his civil rights activism, said: “But it’s something about the spirit of justice that raises up like a warhorse. That horse that stands with its back sunk in and hears that bell —­ I like to say the ‘bell of freedom.’ And all of a sudden, it becomes straight, and the back becomes stiff. And you become determined all over again.”

The spirit of justice is moving today. It is making a small but mighty group of people determined all over again.

Hope is not naive. It is the essential to taking the next step in the journey of justice.

Trump has pushed us to the brink of recession, fascism, and World War III

Thom Hartmann
July 14, 2025 

COMMON DREAMS

A view of the White House by night. REUTERS/Yara Nardi/File Photo

The headlines this week are wild: Trump is threatening nutso tariffs against America’s traditional trading partners (although none for Russia, of course), demanding that our allies proclaim their willingness to go to war with China, and — along with his billionaire buddies — looting our government while immiserating small business and the American middle class.

As a result, America stands today at an extraordinarily dangerous crossroads economically, politically, and geopolitically. We’re talking a second Republican Great Depression, fascism, and the very real possibility of a third world war.

As the Trump administration abandons manufacturing and building out America’s infrastructure in favor of financial speculation and deregulation, we’re hollowing out the very foundations of real wealth. Simultaneously, the GOP is doubling down on policies that have repeatedly crashed our economy, stripped support from working families, and handed more money and political power to the morbidly rich.

Now, with economic stagnation looming and international tensions escalating, Trump’s erratic and belligerent approach threatens not just recession but war. If Democrats and people who love America and democracy don’t find their voice — and fast — we may be sleepwalking not only into a massive economic disaster, but into a global conflict that could define the rest of this century or even bring about the end of western civilization.

There are a few basic principles that undergird this argument. I’ll walk through them here, building the case brick by brick, and ending with the most important task before us.

First, let’s get back to basics. There are only two primary ways to grow a nation’s wealth: by extracting resources from the earth or by manufacturing goods, adding value to those resources. Everything else — lawns getting mowed, nails getting done, stocks getting traded — may move money around or improve quality of life, but don’t grow the actual wealth of a nation.

For example, I wash your car and you mow my lawn. We exchange $20 bills. It’s nice, it’s neighborly, but it didn’t grow our nation’s economy at all.

Now, suppose you go into the ground and mine and refine iron ore, and I use some of it to make an ax. You’ve turned rocks into raw material. I’ve turned that into a tool that can build homes, cut timber, or create more tools.

That is real wealth creation. That ax becomes part of the wealth of our country; that’s what Adam Smith meant in The Wealth of Nations when he pointed out that economies grow when labor transforms nature into value, as I explained in detail on the Hartmann Report.

A third, indirect way to grow national wealth is through government investment in the infrastructure that supports those two main drivers. Roads, bridges, rail, and ports move goods. Broadband and schools cultivate talent. Green energy projects power the nation. Free college, health care, paid sick leave, and maternity leave make for a healthier, more well-educated, and thus more productive workforce. Strong regulation prevents scammers, monopolists, and fraudsters from distorting or hijacking markets.

Without these supports — especially when the bulk of national income is being siphoned off by the morbidly rich — productivity slows, innovation stalls, and economies become brittle. History is replete with examples of this type of collapse from ancient Rome to Europe stumbling into World Wars I and II.

The Democratic Party has largely understood this since the industrial revolution, as did the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw construction of the transcontinental railroad and funded over 70 free “Land Grant” colleges like MSU across the nation.

From FDR through Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden, Democratic presidents have consistently invested in the physical and human infrastructure that powers wealth creation. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the GI Bill, the WPA and CCC, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act all fit this pattern.

Even Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, got it, although he was his party’s modern exception. He built the Interstate Highway System and warned Americans against the possibility that the military-industrial complex could corrupt Congress. His vision was of a balanced, productive America, not one dominated by war profiteers and Wall Street gamblers.

