Antifa Conspiracy Hogwash: A Convenient Platform for Fascism

Eve Ottenberg

 July 15, 2026

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Let’s start with reality: there is no Antifa organization. There exists no Antifa “funding” that FBI director Kash Patel claims he is hunting down – he’ll be doing that from now till Kingdom Come, because it quite simply doesn’t exist. There is no shadowy Antifa conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government and what Donald “Nail a Commie” Trump regards as its God-given mission to promote capitalism. It doesn’t exist. It’s a fascist chimera, a demagogic delusion, a convenient hallucination, a mad mirage, a demented nightmare for the boobocracy. It’s bullshit.

What there is, is people fed up with ICE. It is people, quite a few Americans in fact, who hate fascism. They are – surprise! – anti-fascist. Whoever the idiot was who cooked up the supposedly brilliant idea of making all anti-fascists targets for right-wing cuckoo-birds by tagging them with the trendy abbreviation “Antifa,” I wish he – or she – had stayed home and kept his mouth shut. Because now morons in Washington believe – or maybe some just cynically exploit – the notion that there’s a national octopus of “Antifa” revolutionaries, who, like the devious anarchists of yore, can be eliminated via domestic counter-terrorism.

So we have a problem. Government orgs like the FBI, with fascist roots reaching back over a century, are now, under Trump, laser focused on the very saleable “Antifa” conspiracy. Along the way lots of innocent anti-fascists have their lives turned upside down. Just witness the recent sentencing of the anti-ICE Prairieland protesters. According to the Intercept June 23, one so-called Antifa protestor, Daniel Sanchez Estrada was “convicted of obstructing the investigation by moving a box full of antifascist zines after the protest.” The lunatic judge threw the book at him and sentenced him to 30 years, one of eight absurdly, shockingly lengthy sentences “handed down by judges in two courtrooms in Forth Worth,” a case “widely regarded as the Trump administration’s first major victory in its crackdown on left-wing activism.” Sanchez Estrada’s wife, Maricela Rueda, got 70 years, because she allegedly asked her husband “to move the zines after her arrest.”

Patel delivered a colossally stupid statement after these harsh sentences – one of which was for 100 years – saying these punishments “show the FBI remains committed to identifying, locating and dismantling Antifa and its funding networks across the country.” Antifa has no funding networks, because it is not an organization. It is a label. And an unfortunate, troublesome, imbecilic one, at that.

So how did these eight protestors wind up with such wildly wrong sentences? They all wore black to the protest! So that’s one fashion statement you don’t want to make if you’re demonstrating against ICE. Prosecutors in this case told the jury that, per the Intercept March 12, “wearing all black at protests makes you guilty of terrorism.” What if you’re returning home from a funeral and wander into an anti-ICE-Gestapo demo? Welp, too bad for you. You’re guilty of terrorism. Also, the luckless defendants “used the Signal encrypted messaging app.” So do journalists I know of; they might want to ditch Signal tout de suite. Signal, in turn, might want to sue these prosecutors for defamation that harms its business.

In other words, the prosecution was reaching, straining to expand its weak, lousy case from “we don’t like their look and their tech” to “terrorism!” And the astounding fact is – they succeeded, not just with the jurors but with two half-wit judges. And beyond their wildest dreams; which raises the question, why? The answer, as I’ve been none too subtly suggesting, lies not just in the run-of-the-mill, bovine stupefaction of a complacently ignorant mass of Amuricans, but in the creation by the media, and the birdbrains who coined the term “Antifa,” of an “Antifa” bogeyman. The fact that using this bogeyman nets a bunch of anti-fascists is an added plus for our FBI maniacs, suspicious of Signal and those wearing black.  But my guess is anyone who calls themselves Antifa, even if no anti-fascist, would be acceptable quarry for Trump security state predators.

The Department of Justice is bursting with pride at what it has done. Its press release dated June 23 is headlined: “Leader of Antifa Cell Members in North Texas Sentenced to 100 Years in Prison for Terrorist Attack on ICE Facility.” The press release trumpets the defendants being “affiliated with Antifa.” These eight defendants all together got a combined sentence of 450 years in prison, following their 12-day trial that started February 23. One defendant “was granted a continuance and will be sentenced on July 1. Seven others…pleaded guilty prior to trial to one count of providing material support to terrorists and they will be sentenced on July 1.”

Then the DOJ finally spikes the heart of the matter: “The defendants were members of a North Texas Antifa Cell, part of a larger militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups…[who call for] the overthrow of the United States Government.” The press release repeatedly invokes this insane notion of an Antifa cell and a larger coordinated Antifa organization. But just saying something doesn’t make it so. The Trump cult can scream about a unified Antifa conspiracy all it likes, no matter: Where’s the proof Antifa is anything other than an updated, hipper locution for something that, without a nickname, might be too complicated for your average reactionary nincompoop to grasp, namely anti-fascism? As far as anyone can tell, Antifa is little more than the occasional anti-fascist punching a goth Nazi in the nose in his local bar. But unfortunately, this happened enough absolutely to enrage the far right, so that it claims a concerted Antifa org is out to undermine Amurica.

