Any Trump EPA Attempt to Stop Regulating Climate Pollution Won’t Stand up to the Facts

The science on climate change is so indisputably well-established, that it’s hard to see how any court would uphold a challenge to it.


A man fills his car up with gas at a Brooklyn station in New York City.
(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Rachel Cleetus
Apr 13, 2025

Union of Concerned Scientists/Blog

In a blitz of destructive actions announced by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin last month, he specifically called for a reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. A formal proposal for reconsideration of the finding (and all the agency regulations and actions that depend on it) is expected this month.

The science underpinning the Endangerment Finding is airtight, but that won’t stop the Trump administration from setting up a rigged process to try to undo it and give a blank check to polluters. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) will fight back to defend climate science and protect public health safeguards.

In an earlier post, I laid out some of the history and context for the 2009 science-backed Endangerment Finding and the Cause or Contribute Finding. These findings followed from the landmark 2007 Mass v. EPA Supreme Court ruling which held that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are unambiguously air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. Together, these establish the clear basis for EPA’s authority and responsibility to set pollutions limits for heat-trapping emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other sources of these pollutants, under the Clean Air Act.

There is nothing mysterious about the heat-trapping attributes of greenhouse gases, nor their impact on public health. It’s called science.

Attacks on the Endangerment Finding and EPA’s Clean Air Act authority from industry interests are nothing new. Importantly, courts have repeatedly upheld both, including in a resounding 2012 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals–D.C. Circuit in Citizens for Responsible Regulation v. EPA. But those who have long sought to overturn or weaken regulations to limit heat-trapping emissions now have Administrator Zeldin in their corner. And he has shown himself to be an unbridled purveyor of disinformation and proponent of harmful attacks on bedrock public health protections, as my colleague Julie McNamara highlights.

The details of what will be included in the reconsideration proposal are unclear at this point. But we do know some of the trumped-up lines of attack the Zeldin EPA could advance to try to invalidate these findings because many of these tired arguments are outlined in EPA’s reconsideration announcement.

Here are the facts:

Fact No. 1: The Science Backing the Endangerment Finding Is Beyond Dispute

Every major scientific society endorses the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change driven by GHG emissions. The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report are two major recent authoritative summaries of peer-reviewed climate science, which show that the science on climate change has only become more dire and compelling since 2009.

The impacts of climate change on human health are also starkly clear and backed by overwhelming evidence. Here’s the main finding from the NCA5 chapter on public health, for instance:
Climate change is harming physical, mental, spiritual, and community health through the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, higher incidences of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and declines in food and water security. These impacts worsen social inequities. Emissions reductions, effective adaptation measures, and climate-resilient health systems can protect human health and improve health equity.

As just one example, climate change is contributing to worsening extreme heat, which exerts a punishing toll on people’s health, including that of outdoor workers. Heat is already the leading cause of extreme weather-related deaths in the United States, and studies show that heat-related mortality is on the rise.

Looking around the nation, with communities reeling from extreme heatwaves, intensified hurricanes, catastrophic wildfires, and record flooding, climate impacts are the lived reality of all too many people. To deny that or obfuscate about the underlying causes is not only disingenuous, but actively harmful and outright cruel.
Fact No. 2: The Law Requires an Independent Scientific Determination of Endangerment, Unhindered by Cost Considerations

A Finding of Endangerment under the Clean Air Act is specifically focused on a threshold scientific determination of whether the pollutant under consideration harms public health or welfare. Costs to industry of meeting any subsequent regulations are not relevant per the statute.

The original Endangerment Finding was reached in the context of the vehicle emissions, per section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, partially excerpted below:
The administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.

In its 2012 decision, the D.C. Circuit was also clear is noting that “By employing the verb ‘shall,’ Congress vested a non-discretionary duty in EPA.” That duty is not circumscribed by cost considerations.

Of course, the impacts of climate change are themselves incredibly costly and those costs are mounting as heat-trapping emissions rise. Unsurprisingly, the social cost of greenhouse gases, a science-based estimate of those costs, is another metric that the Trump EPA is seeking to undermine in yet another blatant attempt to put a thumb on the scale in favor of polluting industries.

Fact No. 3: EPA Used Well-Established Methodologies in Its Assessment of Six GHGs

As noted in the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the EPA defined the pollutant contributing to climate change as “the aggregate group of the well-mixed greenhouse gases” with similar attributes. The attributes include that they are sufficiently long-lived, directly emitted, contribute to climate warming, and are a focus of science and policy.

The EPA used a very well-established scientific methodology to combine emissions of GHGs on the basis of their heat-trapping potential, measured in carbon-dioxide equivalents. In the case of passenger cars, light- and heavy-duty trucks, buses, and motorcycles—the transportation sources EPA considered for the original Endangerment Finding—they emitted four key greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons.

False, glib claims in the reconsideration announcement baselessly accuse the 2009 Endangerment Finding of making “creative leaps” and “mysterious” choices. There is nothing mysterious about the heat-trapping attributes of greenhouse gases, nor their impact on public health. It’s called science. Once again, relying on the mountain of evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific literature would make that readily apparent.

Fact No. 4: EPA Has the Responsibility and Authority to Regulate Major Sources of GHGs

The Cause or Contribute Finding—which specifically established that greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles contribute to the pollution that harms public health—may also come under attack. This finding has been extended to other major sources of GHGs, including power plants and oil and gas operations. However, the Trump administration could attempt to use accounting tricks to avoid regulating emissions—as it has tried before.

In its first term, the administration attempted multiple underhanded maneuvers along these lines, including in the context of methane and volatile organic compound regulations in the oil and gas sector. For these regulations, the administration split up segments of the source category, designated them as separate source categories, used that manipulation to claim inability to regulate certain segments, and asserted that methane emissions from the remaining segments were too small and regulating them would not provide additional benefits, so those too could not be regulated. Separately, in the final days of the administration, EPA released an absurd framework attempting to set thresholds for determining “significance,” trialed in the context of power plants.