But the Republican Party since the 1920s (with the exception of Eisenhower) has marched in the opposite direction. From Coolidge and Hoover to Reagan and Trump, they’ve pushed a different story: that government is the problem and taxes are theft. Reagan kicked off the insanity with his massive tax cuts and neoliberal rhetoric. He didn’t just demonize government; in 1983, he legalized stock buybacks, something previously considered felony criminal stock manipulation. This move transformed American corporations from engines of productivity into tools for enriching shareholders and executives.

This launched a massive shift in our economy. Financialization began to replace manufacturing as the central engine of growth. Instead of making things, our largest corporations became obsessed with gaming markets, flipping debt, and enriching insiders. Wall Street and monopolies (also allowed by changes Reagan made in our law) overtook and then devastated Main Street, and the real wealth of the nation thus started to stagnate.

At the same time, Republicans attacked the very institutions that supported productivity. They gutted unions, fought to privatize Social Security and Medicare with their “Advantage” scam, deregulated the banking and energy sectors, and worked tirelessly to cripple the regulatory state. When Obama created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to prevent another financial crisis, for example, Republicans moved swiftly to kneecap it. Under Trump, they’ve largely succeeded.

Now Trump is back, and he’s doubling down on Reaganomics with a vengeance. He’s illegally refusing to release funds from Biden’s infrastructure and manufacturing initiatives. He’s gutting environmental and workplace protections. And he’s promoting speculative financial schemes like Bitcoin, an unregulated, easily manipulated asset class that benefits insiders like his children and wealthy friends.

Ten of the last 11 recessions occurred under Republican presidents. That’s not a coincidence. The Financial Times recently pointed out that today’s America under GOP leadership now resembles a country suffering from “Dutch disease,” a term coined when the Netherlands’ economy was distorted by a single natural resource boom.

Instead of natural gas, our export is debt and the dollar itself. Our economy has become addicted to issuing Treasury bonds while cutting taxes for the morbidly rich.

In a healthy economy, windfalls get invested in productivity: roads, R&D, education, healthcare for working people. In today’s GOP-run economy, however, they’re getting funneled into yachts, stock buybacks, and political influence. Economists call this the “voracity effect”; a dynamic where powerful groups extract so much from the economy that they ultimately destabilize and then crash it. It’s economic cancer.

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” a $4 trillion giveaway to the wealthy, exemplified this perfectly. It wasn’t tax reform: it was looting.

But the biggest potential crisis is that this isn’t just bad economics: it’s dangerous geopolitics.

History shows that when working people lose access to opportunity and stability, populism and extremism rise. They demand scapegoats and embrace demagogues. In early 20th-century Europe, economic collapse and inequality paved the way for authoritarian regimes. The result was two world wars.

We’re now staring into the jaws of what political scientists call the Thucydides Trap: when a rising power (China) threatens a dominant one (the U.S.), and conflict becomes almost inevitable. Combine that with economic unrest, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

Trump is already stoking this fire.

According to the Financial Times, his administration is pressuring Japan and Australia to pledge support for a potential war over Taiwan. His undersecretary of defense, Elbridge Colby, is demanding troop commitments while simultaneously throwing U.S. alliances into chaos.

Worse, Trump is floating bizarre geoeconomic weapons: charging allied nations for access to U.S. financial markets, forcing them to buy long-term Treasury bonds, and tying military protection to economic tribute. He killed our main source of soft power, USAID, and has silenced the Voice of America.


This isn’t diplomacy: it’s shakedown politics dressed up as strategy. As the Financial Times reported, it’s part of Trump’s wider attempt to abandon cooperation in favor of coercion.

These are the hallmarks of an empire in decline, and that amplifies the danger of both domestic fascist takeover and a third world war.

When a nation abandons real wealth creation, concentrates power in a corrupt elite, abandons its public infrastructure, and pursues reckless foreign policy, the mass of people become outraged.

