Serial failure Jared Kushner has no business negotiating peace

Jared Kushner looks on during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 6, 2025.

 REUTERS/Kent Nishimura/File Photo

Sarah K. Burris

April 10, 2026 

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, was working with Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with Iran when the U.S. began its bombing campaign. They were close to an agreement, but Trump went to war anyway, said a report from The Guardian.

It's prompting one national security analyst to question why the two are trying again to negotiate if they weren't able to succeed the first time around.

In a BlueSky thread, Marcy Wheeler questioned why folks are focused on things like the 25th Amendment and impeachment, instead of asking about Kushner, who doesn't even work for the White House and has his own economic interest in continuing the war. The New York Times reported last month that while he was negotiating a peace deal, he was also trying to raise money from Gulf states.


"NO ONE is really holding the GOP accountable for letting Trump send his son-in-law on a diplomat's errand, EVEN AFTER his incompetence led to war, or the fact that he has rid his White House of either experts or grown-up advisors," wrote Wheeler.

She added that there's also "the fact that they let him go to war without fully briefing before and during. It's that accountability that matters, one way or another. And impeachment/25A can be a tool to force that accountability."


Wheeler said that House and Senate Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) are "intent" on demanding a vote over the War Powers Act.

"That would have the effect of peeling off a few members in both [houses]. But you need a larger narrative that GOP refusal to do its job enabled a catastrophic war," Wheeler added.

The comment comes as Trump posted on Truth Social that, despite closing the Strait of Hormuz and causing a possible global economic collapse, he believes Iran has "no cards." He called the closure of the strait "extortion."

The Guardian reported a few weeks after the bombing began that one Gulf diplomat, with direct knowledge of the negotiations, is furious with Witkoff and Kushner’s behavior. That person described them as “Israeli assets that had conspired to force the US president into entering a war from which he is now desperate to get himself out of."

Now, Vice President JD Vance is en route. Vance never wanted the war to begin with, so he might have more success than Kushner and Witkoff.

Meanwhile, inflation has risen above the level it was at when Trump took office in Jan. 2025.

Under Trump, US Disapproval of Israel, Netanyahu Hits All-Time High in Pew Research Poll

“A foreign country that a majority of Americans now disapprove of gets $3.8 billion a year from them.”


Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are gathered outside of the Port of Oakland building as they demand an end to military shipments to Israel on December 18, 2025 in Oakland, California.
(Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Apr 08, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The bipartisan support Israel and its powerful lobby have enjoyed for decades in the US—with lawmakers from both parties insisting the federal government must help Israel “defend itself” with nearly $4 billion per year in military aid—is likely to shift considerably in the coming years as public support for the country continues to collapse, particularly among young voters, in the latest Pew Research poll.

The survey was taken last month as the US-Israeli war on Iran, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly pitched to President Donald Trump in an unusual Situation Room meeting in February, was escalating and spreading across the Middle East. It found that overall, 60% of US adults had an unfavorable view of Israel.
RECOMMENDED...



Majority of American Jews Oppose Trump-Netanyahu War on Iran: Polls



Poll Shows Double-Digit Drop in US Voter Support for Israel Since 2023

That share has grown considerably since 2022, before Israel began its US-backed war on the population of Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. That year, just 42% in the US viewed Israel unfavorably.

Public opposition to the country’s government has also gone up by seven percentage points since last year, according to Pew. The share of adults who describe themselves as having a “very unfavorable” view of Israel has gone up by 9% since 2025 and has nearly tripled since before Israel began waging war on Gaza.

Journalist Prem Thakker commented that it was “absurd” to continue providing a country that a sizable majority of Americans disapprove of with military funding.



Over the past two-and-a-half years—as US public support for Israel has steadily declined—that funding has helped Israel to kill more than 72,000 Palestinians; injure more than 172,000; displace more than 90% of Gaza’s population; carry out nearly 800 attacks on the healthcare system, damaging 94% of hospitals; damage or destroy 97% of school buildings; and impose a mass starvation policy through a blockade on humanitarian aid. Israeli officials have publicly called for the killing of 50 Palestinians for every Israeli killed in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks, for Gaza to be burned to the ground, and for Israelis to “remember what Amalek has done to you,” a reference to the Israelites’ enemies in the Old Testament, whom King Saul was ordered to massacre.

All the while, Israeli officials and bipartisan US lawmakers who continue to support the Israeli government—and take donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other influential pro-Israel lobbying groups—have accused Americans who have spoken out against Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza of being antisemitic.

In the poll released by Pew, the shift away from support for Israel is most pronounced among voters aged 18-49, with 70% of respondents in that age bracket reporting unfavorable views. Majorities of both Democrats (84%) and Republicans (57%) under 50 had unfavorable views. In 2025, just 50% of Republicans under 50 viewed Israel negatively, while 71% of young Democrats said the same—representing a 13-point jump in just a year among the latter group.

Americans’ views on Netanyahu have also grown more negative, with 59% of respondents saying they did not trust the prime minister to do the right thing in terms of world affairs—up from 53% last year.

The poll was released as Israel continued its assault on Lebanon, which it began attacking in March after Hezbollah retaliated against Israeli forces for the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israeli officials claim the two-week ceasefire reached between the US, Israel, and Iran does not include Lebanon, despite statements from Pakistan, which helped broker the deal declaring otherwise.

Israel has killed more than 1,400 people in Lebanon in the last month, in addition to striking Iran along with the US in attacks that have killed more than 2,000 people.

