Bernie and AOC Explain How Trump and GOP Are About to Double Insurance Premiums for Millions of Americans

“This messaging is approximately 142 times better,” said one political observer, “than Democrats are getting from leadership.”


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wave during a stop of the ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ rally in Folsom, Calif., Tuesday, April 15, 2025.
(Photo by Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Oct 02, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Amid the ongoing government shutdown fight in Congress, two of America’s top progressive lawmakers on Wednesday released a video explaining exactly how President Donald Trump and his Republican allies are going to jack up Americans’ health insurance premiums.

In the video, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) explained their decisions to vote against the continuing resolution being put forth by Republicans to reopen the federal government



“This is one of the dirtiest tricks being pulled on the American people right now,” Ocasio-Cortez said of the continuing resolution. “Starting today, October 1, and throughout the rest of the month, Americans across this country are going to start getting notifications that their insurance premiums are up to doubling.”

“Say that again,” Sanders responded.

“Monthly insurance premiums are going to double for millions of people across the country,” Ocasio-Cortez emphasized.

Sanders then interjected to emphasize that this premium hike was coming “at a time when we are already paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for healthcare, at a time when people can’t afford it right now.”

Ocasio-Cortez then listed some of the negative consequences that could come from not passing legislation to extend the enhanced subsidies for people who buy their insurance through the exchanges created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“That means people getting bankrupt over chemotherapy, people going to the pharmacy and not being able to get their insulin, and frankly, it means a lot of Americans are going to be in danger,” she said. “And Republicans want us to rubber stamp that.”

Sanders closed the video by reminding viewers that the US healthcare system is already “broken,” given that “we’re the only major country on Earth to not guarantee healthcare to all people.”

“And these guys,” he said, referring to Republicans, “want to make it even worse. We’re not going to let that happen.”



Many political observers praised the video made by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for directly telling Americans, in plain language, the stakes of the current shutdown fight.

“This messaging is approximately 142 times better (highly scientific estimate) than Democrats are getting from leadership,” said polling expert Nate Silver.

Roberto Cabral Duran, vice president of strategic communications, geopolitics, and corporate affairs at global consulting firm Teneo, said that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez delivered “a brilliant piece of political communication” with their video.

“It’s clear, it addresses an issue close to all voters, and it helps further alienate people from the GOP’s position,” he said. “AOC and Bernie did it again.”

Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America, also said that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were running laps around Democratic leadership in terms of effective messaging.

“The two most prominent progressives in America who support Medicare for All deliver the most compelling message of anyone in the party about ACA subsidies,” he said. “They’re also doing it without posting cringe jokes and memes from young staffers. A lesson, perhaps!”

Recent research from KFF found that most people who buy insurance through the ACA are set to see their premiums rise by over 75% unless Congress steps in and renews enhanced subsidies that had been passed into law under the American Rescue Plan in 2021.

The expiring subsidies aren’t the only threat to Americans’ healthcare, as Republicans over the summer passed a massive budget law that cut spending on Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would result in more than 10 million people, among the nation’s poorest, losing their coverage.

THE GRIFT

Trump Pressures Top Universities to Sign ‘Extortion Agreement’ for Federal Funds

“It is a document of unconditional surrender,” one professor said of a compact “urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump’s political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds.”


US President Donald Trump speaks with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon during an executive order signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on July 31, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Oct 02, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


President Donald Trump’s war on academia continued this week with letters pressuring the leaders of top universities across the United States to sign his “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” for priority access to federal funding and other “positive benefits.”

The New York Times reported that “letters were sent on Wednesday to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia.”

The letters “urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump’s political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds” were signed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon and two key White House officials, according to the Times.

The compact, published by the Washington Examiner, states that “no factor such as sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious associations, or proxies for any of those factors shall be considered, explicitly or implicitly, in any decision related to undergraduate or graduate student admissions or financial support, with due exceptions for institutions that are solely or primarily comprised of students of a specific sex or religious denomination.”

“Signatories commit themselves to revising governance structures as necessary to create such an environment, including but not limited to transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” the 10-page document continues.

