GOP Senator Calls for Ban on ‘All These Chinese’ Entering US to Study

REACTIONARY RACIST SINOPHOBE

By David Badash

THE NEW CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

July 31, 2025 

A prominent Republican senator is calling for a ban on immigrants from China, Iran, and North Korea from entering the United States to study at American colleges and universities, arguing that they return home with the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired.

U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor of Alabama, claims that “40 to 70 percent” of all students enrolled in colleges and universities in the Northeast are “foreign nationals.” That would mean four to seven out of every ten students on average in all schools in the Northeast

“It’s getting out of control, and what’s happening, they, you know, they don’t have to pay taxes,” Tuberville told Fox News on Thursday (video below).

“You know, they’re non-profit,” he said, presumably about the educational institutions.

“And so we have to do something about this. We got to wake up and smell the roses here because we are funding the end of our country because all these Chinese come over,” the Alabama Republican complained. “Now, they’ll leave their visas on time and they’ll go back home, but they take everything they possibly can with them, in terms of, in terms of anything that they learn.”

The Fox News graphics cited the Open Doors 2024 report on International Education Exchange, which is sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

Among states in the Northeast, which Tuberville cited, Massachusetts has one of the highest concentrations of colleges and universities. The Open Doors report for Massachusetts shows international students spend $3.9 billion in the Bay State.

Gil Guerra, an Immigration Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center, remarked, “Sen. Tuberville’s bill would ban students from China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, & Venezuela from studying in the U.S. But admitting students from these nations benefits us by draining enemies of talent and giving dissidents a lifeline to escape these oppressive regimes.”

Charles W.L. Hill, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, noted, “When foreign students come to the US and pay for educational services that is counted as export revenue. The US exports around $50 billion in educational services a year in this manner, which exceeds steel and auto exports combined. So if you are a mercantilist like Trump, and his sidekick, Tuberville, you should be encouraging this.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Trump’s ‘Rare’ Nuclear Sub Deployment Follows Epstein Scandal, Jobs Slump, Critics Say


By David Badash

THE NEW CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

August 1, 2025 

In what is being called an “escalating war of words,” President Donald Trump announced in a social media post that he is repositioning two nuclear submarines in response to an apparent threat made by the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev. Some see Trump’s move as a distraction from the bad news of the week, including the ongoing Epstein files scandal and Friday’s poor jobs report.

Medvedev, who served as President of Russia, denounced Trump’s deadline for Russia to end its illegal war against Ukraine this week as a “step towards war,” Fox News reported

Calling Medvedev’s remarks “highly provocative statements,” Trump announced: “I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”

Trump did not state where the “appropriate regions” are.

“Words are very important,” he declared, “and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.”

Military.com’s Konstantin Toropin called it “an incredibly rare move” that “the President publicly announces that two US nuclear submarines are apparently poised to strike Russia.”

“Important note,” he added, “all US subs are nuclear so it’s not immediately clear if Trump is communicating a nuclear or conventional deterrent here.”

Critics weighed in.

HuffPost Senior White House correspondent S.V. Dáte noted: “1) Remember when he claimed that Biden and Harris would get us into WWIII? 2) Normally the US does not breathe one word, not one syllable, about the location of the Navy’s missile boats. 3) 77 million Americans voted for this. 4) How far will he go to distract from Epstein?”

MeidasTouch News editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski wrote: “Probably just a coincidence that Trump announces he’s stationing two nuclear subs off Russia because of war threats just hours after the worst jobs report in 5 years just dropped.”

“Trump spent every day for 4 years saying that Biden was about to start World War 3 and if he got elected he would end the war in Ukraine and we would have peace with Russia because he has a great relationship with Putin,” Filipkowski added.

Podcaster Fred Wellman, an Army veteran of 22 years, responded to the news with: “Wow. Epstein.”

“How Trump went from ‘wouldn’t it be great to get along with Russia’ to deploying nuclear subs in response to Medvedev is a tale of astonishing Russian diplomatic failure,” noted The Daily Telegraph’s Chief foreign affairs commentator David Blair.

Trump FCC's Approval of Paramount-Skydance Merger 'Reeks of the Worst Form of Corruption

"The stench of this transaction will linger over the commission for years," said a pair of Democratic senators.



Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr testifies during a House hearing on May 21, 2025.
(Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jul 25, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission on Thursday gave formal approval to the $8 billion merger of CBS owner Paramount and the media firm Skydance, which won over the agency's Trump-appointed chairman with pledges to review CBS' content and appoint an ombudsman to evaluate claims of bias.

The FCC's two Republicans, Chairman Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty, supported approval of the merger, a decision that comes weeks after Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle President Donald Trump's lawsuit over the organization's handling of a pre-election "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris.

Anna Gomez, the FCC's lone Democratic-appointed commissioner, said Thursday that "after months of cowardly capitulation to this administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted."