This irrational approach could be used to artificially segment components of power plants or the power system, for example, and then claim no regulations are required. This kind of rigged math wouldn’t fool a kindergarten child, but there’s no telling where this administration might go in its desperate attempt to undo or weaken regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Zeldin’s Relentless Subversion of EPA’s Mission

Under Administrator Zeldin, EPA’s mission to protect public health and the environment has been completely subverted. His shocking rhetoric lays bare how far he will go to protect polluters at the expense of the public. Here he is, for instance, crowing about going after 31+ EPA regulations and guidance, as well as the enforcement of pollution standards meant to protect all of us:
Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion…

EPA even set up an email address for polluters to send an email to get a presidential exemption from complying with regulations on toxic pollution, such as mercury emissions, regulated under the Clean Air Act!

Zeldin is fervently committed to dismantling public health protections and rolling back enforcement of existing laws passed by Congress. Going after the Endangerment Finding is an integral part of this all-out assault because, in the Trump administration’s harmful calculation, revoking the finding is a potential means to rolling back all the regulations that depend on it.

Ironically, some utilities and oil and gas companies have spoken out in favor of keeping the finding intact, as they fear a greater risk of climate damages lawsuits in the absence of EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Of course, this just exposes that they know their products are causing damage. What they seek is the weakest possible exercise of EPA authority so they can continue to reap profits while evading accountability for those harms.

We Can Fight Back With Science

But none of this is a foregone conclusion. The legal and scientific basis for the Endangerment Finding is incredibly strong. The false claims Zeldin and other opponents have trotted out are full of bombast but weak on substance.

The science on climate change is so indisputably well-established, that it’s hard to see how any court would uphold a challenge to it. That’s not to say Zeldin won’t try to find a cabal of fringe “scientists” to try to attack it, but they’re unlikely to succeed on the merits.

Public comments on the proposal to reconsider the Endangerment Finding can help set the record straight on facts. And if the Zeldin EPA ignores them and finalizes a sham finding or revokes the finding with a faulty rationale, that will be challenged in court.

UCS will be closely following the details of EPA’s proposal to reconsider the Endangerment Finding when it is released. And we will let you know how you can add your voice to bolster this crucial science-based finding, and the public health protections that flow from it. So, stay tuned!


© 2023 Union of Concerned Scientists

Rachel Cleetus  is the policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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IRS Collaboration With ICE Threatens Its Core Mission

Using the IRS and its resources for immigration enforcement violates privacy laws and undermines public trust in the agency, impacting its ability to collect revenue.


A sign for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is seen outside its building on February 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Marco Guzman
Apr 13, 2025

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Attempts by the Department of Homeland Security to secure private information from the Internal Revenue Service on people who file taxes with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number is a violation of federal privacy laws that protect taxpayers. It is also a change that could seriously damage public trust in the IRS, which could jeopardize billions of dollars in tax payments by hardworking immigrant families.

The recent memorandum of understanding between the IRS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—which led to the resignation of the Acting IRS Commissioner—establishes procedures for requesting taxpayer information under IRC section 6103(i)(2) for criminal investigations. But that section is clear: Taxpayer information is confidential unless Congress specifically authorizes disclosure. No such authorization exists for routine immigration enforcement.

Using the IRS and its resources for immigration enforcement is a departure from the agency’s core mission, which is to administer tax laws. What’s more, federal privacy law unambiguously protects all taxpayer information, meaning tax returns and taxpayer information must remain confidential except under very specific circumstances that do not include immigration enforcement. This weaponization should worry all filers, because if this can be done without congressional authorization then it can be done to other groups as well.

Every 10-percentage point drop in the income tax compliance rate of undocumented immigrants would lower federal tax revenue by $8.6 billion per year, and state and local tax collections by $900 million per year.

Besides the privacy implications, there are other important considerations when we look at how this will affect immigrant families.

We know that undocumented immigrants pay taxes. Recent Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy research finds that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022, with more than a third of that amount ($37.3 billion) going to states and localities.

Deporting immigrants on a large scale would cause most of those revenues to vanish from public coffers. Both income and sales tax revenues would be reduced as these individuals would no longer be in the U.S. earning taxable incomes and making taxable purchases.

We predict a $7.9 billion reduction in annual revenue for every 1 million undocumented people who exit the country, with $2.5 billion of that coming out of state and local budgets.

But these figures almost certainly understate the true revenue cost of deportations. They don’t account for losses to business outputs and workforce declines in sectors like construction and agriculture. They don’t consider the effects these efforts will have on documented immigrants who may be erroneously swept up in this. And they don’t try to measure how deportations may lead immigrant families to retreat from public view, constrained to less formal, off-the-books employment at jobs less likely to withhold income tax from paychecks.

Our analysis suggests that every 10-percentage point drop in the income tax compliance rate of undocumented immigrants would lower federal tax revenue by $8.6 billion per year, and state and local tax collections by $900 million per year.

Marco Guzman is a senior analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
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Elon Musk’s Death Drive

Is it possible that by promising to end “death by bureaucracy,” he has willfully sowed the seeds of his own political demise?


CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk wields a chainsaw as he leaves the stage alongside Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
(Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Carl Rhodes
Apr 13, 2025

Common Dreams

On Saturday, April 5 hundreds of thousands gathered across the United States rallying under the banner of “hands off.” The protest was against the devastation wielded by the Trump government on public services, consumer protections, public healthcare, and trade freedom. The protesters’ ire turned especially to Elon Musk’s work with the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) radically downsizing U.S. government spending. “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Elon Musk has to go!” They chanted

The scenes of public dissent were in sharp contrast to the image of Musk, just a few months ago, taking the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington raising a chainsaw high in the air with boyish glee. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” he extolled, referring to his aggressively ruthless ambition to ax $2 trillion from the U.S. federal budget.

The April protests are a sign that Musk’s fresh-faced jubilance and billionaire-funded political luck might be running out at the hands of his own destructive impulses. As Musk wantonly fights against what he calls “civilizational suicidal empathy,” is it possible that by promising to end “death by bureaucracy,” he has willfully sowed the seeds of his own political demise?