In an apparent response to campus protests against US complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, the compact adds:
Universities shall be responsible for ensuring that they do not knowingly: (1) permit actions by the university, university employees, university students, or individuals external to the university community to delay or disrupt class instruction or disrupt libraries or other traditional study locations; (2) allow demonstrators to heckle or accost individual students or groups of students; or (3) allow obstruction of access to parts of campus based on students’ race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. Signatories commit to using lawful force if necessary to prevent these violations and to swift, serious, and consistent sanctions for those who commit them.

The compact also requires strict definitions of gender, including for sports, as well as limits on the enrollment of international students. Transgender athletes and foreign scholars have been key targets of the Trump administration.

While Kevin P. Eltife, chair of the University of Texas Board of Regents, told the Times that the school system “is honored” that its flagship in Austin was “selected by the Trump administration for potential funding advantages” and “we enthusiastically look forward to engaging with university officials and reviewing the compact immediately,” the other eight schools declined to comment.

The president has already used federal funding to push for changes at major institutions, waging battles over admission policies, trans athletes, and campus protests against US government support for Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. Brown and UPenn are two of the schools that have already reached agreements with the administration, while others have fought back.

Critics were swift to condemn the Trump administration’s effort as ”blackmail,” ”extortion,” and a ”shakedown.”

“This administration is extorting universities to sign away academic freedom—nothing meritocratic or ‘small government’ about it,” said Salomé Viljoen, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School, on social media.



The compact was decried as a ”loyalty oath” and ”political bribe.” Damon Kiesow, the Knight chair for journalism innovation at the Missouri School of Journalism, said that “it is a document of unconditional surrender.”

Edward Swaine, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, warned that “this steps boldly toward a scheme in which the federal government’s role in relation to all colleges and universities, public and private, is akin to how state governments presently govern state institutions.”

“Federalism aside, at what point does every school become a state actor?” he asked.

Despite Republican officials’ long-standing opposition to student debt relief and tuition-free higher education, the compact also calls for a five-year tuition freeze and free tuition for students studying “hard sciences” if a school’s endowment exceeds $2 million per undergraduate student.

Richard W. Painter, the chief White House ethics counsel under former President George W. Bush and now a University of Minnesota law professor, said Thursday that “the Trump administration is absolutely right that universities must freeze tuition.”

“Price gouging of students and wasteful spending must stop,” he added. “The administration’s obsession over ‘definition of gender’ is a silly sideshow undermining higher ed reform.”

‘Decades of Policy Failures’ Confirmed as Elon Musk Net Worth Hits $500 Billion

“Our system isn’t broken,” said one progressive critic. “It’s working exactly how billionaires want it to work.”


Elon Musk speaks during an America PAC town hall on October 26, 2024 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Oct 02, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Elon Musk became the first person in history with a net worth $500 billion as the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s fortune briefly topped the half-trillion dollar mark on Wednesday, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires tracker.

According to this year’s International Monetary Fund figures, that makes Musk’s net worth higher than the gross domestic product of 165 of the world’s 195 nations.

‘Insane Economics,’ Bernie Sanders Says of Musk’s Trillionaire Potential


Rooted in apartheid South Africa, built on a foundation of unethical business practices, and boosted by staggering sums of corporate welfare, Musk’s fortune soared to even greater heights after he played a key role in buying the 2024 election for President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates by pouring over a quarter billion dollars into their campaign coffers.






As Forbes noted:
Worth just $24.6 billion in March 2020, soaring Tesla shares made him the fifth person ever worth $100 billion, in August 2020. He became the world’s richest person for the first time in January 2021, with a nearly $190 billion net worth. Then, in September 2021, he became the third person ever worth $200 billion (after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Frenchman Bernard Arnault of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH). Musk went on to hit $300 billion in November 2021 and $400 billion in December 2024.

Musk was rewarded for his 2024 largesse by being named the de facto head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a job he has since left after overseeing the Project 2025-inspired evisceration of numerous federal agencies.

As progressives argue that the existence of billionaires is a public policy failure, Musk apparently no longer wants to be one. That’s because he’s seeking to leave the realm of mere multicentibillionaires behind and become the world’s first trillionaire. Such an outcome is possible under a compensation package recently proposed by Tesla’s board, and Forbes says it could happen by 2033.

Addressing this possibility, Musk—who has long warned about the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence, even as his companies pioneer such technology—said on his social media site X last year that “it’s not about ‘compensation’, but about me having enough influence over Tesla to ensure safety if we build millions of robots.”