"Despite this regrettable outcome, this administration is not done with its assault on the First Amendment," said Gomez, who opposed the merger. "In fact, it may only be beginning. The Paramount payout and this reckless approval have emboldened those who believe the government can—and should—abuse its power to extract financial and ideological concessions, demand favored treatment, and secure positive media coverage. It is a dark chapter in a long and growing record of abuse that threatens press freedom in this country."

"The partisan vote is a dark day for independent journalism and a stain on the storied history of the Federal Communications Commission."

Democratic lawmakers responded with similar disgust and alarm. In a joint statement, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said the merger approval "reeks of the worst form of corruption."

"While we're glad that the commission took a vote on the deal, as we have repeatedly called for, the partisan vote is a dark day for independent journalism and a stain on the storied history of the Federal Communications Commission," the senators added. "The stench of this transaction will linger over the commission for years."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that "this merger must be investigated for any criminal behavior."

"It's an open question whether the Trump administration’s approval of this merger was the result of a bribe," said Warren.

Under the publicly available terms of the Paramount settlement, the company agreed to put $16 million toward Trump's future presidential library. But Trump has claimed that the deal is actually worth more than twice the publicly reported figure, asserting that Skydance agreed to spend $20 million on "advertising, PSAs, or similar programming."

Earlier this week, Warren and two other senators demanded answers from Skydance CEO David Ellison about the purported side deal, which the lawmakers described as a "potential secret Trump payoff."

Conor Gaffney and Janine Lopez, attorneys at the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, wrote Thursday that "no doubt the boards of Paramount and Skydance are hoping this saga ends today—now that they've appeased the FCC and cleared merger review."

"But as we've seen time and again, businesses that capitulate to the Trump administration find themselves captured rather than in the clear—with the president quick to change his mind and come back for more," they wrote. "The costs of capitulation are higher than they might initially seem, and the business calculation that Paramount and many others have made may be wrong. The price of protection only goes up, and the mob keeps coming around."

Antitrust Group Demands Probe of Bondi's Role in 'Corrupt' Merger Settlement

"Looks like there was just an attempted coup at the antitrust division, led by Pam Bondi's chief of staff and a set of corporate lobbyists."


U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks to reporters in the briefing room at the White House on June 27, 2025.
(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jul 25, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

An antitrust advocacy organization on Thursday urged Congress to investigate U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's role in a merger settlement deal that the Justice Department struck with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks last month.

"Congress must immediately open an investigation into Attorney General Pam Bondi's involvement in what appears to be a corrupt and politically rigged merger settlement," Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said in a statement Thursday.

The deal in question allowed the two companies' $14 billion merger to proceed, capping off a legal fight that the Justice Department launched in late January. At the time, the Justice Department argued HPE's acquisition of Juniper would unlawfully stifle competition, raise prices for consumers, and harm innovation.

The Capitol Forum on Thursday described the terms of the settlement as strange and reported that the deal divided the Justice Department internally, pitting the head of the antitrust division against top DOJ officials including Bondi chief of staff Chad Mizelle, who ultimately "overruled" the antitrust chief.

"Mizelle's close involvement in the matter is highly unusual—as is the fact that no DOJ trial attorneys signed the resulting consent decree papers," the outlet noted. "It also raises questions that won't be quieted by HPE's July 7 disclosure that it retained MAGA-aligned antitrust thought leader Mike Davis to advocate for the deal."

"In addition to Davis, HPE, in working to short-circuit the antitrust division's case, hired multiple lobbyists close to the White House, including Arthur Schwartz, a close confidante of Vice President JD Vance," the outlet added.

The settlement still must undergo a Tunney Act review by the federal judge in the case, Casey Pitts of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. While that process is "typically a rubber stamp," The Capitol Forum reported, "there's a meaningful chance that this time will be different" given the "substantive and procedural smoke around the HPE/Juniper matter."

As part of the deal with the Justice Department, HPE agreed to divest its Instant On business. But, citing an industry analyst and other unnamed sources, The Capitol Forum reported that "Instant On is targeted at small and medium-sized businesses and isn't an option for the large, 'enterprise-grade WLAN solutions' customers DOJ's complaint alleged the merger would harm."

The Capitol Forum's story drew fresh scrutiny to the settlement and raised alarm about the potential involvement of Bondi, herself a former corporate lobbyist.

Hegde of the American Economic Liberties Project said Thursday that "when DOJ leadership overrules its own antitrust staff and forces a weak settlement that clearly favors corporate interests, both congressional oversight and judicial review under the Tunney Act become essential safeguards."

"Every member of Congress, along with the judge in the case, should be alarmed by signs that DOJ leadership is auctioning off merger enforcement rather than enforcing the law. The integrity of our antitrust system cannot be compromised by backroom deals or political interference," said Hegde. "Given the clear signs of improper influence, along with the mismatch between the alleged harms and the remedy, Judge Pitts must also use his authority under the Tunney Act to scrutinize this settlement in the best interest of the public."

The Cruelty and Speciousness of Bret Stephens' Denial of Genocide

Bret Stephens brings an unprecedented power over the editorial board at The New York Times because he is seen as the voice of the Israeli government-can-do-no-wrong domestic lobby.