The Pew survey was released days after a poll by the IMEU Policy Project and Data for Progress found that among Democratic primary voters in Texas, the US relationship with Israel was not seen as an abstract foreign policy issue, but one that significantly impacted how many chose between US Senate candidate James Talarico and his primary opponent, US Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).

The poll found that Talarico gained a 4-to-1 advantage over Crockett when he spoke out against providing US weapons to Israel. Nearly 90% of respondents agreed with his stance, and 44% of his supporters said his position deeply influenced their vote.

“Democrats,” said political operative Isi Baehr-Breen in response to the poll of Talarico supporters, “are gonna have to choose between Israel and winning elections.”

White evangelicals’ 'persecution' fantasy fueling Trump’s 'disastrous' war

Evangelical Pastor Paula White with U.S. President Donald Trump on July 14, 2025 

(Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian/Flickr)

Alex Henderson

April 10, 2026 

ALTERNET


When U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to destroy "a whole civilization" in Iran in an April 7 post on his Truth Social platform, the comment drew scathing condemnation not only from countless liberals, progressives and centrist Democrats, but also, from many Never Trump conservatives and libertarians. Even some far-right MAGA influencers, including Infowars' Alex Jones, former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), are calling Trump out.

Yet in far-right white evangelical circles, Trump still has plenty of loyal supporters.

In a biting article published on April 10, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argues that white evangelicals' feelings of "persecution" are helping fuel a "disastrous" war.

"For over a decade now, the Christian Right has deflected criticism of Trump's immorality and sadism by insisting they are facing persecution for their religious beliefs," Marcotte explains. "In their minds, they are the real victims of a culture gone to hell, and they see the president as their only hope to beat back these imaginary forces of oppression. Nothing, it seems, can shatter this persecution complex. As the Iran war continues to become an ever-bigger disaster, evangelicals are clinging harder than ever to the notion that because they need to defeat their fictional persecutors, Trump's myriad flaws are excusable and forgivable."

Far-right white evangelicals' "paranoid anger," Marcotte argues, is so extreme that they even view "devout Catholics" like Pope Leo XIV as persecutors.

"Regardless of what is being said in private to Catholic leaders," Marcotte observes, "it's clear that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his allies are furious at the pontiff for undermining their efforts to frame this war as a Christian enterprise — and are suggesting that those who oppose it are the equivalent of Christ's persecutors…. (Pastor) Doug Wilson, who heads the denomination Hegseth belongs to, demonstrated how valuable the phony Christian persecution narrative is for conservatives who need an excuse to stick by the (Trump) Administration amid the Iran debacle…. In the real world, Hegseth is a belligerent official who relishes threatening Iranians with 'death and destruction from above.' But in Wilson’s telling, the defense secretary is a humble servant of God, besieged on all sides by the faithless in their ongoing war against Christ's followers."

Marcotte adds, " As the administration's skirmish with Pope Leo shows, though, it's getting harder for the Christian Right to package the Iran war as a product of God's love — even to followers who have a long history of swallowing all sorts of cruelty in the name of Christ…. Some who have been among the president's loudest supporters in the past, like former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and podcaster Tucker Carlson, are now proclaiming that this war goes against everything Christians should stand for. In an effort to bring critics like these back in line, many evangelical leaders are clinging to false narratives of religious persecution."

The American Medical Association Is Failing to Speak Up for Dr. Abu Safiya

If they speak out to save just one Palestinian doctor’s life, they could pave the way to save hundreds of other prisoners.


Healthcare workers and allies rally in support of Palestinians and to demand the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all Palestinian healthcare workers in Israeli jails as they gather in New York, United States on January 6, 2025.
(Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jenin
Apr 10, 2026

Common Dreams


Israel tortured a 1-year-old baby. They burned him with cigarettes and drove nails through his feet as a form of torture during his father’s interrogation. This isn’t some twisted, made-up movie scene; this is real life. And it’s the one case we know of right now, but who knows how many other babies, in all their innocence, have been tortured by the Israeli military? It also begs the question: Since they’re willing to do this to an infant, what are they doing to older prisoners?

It’s always been clear that the Zionist settler colony will go to any length to achieve its goal of being an ethnostate. To achieve this goal, it subjects Palestinians to mass-imprisonment campaigns. No title—child, teenager, mother, father, health professional, aid worker—is spared from the Israeli prison system. Because if Israel can’t just outright exterminate all Palestinians at once, the next best option is to round them up and slowly kill them behind bars.



UN Experts Urge Israel to Free Gaza Doctor, Citing Reports of ‘Severe Torture’



‘Alarming, Unacceptable’: Trump’s Iran War Has Unleashed an Attack on Healthcare Every Six Hours

Well, that was the case before March 30, 2026, when the Israeli Knesset passed a bill that calls for the hanging of Palestinian prisoners within 90 days of being convicted of killing Israeli settlers. The bill was introduced by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been wearing noose pins and carrying around a physical noose to publicly show his excitement for potentially becoming Israel’s official executioner. When the vote was called out and the bill was passed, Ben-Gvir popped champagne bottles with his cronies, celebrating the essence of killing more Palestinians.

These are illegal settlers under international law, who have been terrorizing Palestinian villagers for years, their attacks becoming increasingly frequent and heinous. Palestinians have had their houses set on fire while inside them at the hands of these settlers, backed by the state. It is important to remember that the Israeli military courts operate outside of constitutional processes and have been widely condemned for their human rights abuses. In these courts, Palestinians have a conviction rate of over 96%, most often for crimes they never even committed.