“If I can just get kicked out in the future by activist shareholder advisory firms who don’t even own Tesla shares themselves, I’m not comfortable with that future,” he added.

Progressive observers expressed dismay at the news of Musk’s latest money milestone.



Campaign for New York Health executive director Melanie D’Arrigo said Wednesday on social media that “Elon Musk hitting $500 billion while 60% of Americans can’t afford basic necessities is what it looks like when billionaires buy elections to get laws written to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.”

“Elon Musk is a result of decades of policy failures,” she added.

Podcaster Brian Allen alluded to United Nations World Food Program Director David Beasley’s challenge to Musk to contribute toward the $6.6 trillion needed to combat world hunger.

“He could’ve solved it 83 times, but chose to buy Twitter, pump Dogecoin, and lay off workers instead,” Allen said of Musk. “Welcome to late-stage capitalism.”

Musk joins ‘cancel Netflix’ campaign

By AFP
October 2, 2025


Elon Musk has urged his 227 million social media followers to cancel their Netflix subscriptions, accusing the streaming platform of promoting what he describes as transgender propaganda.

In his latest culture war campaign, the Tesla tycoon joined a trend launched by conservative social media account Libs of TikTok that cited the animated series “Dead End: Paranormal Park” and Netflix’s corporate diversity efforts as a cause for dropping the streaming service.

The show’s creator, Hamish Steele, is accused of making social media remarks about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September that were seen by conservatives online as disrespectful and led to the backlash.

Netflix’s shares fell two percent on Wednesday when the controversy gained traction and were down as much as another two percent Thursday on Wall Street.

“Cancel Netflix,” Musk wrote in a Wednesday post on X, the platform he owns, quoting another post made by Libs of TikTok.

That post shared screenshots of a Netflix company report that said it had increased the number of non-white directors and lead actors on its programs.

In a later post on the issue, Musk encouraged his followers to “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids.”

Steele addressed the controversy in a few Bluesky posts that have since been deleted: “It’s all lies and slander!”

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, has a personal connection to transgender issues. His eldest daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, publicly transitioned in 2022 and legally changed both her name and gender identity.

Musk has claimed his child was “killed” by the “woke mind virus” instilled at an elite California school.

MAGA influencers rage-quit Netflix over new kids show: 'Bunch of woke garbage!'

Robert Davis
September 30, 2025

RAW STORY

Supporters of Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump raise MAGA hats, on the day Trump returns for a rally at the site of the July assassination attempt against him, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

MAGA-aligned influencers are rage-quitting Netflix after the company released advertisements for an upcoming kids' show that features a transgender character.

The moves to leave the popular streaming platform come after Netflix announced a new show called "Dead End Paranormal Park," an animated series about a group of friends who fight off demons at a haunted theme park. One of the characters in the show identifies as transgender, which was called out by the popular LibsofTikTok account on X.

Several MAGA voices called out Netflix for including a transgender character, and some posted screenshots of them cancelling their subscriptions because of it.

"We will not support a company who pushes transgenderism on kids and employs someone who celebrates murder," Chaya Raichik, who operates the LibsofTikTok account, posted on X.

Raichik also posted about "Dead End Paranormal Park's" creator, who she said had celebrated the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Elon Musk, X's owner, chimed in, calling the show's creator a "groomer" in a post on X.

"Who actually watches Netflix at this point?" MAGA commentator Nick Sortor posted on X. "It’s a bunch of woke garbage. Is it a bunch of chronically unemployed leftists in LA or something?"

"Cancel Netflix," conservative influencer Gunther Eagleman posted on X.

Watchdog Fears Supreme Court Will Continue to ‘Rubber-Stamp’ Authoritarian Trump Actions in New Term

Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk said the Supreme Court has “regularly abetted President Trump’s unlawful power grab and indulged his anti-constitutional impulses.”


Protestors holding signs stand outside of the US Supreme Court on June 20, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Oct 02, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

With a new term kicking off for the US Supreme Court on Monday, an anti-corruption watchdog group is sounding the alarm about several cases that may “rubber-stamp” President Donald Trump’s attempts to further erode the rule of law and consolidate more authority over the federal government.

In a statement published Thursday, Tony Carrk, the executive director of the group Accountable.US warned that during Trump’s first nine months in power, the high court’s 6-3 conservative majority has “regularly abetted President Trump’s unlawful power grab and indulged his anti-constitutional impulses, which has enriched himself, his family, and his wealthy allies at the expense of everyday Americans while eroding our rights, freedoms, and protections.”