Republican U.S. presidential hopeful, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) (R)

TRUMP'S GUNSEL

 participates in a discussion with moderator Bret Stephens, then of The Wall Street Journal, during a Christians United for Israel summit July 13, 2015 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Ralph Nader
Aug 02, 2025

Common Dreams

After the long-time skittish New York Times published a lengthy essay by the renowned genocide scholar, Prof. Omer Bartov of Brown University, titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar, I Know It When I see It,” the Palestinian-hater, Times columnist Bret Stephens, immediately jumped into the Netanyahu‑style rebuttal mode. His column was titled “No, Israel is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza.” His cruel and specious assertion, contradicted by many genocide scholars, was that if the Israeli regime was truly genocidal, they would have committed “hundreds of thousands of deaths” in Gaza instead of the mere 60,000 deaths reported by the Hamas‑run Health Ministry.

Get real, Mr. Stephens, the Israeli military has destroyed the lives of at least one out of four Palestinians there, or about half a million at least, from the daily bombing since October 7, 2023, of civilians and their infrastructure. Saturation aerial and artillery bombardments of 2.3 million defenseless Palestinians, also under constant sniper fire, crammed into an area the geographic size of Philadelphia. (See The Lancet, “Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult But Essential”, my column “The Vast Gaza Death Undercount—Undermines Civic, Diplomatic, and Political Pressures” and my article in the August-September 2024 Capitol Hill Citizen). American doctors back from Gaza have repeatedly observed that almost all the survivors are sick, injured, or dying.

Seizing on the Hamas regime’s self‑interest in a low death count, to not arouse further the ire of the residents of Gaza against their lack of bomb shelters and other protections, Stephens constructs the usual fictions, reflecting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime, that Israel does not “deliberately target and kill Gazan civilians.” [Former United Nations Ambassador and Foreign Minister Abba Eban wrote of Israel under then Prime Minister Menachem Begin that Israel “is wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name.”] Look at the reports by Times journalists from the area, see the pictures of the mass murder, the slaughter of babies, children, mothers, and fathers that comprise Netanyahu’s Palestinian holocaust.

Listen to the former Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant’s October 9, 2023 enforced declaration that Israeli demolition of Gaza would include “…no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

Stephens is immovable. Over a year ago, he shockingly wrote that the Israeli military is not using enough force on the Palestinians.

And so indeed has the Israeli military targeted innocent families, journalists, and U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East staff. To quote Professor Bartov, “the systematic destruction in Gaza not only of housing but also of other infrastructure—government buildings, hospitals, universities, schools, mosques, cultural heritage sites, water treatment plants, agriculture areas, and parks…” Bartov grew up in Israel, served four years in the Israeli army, and knows the situation there in great detail.

Bret Stephens brings an unprecedented power over the editorial board at the Times because he is seen as the voice of the Israeli government-can-do-no-wrong domestic lobby inside the Times who is always ready to frivolously accuse anybody at the paper of antisemitism to shut them up or water down their content.

As Will Solomon reported July 25, 2025 in Counterpunch, Stephens is the “minder” of what is unacceptable criticism of the Israeli regime and has succeeded significantly in his censorship. If you wonder for example why it took the Times editorial board so long to condemn the Israeli regime’s starvation of Gazans, especially the most vulnerable infants and children ( See July 31 editorial and The New York Times July 27, 2025 opinion piece “The World Must See Gaza’s Starvation” by Mohammed Mansour), it is likely the climate of fear or weariness generated by Stephens.

Stephens is given remarkable latitude by the Times editors. His falsifications and antisemitic rage against Palestinian semites (see, “The Other Antisemitism” by Jim Zogby) escape his editors’ pen. He is given unusual space, including a recently concluded weekly column with Gail Collins, which replaced valuable editorial space, with repartees that had become shopworn over the years. He also is given special writing projects.

Consider his background. A former hard-line editor of The Jerusalem Post, then for years a warmongering columnist for The Wall Street Journal. Especially vicious against Palestinians and their supporters, Stephens came to the Times for a singular reason. The Times wanted a right-winger who did not like the new president, Donald Trump. What the Times got was a cunning censor of their journalistic integrity and editorial respect for the regular devastating reports the Times was getting from their own journalists operating out of Jerusalem. They were not allowed into Gaza to report independently on what was being done with U.S. tax dollars and the unconditional support from former U.S. President Joe Biden and now Trump.

Imagine, for example, the Times not writing an editorial following the Israeli booby-trapping of thousands of pagers in Lebanon. This was called a clear war crime by former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

While the Times has published op-eds critical of Israeli aggressions, it has maintained a list of words and phrases that could not be used in its reporting, such as “genocide.” It has avoided doing features on the many Israeli human rights groups sharply taking Netanyahu to task, or groups in the U.S., such as the very active Veterans for Peace with 100 chapters around the U.S. By contrast the Times devoted extensive space to repeated false propaganda by the Israeli regime.