Our government is killing people in cold blood, and the institutions meant to advocate for us remain silent even when it is their peers being forced into tanks, handcuffed, and locked away and tortured.

Israel promotes its interests by incentivizing settlers to brutalize Palestinians and destroy their land. And now, after systematically denying Palestinians’ right to defend themselves, they are branding them as cattle to be killed by hanging. Israel is carrying out its genocide in the form of codified law. This is the true face of the settler colonial state of Israel: dehumanization to the lowest level.

Right now, Israel is holding the highest number of Palestinian prisoners ever recorded. One such prisoner is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. He was the sole lead of the only functioning hospital in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital. For the “crime” of providing medical aid to Palestinians, he was surrounded by Israeli tanks and soldiers and forced into imprisonment in December 2024.

Israeli society is getting more and more draconian: no prosecution, no unanimity, nothing. Simply put, if the Israeli military sees fit to kill a Palestinian prisoner, they will do so. Dr. Abu Safiya has been in an Israeli prison for 16 months, and there is speculation that he is being tortured. But again, if they can torture an infant, what’s a middle-aged man to them? The new Israeli bill gives the IOF a pathway to execute prisoners like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya: torturing them to force a confession, convicting them, and then hanging them. Clearly, he’s been deemed a threat to the very existence of Israel because he helped save the lives of Palestinians.

This is the situation of medical professionals outside of the West, heroes who put everything on the line to provide care for their people. In comparison to the most “esteemed” doctors in the US—like those within the American Medical Association, with all their prestige and shiny titles—the healthcare workers subjected to deadly imperialist brutality deserve our recognition, and they urgently need our help.

You might be thinking, “What does the American Medical Association have to do with a detained Palestinian doctor?” Firstly, we need to contend with the fact that it is our US tax dollars that fund these genocidal soldiers, prisons, and policies that got Dr. Abu Safiya arrested in the first place. The American government and its institutions are just as guilty of the oppression of the Palestinian as the Israelis are. We need to stop operating on willful ignorance because it has cost thousands of lives in the region, a tally that is increasing by the second with the recent attacks on Iran and Lebanon.

Secondly, the American Medical Association (AMA) prides itself on its strong relationship with the World Medical Association, which has already called for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya, demonstrating alignment with its policies that “support the rights of physicians worldwide.” The advocacy of foreign doctors is integral to the AMA as a whole. Why is a Palestinian doctor being ignored by them, then? Maybe the topic of genocide is too taboo for them. That would be ironic if so, when a genocide is the culmination of healthcare sectors being destroyed, lineages lost, and eugenics shaping a land and people forever. These are topics any medical association should be speaking about, especially one that represents the literal country that enabled this violence. Imagine the leverage the AMA could have in the halls of Congress when advocating for change.

The recent codification of the execution of Palestinian prisoners poses a grave threat to Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s life. Will the AMA finally act now, in the face of such injustice and wickedness? If they speak out to save just one doctor’s life, they could pave the way to save hundreds of other prisoners.

The genocide in Gaza has shown me that so much of what I thought about society was false. I once believed I lived in a world where good prevails, but I have come to realize that selective empathy is the rule. The leaders of this world don’t hold empathy for anything or anyone that stands in their way of global domination. I frequently think of how many lives have been lost at the hands of US-Israeli imperial violence. The sheer number of casualties in Gaza, despite being predicted to be in the hundreds of thousands, has never been enough reason to stop. I think of how one of the first targets in the US war on Iran was a girl’s elementary school, which they targeted with not just one strike, but three in a row.

Our government is killing people in cold blood, and the institutions meant to advocate for us remain silent even when it is their peers being forced into tanks, handcuffed, and locked away and tortured. At this point, advocating for the release of our prisoners who were wrongfully detained is the least we can do.

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


Jenin
Jenin is CODEPINK’s Palestine campaigner. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago in December of 2023. For over five years, Jenin has been a community organizer and dedicated individual focused on the Palestinian movement through advocacy, digital storytelling, and grassroots mobilization. She is a firm believer in intertwined struggle and liberation for all.
Full Bio >

‘It Seems Nothing Is Moving the World to Stop Israel’s Terrorism’: Palestinian Poet Shares Photos of 9-Year-Old Girl Killed

“Even when kids try to learn, after over two years of nonstop running from the bombs, Israel shoots them.”


The body of nine-year-old Ritaj Rihan, who was killed in an Israeli attack on the northern Gaza Strip, is taken from the morgue of Al-Shifa Hospital for funeral prayers and burial in Gaza City, Palestine, on April 9, 2026.
(Photo by Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Apr 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


WARNING: The following article contains graphic video and images that some people may find disturbing…

Israeli forces shot and killed a 9-year-old girl in northern Gaza in front of her third-grade class on Thursday, local news sources report.



Israeli Forces Kill Parents and 2 Children in West Bank, Beat Surviving Children

According to a report Thursday from the Gaza Education Ministry, Ritaj Rihan was sitting at her desk at Abu Ubaida bin al-Jarrah School in Beit Lahiya when she was shot in front of her classmates, who were left in “psychological shock.”

“We suddenly heard the students screaming, so we rushed to the tent to find Ritaj lying face down, blood gushing from her mouth,” her teacher told the Xinhua news agency.

Photos of Rihan’s dead body were shared on social media by Mosab Abu Toha, a local poet. He said that the makeshift tent where Rihan studied was built on top of the ruins of his former high school, which was destroyed during Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.





