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

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


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

Brett Wilkins
Oct 30, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Win the Midterms to Defang Climate Monster Trump

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


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


Bill Mckibben
Oct 30, 2026

The Crucial Years

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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


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






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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


© 2022 Bill McKibben


Bill Mckibben
Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent book is "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?." He also authored "The End of Nature," "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."
Full Bio >

Boo-Hoo! California’s Billionaire Snowflakes Are Scared of a One-Time, 5% Tax!

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

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

Chuck Collins
Oct 31, 2026

OtherWords

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not all the billionaires are cowering in the corner.

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

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

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

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

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


This column was distributed by OtherWords.

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

The more political power the billionaire class has, the less political power the rest of us have


Sister Diane Smith, with CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), joins The Fair Games Coalition, made up of community leaders, labor organizations, and advocates, announce the launch of the Overpaid CEO Tax Initiative in front of the Tesla Diner in West Hollywood on January 14, 2026.
(Photo: Getty Images)

Robert Reich
Oct 30, 2026

Inequality Media

We shouldn’t begrudge billionaires.

As America’s super-wealthy become super-wealthier, their riches don’t come directly at our expense. It’s possible for billionaires to get even richer without the rest of us becoming poorer.

Or to put it a different way, making a fortune in America isn’t a zero-sum game.

But this doesn’t mean billionaires should be allowed to do whatever they want with their billions.

Billionaire wealth becomes a public problem when it finds its way into politics—making it harder for average voters to be heard. It throttles democracy.

Consider the estimated $300 million from more than 70 California billionaires seeking to defeat Proposition 40—the one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires that’s on Tuesday’s ballot.

It’s being led by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who single-handedly put $102 million behind the campaign to defeat the measure. (Brin’s personal fortune of $251 billion makes him among the top 4 to 5 richest people in the world.)

Also leading the campaign against the billionaire tax are former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (now worth $64.3 billion, but likely far more after the upcoming IPO of Anthropic, in which he’s a major shareholder); venture capitalist John Doerr ($12 billion); Stripe CEO Patrick Collison ($17.5 billion); and crypto executive Chris Larsen ($13.3 billion).

Brin, Schmidt, Doerr, Collison, and Larsen might be perfectly nice people, for all I know. I don’t mean to impugn their integrity by noting that they’re pouring money into trying to stop California from imposing a one-time 5 percent tax on their wealth.

But in so doing, they’re unwittingly illustrating why billionaire wealth is so bad for democracy.

This is the story of American democracy in this second Gilded Age. Billionaires are building their wealth with bribes campaign donations (as well as with their ownership of media and with their armies of lawyers marching to the Supreme Court to contest judicial rulings that harm their bottom lines).

Billionaires poured money into getting Trump elected in 2016, with his promise of a big federal tax cut if he succeeded, on which he delivered, and poured their money into getting him elected again in 2024, with his promise of another big federal tax cut, on which he delivered again.

Paying for those tax cuts required, among other things, cuts in Medicaid—which in turn prompted California’s move to fill those cuts with a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaire wealth.

Total spending on advertising in the 2026 midterms is $11.3 billion so far—already higher than the total spent on ads (including the presidential race) in 2024. And much of it is from the billionaire class. The 50 largest donors to super PACs have contributed a combined $2.77 billion. Elon Musk himself has sunk $446 million into supporting Republican candidates.

Is it any wonder that billionaires aren’t paying their fair share of taxes? Many pay little or no income taxes because they have little or no income. Instead, they borrow against their vast fortunes to pay for their lavish living expenses. That borrowing isn’t taxed.

California’s Governor Gavin Newsom opposes Prop 40. He has even lent his support to a poison pill (Prop 42) that would prevent the state from ever again trying to tax billionaire wealth.

Newsom claims he’s concerned about billionaires exiting California. Maybe that’s his true motive, but Newsom may have another reason to oppose Prop 40.