“Evidence at trial revealed that most of the ANTIFA cell involved in the Prairieland attack looked to Benjamin Song as a leader,” the DOJ hyperventilates. And Song owned guns! Ordinarily for reactionaries, gun ownership is a sacred Amurican right, worth the bloody, regular ritual slaughter of schoolchildren by psychotics with semi-automatic weapons being excused by the far right as the price we pay for our freedoms. I suppose for them sometimes the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of toddlers. In short, it depends, I guess, who owns the guns. If the owner protests ICE abuses, then his gun ownership proves he belongs to a nefarious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. DOJ also breathlessly invokes “ideologically aligned groups,” namely those luckless women who “created and distributed insurrectionary materials called ‘zines.’” Short for magazines and pamphlets. Like Antifa is short for anti-fascist. How many multi-decade prison sentences will it take before leftist bubbleheads abandon this idiotically provocative lingo?

Calling things by their names is far more likely actually to stump boneheaded reactionaries. Attacking an anti-fascist means what? That you’re attacking someone opposed to fascism? Well, such an attack is prima facie, even for rightists, a bad thing. Fascists were once Amurica’s enemies. We even fought a war against them. But if you’re attacking Antifa? Ah, now that’s another kettle of insurrectionists. It’s an amorphous term, whose provenance is obscured, and which can be slapped onto just about anything a far-right nitwit doesn’t like. You’re even supposed to pronounce it with the stress on the second syllable, making its relation to “anti-fascist” even more opaque. Cool. That makes it almost impossible to link, orally, to antifascist. Antifa is a dream-come-true for dimwit reactionaries and their judges, who think pounding its so-called followers with 100-year sentences strikes a blow against a vast, coordinated underground network of revolutionaries. Who’s gonna tell these judicial chumps? None of this stuff exists. There are just anti-fascists, who recognize that what ICE does is, well, unvarnished fascism. For that – and for moving a box of magazines – they get 70 years behind bars.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is “Death Calls It a Day.” She can be reached at her website.

From the Haymarket 8 to the Michigan 8

How the state uses conspiracy charges to crush social movements.


FBI raid on the home of some of the Michigan Eight defendants in Ypsilanti, Michigan on June 10, 2026.

Adi Saleem
Jul 14, 2026

Common Dream

On the morning of June 10, 2026, the FBI, together with an ensemble of local and state police departments, including the University of Michigan Police Department, conducted a series of simultaneous raids and arrests in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin in spectacular militarized fashion. The operation targeted eight individuals engaged in Palestine solidarity activism at the University of Michigan.

That afternoon, FBI director Kashyap Patel announced that the targeted individuals “engaged in a coordinated campaign of violent, criminal acts seeking to pressure University of Michigan leaders and other businesses in the Eastern District of Michigan to cut off all ties with Israel.” The alleged violent, criminal acts in question? Property damage. The coordinated campaign in question? Per their indictment, “using encrypted messages, social media, and overseas collaboration platforms […] [and] the internet and social media to broadcast their message.”

To be clear, the Michigan Eight are not being charged with property damage or vandalism. Instead, they are facing charges of conspiracy to transmit a threat, conspiracy to tamper with a witness, and destruction of property to prevent seizure. Less than a week after the raids against the Michigan Eight, 15 individuals were similarly indicted in Minnesota on various conspiracy charges for their participation in community activism and mutual aid in the context of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) Operation Metro Surge that saw 2,000 ICE agents deployed in Minnesota, leading to over 3,000 arrests, two protesters shot by ICE agents, and one individual dead in ICE custody. The conspiracy charges faced by the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15 carry a maximum sentence of 5-20 years and, when there are multiple counts of it, defendants face potentially decades in prison. A week after the Minnesota 15 indictments, anti-ICE protesters were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison after being convicted of various conspiracy charges related to protest activity at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.

These are just three out of several other recent cases involving social movements and conspiracy charges. What links them is not the recurrence of some crime called “conspiracy,” but the conversion of ordinary political association into proof of unlawful intent. Conspiracy charges are among the most common charges brought against social movements precisely because they represent an extremely broad, far-reaching, and powerful tool of the state. You do not need to have taken any action, nor do you need to know the other alleged co-conspirators to be found guilty. Federal prosecutors simply have to establish that at least one alleged conspirator has taken an overt (legal or illegal) act toward the alleged plan. Needless to say, virtually anything can be claimed to be an overt act.

The only conspiracy related to the Michigan Eight or the Minnesota 15 is the one that has been constructed by the federal government.