“Even when kids try to learn, after over two years of nonstop running from the bombs, Israel shoots them,” he wrote in a post which accompanied a photo of Rihan wrapped in a body bag at a hospital in Gaza City.

“It’s painful for me to post this,” Toha said. “It seems nothing is moving the world to stop Israel’s terrorism.”

Photos and videos showed Rihan’s bloodied body being rushed through the streets on foot. The school’s principal told the Quds News Network that there was no medical transport in the area, so the only way to carry her to the hospital was via horse-drawn carriage.

Another photograph shows the bullet that reportedly killed the child.

“We were stunned,” another of the educators said. “A 9-year-old child. By what right was she martyred? For what sin was she shot while she came just to learn to write?”

The Israeli military has not commented on the shooting.



The killing came on the six-month anniversary of the “ceasefire” in Gaza that has been in place since October. At least 738 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,000 injured since then, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. In January, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that more than 100 children had been killed since the ceasefire began.

Authorities in Gaza have accused Israel of violating the ceasefire thousands of times. And according to a report out Thursday from Oxfam and other humanitarian groups, “Palestinians are continuing to suffer extreme deprivation, hunger, injury, and death due to the Israeli government’s continued attacks, movement restrictions, and aid obstructions.”

Israel still occupies more than half of the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 2 million residents crammed into about a third of the strip’s territory. With most buildings either damaged or totally destroyed, the vast majority of the population lives in makeshift tents and is left with little protection from storms and ongoing attacks by Israel.

According to Human Rights Watch, 97% of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks. But educators, most of whom are volunteers, have still tried to use the few resources they have to provide schools for Gaza’s more than a million children.

The school attended by Rihan was just two kilometers away from the yellow line dividing Israel’s official occupation zone from the rest of Gaza.



Rihan’s mother said she woke up excited to go to school that day and was looking forward to wearing her favorite dress to her uncle’s wedding the next week.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” her mother said, while holding her daughter’s bloodstained school notebook. “She wore her shroud instead.”

The reported attack also comes just a day after Israel launched an unprecedented assault on civilian areas across Lebanon, which has threatened to destroy the ceasefire reached earlier this week between the US and Iran.

The Gaza Ministry of Health described the attack that killed Rihan as a “brutal and horrific crime, adding to Israel’s long, dark record of atrocities.”

“It was not an isolated incident,” the ministry said, “but a direct extension of a systematic policy targeting the Palestinian people.”

Trump Reportedly Agreed to Include Lebanon in Ceasefire But Lied About It Anyway


The death toll from Israel’s massive, 10-minute blitz on Lebanon on Wednesday has surpassed 300 people.

By Sharon Zhang , 

Truthout

April 10, 2026

Firefighters attempt to extinguish a fire following an Israeli strike at the Corniche al-Mazraa neighbourhood of Beirut on April 8, 2026. Around 2:00 pm, a series of Israeli strikes slammed into the Lebanese capital without warning, triggering scenes of panic.Ibrahim AMRO / AFP via Getty Images

The Trump administration is lying about Lebanon’s inclusion in the Iran ceasefire deal that officials agreed to on Tuesday, as new reporting finds that U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to pause bombardments on the country before Israel launched a horrific wave of airstrikes just hours after the ceasefire went into effect.

CBS reported on Thursday, citing “multiple diplomatic sources,” that Trump was told of and agreed to Lebanon’s inclusion in the ceasefire — and that it would in fact encompass the entirety of the Middle East, including the Gulf countries that Iran has launched retaliatory strikes on.

This reporting sharply contradicts statements from various figures within the Trump administration that were made after Israeli forces bombarded Lebanon, evidently in violation of the agreement.

Vice President J.D. Vance said on Wednesday that the dispute over whether Lebanon was included “comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn’t,” he told press. Trump and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also said that Lebanon wasn’t included.

Despite this assertion being, evidently, a lie, Vance went as far as to say that it would be “dumb” if “Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart” because of Israel’s attack. “We think that would be dumb, but that’s their choice,” he said.

Israel Carpet Bombs Lebanon After Announcement of Iran Ceasefire
Israeli forces announced on Wednesday that it struck 100 sites in Lebanon over 10 minutes. By Sharon Zhang , TruthoutApril 8, 2026

The comment came on Wednesday, less than a day after the ceasefire went into effect, after Israeli forces carpet bombed Lebanon, including the capital of Beirut, in an operation the military dubbed “Eternal Darkness.” The deluge of strikes, which came over the course of just 10 minutes, destroyed buildings across the country, collapsing residential buildings with no warning.

As of Thursday, the death toll from the strikes had surpassed 300, according to Lebanese health officials, with 1,150 injured. Hospitals have been unable to cope with the load, with patients dying as they await care.

Israel has a long history of violating ceasefire deals, especially right as they are announced.

CBS’s report lines up with what Iranian officials have said about Lebanon’s inclusion in the deal, as well as officials from Pakistan, which served as the key mediator for the negotiation of the deal.

“I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere,” wrote Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday, announcing the agreement.

Earlier that day, Sharif had posted a statement about a progressing ceasefire deal on X that was reportedly directly approved by the White House.

Iranian politicians have sharply criticized the U.S. for excusing Israel’s wanton violence in Lebanon.

“The Iran–U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose — ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Araghchi.

Araghchi went on to suggest that the U.S. is bending over backwards for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s benefit.

“Netanyahu’s criminal trial resumes on [Sunday]. A region-wide ceasefire, incl in Lebanon, would hasten his jailing,” said Araghchi in a post on X, referencing Netanyahu’s penchant for using military action to postpone proceedings on his criminal trial.