They rarely understand who did this to them — giving autocrats like Putin, Hitler, Orbán, and Trump the opportunity to assign blame to minorities and attack their political enemies — but they do know they’ve been screwed.

As public sentiment boils over and billionaire-owned media like Fox “News” and billionaire social media owners like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk use invisible, secret algorithms to increase their own profits by promoting and amplifying raw hate and rage, the outcomes, as we’ve seen throughout history, are predictable:Minority and political scapegoats are blamed.
Borders are militarized.
Political violence explodes.
Journalism gives way to propaganda.
Financial crashes trigger democratic backsliding in the name of “emergency measures.”
War looms.

This is the road Trump and his toadies in the GOP have put us on.

Trump is poisoning our economy while destabilizing international diplomacy. He just fired 1,200 career professionals from the State Department, crippling our ability to engage in diplomacy and maintain peace.

He’s wrecking the low-wage workforce and our food supplies through immigration crackdowns and ICE raids.

He’s slowing growth and destroying small businesses with tariffs and erratic trade policies.

All while planning to expand ICE into an unaccountable, masked, nationwide secret-police-style paramilitary force that is already being used to suppress dissent and attack Democratic politicians, while it continues to terrorize immigrant communities.

Democrats and people of conscience must do more than hope the courts will stop this; the courts will not save us. We must speak out with moral clarity, economic fluency, and relentless courage.

We must call this what it is: a full-scale assault on our economy, our democracy, and the world order that’s prevented a third world war for nearly 80 years.

We must make it clear that Biden’s investments were beginning to rebuild our productive base, and Trump is trying to salt the earth.

And we must act. Talk to your neighbors. Write letters. Post on social media. Show up to town halls. Demand that your representatives speak the truth.

If we don’t, the noise machine on the right will define the narrative. If we wait, it may be too late. July 17th will be another huge opportunity; please show up.

The 2026 midterms aren’t just another election, and neither are the hundreds of state and local off-year and special elections that’ll be happening this year. They may be our last chance to change course.

We could lose more than our democracy. We could lose the very idea of America and, with it, the peaceful world we’ve anchored since 1945.

Tag, we’re it.

'Wallowing in corruption': New head of tax office helped ultra-rich dodge taxes

Jake Johnson,

 Common Dreams
July 15, 2025

Ken Kies, the assistant U.S. treasury secretary for tax policy, testified before the Senate Finance Committee on April 10, 2025. (Photo: C-SPAN/Screengrab)

A corporate lobbyist who for decades has helped major companies and rich Americans dodge taxes is now serving as the U.S. Treasury Department's top tax policy official, a position in which he will write rules implementing the newly passed Republican budget law.

That role is "enormously powerful," The New York Times' Jesse Drucker wrote in a Monday profile of Ken Kies, whom the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate confirmed as assistant treasury secretary for tax policy in a party-line vote last month. President Donald Trump selected Kies for the position in January.

The Republican budget measure, which Trump signed into law earlier this month, contains around $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that will flow disproportionately to the wealthiest Americans over the next decade, according to nonpartisan analysts.

"By putting a professional tax-dodging consultant in charge of their tax law, Republicans are continuing to make their intentions crystal clear—this law is a gift to billionaires and huge corporations like those Ken Kies has spent his career looking out for," Leor Tal, campaign director for the progressive advocacy group Unrig Our Economy, said in a statement Monday.

"As families struggle with rising prices from Trump's tariffs and face devastating cuts to Medicaid and SNAP," Tal added, "Republicans are doubling down on helping the richest of the rich, while working people pay the price."

In his role as a lobbyist whose client list has included Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Microsoft, and other corporate behemoths, Kies has helped secure major tax giveaways for large companies and wealthy Americans—including in the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that the new Republican budget package extends.

"In the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Kies successfully pushed for legislation to make such offshore tax dodges even easier to execute. During the Obama administration, he fended off another attempted crackdown on those strategies," Drucker wrote Monday. "In 2017, as part of a sweeping package of tax cuts signed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Kies lobbied for a new tax break that provides a 20% deduction to certain businesses, which overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans."