Even coverage of the omnipresent Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now requires dramatic nonviolent civil disobedience, as with the October 24, 2023 sit-in at Grand Central Station, to get into the Times pages.

Throughout the months since October 7, and the mysterious total collapse of the multitiered Israeli border security apparatus on the Gaza border, still denied an official investigation by its perpetrators, the defiant presence of Stephens persists, though it is being countered by the sickening pictures of skeletal, starving Palestinian infants. (A survey last year by a British civic association had 46% of Palestinian children wanting to die and 97% expecting to be killed.)

Credit Stephens with covering his self-designated, intimidating role of policing what should not be appearing by staff in the Times’editorial pages. In his column with Collins, he used humor and praise of Times reports and book reviews not connected with the Israeli domination of the Middle East. Recognizing a no-win situation for herself, Gail Collins agreed not to raise the Israeli-Palestine issue in any of the hundreds of columns she wrote with Stephens, who is disliked by many at the Times.

Stephens is immovable. Over a year ago, he shockingly wrote that the Israeli military is not using enough force on the Palestinians. He refuses to disavow the most racist, vicious descriptions of Palestinians over the years by high Israeli government officials. He refuses to support opening Gaza to foreign journalists, including Israeli journalists. He even declines to support the airlifting of amputated and horribly burned Palestinian children to ready and able hospitals in the U.S.

The New York Times does not fear Donald Trump. But it does fear or is very wary of the smiling, internal censorious presence of this AIPAC clone and the attention he demands because of the forces he represents. The editorial board and Times management need to reject this affront to the freedom of its journalists and the paper’s institutional integrity.

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


Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of "The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future" (2012). His new book is, "Wrecking America: How Trump's Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All" (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).
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NYT Condemned for Clarifying Starving Palestinian Child's 'Preexisting Health Condition'

"If a publication ran an editors' note to 'clarify' that some portion of Nazi death camp victims had preexisting conditions, it would rightfully be accused of Holocaust denialism," said one observer.


Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, an 18-month-old child in Gaza City, Gaza, faces life-threatening malnutrition as the humanitarian situation worsens due to ongoing Israeli attacks and blockade, on July 21, 2025.
(Photo: Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jul 30, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

As the U.S. corporate media stepped up its coverage last week of the impact Israel's near-total blockade on Gaza is having on Palestinians, at least 154 of whom have now starved to death, Israeli officials zeroed in on just one of the children featured in a New York Times report.

After suggesting that his case showed reports of starvation in Gaza are overblown, they evidently managed to convince the newspaper to issue a clarification.

The Times mentioned Atef Abu Khater, a 17-year-old whose father said he was "not responding to the treatment" he was getting for severe malnutrition, and four-month-old Yahia al-Najjar, who died on July 22 after his mother, who was subsisting on one serving or lentils or rice per day, was unable to nurse him.

But the Israeli media and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which facilitates humanitarian aid in Gaza, focused on the story of 18-month-old Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, whose mother told the Times, "I look at him and I can't help but cry."

I24 News reported Wednesday that after the story was printed, COGAT "publicized records showing the child suffered from severe preexisting medical conditions."

Al-Mutawaq was born with cerebral palsy, The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday, adding that the Israeli government had uncovered another photo of the child's family in which his older brother looked "distressed but relatively healthy."

"Their mother also does not appear to be suffering from any symptoms of starvation," the outlet mused.

Children are most at risk for being severely impacted by hunger and starvation, and often die at twice the rate of adults, according to the International Rescue Committee.

As images of Al-Mutawaq's mother holding his skeletal body were published by other outlets, the U.S.-based pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting also took notice.

The photos, said the website, were being used "as visual proof of a humanitarian catastrophe. More than that, as proof that Israel is deliberately starving the people of Gaza."

Israeli officials themselves have said they are deliberately starving the people of Gaza, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich saying in May that Israel would let only the "tiniest amount" of aid into the enclave so the world would "continue providing us with international protection." International human rights groups and experts have assessed that Israel is carrying out a policy of deliberate starvation.

Nonetheless, HonestReporting demanded that "every outlet that promoted this false narrative must update their coverage to reflect the full truth: Mohammad has a medical condition."

Late on Tuesday, the Times appeared to respond to the outcry.

In addition to publishing an addendum to its initial reporting, the newspaper's communications department issued an official statement.

It emphasized that children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, and noted that it had learned of Al-Mutawaq's health condition.

"We... have updated our story to add context about his preexisting health condition," said a spokesperson. "This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation."

In at least one case, the communications department directly responded to a pro-Israel journalist who had said photos of Al-Mutawaq did not show "the face of famine."



The Times did not suggest Al-Mutawaq's health condition negated or lessened the impact of the malnutrition he is also suffering from.

But a number of observers were aghast at the paper's apparent decision to appease the Israeli government and pro-Israel groups and media outlets that had suggested reporting on Al-Mutawaq's case was "misleading" and "playing into the hands of Hamas' propaganda war."