“If the U S. wishes to crater its economy by letting Netanyahu kill diplomacy, that would ultimately be its choice. We think that would be dumb but are prepared for it,” Araghchi went on, in a jab at Vance.

Vance also said on Wednesday that Israel had agreed to step down its attacks, which Trump repeated. However, Netanyahu contradicted them, saying in an address on Thursday: “There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. We continue to strike Hezbollah with full force.”

‘Nightmare for Civilians’: Israel Inflicts 1,400+ Casualties on Lebanon War’s Deadliest Day

“Civilians in Lebanon are already paying an unbearable price with children, health workers, and journalists amongst those killed—the latest attacks will only escalate this devastating human toll,” said one campaigner.


A woman injured in an Israeli airstrike arrives at a hospital in Nabatieh, Lebanon on April 8, 2026.
(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Apr 09, 2026

COMMON DREAMS

Humanitarian campaigners, civil rights defenders, and progressive members of Congress were among those calling on the Trump administration to pressure Israel to stop bombing Lebanon after Israeli airstrikes killed or wounded more than 1,400 people—many of them civilians—on Wednesday.

In what Amnesty International called an “unprecedented escalation,” the Israel Defense Forces said it carried out the “largest coordinated wave of strikes” of its renewed war on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Around 100 sites in the country were bombed in one 10-minute period alone in what the IDF dubbedr “Operation Eternal Darkness.”



As in Gaza, Israel’s ‘Deliberate’ Bombing of Lebanese Civilians Takes Heavy Toll



Despite Ceasefire With Iran, Israel Pummels Lebanon With ‘Apocalyptic’ Strikes

Lebanese officials said that at least 303 people were killed and 1,165 others wounded by Israeli strikes on Wednesday, the deadliest day of attacks since Israel resumed bombardment of Lebanon and likely since it started bombing its northern neighbor after the Hamas-led Palestinian attack of October 7, 2023.

While Lebanese authorities do not break down casualties according to combatant status, officials and residents of the capital city of Beirut said that civilians were the main victims of Wednesday’s bombings, which targeted apartment towers and other civilian structures in numerous densely populated urban areas.

One witness, a woman named Fatima, told Amnesty International what she saw in the immediate aftermath of an IDF strike on a building across the street from her home in Beirut’s Salim Salam neighborhood.

“It was apocalyptic,” she said. “Bodies on the ground. Blood everywhere. I saw countless wounded adults and children. I walked further but it was the same scene in the other neighborhoods too. I did not know where to go. I just walked aimlessly trying to get as far as possible. It was a nightmare.”

Dr. Firass Abiad, a surgeon and wformer Lebanese health minister, told The Guardian that American University of Beirut Medical College, where he works, received about 70 patients at the same time, a situation he said was intentionally caused by Israel “to flood the health system.”

“There was a 90-year-old who I just left a bit ago. He passed away from his wounds,” he said. “There was nothing we could do. These are civilians who, without any warning, their whole apartment building was flattened. So you can imagine the severity of injuries that we’re getting.”



Shaden Fakih, a 24-year-old calisthenics trainer, described trying to find his friend who was inside a building when it was bombed. He couldn’t locate his friend, but he was seen carrying an elderly woman from the rubble.

“There’s no Hezbollah here, the Israelis are just getting happy when they bomb people, it’s not about Hezbollah,” Fakih said in an interview with The Guardian. “Just stop bombing us. If you want to kill Hezbollah, go for it, but don’t kill civilians, because you’re creating anger in us against Israel and we will have to act like Hezbollah just to defend our country. But I don’t want to do that, I just want to live in peace.”

“It’s been the worst day since the war started,” he added. “And what I’m most sad about is that my pretty Lebanon, our beautiful Lebanon, soon it will all be brought down to the ground.”

As Common Dreams reported, Israeli strikes have wiped out entire families in Lebanon and Iran. In Gaza, more than 2,700 families have been erased from the civil registry.

Responding to Wednesday’s attacks, Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa regional director Heba Morayef said that “just hours after the world cautiously welcomed news of a US-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, in Lebanon the nightmare for civilians has become more terrifying.”

“Even before today’s attack... more than 1,500 people had been killed and over a million people displaced from their homes across the country,” Morayef continued, referring to Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon after Hezbollah began launching rockets and drones southward in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing.

“Civilians in Lebanon are already paying an unbearable price with children, health workers, and journalists amongst those killed—the latest attacks will only escalate this devastating human toll,” Morayef added. “These attacks are a reminder that states must immediately halt the transfer of arms and weapons to Israel given the overriding risk that they will be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law.”

The Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement late Wednesday, “Once again, Israel’s genocidal government is trying to derail a ceasefire and ensure peace does not succeed by slaughtering innocent civilians.”

“The Trump administration must stop them from carrying out this brutal plan,” the group added. “Israel has demonstrated time and again that it cannot be trusted to abide by peace agreements. It is time for our government to cut all support for Israel’s atrocities.”

These and other groups, as well as governments in the Mideast and beyond, and US progressives, are demanding that Lebanon be included in the ceasefire. Although Israel agreed to the truce, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—asserts that the deal does not include Lebanon.

Iran categorically rejects Israel’s claim and is using its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz to pressure Israel to reconsider its stance.

Some US progressives called for President Donald Trump to pressure Israel to stop attacking Lebanon, and for a suspension of American arms transfers to the IDF.