As The New York Times reports, Newsom is “preparing a turnkey high-dollar operation” for an upcoming run for the Democratic nomination for the 2028 presidential election. And “as the governor of California, the state with the most billionaires,” Newsom has “certain advantages. Already, two Democratic megadonors, Reed Hastings, the Netflix co-founder, and Chris Larsen, a crypto billionaire, have signaled their leanings toward him. Mr. Newsom has staked out a donor-friendly position opposing California’s proposed billionaire tax and invited donors to V.I.P. receptions on his book tour.”

Interestingly, another California presidential hopeful—Representative Ro Khanna—supports the Prop 40 billionaire tax. Khanna has also sworn off super PAC funding.

Newsom is no more corrupt than the billionaires who are pouring money into opposing Proposition 40, but that’s exactly the point. America’s billionaire class is becoming far richer by the day—they could have paid the entire Prop 40 tax with the additions to their wealth since Labor Day—and although wealth isn’t a zero-sum game, power definitely is a zero-sum game.

The more political power the billionaire class has, the less political power the rest of us have. Hence, the importance of taxing their wealth if we want to preserve our democracy.



© 2025 Robert Reich

Robert Reich
Robert Reich is professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former US secretary of labor. His latest book is the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Coming Up Short."
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Trump’s ‘Election Denial Must Stop’: Progressive Lawmakers Demand US Recognize Lula’s Brazil Victory

“In the two largest democracies in the hemisphere, we cannot tolerate authoritarian efforts to deny election results, overturn the will of hundreds of millions of voters, or violently interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.”


Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva waves to supporters in São Paulo on October 25, 2026 after winning the presidential runoff election.
(Photo by Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Oct 30, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Progressive leaders in the US House of Representatives on Friday demanded that President Donald Trump recognize Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reelection victory, accusing the Republican of joining defeated far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro’s bid to undermine democracy in Latin America’s largest country.

“Trump continues to ramp up his election denialism,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas), CPC Deputy Chair Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and CPC Whip Jesús G. “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) said in a statement, adding that Lula won by “more than 4 million votes. Yet Trump called it ‘rigged’ and ‘corrupt’ and refused to recognize the outcome.”

Turning to loser Bolsonaro’s flight from Brazil to the United States, where senior Trump officials said he and his family would be granted visas, the progressives continued, “As soon as Flávio Bolsonaro touched down in Florida, he thanked Donald Trump for his support and claimed that Brazil’s election was stolen, outrageously declaring himself the rightful ‘president-elect.’”

“Trump’s and Bolsonaro’s partnership in election denial must stop immediately,” they stressed. “We demand that the United States join the rest of the world in accepting the results of Brazil’s election. In the two largest democracies in the hemisphere, we cannot tolerate authoritarian efforts to deny election results, overturn the will of hundreds of millions of voters, or violently interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.”




“As November approaches, we are committed to using every congressional tool at our disposal to defend election integrity at home and stop Trump’s election interference and denialism abroad,” the lawmakers added, alluding to next week’s US midterm elections.

The Trump administration’s response to the results of the Brazilian runoff has angered many in Brazil, especially those on the left.

According to Folha de São Paulo, the US State Department had prepared a customary statement congratulating Brazil on its election but was ordered to withhold its release after Bolsonaro challenged the results. The US Embassy in Brasília subsequently offered no indication of when the statement would be issued.

Lula’s leftist Workers’ Party addressed Trump’s behavior in a resolution saying that “Brazil will not accept foreign interests interfering in its democracy, nor will it accept political disputes serving as a pretext to disrespect the sovereign will of the Brazilian people, in elections that were widely monitored and recognized for their integrity.”

“The position of US President Donald Trump regarding the election results and [Bolsonaro’s] presence on US territory also requires attention,” the resolution added.

Dan Beeton, communications director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Common Dreams on Friday that “the CPC leaders are right.”

“Trump should join the rest of the world and recognize Lula’s historic electoral victory and, hopefully, turn a new page in US-Brazil relations, which have deteriorated significantly during Trump’s second term, with Trump’s unprovoked and unnecessary tariffs, sanctions against officials responsible for holding former President Jair Bolsonaro accountable for his 2023 coup attempt, and other hostile actions,” Beeton added. “Trump will risk further isolating the US on the world stage as long as he doesn’t.”