"If a publication ran an editors' note to 'clarify' that some portion of Nazi death camp victims had preexisting conditions, it would rightfully be accused of Holocaust denialism," said writer Natalie Shure. "This is one of the most depraved things The New York Times has ever published."

Some emphasized that the news of Al-Mutawaq's health condition hardly vindicates Israel, especially considering that the Israel Defense Forces have decimated Gaza's healthcare system since they began bombarding the enclave nearly 21 months ago.



"This actually makes it even more grotesque," said Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs. "Of course the first people to die have preexisting health problems. Starvation is a eugenic policy which first kills off the weakest and sickest. Israel acts like proving 'preexisting health problems' is a defense. It's an indictment."

Some pro-Israel entities appeared to view the Times' addendum and statement as something of a victory, with the right-wing news outlet The Daily Caller writing that the newspaper was "forced to backtrack on reporting of Gazan child after getting key element wrong."

The Times' move didn't stop others from criticizing the newspaper. The Instagram account Jewish Lives Matter said the spokesperson's statement didn't reverse the "journalistic malpractice" the paper had committed. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the Times was guilty of "blood libel"—a reference to medieval antisemitic allegations that Jewish people used the blood of Christian children in rituals.

As for the Israeli government, hours after the Times issued its statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs moved on to criticizing media outlets for printing photos of another emaciated child: Osama al-Raqab, who has cystic fibrosis in addition to suffering from malnutrition brought on by Israel's blockade.

'A Horror So Vast, It Could No Longer Be Ignored': US Media Finally Centering Starving Gazans

However, one critic lamented that corporate media "continues to act like starvation is the unfortunate byproduct of 'war.'"

Hidaya, a 31-year-old Palestinian mother, sits with her starving 18-month-old son Mohammed al-Mutawaq inside their tent at the al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Palestine, on July 25, 2025.
(Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jul 25, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

As more and more Palestinians, mostly children, starve to death due to Israel's 657-day obliteration and siege of Gaza, reliably pro-Israel U.S. corporate media outlets in recent days have centered the starvation crisis—which began in October 2023—while critics have decried passive language and anti-Palestinian tropes used in some reporting.

The Washington Post published at least two articles on the subject in as many days, including an Associated Press story by Wafaa Shurafa, Sarah El Deeb, and Lee Keath titled "Dozens of Kids and Adults in Gaza Have Starved to Death in July as Hunger Surges" and an internal piece by Louisa Loveluck, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Siham Shamalakh, Miriam Berger, and Abbie Cheeseman with the headline "Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza as Deaths Rise From Hunger." The authors of the latter article noted that "Israel has severely limited the amount of food entering Gaza, where society is on the brink of collapse."

The New York Times on Friday published a morning newsletter article by Lauren Jackson titled "The Starvation Spreading in Gaza," which stressed that "hunger in Gaza is not new" amid an Israeli blockade that has choked the strip "for nearly two decades." Jackson's piece followed a Thursday front-page story by Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner, and Abu Bakr Bashir, with images by Palestinian photographer Saher Alghorra, headlined "Gazans Are Dying of Starvation."

Palestinian peace activist Ihab Hassan, who heads the Agora Initiative's Human Rights for Gaza project, said on the social media site X, "Starvation in Gaza made it to the front page of The New York Times—a horror so vast, it could no longer be ignored."

Carnegie Middle East Center senior editor Michael Young wrote on X, "Don't underestimate that a mainstream media outlet in the U.S. is finally stating the obvious, that Gazans are dying of starvation."

"But it's not as if they're just dying, for no reason; they are being denied adequate amounts of food by Israel, therefore are being killed," Young added. "Nonetheless, that the NYT presents the story in so blunt a way, under a heartbreaking photograph, must qualify as a turning point of sorts given how reluctant U.S. media outlets are to say anything bad about Israel."

Assal Rad, a fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C. and frequent media critic, offered a more accurate headline for the Times story—"ISRAEL IS STARVING PALESTINIANS TO DEATH.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting's Counterspin blog took aim at the Post's "Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza" headline, noting that "it's actual human beings stalking Gaza, who could right now choose to act differently."

Still, there have recently been remarkable discussions about Gaza in U.S. corporate media outlets that would have been all but unimaginable during past Israeli attacks on Palestine.

CNN's "NewsNight" with Abby Phillip on Thursday aired a panel discussion titled, "Why Is the U.S. Silent About the Starvation in Gaza?" The segment featured journalist Peter Beinart, who highighted the International Criminal Court's issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including forced starvation, U.S. support for Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and the Israeli government's ban on foreign journalists entering the strip.



"To say the United States is silent, it's much worse than that," Beinart said. "We are profoundly complicit and deeply responsible. It is our weapons that enforce this starvation. It is our diplomatic efforts that prevent international justice from being done."

"The blood is on our hands!" he stressed.

The CNN segment also featured a video clip of United Nations World Food Program Director Cindy McCain, whose warnings of a looming starvation emergency in Gaza began in October 2023.