“It is unconscionable we continue to provide aid to Israel as they continue to murder civilians and violate international law in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said Thursday on Bluesky. “No more money to Israel’s genocidal apartheid regime.”

In Yet Another Industry Handout, Trump EPA ‘Just Took a Sledgehammer’ to Coal Ash Rules

“Ultimately, if this rule is finalized, human health will suffer, and taxpayers will be left with the cost of cleaning up their rivers and drinking water.”

A worker moves coal refuse to be prepared for transport at a land reclamation project site in Center Township, Pennsylvania, with the shuttered Homer City Generating Station in the background, on June 12, 2024.

(Photo by Scott Lewis for The Washington Post via Getty Images)


Jessica Corbett
Apr 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Amid mounting calls for the removal of US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA chief on Thursday announced proposed changes to coal ash rules, which critics blasted as another gift to polluters at the expense of public health.

Officially called coal combustion residuals (CCR), “coal ash—the toxic byproduct of burning coal—contains hazardous pollutants, including arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, radium, and selenium, which are linked to serious health harms such as cancer, heart disease, and brain damage, among other lasting impacts,” noted the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Specifically, as The Associated Press reported, the EPA “proposed easing standards for monitoring and protecting groundwater near some coal ash sites, rolling back rules forcing the cleanup of entire coal properties instead of just places where ash was dumped. The revisions would also make it easier to reuse coal ash for other purposes.”

While Zeldin claimed the “commonsense changes to the CCR regulations reflect EPA’s commitment to restoring American energy dominance, strengthening cooperative federalism, and accommodating unique circumstances at certain CCR facilities,” Environmental Protection Network’s Marc Boom responded that “letting companies avoid cleaning up waste sites that may be leaching toxic metals into groundwater and nearby waterways, while weakening protections and accountability, is not common sense.”

“EPA’s top priority should be protecting people’s health, not sacrificing it for corporate expediency,” argued Boom, senior director of public affairs at the group, which is made up of former agency staff. “EPA may call these safeguards ‘impractical,’ but anyone living downstream of coal ash sites holding thousands of tons of waste knows that requiring cleanup and monitoring is a necessary and basic standard.”

NRDC senior attorney Becky Hammer called the pending rollback just “the latest in a long, long, line of Trump administration giveaways to fossil fuels industries,” which have also included repealing EPA rules that targeted chemical pollution from coal-fired power plants, declaring a national energy emergency, and scrapping the 2009 “endangerment finding” that underpins all federal climate regulations.

Other advocacy organizations were similarly critical of Thursday’s announcement. Daniel Estrin, Waterkeeper Alliance’s general counsel and legal director, pointed out that “coal ash is contaminating water at nearly every active and retired coal plant in the US.”

“By gutting these safeguards, EPA is abandoning its duty to protect impacted communities by allowing preventable contamination of our rivers, lakes, streams, and groundwater,” he said. “The longer the coal industry is allowed to delay closing and cleaning up its toxic waste sites, the more difficult and costly it becomes to fix the damage. By failing to enforce the law, EPA is letting polluters continue harming people and wildlife without accountability.”

Like Estrin and Hammer, Earthjustice senior counsel Lisa Evans framed that proposal as “yet another handout to the coal power industry at the expense of our health, water, and wallets,” and warned of the dangers of delaying closure and cleanup. She said that “ultimately, if this rule is finalized, human health will suffer, and taxpayers will be left with the cost of cleaning up their rivers and drinking water.”

Although “the Trump administration just took a sledgehammer to the health protections in place for toxic coal pollution,” Evans added, “Earthjustice has successfully defended these safeguards in court and will do so again.”

Nick Torrey, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has secured commitments to clean up over 270 million tons of coal ash in US communities, similarly said that “doing the bidding of industrial polluters instead of protecting ordinary families and clean water is shameful, but we are ready to keep fighting against coal ash pollution.”

“Letting coal-burning utilities set the agenda has been a disaster for communities across the South, resulting in coal ash spills and hundreds of families forced to live on bottled water for years under the threat of coal ash pollution,” Torrey highlighted. “The Trump administration and coal ash polluters want to take us back to the bad old days of arsenic, lead, and mercury from coal ash contaminating our water.”

In addition to facing a flurry of lawsuits over policies prioritizing the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry—whose campaign cash helped President Donald Trump return to the White House last year—the administration has recently been hit with demands to remove Zeldin from more than 160 advocacy groups and nearly 300 health experts.

“This EPA’s actions to put polluters first, at the expense of our health, are dangerous and will be deadly,” states the health experts’ open letter, organized and released Thursday by the Climate Action Campaign. “Administrator Zeldin has abandoned his sworn duty and must be held accountable for his agenda.”

As Zeldin Embraces Climate Crisis Deniers, 290+ Health Experts Demand His Removal

“We cannot tolerate an EPA administrator who treats our families as expendable.”


US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin participates in a discussion at the EPA in Washington, DC on April 2, 2026.
(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Apr 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Hundreds of health experts are demanding the removal of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin over his gutting of key regulations that they say will endanger Americans’ livelihoods.

A letter released Thursday by Climate Action Campaign outlines Zeldin’s threats to public health and explains why he should not be serving as the top US environmental regulator.
RECOMMENDED...


‘Game Over Zeldin’: 160+ Climate and Health Groups Say EPA Chief Must Go


“Administrator Zeldin is pursuing a deregulatory agenda that will result in a massive increase in health-damaging air pollution, toxic chemicals, and climate-heating greenhouse gases,” says the letter, which is signed by nearly 300 medical experts, including physicians, nurses, and public health researchers.