Aside from formal charges of conspiracy, there is also the more diffuse concept of conspiracy that the prosecution in these cases use more generally to paint activists as dangerous, terroristic individuals engaged in a plot against the state. For example, during the detention hearing on June 12, 2026, for four of the Michigan Eight, one of the federal prosecutors, Margaret M. Smith, assistant United States attorney at the Department of Justice, made several references to the defendants being part of a revolution and a “revolution organization.” This language, as we shall see, has a long association with conspiracy charges. It does more than just describe the alleged beliefs of defendants. It represents the bridge by which belief, affiliation, and collective organization can be made to stand in for actual evidence of particular criminal acts.

But what does the nebulous concept of conspiracy mean and why does the government keep using it and who is it meant to target? The late Michael Parenti once noted that “conspiracy means to collude together in secrecy for what are potentially illegal or immoral ends and [the ruling elites] do this all the time and they talk about the necessity of it and they even give it a name, they call it national security.” Indeed, the only conspiracy related to the Michigan Eight or the Minnesota 15 is the one that has been constructed by the federal government. In fact, across more than a century of American history, the recurring pattern that has shaped the state’s response to dissent and protest has been the tendency to treat collective organization itself as a crime. The First Amendment may protect the freedom of speech and assembly as the very conditions of democratic politics, but conspiracy charges have long made these supposed rights conditional.

The Long History of Conspiracy Charges

The state has a long history of using the concept and charge of conspiracy as a weapon against social movements that have sought to expand democratic freedoms. We must therefore place the particular case of the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15 in a longer history that involves the Haymarket Trial (1886-1887), the Espionage Act (1917), the Smith Act (1940), the Anti-Riot Act (1968), RICO (1970), and more contemporary post-9/11 developments such as the Patriot Act (2001). These historical moments represent the cumulative expansion in what the state can make conspiracy mean: from attributing responsibility for an unidentified act to an entire radical milieu, to treating speech as dangerous, group membership as suspicious, mundane logistical organization as evidence of criminal intent, and decentralized movements as racketeering enterprises. While, in case of the Michigan Eight, the targets are Palestine solidarity activists, and while in the case of the Minnesota 15, the targets are anti-ICE organizers, the tools that have been assembled and are still being expanded and perfected can and will be applied to other groups. What is at stake here is no less than ability to collectively organize to create a better and more just world and to resist oppression.

In 1941, the legal scholar Albert J. Harno wrote that, due to its “elasticity” and “vague boundaries,” the concept of conspiracy “presents serious potential dangers of abuse.” Only, there is nothing “potential” about its dangers. From some of its earliest applications right to the last two weeks, the charge of conspiracy has been the bane of organized labor and other broad social movements that the state has sought to repress. One facet of the seemingly endless elasticity of the concept of conspiracy relates to the category of unindicted conspirators. In the case of the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15, this term is constantly invoked in the indictments. Aside from the fact that unindicted conspirators cannot testify on behalf of the defense, prosecutors can introduce the out-of-court statements of unindicted conspirators in court as evidence against the defendants without these statements considered hearsay. Prosecutors can thus introduce texts, emails, phone calls, et cetera, involving unindicted conspirators as evidence against the defendants even if the defendants were not a direct party to these communications. Moreover, the shadow of not knowing whether one is or is not an unindicted conspirator introduces even more fear into social movements. This uncertainty is a feature of conspiracy law and one of its political effects, thus extending the coercive reach of an indictment beyond the courtroom.

Conspiracy and Labor Repression

Nineteenth-century labor cases show where this logic first acquired its legal form and political function. Labor Studies scholar Risa Lieberwitz notes that the charge of conspiracy has historically “provided a powerful weapon against groups advocating political and social change [and] the labor movement [in particular] was the target of many criminal conspiracy prosecutions during the 19th century, beginning with the Philadelphia Cordwainers’ Case of 1806, which was both the first criminal conspiracy trial in the United States, and the first recorded labor case.” If the Cordwainers’ Case demonstrated that workers coming together to demand higher wages could be a criminal conspiracy, the trial of the Haymarket Eight showed how conspiracy could make an entire political milieu culpable for an act that the state could not directly attribute to any one defendant.

On May 4, 1886, a bomb was thrown during a labor demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Till this day, no one can say for certain who threw that bomb. During the trial, prosecutors could not prove who threw it nor prove that the defendants had planned the bombing. They could not even, in some cases, prove that they had been present when the bomb was thrown. What they could prove was that the Haymarket Eight had given speeches, written articles, edited newspapers, belonged to radical organizations, and broadly advocated for a social revolution.

The concept of conspiracy was what allowed the prosecution to transform this into evidence of collective responsibility for the bombing. The prosecution did not need to identify the bomber; it only needed to argue that the Haymarket Eight had been part of a conspiracy to create the conditions in which such a bombing became likely. In other words, the defendants were guilty of belonging to and contributing to a radical workers’ milieu that the state had defined as dangerous. Haymarket helped established what would become a recurring pattern where membership in particular groups (whether well-defined or as vague as “antifa”) and speech (like posting messages on social media) and acts (like organizing a meeting or using the internet) can become evidence of a conspiracy.