He represents a very particular marriage of politics and capitalism that has no respect for the law, believing that the masters of industry should also be the masters of the world, unencumbered by stuffy bureaucrats trying to stymie their pursuit of greatness.

Musk portrays himself as the billionaire version of the classic vigilante: the man (almost always) who takes the law into his own hands in search of a self-styled brand of justice and effectiveness. A significant part of Musk’s cultural cache is that he exploits the vigilante myth, portraying himself as the savior of an America dream destroyed by corrupt and inefficient democratic institutions.

President Donald Trump described Musk’s vigilante appeal well: “Elon is doing a great job, but I would like to see him get more aggressive. Remember, we have a country to save.” Destruction, redemption, and emancipation driven by masculine emotion is at the heart of Musk’s DOGE endeavor.

Vigilantes achieve their ambitions through self-justified law breaking, reflected in Musk’s DOGE being condemned as illegal. With unwavering confidence in their own convictions, vigilantes feel justified in using whatever powers they have to ensure what they think is right is enforced—and in Musk’s case that is a lot of power.

Unlike the vigilantes we see on television or in the movies, Musk is not a violent avenger seeking justice through the barrel of a gun (or even at the end of chain saw). His weapons are not firearms but money and power. He is portrayed as “the DOGEfather” in vigilante reference to Don Corleone, the eponymous anti-hero of 1972 gangster film The Godfather.

Musk acts out billionaire vigilantism par excellence. He represents a very particular marriage of politics and capitalism that has no respect for the law, believing that the masters of industry should also be the masters of the world, unencumbered by stuffy bureaucrats trying to stymie their pursuit of greatness.

The aggression of Musk’s ambition to slash government and upturn the institutions of democracy appears to be turning against up him. His popularity is nosediving as his unpredictable and conflict-ridden behavior escalates. Musk may have taken the stereotype of the vigilante to such extremes that he is exercising a death wish not just on his own political career but on very idea of the heroic billionaire savior.

The tides are certainly changing. Musk may have used his wealth to influence the presidential election last year, but this month his $25 million spend could not secure Trump’s preferred candidate Brad Schimel in the campaign for as seat in Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Tesla’s sales around the world have plummeted, with people seemingly embarrassed at the prospect of being seen to be associated with Musk. Many are putting bumper stickers on their cars with slogans such as “I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy.” In Britain social media campaigners Everyone Hates Elon orchestrated a public art project where people took sledgehammers to a donated Tesla Model S. Their purpose was “to create a debate about wealth inequality.”

Employees are not far behind. Musk practically begged them not to sell Tesla stock holdings. Meanwhile investors are calling for Musk to resign as CEO of Tesla as he gets more and more embroiled in political controversy and Tesla’s market value stumbles. In the the not too recent past conservatives rallied behind the slogan “go woke, go broke.” This is rapidly turning around to “go MAGA, go broke.”

Musk’s outlandish death drive might end up killing the vigilante myth he trades on rather than killing American democracy. Time will tell, but for now there are plenty of reasons to hope that it will.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Carl Rhodes is professor of organization studies at UTS Business School in Sydney, Australia. His research critically investigates the relationship between business and politics, with a special focus on justice, equality, resistance, dissent, and democracy. His latest book is “Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire” (Bristol University Press, 2025).
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Today’s ‘Death Squad’ Dems Enable the Trump-Backed Slaughter in Yemen, Gaza, and Beyond

The truth is that a number of Democratic members of Congress, whom millions of people see as leading the resistance, actually ally with Trump on foreign policy.


A man carries his child near the rubble of a building targeted by the United States' aerial attacks on March 20, 2025, in Sanaa, Yemen
(Photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)

Stephen Zunes
Apr 14, 2025

The Progressive

On March 15, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz informed fellow Trump Administration officials through their now-infamous Signal chat that a U.S. missile attack had resulted in the collapse of an apartment building filled with Yemeni civilians. Vice President JD Vance replied, “Excellent.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill have since expressed outrage—not at the deaths of innocent civilians, or at the United States’ unprovoked attack on a sovereign country, but at the fact that the conversation was not more carefully shielded from the public.

The Trump administration claims to have resumed bombing in Yemen to stop the Houthi rebels’ attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea, despite the fact that the Houthis, who serve as the de facto government of much of the country, had ceased those attacks months ago. Scores of Yemeni civilians have died since the United States resumed the bombing last month. Air strikes have denied tens of thousands of people in this impoverished country access to electricity and drinking water. The Democratic leadership in Congress has refused to condemn this destruction or attempt to invoke the War Powers Resolution, which was enacted in 1973 to limit a president’s ability to engage in armed conflict without the consent of Congress.

Today, it is the majority of congressional Democrats who are allying with a Republican President to support war crimes and undermine international humanitarian law.

Those same Democratic leaders have expressed little opposition to President Donald Trump’s support of Israel’s ongoing occupation forces in Lebanon, which violate the terms of the cease-fire agreement made between Israel and Lebanon last fall. Nor have the Democrats objected to Trump’s support for Israel’s violation of its 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria, or his defense of the ongoing large-scale seizure of Palestinian lands and destruction of villages in the occupied West Bank.

And it’s not just Israel. The Democratic leadership has also backed Trump’s arms shipments and other support for oppressive Arab dictatorships, including Morocco, whose illegal annexation of Western Sahara he recognized in 2020, violating a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a landmark ruling of the International Court of Justice.

Soon after Trump launched his war on Yemen, Israel’s far-right government tore up its cease-fire agreement with Hamas, which was the product of months of negotiations led by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the indicted war criminal feted this week in Washington, D.C., relaunched devastating air strikes as Israeli troops re-occupied large swathes of the territory, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people.

More than 1,000 Palestinians, primarily civilians, have been killed in these post-cease-fire attacks, including more than 300 children. The recent execution-style slaying of 15 paramedics and rescue workers in clearly marked ambulances by Israeli forces, who attempted a coverup by burying the victims and their vehicles in a mass grave, has sparked international outrage.