Flavio Bolsonaro’s great escape: Is this the beginning of the end for ‘Bolsonarism’?

The Brazilian election results had barely been announced before the defeated presidential candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro, packed his bags and fled with his family to the United States. The move may have dealt a serious blow to the already tarnished family brand, but does it spell the end for “Bolsonarism”?


Issued on: 29/10/2026 
FRANCE24
By: Sébastian SEIBT

Flavio Bolsonaro steps down from the private jet that brought him and his family to the United States on October 28, 2026. © Eva Marie Uzcategui, Reuters


A few hours after touching down in Miami on Wednesday, Flavio Bolsonaro issued a statement declaring he was the “true president” of Brazil. He claimed he had been the victim of an electoral coup staged by Brazil’s Supreme Court and President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who won last weekend’s election by more than 4 million votes.

That, in Bolsonaro’s view, left him with no other choice but to flee.

Flavio Bolsonaro declares himself Brazil's 'true' leader after landing in Miami

According to several news outlets, the Bolsonaro family had already left Brazil on Tuesday. Their journey took them through both Argentina and Ecuador before they got on the private jet that would eventually fly them across the continent and keep the embattled far-right politician at arm’s length from Brazilian justice.


A family tradition

Although Bolsonaro’s whereabouts, and the destination for his escape, were initially shrouded in mystery, his ally US President Donald Trump appeared to almost have been waiting for him, greeting him with a US visa more or less the moment he arrived.

Bolsonaro currently faces a string of investigations in his homeland for suspected money laundering, corruption, and for having illegal accepted campaign funding from a donor network connected to US Vice President JD Vance.

By choosing the US exile route, however, Bolsonaro could deal a devastating blow to “Bolsonarism” – the macho ideology championed by his father, ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, and which glorifies the strong man who stops at nothing when the going gets tough.

But Bolsonaro junior is hardly the first in the family to have sought refuge in the US as soon as his political fortunes start to fade. His father did so in 2022 – just two days before Lula was inaugurated for a third presidential mandate – after facing a number of criminal probes. And last year, his brother Eduardo went into “voluntary” US exile after accusations he had sought to convince Washington to impose sanctions on Lula’s Brazil.

Fiona Macauley, a Brazil expert at the University of Bradford, labelled the escapes, and especially the latest one, as “very negative” for the Bolsonaro family brand.

“It’s an incredible admission of guilt,” she said, adding that many of the people who voted for him are likely to be disappointed.

“If you were one of the nearly 60 million people who voted for Bolsonaro, you would now be feeling very bitter about the lack of courage.”

In other words, the values defining Bolsonarism become hard to defend when the Bolsonaros’ systematically run to Trump for help every time they face any kind of legal woes.

Larissa Peixoto Gomes, a specialist in Brazilian politics at the University of Edinburgh, said it looks “really bad”, especially to undecided voters “who were key” in the elections.
Shadow government in the works?

Indeed the Bolsonaro family's multiple escapes make president-elect Lula, who has himself been subject to investigations and even served time in prison before finally being acquitted, look even stronger.

“It makes him look good,” Chris Lyon, a Brazil expert at the University of Birmingham, said. “Because when he faced corruption charges, he stayed, he didn't run away.”

With the elder Bolsonaro currently under house arrest (where he is serving a 27-year sentence), and two of his sons risking lengthy prison terms if they return to Brazil, it has become increasingly difficult for the family to exercise its political influence.

But experts say they could potentially set up a parallel or shadow government in the US, mimicking the Cuban or Venezuelan opposition in exile models.

However, Janaina Maldonado, a Brazilian politics expert with the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), said that “the Brazilian scenario is completely different from what we had in Venezuela and what we have in Cuba”, making both her and her peers very sceptical that such plans would actually work. Not least because much of the international community – save Trump who suggested the election was “rigged” – has already recognised Lula as the legitimate winner.

Another potential hurdle is the Brazilian diaspora.

Macauley said that in contrast to the Cubans and Venezuelans in the US, most Brazilians living there are economic migrants and are not looking for a leader to rally behind.
The Bolsonaro reserves

This week's escape hardly spells the end for Bolsonaro politics being played out in Brazil. The Bolsonaro family is big and still very influential. “You've still got four Bolsonaros in the national elected office,” Lyon said.