Conspiracy, Speech, and Political Organizations

Haymarket thus supplied the basic argument that the state would repeatedly adapt: When direct proof of individual action was absent, prosecutors could substitute much fuzzier ideas. World War I expanded this basic framework under the sign of national security. The federal government used the Espionage Act of 1917 against socialists, labor organizers, anti-war activists, and others who opposed conscription or otherwise criticized the war. During this time, the Department of Justice conducted a series of mass raids and arrests, collectively known as the Palmer Raids (1919–1920), in more than 30 cities and towns, targeting thousands of individuals, particularly Italian-American and Jewish-American socialists, the so-called “hyphenated Americans” that President Woodrow Wilson railed against, warning that “any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”

In Schenck v. United States (1919), theSupreme Court unanimously held that the First Amendment did not protect Charles Schenck, who had distributed anti-draft and anti-war flyers to draft-age men, from prosecution under the Espionage Act precisely because, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. concluded, “The words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” In other words, the Supreme Court ruled that otherwise lawful speech could be punished if it was thought likely to obstruct or encourage resistance to government aims.

In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court overturned Schenck v. United States and, on the surface, introduced a more expansive interpretation of the First Amendment, holding that advocacy of illegal action cannot be punished unless it is “directed towards inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Yet, the so-called Brandenburg test still reveals the subjective nature of, well, law in general, its interpretation, and its enforcement. In this case, the key subjective terms are “imminent” and “likely.” Whether an action is imminent and whether speech is likely to produce an action requires a level of guesswork that is wholly reminiscent of the trial of the Haymarket Eight.

Described as a “prison for ideas” by the National Committee to Win Amnesty for the Smith Act Victims in 1954, the Smith Act of 1940 would extend this logic within the context of the Cold War. Among other things, the Smith Act criminalized “knowingly or willingly advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing any government in the United States by force or violence.” In the late 1940s and 1950s, communists in particular were prosecuted under the law, not because they had launched an armed insurrection, or even taken material steps toward an armed insurrection, but because they belonged to organizations that taught Marxist theory and advocated for communist revolution.

Like their predecessors in 1886 who did not have to prove that the Haymarket Eight had thrown the bomb, prosecutors in these cases did not have to prove that communists had entered into an agreement to commit a crime (the most basic definition of conspiracy), but that the Communist Party itself was a criminal enterprise. The state did not need to demonstrate that any communists had agreed to carry out a specific unlawful act in the near future. Instead, their membership in the party and their ideological beliefs were sufficient proof of criminal liability. Charisse Burden-Stelly summarizes it well, writing that “membership in the CPUSA automatically meant conspiracy of insurrection.”

Conspiracy and Protest

In the context of popular protests and anti-war mobilization, the Anti-Riot Act of 1968 made it a federal offense to cross state lines or use interstate facilities with the intent to incite, organize, or encourage a riot. If the Smith Act treated membership as evidence of insurrectionary conspiracy, the Anti-Riot Act adapted the same logic to the mass movements of the 1960s by treating travel, communication, planning, and assembly as evidence of an intention to produce disorder. The Chicago Seven would be the first to be prosecuted under the Anti-Riot Act and charged with conspiracy to incite a riot and crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. Again, we see the danger in the elasticity of the key terms of the act that allowed the federal government to frame lawful activities taken to organize a protest, in this case at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as evidence of unlawful intent, namely, to incite a riot.

On February 18, 1970, seven defendants were acquitted on conspiracy charges, two were acquitted on all charges, and the remaining five were convicted of travelling across state lines with intent to incite a riot and sentenced to five years in prison. Over two years later, those convictions would be overturned by an appeals court panel that found numerous errors made by the judge. Yet, the damage to the defendants’ lives and to the broader public had been done. Even when defendants are acquitted or have their convictions overturned, conspiracy charges succeed in the ideological work for which they are perhaps best designed, leaving behind a public narrative in which dissent and protest are not cornerstones of democracy, but dangerous, hidden plots conducted by shadowy figures.

Even unsuccessful prosecutions impose a real material and mental cost on defendants and, more generally, they impose a heavy cost on the public at large, forcing all of us to consider whether participation in collective protest or forms of dissent may expose us to repression.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act of 1970 would give an even more expansive tool for prosecutors to bind heterogeneous individuals and acts under the label of a single, criminal enterprise. RICO has increasingly been used by federal and state prosecutors to target labor unions and broad social movements. The statute’s breadth gives prosecutors considerable flexibility in defining a criminal enterprise and explaining how otherwise separate acts fit together.

In September 2023, Georgia prosecutors brought a sweeping state RICO indictment against dozens of activists associated with opposition to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, commonly known as Cop City. The indictment alleged that a broad protest movement constituted a criminal enterprise and cited a wide range of activities, including alleged acts of property destruction, distribution of literature, mutual aid, reimbursements, fundraising, communications among activists, and protests and demonstrations.