Meanwhile, both Netanyahu and Trump are pushing forward with their plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip of surviving Palestinians in order to develop resorts there, per Trump’s aspiration. Rather than try to force 2.3 million people out by bayonet point, the U.S. and Israel appear determined to drive out the population by bombing civilians and blocking food and medicines from entering the besieged enclave, forcing the remaining population to flee in order to survive.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has sponsored Joint Resolutions of Disapproval over some of Trump’s continued backing of Netanyahu.

“As a result of Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid into Gaza, many thousands of children there face malnutrition and even starvation,” Sanders said. “Sadly, and illegally, much of the carnage in Gaza has been carried out with U.S.-provided military equipment. Providing more offensive weapons to continue this disastrous war would violate U.S. and international law.”

Among the weapons included in the resolution are 35,000 two-thousand-pound bombs, which have caused thousands of civilian casualties over the past 18 months. The international outcry over these war crimes was so great that even President Joe Biden suspended their shipment last spring. Trump insisted that such arms shipments should be resumed, however, and the majority of Senate Democrats are supporting him.

Indeed, only 14 Democratic Senators voted for Sanders’ resolutions to block the transfer of these and other deadly weapons.

This was not a result of political pressure. Only 15% of Americans and just 5% of Democrats support additional military aid to Israel. Senate offices were flooded with calls to support the resolutions in a campaign organized by a wide array of peace, human rights, and religious organizations. Despite this, more than 70% of Senate Democrats sided with Trump and the arms industry over the wishes of their constituents.

The truth is that a number of Democratic members of Congress, whom millions of people see as leading the resistance, actually ally with Trump on foreign policy.

While Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)—a prominent supporter of Trump’s massive arms transfers—was widely praised for his marathon speech warning of the dangers of Trump’s policies, few pointed out that Booker expressed support for Trump’s backing of Israel’s far-right government and autocratic Arab allies during his address and joined the majority of Democrats if voting against limiting arms shipments.

Instead of challenging Trump’s Middle East policies, today’s opposition party resembles the so-called “Death Squad Democrats” who backed former President Ronald Reagan’s policy in Central America. The difference is that such Democratic militarists were then in the minority. Today, it is the majority of congressional Democrats who are allying with a Republican President to support war crimes and undermine international humanitarian law.

Had today’s Democrats been in office 40 years ago, they would have likely backed arming the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, the death squads in El Salvador, and the Guatemalan genocide against the indigenous Mayans. A few years earlier, they would have probably supported former President Richard Nixon’s carpet bombing of Vietnam.

Perhaps today’s Democratic Party leadership assumes that the threat to basic government institutions and our very democracy posed by the Republicans is so great that progressive voters will support their candidates even if they side with Trump on such issues as offensive military operations, arms control, human rights, and international law.

This is not necessarily the case, however. Polls have shown that Democratic support for Israel’s war on Gaza was the number one issue among the 19 million voters who backed Biden in 2020 but did not vote for Kamala Harris in 2024.

Indeed, a case could be made that, given the closeness of the presidential election and some key congressional races, Democratic support for Israel’s wars on its neighbors cost them the White House and both houses of Congress.

A growing number of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters do see opposing ethnic cleansing, undeclared wars, massacres of civilians, and other crimes as a fundamental principle that’s worth defending. Even if that means standing up to the party’s leadership.


© 2023 The Progressive


Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as coordinator of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. Recognized as one the country's leading scholars of U.S. Middle East policy and of strategic nonviolent action, Professor Zunes serves as a senior policy analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, a contributing editor of Tikkun, and co-chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
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As Trump Dismantles the Republic, Where Are Its Former Leaders?

Tens of millions of Americans voted for our past presidents. They are waiting for them to speak up, stand up, and mightily help lead the fight to stop Trump’s mayhem against the American people in red and blue states.



(L-R) Former U.S. Vice Presidents Al Gore and Mike Pence, Karen Pence, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former U.S. President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, former U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Melania Trump, former U.S. President Joe Biden, Jill Biden, former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and Doug Emhoff attend the state funeral for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Washington National Cathedral on January 9, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Ralph Nader
Apr 13, 2025

Common Dreams

If there was ever a strong contemporary case for declaring that silence is complicity, consider the hush of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and even George W. Bush as they grind their teeth over the Donald Trump-Elon Musk wrecking of America. Trump is destroying freedom of speech and due process, abolishing democratic restraints, and establishing a criminal fascistic dictatorship.

Trump pounds Biden for the Trump administration’s blunders and failures an average of six times a day. These assaults go unrebutted by the Delaware recluse, nursing his political wounds.

The Clintons? Bill sticks to his private telephone wailings. While Hillary, who gave us Trump in 2016 with her smug, stupid campaign, penned a self-anthem op-ed in The New York Times on March 28, 2025. She writes: “Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.” Trump is not belligerent enough for the war hawk Hillary Clinton who has been the pro-Iraq sociocider butcher of Libya and the ardent supporter behind provocative “force projection” of the Empire around the world.

What would all the GIs, who they caused to lose their lives in their presidential wars, think of their timidity?

Before turning to the excuses for essentially shutting themselves up during our country’s greatest political upheaval—unconstitutional and criminal to the core—here is what prominent former Democratic presidents and presidential candidates COULD do:Tens of millions of Americans voted for our past presidents. They are waiting for their leaders to speak up, stand up, and mightily help lead the fight to stop Trump’s mayhem against the American people in red and blue states. The people want former Democratic leaders to galvanize the Democratic Party, still largely in disarray about confronting Trump.

Don’t they know they have a trusteeship obligation to citizens, many of whom are voicing their demands for a comprehensive plan of offense against the GOP in town meetings and other forums?