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He fears the court may do so again as it hands down new, highly consequential rulings. Some cases it plans to decide in the new term will determine whether Trump can use emergency powers to enact tariffs without Congress’ approval and fire heads of independent federal agencies, including Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, without cause.

These cases are all on the latest so-called “shadow docket,” by which the court issues emergency rulings without providing a public rationale for its decisions. Since his second term began, Trump has flooded the shadow docket with an unprecedented number of cases.

Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck found that in just the first 20 weeks of Trump’s second term, the administration sought emergency action by the court 19 times—the same number of requests made by the Biden administration over four years.

“On issues ranging from dismantling the Department of Education to banning transgender people from serving in the military, federal trial judges from across the ideological spectrum have repeatedly blocked actions by the administration, only for the Supreme Court to halt those rulings with little or no explanation,” explained Alicia Bannon, the director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford University, described the Supreme Court as being “in open conflict with the lower courts over cases involving the Trump administration.” Between May 1 and June 23, he found, “federal district courts... ruled against the administration 94.3% of the time. The Supreme Court, however, has flipped that outcome, siding with the administration in 93.7% of its cases (15 out of 16).”

Carrk noted that these new cases “come on the heels of the court’s decision in Trump v. United States last year, which granted Trump broad immunity for unchecked abuses of power at the highest levels of government. This considerable expansion of presidential power arguably emboldened him to take even more extreme, accelerated actions.”

Trump is also expected to add other cases to the shadow docket as the term progresses. On Sunday, ABC reported that Trump has requested that the court make an expedited decision on his order ending the constitutional protection of birthright citizenship.

The conservative justices signaled that they may be sympathetic to overturning birthright citizenship when they ruled in June that lower courts could not issue nationwide injunctions to stop its enforcement. Since then, three more federal judges have ruled the order unconstitutional.




The new term will come as the American public increasingly doubts the Supreme Court’s evenhandedness. A Gallup poll published Wednesday found that 43% of Americans believe that the court is “too conservative.” While this was the highest proportion ever recorded, it has held roughly steady since 2022, when the court overturned Roe v. Wade, which has allowed many states to severely restrict or outright ban abortion.

Approval of the court has plummeted more generally over the past five years. In 2020, just two months before the death of the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 58% of Americans approved of the job the Supreme Court was doing. Now just 42% say they approve of the court, just slightly up from the 39% nadir recorded in July, which was the lowest level of support the court had received in Gallup’s 25-year trend.

“As the court’s new term kicks off, Carrk concluded, all eyes will be on its conservative majority to show that they’re capable of standing up for our rights, freedoms, and the Constitution, or they will further risk undermining their legitimacy and waning trust among the American public.”

‘Surreal Moment for America’: ICE Agents in Chicago Drag Children Out of Their Homes, Ransack Building​

“We’re under siege,” said one witness. “We’re being invaded by our own military.”

LIKE IN THE MOVIES; MIB REPELLING DOWN FROM BLACKHAWK HELICOPTER


Demonstrators march through downtown Chicago, opposing ICE and troop

 deployment during an emergency protest on September 30, 2025.
Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images

Brad Reed
Oct 02, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Just hours after President Donald Trump said US soldiers should use Americans cities as “training grounds,” federal law enforcement officials on Tuesday night descended upon an apartment complex in Chicago where witnesses say they broke down residents’ doors, smashed furniture and belongings, and dragged dozens of them, including children, placed in U-Haul vans.

Local resident Rodrick Johnson, who lives in the building raided by Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) agents, told the Chicago Sun-Times that federal officials broke down his door, put him in zip ties, and kept him detained outside the building for three hours before letting him go.
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“I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” he explained to the paper. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.”

Pertissue Fisher, who also lives in the building, backed up Johnson’s account and said that agents forcibly removed all residents from their homes regardless of their legal status.

“They just treated us like we were nothing,” she told local news station ABC 7 Chicago. “They, like, piling us all up in the back on the other side, and it wasn’t no room to move nowhere.”

Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street from the raided building, told the Chicago Sun-Times that she saw children, some of whom weren’t even wearing clothes, dragged out of the building by ICE agents and then placed into U-Haul vans.

“It was heartbreaking to watch,” she said. “Even if you’re not a mother, seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.”