Prosecutors used the flimsiest of evidence to rope even more people into this “conspiracy” as “co-conspirators.” Signing a petition was enough to get a visit by the police and having mud on one’s shoes in a forest was taken as evidence of participation in alleged acts of property damage at a construction site. The significance of the Stop Cop City case lies less in the specific allegations, but in the indictment’s construction of a broad social movement as a unified, organized criminal enterprise. Social movements are almost by definition heterogenous and decentralized. They always comprise individuals with different goals, tactics, and levels of commitment.

The dismissal of the RICO charges against the defendants in December 2025 does not make this case any less troubling (the state could refile charges or repeal the dismissal). On the contrary, the dismissal sharpens the stakes of indictments like this. While the dismissal shows how weak the charges were in the first place, the state successfully punished the defendants. Even unsuccessful prosecutions impose a real material and mental cost on defendants and, more generally, they impose a heavy cost on the public at large, forcing all of us to consider whether participation in collective protest or forms of dissent may expose us to repression. From this perspective, it does not matter much that a court may eventually reject prosecutorial overreach when the threat of prosecution may shape the way we behave.

Responding to Repression with Trust and Solidarity

One lesson that we can learn from the historical continuity between each of these episodes is that movements for economic and racial justice, movements against wars and imperialism, and anti-fascism as a concept (through the targeting of “antifa”) have all been described, in different moments, as threats to public order. In each case, the state and its prosecutors have been able to portray individuals participating in these movements as public enemies. The language of conspiracy is especially useful in this process because it turns ordinary features of collective life into suspicion. Each of these historical cases has contributed to the ever-expanding use of conspiracy charges in state repression of social movements. Across these cases, the object of prosecution moves further and further away from identifiable unlawful acts to the social relations that make collective action possible. This past should inform our understanding of the recent cases and remind us not to take at face value the charges against the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15.

Like the cases from the past, the present charges are an attack on political speech and, more broadly, all those who seek to collectively work toward a more just and freer future. Isaac Sant, one of the Minnesota 15, has noted that what they are facing is “not a normal criminal trial; this is a political case, this is political repression against organizers.” The long history of conspiracy charges and state repression suggests that political repression cannot be defeated alone in the courtroom. This is because conspiracy cases do not just target the named defendants; the broader targets are concepts like trust, collective organization, and solidarity, that is to say the very bases of social movements.

Like previous generations of workers faced with political repression, we must seize the current crises as an opportunity to revitalize the labor movement from the ground up. That revitalization is not going to come from union leadership, but from you and other rank-and-file worker-organizers. As the veteran labor organizer Daniel Gross recently noted, in Unions of Our Own (2026), “A truly just society with reliable economic security, where we can live freely on a healthy planet, simply cannot happen without organized workers and liberatory unions.”

This moment threatens our very ability to collectively organize for a better world at the same time as it represents an opportunity for workers everywhere to double down on collective organization, whether it is to keep our fellow workers safe from abductions; to organize toward divestment from companies profiting from war and genocide; or to fight the daily struggles of autonomy, respect, and dignity on the shop floor. In all cases, every victory, big or small, is not a concession, but a privilege that workers have wrested from state and capital. The stakes of not meeting this moment could not be heavier.


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

Adi Saleem
Adi Saleem teaches at the University of Michigan.
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Hakeem Jeffries Rebuked for Opposing Amendment to End US Military Aid to Israel

“Why does Democratic leadership continue to oppose a measure supported by 74% of Democratic voters?” asked one commentator.


US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks during a news conference on July 13, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jul 14, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

With a key amendment to a 2027 spending bill expected to come up for a vote in the US House of Representatives in the coming days, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had what one organizer called “a real opportunity... to show he’s listening” to the Democratic Party’s base and its growing disapproval of US military aid for Israel.

But on Tuesday, progressive advocates said Jeffries (D-NY) had squandered that opportunity by announcing in a Dear Colleague letter that he would oppose the amendment put forward by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), which would eliminate the $3.3 billion the US provides to Israel’s military annually.

Last month, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—who was detained by armed Israeli settlers in the West Bank this week—urged his colleagues to back the amendment, calling US support for Israel “the moral test of our time” as he stood in front of a memorial for 20,000 children killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

In the letter and at a caucus meeting Tuesday morning, Jeffries claimed the amendment was “overly broad” and could limit funds for humanitarian aid, refugee resettlement, and other operations.

He also asserted that the funding cut would restrict the United States’ ability to “confront Hamas.”

The US government, under both the Biden and Trump administrations, has relentlessly claimed that Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza that began in 2023 has targeted Hamas, even as refugee camps, schools, hospitals, residential buildings, aid workers, and children have been targeted by the Israel Defense Forces and as Israel has concurrently ramped up violent efforts to annex the West Bank.