The media, threatened daily by Trump, is eager to give former Democratic Party leaders coverage.They are all mega-millionaires, very capable of raising many more millions of dollars quickly with their fame and lists of followers. They know very rich people as friends. They could set up strike forces in Washington and around the country to provide needed, fighting attorneys, organizers, and other specialists to ride head-on against the proven damage to health, safety, and economic well-being of people here and abroad and counter Trump’s daily cruel and vicious assaults. They could end Trump’s unrebutted soliloquy of lies and false scenarios over mainstream and social media.
They could push the Democrats in Congress to hold constant “unofficial” public hearings and file resolutions and legislation that provide the daily evidence of this dictator and his recidivistic criminality and push for impeachment and Trump’s removal from office. Impossible, you might say with the GOP in narrow control on Capitol Hill. Look back at Richard Nixon who for far fewer violations was told by Republican senators that his time was up. Politicians save their political skin in approaching elections before rescuing an unstable, egomaniacal, vengeful politician like the one now camped at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Trump will be soon plunging in polls and stock market drops, inflation, recession, and more Gestapo-like kidnappings and disappearances to foreign prisons of targeted individuals. These conditions are not popular with the American people.
The former Democratic leaders could do what Bernie Sanders is doing and traverse the country supporting the fighting civic spirit of the American people who oppose the painful afflictions wrought by Tyrant Trump.
Gore is well-credentialed to show how the actions of Hurricane Donald, Tornado Trump, Drought Donald, and Wildfire Musk’s fossil-fuel-driven greenhouse gases are leading to a climate catastrophe. The facts and trends Trump omnicidally ignores need to be front and center.

Even George W. Bush, known for causing the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis and the destruction of their country by his criminal war of aggression has a beef. His sole claim to being a “compassionate conservative”—the funding of life-saving AIDS medicines overseas—has gone down in flames with Trump’s illegal demolition of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Bush may be mumbling about this, but he’s staying in his corner painting landscapes.

All this abhorrent quietude in the face of what they all believe is a mortal attack on the Republic has the following excuses:

First, they don’t want to get into a pissing match with a slanderous ugly viper, who unleashes his hordes of haters on the internet. That’s quite a surrender of patriotic duty at a time of unprecedented peril. What would all the GIs, who they caused to lose their lives in their presidential wars, think of their timidity?

Second, it wouldn’t have much impact. America doesn’t listen to “has-beens.” Then why is Obama still the most popular retired politician in America with over 130 million followers on Twitter? That attitude is just convenient escapism.

Third, plunging into the raucous political arena with the Trumpsters and Musketeers is just too disruptive of a comfortable daily routine life by politicians who believe they have been there, done that, and deserve a respite. Self-diminishment gets you nowhere with tens of millions of people in distress who seek powerful amplifiers from well-known leaders behind the demand that Trump understands: YOU’RE FIRED, ringing throughout the nation from liberals and betrayed Trump voters hurting in the same ways. That mass demand is what pushes impeachment of the most visibly impeachable president in American history.

In the final analysis, it comes down to their absence of civic self-respect and cowardliness in confronting Der Fuhrer. Aristotle was right: “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”

Want Equitable Tax Policy? Listen to the Patriotic Millionaires, Not Donald Trump

The new Patriotic Millionaires tax plan isn’t going to become the law of the land anytime soon, but it could help refocus America’s political debate onto the dynamics that are threatening to destroy our democracy.



A mobile billboard calling for higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy depicts an image of billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos, near the U.S. Capitol on May 17, 2021 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sam Pizzigati
Apr 14, 2025

Inequality.org

Republican leaders in Congress have been working feverishly over recent days to renew the rich people-friendly 2017 Trump tax cuts set to expire at this year’s end. Both the House and Senate have now passed bills that do that renewing—and also add in some assorted new goodies.

All that remains before this latest giveaway to grand fortune becomes law: a bit of dickering between House and Senate GOP leaders over the tax cut’s particulars and then President Donald Trump’s John Henry on whatever legislation that dickering ends up producing.

Trump can barely wait for the signing ceremony. But he’s also pushing for much more than an extension—and expansion—of those 2017 tax cuts. His ultimate goal: erasing taxes on income from the entire federal tax code.

Some 48% of Americans say they worry “a great deal” about how “income and wealth are distributed,” a remarkably high share of the public given how seldom our media and politics directly address that distribution.

“You know,” Trump told a press conference this past Tuesday, “our country was the strongest, believe it or not, from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff based. We had no income tax.”

Over those years, federal revenue most certainly did come mostly from tariffs. And those tariffs did work wonders—for the nation’s rich. Our original Gilded Age wealthy frolicked in an America where the rich and their corporations could essentially operate however they pleased. They could pay their workers precious little and cavalierly short-change consumers at every opportunity.

In that same America, the federal government did precious little to protect average Americans from greed and grasping—and even less to make their lives more economically secure.

Changing that profoundly unequal state of affairs took decades of organizing on the part of workers, farmers, and middle-class reformers. By 1913, that organizing had paid off. The ratification of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that year gave Congress the authority to levy income taxes. By the end of World War I, America’s wealthy faced a 79% levy on their top tax-bracket income.

But the nation’s rich would come roaring back in the Roaring Twenties. America’s wealthiest flexed their political muscles enough to get that top tax rate down to 25%. They would go on to party hardy throughout that decade, right up until the 1929 stock market crash. The 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that Trump so likes to trumpet helped turn that crash into the Great Depression.

Amid that unprecedented downturn, America’s grassroots would rise up and break the plutocratic lockgrip on public policy. Working people would gain collective bargaining rights. Seniors would gain Social Security. The super rich would gasp as federal tax rates on their top-bracket income jumped to over 90%.

The end result? By the mid-1950s, over half America’s households had money left over after meeting their most basic living expenses. No modern nation had ever before reached that status.

That share-the-wealth momentum, unfortunately, would soon begin ebbing. Since the late 1970s, as the Economic Policy Institute has detailed, only Americans of substantial means have been sharing in Corporate America’s economic bounty.

How can we change this top-heavy state of affairs? Last week, at an unusual conference in Washington, D.C., activists highlighted a detailed agenda for making America start working for all Americans, not just the wealthiest among us. What made this confab so unusual? The people who put it together all just happen to rate as wealthy themselves.