The most prominent of them is Michelle Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s wife who was recently handed a senator seat in Brasilia, as well as the couple’s second oldest son Carlos – also known as the family’s social media mastermind – who is a senator in Santa Catarina.

But there are more. The youngest son, Renan, is a federal deputy, and so is Bolsonaro senior's brother, Renato.

Corneel Weyers, a Brazil expert at Sciences Po’s Centre for International Studies (CERI) in Paris, said that while Carlos is expected to “carry on the Bolsonaro legacy”, Michelle has equally become a “major player”.

“She has a lot of influence and visibility with parts of the ‘Bolsonarista’ electoral coalition, especially among women and evangelicals.”

The day after the Brazilian election, the president of Bolsonaro’s party even had a meeting with her to discuss the party’s future.

Maldonado said the Bolsonaros who have just entered the political arena are likely to play the “political persecution” card going forward, hoping to galvanise the radicalised supporters who already subscribe to that idea even more.

“This part of the electorate is not minor,” she said. Flavio Bolsonaro “got 59 million votes, and these people have a lot to say still”.

This article was adapted from the original in French by Louise Nordstrom.

 

Protesters clash with police near Colosseum as Italy stages nationwide strike

By Gabriele Barbati & Greta Ruffino

Published on 30 October 2026

People have taken to the streets again in dozens of Italian cities to protest against the rising cost of living, as part of a general strike called by grassroots unions.

Tensions escalated during protests across Italy on Friday, with clashes breaking out between demonstrators and police.

Near the Colosseum in Rome, a small group broke away from the main march, erected barricades, tore down road signs and set rubbish bins on fire. Protesters also hurled bottles at police officers, while eight demonstrators were detained.

Authorities closed Piazza Montecitorio and Piazza Colonna, near Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's office, as a precaution, deploying riot police to secure the area.

The nationwide demonstrations were organised by grassroots union USB against the rising cost of living and rearmament in Europe.

The protest, under the slogan "Shut everything down", involves workers and students, as well as pensioners, housing rights activists and port workers, who are also striking in around 20 countries against the transport of weapons.

Italian authorities are closely monitoring security, after the recent violence in Milan. The Interior Ministry has been put on alert over the possible infiltration of violent groups into the various marches, amid fears of unrest that could continue throughout the weekend, described as "problematic" by Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.

"There are alarms, because there is this very insidious way of activating the squares, but nothing different from what we have dealt with so far", Piantedosi said on Thursday.

In this context, the police plan to step up checks and potentially carry out preventive detentions allowed under the latest security decree. As for transport, reports indicate that services are operating only partially as normal.

A march passes in front of the Ministry of Education at Piazza dell'Emporio. Friday, 30 Oct., 2026. LaPresse

Relate

Where demonstrations are taking place in Italy

In Rome, the march is set to begin mid-morning near Termini station, heading towards the Imperial Forums, with at least 20,000 people expected to take part. Authorities are on high alert along the route, which passes through the historic centre, close to government buildings, the Defence Village at Circus Maximus and the Colosseum area, which was targeted during previous demonstrations.

Hundreds of students gathered nearby, in Piazzale Ostiense, under a slogan referencing the movement that paralysed France, "Le monde est à nous" (The world is ours).

Two marches are taking place in Milan, one organised by students and the other by trade unions and pro-Palestinian activists. They are expected to converge in the morning along Corso Buenos Aires, heading away from the city centre, which was the scene of unrest on 17 and 18 October. There are concerns that demonstrators could try to reach the city's eastern ring road and block traffic, as happened a year ago.

In Turin, a mobilisation organised by USB is taking place, with school and university students, as well as autonomous collectives, joining the march towards the city centre and city hall. The situation is similar in Bologna, while in Naples the demonstration is being led mainly by student movements, which have occupied university buildings and secondary schools in recent days.