A ceasefire in Gaza was reached in October 2025, but more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since the deal was signed. In all, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed.

As the US has continued to give material and political support to Israel, approval of the military aid and the Israeli government has plummeted among the American public.

More than half of Democratic voters said in an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll last week that they believed the US-backed military operation amounted to a genocide.

A Quinnipiac University poll found last August that three-quarters of Democratic voters and 60% of all voters supported suspending US weapons aid to Israel.

A number of progressive Democratic challengers, including Melat Kiros in Colorado, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, and Adam Hamawy in New Jersey, have also decisively won primary races in recent months after campaigning on a suspension of US military aid to Israel, noted Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats.

In the corporate press, the issue at hand was described as one that has “sharply divided” Democrats in recent weeks—a characterization that Adam Johnson of the podcast “Citations Needed” vehemently rejected.

“This issue is very much not ‘dividing’ the party writ large,” said Johnson. “Support for cutting aid to Israel among Dems is 74-20. Only 13% of Democrats have a positive view of Israel—less than the percentage of Democrats who support full abortion bans.”

The “divide,” said Johnson, is between voters and the party leadership, particularly Democrats who—like Jeffries—have taken millions of dollars from the pro-Israel lobby.

“Why does Democratic leadership continue to oppose a measure supported by 74% of Democratic voters?” asked Johnson. “Where are all the popularism pundits decrying the Democrats’ out-of-touch leadership, ignoring a broadly popular position, one also supported by the majority of independents?”

Jeffries said in the Dear Colleague letter that his opposition to the amendment was “consistent” with that of “pro-peace organizations like J Street.”

J Street, which describes itself as a “pro-peace” and “liberal Zionist” group, expressed opposition to the amendment, but said it would also “support those members who vote yes to signal their opposition to unconditional [foreign military financing] and support for stronger oversight of how US security assistance is used.”

Erik Sperling, executive director of the progressive think tank Just Foreign Policy, said J Street’s “hedging” on the amendment was “a moral stain” for the organization.

“Genuine pro-peace groups cannot allow billions in US taxpayer money to be sent to [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s Israel now,” said Sperling.

A Budget of the Pentagon, By the Congress, and For the War Profiteers

America's Dilemma at 250

by Eisenhower Media Network | Jul 15, 2026 

Reprinted with permission from the Eisenhower Media Network’s Substack.   Visit the Eisenhower Media Network.

By: Major General Dennis Laich, US Army, (ret.) Executive Director, Eisenhower Media Network

The first sentence of Thomas Paine’s classic 1776 essay, Common Sense, urged the American people to challenge the legitimacy of the English Crown, something that had never been challenged before. He wrote:

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them a great favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

Two hundred and fifty years later, time and reason strongly suggest that the U.S. “defense” budget is out of control, unsustainable and absent of accountability.

Only the American people can rein it in.

Credit: The White House

The “defense of custom” in this case will come from the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) of which President Eisenhower warned us in 1961 in his farewell address, and drove home the consequences of in his famous “Cross of Iron” speech in 1953. In his address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Eisenhower said the following:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

All of these forces benefit by exaggerating threats to our national security which justify a huge U.S. “defense” budget, larger than the next eight nations (most of whom are allies) in the world combined, while American citizens lack health care, childcare and other basic needs.

The defense industry’s lobbyists team up with U.S. politicians, who receive campaign financing from the industry, to draft the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets military policy, the expensive weaponry to be purchased, and the overall military budget. The industry takes the ensuing windfall and puts it toward stock buybacks, which increase the share price, making the rich richer; dividend payments for shareholders; eight-figure annual compensation packages for corporate executives; and the continual political graft (campaign contributions and lobbyists) that keeps the wheel spinning. Incredibly, some contracts stipulate that only the contractor may repair and maintain equipment.

The most embarrassing example of this practice is the F-35 Stealth Fighter, which is grossly over budget, behind schedule and is only 25% fully mission capable.

Credit: US Air Force

The principal beneficiaries of the MICC’s practice of vastly overstating foreign threats are the Pentagon and the invertebrate senior uniformed bureaucrats who occupy it and secure lucrative post-retirement employment with the MICC. The massive Pentagon budget provides the Pentagon with a premier position within both the government and society. Money talks in America, but few members of Congress choose to talk about the $39 trillion national debt to which military spending is a major contributor.

Unfortunately, the uniformed bureaucrats lack the courage to stand up against a draft dodger and a Rambo-wannabe in order to protect their profession or the institution of the military. Government employees, including military officials, are fired for specious reasons and no one, not even those who were fired, dare speak up regarding the negative impact on morale, discipline and readiness. Nor do they speak up when the U.S. supports genocide in Gaza, extrajudicial murders in the Caribbean, or attacks the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.