Asked by Phillip if the images of starving Gazans making headlines around the world marked "an inflection point," Beinart replied, "Why did it take this long?"

Meanwhile, Israel's oldest newspaper, Haaretz, ran an editorial Thursday titled "Israel Is Starving Gaza."

"Gaza is starving, and Israel is responsible," the Haaretz editors wrote. "According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 111 people have died from malnutrition since the war began, most of them children. Alarmingly, 43 of those deaths occurred just in the past week."

"The famine that has been created is another facet of Israel's cruel inhumanity towards the people of Gaza," the editors added. "It constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity and is a clear violation of the orders issued a year and a half ago by the International Court of Justice in The Hague."

ISLAMAPHOBIC ANTI-PALESTINE FASCISM

ADL-Backed Bipartisan Bill Threatens to Censor Israel Criticism on Social Media

The bill’s lead sponsors described it as part of an effort to prevent antisemitic hate. But their comments during a press conference on the measure suggest it will also target critics of Israel.


Rep. Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Rep. Bacon (D-Neb.), and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt announcing the STOP HATE Act in the U.S. Capitol on July 23, 2025.
(Photo: Rep. Josh Gottheimer)

Stephen Prager
Jul 25, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Free speech advocates are raising concerns that a new bipartisan bill would force social media companies to censor criticism of Israel on their platforms.

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.) rolled out the bill, called the Stopping Terrorists Online Presence and Holding Accountable Tech Entities (STOP HATE) Act, at a press conference Wednesday, alongside Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The bill would mandate that social media companies work with the federal government to implement moderation policies that curb the speech of groups the government designates as "terrorists." They'd be required to provide regular reports to the U.S. attorney general. Those that don't comply would be fined $5 million each day they refuse.

The lawmakers justified the measure by citing some recent examples of overt antisemitism and calls for violence on social media.

"We've seen an explosion of disinformation and antisemitic hate online in America and around the world," Gottheimer said. "After the shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum, anti-Zionist extremists used social media to call for further violence, posting messages like 'may all Zionists burn.' Even AI platforms like Grok have posted deeply disturbing content, praising Adolf Hitler and Nazism."

Bacon said, "We want to be in a country that makes clear that antisemitism or any kind of racism is repugnant, unacceptable, not allowed in an online space, and that we have zero tolerance for it."

However, other statements from the lawmakers make clear that their definition of "antisemitism" goes far beyond expressions of hatred or calls for violence against Jewish people.

As Matthew Petti wrote for the libertarian magazine Reason: "The specific idea that Bacon had in mind was antisemitism, and he made clear that it includes criticism of the State of Israel in his book."

At the press conference, Bacon explicitly referenced recent protests against Israel's policy of starvation in Gaza.

"I saw protests out here the last two days, they were vile, right?," he said. "They were...you can see the antisemitism in their comments and how they were treating some of our members of Congress who are Jewish. I saw that firsthand."

Bacon did not specify what specific comments he was referring to. However, Petti noted:
Protesters stormed the congressional cafeteria on July 1 to call for food aid to Gaza, and interrupted Rep. Randy Fine (R–Fla.)—who has called for Palestinians to "starve away"—during a hearing on campus antisemitism last week.

Bacon also suggested that merely stating opposition to pro-Israel congresspeople, including himself, constitutes antisemitism.

"I even saw an article today. It was about me, but talking about we have to oppose congressmen who are pro-Zionists, right?" said Bacon, who is notably not Jewish. "It's all over our social media and it's unacceptable."

Gottheimer, meanwhile, said the policy was not just about combating terrorism, but about halting a "massive disinformation campaign influencing us every day."

Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald—a critic of government efforts to regulate "misinformation"—suggested that the bill flies in the face of the right's supposed commitments to free speech.

"There was [a] full consensus on the Right for the last decade that Big Tech censorship was a great evil, especially if pressured and demanded by the U.S. government," he said on X. "All that changed [when] it came time to censor for Israel."

In a statement released Friday, the American‑Arab Anti‑Discrimination Committee (ADC) likewise described the STOP HATE Act as part of "the continuous efforts by lawmakers to silence, censor, and chill freedom of speech and expression in this country at the behest of Israel."

They warned that the bill gives the government, in tandem with pro-Israel groups like the ADL, "unfettered powers to police private social media companies, attack lawful expression, and levy fines of up to five million dollars each day if companies fail to silence and censor users."

This is not the first time Gottheimer and Bacon have introduced the STOP HATE Act. A similar version, introduced in 2023, died in committee.

When introducing that version of the bill, they were more explicit in their calls for government regulation of media—calling on the Department of Justice to require the news outlets Al Jazeera and its subsidiary AJ+, which are sponsored by the Qatari government, to register as foreign agents.

The two congressmen were also at the forefront of calls for the U.S. government to ban TikTok, which Gottheimer said was being used by the Chinese Communist Party to "boost anti-Israel and pro-Hamas videos in the United States." They have also introduced legislation that would criminalize efforts to boycott Israeli products.