In Genoa, dockworkers blocked part of the port area early in the morning using tyres and smoke flares, calling on colleagues from "all over Italy" who "do not want to work for war" to join them. Hundreds of demonstrators also gathered at the entrance to the port of Trieste.

'Let's reclaim our future': Thousands protest in Italy over rising living costs

Thousands of protesters marched across Italy on Friday over the rising cost of living, education funding cuts and government spending on defence. Minor clashes were reported in the northwestern Italian city of Turin, while police maintained a heavy presence across the country.


Issued on: 30/10/2026
By: FRANCE 24

Young people in Italy are calling for more funding for education and housing and cuts to defence spending. © Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP


Thousands of students and workers took to the streets across Italy on Friday, calling for more school funding and relief from the soaring cost of living, amid a high police presence to avert possible clashes.

Friday's Italy-wide protests came after weeks of demonstrations led by students who set up tent camps and occupied schools to make their demands heard – fuelled by similar movements in nearby France and Spain.

A general strike called by Italy's USB trade union attracted thousands of workers to Friday's protests, including truck drivers, taxi drivers and farmers, each of whom have rallied in recent weeks over the spike in fuel prices and to oppose rising defence spending.

Marches were held in dozens of cities up and down the country, including in Bologna, Genoa, Naples, and Turin – where a few minor skirmishes between protesters and riot police occurred at the start of the demonstrations.

In Rome, university student Beatrice Chilelli told AFP students were "at a breaking point".

"They can't afford to pay exorbitant tuition fees, and rent... which weighs heavily on their parents' shoulders," said the 21-year-old, citing student housing in Rome that could reach 1,200 euros per month for a single room.

Police have deployed in large numbers to prevent outbreaks of violence like those earlier this month in Milan. © Andreas Solaro, AFP

Thousands of people left Rome's central Termini train station, accompanied by two tractors and a taxi, making their way past the Colosseum as they waved flags, unfurled banners and shouted into megaphones.

An AFP photographer witnessed a heavy police presence outside the Economy Ministry, which the procession passed by.

"We need more houses, not bombs!" sang one group in the crowd, as a troupe of protesters gave a brief performance imitating terrified civilians in a Gaza bombing raid.

Cover image: Demonstrators light flares during an anti-government protest organized by the Italia in Piazza movement, at Piazza Duomo in Milan, on October 17, 2026. © Piero Cruciatti, AFP
03:08

The Milan protest also began at the central train station, but then headed outside the city – far from the centre where young vandals had looted stores, destroyed property and clashed with police two weeks ago after another sanctioned cost-of-living demonstration.

"Let's reclaim our future" read one banner unfurled by students in Milan.

Police in riot gear blocked off streets, but no major clashes had been reported as of midday.

Besides students, the demonstrators at Friday's protest included teachers, workers and retired people, with one man in Rome bearing a sign that read "Pensioners – Pissed Off and Furious".

Many pro-Palestine flags were seen in the crowds in major cities.

Ahead of the demonstration, a spokesperson for the OSA student movement, 18-year-old Laura Teresi, told AFP she expected a "massive" mobilisation that would empty out schools.

"We will take to the streets to denounce the rearmament policies of (Prime Minister Giorgia) Meloni's government and the rising cost of living, which is weighing ever more heavily on families, workers and students," she added.

The students will also protest against the "endless budget cuts to teaching", Teresi said.
Law and order

Following the October 17-18 weekend of clashes between youth and police in Milan, Meloni's hard-right government toughened laws on public gatherings while easing rules on detaining minors.

The main protest by young people and workers in Rome on Friday will take place near the Colosseum. © Andreas Solaro, AFP

The government also last week agreed on a 175.2-million-euro ($195 million) aid package for truck drivers, farmers and fishermen hit by soaring fuel prices linked to the war in the Middle East.

Measures in favour of young people and families are also planned in the draft 2027 budget currently being discussed among the various governing parties, such as an annual bonus of 2,500 euros for workers under 30.

"I hope this can provide answers for young people in general... who feel that the state doesn't care about them," Meloni said at a press conference on Wednesday, stressing that these measures were "not for those who smash windows".