Watson also said that it appeared the federal agents had ransacked the building during the raid.

“Stuff was everywhere,” she said. “You could see people’s birth certificates, and papers thrown all over. Water was leaking into the hallway. It was wicked crazy.”

Dan Jones, a resident at the building, told the Chicago Sun-Times that he returned from work on Wednesday to find that several of his belongings, including electronics and furniture, were missing from his apartment, and that all of his clothes had been strewn across the floor. He said that he asked the Chicago Police Department for any information about what happened to his belongings in the wake of the ICE raid, but has so far received no response.

“I’m pissed off,” Jones told the paper. “I feel defeated because the authorities aren’t doing anything.”



Darrell Ballard, who witnessed the raid, told ABC 7 Chicago that it felt more like a military operation than law enforcement.

“We’re under siege,” he said. “We’re being invaded by our own military.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that 37 people were arrested during the raid, and it claimed some of them “are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes, and immigration violators.”

American Immigration Council fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said in a Thursday social media post that the raid represented “a surreal moment for America” that was a clear violation of residents’ civil liberties.

“Needless to say, if the normal police ever pulled something like this—pulling every single person out of an apartment building and handcuffing them to run warrant checks—they would be sued into oblivion,” he observed. “Yet ICE is going to get away with it entirely.”

Reichlin-Melnick also said that, even if the agents had a valid warrant to enter the apartment complex, it was highly unlikely that warrant would extend to removing every single resident there.

“I am... DEEPLY skeptical that the warrant permitted them to smash down every door and arrest every person in the building,” he wrote. “My gut says they went far beyond the warrant.”

Apple Removes ‘ICEBlock’ App That Let Users Report Local ICE Sightings After DOJ Pressure

“Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move,” the app’s developer said.


In this photo illustration, the ICEBlock app is displayed on an Apple iPhone on October 2, 2025, in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Oct 03, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Caving to what the developer described as “pressure from the Trump administration,” Apple has removed an application that allowed users to report and track US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in their area.

“ICEBlock,” which has over 1 million downloads, allowed users to report sightings of ICE agents within a “5-mile radius of your current location” to alert immigrants and others in the community fearful of being swept up in President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” crusade.

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Its developer, Joshua Aaron, told NBC News that he created it in April because he felt like he was “watching history repeat itself” when he saw things like “5-year-olds in courtrooms with no representation” and “college students being disappeared for their political opinions.”

“When I saw what was happening in this country, I really just wanted to do something to help fight back,” he said.

Downloads of the app surged in June as the administration accelerated its deportation efforts, aiming for a daily quota of 3,000 arrests. That’s also when CNN published a piece about the app that caught the attention of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she was “working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them [CNN]” for reporting on the app, which she said was “actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations.”

Courts have long held that recording the actions of law enforcement is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Aaron contended, in a statement emailed to 404 Media, that “ICEBlock is no different from crowd-sourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application, including Apple’s own Maps app, implements as part of its core services.”

Fox Business reported Thursday that Apple had removed ICEBlock following direct pressure from the Justice Department, including Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store—and Apple did so,” Bondi said in a statement. “ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed.”

Following the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas last week, which resulted in the deaths of two detainees and the critical injury of another, federal officials claimed that the shooter had used ICE tracking apps; however, they stopped short of naming any specific app or claiming that he used it to plan the shooting. Aaron has dismissed these charges as politically motivated.

Aaron shared a copy of Apple’s email informing him that ICEBlock had been removed with 404 Media. It said the program violated the App Store’s policy against “objectionable content,” specifically its section banning “defamatory discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm a targeted individual or group.”

The email then said, “Information provided to Apple by law enforcement shows that your app violates Guideline 1.1.1 because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”

Aaron disputed this characterization, saying: “Apple has claimed they received information from law enforcement that ICEBlock served to harm law enforcement officers. This is patently false.”

Apple has said it also removed “similar apps” from the App Store, citing law enforcement concerns.

The removals come as immigration operations around the country have drawn increasing national scrutiny, with a number of high-profile acts of brutality in just the past week.

On Tuesday night, just hours after Trump said US soldiers should use American cities as “training grounds,” federal law enforcement agents descended upon an apartment complex in Chicago where witnesses told the Chicago Sun-Times they broke down residents’ doors, smashed furniture and belongings, and dragged dozens of people, including children, into U-Haul vans as part of an operation that nabbed 37 people.