Greenblatt, who spoke alongside the two legislators on Wednesday, has explicitly said that "Anti-Zionism is antisemitism." Though he's faced criticism for this stance, including from members of the ADL itself, he has only continued to double down.

In one infamous exchange during the outbreak of pro-Palestine protests on college campuses in 2024, Greenblatt suggested that students wearing keffiyehs—a kind of scarf commonly worn by Palestinians—were doing the equivalent of wearing a swastika armband.

More recently, he endorsed Immigration and Customs Enforcement's warrantless abduction of pro-Palestine organizer Mahmoud Khalil, who he accused—along with other pro-Palestine demonstrators—of being an asset of foreign governments and likened to Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

Wednesday's press release from the legislators on the STOP HATE Act cites the ADL's 2024 "Social Media Scorecard," as evidence that "the five major social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X—routinely failed to act on antisemitic hate reported to them."

That Scorecard page features a quote from Greenblatt, who said, "Social media platforms are still falling far too short when it comes to moderating antisemitic and anti-Israel content."

After the October 7, 2023 attacks led by Hamas, the ADL changed its methodology to categorize antisemitic incidents to not only include hate speech or threats directed at Jewish people, but also language expressing "opposition to Zionism."

The proposed STOP HATE Act comes at a time when American public opinion has dramatically shifted against Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza. According to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS, released last Friday:
Only 23% of Americans say Israel’s actions have been fully justified, a 27-point drop from a[n] October 2023 poll taken shortly after Hamas’ October 7 attacks. Another 27% now say those actions have been partially justified and 22% say that they have not been justified at all. In October 2023, just 8% said Israel’s actions were not justified at all.

In recent weeks, Israeli leaders have openly called for the mass displacement of two million Palestinians to make room for Jewish settlers. Meanwhile, at least 115 Palestinians—including more than 80 children—have reportedly starved due to Israel's restrictions on aid entering the Gaza Strip. Over 1,000 aid seekers have been killed, often by Israel Defense Forces soldiers, at aid sites jointly administered by the U.S. and Israel.

"The First Amendment is supposed to be the cornerstone of American democracy—our shield against censorship and government overreach," said Abed Ayoub, ADC's national executive director. "When members of Congress and state lawmakers start compromising our freedoms to satisfy the demands of a foreign government, we lose what makes this country free. We must reject any legislation that threatens our speech, our conscience, and our right to dissent."

'The Orban Playbook': Trump Assault on Media Matters Seen as Dire Warning to Other Critics

"The speed of the collapse in the media environment is something I had not foreseen," wrote John Hopkins University economist Filipe Campante.

Brad Reed
Jul 25, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

U.S. President Donald Trump and his allies have been waging legal war for months against liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America, and a report from The New York Times on Friday claimed that the organization is now in dire financial straits as it's been racking up millions in legal expenses.

According to the Times, Media Matters has incurred legal expenses of $15 million in its efforts to defend itself against lawsuits from X owner Elon Musk, as well as investigations launched by the Federal Trade Commission and two Republican state attorneys general. The expenses from the lawsuits have also had the add-on effect of making donors to the organization "skittish," writes the Times, and the organization has had to slash its staff in half

To make matters worse, even victories in court for Media Matters bring it little reprieve given that Musk, with his limitless resources as the world's wealthiest man, will file appeals that will force the organization to shell out even more legal fees.

John Hopkins University economist Filipe Campante, who regularly writes about authoritarian threats to democracy, commented on Bluesky that the plight of Media Matters is linked to Trump's other efforts to clamp down on the free press, such as his lawsuit against CBS News that resulted in parent company Paramount agreeing to pay out $16 million shortly before the Federal Communications Commission signed off on its $8 billion merger with studio Skydance.

In fact, he likened the Trump administration's current actions to those of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has successfully strangled independent media in his country over the span of several years.

"This, yet again, is competitive authoritarianism in practice," wrote Campante. "The speed of the collapse in the media environment is something I had not foreseen... weaponization of lawsuits, persecution by regulators, donors scared away. It's the Orbán playbook, on steroids."

And Campante isn't the only expert making comparisons to Orbán.

Gábor Scheiring, a former Hungarian member of parliament who is now an assistant professor of comparative politics at Georgetown University Qatar, told CNN's Brian Stelter on Friday that Trump's strategy for taming the news media is almost the exact same strategy he once saw Orbán employ. Scheiring zeroed in on CBS' recent announcement that frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert would have his show canceled next year as particularly Orbán-esque.

"Most of Orban's tactical weapons to take over the media resemble the moves that led to Colbert's cancellation," he explained. "The legal warfare, the lawsuit against CBS, the regulatory capture and threats, the financial pressures, the sale of the parent company, and the new owner's apparent friendliness to Trump."

Scheiring added that Orbán was able to achieve this result by isolating media owners and picking them off one by one to ensure they never forged a sense of solidarity with one another.

"Media owners, both foreign and domestic, largely capitulated individually rather than mounting collective resistance, which enabled Orbán's systematic capture strategy," he said.