The sponsor of this How To Beat the Broligarchs gathering: Patriotic Millionaires, the national group that’s been organizing Americans of means to “tax the rich, pay the people, and spread the power” since 2010. This past week’s broligarch-bashing conference gave these millionaires—and activists and scholars equally interested in creating a more equal United States—a vibrant forum for sharing information, insights, and, most importantly, an ambitious gameplan for ending rule by the rich.

“Our economy should be judged on how well it takes care of working people,” as Patriotic Millionaires founder Erica Payne notes, “not on how many billionaires it mints in a calendar day.”

To take better care of working people, the new Patriotic Millionaires economic plan, entitled America 250: The Money Agenda, proposes a “Cost of Living Tax Cut Act” that would exempt all annual income up to $41,600—the current cost of living for the typical American adult—from federal income tax.

Another Patriotic Millionaires-proposed piece of legislation, the “Cost of Living Wage Act,” would nearly triple the federal minimum wage, from $7.25 an hour to $20, a rate that would adjust every year to rising prices.

To help trim our richest down to something resembling democratic size—and offset the cost of exempting low incomes from income tax—the Patriotic Millionaires plan would also start subjecting millionaires to a surtax on their taxes due.

Another part of the plan would tax the capital gains millionaires pocket—their profits from buying and selling stocks and other assets—at the same rate as ordinary earned income. Still another plan section would essentially prevent the mostly tax-free intergenerational transfer of assets from the super rich to their super fortunate offspring.

What makes that prevention so important? Under current law, point out Patriotic Millionaires analyst Bob Lord and law professors Brian Galle and David Gamage in a new research paper, between 80 and 90% of the wealth “that rich families have set aside for their heirs will likely never be subject” to the over-a-century-old federal estate tax.

The first phase of the “Anti-Oligarchy Act” the Patriotic Millionaires plan is proposing would have all inheritances over $1 million taxed as ordinary income. This phase would also “impose a progressive tax on large sums of trust-held wealth to limit the accumulation of dynastic wealth.”

The second phase would seek to impose “a tax on the wealth of the richest Americans sufficient to reduce their wealth to a level in harmony with the ideals of democracy, amending the United States Constitution if necessary.”

The pollsters at Gallup have just asked Americans if they worry “a great deal”—or much less—about 16 different current-day concerns. Some 48% of Americans say they worry “a great deal” about how “income and wealth are distributed,” a remarkably high share of the public given how seldom our media and politics directly address that distribution.

The new Patriotic Millionaires tax plan obviously isn’t going to become the law of the land anytime soon. But the plan could help refocus America’s political debate onto the dynamics that are threatening to destroy our democracy. Let’s get that debate going. Soon.

'Cruel and Dangerous': Trump Ends Protected Status for Afghans and Cameroonians

One advocate said the move was "yet another example of the Trump administration using immigration policy to target the most vulnerable among us."

Denis, from Cameroon, is greeted by supporters after speaking during a rally with activists from CASA, SEIU and, other organizations in Lafayette Park to demand "Temporary Protected Status for Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador on International Workers Day," on Monday, May 1, 2023.
(Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)


Olivia Rosane
Apr 12, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it was revoking the Temporary Protected Status—or TPS—for thousands of immigrants from Cameroon and Afghanistan who are currently living and working in the United States.

The move, the latest attempt by the administration to roll back protections for migrants in the U.S. who cannot safely return to their home countries due to conflict or natural disasters, comes despite the fact that advocates say conditions in both countries remain dangerous.

"TPS exists for a reason: to protect people whose return to their country would place them in grave danger. Afghanistan today is still reeling from Taliban rule, economic collapse, and humanitarian disaster. Nothing about that reality has changed," president and CEO of Global Refuge Krish O'Mara Vignarajah said in a statement. "Terminating protections for Afghans is a morally indefensible betrayal of allies who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us to advance American interests throughout our country's longest war."

"We cannot afford to lose this protection; our lives depend on it."

President Donald Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants a central plank of his 2024 campaign. However, since taking office, he has consistently moved not only to crack down on undocumented immigration but to revoke the status of migrants who are in the country legally. This has included attempting to strip TPS from other nationalities, revoking visas and even green cards from immigrants from certain countries or who voice opinions the administration dislikes, and ordering nearly 1 million people who entered the country using a Biden-administration app to leave "immediately."

Friday's decision would impact more than 14,600 Afghans and 7,900 Cameroonians, who would now have to leave the country by May and June respectively, according toAl Jazeera.

TPS means that immigrants from certain countries undergoing conflict or hardship—who may not qualify for asylum—will not be deported and will be able to work legally in the U.S. until the situation in their home country improves.

Cameroonians have been grated TPS due to civil conflict between the government and separatists that sparked in 2017. The violence has collapsed the economy and forced almost 1 million people to flee their homes within the country. More than 1.8 million people there urgently need humanitarian assistance.

"TPS has been a lifeline that has allowed me to live in safety and dignity," Amos, a Cameroonian TPS holder and member of CASA—a group that organizes working class Black, Latino, African-descendant, Indigenous, and immigrant communities—said in a statement. "Returning to Cameroon would put me and thousands of others in grave danger, as violence and government attacks continue to devastate our communities back home. With the protection of TPS, I have been able to build a stable life in the U.S., contribute meaningfully to my community, and pursue a future full of promise. We cannot afford to lose this protection; our lives depend on it."

CASA executive director Gustavo Torres said: "By ending TPS for Cameroon, President Trump has again prioritized his instincts for ethnic cleansing by forcibly returning people to violence, human rights violations, and a humanitarian crisis in Cameroon that continues to place its citizens at severe risk. Cameroon clearly meets the statutory basis for the redesignation of TPS. This termination of TPS is a xenophobic attack that targets our families and neighbors and endangers the economy of the U.S."

In Afghanistan, the Taliban government continues to violate human rights, arresting Afghans who worked with the U.S.-backed government and severely limiting the freedom of women and girls.