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

With ‘Largest Coordinated Port Action Ever,’ Dockworkers in 22 Countries Strike Against Gaza Genocide

“We, the workers in the ports, know very well that without us nothing moves. Without our hands, containers remain still, ships are not loaded, the war machines are blocked.”


Seafarers and dockworkers chant slogans as they take part in a march from the port of Piraeus, near Athens, towards Greece’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs on October 30, 2026.
(Photo by Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Oct 30, 2026

COMMON DREAMS

Dockworkers in more than 20 countries—from France to India to Greece—are withholding their labor on Friday to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and highlight the role that commercial ports play in fueling deadly militarism worldwide.

Organizers said the work stoppages, led by dockworkers’ unions at 113 ports across 22 countries, would be the “largest coordinated port action ever,” easily surpassing the international day of action held in February. No Harbour for Genocide, a collective of trade unions and others supporting the day of action, said $2.8 billion worth of cargo will be halted at Mediterranean ports, where workers are planning to strike for 24 hours.

“A cargo refused in one port sails on to the next,” said No Harbour for Genocide. “Refused in every port, it stops, and the workers have enforced the embargo that governments announced and did not.”

In a joint statement last month announcing the day of action, dockworkers’ unions from Türkiye, Morocco, Italy, France, Greece, Italy, and Basque Country laid out their demands:An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and the opening of safe corridor for humanitarian aid.. An end of colonization, occupation and apartheid imposed to Palestinian People and the recognition of an independent Palestinian state recognized by the international community on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

An end to the war in the Middle East. No support, no facilitation, no participation in the US-Israeli war against Iran, Lebanon or any other imperialist intervention. Military fleets and bases out of the region. We express our full solidarity to the people of Cuba and Venezuela and Sudan menaced by US imperialism and we call for defend people’s sovereignty, resources, territorial integrity, peace with justice, and the right for resistance for self-determination.

Ports must not be used for the transport of weapons, ammunition, military equipment and troops. We call on unions to strengthen vigilance, to inform workers, to expose the cargoes of war, and to organize mass collective resistance with all our rightful available means and our struggle.

An end to the militarization of ports and critical infrastructure. Ports belong to the peoples and the workers. They are not bases for NATO, the USA or the EU, nor tools of shipowners and monopoly groups.

No to the war economy and armaments. The money must go to wages, collective agreements, health, education, social needs, and the protection of life and safety at work.
Health and safety measures in the workplaces. Not one worker dead for profits. An end to intensification, subcontracting, dangerous conditions, and employer arbitrariness.

Collective agreements with real wage increases, stable jobs with rights, a retirement policy with better pensions, and a reduction of working time. Technological developments, mechanization, automation, the use of AI and the development of ports must serve the needs of workers, and not lead to the intensification of work or the disappearance of their jobs.

“Our strength lies in organization. It lies in our unions, in general assemblies, in collective decisions, in solidarity among workers from different countries,” the unions said. “We, the workers in the ports, know very well that without us nothing moves. Without our hands, containers remain still, ships are not loaded, the war machines are blocked.”


This is urgent

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Al Jazeera noted that of the ports participating in Friday’s actions, “Genoa, Livorno, and Gioia Tauro in Italy, Marseille in France, Piraeus in Greece, and Tangier in Morocco all have proven links to weapons shipments to Israel.”

The strikes come as Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues despite a ceasefire agreement that putatively took effect last October. A United Nations report published earlier this week noted that “Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocidal acts” in Gaza “even after the so-called ceasefire agreement, with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part.”

The report found that Israel—which is armed and supported diplomatically by Western governments, principally the United States—has “committed war crimes and the crimes against humanity of extermination, persecution, torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence” in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

Port Workers and Communities for Palestine said in a statement Friday that will be demonstrating at the Port of Elizabeth in New Jersey. The coalition said the New Jersey port is the only port on the East Coast of the US where a protest is expected. Demonstrations are also expected in Oakland and San Francisco, California.

“We know that, regardless of what union leadership may decide, workers everywhere stand in solidarity with Palestine,” said Port Workers and Communities for Palestine. “We will be out there on Friday to show them that they are part of this movement too. Workers have the power to stop the war machine.”