These recent developments will serve to accelerate a decline in the U.S. military’s performance. Since WWII, the U.S. has won one war (the first Gulf War), lost four (Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran) and tied one (Korea. Iran may be as much an embarrassment as a loss. The United States has failed to achieve its stated objectives in any recent war, despite having a military budget larger than the next eight countries combined and being easily the most defensible of any peer nation (with two friendly, stable nations to its north and south and oceans on its east and west). What football coach could keep his job with a 1-4-1 record?

Additionally, the Pentagon cannot tell the American taxpayer where the money went, since it is unable to pass a financial audit as required by law – something every other department of the federal government is able to do. Now, they are requesting a 50% increase in the defense budget to S1.5 trillion. This is equivalent to your child asking for more money a day after receiving his/her allowance. When you ask what happened to the money he/she received yesterday, the child can’t answer the question, but you give him/her more money regardless.

Credit: Touch of Light/Wikimedia (Pentagon)

This represents a level of arrogance and incompetence that the American people should not be asked to tolerate. Thomas Paine understood something that seemed impossible in 1776. On paper, the American colonies had no chance against the greatest empire on Earth. Britain possessed the world’s most powerful military, immense wealth, and overwhelming resources. The colonies had none of those advantages. What Paine recognized as “common sense” was that wars are not won by budgets alone. They are won by legitimacy, purpose, and the willingness of a free people to defend their own liberty.

The $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request represents more than S9,000 per individual taxpayer. If we Americans are tired of seeing our tax dollars spent on endless wars, bombing campaigns, and military excess while our own communities struggle with the costs of health care, child care, education, and infrastructure, then the time has come to do what Thomas Paine asked Americans to do 250 years ago: challenge the assumptions that have become accepted simply because they are old. The courage required today is not to defeat an empire abroad, but to confront one at home — the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex — and reclaim a government that serves the American people rather than the interests of perpetual war.

The Eisenhower Media Network (EMN) comprises former military, intelligence and civilian national security officials who offer independent analysis based on decades of real-world experience, study, and scholarship. EMN aims to reach broad, cross-partisan audiences in diverse media outlets and among the American people, who increasingly sense that US foreign policy today is not making them, or the world, safer.

The War Machine, and the War Budget, Are Out of Control—Let’s Change That

The Trump administration, enabled by many in Congress, is proposing an outrageous 66% increase in Pentagon and related spending, to over $1.5 trillion per year; we must stop this madness.

Members of the US military are seen next to a Bradley Fighting Vehicle as preparations are made for the “Salute to America” Fourth of July event with US President Donald Trump at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, July 3, 2019, which will feature flyovers by the Blue Angels, an airplane used as Air Force One, as well as military demonstrations and a speech by Trump.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

Kevin Martin
Jul 14, 2026

Common Dreams


Much of the time, it seems as if the war machine runs on autopilot. Indeed, the United States has been engaged in warfare for almost the entirety of our 250 year history. It feels overwhelming to most people to attempt to intervene, yet we are all involved, as our tax dollars feed endless wars, interventions, and weapons transfers fueling violent conflict around the world—and at home, as evidenced by the murders of US citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So, intervene we must, if we want our government to pursue more productive, life-affirming policies and priorities.

This week, the Senate will vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to set those war policies and priorities for the next fiscal year. The Trump administration, enabled by many in Congress, is proposing an outrageous 66% increase in Pentagon and related spending, to over $1.5 trillion per year. While this is a boon to weapons manufacturers, it is to the detriment of everyone and everything else. We must stop this madness.

On the other side of the guns vs. butter ledger, Trump has already slashed over $1 trillion in funding from healthcare and food assistance programs over the next decade. And he wants to make even bigger cuts to healthcare, climate, housing, food, and other human needs. Trump recently said we can’t fund childcare because we’re fighting wars, in the context of his (and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s) illegal war of aggression against Iran. Sometimes he says the quiet part out loud.

So the task is simple—to tell the Senate to vote “no” on this misappropriation of our tax dollars. It is easy enough to dial the US Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, and ask to be connected to your two senators (requiring two calls).

Politicians in Washington, and the masters of war (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and company) count on a complacent citizenry accepting business as usual to keep their endless war gravy train running.

In addition to demanding they vote against this gargantuan war budget, tell them to reject the proposed US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, and a related Intelligence cooperation agreement, both of which would further entangle the two countries’ war machines, at a time when the government of Israel is deservedly unpopular for its never-ending wars, and its occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people.

If you can do more than call, please write to your senators with the following message, with thanks to the People Over Pentagon coalition:

Dear Senator,

I urge you to vote against President Donald Trump’s request for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget, to oppose any increase to the Pentagon budget for 2027, and to vote for any amendment to cut that budget.

Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget for the Pentagon would be a stunning 66% increase over last year’s already enormous $900 billion Pentagon budget. Trump is cutting funding for healthcare, housing, food, education, and climate action. He is using this money to dramatically increase funding for the Pentagon.