“And just last month, the administration laid bare its decision to no longer count the economic value of health benefits when setting Clean Air Act rules,” the letter adds, “refusing to acknowledge the value of lives saved, hospital visits avoided, and lost work and school days prevented.”

The letter also points to the EPA’s February decision to revoke the so-called “endangerment finding,” which gave the agency authority to regulate greenhouse gases as threats to public health.

Repealing this finding, the letter contends, “will increase the frequency and severity of climate disasters.”

According to a Wednesday report from The Associated Press, Zeldin celebrated the EPA’s revocation of the finding while delivering a keynote address at the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank that has long pushed climate denialism.

“Today is a moment to celebrate,” Zeldin said at the event. “It is a day to celebrate vindication.”

Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, said her group decided to organize the letter among medical experts because “Lee Zeldin is too dangerous to ignore.”

“When health experts—the people who see the effects of pollution on their patients every single day—say enough is enough, the rest of us need to pay attention,” said Alt. “Zeldin is not just failing Americans. He is actively endangering us. We cannot tolerate an EPA administrator who treats our families as expendable.”

This is the second “Game Over Zeldin” letter, following another from over 160 advocacy groups, including Climate Action Campaign and Moms Clean Air Force, last month.

As Mexico Enacts Universal Healthcare, Advocate Says Insurers’ ‘Stranglehold’ Is Moving US in ‘Opposite Direction’

Medicare for All advocate Wendell Potter said it’s “both inspiring and frustrating” to see other nations advance their public healthcare systems while the US dismantles its own.


Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum speaks during the daily morning briefing at Palacio Nacional on April 7, 2026, in Mexico City, Mexico.
(Photo by Jeannette Flores/ObturadorMX/Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Apr 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum moves forward with a plan to enact universal healthcare for her country’s more than 130 million people, a longtime advocate for Medicare for All in the US called the development “both inspiring and frustrating.”

“Inspiring because it shows what is possible,” Wendell Potter, a former insurance company communications director who has become a leading critic of the industry, told Common Dreams. “Frustrating because here in the US we are going in the opposite direction.”


Millions of Americans Joining the Ranks of the Uninsured Thanks to Trump-GOP Cuts in 2025


Earlier this week, Sheinbaum announced a decree that she called “a historic step” for Mexico.

Beginning in 2027, her government plans to unify Mexico’s public health institutions into a single Universal Health Service, allowing patients across the country to receive care from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the Social Security Institute and Social Services of Workers of the State (ISSSTE), and the IMSS‑Bienestar program, which provides free services to those without employer-provided insurance.

According to TeleSur, universal access would be rolled out gradually, with universal emergency care and continuity of treatment, free of financial constraints, beginning in January. Specialized services such as radiotherapy, laboratory tests, and imaging studies would be phased in later that year, and universal prescription fulfillment and hospitalization would also be added to the program in 2028.

“The goal is that when we leave the government [in 2030], any Mexican man or woman can go to any health institution for treatment for any ailment and be received,” Sheinbaum said.



Mexico has expanded its annual healthcare budget in recent years, but Sheinbaum’s government hopes that consolidating all of Mexico’s health services into a single program will eliminate bureaucratic bloat and create a more cost-effective system that saves money over time.

Potter described the plan as “just another example of countries around the world lapping the US when it comes to healthcare policy.”

While tens of millions more previously uninsured Mexicans have become eligible for free care under the healthcare expansion efforts of Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the US under President Donald Trump is in the process of shredding public healthcare programs and subsidies.

Following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by Trump last year, 11.8 million Americans are expected to lose Medicaid and other coverage, and more than 20 million are projected to see higher premiums after insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act were allowed to expire.

“Due to the stranglehold Big Insurance has on too many politicians in this country, instead of expanding care and lowering costs, we are simply helping Big Insurance make more and more money,” Potter said. “It is totally backwards.”

“We must continue to keep Medicare for All as our north star here. But also acknowledge the reality that we need to change so much about our current political environment to make it possible,” he said. “And that has to start with breaking up Big Insurance’s stranglehold on Washington.”

Oxfam Warns Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Could Help Kill More Than 9 Million People by 2030

“Governments must restore their aid budgets, and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades,” said an advocate with the international charity Oxfam.


A health worker measures a child’s arm circumference during a nutrition screening on July 23, 2025 in Karamoja region, Uganda.
(Photo by Hajarah Nalwadda/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Apr 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The global anti-poverty group Oxfam International warned this week that US President Donald Trump’s decision to slash foreign aid by more than half could kill nearly 10 million people by the end of the decade.

Responding to new data released Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showing the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance, Oxfam said “wealthy governments are turning their backs on the lives of millions of women, men, and children in the Global South.”

The OECD released preliminary data on international aid that was provided last year by member countries of the organization’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), finding the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance.

OECD member countries provided $174.3 billion in aid last year, according to the new data, representing 0.26% of the countries’ combined gross national income.

In 2024, the countries sent $215.1 billion, or 0.34% of their gross national income to developing countries, including across the Global South—helping to provide nutritional assistance and healthcare initiatives among other programs.

US foreign aid spending dropped by 56.9% after Trump dismantled the US Agency for International Development, cut smaller aid programs, and pushed Congress to rescind previously approved foreign assistance.

“At a time when aid cuts are already driving instability and fostering greater inequality, government donors are cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarization.”

Overall, wealthy OECD countries provided 23.1% less in foreign aid last year than they did in 2024—a greater decline than what the Institute of Global Health in Barcelona projected in February when it released a study in The Lancet, evaluating the impact of development assistance funding declines around the world.