Even media moguls ideologically allied with the president haven't escaped his wrath, as Trump filed a lawsuit against right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch earlier this month after the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal published a story detailing an obscene birthday card the president allegedly gave to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Diplomats Informed That Trump Refugee Program 'Intended for White People' Only: Report

Trump earlier this year lobbed baseless accusations at South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that his government was engaging in "genocide" against white farmers.


U.S. President Donald Trump meets with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2025.

 (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Jul 25, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

A Friday report from Reuters claims that a senior Trump administration official recently informed diplomats in South Africa that a refugee program set up by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year was explicitly intended for white people.

According to Reuters, American diplomats in South Africa earlier this month asked the U.S. State Department whether it was allowed to process refugee claims from South African citizens who spoke the Afrikaans language but who were of mixed-race descent.

The diplomats received a response from Spencer Chretien, the senior bureau official in the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, who informed them that "the program is intended for white people," writes Reuters.

The State Department told Reuters that the scope of the program is actually broader than what was outlined in Chretien's message and that its policy is "to consider both Afrikaners and other racial minorities for resettlement," which lines up with guidance posted earlier this year stating that applicants for refugee status under the program "must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa."

Trump back in February issued an executive order establishing a refugee program for what the order described as "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination." The president also lobbed baseless accusations at South African President Cyril Ramaphosa this past May that his government was engaging in "genocide" against white farmers in his country.

The notion that whites in South Africa face severe racial discrimination, let alone the threat of genocide, is difficult to square with the reality that white South Africans own three-quarters of the private land in the nation despite being a mere 7% of the population.

Dara Lind of the American Immigration Council, reacting to the Reuters report, explained on social media platform Bluesky the reasons that Trump's refugee program for Afrikaners is highly unusual. Lind pointed to the fact that the United States government at the moment is still trying to block refugees who have already gone through a two-year vetting process from entering the country, whereas it let many Afrikaner refugees into the country after a mere two weeks of vetting.

"Two years of vetting is insufficient, but two weeks is enough to know if someone will 'be assimilated easily'—as admin officials said when the Afrikaners came," she observed.

Fridays for Future Plans Global Climate Strike During COP30 in Brazil

"A just transition is not a luxury or a campaign to be used for greenwashing; it's a matter of survival and securing our future," said a movement member in the host country.

Luisa Neubauer speaks to activists from Fridays for Future during a demonstration against gas drilling off the German island Borkum on July 15, 2025.
(Photo: Lars Penning/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Jul 29, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The Fridays for Future movement announced this week that it is planning the next Global Climate Strike for November 14, the first Friday during the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil.

The movement began in 2018, with then-teenage Greta Thunberg's solo protest at the Swedish parliament, which inspired millions of people to hold similar school strikes for climate action around the world.

The U.N. summit, COP30, is set to run from November 10-21. Brazil's website for the conference states that "the main challenges include aligning the commitments of developed and developing countries in relation to climate finance, ensuring that emission reduction targets are compatible with climate science, and dealing with the socio-economic impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations."

On November 14, "under the banner #JustTransitionNow, young people around the world will mobilize to demand urgent, justice-centered action to phase out fossil fuels and build a sustainable future for all," according to a Monday statement from Fridays for Future.

"Global leaders must stop listening to fossil fuel lobbyists... It's time they start listening to science, to young people, and to traditional communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis."

According to the movement, the upcoming global strike will highlight the urgent need to:Accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels: End the financing and expansion of coal, oil, and gas projects.
Massively invest in renewable energy: Call for a significant increase in clean, affordable energy for all.
Ensure a just transition for workers and communities: Safeguard livelihoods and promote social justice in the shift to a green economy.
Advance climate justice for the Global South: Demand reparations and financial support for developing countries disproportionately affected by the climate crisis.

"Global leaders must stop listening to fossil fuel lobbyists or seeking alliances with groups like OPEC+," said Daniel Holanda of Fridays for Future Brazil, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other leading oil exporters.

"It's time they start listening to science, to young people, and to traditional communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis," Holanda added. "A just transition is not a luxury or a campaign to be used for greenwashing; it's a matter of survival and securing our future."

The movement's announcement of the next strike follows last week's landmark advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—the U.N.'s primary judicial organ—that countries have a legal obligation to take cooperative action against the "urgent and existential threat" of human-caused planetary heating.

"We now have a common foundation based on the rule of law, releasing us from the limitations of individual nations' political interests that have dominated climate action," said Ralph Regenvanu, a minister in Vanuatu, which introduced the U.N. General Assembly resolution that led to the opinion. "This moment will drive stronger action and accountability to protect our planet and peoples."

Plans for the strike also come as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and congressional Republicans work to undo the limited progress that the United States has made in terms of taking accountability for being the biggest historical contributor to climate pollution.

In addition to the United States ditching the Paris agreement, again, Trump's return to power has meant the elimination of the State Department's Office of Global Change. The latter move, CNN reported Tuesday, "leaves the world's largest historical polluter with no official presence" at COP30.