Trump has already cut over a trillion dollars from funds for Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and SNAP, which helps low income people buy food. Millions of people are expected to lose healthcare coverage and food.

The Pentagon is unaccountable to American taxpayers and has never passed an audit. More than half of the Pentagon’s budget (54%) is paid to corporate military contractors, whose profits are rising. Further gigantic increases would be grossly irresponsible.

Please oppose Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget and oppose any increase in Pentagon funding this year. This money should be invested in meeting basic needs in our communities.


Please encourage friends, family, and colleagues to call or write as well, and you can tag your senators on social media, with this simple message:
Dear @ Senator (fill in their names), I urge you to vote against Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget. Please oppose any increase in funding for the Pentagon. This money must be spent on human needs, including healthcare, housing, food, education, and climate action. #PeopleOverPentagon.

Politicians in Washington, and the masters of war (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and company) count on a complacent citizenry accepting business as usual to keep their endless war gravy train running. Let them know this outlandish war budget is unacceptable, and that we will be watching and holding them accountable.


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


Kevin Martin
Kevin Martin is the president of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, with over 40 years experience as a peace and justice organizer. He is helping coordinate the Cease-Fire Now Grassroots Advocacy Network.
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Johnson Says Pentagon Needs More Money for ‘Fighting Communism on Our Own Shores’

Trump has threatened to deploy the military against the “enemy within” and has recently promoted the idea that “democratic socialism must be criminalized.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) attends a news conference at the Republican National Committee after a meeting of the House Republican Conference on July 14, 2026.
(Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Jul 14, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As he pushed for Congress to approve $350 billion in new spending requested by the Pentagon, House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Tuesday that some of the funds were needed for “fighting communism on our own shores,” an ominous notion in light of President Donald Trump’s threats to deploy the US military against his domestic enemies.

In addition to the already record-breaking $1.1 trillion military spending bill that was approved last month by the House Appropriations Committee, the Pentagon has requested a separate $350 billion package to be passed through a separate GOP-led spending bill known as “Reconciliation 3.0,” which can pass without Democratic support.

Johnson (La.) has faced pushback from some GOP senators, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and the hospitalized Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), as he’s sought additional spending. During a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson made his case for Republicans to back the reconciliation proposal.

The speaker argued that the package included “transformational funding that will help us change the dynamic of the Department of War and make it more efficient and effective,” including Trump’s request to “effectively double the funding for national defense.”

“Look, we live in dangerous times,” Johnson said. “We’re fighting communism on our own shores, and we’re fighting evil terrorists and tyrants around the world, and we have to be able to protect our national security.”



In the weeks following a series of Democratic primary victories by progressive and democratic socialist candidates in New York, Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere, Trump and his allies in the GOP have relentlessly hammered on the idea that the nation was under siege by “godless Communists” who want to “completely destroy the traditional American way of life,” rhetoric that echoed McCarthy era red-baiting to many critics.

In just two weeks since those primaries on June 23, Reuters found that Trump had invoked “communism” at least 81 times to demonize candidates and officials like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and others, who have promoted policies like Medicare for All, higher taxes on the wealthy, the expansion of public utilities, the abolition of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cutting off aid to Israel, and other policies supported by large numbers of Democratic voters.

Trump’s recent rhetoric has indicated that opposing “communism” goes beyond simply voting to keep these candidates out of power. He’s referred to the so-called communists as “animals,” as a “cancer” that needs to be “cut out fast.”

He said during a July 3 speech outside Mount Rushmore that “communists” cannot be “loyal” to America and he will “send them into exile... send them quickly away.”

On Sunday, Trump reposted a video from the right-wing radio host Michael Savage with the title “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM MUST BE CRIMINALIZED; LEADERS DEPORTED.”

Johnson echoed Trump’s rhetoric on Tuesday, continuing to describe passing the military spending proposal as part of the existential fight against internal communist enemies.

“THE BARBARIANS ARE INSIDE THE GATE!” Johnson posted to social media alongside a video of himself promoting the bill.

“We are fighting right now in Congress over whether we’re going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic OR trade that in, dismantle the foundations and GO DOWN THIS DARK ROAD OF DEATH TO COMMUNISM,” he continued. “THAT is the question.”



With these comments, Johnson was explicitly tying increased military funding to Trump’s fight against communism, though it’s unclear which aspect of the budget proposal would be directed toward those ends.

Federal troops are generally barred from domestic law enforcement, though the president can deploy them in cases of domestic insurrection and violence that ordinary law enforcement cannot handle.

Trump has deployed active duty Marines to US cities like Los Angeles and ordered the National Guard to deploy to many others, including Portland, Memphis, and Chicago, which courts have said violated the law.

He has also suggested using armed forces to target his ideological enemies. During a speech to generals last year, he said cities should be used as “training grounds for our military” as they fight an “enemy within,” which has included immigrants, the “radical left” and protest movements that have mobilized in opposition to his administration.

GRIMES IS CANADIAN