The institute found that aid cuts in 2025 alone, which it assumed would represent a 21% decrease in funding, would lead to 695,238 excess deaths. If cuts continued at the same rate, an estimated 9,416,417 people could die of preventable diseases like malaria and AIDS, starvation, and other impacts by 2030.

The drop in foreign aid spending would suggest even more people could be killed by the cuts over the next four years.

“We are in a time of increasing humanitarian needs; strong pressures on the poorest and most fragile countries; and facing growing global uncertainties and massive insecurity,” said Carsten Staur, chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which compiled the data. “In this situation, the world needs more ODA, not less—to help fight extreme poverty, improve resilience, and mobilize more private resources.”

Trump’s cuts helped make Germany the largest provider of development assistance for the first time ever, providing $29.1 billion to countries in need. The US sent $29 billion while the United Kingdom provided $17.2 billion, Japan sent $16.2 billion, and France sent $14.5 billion. All five of the top ODA providers reduced their foreign aid spending, accounting for 95.7% of the total decline.

Eight out of the DAC’s 34 member countries either maintained or increased their development aid spending, and four countries—Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden—exceeded the United Nations’ target of spending 0.7% of their gross national income on ODA.

Didier Jacobs, development finance lead for Oxfam, emphasized that while “recklessly” cutting foreign aid, “the Trump administration has been preparing to ask Congress for tens of billions in additional funding for bombs, ammunition, and other military equipment relating to its unlawful war against Iran.”

“At a time when aid cuts are already driving instability and fostering greater inequality, government donors are cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarization. Cuts from donors including Germany, France and the UK will be felt by the world’s poorest,” said Jacobs.

In addition to slashing military spending instead of crucial foreign aid, he said, “there are other ways to find tens of billions, such as by taxing the $2.84 trillions of dollars that the super-rich hide in tax havens.”

“Governments must restore their aid budgets,” he said, “and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades.”

Human Rights Groups Denounce Trump Plans to Send Cubans Fleeing Impacts of Blockade to Guantánamo

“The continued use of Guantánamo Bay, which has an extensive history of abuse and torture, is horrific and unconscionable.”


Cubans ride electric tricycles and bicycles during an anti-imperialist march amid ongoing shortages and prolonged power outages, as the island faces deepening economic strain under the decades-long United States embargo in Havana, Cuba on April 2, 2026.
(Photo by Juancho Torres/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Apr 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Dozens of human rights organizations sent a letter to Congress on Friday, decrying threats by US military officials to detain Cubans who flee to the US to escape President Donald Trump’s crushing economic blockade at Guantánamo Bay.

The 86 groups, which include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Victims of Torture, the International Refugee Assistance Project, and Refugees International, zeroed in on remarks made by US Marine Corps Gen. Francis Donovan, the commander of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last month about how the military would respond to the mass influx of Cuban refugees to the United States.

The risks of a refugee exodus from Cuba were sparked in January after Trump tightened the already brutal regime of economic sanctions by threatening to slap harsh tariffs on any nation that provided oil to Cuba. The result has been a crippling fuel shortage that has caused routine blackouts and disrupted every facet of daily life, from hospital care to food cultivation.

Trump enacted the fuel blockade in what he has described as an effort to coerce the government to step down from power and make way for one more amenable to the interests of American companies. With Cuba in a weakened state, he has threatened to “take” the island outright using American military force.

The United Nations has warned that if the blockade is prolonged, it could bring about a total “humanitarian collapse.”

Asked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) about what would be done if this caused a mass influx of Cuban refugees to the US, Donovan said they had an executive order that would involve coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security to handle a “mass migration event.”

Donovan said it would include using the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, “where we would set up a camp to deal with those migrants or any overflow from any situation in Cuba itself.”

“Given the well-documented history of abusive and unlawful detention at Guantánamo, any proposal to use the base for additional detention is deeply troubling and unacceptable,” the organizations wrote on Friday,

They note the prison’s history as a site used for extrajudicial torture during the global War on Terror and as a holding facility for other migrant groups, including Haitian refugees and asylum seekers who fled a military coup in the 1990s, many of whom were subjected to substandard living conditions.

“Time and again, we have seen the US government try to use Guantánamo as a legal black hole to mistreat migrants, subjecting them to inhumane conditions and interfering with both their right to seek protection in the United States and their right to counsel,” said Pedro Sepulveda, a litigation fellow for the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Despite pledges from multiple presidents to close the camp for good, it remains open more than two decades after former President George W. Bush began using it to detain hundreds of terrorism suspects without trial.

Trump has expanded its use during his second term, using it to temporarily hold more than 700 migrants since February 2025—including dozens of Cubans rounded up by immigration agents.

Trump’s use of the camp marks the first time it has been used to hold people detained in the continental United States. A Washington Post investigation from February found that those in the facility were subject to weeks-long periods of isolation, invasive strip searches, and denied contact with lawyers.

The human rights groups called on Congress to block any funding that could be used to detain Cubans fleeing Trump’s blockade and to shut down Guantánamo Bay for good.

“The president has held Guantánamo detention as a threat over the heads of migrants in the United States and now threatens the same over Cubans who may be forced to flee their homes as a result of his own actions,” said Michael Galant, the senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Victims of Torture, said, “If the Trump administration is worried about Cuban migration, the solution is simple: Stop intentionally impoverishing the Cuban people through an embargo and fuel blockade.”