"For Afghan women and girls, ending these humanitarian protections means ending access to opportunity, freedom, and safety," Vignarajah said. "Forcing them back to Taliban rule, where they face systemic oppression and gender-based violence, would be an utterly unconscionable stain on our nation's reputation."

In addition, the Biden administration determined in 2023 that conflict in the country contributed to internal displacement and economic instability, making it difficult for people there to access food, water, and healthcare.

Council on American-Islamic relations-California CEO Hussam Ayloush said:
Ending TPS for Afghans and Cameroonians is a cruel and dangerous escalation of the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda and a shameful betrayal of our moral and humanitarian obligations. These individuals have fled war, persecution, and instability—and, in the case of many Afghans, risked their lives to support U.S. operations. This decision will separate families and force people into the shadows. For some of them, TPS may be their only option for protection from deportation. It's yet another example of the Trump administration using immigration policy to target the most vulnerable among us. Decisions such as these deepen fear in our communities and erode trust in our government's commitment to protecting human rights.

There is a good chance, however, that the administration's decision will not stand up in court. A federal judge has already temporarily blocked its attempt to end protections for Venezuelans, saying the order was "motivated by unconstitutional animus."

"We will closely examine the terminations to determine whether the government complied with the TPS statute in determining Afghanistan and Cameroon are now safe to accept returns of their nationals as required by the TPS statute," Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney who helped bring the case challenging the ending of TPS status for Venezuelans, toldThe New York Times.

Sanders and AOC Draw Crowd of 20,000+ in Utah—A State Trump Won by Over 20 Points

"We're here in so-called 'conservative' Utah, and tomorrow we're gonna be in Idaho," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "Because we believe that in every state of this country, people are prepared to stand up and fight."


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appear before a crowd of 20,000 people in Salt Lake City, Utah on April 13, 2025.
(Photo: Bernie Sanders/X.com)

Jake Johnson
Apr 14, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew a crowd of more than 20,000 people in Salt Lake City, Utah on Sunday for the latest stop on the progressive duo's "Fight Oligarchy" tour, which has attracted energized audiences across the United States as public anger at the Trump administration mounts.

"We're here in so-called 'conservative' Utah, and tomorrow we're gonna be in Idaho. Because we believe that in every state of this country, people are prepared to stand up and fight," Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd gathered in Salt Lake City's Huntsman Center.

Roughly 4,000 people were in the overflow crowd outside the Huntsman Center, according to the Vermont senator's communications director. President Donald Trump won the state of Utah by more than 20 percentage points in the 2024 election.

"We are living in the most dangerous moments in the modern history of this country," Sanders told the Salt Lake City audience. "We are living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control our government... We do not want a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class—we want a government that represents all of us."

Sanders' remarks followed a fiery speech by Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has emerged as a leading voice against the Trump administration and outspoken critic of the Democratic leadership's capitulation in the face of what the progressive lawmakers characterized as a growing authoritarian threat.

"We are at a crossroads in America," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We can either have extreme and growing wealth inequality with the toxic division and corruption that it requires to survive, or we can have a fair economy for working people along with the democracy and freedoms that uphold it."

"Oligarchy or democracy," she added, "but we cannot have both."

Watch the rally in full:



The Salt Lake City event came after a week in which Trump continued to wreak global havoc with his billionaire-enriching tariff chaos and Republicans in Congress moved ahead with another round of tax breaks for the wealthy—giveaways they want to pay for, in part, with massive cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.

"It does not surprise us that their first economic mission has been to target Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, firing our federal workers, and cutting benefits from our veterans for hundreds of billions of dollars, so that they can hand that money off to the wealthiest," Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday.

The Utah event came days after Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez appeared before a crowd of 36,000 in Los Angeles, which the Vermont senator described as "our biggest rally ever."

"When Donald Trump looks out at this crowd—and they pay attention to this stuff, Elon Musk does—you are scaring the hell out of them," Sanders said at the Los Angeles rally. "Because they know what we know: They are the 1% and we are the 99%." \

Following Record-Breaking LA Rally, Sanders Takes Fighting Message to Coachella

"We need you to stand up to fight for justice—fight for economic justice, social justice, and racial justice," Sanders told the festivalgoers.


U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is seen on giant screens as he speaks on stage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 12, 2025 in Indio, California.
(Photo: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)


Olivia Rosane
Apr 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders capped off a record-breaking Los Angeles stop on his "Fighting Oligarchy" tour with Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday by making a surprise appearance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California.

Sanders took the festival stage Saturday night to introduce singer-songwriter Clairo—whom he praised for using her platform to fight for women's rights and "to try to end the terrible, brutal war in Gaza." Before introducing the singer, he shared a message with the young people in the crowd.

"The country faces some very difficult challenges, and the future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation," Sanders said to cheers. "Now you can turn away and you can ignore what goes on, but if you do that, you do it at your own peril. We need you to stand up to fight for justice—fight for economic justice, social justice, and racial justice."



Sanders criticized U.S. President Donald Trump in particular for his denial of the climate emergency.

"Now we've got a president of the United States," Sanders began, only to be interrupted by a chorus of boos.

"I agree," he said, continuing to lament that Trump "thinks climate change is a hoax. He is dangerously wrong."

"You and I are going to have to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them to stop destroying this planet," Sanders said.

He also urged the audience to stand up for women's rights, an economy that prioritizes the working class over billionaires, and the right to healthcare.

His speech at Coachella came after he addressed a crowd of tens of thousands with Ocasio-Cortez at Los Angeles' Gloria Molina Grand Park Saturday afternoon. Writing on social media, Sanders said the event drew a crowd of 36,000, breaking the record he and the New York representative set in Denver in March.

"Your presence here today is making Donald Trump and Elon Musk very nervous," Sanders said as he announced the record to the crowed.



The pair repeated many of the themes that have defined the "Fight Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here" tour since Sanders launched it in February to counter both the billionaire takeover of the U.S. government and the move toward authoritarianism under Trump.