Last week, an agent was filmed throwing an Ecuadorian asylum seeker to the ground shortly after her husband was detained in front of their family at an immigration courthouse in New York City, where they’d come for an immigration hearing. DHS briefly put the officer on leave, calling his conduct “unacceptable,” before returning him to the job three days later.

On Tuesday, a photojournalist had to be hospitalized after an ICE agent pushed him to the ground at the same facility, leading him to hit his head on the floor.

“I am incredibly disappointed by Apple’s actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move,” Aaron wrote. “We are determined to fight this with everything we have. Our mission has always been to protect our neighbors from the terror this administration continues to [rain] down on the people of this nation. We will not be deterred. We will not stop. #resist.”

Judge Rejects Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Bid to Reopen Asylum Claim

The judge ruled Abrego Garcia had presented “insufficient evidence” to show that the Trump administration planned his “imminent removal to Uganda.”

A member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus holds a picture of Kilmar Abrego Garcia during a news conference to discuss Abrego Garcia’s arrest and deportation d at Cannon House Office Building on April 9, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Oct 02, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Kilmar Ábrego García, the man whom the Trump administration wrongly deported to El Salvador earlier this year, has been denied a bid to reopen his asylum case.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Immigration Judge Philip P. Taylor rejected Ábrego García’s asylum request, as he found “insufficient evidence” to show that the Trump administration planned his “imminent removal to Uganda,” even though the US Department of Homeland Security wrote in a social media post in late August that he would be processed for removal to that nation.



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In explaining his ruling, Taylor noted that the government had not yet filed any paperwork to send Ábrego García to Uganda, and a government attorney said that deporting him to Uganda was merely a possibility not a foregone conclusion.

Ábrego García now has 30 days to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

The Trump administration this past June complied with a Supreme Court order to facilitate Ábrego García’s return to United States after it acknowledged months earlier that he had been improperly deported to El Salvador, where a US immigration judge had ruled years earlier he faced direct danger from gang threats against him and his family.

While imprisoned in El Salvador’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), Ábrego García’s attorneys allege he was subjected to physical and psychological abuse “including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.”

Upon his return, the US Department of Justice promptly hit him with human smuggling charges to which he has pleaded not guilty.

President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have also accused Ábrego García of being a member of the gang MS-13, although they have produced no evidence to back up that assertion.

‘Unconstitutional, Un-American, and Wrong’: Journalist Mario Guevara to Be Deported to El Salvador Friday

“Mario’s treatment should terrify any person in this country that cares about a free press,” said an ACLU attorney.


Mario Guevara, a Salvadoran journalist with a work permit in the United States, was arrested while covering a “No Kings” protest in June 2025, and is now at risk of imminent deportation.
(Photo: ACLU)

Jessica Corbett
Oct 02, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Journalist Mario Guevara’s family and lawyers said Thursday that the award-winning Spanish-language journalist is set to be deported from the United States to his native El Salvador on Friday morning.

The announcement comes after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to block a final order of removal from the Board of Immigration Appeals. The ACLU said in a statement that Guevara’s wife and three children were not allowed to say goodbye to the journalist, who was transferred to a Louisiana facility ahead of his deportation after being held in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in Georgia for over 100 days.

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“Words cannot begin to describe the loss and devastation my family feels. I am in utter shock and disbelief the government has punished my father for simply doing his life’s work of journalism,” said his son Oscar Guevara, who also shared an update in Spanish on his father’s Facebook account.

“My father should have never had to face over 100 days in detention,” Oscar Guevara continued. “He is the center of our family. He is the reason our home feels like home. To me, he’s my rock, and I don’t know what life without him here will look like now that he will be deported.”

“When I was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2021, it was my dad who centered me, who drove me to my medical appointments, and who lifted me up,” he added. “Now, I will have to manage my healthcare on my own, and live thousands of miles away separated from him. My family has been torn apart for no good reason, and I can only hope that we can one day be reunited.”

Guevara has covered immigration in the Atlanta area for two decades. He was arrested in June while reporting on a “No Kings” protest in Georgia. The local charges against him were dropped, but he has remained in ICE custody in Folkston, despite having work authorization and a path to a green card through his son.