Drucker noted that in his new position, Kies "will oversee about 100 attorneys and economists at the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Policy, a powerful corner of the federal government."

"The office issues regulations to help the government administer tax laws and provides guidance that can render the latest tax-dodging strategy a gold mine—or doom it," he added.

Kies previously served as managing director of the Federal Policy Group, a lobbying firm at which he "delivered significant legislative and regulatory results for his clients, which include major corporations, trade associations, and coalitions of companies with common objectives," according to a since-removed biography of Kies.

"Mr. Kies has led coalition efforts to enact legislation responding to the World Trade Organization's ruling against U.S. foreign sales corporation benefits, to avert enactment of broad 'corporate tax shelter' legislation that would have an adverse impact on legitimate business transactions, and to reverse Treasury regulations targeting 'hybrid' arrangements of U.S. multinational corporations, among other projects," the biography stated.

Highlighting the Times profile of Kies, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote Monday that the Trump administration is "wallowing in corruption."

"Five trillion dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest, written and administered by the wealthiest," she wrote. "On the backs of stripping healthcare and food from working and poor people. Shame on you."

In addition to implementing the new Trump-GOP law, Kies could be positioned to help deliver another sizable tax break to the rich.

The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reported last week that on the heels of passage of the GOP budget law, right-wing organizations and Republican lawmakers are set to push the Trump administration to unilaterally "drastically reduce what investors pay on their capital gains."

"The plan rests on changing how the Treasury Department calculates those taxes," Stein wrote. "The highest-earning 1% of Americans would receive 86% of the benefits from indexing capital gains to inflation, while the bottom 80% of income earners would get just 1% of the benefits, Penn Wharton projected in 2018."

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, wrote in response to Stein's reporting that "after gutting health care for millions of Americans and passing massive tax breaks for billionaires, Republicans are now working on even MORE tax breaks for the ultra-rich."

"They aren't interested in fighting for working families—only their rich friends," Boyle added.

California's plea for urgent wildfire aid still hasn't been seen by Mike Johnson

"The formal request was sent to your office in February," the reporter reminded Johnson.

Travis Gettys
July 15, 2025 

RAW STORY

A firefighter battles the Palisades Fire, one of several simultaneous blazes that have ripped across Los Angeles County, in Mandeville Canyon, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 11, 2025. REUTERS/Ringo Chiu

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was quickly fact-checked over his claim about California disaster relief Tuesday.

The Louisiana Republican confirmed months ago that GOP lawmakers had discussed tying wildfire aid to a debt limit increase, which was eventually approved as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But he would not commit when asked Tuesday to including California in a disaster aid package.

"First of all, we wouldn't know how much to commit because there's a process, the White House in every administration, every previous Congress, the White House takes the request of the state, after the calculations are done, the assessments, there's a multi-step process to this, they take that and the request to Congress, and it goes through regular order and acts upon the request," Johnson said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for billions in federal funding last week, six months after the Eaton and Palisades fires, amid his ongoing feud with the president over federal immigration raids in his state.

"We haven't had that in California yet for whatever reason," Johnson said. "Gavin Newsom seems to enjoy trying to stick his thumb in the eye of the White House and Congress, which seems to be counter-purpose if he is requesting relief. Look, we're going to do the right thing at the end of the day, we'll take care of the American people, we'll take care of our federal responsibilities. We've not seen the calculation nor the formal request, and I'm not going to act upon until we do."

"The formal request was sent to your office in February," the reporter reminded Johnson.

"I will get the request from the White House and executive branch," Johnson replied, his voice rising in pitch. "That's how this works, we're going to follow the rules."

Newsom requested $40 billion in federal funding to help rebuild homes, schools, churches and hospitals destroyed by the fires, but so far the Republican House has not made progress on the request the governor made in late February