"We're living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life… We're living in a moment where the president has no understanding or respect for the Constitution of the United States, and let us make no doubt about it, moving us rapidly toward an authoritarian form of society," Sanders said Saturday afternoon, as the Los Angeles Daily Newsreported.

"And, Mr. Trump, we ain't going down," he said.

Ocasio-Cortez called out "Trump's corrupt and disastrous tariff scheme" that played out over the past week, in which the president announced new tariffs on Tuesday only to declare a pause when the market fell, causing it to rally again. The incident has sparked suspicions of insider trading.

"It's been despair every day. And being around all these people and hearing these messages is helpful right now."

"I hope that we all see now that the White House's tariff shuffle here didn't have anything to do with manufacturing like they claimed," she said. "It was about manipulating the markets. It was about hurting retirees and everyday people in the sell-off, so Trump could quietly enrich his friends whom he nudged to buy the dip before reversing it all in the morning."

AOC also criticized the culture of playing the stock market in U.S. Congress, saying the body and its members "have somehow conditioned itself to actually believe that it is normal for elected representatives who swear an oath to the American people to day trade individual stocks that make millions with the sensitive information we are entrusted with for the purpose of governing."

"How can anyone possibly make an objective vote on healthcare, energy, or war when their personal money is tied up in pharmaceutical, oil and gas, or defense company stock?" she asked, before concluding, "They can't."

At Saturday's rally, the two lawmakers were also joined by musical guests Neil Young, Joan Baez, The Red Pears, Maggie Rogers, Indigo de Souza, and the Raise Gospel Choir, as well as other progressive politicians and community leaders including Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), District 1 LA City Councilmember Eunissess Hernandez, California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez, and SEIU President April Verrett.

The event inspired hope in several of the 36,000 attendees, with Myylo Lewis of Silver Lake, California tellingThe Guardian that Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders were the "closest thing to a version of America you actually want to live in."

"I needed this right now," 32-year-old Tracy Setto of Palmdale told the Los Angeles Daily News. "It's been despair every day. And being around all these people and hearing these messages is helpful right now."

David Rasmussen, meanwhile, felt inspired.

"We've all got to rise up together, fight it, push it back, make something else happen because this cannot go on," Rasmussen toldAl Jazeera.

The Los Angeles event was the first in a five-day Western swing of the tour. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez will next appear in Salt Lake City on Sunday evening, followed by stops in Nampa, Idaho; Bakersfield, California; Folsom, California; and Missoula, Montana.

"The American people, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, do not want billionaires to control our government or buy our elections," Sanders said in a statement announcing the Western part of his tour. "They do not want Republicans to decimate Social Security and the Veterans Administration. They do not want huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the country paid for by massive cuts to Medicaid and other programs that working families rely on. That is why I will be visiting Republican-held districts all over the Western United States. When we are organized and fight back, we can defeat oligarchy."

Israel Preparing to Seize Ethnically Cleansed City of Rafah as Part of Permanent Buffer Zone

"The entire city of Rafah is being swallowed up," warned one Israeli human rights group. "The massive death zone... continues to grow by the day."

Palestinians ethnically cleansed from Rafah in southern Gaza carry their belongings as they flee in search of safety on March 31, 2025.
(Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)


Brett Wilkins
Apr 13, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The Israel Defense Forces is preparing to permanently seize the largely depopulated Palestinian city of Rafah—comprising about 20% of Gaza's land area—and incorporate what was once the embattled enclave's third-largest city into a borderland buffer that IDF troops have described as a "kill zone" rife with alleged war crimes.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretzreported Wednesday that "defense sources" said an area from the so-called Philadelphi corridor along Gaza's border with Egypt and the Morag corridor—the name of a Jewish colony that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis—will be incorporated into the buffer zone that runs along the entire length of the Israeli border.

The affected area includes the entire city of Rafah—which is thousands of years old—and surrounding neighborhoods, which were home to more than 250,000 people before Israeli launched what United Nations experts have called a genocidal assault on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.



As Haaretz's Yaniv Kubovitch reported:
Expanding the buffer zone to this extent carries significant implications. Not only does it cover a vast area—approximately 75 square kilometers (about 29 square miles), or roughly one-fifth of the Gaza Strip—but severing it would effectively turn Gaza into an enclave within Israeli-controlled territory, cutting it off from the Egyptian border. According to defense sources, this consideration played a central role in the decision to focus on Rafah...

It has yet to be decided whether the entire area will simply be designated a buffer zone that is off-limits to civilians—as has been done in other parts of the border area—or whether the area will be fully cleared and all buildings demolished, effectively wiping out the city of Rafah.

In recent weeks and for the second time during the war, IDF troops forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands residents from Rafah and other areas of southern Gaza in an ethnic cleansing campaign reminiscent of the 1948 Nakba, or "catastrophe" in Arabic, through which the modern state of Israel was founded. Most Gaza residents today are Nakba survivors or descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from other parts of Palestine in 1948.

Earlier this month, Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced plans to seize "large areas" of southern Gaza to be added to what Katz called "security zones" and "settlements."

Jewish recolonization of Gaza is a major objective of many right-wing Israelis. Last month, Katz announced the creation of a new IDF directorate tasked with ethnically cleansing northern Gaza, which Israeli leaders euphemistically call "voluntary emigration." Katz said the agency would be run "in accordance with the vision of U.S. President Donald Trump," who in February said that the United States would "take over" Gaza after emptying the strip of its over 2 million Palestinians, and then transform the enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East." Trump subsequently attempted to walk back some of his comments.

Earlier this week, the Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence published testimonies of IDF officers, soldiers, and veterans who took part in the creation of the buffer zone. Soldiers recounted orders to "deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions."



Palestinians who dared enter the perimeter, even accidentally were targeted, including civilian men, women, children, and elders. One officer featured in the report toldThe Guardian: "We're killing [men], we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."

Most of Gaza's more than 2 million residents have been forcibly displaced at least once since Israel launched the war, which has left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Widespread starvation and disease have been fueled by a "complete siege" which, among other Israeli policies and actions, has been cited in the ongoing South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.