The reporter’s battle to remain in the United States has played out as ICE works to deliver on President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations and his adminstration cracks down on criticism from journalists, comedians, and more. Press freedom and immigrant rights advocates have sounded the alarm about his case.

“The government kept Mario unlawfully detained for weeks because of his vital reporting on law enforcement activity. His deportation is a devastating and tragic outcome for a father and celebrated journalist,” said Scarlet Kim, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU, one of the groups representing Guevara in federal court.

“Journalists should not have to fear government retaliation, including prolonged detention, for reporting on government activity, and showing up to work should not result in your family being torn apart,” added Kim. “Mario’s treatment should terrify any person in this country that cares about a free press.”

Freedom of the Press Foundation is among the groups that have been demanding his release. The organization’s director of advocacy, Seth Stern, said Thursday that “Mario Guevara was ripped from his family and community because the Trump administration punishes journalists to protect its own power.”

“The only thing that journalists like Guevara threaten is the government’s chokehold on information it doesn’t want the public to know. That’s why he’s being deported and why federal agents are assaulting and arresting journalists around the country,” Stern continued. “The full impact on our freedom of speech may never be known. But what is certain is that Guevara’s deportation sends a chilling message to other journalists: Tell the truth, and the state will come for you.”

“This is unconstitutional, un-American, and wrong,” he added. “It’s an assault on the First Amendment, and it won’t stop until we all fight back by speaking out.”

‘Red Flag’: Analysts Sound Major Alarms As AI Bubble Now ‘Bigger’ Than Subprime

“I wouldn’t touch this stuff now,” warned one financial analyst about the AI industry.



Signage of AI (artificial intelligence) is seen during the World Audio Visual Entertainment Summit in Mumbai, India, on May 2, 2025.
(Photo: Indranil Aditya/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Oct 03, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Several analysts are sounding alarms about the artificial intelligence industry being a major financial bubble that could potentially tip the global economy into a severe recession.

MarketWatch reported on Friday that the MacroStrategy Partnership, an independent research firm, has published a new note claiming that the bubble generated by AI is now 17 times larger than the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, and four times bigger than the global real-estate bubble that crashed the economy in 2008.

The note was written by a team of analysts, including Julien Garran, who previously led the commodities strategy team at multinational investment bank UBS.

Garran contends that companies have vastly overhyped the capabilities of AI large language models (LLMs), and he pointed to data showing that the adoption rate of LLMs among large businesses has already started to decline. He also thinks that flagship LLM ChatGPT may have “hit a wall” with its latest release, which he said hasn’t delivered noticeably better performance than previous releases, despite costing 10 times as much.

The consequences for the economy, he warns, could be dire.

“The danger is not only that this pushes us into a zone 4 deflationary bust on our investment clock, but that it also makes it hard for the Fed and the Trump administration to stimulate the economy out of it,” he writes in the investment note.

Garran isn’t the only analyst expressing extreme anxiety about the potential for an AI bubble to bring down the economy.

In a Friday interview with Axios, Dario Perkins, managing director of global macro at TS Lombard, said that tech companies are increasingly taking on massive debts in their race to build out AI data centers in a way that is reminiscent of the debts held by companies during the dot-com and subprime mortgage bubbles.

Perkins told Axios that he’s particularly wary because the big tech companies are claiming “they don’t care whether the investment has any return, because they’re in a race.”

“Surely that in itself is a red flag,” he added.

CNBC reported on Friday that Goldman Sachs SEO David Solomon told an audience at the Italian Tech Week conference that he expected a “drawdown” in the stock market over the next year or two given that so much money has been pumped into AI ventures in such a short time.


“I think that there will be a lot of capital that’s deployed that will turn out to not deliver returns, and when that happens, people won’t feel good,” he said.

Solomon wouldn’t go so far as to definitively declare AI to be a bubble, but he did say some investors are “out on the risk curve because they’re excited,” which is a telltale sign of a financial bubble.

According to CNBC, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was also attending Italian Tech Week, said on Friday that there was a bubble in the AI industry, although he insisted that the technology would be a major benefit for humanity.

“Investors have a hard time in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and the bad ideas,” Bezos said of the AI industry. “And that’s also probably happening today.”

Perkins made no predictions about when the AI bubble will pop, but he argued that it’s definitely much closer to the end of the cycle than the beginning.

“I wouldn’t touch this stuff now,” he told Axios. “We’re much closer to 2000 than 1995.”